his big rifle and fired. There was no recoil and no sound, just a laser-straight line of orange-red fire. The round looked as if it had missed the tank because Zolqadr could see the orange-red line go right past the tank as if the tank was nothing but a desert mirage…but the tank suddenly shuddered to a halt as if its driver jammed on the brakes. Seconds later smoke began billowing from the tank, and moments later fire was billowing from several blow-out ports and through melting steel.
“Who are you?” Zolqadr screamed. But the two figures ignored him. The first picked up Buzhazi as easily as if he was a doll and headed toward the Khomeini Library, while the second covered their retreat with the big tank- killing weapon, swiveling it in all directions as if it was weightless as well.
The big figure with the large, unidentified rifle said, “Salam aleikom. Have a nice day, sir,” in Farsi to the dazed and confused Pasdaran commander as he walked by.
The cheering inside the Khomeini Library could be heard from half a kilometer away as the two strange figures approached. Men came running out to join their leader. The first gray-clad figure put him down on the ground just inside the walls. “Are you alive, Buzhazi?” he said in Farsi through his electronic speakers.
“Yes, thanks to you,” Buzhazi said weakly, still dazed but able to rise up on one knee, then motioning for his men to pull him to his feet. He noticed two more similarly clad and equipped figures entering the compound. “I think I recognize you.”
The first figure ignored Buzhazi and turned to the others. “Report,” he ordered in English.
“The northwest battalion scattered,” another figure responded. “No further contact with them. We downed two Mi-35 Hind attack helicopters attacking from the north; three more turned away toward Qom. Systems reporting sixty-three percent and thirty-five percent ammo.”
“The southwest battalion departed as well,” another reported. “They have reassembled near the city center about seven klicks away and they are reporting the situation to their headquarters. I count a force of six APCs and one T-72-sized main battle tank. We’re at fifty percent power and thirty percent ammo.”
“Very well. The west battalion has left the area but appears to be rendezvousing with the southwest survivors,” the first figure said. “They had five APCs and a number of men on foot. I still have contact with the mortar team that set up — they’re still in place but I haven’t detected any rounds headed our way, yet. We can expect some sort of counterattack or probe shortly. Me and the sergeant major are at fifty-seven percent power and seventy percent ammo left. All of you, stop wasting your ammunition. Those aren’t machine guns you’re firing.”
“You are Americans, the so-called Air Battle Force ground units, the ones who helped the Sanusi liberate Libya,” Buzhazi said.
The first figure handed his rifle over to his comrade, then quickly removed his helmet, revealing the angry face of a rather young black man. He stepped over to Buzhazi and grasped him by his jacket, pulling him toward him until they were face to face. Buzhazi’s men moved as if they were going to help him, but backed away when the other armored figures shifted their weapons to a more threatening port-arms position. “I’ll tell you who I am, Buzhazi,” the black man spat. “I’m the guy who swore if I ever found you alive I’d twist your head right off your shoulders with my bare hands, orders or no orders to the contrary.”
“Briggs,” Buzhazi gasped. “Harold Briggs, the American commando and leader of the Tin Men. I thought so.” Hal’s face was a mask of pure rage. “You still mourn your woman, even though she died as a spy serving her people, trying to assassinate me.”
“Go ahead, Buzhazi. Say one more word to me. Give me a reason to rip you limb from limb.”
“Sir, let’s get the hell out of here,” the second figure said.
Briggs tossed Buzhazi out of his hands and into the arms of his men surrounding him. “The message is, General,” Briggs said, “that you asked for our help, and you got it. If it was up to me, I’d shove you headfirst into the sand up to your ankles and call it self-defense. But General McLanahan seems to think you have the ability to turn this country around. Personally I think he’s insane, but he thinks differently.”
“Tell him thank-you from my men and myself.”
