18

GHAT, LIBYA —18 NOVEMBER

It was 4 a.m. when the Antonov An-148 touched down.

The aging Ukrainian passenger plane taxied down the runway, then came to a stop outside the nearly deserted terminal. The pilots shut down the two turbofan jet engines. A ground crew rolled a set of stairs into position. But the plane’s door remained shut until all of the airport’s external lights were also shut down.

Once the ground crew sped away, a convoy of four SUVs emerged from a dilapidated hangar on the far side of the airfield and roared across the tarmac. Pulling alongside the jet, the drivers cut their headlights, and armed men dressed in black exited their vehicles and took up defensive positions around the motorcade and the plane.

Only then did the door of the plane open and a single bodyguard emerge. He scanned the scene looking for threats and received the “all clear” message from the team’s sharpshooters positioned on several nearby roofs. Then he headed down the metal stairs. A moment later, General Mahmoud Entezam emerged, wearing a dark suit and sunglasses, despite the fact the sun would not be up for several hours. Surrounded by a phalanx of IRGC operatives, Entezam hustled down the stairs and into the second of the four waiting SUVs. The rest of the team followed, and once every door was closed, the headlights of each vehicle flicked back on, and the convoy roared off into the predawn darkness.

The city of Ghat wasn’t exactly a jewel in the Libyan crown. Situated in the country’s southwestern corner, tucked against the Algerian border, it was once an important stop on the trans-Saharan trade route, the site of a fortress built by Italian fascists during the First World War, and occupied by the French during the Second. But in the modern era, it had long since ceased to be important to anyone but drug runners and terrorists.

Ghat wasn’t a tourist destination. It was home to no Muslim or Christian holy sites. It had no oil or gas, no precious minerals or other natural resources. And it was hardly suitable for growing cash crops, given its proximity to the world’s largest desert and thus the near-complete absence of rain. Most of the year the city was nothing but a blast furnace, inhospitable to man or beast. Entezam had been told the entire population comprised some twenty-four thousand residents, but that estimate seemed high to him. Ghat, he surmised, was a place you lived only if you couldn’t afford to move or didn’t want it known where you lived.

The rickety, sunburnt buildings of the airport had been built eighteen kilometers north of the city. But the convoy did not head south. Instead it headed west toward the Algerian border for about twenty minutes until it reached an enormous, walled, and completely desolate compound. Even if it had been daylight, no other houses or structures of any kind would have been visible in any direction. The road to get there wasn’t even paved. Nor were there power lines or telephone poles or gas or water pipes connecting the compound to civilization.

This was not Entezam’s first visit to Libya. To the contrary, he had invested a great deal of time and an even greater amount of his regime’s money in this post-Gadhafi world of chaos and carnage. Afghanistan had once been the failed state of choice where he could fund, arm, and train jihadist proxy groups to do his bidding without leaving Iranian fingerprints. Then the Americans and NATO had come and fouled it all up. They’d tried to seize control of Syria in a joint venture with the Russians, to mixed results. In the view of the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, however, it was Libya that was now proving the most ideal environment to recruit and deploy warriors for Allah. It was just as failed a state as the others. Lots of weapons. Lots of angry people. No functioning central government. And for the moment at least, no great powers trying to take it over. After Gadhafi’s violent death, NATO hadn’t had the stomach to stay. After the catastrophe in Benghazi and the murder of their ambassador, the Americans had effectively bugged out, as well. The Russians, the Chinese, and the Turks were certainly looking for ways to seize Libya’s significant oil reserves. But that kept them operating in Tripoli, mostly. Rarely did Russian intelligence operatives —much less politicians or businessmen —venture outside the capital. Nor did almost anyone else, for that matter. That left the playing field almost entirely to Iran, and nothing could have suited Entezam better.

As the massive steel gates of the compound opened, the convoy turned off the dusty dirt road onto a beautiful paved driveway. They followed it, snaking through the sprawling complex until they arrived at a four-story villa painted a pale yellow. Parked out front were two armored personnel carriers, each fitted with a .50-caliber machine gun that was manned and ready to engage. On the roof, Entezam could see snipers eyeing them warily. On the balconies of each level, men stood guard with AK-47s. There were manned guard towers in every corner of the compound, and while Entezam could not see any attack dogs, he could hear German shepherds barking out back.

As the motorcade came to a stop, the Iranians exited their vehicles and set up a perimeter. Once this was done, Entezam’s personal bodyguard got out of the front passenger seat of the SUV, scanned the environment, then entered a code into the handle of the rear passenger-side door. Entezam heard the click of the lock disengaging. The moment his bodyguard yanked open the heavy, armor-plated door, the general stepped out in the moonlight and was whisked inside.

The Iranian and his detail entered a spacious elevator and emerged on the top floor. They were led into a dining room far more elegant than might have been expected in the otherwise-spartan facilities. There was a long, antique mahogany table surrounded by a dozen ornately carved wooden chairs. Overhead was a crystal chandelier. Under their feet was a thick Persian carpet.

Entezam was shown a seat near the far end of the table. He sat down and set a small file folder on the table while the guards —both the Iranians and the Libyans —took up their positions around the room. Then an aide rang a small silver bell.

The elderly man who entered through a side door did not look like a killer. But Entezam had no doubt he was.