6:48 P.M. Eastern Time
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
Ron Carter exchanged a glance with the DCS as he disengaged the uplink. “Think he’ll do it?”
Bernard Kranemeyer nodded. “He’s a good man.”
A snort. “They’re all good men. Pull the files on Thomas Parker’s next of kin. They’ll need to be notified.”
Carter turned to his computer, tapping quickly through the database of CIA personnel. He shook his head. “His father’s dead, his mother lives out in California with her husband. Last reported contact between them was four years ago at his step-sister’s wedding.”
Kranemeyer let out a weary sigh. “Their relationship doesn’t matter. Make sure she’s notified.”
3:50 A.M. Tehran Time
The Alborz Mountains
“EAGLE SIX to GUNHAND. Take SWITCHBLADE and destroy the fuel tankers parked behind the trailers. Use up our det cord if you have to. But make sure they go up in flames.”
“Roger that, EAGLE SIX.”
Hossein snarled an angry curse into the empty night, listening to it echo among the rocks, mocking his impotence. How the radio had survived the crash, he had no idea, but it remained in his shirt pocket, informing him of events moment by moment, things he could do nothing about, had no power to stop. The gunfire had moved away, as his men chased their attacker across the rugged mountainside. But none of that mattered, not now. In a few moments, the Americans would have destroyed his transportation, his means of pursuing them.
A footstep crunched into the rocky ground beside his ear and he glanced up, into the eyes of an Iranian soldier. “Help me!” he hissed angrily.
The soldier started up, looking again as if to see if his major was still alive, then he lifted up his voice. “Come! Come and help me with this cursed truck!”
3:55 A.M.
The base camp
Tex moved quickly toward the back of the base camp, stepping over the corpses strewn across the desert sand. Davood’s form appeared at his side and the Texan dug into his backpack, dividing his supply of detonation cord.
“Take the two tankers to the right,” he ordered, his words terse and quick. “I’ll take the two this side of the main road.”
The Iranian agent nodded. “Timed detonation or command?”
“Command. Separate charges. That’ll get us well clear.”
“Understood.”
They separated there, and Tex hurried to his tankers. The fuel trucks had been moved in within the last few days, according to the satellite imagery they had been shown before loading onto the Huey. Apparently the Iranians had planned on settling in.
The Texan bent down on one knee by the rear of the first tanker, unwinding the det cord from his backpack. The thin rope was impregnated with plastic explosives, and was usually intended to connect a charge to its detonator. But it made a fine explosive in and of itself.
He still remembered an ambush in the mountains of Afghanistan. He and his Force Recon squad had been assigned to take out a Taliban strongman. They had laid in wait for him along a mountain trail. When their trap was sprung, the terrorist and his surviving bodyguards dove for the rocks to one side of the trail, intending to take cover there. In their hurry, they never noticed the rope laced into the rocks. And at that moment, Tex had pressed the detonator…
He tossed one end of the rope up over the tanker and pulled it down the other side, twisting the cord into a knot. Placed at that point, the explosion would split the fuel tank apart, igniting the gasoline inside. Testing the knot to make sure it was secure, he attached the detonator. As a hurried beep-beep-beep assured him the trigger was engaged, he moved to the other tanker.
Harry pushed open the door of the trailer cautiously, following his gun barrel into the room. Hamid was on guard outside.
A strong smell of antiseptic was the first thing that struck his nose, followed by another, equally recognizable. The smell of death.
His eyes swept the room, taking in the scene. The inside of the trailer was like a hospital room. His mind flitted back to the schematics they had been shown back at Langley. The computer simulations the photoanalysts had made of the Russian bio-war trailers.
He was standing inside one. For once the spooks had gotten it right.
A body was hermetically sealed inside a container on the far side of the room. Harry stepped closer, peering into the- casket. It was the only word he could think of.
At first he thought the night vision goggles were distorting his sight, but then he looked closer. The man was naked, lying on his back a few inches beneath the clear, air-tight plastic. White, Caucasian. Probably one of the archaeologists he had come to rescue.
He was no longer recognizable, every vein of his body puffed out and outlined in black. Harry had never seen anything like it. In his fifteen years of service for the Agency, he had seen bodies in every stage of death and decomposition, but never anything like this.
