Harry and Tex exchanged a quiet smile, then Harry responded. “You think so? Get a few more missions under your belt before you go drawin’ those conclusions. We’re a team. We think like a team, we act like a team, we depend on each other. Why? Because no one’s on our side-and don’t fool yourself into thinking any different. Each other-that’s all we can count on. Do you understand?”
Davood looked from one team member to another, then responded with a quiet, “Yes.”
With the same grim smile on his face, Harry reached out and clapped a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Good. Let’s stick together on this. We’re a team.”
Yet even as he said the words, Harry could see the doubt in Davood’s eyes. He was young, he was inexperienced, and perhaps worst of all, trusting.
Just above them, the “Fasten Seatbelts” light came on and the men retreated to their seats to prepare for landing. Harry watched the young agent out of the corner of his eye as he collected his personal effects. Recognizing the danger there.
Trust. It was the currency of human relationships, perhaps the most basic and sacred element of personal life. Extended to the wrong people, he had seen it kill. Often enough to question whether there were any “right” people.
Harry turned away, looking out the window as the Starlifter’s wheels touched down on German soil. These were his people. His team. And he would do whatever it took to protect them. They would do the same for him…
The last echoes of the muezzin’s call had scarcely died away when an attendant scurried forward to retrieve the prayer mat. Isfahani rose, looking toward the golden dome of the shrine.
He cast a sidelong glance at the man rising next to him, a cool appraisal. The ayatollah had long prided himself in his ability to take the measure of a man in a single glance.
Major Hossein was proving measurably more difficult. He was a tall man, his features undeniably Persian.
Farshid. His name too was Persian, not Islamic, taken from the secular
Bright as the hope flickering in the ayatollah’s heart.
They made a strange couple as they, flanked by Isfahani’s bodyguards, walked across the square toward the mural-bedecked cemetery of the Martyrs.
The holy man and the warrior.
“You understand why I have brought you here, do you not?” The ayatollah asked a few short moments later, gesturing to a mural of a slain fighter, fallen, like all the rest in this cemetery, during the Iran-Iraq War.
The major nodded, his face well-nigh expressionless, the only trace of nervousness visible in the twisting of the coral beads between his fingers.
“They died fighting, major. Fighting their fellow Muslims. Your own father among them,” the ayatollah finished, a warning lurking in his words. A warning that Hossein’s past was an open book.
A nod was the major’s only reply, for Isfahani had gone on without waiting for one. “It is happening again. Think of it, my son, if these forces were but united against the infidel.”
“ ‘I against my brother,’”quoted Hossein, “ ‘my brother and I against our cousin-my brother, my cousin, and I against the infidel.’”
“Such has always been our weakness,” Isfahani mused bitterly. “Ever since the days of the Prophet. So it will always be. Unity is more than we can hope for, major.”
“Then what is our objective?” Hossein asked, the military man rising to the surface as his confidence returned.
Isfahani turned, his steel gray eyes seeming to pierce to the very soul with the intensity of their stare. “To prevent desecration…”
They had seen the flames shortly after fording the stream. It had taken them two hours to reach this small Kurdish village-or rather what was left of it, Thomas thought, standing in the smoldering ruins. Beyond him lay the body of an aged grandmother, her skull crushed in by a rifle-butt. A couple of feet to her right, the corpse of a small child, face charred beyond recognition by the flames. The odor of burnt flesh hung in the air.
Butchery. The body of an aged man lay across the threshold of his house, a bolt-action Mosin-Nagant clutched in his stiff, lifeless hands. Thomas’s mind registered the futility of the old man’s resistance even as his heart moved in silent admiration of its raw courage.
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, Thomas reflected. The old laws of vengeance had never died here in the East. He was standing amidst the fruits of it. The ashes of dreams.
Thomas saw several of the women among the PJAK group kneel among the rubble, weeping over the bodies of the dead. Estere was not among them. He turned to find her standing by a shell crater, looking out over the valley, the British-made sniper rifle still cradled in her arms.
“I am sorry,” he whispered, walking up to stand at her shoulder.
It was a long time before she even turned to look at him. “
She fell silent once more as Sirvan came up to join them. “Regular army,” he announced grimly. “Likely in retaliation for our ambush two weeks ago.”
A shovel was in his left hand, and he tossed it to Thomas with the words, “Let us bury the dead.”
Thomas took it without a word and followed the young Kurd through the streets of the village. Yet even later, as they dug the graves, he could not get Estere’s face out of his mind. The look in her eyes. He had seen it, so many times before, in the eyes of his comrades through the years. The look of death.
“So, we’re negotiating with terrorists, are we?”
David Lay lifted his eyes from the folder in front of him to meet President Hancock’s gaze. “PJAK’s status has been a matter of dispute over the years. Under the previous administration, they were removed from the US terrorism watch list.”
“A mistake I was quick to rectify,” Hancock interjected coldly, cutting the DCIA off. “Did you know about this, Lawrence?”
Lawrence Bell, the National Intelligence Director, shook his head slowly. “I was not briefed on the situation till late yesterday afternoon. By then PJAK had already sequestered our agent.”
The President turned back to Lay. “Is there a reason you did not send this through the appropriate channels, director?”
