The Tehran Initiative Read Free Page B

devout. Some were passionate. Some were fanatics. A week ago, Farooq would never have imagined that any of them would embrace the teachings about the Mahdi, much less take to the streets to call for Pakistan to join the Caliphate with the Twelfth Imam as its leader. But now the people were on the move.
    From Karachi to Cairo to Casablanca, millions of Muslims—Shias and Sunnis alike—were on the streets demanding change, demanding the immediate downfall of “apostate regimes” like his own, demanding that the ummah , the community of Muslims around the world, join forces to create a new, unified, borderless kingdom, a new Caliphate stretching from Pakistan to Morocco.
    And that was just the beginning. The masses wanted what the Twelfth Imam was preaching: a global Caliphate in which every man, woman, and child on the face of the planet converted to Islam or perished in a day of judgment.
    It was lunacy, Farooq thought. Sheer lunacy. Yet he dared not say so. Not yet. Not now. To do so, he knew, would be political suicide. Abdel Ramzy could publicly defy the Mahdi from his secure perch on the banks of the Nile, backed by all that American money and weaponry. But one word in public from the Mahdi that he was unhappy with the “infidel of Islamabad,” and Farooq knew he would have a full-blown and bloody revolution on his hands. The protesting masses—notably peaceful in their first twenty-four hours—could very well turn violent. He had seen it before. He had been part of such mobs before, back in his youth. If that happened, he genuinely doubted the military would stand with him, and then what?
    “I appreciate your call very much, Your Excellency,” Farooq told the Mahdi. “There are a few more questions I have, ones that I would prefer not to discuss over the phone. Perhaps we could meet in person? Would that be acceptable to you?”
    “It must be soon. Coordinate details with Javad.”
    “Very well, Your Excellency,” Farooq said before being put on hold.
    As he waited for Javad Nouri, the Mahdi’s personal aide, to come on the line, Farooq tried not to think about the consequences if he were deposed and his nation descended into anarchy. If he didn’t bide his time and plan his steps very carefully, this self-appointed Twelfth Imam would soon gain control of his beloved Pakistan, and with it, control of 172 nuclear warheads—the nation’s entire arsenal—and the ballistic missiles to deliver them.

2
    Queens, New York
    Air Force One was now on final approach.
    As they descended through the clouds into John F. Kennedy International Airport, the military crew and Secret Service detail on board the presidential jumbo jet were unaware of the threat materializing on the ground below. For them, this was just another mission, carefully scripted and exacting in detail, one of hundreds of similar missions they flew every year for their commander in chief. Thus far it was indistinguishable from the rest. Half a world away, tensions were mounting, to be sure, but for now, in the blue, cloudless skies over the Big Apple, they had a beautiful Sunday afternoon with unlimited visibility and unusually warm temperatures for the first week of March.
    Flying over the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, the pilots could see Runway 13R—at more than fourteen thousand feet, one of the longest commercial runways in North America—three miles ahead and closing fast. “Wheels down” was scheduled for 5:06 p.m. eastern time, and they were on track for another picture-perfect, on-time landing. All other air traffic was on hold. Ground traffic at JFK was on hold. Marine One and her crew were on standby.
    “It’s time, Mr. President.”
    Special Agent Mike Bruner, thirty-eight, head of the president’s protective detail, made sure he had his boss’s attention. Then he stepped out and quietly closed the door behind him, leaving the leader of the free world alone with his thoughts.
    William James Jackson, about to turn fifty,