Harry reached down and unstrapped the TACSAT from his ankle. Phone home…
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
“Kranemeyer here. Speak.”
“Director, this is Nichols. I’ve found another one of the archaeologists.”
“Who?”
Irritation showed through in the voice that responded. “I don’t have the time to run around identifying corpses, sir. I’ll leave that to the desk jockeys.”
“He’s dead?”
“Yes, and his body’s in worse shape than anything I’ve ever seen.” Kranemeyer exchanged a sharp glance with Ron Carter. Coming from the man on the other end of the line, that meant something.
But Harry was still talking. “I’ve taken a photo with the TACSAT’s camera. Uploading to the Agency intranet as we speak. See if you can get an ID on what killed him.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’ve got a full-on bio-war lab set up here, just like Ron figured. I’m guessing this guy was one of the test subjects-or something, I’m not sure what.”
“Can you tell what biological agent is in use?”
They heard a shout from the distance and Harry came back on hurriedly. “I’ll let you figure that out, sir. We just ran out of time.”
“What’s going on out there, Nichols?” Lay demanded. Only silence answered his question. The comm link was dead.
4:04 A.M.
The base camp
Dragging himself up over the rocky ground, Harry cast an anxious look back over his shoulder, then upwards toward the rest of his team and the archaeologists they had freed. Three, he thought, his mind instinctively supplying the digit. Four …
“Hit it!”
Ahead, Tex threw himself prone, the detonator in his right hand. The distance was right. The former Force Recon demolitions expert checked one more time to see that the rest of the team had gone to ground. Mullins, the young student, had his head up and Tex shouted an angry warning in his direction. His thumb depressed the button…
The ground shuddered, earth rippling beneath the prostrate men. Harry averted his eyes, sheltering them against the blast. The next moment, heat washed over them like a tidal wave, expanding outward from the center of the explosion. Devastation…
Watching from the mountain road two kilometers to the south, Major Hossein saw the whole thing. He knew the layout of the base camp well enough to know what had just exploded. His fuel supplies.
With one blow the Americans had destroyed his chances of overtaking them. They had two more hours till daybreak. With their advantages in night-vision technology, they could lose themselves in the mountains in that time.
His eyes narrowed as he looked down upon the camp, his gaze sweeping toward the south end of the motor pool. For a moment he thought he was seeing things, his night vision destroyed by the glare of the flames. He rubbed his eyes and took another look.
A smile crept slowly across his face. He turned and called to one of his men. “Bring the radio. I need a secure uplink with Tehran.”
Harry lifted his eyes from the rocky soil, sensing almost instinctively that something was wrong. That feeling was only reinforced by the muffled curse he heard break from Hamid’s lips a few feet up the slope.
He turned, looking back at the base camp, into the oily clouds of black smoke curling up into the sky, angry red tongues of flame shooting from the midst of the inferno like daggers.
It took him a moment to place what was wrong, his eyes adjusting to their new surroundings. Then it hit him with the force of a thunderbolt. The lower end of the motor pool. One of the tankers was still intact.
Tex appeared at his shoulder, the detonator still clutched in his big hand. “Wires must’ve got crossed down there, boss,” he stated tersely, thumbing the button once again as if to assure his own mind of the grim truth.
“Who set the charges for that tanker?” Harry asked, turning to look his old teammate in the eyes, assured of the truth of the answer.
“Davood,” the Texan replied, his gaze never wavering.
A flicker of movement entering the circle of light caught Harry’s eye and he turned. Men were crossing the ridge to their south, men with rifles in their hands. IRGC soldiers, flooding back toward their base camp.
The young Iranian-American agent came up to them at that moment, worry lining his face. Tex turned on him.
“What went wrong?” he demanded.
“I don’t know. It was dark-maybe the wires got crossed, I don’t know. The one blew properly,” the Iranian finished defensively.
“One’s not good enough,” Tex exclaimed, the words escaping from clenched teeth. “You were taught to set explosives blindfolded, for heaven’s sake! Now they still have fuel.”
