weighing in at thirty-five pounds, the M82A1 Light Fifty was badly misnamed, but it had several features that made it perfect for special operations use. First, it was a simple, rugged, semiautomatic weapon accurate out to twelve hundred meters. Second, it fired the same enormous.50-inch Browning round used in the U.S. Army’s heavy machine gun. More than three times the size of the 5.56mm bullets used by most modern assault rifles, the.50-inch round had enormous penetration and lethality. To handle the recoil, the Barrett Light Fifty was equipped with a muzzle brake and a thick butt pad. A biped mounted near the muzzle helped steady the rifle.
With practiced ease, the Delta Force officer attached an ITT-made optical sight to his weapon and peered through the scope. Two AA batteries powered an image intensifier that turned the night into day. He flicked to 8x magnification and shifted his aim to one of the emplacements on top of the squat, drab building roughly four hundred meters away. His crosshairs settled on an Iranian soldier seated behind a twmbarreled ZU-23 light antiaircraft gun. The man looked tired and bored.
Lindsay held his aim steady. The ZU-23 was virtually useless against modern attack aircraft, but its rapid fire could murder infantry caught out in the open. He frowned. Something seemed odd. Fewer than half the defensive positions atop the enemy headquarters were manned. Maybe this guy Taleh wasn’t so thorough after all.
One by one, his teams reported that they were in position.
Lindsay contacted Thorn and confirmed their readiness. “November One Alpha, this is Sierra Four Charlie. We’re dialed in. Standing by.”
“Understood, Four Charlie. We’re moving now.”
The sniper focused all his attention on the bored Iranian antiaircraft gunner, waiting for the single command that would open the attack. He could hear motors revving up on the street below. NEMESIS was under way.
Three trucks crammed with Delta Force soldiers rolled down the Avenue of the 17th of Shahrivar, heading for Khorasan Square. A fourth truck veered right, peeling off to come in behind the main entrance to the headquarters building. The men it carried would seal off a rear exit, killing anyone who tried to escape outside when the rest of the attack force went in.
Peter Thorn rode up front now. A staff sergeant who spoke Farsi fluently sat wedged in between Pahesh and him. The sergeant, an olive-skinned man named Alberi, wore Iranian Army insignia identifying him as a captain.
Alberi also held a 9mm pistol outfitted with a Knight noise suppressor in his lap. Although the device made it impossible to fire more than a single shot without working the slide to manually feed another round into the pistol’s breech, it reduced the sound of firing to that of a child’s air rifle.
Thorn carried a Heckler & Koch MP2000 submachine gun. The weapon, an advance over the similar MP5, had a silencing system built in. Holes in the barrel allowed some of the propellant gases to bleed away, slowing the rounds being fired to below supersonic speed and cutting the noise they made dramatically. For open combat, the gas bleed holes could be closed. Right now, he had the weapon set for silent fighting.
They turned into the square and rumbled straight toward the headquarter’s main gate. The truck’s headlights flashed across a guard post that barred direct access to an open courtyard visible beyond the gate. When they were within fifty meters, an Iranian soldier came forward, signaling them to stop. Four more sentries manned a sandbag redoubt built adjacent to the entrance. Two were talking to each other, arguing cheerfully about something. The others leaned against the piled-up sandbags near a light machine gun sited to sweep the square. One of them had a cigarette dangling from his mouth.
Pahesh stopped right in front of the gate and cranked his window open.
The soldier who had flagged them down walked right up to the truck cab, yawning slightly. The guards here must be very used to comings and goings at irregular hours, Thorn decided, vaguely surprised by their nonchalance. He had expected somewhat tighter security.
The Iranian looked in through the open driver’s-side window. “Show me your orders ”
Phut. Sergeant Alberi leaned across the Afghan truck driver and shot the astonished guard in the head. The man toppled backward without a sound.
Thorn popped open the door on his side and dropped onto the street before the other stunned guards could even begin to react. His submachine gun stuttered, kicking against his grip as he walked three-round bursts across the top of the redoubt.
Sand sprayed out of torn sandbags. Blood sprayed out of torn men.
Thorn stopped firing. Nothing moved near the gate. Now for the enemy soldiers posted on the roof. He spoke softly into his throat mike. “Take ‘em out, Four Charlie.”
Eight sniper rifles cracked suddenly, firing so close together in time that it almost sounded like one long, tearing shot. A few more scattered shots followed as Lindsay’s snipers engaged new targets. Then the Barrett Light Fifties fell silent.
“One Alpha, this is Four Charlie,” the sniper reported. “The roof is clear. Go on in.”
Thorn scrambled back into the truck and waved Pahesh forward. Grinning like a madman, the Afghan threw the vehicle in gear and drove through the open gate. The other trucks followed them into the interior courtyard.
Delta Force assault teams piled out of the trucks while they were still moving, fanning out across the courtyard to cover every door and window leading into the headquarters building.
Thorn snapped a fresh magazine into his submachine gun and followed them inside.
Twenty minutes later, the smoke from flashbang grenades and burning papers and furniture still eddied through the bullet-riddled headquarters. Large numbers of dead Iranian soldiers and staff officers scattered through the corridors and in several of the offices. But there were too few corpses wearing the right kind of rank insignia.
The top commanders of the NEMESIS force were meeting inside an empty office on the building’s second floor. None of them were pleased. When he heard his secondin-command’s first report, Thorn had to fight an impulse to smash his fist into the nearest wall in frustration. Instead he asked again, “You’re sure, John?”
Major John Witt nodded flatly. “Dead sure, Pete. I went over the bodies myself. There’s not a high-ranking officer among ‘em.” He rubbed a hand wearily across his shaved head and then continued his report. “We got plenty of majors, captains, lieutenants, and enlisted guys. But nobody else. And there’s no sign of Taleh.”
Christ, what a fuckup, Thorn thought in despair. At first, he’d thought their attack had gone off without a hitch at the cost of only two Delta Force soldiers lightly wounded. They’d even secured the headquarters complex without alerting anyone outside the area. Now, though, it was dear that their intelligence had been wildly off the mark. Neither Taleh nor his top-level invasion command staff had been inside the Khorasan Square building. He and his troops had hit the wrong damned target!
His eye fell on the two troopers setting up a SATCOM radio near an open window. Once they had a clear signal, he was going to have to report the failure of their mission to Washington.
Diaz stuck his head into the office. “I have something I think you should see, Pete.” “Where?” Thorn asked tightly.
“The HQ comm center. I think we may be able to draw a bead on our Iranian friend.”
“Show me.” Thorn grabbed his weapon and followed the sergeant major down three flights of stairs into the basement.
On the way they passed Delta Force troopers checking bodies for identity cards. Major Witt believed in being thorough.
The communications center was a large room just off the staircase. Banks of high-frequency radios, telephone switchboards, and teletype machines lined three of the walls. The fourth held a large street map of Tehran with various locations marked. Most of the equipment was old 1970s and 1980s vintage but there were a few newer computers and fax machines on a group of desks cluttered in the center of the room. There were more corpses huddled on the floor or sprawled across the desks. The comm center at least had been fully manned.
Diaz led him straight across the room to where a Delta Force trooper, Master Sergeant Vaughn, stood tracing circuits and switches on one of the telephone switchboards. “Show the colonel what you found, Tony.”
Thinner than most of the men who made it through the Delta selection course, Tony Vaughn was one of the outfit’s top technical specialists and linguists. He pointed to a set of panels. “See these?”
Thorn nodded.
“They’re patch panels to several remote sites. Phone calls come in here to the main center and this gear
