Exit Plan Read online

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  Exit Plan

  [Jerry Mitchell 03]

  Larry Bond

  No copyright 2012 by MadMaxAU eBooks

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  PROLOGUE

  6 February 2013

  Uranium Pilot Enrichment Plant, Natanz, Iran

  “I smell smoke!” Shirin Naseri, assistant engineer in the centrifuge-testing department, had opened the blast door into the test cell. Her superior, Dr. Davood Moham, quickly looked up, first with confusion, then irritation, and motioned for her to shut the door.

  “What is the problem now?” snapped Moham. “And why did you open the door?”

  “I said, I smell smoke,” replied Naseri patiently. She had to be careful of her tone; her boss was in one of his less collegial moods. “A good engineer doesn’t just look at the gauges, and my nose tells me something is overheating. We should shut down the test and find out what’s wrong.”

  Moham slammed his clipboard on the console, making test technician Faraz Yazdi almost jump out of his seat. He stalked over to the blast door, muttering about “fussy women,” and yanked it open. The whirring din from sixty-four centrifuges engulfed them. Taking a deep sniff, his face soured even more. “I smell nothing.”

  “It’s been six days, Doctor Naseri.” Moham had used her title with contempt, as if it was a mistake. “You thought we weren’t ready for this, that the design was still flawed. It’s been six days, with no problems whatsoever, and now that it’s almost over, you’re still looking for bad news.”

  Naseri shook her head. “No, sir. I want this design to succeed, but I’m very sensitive to smells right now, and…”

  “And pregnancy makes you smarter?” Moham looked up, as if speaking to the heavens. “Why did I ever think a woman would be useful?”

  Naseri, twenty-eight, was one of Moham’s assistants. She’d done well enough in school to impress even the opinionated Moham. A petite and beautiful young woman, she was as outspoken as Yazdi was timid. The technician was still working on his doctoral thesis, and looked like a graduate student—skinny, with a spare beard and pale complexion from spending too much time indoors. He was the nervous type, intimidated by Moham’s reputation and Naseri’s competence, and had been especially wound up for days, ever since the final test had started. Naseri certainly was.

  Moham, director of the centrifuge program, was their boss, but more than that, their beacon. Brilliant, arrogant, and charismatic, he’d brought them and others as new blood into a program that Moham would redeem and save. Now, three years later, he’d lost weight, and gray had appeared in the thirty-eight-year-old’s jet-black hair and beard. His expression was just as intense as it was at the beginning, but now it wasn’t all power and knowledge. He was also afraid.

  This was the final test of their latest centrifuge design—his latest design, and his last chance. None of the others had come this far, and if it passed, it meant success, vindication, reward. And failure meant more than just professional loss. Others in the nuclear program had been accused of sabotage or spying, never to be seen again.

  All three stared through thick safety glass at the two rows of cylinders and piping, as if they could pull more information from the machines by gazing intently at them. The computer displays that filled the test console told them anything they wanted to know: revolutions per minute, gas flow, bearing temperatures—any physical metric that they could imagine. After all, Moham and the others had designed the console. But did it tell them what they needed to know?

  The brightly lit test cell appeared almost empty. Only a small fraction of the available floor space, designed to hold several hundred machines, was being used. The ceiling was heavily patterned with electrical cables, piping, and flexible tubing that supplied power, cooling water, and the uranium hexafluoride gas to the centrifuges.

  Sixty-four hand-built examples of their latest centrifuge design stood neatly aligned in two rows of thirty-two, connected in a long chain called a cascade. A full cascade usually had 164 machines, but given the “encouragement” from their seniors for faster progress, smaller test cascades were now the norm.

  Everything was contained within walls of thick reinforced concrete. The panels, doors, and windows around the control room were also of reinforced construction. Some of the previous tests had ended violently, and while uranium hexafluoride gas was not highly radioactive, it was dangerously toxic.

  For something so important and complex, the centrifuges themselves were rather plain. Each smooth silver cylinder stood about three-and-a-half-feet tall and six inches in diameter. Spaced about ten inches apart, they looked like rows of stacked juice cans without their labels. Their importance lay beneath their shiny silver exterior. Inside each canister, a carbon-wound rotor spun in vacuum at ninety thousand revolutions per minute—six times faster than a high-performance race car engine.

  “Faraz!” yelled Moham. “Are any of the centrifuges overheating?”

  “Ahh, no, Dr. Moham,” responded Yazdi. “But several have lower bearing temperatures that are higher than I’d like,” he added carefully.

  “Are they within acceptable limits, Technician Yazdi?” demanded Moham impatiently.

  “Yes, Doctor; just barely.”

  Turning back to Naseri, Moham sneered and said, “See! There is no basis for your concern. We will continue the test.”

  “Doctor, we both know there can be a time lag between when a component begins overheating and when the heat actually reaches the thermocouple. I’m convinced that at least one of the centrifuges is in serious trouble.” Naseri’s tone was urgent, almost pleading.