“Leave it!” Harry ordered, laying a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “We don’t have time for this.” His index finger stabbed downhill at the soldiers fanning out, moving in on the base camp.
“We need to extract before they realize we’re gone.”
After another sharp glance in Davood’s direction, the big man nodded. Harry turned away, gesturing to Hamid. “You take point. Lead us to LZ OSCAR.”
A grim smile flashed across the Iraqi’s face. “Roger that, boss. Alpha Team, move it out.”
“Tex, you take responsibility for the old man and Eliot,” Harry continued, giving his marching orders. “Keep them at your side. Davood, take Mullins.”
“Wait a minute!” the college student cried out, jerking away as Davood put a hand on his arm. “How do you know our names?”
Harry ignored the question and dropped to the back of the line, his eyes flickering to the rear as he edged up the side of the mountain. It wouldn’t be long. The men below would be coming after them. And now their pursuers had fuel…
4:22 A.M.
The base camp
Major Hossein stood in the ruins of his camp, smiling ruefully. The Americans had been thorough. Or at least they had tried to be. Only one of his fleet of fuel tankers was left, standing all alone, its paint scorched by the heat of the flames that had fanned across it. He knelt down by the back of the truck, noted how the det cord was looped uselessly around the tank. Uselessly, because of one oversight. One of the wires attaching cord and detonator had never been connected…
Oversight? Rather a gift from one of Allah’s faithful. And the major smiled once again, his dark countenance lit by the still-flickering fires. BEHDIN had come through for him…
6:23 P.M. Central Time
Joint Special Operations Command(JSOC)
Fort Bragg, North Carolina
“A call for you, commander. It’s the DCIA over at Langley.”
General Charles Benet turned, his eyebrows going up. “David Lay? What does that old sonuvagun want with me?”
The aide shrugged, handing the mobile phone to the JSOC commander. “Joint Special Operations Command, General Benet speaking.”
“General, this is David Lay.”
“So my aide tells me. Good thing you caught me, director. I was just leaving for the night.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to put that on hold, general. We’ve all got a long night ahead of us.”
“What’s going on?” Benet asked, a distinct note of hostility in his voice. He didn’t like the CIA director, and didn’t pretend to.
“You mean no one’s briefed you?”
“Stop circling the field, director. What’s going on?”
“Operation TALON went down the tubes two and a half hours ago. Our team was ambushed at insertion, the Huey blown out of the sky. We have four survivors on the ground, in need of extraction. You have a Pave Low squadron on temporary deployment at Q-West in northern Iraq.”
“So I take it you want me to send a helo in after your boys?”
“Precisely. Before daybreak, if possible.”
General Benet glanced quickly at his watch, pushing back the sleeve of his uniform utilities. “Can’t be done.”
“General, the SA-15 Gauntlet that destroyed the Huey has been taken off-line by my team. It poses no further risk.”
“Director Lay, I don’t ask you to assure me that my boys will be safe,” Benet replied, heat in his voice. “If I needed that assurance, my crews would be sitting on their thumbs in the barracks all day. However, there is not enough time for the orders to go through. My men would be caught in Iranian airspace in broad daylight. Classic recipe for a war. Perhaps that shouldn’t bother me, though. Sounds like you’ve already started one.”
“Then I’ll have to find another way.”
“Do that, director. If your men are still in Iran by tomorrow night, I’ll send in a Pave Low. Not until then. Good-bye.”
7:27 P.M. Eastern Time
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
David Lay hung up the phone, sighing heavily. He had held out hope until the last moment. Now Harry’s team was stranded, on their way to an extraction zone, to wait for help that wasn’t coming anytime soon. LZ Oscar hadn’t been selected with defense in mind. He reached over and picked up the phone.
“Any progress on the photo, Carter?”
The analyst sounded tired. As well he might be. He was going on hour thirteen. “I’m kinda working on overload here, boss. I shot the photo over to Monique Devonne. She’s been the head of photoanalysis ever since I transferred to ClandOps, so that’s her territory.”
“I thought I had Kranemeyer tell you to keep this operation under wraps.”
“I understand, director. She doesn’t need to know where the photo came from, so I didn’t tell her. And she can get you your answer.”
