“There are the last of your missiles, Imad.”
“Thank you, General.” The colonel smiled and nodded toward the airport perimeter. “Now, with God’s blessing and some hard work, my men and I will have all of our batteries in position by nightfall.”
Akhavi followed the younger man’s nod, squinting into the sunlight sparkling off the blue Gulf waters. There, silhouetted against the ships crowding Bushehr’s waterfront, he could just make out the low, tracked shape of an SA-6 SAM.
A tiny, ill-dressed man stopped him on the way out the launcher. Soldiers and technicians were busy piling sandbags around the vehicle and stringing camouflage netting over it. More men were occupied elsewhere around the field, digging in towed antiaircraft guns and building missile and ammunition storage bunkers.
The logistician breathed a little easier. Each load of military supplies ferried in by coast freighter, train, truck, or aircraft had made the little port city a more inviting target for a preemptive strike. Now, as General Taleh’s plans took final shape, Bushehr’s own defences were at last being strengthened.
Colonel Peter Thorn was practically hip-deep in maps, satellite photographs of Tehran, and intelligence reports when one of the senior sergeants assigned to his planning cell looked in the door of his temporary office. “Sir, Major General Farrell is on secure line one.”
“Thanks, Hal.” Thorn dumped the pile of papers in his hand to one side and grabbed the phone. The JSOC commander was still in Washington, shepherding events there while he ran things at this end. “Thorn here.”
Farrell didn’t waste any time. “NEMESIS is a go, Pete. The President signed off this morning after seeing your preliminary ops plan. He also confirmed you as mission commander.”
Thorn relaxed slightly. NEMESIS was his plan to kill Taleh. “Thank you, sir.”
Farrell snorted. “You ought to thank me. I’ve had Bill Henderson and the other guys in my face ever since they heard the news.” “Sorry about that,” Thorn said without much real remorse.
He wasn’t surprised by his peers’ reaction. In the normal course of events, Hendewn or one of the other Delta Force squadron commanders would have been selected to lead the raiding force.
Certainly, no one would have expected command to fall to a staff officer even one who was a Delta veteran with a sterling combat record. But he had been prepared to pull every string and use every chit accumulated over his career to wangle this assignment. In the end, Farrell had agreed to give him the job for two very good reasons. First, he knew the territory and Taleh’s mind and personality better than any other officer in the U.S. Army. Second, the NEMESIS force would, of necessity, be a mixed outfit one hastily drawn from the existing Delta Force squadrons. Given the limited time available, that was the only way to create a team with the needed language and combat skills. Besides, if NEMESIS failed to stop Taleh’s planned invasion, Farrell’s other officers would have more than enough bloody work for their own skilled hands.
There was a third reason, of course one he and the general left unspoken. Helen Gray. Both men knew this mission would be the most difficult and dangerous operation ever mounted by the Delta Force. Much could go wrong in the blink of an eye. And both men instinctively knew the on scene commander might need the driving force of a very personal and very compelling passion to push NEMESIS through to victory. Peter Thorn had that fiery drive for vengeance. He wanted Amir Taleh dead more than any other man alive.
“Are you getting the data you need on the Iranian HQ?” Farrell asked.
Thorn’s mind came rapidly back to the present. “Yes, sir. The CIA and NSA assessments agree with our own. Taleh and his staff are definitely working out of the old Pasdaran building near Khorasan Square.”
Fragments of intercepted telephone conversations, satellite photographs showing upgraded defences, and gossip the CIA’s agents inside Tehran had picked up from local residents all confirmed Amir Taleh’s presence there. With their primary target locked in, Thorn’s planners had kicked their work into high gear.
“You have enough to build your HQ mock-up?”
The Delta Force always tried to run its assault teams through detailed mock-ups of their targets before any major operation. In the Delta Bible, elaborate, full-scale dress rehearsals were essential to reducing both confusion and casualties.
“Yes, sir,” Thorn answered. “I have the construction crews out working now. We’re using satellite photos for details on the outer defences. We were even able to dig up a set of floor plans for the interior.”
Farrell whistled appreciatively. “How the hell did you manage that?”
“Before the Revolution, the Shah’s secret police used the building as a prison. Apparently, our mission there tried to keep an eye on SAVAK excesses,” Thorn explained. “Captain Pappas found the blueprints in an old Army Intelligence file.”
“Outstanding.” Farrell cleared his throat. “Look, Pete, I don’t want to rush you, but you know the time pressure we’re under. I need to know when you and your assault force can be ready to go.”
Thorn glanced at the massive piles of paper still heaped throughout his office he considered his reply. To lay out the detailed plans for NEMESIS, he’d commandeered talented officers and NCOs from Delta’s intelligence, operations, logistics, and administration staff directorates. They had already been working nearly around the clock for more than twenty-four hours. The planning cell was making enormous strides adding real substance to the skeletal outline Farrell had laid before the NSC yesterday. But there was still a lot of hard work and hard training left to be done.
“We need at least a week to prep,” he said finally.
“That’s cutting it mighty close, Pete,” Farrell warned quietly. “A week is well inside the early window for the Iranian invasion.”
“Can’t be helped, sir. I won’t send my troops into Iran unprepared,” Thorn said stubbornly. They were already moving faster than was really wise. Previous Delta Force operations, even those of less inherent danger and complexity, had often required more than a month of planning and preparation. “Besides, having this CLIP contact inside Tehran is critical to the mission, and Langley tells me he can’t possibly be in position for at least another three days.”
Neither he nor the head of the JSOC were happy about having to rely on the Afghan truck driver code-named Stone. Unfortunately, there wasn’t time to infiltrate anybody else into the Iranian capital. Stone’s CIA controllers regarded him as a man of the utmost integrity and reliability. Thorn just hoped like hell they were right for once.
“On the other hand,” he continued, “we should have thirty-six to forty-eight hours’ notice of any imminent Iranian move now that we know what to look for. If Taleh puts his plan in gear sooner than expected, we’ll saddle up and go right away.”
“Fair enough,” Farrell said. “I’ll try to keep the President and the JCS off your backs for as long as possible.”
“One last thing, Pete.” The general’s tone changed, becoming less official and more personal. “What’s the latest word on Helen?”
The room seemed to darken around Thorn. “I talked to one of the surgeons at Walter Reed this morning. She’s still in intensive care and still fighting off the infection. But, as best they can tell, she can’t move anything below her waist. They just don’t know yet whether the nerve damage is temporary… or permanent. He couldn’t give me much more than that.”
“I am sorry, Pete,” Farrell said sadly. “Louisa’s flying up here tonight. She plans to stay near the hospital and keep an eye on Helen for you.”
Grateful beyond words, Thorn was conscious of mumbling his thanks, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he should be there himself waiting by Helen’s bedside to comfort her, to stroke her hair, to tell her again that he loved her.
The general seemed to read his mind. “Helen will understand, Pete. She has a soldier’s heart. She’ll know that this mission must come first. There’s too much at stake.” “Yes, sir,” Thorn said slowly.
Farrell’s next words were in deadly earnest. “This is gonna be a rough one, Pete. Don’t screw up and get yourself killed.”
“No, sir.”
General Amir Taleh stood with his arms folded near the front of the chair-filled subterranean room, watching