  Moham breathed in deeply, his face crimson with anger. “Engineer Naseri, I have no intention of ending this test until it reaches its successful conclusion! We will continue the test, and that is final!”

  Naseri surrendered and took her post again, sitting next to Yazdi, and monitored the computer displays and gauges, while Moham, supervising, paced back and forth in the narrow space. Moham kept glancing at his watch, and unconsciously reached for the pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket. Then he would put them back. There was no smoking in the control room.

  They’d barely started checking the displays again when the computer confirmed Naseri’s fears. Centrifuge forty-two’s lower bearing temperature was rising rapidly. Cross-checking the rotor vibration display showed it was getting disturbingly large as well. A quick glance toward Yazdi showed that he saw it, too, but he remained silent. Dashing to the blast door, Naseri threw it open. A foul odor washed over the three of them. “Can you smell it now?” she demanded.

  Her supervisor reacted with anger, but that quickly transformed into shock as the unmistakable odor of burning electrical insulation took hold. Moham froze.

  Before Naseri could say anything else, a loud alarm buzzer sounded.

  “High temperature in number forty-two!” shouted Yazdi. “Lower bearing!”

  Moham stared, disbelieving, at the display; all the color disappeared from his face.

  “Doctor Moham? What do you want me to do?” asked the technician.

  He didn’t reply, and instead stared at the displays, finally saying, “It has to be an error in the sensors. Maybe if we reset the system . . .”

  Naseri slammed and bolted the blast door, yelling commands. “Execute test shutdown sequence. Start coasting down the centrifuges. Close the uranium hexafluoride gas feed.”

  Yazdi hesitated for a moment, looking to see if Moham would countermand Naseri’s orders. When the director just sat there, muttering to himself, the technician started the shutdown protocol. He kept up a running commentary on the centrifuge as he punched the commands.

  “The temperature is spiking. Vibration readings are very high as well. Wait, now it’s gone
to zero . . .

  “Now it’s high again.” The technician checked the control settings. “It’s like the sensor can’t handle the data.”

  “Never mind, Faraz, we don’t have time,” exclaimed Naseri. “That rotor will tear itself apart any second now. We have to leave.” She hit the red button on the console. The emergency alarm for the building started shrieking. Reaching down under her seat, she grabbed her gas mask from its storage bag and started putting it on.

  The technician was busily putting on his mask, but Moham was fumbling with his, still confused as to what was going on. Naseri grabbed him and started pushing him to the exit.

  The two of them managed to drag their supervisor out of the control room just as the centrifuge blew, a loud pop mixed with the screech of tearing metal. The blast-resistant windows shuddered, but held. The test cell was immediately filled with a brownish-yellow smoke. The swirling clouds near the ceiling also showed the fire suppression system had been activated, flooding the cell with carbon dioxide gas. Uranium hexafluoride could burn when mixed with the air.

  A staccato of explosions punctuated by the sound of thuds and crashes continued, as if two giants were fighting in a junkyard. They felt each explosion through the floor, and they were hard enough to knock dust and debris down from the ceiling.

  As Naseri and Yazdi made sure the control room door was latched shut, several men in firefighting gear came running down the hallway with hoses and portable extinguishers. Their leader pointed to the test team, motioning for them to move to a safer location. Escorted by two of the firefighters, Moham, Yazdi, and Naseri quickly found themselves outside; a crowd was gathering, with people streaming toward them from other buildings. The sound of sirens mixed with the diesel engines of fire equipment.

  Colonel Zamanian, the base commander, leapt out of a jeep as it slowed.

  “Davood! What happened? What went wrong?”

  “Disaster!” wailed Moham. “May Allah be merciful!” The director began to weep, and would have collapsed if not for the firefighters supporting him on each side.

  Zamanian turned to Naseri and Yazdi. “Engineer, Technician, tell me what happened.”

  “A bearing failed on one of the centrifuges. It tore itself apart,” replied Naseri frankly. The engineer shuddered, reliving the experience. “There were many explosions, Colonel.”

  Zamanian became pale. “Why? What caused the bearing to fail? I thought we solved that problem months ago.”

  “I don’t know, sir. Nothing obvious. There was a temperature alarm in centrifuge forty-two and it blew up soon thereafter. We’ll have to analyze the test data.” She looked over to her partner. “But I believe Technician Yazdi was able to save the data. We should be able to identify the cause.”

  “How much of the cascade did we lose?”

  “I do not know,” answered Naseri, annoyed that the man seemed more interested in centrifuges than people. “But as I said, there were many explosions. It may be a total loss.”

  Stunned, Zamanian nodded, then gathered himself. “I must report this unfortunate incident. The medical staff will tend to you and the others.” With a weary smile he added belatedly, “I’m glad that no one was hurt. We at least have that to be thankful for. Allah be praised.”