Lay shook his head. “Let’s pray to God you’re right. By the looks of that photo, if the Iranians start spreading that around, we’re all in a world of pain.”
“Right.” The analyst was no longer listening to him. “I’ve got a couple of vehicles moving down the mountain road into the base camp. Looks like a Chinese make, probably some of the trucks Iran imported last year.”
“Chinese trucks?”
“Part payment for oil, boss. It’s the way they’re playing the game.”
“Understood. Let me know when you have any more intelligence.”
“Sorenson’s breathing down my neck to release that satellite. I told him to give us a few more hours, I want it there when the helo extracts our field team.”
“There’ll be no helo,” Lay stated flatly.
“What?”
“JSOC says there’s not enough time before daylight.”
“You’re going to let Nichols keep moving toward the LZ?”
Lay glanced at the computer in front of him, at the satellite image of the destroyed Iranian base camp. “You have any better ideas?”
5:38 A.M. Local Time
The RAHAB helicopter
“We’ll be in Israel in fifteen minutes,” Yossi announced, returning from the cockpit. He sat down beside Gideon. “Mossad wants us to start the debrief on the way in. The Prime Minister is after them for actionable intelligence and after pulling your dossier, they realized you had the experience.”
Gideon nodded silently, worry in his eyes as he glanced over at the man they had recovered. This was hardly his first hostage rescue. He had conducted many of them with the Sayeret Matkal over the years. But Dr. Tal was not acting like any of the people he had rescued in that time. Their emotions tended to range from euphoria to disbelief, joy mingling with tears. Fear too was often a factor.
There was nothing here. The helicopter was darkened, but in the glow of the red emergency lights, Gideon could see the archaeologist’s face. The expression there was sullen, resentful-angry was the word that came unbidden to his mind.
He moved over and sat down directly across from Dr. Tal. “We’ll be back home in less than thirty minutes, doctor. Your control at Mossad ordered me to debrief you. They want to know as much about the Iranians’ plans as possible. As soon as possible.”
“I will tell you nothing,” Moshe replied, avoiding eye contact with the lieutenant.
“I understand your hesitancy to talk, doctor, but I can put you on the radio with Avi ben Shoham within minutes. I have his authorization to debrief you.”
Gideon half-rose from his seat. “Do you want to speak with General Shoham?”
“No.”
“Then, let’s start the debrief. How did all this begin with the Iranians, Dr. Tal?”
The archaeologist looked away. Gideon waited a moment, then repeated the question.
“I will tell you nothing.”
“Okay, I’ll call the general,” Gideon said finally, rising.
“It will do you no good,” Tal said, his words arresting the lieutenant. “I will tell him nothing either.”
Worry flickered through Gideon’s eyes. This man was a trained operative of the Mossad. He had only been in captivity a few days. Stockholm syndrome couldn’t have set in yet-could it have? He sat back down, determined to handle the situation as delicately as possible. “Why, Dr. Tal?”
Moshe lifted his head slowly, looking the young lieutenant in the eye for the first time. “You abandoned my team…”
5:56 A.M. Tehran Time
LZ OSCAR
It took the team just under an hour and a half to reach the secondary extraction zone, their progress slowed by the archaeologists. Harry had provided rear security for the entire trip, his AK trained on their backtrail. There was no one there, not yet. There would be. Soon enough.
He knew the moment they reached OSCAR that something had gone wrong. They were behind schedule. The pick-up helo should have already arrived. It should have been waiting for them.
Daylight was coming on fast, the faint glow of an unwelcome sun already appearing far to the east. For they have loved darkness, rather than light. It was a sentiment he concurred with.
“Spread out, establish a security perimeter,” he ordered crisply. “Hamid, you guard the hostages. Tex and Davood, establish defensive positions. I’m contacting Langley.”
He pulled the TACSAT from its holster, kneeling there against the mountain earth as he hit speed-dial. Harry’s eyes flickered north to the mountains overshadowing them. He didn’t like it. They weren’t in possession of the high ground. But that wouldn’t matter if they could extract before daylight.
9:01 P.M. Eastern Time
CIA Headquarters
Langley, Virginia
Kranemeyer glanced at the brightly lit screen of the phone he held in his hand. It was Nichols. It had been two hours since last contact. The call he had been secretly dreading.