“He can hear everything you say and has been monitoring this battle, and he will continue to monitor what you’re doing from now on,” Briggs said. Buzhazi’s eyes drifted up to the sky as if he was searching for the eyes watching them. “He convinced a lot of very powerful people that you were going to bring down the theocratic regime and help stabilize the region. If he’s found wrong, he will be extremely embarrassed, and I will take great pleasure in removing the source of that embarrassment — you.”
“He shall have no fear — the theocracy will die, or I shall,” Buzhazi said. “Iran is done sponsoring death and destruction in the name of the religion of peace. If I am successful, I shall pursue peace with the rest of the world — Arab, Westerner, Zionist, Asian, and European, as well as Persian, I swear it. Again, I thank you for your help.”
“We’re done helping you, General — we’re outta here,” Briggs said. “Your promises don’t mean shit to me — only your actions matter. Make sure no one tries to follow us east of this place, or we’ll come back and finish the Pasdaran’s job.”
“No one will follow you, I swear.”
“Better pray that’s so, General. If you have any friends in the regular armed forces who aren’t friends with the clerics, I suggest you give them a call and get them out here to give you a hand against any other Pasdaran forces who might try a counterattack. And I’ve got one more promise for you, General: The next time I come back here, it’ll be to finish the job — on you.” With that, the four figures ran off, and in the blink of an eye were gone — last seen jumping over the walls of the compound and bounding across the farmlands to the east.
“Those were the American armored commandos you called, sir?” Mansour Sattari asked breathlessly. “But that is impossible! You called them just last night! How could they have gotten out here so quickly?”
Buzhazi stood dumbstruck for a few moments, then shook himself out of his shock and smiled. “I would imagine that’s the secret east of here they don’t wish to share,” he said. “No matter. The Americans did the impossible, and they have delivered to us a miracle and turned the tides in our favor. Now it is time to push forward and take the clerical regime down once and for all!”
It took the team thirty-seven minutes to run twenty miles east of the Khomeini Library — they attracted a lot of incredulous stares from farmers and townspeople, and Hal Briggs was sure there were going to be some frantic phone calls to local gendarmerie, but they continued on without any interference. For safety, they changed their main battery packs for fresh ones before moving into the target area — their batteries were almost depleted, and it would not be prudent to have to defend their destination area with spent batteries installed. Eight miles west of the Kavir Buzurg dry salt marsh and three miles north of a smaller dry lake bed, on the very western edge of the Dasht-e Kavir wastelands, they came across a stretch of paved construction highway in the center of a narrow valley. There were dozens of natural gas wells along the road, and Hal remembered passing a large industrial complex several miles back that had to be the natural gas processing plant for these wells.
In the center of the highway, just east of a bend, sat their objective: an XR-A9 Black Stallion spaceplane, the “magic carpet” that took them from Dreamland to north-central Iran in less than two hours.
“I was starting to get worried, sir,” Captain Hunter “Boomer” Noble said as the four Tin Men approached.
“We radioed you we were on our way,” Hal said.
“Not about you, sir — I was worried we’d miss lunch back at the Lake,” Boomer deadpanned. “Sounds like it went well.”
“We got lucky, Boomer,” Hal said.
“That Iranian commander sure has balls of steel, eh, General? Not one, not two, but six truck bombs — and he decides he’s going to drive one of them? Gutsy.”
“The man’s a coward, Captain,” Hal said acidly. “He probably said he’d drive one because he’d rather die in a blaze of glory than be tortured or killed by the same bastards he trained to torture and kill.”
“Still, you gotta admit his timing couldn’t have been better. He initiates his attack just before the Pasdaran forms up to attack, and right when you…”
“You want to go back there and give him a big wet sloppy one, Captain, go right ahead,” Briggs snapped. “Otherwise, let’s mount up and get the hell out here. Briggs to McLanahan.”
“I’ve been listening, Hal,” Patrick responded via their subcutaneous global transceiver system. “Good job. We see a possible sign of pursuit — several small vehicles heading your way, about fifteen minutes out. No general defense alert yet, just a lot of confused radio traffic from your area, but I expect they’ll issue a nationwide