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  1

  EPIPHANY

  8 February 2013

  Uranium Enrichment Facility, Natanz, Iran

  Natanz lay only 150 kilometers to the north of his headquarters in Isfahan, so General Moradi had flown up early in the morning with his aide, Captain Hejazi. Moradi’s staff had urged him to wait, to not rush up there the same day, that afternoon. “They won’t know anything,” Colonel Nadali had warned. “They’ll bury you in raw data and argue with each other.”

  The general had learned to listen to Farzad Nadali, his chief of staff. The colonel’s patience and good humor complemented Moradi’s own fiery temperament. Nadali had counseled Moradi to wait until the scientists had something to tell him.

  So finally, two days later, they were flying north in an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Mi-17. Instead of jump seats for troops, the Russian-made transport helicopter was fitted for VIP travel, with increased soundproofing, comfortable seating, and fold-down work surfaces. A few hundred meters below them, the landscape was empty and broken, painted in shades of brown and gray, with stony hills rising from the left. It was still winter, and the morning cold did nothing to soften the desert landscape.

  Moradi had made the trip often, and hardly noticed the harsh beauty of the ground below. Instead, he studied a briefing prepared by the scientists and e-mailed to his headquarters that morning. The general was sure they’d been up all night working on it, but he was not sympathetic. A few more sleepless nights might have prevented this disaster.

  Captain Hejazi’s voice interrupted his review. “Sir, Natanz is in sight.” Moradi understood that his aide was referring to the uranium enrichment facility. They’d spotted the town of Natanz proper five minutes ago. The facility was thirty kilometers farther to the north, surrounded by desert and rocky hills, but not isolated. Its front gate was just south of the Isfahan-Kashan road, a six-lane highway that actually passed through the outer ring of air defenses. A moment later the aide added, “Major Sadi is monitoring our approach.”

  Moradi nodded, acknowledging the report. Sadi was in charge of the facility’s air defenses, and simply because they were a scheduled flight didn’t mean they couldn’t be shot out of the sky.

  The enrichment site itself was a rough square, a kilometer and a half on each side. A perimeter fence enclosed the pilot enrichment plant, the gigantic buried centrifuge halls, and the support buildings for those two vital facilities.

  A few hundred meters out, a road paralleled the perimeter, connecting dozens of antiaircraft gun emplacements and watchtowers. Each gun position, a pair of manually aimed 23mm or 35mm autocannons, was ringed with sandbags and sited on an earthen mound to give it a better field of fire.

  Farther out, a second ring bristled with even more guns: larger four-gun batteries of 100mm weapons, radar-directed 35mm batteries, scores of the manually aimed guns, and half a dozen batteries of surface-to-air missiles. Three early warning radars covered Natanz and the surrounding area. It was possible that Natanz was the most heavily defended place in Iran, except, of course, for Tehran itself.

  And a lot of that was Moradi’s doing. Since he’d been placed in charge of the nuclear weapons program five years ago, he’d tripled the number of SAM batteries and ordered a second ring of antiaircraft guns placed around Natanz. He’d also handpicked Sadi for his post. The major was inexperienced, but competent, hardworking—and loyal.

  Moradi felt the helicopter descend, and he saved his notes and closed the laptop. As Hejazi packed up the general’s computer, the helicopter hovered and then set down smoothly. The crew chief moved aft to open the side door, and Moradi remembered to remove his uniform cap before the rotor wash snatched it away.

  The blades slowed, and figures outside ran toward the open door. A few were ground crew, but most were officers, with a few civilians scattered through the group. Moradi recognized the Natanz facility’s commander, Colonel Zamanian, with his staff, including Sadi, and Nadali, who’d arrived yesterday to manage the recovery and the investigation. Colonel Nadali was a great organizer, and he’d been right to go ahead and manage things. Moradi knew he’d probably have fired the lot on the spot.

  The officers immediately fell into two ranks, and the civilians wandered about for a few moments, deciding where to stand. There was more than a little tension between the scientists, engineers, and the military. The civilians seemed reluctant to fall in line, but finally formed a knot at one end, not quite in line, but not sticking out either.

  Nadali, who’d placed himself at the near end of the front rank, saw Moradi appear in the open door and called “Attention!” The officers saluted as one, and even the civilians managed to stand a little straighter.

  Brigadie
r General Adel Moradi of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Pasdaran, stepped from the helicopter. The Revolutionary government’s propaganda machine had dubbed him “The Lion of Karbala,” for his bravery in the war with Iraq, but he knew his real nickname, the one his staff thought he didn’t know about: “The Rhino.”

  Smoothly slipping on his uniform cap, Moradi returned the salute. His hat was a dark olive green ball cap, matching his fatigues and emblazoned with the emblem of the Pasdaran in gold thread. The symbol was repeated on his breast pocket.

  In his late fifties, Moradi was trim, almost athletic. His aide, Hejazi, was taller, but Moradi was still six foot one. Solidly built, his physical presence had always been an asset, both on the battlefield and in politics. Trimmed close, his beard was only lightly threaded with gray. It outlined a broad, weathered face that seemed to settle naturally into an impatient scowl.