“Kranemeyer here.”
“Director, this is Nichols. We’ve arrived at the alternate extraction zone with the rescued archaeologists. Where’s the Pave Low?” The voice on the other end was clipped, abrupt. As though the instincts that had kept the officer alive through fifteen years of field operations were now warning him of impending trouble.
The DCS took a deep breath, looking at the last sat coverage of the field team’s position. They were vulnerable. And he could do nothing about it.
“I’m sorry, Nichols. JSOC can’t get a helo in and out before daylight. You’ll have to take up defensive positions, hold out until nightfall.”
Dead silence filled the line for the space of forty seconds. “We’re sitting ducks here, boss. LZ OSCAR is not the high ground.”
“I know it. The general refuses to move his assets into place. Sit tight until nightfall and we’ll get you out.”
“Roger,” came the grudging reply. “Any contact with Parker?”
“No, we’ve not heard a thing. You?”
“Negative, sir.” Harry paused, then added, “Have the Pave Low bring out some body bags. We’ll need them by nightfall. Nichols out.”
Kranemeyer started to respond, but the phone was dead in his hand. He shook his head wearily, leaning back in his chair. He had been there once himself, back in his Delta Force days, a small team running cross-border interdiction in the Hindu Kush. The chopper that had never come.
He swore bitterly and stood, wincing as he did so. Pain was flickering through his right leg, phantom pain from a leg that was no longer there. Placing a hand on the desk for support, he reached down to rub his knee, biting his tongue as fingers slid over the flesh of the knee to the prosthesis below it. An IED had put a permanent end to his spec-ops career. Oh, yes, he’d been there. Done that…
Harry replaced the phone in its holster and strode back to the small group, his Kalishnikov held loosely in one hand. Hamid was keeping an eye on the rescued hostages and looked up at his approach.
“Let’s pack it up and move it out,” Harry ordered, his tones clipped, his face a mask. The Iraqi looked at him, his eyes shadowed by worry.
“What’s the matter, boss?”
“We’re too exposed here,” Harry stated flatly, feeling everyone’s eyes on him. “We need to get atop that ridge,” he continued, his index finger indicating an elevation perhaps another ninety feet higher than where they were standing and a quarter-mile off. “It’s better for defense. Tex, how’s your shoulder?”
“It went back in place,” the big man replied, massaging the muscle with his free hand. “I can use it.”
Harry acknowledged him with a nod. “Good. I want you to take up overlook on the southern bluff. Take binoculars and your rifle. Dig a hide and keep me advised of anything that happens. Hamid, Davood, you and the archaeologists are coming with me to the ridge. We’ll dig another hide there, wait this out.”
“The chopper’s not coming.” This from Tex, his usual economy of words showing itself in the statement.
Harry nodded. “Not ‘til evening. Let’s move them out.”
5:03 A.M. Local Time
Mossad Headquarters
Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel
“Did he say why?” General Shoham asked, a cool wind fluttering at the corners of his jacket as he stood atop the roof of the headquarters building. The rain had stopped and now a raw breeze blew in off the Mediterranean, raising the hair on the back of the old veteran’s neck.
His bodyguard replied with a shake of the head, his tall form burrowed into the folds of a poncho. “ETA is three minutes. We should know soon.”
Shoham nodded, pulling the jacket closer to him. Dawn was still a good hour away. The night was cold, made colder still by the news he had just received.
In heaven’s name, what was wrong with Dr. Tal? The general’s mind flickered back to the early days of their relationship. He had recruited Tal personally, their joint interest in archaeology drawing them together, their joint patriotism keeping them there.
When the Iran mission had come up, Tal had been the first to volunteer, his liaison with the Ayatollah Isfahani forming the basis of their success.
And now all that was gone. The commandos of Sayeret Matkal had risked their lives to rescue him and he was refusing to help them in return. Somehow-some way, the Iranians had turned him. And Shoham didn’t know how.
The twisting, rhythmic thwap-thwap of approaching rotors caught his attention and he swiveled toward the sound, his eyes straining to pierce the enveloping darkness. Another few moments and the helicopter appeared, invisible until it was almost on top of the two men, its downwash tearing at their clothes.
