Gorud said nothing. A pair of binoculars sat on the rock right in front of him.
“Mind if I take a look?” asked Turk, reaching for them. Gorud didn’t stop him.
From their vantage point they had a good view of the countryside, speckled with more green than the area they were in the day before. A wide expanse of concrete sat in the distance; he focused the binoculars, moved them around, then finally satisfied himself that he was looking at a runway. He couldn’t see any planes, except for the glowing white carcasses of two old trainers—Texans, he thought, though from this distance it was impossible to tell.
“That’s an airport?” he asked Gorud.
“Was. They only use it to fly equipment and VIPs in and out now,” said the CIA officer.
“We could use it to get out.”
“There are no planes there. The standing orders direct that any air force plane attempting to land there be shot down. If the pilot survives, he’s to be shot summarily. We thought of using it,” added Gorud. “Too risky getting in with anything smaller than two full companies. Didn’t work.”
Turk nodded, though he continued to stare at the runway. It was long, in perfect shape except for a patched wedge at one side.
“How are you feeling?” Gorud asked.
“I’m good.”
“You should get some sleep,” Grease said from the shadows behind them. Even after all this time, the fact that he was hovering nearby surprised Turk.
“I just slept. You go.” He looked at Gorud. “Where are we?”
“Within ten miles of both possible targets,” said Gorud. “Site Two is that way. One is a little farther away, on the left, down.”
Turk looked in the direction of the second site. “There’s a village.”
“It’s about a mile farther on.”
“People.” He couldn’t see past the village. The uneven ground blocked his view. “It’s probably not the right one.”
“They say it’s more likely.”
“What kind of idiots would put a plant so close to people?”
Grease snorted in derision; to him the answer was obvious: that was exactly where they would put it to make the Americans less likely to attack.
Turk put the glasses down and walked back into the cave to the pickup. The space was about three times as wide as the vehicle was long, though it narrowed the deeper he went. The top and the side on his right were jagged, but straight lines ran down the wall on the left. He guessed they were left from drilling and explosives; the cave had clearly been widened before it was abandoned.
If that was so, he soon found a possible reason: he could hear the sound of water dripping in the distance. He walked toward it, gradually losing the light until he had to reach to the wall to make sure of where he was.
“Careful,” said Grease when he stumbled. The Delta sergeant flicked on a small light. “There’s a pool of water ahead.”
The beam caught the edge.
“Salty in here,” said Turk. “Like being at the sea.”
“Must’ve been part of the ocean a couple of million years ago.” Grease shone the light to the right. “There’s a passage up around the water. Come on.”
He led Turk to a narrow, slippery ledge. As they started to walk, Turk slipped. Grease grabbed him and pushed him hard against the rocks to keep him from falling in.
“Easy,” said Turk. “I can swim.”
“We’re not sure how deep it is,” said Grease. “But it’s more than a hundred feet.”
“Really?”
“This was originally cut for a bunker.”
Sobered, Turk clung to the wall but kept going. The path extended another thirty feet or so. After that, the ledge became more of a walkway, wide enough for two people. Twenty feet farther, it widened into a large hall. Grease led Turk to a pile of rocks, playing the light on it. There were packs and boxes just beyond them.
“Backup gear,” he said. “MREs, ammo, more guns. Spare radios.”
“Damn, I forgot to check in,” said Turk.
“I did it.”
“You did it?”
“You were sleeping. I didn’t want them worrying.”
“You should’ve woken me up. Did they say anything?”
Grease shook his head.
“Did you ask about extraction?” asked Turk.
“No.”
“Did they say anything?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“They’re not going to come for us. The reaction team. The SEALs were pulled back.” Grease knew as much. Turk was just telling himself, needed to state reality so it was clear to him. “If something screws up, they’re not going to come for us. We’re on our own.”
“Something did screw up,” said Grease. “The mission changed. Come on with me this way. I’ll show you the back exit. There are some rocks that have to be taken out of the way so it can be used.”
7
Omidiyeh, Iran
TIRED AFTER HIS LONG SORTIE, VAHID SKIPPED DINNER and headed straight for his quarters, a room on the second floor of the squadron dormitory. He lay down on the bed, staring at the ceiling; within moments he was asleep.
The next thing he knew, someone was banging on his door.
“Go away,” he muttered. “Go.”
“Up,” said a stern voice next to him.
Vahid opened his eyes and saw two soldiers. One was pointing a rifle in his face.
“How did you get in?” he demanded.
“Captain, it is not a good idea to make Colonel Khorasani wait,” said a sergeant near the door. “Get dressed and come with us. You should not be sleeping.”
“I was flying. The mission was long and trying.”
“That is immaterial. The three of us have worked around the clock to deal with this situation. No one should rest while the Revolution’s enemies are free.”
TEN MINUTES LATER VAHID SAT IN THE SMALL ROOM where General Shirazi had found him the day after the attack. He recognized the name of the man he was supposed to see, Colonel Khorasani. It was the investigator who had ordered him to blow up the truck.
While he didn’t like the fact that he had been woken from a sound sleep, he did want to talk to the colonel—he wanted to make sure the men he had killed in the truck were in fact enemy commandos, and not simply Iranian farmers.
But the colonel hadn’t come to talk about the truck. After he strode in alone, he got right to the point: “When you saw the airplane the night of the earthquake, what did you think it was doing?”
“I didn’t see very much at all,” Vahid said, rising. “Is that why you’ve come?”
“Answer the question fully. What was it doing?”
“I don’t know. It was flying south at first, then turned eastward. Maybe it had been off course. I never got very close. I had a brief shadow on radar, then later my IR detected it. I could see there was something there.”
“You radioed him?”
“I attempted contact, but there was no answer. By the time I closed in, I was already under orders.”
Vahid began describing how the radar would have been blocked by the ground clutter, or even the peaks between them. Khorasani held up his hand.
“It was a civilian plane that you shot down? A Cessna?”
“I believe so.”
“The air force has Cessnas?”
“We have a few,” admitted Vahid. “But they would have answered the radio or we would have known about it, the command would have known.”
“If it wasn’t the air force, it must have been flown by a spy. Or it was the air force, and it was a traitor. It may have very well been the air force, since all of the civilian planes in the area have been accounted for.”
Khorasani stepped closer to Vahid. He was not a tall man; in fact, he was several centimeters shorter than Vahid, who himself was not very tall. He wore a brown sport coat and an open white shirt, with gray trousers that strained slightly at the waist. He was in his thirties, with a soft face and large hands, and his fingernails were at least a week from a good clipping. But intensity was the colonel’s defining characteristic: he leaned forward, his body coiled as he fired his questions, his mouth a cannon more potent than the one on Vahid’s MiG. “How would this plane be fitted with a bomb?”