“And get this: The fence is about ten feet high and topped with razor wire, but the gate is hanging unlocked and open.”
Joe Tipp said they had found a decent overwatch site to the south about four hundred meters away, along the single road leading into the site from the nearest population center, Khorramshahr.
“Okay, then, Captain Newman. That’s our OP,” Kyle said.
“Roger that. You, Double-Oh, and Tipp set up there, and the rest of us will establish a good support position here. Let’s go,” Newman said. Tipp took point, and Swanson fell in behind him, reading the dials, while Double-Oh walked at the tail end. The rest of the MARSOC team began building hide sites and gathering bushes for camouflage.
The OP was in an area where a washboard of ridges began and expanded higher and higher into the distance, so it did not stand out like a pimple on the flatlands. Once at the crest, the three Marines had a clear view of both the road and the target site, so they made themselves a hide among low, decaying trees and thin weeds. In a few minutes, a powerful spotter scope, a pair of binos, and the scope of the sniper rifle were examining the structure, inch by inch, parsing it in every way possible. The clouds had parted, and illumination was good. Not so much as a dog barked.
“Ain’t nobody home down there, Shake,” said Double-Oh after watching for a half hour. “Place is run-down and empty.” Wind had covered up most vehicle tracks, which indicated nothing had been driving around recently, and they could see no footprints.
“Yeah,” said Kyle. “I don’t think we’re going to need to watch this for three days. It
“Spooky,” said Tipp. “So we stay here all day and go in tonight? Why not go in right now and be done with it?”
Swanson shook his head. “We only have a good hour left before daybreak. We need to take our time in there. Remember, slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”
“Too risky right now,” added Double-Oh. “I don’t think anyone is down there, but there may be some activity in the area. We’ll watch it all day, then go in as a four-man team tonight. The other four guys will set up a firing position here while we make a thorough snoop.” He found the keypad on his digital communications terminal and typed a message that flashed up on Captain Newman’s DCT.
Darren Rawls, carrying a heavy machine gun, appeared at the OP in a few minutes as the other three wiggled around to make room for him. He smoothly set up the weapon, which gave the OP more firepower. Then they began a rotation of two men on watch while the other two slept for a few hours. It was going to be a long day in Iran.
With the sun up, they had a clearer view of the surrounding area. A main highway led out of the city, heading northeast, and the road the Marines were watching seemed to be an isolated track that led only to the site. It was about ten miles long. Two guard posts, one a mile from the site and the other near the wire, were abandoned. Not a vehicle came up the road all day.
Rick Newman crawled to the OP as the sun started to set and found all four of the men there already wearing their heavy MOPP suits, except for the hoods and masks. He agreed to accelerate the mission by a day and went back to bring forward his other Marines and do a communications update. The helicopter was scheduled for 0400.
Swanson, Double-Oh, Joe Tipp, and Rawls hurried through the open gate and stacked beside the gaping entrance to the building, then plunged through as a group. They did a hasty search and clear of the small layout, and Kyle read the dials: nothing dangerous. Their flashlights, however, scanned the walls in four bright circles, and the evidence of a recent fire was clearly visible. Kyle reached out a finger and swiped a path through a deep layer of soot.
A freight elevator was in one corner at the edge of an exterior loading dock, and a broad staircase led down into darkness. The Marines descended in pairs on each side, and Double-Oh kicked the door at the bottom. It burst open to reveal another empty room, which must have been an office before it was destroyed by fire. Through another door at the rear, and down another staircase, they found the tangled debris of what once had been a laboratory.
While the others stood in protective positions, Kyle waved his wands and sensors throughout the room. Whatever the monster that caused so much destruction was, this was where it was born and probably also was where it died. There was no sign of an accident, so the fire was likely deliberate. Apparently the occupants had thrown in some thermite-style grenades after soaking the place in flammable liquids. Fire is the best way to destroy chemical and biological agents, which vanish in the flash of intense heat. The blackness of the soot was even thicker in the ruined laboratory, and the MOPP booties were almost ankle deep in the stuff. The dials remained steady and harmless.
One more door, one more staircase.
They were far underground now, and since fire burns up, not down, the damage was not as great as on the lower level. Kyle found a bilingual sign at the top of the staircase with Arabic script and Korean lettering. Just as in Syria, the underground bunker complex had been built by North Korean engineers.
A central square room was the hub of six separate corridors, and a pair of Marines went down each of them.
“Jesus Christ!” muttered Double-Oh as he and Kyle came to a stop outside a barred cell door. The walls were also scorched back here, but the fire had cooked hotter above, and it would have required some time to reach back along the concrete fingers, where there was a minimum of oxygen. The scorched bones of a human being lay beside the door inside the cell, as if he had been trying to pull the bars apart in his last minutes during the process of suffocation and incineration. Apparently the flammable liquid also had been splashed inside the cages prior to the fire. The poor inmates had been doomed to burn alive.
Every cell held the same gory story. A dead person in each. Swanson scanned them, and there was some light ticking on one of the meters. He backed away.
“Okay, guys. Rawls, you take a position at the top of the stairs by the entranceway while the rest of us break out our cameras and document all of this for the intelligence people to figure out.” He wanted to take the contaminated body out with them, but there was no way to secure it to prevent whatever infection it carried from spreading. He would have to settle for cutting a few samples from the corpses, sealing them in double plastic ziplock bags, and wrapping those tightly with duct tape.
The three Marines removed their hoods and masks, then put them back on because it was so hard to breathe deep inside the bunker complex. It was like standing inside a giant fireplace. They worked as fast as possible, wanting to clear out of this building, go home, and take a shower. “Palace of Death is right,” said Joe Tipp. “Not much to look at, but the name is sure accurate down here.”
Captain Newman’s voice sounded suddenly in their earpieces. “Get out now! Somebody’s coming fast!”
They were on the bottom floor, documenting the tiny cells and their inhabitants, when the call came in. Racing up three floors on slippery stairs while wearing MOPP booties was pointless. There was no way to make it in time, and when they cleared the final doorway into the upstairs office area, Rawls was motioning for them to take cover. Two vehicles raced through the open gates and braked to hard halts with the headlights shining on the building.
One was an old Range Rover, and in it were a young man who was driving and a woman as a passenger. The second was a military truck with a squad of armed men wearing Iranian Revolutionary Guard uniforms, chasing the people in the Range Rover and not hunting for U.S. Marines.
“Hold fire,” Captain Newman said over the intercom. The Marines on the overwatch and inside the building observed what was happening with their fingers on their triggers. Swanson had left the sniper rifle behind for the building search. He brought his small M-4 carbine to bear on the group and focused the scope.
The soldiers had surrounded the front vehicle and were yelling for those inside to get out. The doors opened, and the driver exited and was immediately pummeled to the ground and dragged a short distance away, still in the pool of bright light. The woman got out slowly, but she, too, was smashed to the ground and hauled over beside the prone driver. She struggled to her knees, pleading; “I am just looking for my brother!”