It settled down upon the helipad and the side door flew open almost the minute the wheels touched down. Lieutenant Gideon Laner emerged first, his face tired and dirty in the harsh glare of the helipad lights. A Galil assault rifle was cradled loosely in the crook of his arm.
Shoham could feel his bodyguard stiffen, the man’s body instantly at attention at the sight of the weapon. Another occasion and it would have been a cause for humor. But the night was far too grim.
The rest of the Sayeret Matkal team exited the chopper behind him, and the general could recognize Dr. Tal flanked by Sergeant Eiland and Corporal Gur. Each of them had a purchase on one of his arms. It was price he paid for not cooperating. They had to be prepared for anything now.
“Moshe,” Shoham greeted familiarly, striding onto the platform and sticking out a hand from the folds of his poncho. The soldiers released their captive, leaving him standing in front of the Mossad chief.
“It’s good to have you home again, my dear friend,” Avi ben Shoham said, painfully aware of the reproachful look in Tal’s eyes. His hand hung there awkwardly, unaccepted. “We can take you in and start the debrief, if you so desire.”
There was no response, the only sound the helicopter’s engine shutting down, a dull roar in the background. Shoham could barely hear it as he focused in on his old friend’s face, the world shrinking to the two of them. Everything faded away as he searched for the man he had once known. He was gone, leaving a stranger standing before him.
“I am sorry, Moshe. We should have never used you. Others would have been more expendable.”
“Like those you abandoned tonight!” the archaeologist flared, anger flashing in his eyes before he fell silent once more. Smoldering.
Bewildered, Shoham turned toward Lieutenant Laner as though expecting an explanation. Dr. Tal provided it without him even asking, his cold glare piercing to the soul. “I will tell you nothing-you abandoned my people. You left them to die…”
6:32 A.M. Tehran Time
The ridge overlooking LZ Oscar
Sun had not yet dawned when the hides were finished. They had dug not one, but three, about twenty meters apart, laid out with interlocking fields of fire. Each one was just large enough for two people, overlooking the landing zone below. A gently sloping, grassy plateau, there was hardly an inch of cover anywhere within range of their rifles. Harry laid his entrenching tool to the side and stretched. “Digging doesn’t agree with my constitution, I’m afraid.”
Hamid grinned, his white teeth visible in the darkness. “Running around the mountains all night doesn’t agree with mine, either.”
Davood and the archaeologists just stood there looking on, as though not knowing what to make of the old friends’ jest. Harry cast another look at the horizon and all traces of good humor vanished without a trace.
“Let’s get under cover,” he said tersely. “Davood, take Professor Peterson. Hamid, Mullins. You’ll come with me, Miss Eliot.”
He could feel his friend grinning at him through the darkness, but he ignored it. It was quite simply the most logical arrangement.
He motioned for the girl to walk ahead of him, the twenty meters back to the southern hide. Arriving, he eased himself cautiously into the pit, then extended a hand to help her down. She took it wordlessly, watching as he reached back upward to camouflage the hide. When he was done, they were completely covered, a carefully camouflaged slit in the front providing their only view of the outside world. He propped his Kalishnikov against the front of the hide and aimed his binoculars down-range. Daylight would be coming soon.
He could feel her eyes on him, as though she was trying to assess him in the darkness. She hadn’t spoken since they had plucked her from the Iranian cell. Shock. Fear. He had seen it before.
No matter. His first priority was getting through the next twenty-four hours so that he could deliver her back to civilization in one piece. She could visit a shrink later.
“You speak English,” she announced, as though stating the most obvious fact she knew about him.
He nodded without hesitation. “Arabic, if you’d prefer. Half a dozen or so others. My hobby.”
“Who are you?”
“Colonel Smith, US Army Rangers,” he lied glibly. “Joshua Smith.”
“You were sent to rescue us, colonel?” she asked, her voice trembling, surprise not unmixed with relief.
He turned, laying a gentle hand on her shoulder. “My friends call me Josh. I would count it an honor if you’d do the same. And, yes,” he continued in the same soothing voice, “I was sent to rescue you.”
