It was Hamid.
Davood rolled over on his back, biting his lip as pain shot through his veins. Tancretti was nowhere to be seen. The explosion must have flung them apart, he thought numbly, the sound still ringing in his ears. He wondered how long he had been unconscious.
“BIRDMASTER?” he whispered, gazing up into Hamid’s face as the tall man bent over him. “Where is he?”
Hamid stood to his feet, glancing around them. Finally he spotted a figure stretched out in the sand about six feet away.
“There,” he said solemnly.
Davood raised himself up on his elbows, testing himself carefully. Nothing seemed to be broken. Just cut-and bruised. Hamid was looking at him again, his face looking strangely misshapen with the night-vision goggles covering his eyes. A giant bug-like creature from one of the American alien movies Davood had watched as a child.
“Do you need help?” he asked.
“No. I have to check the colonel,” was his reply, carefully rising to his feet.
“Very good,” Hamid retorted shortly, “I will report our situation to EAGLE SIX.” He paused. “Where is your radio?”
Davood’s hand went to his belt, searching for the small transmitter. He shook his head, a rueful smile crossing his face. “Must have lost it in the explosion.”
A curt nod. “EAGLE SIX, this is FULLBACK. Sitrep?”
12:36 A.M. Local Time
The personal residence of Avi ben Shoham
Overlooking Lake Galilee
Counting sheep had never worked for the Mossad chief. Neither had counting terrorists, for that matter. He knew them by heart, every last man who had struck Israel and was still living to boast about it. They didn’t help him sleep. He went back to his nightstand and closed the dossier on Ibrahim Quasim.
Case closed. Another body in a Palestinian morgue. Another terrorist dead.
His eyes flickered to the portrait of his wife hanging over the bed. It had been a long-time wish of hers. Painted when he had worked in the Israeli Embassy in Paris, it was the way he wanted to remember her. A beautiful woman in the prime of her life.
Not the way they had parted. Not the way she had died, bleeding to death in an ambush on the West Bank, her legs blown off by a roadside bomb, small-arms fire chattering noisily over their heads as he covered her with his body, as his protective detail fought back.
Tears coursing down his face, her blood on his hands, cursing in impotent rage at the utter futility of it all.
Ibrahim Quasim had died as he lived. In an explosion as fiery as the one with which he had killed Rachel Shoham.
It was justice. The general closed his eyes, willing the memories to go away as he tore the photograph of the dead terrorist leader into shreds, pieces fluttering to the floor like the snow that blanketed Mount Hermon.
The satellite phone beside the bed rang noisily, a jarring intrusion into the privacy of his thoughts. He came alert, reaching for it.
“Shoham here.”
“General, we are on scrambler.” It was the watch officer at Mossad Headquarters. Which wasn’t good. Something had happened.
“Copy scrambler. What’s going on?”
“We have PHOTINT indicating a military presence approximately twenty-five kilometers north-northeast of RAHAB’s last reported position. There’s a firefight going on.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive. We have muzzle flashes, looks like the Iranians are there in platoon strength or greater.”
“Dear God,” the general whispered. A military platoon against his four men. There might be a chance, but it was a slim one. “Any sign of the FAVs?”
“Nothing. However it looks like a helicopter crashed in a nearby canyon, sir,” the watch officer stated after a moment.
“A helicopter?” Shoham demanded in astonishment. “Where did that come from?”
“I have no idea, sir. There’s not enough left of it to establish make. Request permission to contact RAHAB.”
A long pause. “Permission granted. Find out what’s going on. And make it short.”
“Aye, sir.”
2:40 A.M. Tehran Time
The crash site
“Roger, FULLBACK. You stay and provide cover for BIRDMASTER. Tell SWITCHBLADE to join me. We will regroup on your position.”
“Copy that, sir.”
Major Hossein reached up and grasped the man beside him by the shoulder. “The Americans are moving. They will be spread out. We need to strike before they can regroup.”
The soldier nodded. Hossein flicked the safety off the Kalishnikov assault rifle he carried. “Here’s what I want you to do.”
“Harry wants you to join him,” Hamid stated calmly as Davood came up beside him. The young Iranian looked strange in the green glow of his night vision. “Immediately.”
Davood looked back toward the cave where he had placed Tancretti, its mouth hidden in the shadows of night.
“How is he?” Hamid asked.
“Not good. He needs an IV, but,” Davood gestured helplessly toward the wreckage of the Huey, “we don’t have any med supplies left.” His shoulders slumped in discouragement.
“Let Allah be your strength, my brother. Look to Him and place your faith in His power.” Hamid clapped his fellow agent on the back. “May He go with you. I will look after BIRDMASTER.”
Davood nodded, unholstering the Beretta from his hip as he moved toward the cliff path. Hamid watched him go…
5:43 P.M. Eastern Time
NCS Operations Center
Langley, Virginia
“Change of course, Carol,” Ron Carter announced, coming around the edge of the cubicles with a sheaf of printouts in his hand. “I need you in the Tehran intranet, and I need you in there yesterday.”
Carol Chambers looked up from her workstation, frowning at the head analyst. “Do you know the kind of time that will take?”
“Of course I do,” Carter shot back, cheerfully sweeping a space clear on her desk to deposit the printouts. “That’s why you’ve got two hours instead of one.”
Carol stared after him in disbelief as he disappeared. Two hours. Yeah, right.
She turned back her terminal, reminding herself for the hundredth time that she should have joined the NSA. The world’s biggest signals intelligence gatherer would have had the manpower to pull off what Carter wanted. Not just the manpower, but the processing power, which was more important. The computers that the Clandestine Service had control over, the only ones she was permitted to access for TALON, just didn’t measure up to the huge Crays.
Which once again begged the question. Why had she joined the CIA?
Carol sighed and reached back, sweeping her hair into a tight ponytail. Time to get to work.
Shoulder-length when worn down, her hair was a golden brown, dirty blond, as it was often called.
A smile crept across her face. Dirty, maybe, but not dumb. She hadn’t graduated from MIT at the top of her class, but she’d been a long way from the bottom. Yeah, forget the CIA and NSA, with her grades and other skills, she could have made a fortune in the private sector. After all, the government wasn’t the only entity that utilized hackers and espionage.
The familiar pulsing hum of the door scanner reached her ears and Carol looked up to see the figure of her father step onto the floor of the operations center.
His presence in the nerve center of the Clandestine Service was rare enough to be the rough equivalent of a divine visitation, and to have it happen twice in one night…
It had always been that way, ever since she’d been a little girl. Memories of those early days were few and distant, hazy shadows, a mirage to chase in one’s dreams. Nothing tangible. She only remembered the absence, the lack. A godlike father figure, distant, unapproachable. Someone whose very existence had to be accepted on faith. In many ways, God was the more approachable of the two.