“Unlikely they have plasma,” said Grease.
“Worth a try,” said Granderson.
“If we’re going there, then it makes sense to look,” said Green. “That’s all I’m saying.”
“What’s Gorud say?” asked Turk.
“I wanted to get it straight with you first,” said Granderson.
The captain was trying to get his votes together, as it were, before confronting Gorud and the Israeli with what he assumed they would think was a risky venture. Turk guessed the Israeli would be opposed, but he wasn’t sure what Gorud would do.
“Do you think you could pull it off?” Turk asked.
“Yeah,” said Granderson without hesitation. “We could.”
Turk looked at Green. The soldier nodded, then at Grease. His stone-faced expression gave nothing away.
“I’ll back you,” Turk said to Granderson. “Let’s talk to Gorud.”
They walked over to the CIA officer and the Israeli. Turk spoke first.
“The Delta boys think they can get a truck in town,” he said. “They can get medicine for Tiny, too.”
“Plasma,” said Granderson.
“There’s a set of army barracks that are deserted,” continued Turk. “It’s a little out of town, isolated—we could get in and out.”
“At the barracks?” asked Gorud.
“Place looks empty,” said Granderson. “Or I wouldn’t suggest it.”
“Risky.” Gorud looked at Turk. “Your mission is our primary concern. We’re not even sure where we’re going yet.”
“Understood.” Turk noted that Gorud’s attitude toward him had subtly changed. He wasn’t deferential, exactly, but he was at least treating him with more respect. “And I know it’s a gamble, but it might help us get there easier. And we might be able to save our guy.”
Gorud frowned. He took the paper map from his pocket and examined it, as if the answer were written in the topographic lines that waved across the landscape, or the symbols at the bottom of the page.
“If we can get in and out of the compound without trouble,” he said finally, “it would definitely be worth it.”
THEY SET UP A PERIMETER, MEN WATCHING THE BACK and sides of the compound as well as the road, and then they went with a plan both simple and audacious—they drove directly to the buildings. Granderson leapt from the truck, followed by Dome and Meyer; they ran and began clearing what they assumed was the barracks. Gorud and the Israeli took the second building.
Meanwhile, Grease and Turk went to the pickup. Grease pulled it open, intending to jimmy out the ignition wiring with his combat knife. But the key was in the ignition. He hopped in and started it up while Turk watched anxiously with the rifle.
“Full tank,” said Grease. “Your luck is holding.”
A burst of automatic weapons fire sent Grease scrambling from the cab as Turk ducked behind the rear tire. Two more long bursts followed. Turk felt a twinge of self-doubt—he’d argued that coming inside with the others was as safe or safer than staying outside. Now he wasn’t so sure.
Grease put his hand to the radio headset. “It’s just them,” he said. “They’re good. Come on. Get in.”
Turk jumped into the back of the truck bed as Grease got behind the wheel. He drove the pickup to the door of the building, backing around so they could load it easier. Meanwhile, the troop truck was driven across the way to the fuel pump at the end of the compound. One of the troopers hopped out and began filling it with fuel.
“We can get fresh uniforms,” said Gorud, appearing. “Help.”
Turk shouldered the AK-47 as he ran into the building, Grease close behind. The structure looked at least a hundred years old. The clay bricks leaned toward the interior and the ceiling hung low. Turk ducked through the door and entered a long hallway that ran along the front of the building. It had been modernized during the seventies or eighties; ceramic tile lined the floor, and the walls had faded to a dirty gray.
Meyer waved to Turk from the far end of the hall. Turk passed two empty barracks rooms on the left; a body lay on the floor of the second in a pool of blood. Two more lay at the intersection at the far end, just to the left of Meyer.
“Medical room at the back.” Meyer thumbed down the other hall. “They’re getting supplies. There’s a computer in that office,” he added, pointing to the first doorway down the side corridor. “We’ll take that, too. Grab any clothes you can find.”
Turk stepped over the bodies. One had a pistol in his hand; another gun, an older rifle with a wooden stock, lay on the floor. As he stepped into the office, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and spun right; he jerked around, ready to fire, only to discover it was a small oscillating fan, moving left and right.
Shaking his head, he went to the computer. It was an American-made Dell with an Internet Explorer browser open to an odd porn site: it featured a virtual game where the characters were in the process of disrobing each other.
There were several other tabs open. One was for what looked like a news site in Tehran; the lettering was Persian, and he had no idea what it said. Turk clicked on the video player at the middle of the page and footage of a desert began to play—it appeared to be a report on the “earthquake” that had struck Natanz.
The footage showed rows of demolished houses. He stared at them for a few moments, amazed at the damage, wondering if it was real.
“That’s Badroud,” said Gorud, coming into the room behind him. “They didn’t know they were sitting on an atomic bomb. Excuse me.” After gently pushing Turk aside, he took the mouse and started fiddling with the browser, first checking the history and then opening the Favorites folder.
“You can read this?” Turk asked him.
“You think I’d be here if I couldn’t?” Gorud frowned at him. “I want to make sure they didn’t get an alert out,” he added, his voice less antagonistic. “Doesn’t look like it.”
“Do they know what happened?” Turk asked.
“The news, at least, believes it’s an earthquake.” Gorud straightened. “Or that’s what they say. Come on. We gotta go.”
He pulled the wires from the back without turning the machine off. Granderson and the others were already outside. They’d found plasma and were treating Tiny. Turk peeked into the back and saw the soldier lying comatose, his skin so pale it looked like a sheet of paper. He was about to ask if the man would make it but thought better of it.
“We better get moving,” said Granderson, hopping off the back. “Let’s go.”
The pickup went first, driving out of the compound and back to the helicopter rendezvous point. There, some of them changed out of their uniforms, with Turk and Grease putting on a set of civilian clothes that had been found in one of the rooms. They were tight on Grease, loose on Turk. Then the team rearranged themselves in the vehicles—the Israeli in the car with Grease and Turk, who went back to posing as Russians; the captain and Green in the pickup, with their hired bodyguards, Gorud, and the others in the truck, in theory their Iranian escort.
“How you doing back there?” asked Grease from the front seat.
“I’m good.” Turk was alone in the back.
“You’re so quiet, I thought you were sleeping.”
“No.”
“You might try. You’re going to be awake all night. And you have to be alert.”
“I’ll be all right. This area we’re driving through,” he said to the Israeli, “what are the people here like?”
“Iranians.”
Grease scoffed.
“That much I knew,” said Turk.
“They live at the edge of the desert. They scrape by,” said the Israeli. “If you think too much about them, you’ll have trouble doing your job.”
The comment effectively ended Turk’s try at conversation. He slumped back in the seat.
How many people had died in the nuclear explosion, or been buried by the resulting tremors? It was the Iranian leaders’ fault, he told himself, not theirs, and certainly not his. If anything, he had saved thousands, millions. Destroying the weapon meant it couldn’t be used, and even the crudest math would easily show that the damage here was far less than if the weapon had been.