“Then who were the others?” she asked, her tone still uncertain.
Harry shook his head. “I don’t know. What did their uniforms look like?”
“I couldn’t see much. They looked the same as your Rangers. And they took Dr. Tal,” she concluded, obviously bewildered. Harry could hardly count that against her. He was hard-pressed to figure it out himself.
“So I was told.” He turned back away from her and picked up the binoculars again. “Another day dawns,” he observed reflectively. “Miss Eliot, I will need you to do everything I tell you for the next twenty-four hours. Follow my orders to the letter.”
“Why?” she asked, the obvious question. “Why should I trust you?”
He looked back at her, only a foot or so separating them in the narrow hide, his eyes locking with hers. “You shouldn’t. But without me, there’s no way you’ll leave these mountains alive. So do as you’re told…”
7:13 A.M. Tehran Time
A mountain overlooking the base camp
Devastation. Sheer, unadulterated destruction. On his approach, Thomas had seen the sun rising in the east, but he couldn’t have told the difference now, clouds of oily black smoke rising from the still-burning tankers below him. The stench of diesel fuel set aflame filling his nostrils.
He hunkered against the side of the slope, watching the smoke ascend, completely blocking out the light of the sun. He still had one of AKs he had stolen from the Iranian soldiers. The other one had been emptied and discarded in the running gun battle of the other night. Yet he had accomplished his purpose.
As his team had theirs.
It was only a supposition, yet the burning tankers below him were stark evidence of one thing, as clear as a neon sign across the mountainside. Nichols amp; Co. had been there.
And if they had been there, they hadn’t left without accomplishing their objective.
Thomas adjusted the binoculars as a team of men emerged from the smoke, laboring at ropes to pull an undamaged tanker farther from the blaze. His eyes narrowed at the sight. One had escaped.
Why?
He shook his head. No sense worrying about it. He was in no position to effect a change in the situation. One had survived, and that was all there was to it. It was time to rejoin the team, back at the primary extraction zone.
Rising to his feet, Thomas grabbed up the AK-47 and began the long climb back up the ridgeline. Toward safety. Homeward bound…
The whirr of rotors warned him of danger and he threw himself to the ground, flattening himself between the boulders as a Mi-8 “Hip” transport helo flew directly overhead, rotor wash blasting pebbles against his exposed face.
Russian-made, the helicopter was weathered and beaten by long years of service in the Iranian military. It looked scarcely serviceable. Thomas kept his head down, peering through the rocks as it circled the base camp once, then twice, finally settling down on the edge of camp. A man in the full uniform of an Iranian army colonel exited, accompanied by two other soldiers. Thomas focused his binoculars in on the tight group, studying each face in turn and wishing desperately for his SV-98…
“Major Hossein! Sir!” Hossein turned, wiping a soot-covered mouth against the torn sleeve of his uniform. He had been battling for hours against the blaze that threatened to engulf his camp, his final fuel tanker, his remaining soldiers. The explosives used to wreck his diesel supply had fed an inferno that had spread onto two of the laboratory trailers, which had gone up in their turn, Dr. Ansari’s stockpile of chemicals only adding to the misery. One of his men had died, screaming, in the flames.
“What is it?” he demanded angrily, handing his end of the tow rope off to a young soldier.
The corporal slid up to him, never saluting. It went unnoticed in the chaos. “Sir, we’ve got company.”
Hossein’s hand went instinctively to the Makarov on his hip. The corporal shook his head, still too breathless to speak. “A helicopter-from Tehran. A colonel to see you, sir.”
“This chaos?” Hossein asked rhetorically, waving a hand at the towering pyre. “This chaos, and they send someone to take over. What in Allah’s name can they be thinking?”
“He wants to see you, sir,” the young man repeated, anxious. Hossein shot him a baleful glance and shook his head. “If we don’t get this tanker moved away from the flames, we’ll all see the devil first. Lend a hand…”
Thomas watched until the colonel and his escort disappeared into the interfering haze of oily smoke. Then he tucked the binoculars back down the front of his shirt and began the trek upward. Toward LZ RUMRUNNER. Day had come. Time was running out. He could only hope to get there before the team was extracted…