A very similar pickup was seen on the road near the farm truck that had been destroyed; it was clear in the video from the aircraft. That truck had a dent in the top rail; this one had an identical mark. The first character in the registration plate—all that could be seen—was identical.
But this was entirely the wrong place for the pickup truck to be located. It was closer to the lab, not farther away.
Maybe they were tasked with seeing what had happened. The colonel turned south, gazing in the direction of Fordow, which had a high security plant. There were dozens of others scattered between there and Qom farther south. The precincts were off limits to all but the workers and scientists involved in the bomb’s development. Khorasani himself didn’t even know the location of all of them.
But perhaps the most obvious explanation for the truck was that it wasn’t related at all. Smugglers would use a house such as this to stash their wares. It was empty, but perhaps the airplane had driven them off.
The structure had been abandoned years ago. Part of the wall was missing. Khorasani stepped through, entering what was once a bedroom. All of the furniture was long gone, but there were old photographs tacked to the walclass="underline" a family picnic lost now to memory.
The colonel walked through the rooms. Dust was thick everywhere.
Khorasani stood in the middle of what had been the kitchen and stared at the weathered pipes in the wall. He had no other leads. The more work he and his investigators did, the more he came to believe that the “incident,” as he called it, was actually an accidental blast caused by the scientists themselves.
That was unlikely to be admitted.
The truck must be linked somehow. Parking here—maybe they were smugglers, but what if they were spies? What if there were more commandos, eyeing another attack?
Khorasani strode outside. Sergeant Karim was waiting.
“Colonel, it is the captain coordinating the Twelfth Guard unit,” said the sergeant, holding the satellite phone out. “He wishes to take his men off alert. They’re worried about their families.”
“They can worry later,” Khorasani snapped. “Tell him the entire area is to stay on alert. Tell him—tell him we are looking for commandos who stole this truck.”
“Uh—”
“Sergeant Karim, follow orders,” he said, returning to his command vehicle.
11
Iran
TURK HAD TO STAND NEAR THE ENTRANCE TO THE CAVE for the sat phone to work. He was just punching the quick-dial to connect with Breanna when he heard a plane approaching from the north.
“I may have to cut this short,” he said as soon as the connection went through. “There’s a plane nearby.”
“Turk, are you OK?” asked Breanna. He heard concern, even fear, in her voice.
“I’m good. I don’t want to take the chance of being seen. The Iranians have been sending airplanes through the region.” He leaned back against the side of the cave. The plane wasn’t getting any closer. “It should be dark soon. Do we have a target?”
“We have two.”
“You still have two? I thought—”
“I have a coordinate for the area we think is safest for you to operate from,” she said, cutting him off. “The procedure you’re going to have to follow is different than the first strike.”
“How different?”
“They’re still working on things. It’ll be more hands on and you may be making the attack in the morning, near or after sunrise.”
“In the day?”
“Possibly. Probably, I should say.”
Turk looked out across the valley in front of him, letting the words sink in. They were still figuring out exactly what to do—that wasn’t a good sign.
“Turk?”
“Yeah, OK. Those coordinates?”
“I’m sending them via the text system now.”
His satcom beeped, signaling that the information had been sent.
“Call when you’ve arrived. We need you in place by 2200 hours,” Breanna added, using the military term for 10:00 P.M. “So we can download everything to your unit before clearing the launch. We’re going to use the first orbiter as a relay station; some of your programming has to be changed. There’s only a small window to do the download.”
“Understood.”
“THEY’RE INSANE IF THEY WANT US TO GET TO THIS point.” Gorud shook his head. “We’ll have to pass two barracks and an antiaircraft site. They’re crazy. God.”
The CIA officer got up and started pacing. He folded his arms over his chest and began scratching his left bicep frenetically, as if he wanted to tear through the cloth and dig past the skin to the muscle and bones.
Grease glanced at Turk and gave him a look that said, He’s losing it. Then he took out the paper map of the area that had been stored there and examined it. Turk looked over his shoulder.
The topo map showed a trail they could take from the road toward a narrow hillside ledge, but it ended about a half mile before reaching that point. The topo lines squeezed together, showing a sharp rise. It would be a difficult climb.
Grease studied the area.
“If we could go through this air base, we’d have an easy time,” he said, pointing at the map. “Otherwise the nearest road is ten miles here. Then we have to go out this way and back.”
“Unless we go through the desert,” said Turk.
“We can’t—this is the salt lake. It’s water out here. There may be patrols on the road.”
“There’ll be patrols inside the base.”
“Not as many as you’d think. Remember the place we hit the other day? Security is something you do at the perimeter, if there.”
“Those are barbed-wire fences, I’ll bet.” Turk pointed to the parallel fence line on the map. “And they’re not going to let us through the gate.”
“We can cut through the fences. That’s not a problem.” Grease studied the map some more. “We’d have to scout it, obviously. A satellite image would be convenient.”
“Yeah,” said Turk. They weren’t likely to get one; the data download was due to take place after they arrived.
“We could take one of their trucks and get right out the front gate. Be less likely to attract attention than ours.”
“What are you talking about?” demanded Gorud. “What the hell are you thinking?”
The CIA officer started waving his good arm in the air. He seemed dangerously close to losing control—maybe he already had.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “They’ve given us a suicide mission—”
He stopped speaking. Turk stared at him for another second, then looked at the map again. Grease had already turned his attention back to it.
“We can leave the truck about a mile away and walk through this ravine,” Grease told Turk. “We get past the fence here, then it’s a straight jog to the administrative buildings.”
“What if there are no vehicles?” asked Turk.
“It’ll work, don’t worry,” said Grease. “Worst case, we go back. But we won’t have to.”
“You’re crazy!” shouted Gorud. “Both of you! Crazy! We have to leave now! We have to leave now—now! We have to get out!”
Gorud turned and ran toward the deep black of the cave’s interior. Frozen for a moment, Turk finally got moving only after Grease jumped to his feet.
They caught the CIA officer at the edge of the underground lake. Turk, whose eyes seemed to have adjusted better to the dark than Grease’s, grabbed the back of his shirt and started to pull. Gorud swung around, trying to hit him. Instead they both fell. Grease leapt on Gorud, pinning him to the damp, uneven floor.
Gorud yelled and screamed in pain. Grease leaned against his neck with his forearm while pulling the flashlight from his pocket as the other man squirmed harder.