Taleh claimed he wanted to end Iran’s undeclared war against the United States and its allies. The safe-conduct pass and the invitation to use it were intended as proof of his sincerity.
Discreet invitation or no invitation, there were plenty of high-ranking people in the Pentagon and the State Department who believed this mission’s timing was an act of total insanity. Despite Taleh’s cautious overtures through a CIA source, normal diplomatic relations between Iran and the United States were still nonexistent. Certainly, no U.S. analyst had an accurate read on the Islamic Republic’s chaotic internal politics. Under those conditions, the naysayers argued, sending one of America’s top commandos to Tehran was like handing Iranian extremists a gift-wrapped package for torture, interrogation, and ransom.
As the designated package, Thorn hoped like hell the naysayers were wrong. Neither he nor his boss, Major General Sam Farrell, the head of the Joint Special Operations Command, put much faith in secret messages and diplomatic feelers. Words didn’t mean much when your life and freedom were on the line. Pictures and telecommunications intercepts were another story.
U.S. spy satellites were picking up solid evidence that Tehran was reducing its support for international Islamic terrorism. Transcripts of NSA-monitored signals between terrorist training camps in Iran and their headquarters in Lebanon, Syria, and Libya were full of complaints about Iranian refusals to pay them or provide promised weapons. The latest satellite photos were also significant. Some of the camps run by smaller organisations now stood abandoned, apparently unable to operate without assured Iranian backing. But the larger, more self-sufficient groups the HizbAIlah, for one were very much in business. Their facilities were still bustling, crowded with terrorists recruited from around the globe.
Those camps were the reason Amir Taleh said he wanted Western military observers on the ground inside Iran itself.
Hydraulics whined as the Swiss DC-10 slowly banked left and then levered off, lining up with the unseen runway. Thorn felt a series of heavy thumps through the cabin floor beneath his feet. The landing gear was coming down.
He glanced out the window to his left. The smog pall cut so much sunlight that he could see a faint reflection of himself. Green eyes stared steadily back at him out of a lean, sun-darkened face. The face looked boyish, but he knew that was a measure of the reflection, not reality. He was thirty-eight and there were already a few strands of grey in the light brown hair he wore longer than Army regulations usually allowed. There were also tiny crow’s-feet around his eyes fine lines worn into the skin by wind, weather, and the pressures of command.
Thorn looked out past his own mirrored image, matching the countryside below to the memories of his youth. On the surface, nothing much seemed to have changed in the twenty-two years since he’d last seen Iran.
Clusters of drab, flat-roofed buildings were visible through the haze now, stretching along the straight line of the Tabriz-Tehran highway. Trucks, buses, and passenger cars crowded the wide, paved road, weaving in and out without apparent regard for traffic rules or safety. Mountains loomed in the distance, dark against the barren, treeless plain.
As a teenager, Thorn had come to Tehran to live with his father, a highly decorated U.S. Special Forces NCO assigned to help train the Shah’s Army. Three years of his life had passed in a whirlwind of learning and adventure as he’d explored the maze of Tehran’s narrow back streets and hiked through the rugged countryside outside the city. Along the way he’d acquired enough Farsi to mingle easily with every element of Iranian society all the way from the ruling elites down to the poorest porters in the bazaars.
He had also made a number of friends. Some were American and British, the sons and daughters of businessmen and diplomats working in Iran. But chief among all his friends had been a young Iranian named Amir Taleh.
Taleh, four years older and already an officer cadet, had taken Thorn under his wing, showing him a side of Iran few Westerners ever saw and yanking him out of trouble whenever that proved necessary. Their personalities and interests were so similar that some of their fellows had begun referring to them teasingly as brothers. Neither of them had fought hard against the notion. Their friendship had seemed a great constant in a changing world. They had stayed in touch even after Thorn went home and while Taleh went through Ranger School in the United States.
Then Iran’s Islamic Revolution shattered all normal ties between their two countries. Caught in the turmoil surrounding the rise of the radical mullahs, Taleh vanished seemingly without a trace. Only in recent years had Thorn begun seeing references to his old friend in foreign military journals and intelligence reports. From then on, he had followed the Iranian’s rapid rise through the ranks, greatly relieved to note that Taleh had avoided involvement in the terrorist schemes fomented by his nation’s fundamentalist government.
He shook his head. After the Shah fell, the Iran he had loved so much as a boy had changed almost beyond recognition. Ironically, most of his professional life had been spent training to foil or avenge terror attacks sponsored by the Islamic Republic. Now it somehow seemed wrong to come back to this country unarmed and in daylight, flying in on a neutral airline.
Iran had been the site for Delta Force’s first mission and its greatest failure. When the aborted Iranian hostage-rescue mission came to its fiery end at Desert One, Peter Thorn had been just another second lieutenant, fresh out of West Point, green as grass, and fighting hard to survive Ranger School without being recycled. But even then he’d known he wanted more than any regular Army command could offer him more challenge, more action, and more responsibility. Several years spent shepherding conventional troops through the dull grind of drill and paperwork only confirmed that. He’d jumped at the chance for a Delta Force slot like a drowning man grabbing for a rope. He’d never looked back.
Buoyed by the self-confidence and selfdiscipline instilled by his Green Beret father, he’d made it through a rigorous physical and psychological selection process designed to weed out all but the best. Those tests had been followed by six months of around-the-clock instruction in commando tactics and covert operations. Since then he’d climbed steadily from a captain commanding a twenty-man troop to a lieutenant colonel leading one of Delta’s three assault squadrons.
Thorn rubbed his nose absentmindedly, feeling the thin, almost invisible scar that ran across its bridge and down under his right eye. The scar and a couple of metal pins in his right cheekbone were the only real reminders of a long ago helicopter crash that could have been a lot worse.
He grinned suddenly. It was ironic. He’d been shot at in Panama, hunted through the Iraqi desert, and ambushed during a brief, nightmarish tour in Somalia all without getting so much as a scratch. His only serious injury in sixteen years of active-duty service had come from an accident during a routine, peacetime training exercise. Not surprising, really.
Delta Force operated under a single constant admonition: Train hard, fight easy.
“Seat backs and tray tables up, please. We will be landing soon.” The flight attendant’s pleasant, German-accented voice brought Thorn back to the present. The slender, goodlooking brunette leaned across the empty seat next to him and deftly snagged the plastic cup of mineral water he’d been nursing for the last thousand air miles or so.
“Danke schon. He brought his seat back upright. The flight attendant smiled at him and moved off to check on the rest of the main cabin, swaying in time with the increased turbulence. She glanced back once to see if he was still watching and smiled again.