“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…”
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…”
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 & 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?”