disastrous.
“Check it out!” Burke yelled back. “Make sure we got what we paid for!”
The Bosnian knew what they would find. He’d helped Yassine pack the shipment himself. The crates contained Czech-made Skorpion machine pistols, AK-47 assault rifles, a PKM light machine gun, ammunition, several kilos of highgrade plastic explosive, and an assortment of sophisticated detonators. He’d told Burke that the weapons came from secret stockpiles of the East German Army. That much was true. Acting through several layers of middlemen, the Iranians had purchased them from ex-members of the Stasi the East German secret police who now controlled the criminal gangs in their former country.
Halovic watched closely as the three excited Americans began loading their new military hardware into the back of the Blazer. He was still faintly astounded by their greed and ignorance. Apparently, they really believed that someone would sell them equipment so far below the black-market price without expecting anything in return.
He stayed motionless until long after Burke and his companions were gone, making sure nobody else had observed this covert transaction. Then, as quietly as he had come, he slipped back down the hill to the spot where he’d concealed his own vehicle.
Like fat, lazy fish, Burke and the others had swallowed his lure. And when at last they were reeled in, the lines at tacked to them would lead the American authorities only in directions General Taleh wanted them to go.
The squat, drab concrete building just off Khorasan Square had an evil reputation among the poverty-stricken residents of central and southern Tehran. Built decades ago as a local headquarters for the SAVAK the Shah’s feared secret police the deep basements within its massive walls were rumored to contain torture chambers and mass graves. When the Shah fell, the Pasdaran, the Revolutionary Guards, moved into the building. Their fanaticism and heavy-handed repression soon blackened its name further. Now new masters ruled the roost.
Soldiers in the camouflaged battle dress and green berets of Iran’s Special Forces manned checkpoints closing off the nearby streets. More troops garrisoned sandbagged emplacements on the roof, wielding an array of machine guns, light antiaircraft guns, and shoulder-launched SAMs. Nobody went in or out without an escort provided by soldiers personally loyal to General Amir Taleh.
Although the Khorasan Square building showed up in official documents only as an “auxiliary command post,” Taleh had turned it into his principal special operations headquarters. More than a hundred handpicked staff officers were stationed there each part of a giant analysis and planning cell charged with shepherding his complex master plan to completion. To maintain airtight operational security, they worked, ate, and slept inside the facility.
The general himself had an office buried deep in the building’s basement. Detailed maps and operations orders covered each of the room’s four walls. Those showing the United States displayed a spiderweb of safe houses, arms caches, and targets spreading across the country at an ever increasing pace.
As the schedule tightened, Taleh found himself spending more and more time poring over the daily status reports transmitted by each team. To ensure that he could wield the different cells as a coordinated weapon when they took action, all command and control functions were channeled through his headquarters. Under no circumstances were the teams allowed to communicate with each other. If American counterintelligence penetrated one, they would learn nothing that could lead them to the others.
He flipped through the latest sheaf of computer printouts brought in by Farhad Kazemi, noting potential problems and successes with a dispassionate eye.
SITREP: UON 46 LION Prime Via MAGI Link to MAGI Prime:
1. LION confirms special weapons drop made to Aqan Sword contact BURKE. Payment received. Further direct contact evaluated as unnecessary, possibly hazardous. Aryan Sword behavior is undisciplined and erratic. They will not respond to positive control, but may well undertake actions on their own initiative.
2. LION sections have now completed strike reconnaissance on all first-wave assigned targets. All targets are viable.
3. LION Prime recommends Target BRAVO TWO for the initial action. Information contained in today’s Washington Post suggests the following options…
Taleh read Sefer Halovic’s latest situation report with growing satisfaction. He’d made the right choice there, he decided. The young Bosnian was proving a superb team leader in a critical sector intelligent, ruthless, and obedient to orders. Just look at his success in achieving useful contact with the American extremists. Only four of the other action cells scattered across the United States had made similar contacts and none to the same degree.
Halovic had exactly the right mix of cool calculation and daring required to conduct the covert war Taleh envisioned. Training and preparation could only carry one so far, the general thought. They had to be built on God- given talents…
Taleh brought himself up short. He sounded more like a proud father than a military commander. Halovic and his men were weapons to be saved if possible, to be expended if necessary. They existed only to serve God and Islam. To serve as he himself served and to lay down their lives for the greater good of all the Faithful.
He rubbed briskly at weary eyes. Too many days spent away from the sun and fresh air were exacting a toll on his endurance. Perhaps he should pay heed to Kazemi’s nagging suggestions that he take more rest.
With an impatient snort at the weak longings of his own mind, Taleh thrust the thought away. He flipped through another report and then another, searching as always for signs of trouble that he had not anticipated. There were none. At least none of any consequence. No matter how hard he looked, he could see no indication that his plans had been discovered. The Americans seemed utterly unaware of the invaders hidden in their midst.
When he had finished, the Iranian general sat in silence at his desk, feeling again the sheer exultation of the great power he tad harnessed. The arrow he had fitted to his bow was drawn tight, straining to be free, to fly toward the heart of his foes.
The Americans were rich. Then Taleh would strike at their wealth. The Americans had pushed their God aside in favor of a life of ease and materialism. So be it. He would strip them of ease and turn their goods into the instruments of their own destruction.
He closed his eyes, savoring the prospect. It would be as God willed.
CHAPTER 9
MISFIRE
Helen Gray lay alone under her covers in that warm, comfortable zone halfway between drowsy wakefulness and true sleep. After the focused intensity of every day on duty, the chance to let her thoughts and feelings run free at night was a luxury she prized. In the peaceful darkness she had nothing to prove and no one to impress.
The clean, crisp smell of pine drifted in through the window she had left cracked open, caught and carried by a cool breeze blowing off the nearby Potomac. She burrowed deeper under the blankets. Autumn was on the way, and though the days were still warm, the nights were growing steadily colder. Helicopters clattered somewhere off to the north, muffled by the distance and the forests crowding both sides of the river. The familiar sounds meant the marines based at Quantico were practicing night flying again.
The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team had its headquarters on the edge of the Bureau’s wooded Quantico academy campus. Firing ranges, an old airliner, and a smaller version of the Delta Force killing house gave team members a chance to hone their specialised skills. Beyond the ranges, a central building provided administrative offices, conference rooms, and temporary living quarters for HRT sections rotating through for refresher training or on routine alert.
As a section leader and one of the HRT’s only women agents, Helen had a room all to herself. It wasn’t
