“I suppose so.”
“You have spoken many times of the fact that every insurgency has their moment of greatest desperation,” Zhoram said. “Is this yours, General?”
Buzhazi took a deep breath, then replied, “I think it was the moment I learned Mansour and every man in his detail was dead at Aran. I knew then that we couldn’t run, and that the fight would take us back to this place.” He looked at the former Rocket Brigade commander. “But I’m not here to have my final pitched battle to the death with the Pasdaran — I’m here to gather supplies so we can fight another day. If this turns out to be our Tet Offensive or our Al-Fallujah, then so be it. Maybe today will be the beginning of the end of the Pasdaran…”
“Even if it’s the end of us?”
“Even so,” Buzhazi said.
Zhoram swallowed hard, then raised his radio when he felt it vibrate, silently alerting him of a call. He listened for a moment, then reported, “Problem, sir. A Pasdaran officer was behind one of the earthmoving vehicles when it stopped in an intersection. When the officer approached, the driver ran off. The Pasdaran brigade headquarters has probably been alerted.”
“Have the power and natural gas cut immediately, redeploy the warehouse teams as planned, and order all units to prepare to repel attackers,” Buzhazi ordered. “Looks like we’ve run out of time already.”
Buzhazi and several of his men hurried through the security center, heading down two flights of stairs to the stockade. His men had already captured the guards and staff and were surrounding the security center’s most important prisoner, former chief of staff General Hoseyn Yassini. The general was standing, dressed in a simple white and black prisoner’s shirt, trousers, and sandals. Amazingly, the lights were already off, and the corridors lit only with battery emergency lamps. “Well, well, sir, looks like your new office is not quite as luxurious as your old one,” he said.
“Hesarak! I should have known this was your doing!” Yassini remarked when he saw Buzhazi before him. Buzhazi motioned to the guard, who opened the cell door. “What in hell is going on here?”
“Shut up and listen for a moment, will you, Hoseyn?” Buzhazi said. “Any minute now the entire Revolutionary Guards Corps will be swarming in on us. We’re taking as many supplies as we can and getting out, but I came here to release you so…”
“Release me? On whose orders?”
“That’s a funny way to say ‘thank-you,’ Hoseyn,” Buzhazi snorted. He tossed Yassini a radio. “I want only one thing from you in return, General: order the army to deploy into the cities and confront the Pasdaran.”
“You mean, start a war between Iranian armies in the capital?” Yassini asked incredulously. “Why in the hell would I even consider that? The Revolutionary Guards Corps are committed to the defense of the nation just as the regular army. Why would I order the army to do battle with the Pasdaran? We are all Iranians…”
“Damn your eyes, Hoseyn, I’m telling you, the clerics and the Pasdaran will destroy the army — starting with you — because they represent a threat to their regime and to their goal of a regional theocratic Islamist state,” Buzhazi said. “After that, they’ll round up and execute any man, woman, or child who is even suspected of opposing the regime. If they need to launch a full-scale attack with their missiles, bombers, bio-chem weapons, or even nuclear weapons, they’ll do it. And when they’re done with the opposition here in Iran, they’ll go after any opponents anywhere else in the region. They don’t care if that means a world war — they’ll use an Israeli or Western counterattack as proof that the rest of the world just wants to kill Muslims, and they’ll emerge stronger than ever. They won’t care that hundreds of thousands of citizens will die in the process. Can’t you see all that?”
Yassini looked at the radio in his hands as if it was a serpent ready to strike — but he did not give it back. “You want me to start a civil war just to save your own hide,” Yassini said. “You’re desperate, out of supplies, and you’re stuck in a corner facing total annihilation. Your best way to escape is to hope the regular army engages the Pasdaran. Why should I listen to you, Hesarak? You’ve been condemned by the leadership for high crimes and treason against the faith, the state, and the people of Iran. You face death by public hanging. You’ll do or say anything to save yourself.”
At that moment there was a huge explosion somewhere above them, and Buzhazi’s own radio squawked. He shook his head at the chief of staff. “Glad to see you’re alive, Hoseyn,” he said acidly. “Now you can go to hell. I’m sure I’ll see you there soon.” He motioned to his soldiers, and they followed him down the hall and upstairs, leaving a confused and frightened general officer alone in the dark cell behind them.
Buzhazi and his men drove over to the flight line and climbed up to the top of the largest aircraft hangar, which was the spot they chose for their observation position. He found Kamal Zhoram waiting for him. “I was afraid I’d have to take charge of our Tet Offensive here, sir,” he said with a weak smile. “Glad to see you’re still alive. Where’s Yassini?”
“Crawling down a sewer pipe to save himself — or informing Zolqadr of our presence,” Buzhazi said. “Forget him — he’s on his own. Situation?”
“Pasdaran guards came across one warehouse team and set off a booby trap, sir,” Zhoram said. “Survivors are being suppressed by our forces, but we’ve picked up general alerts on the base emergency frequency. The scouts report perhaps one battalion still in their barracks.” He motioned behind them toward the flight line. “Aviation units are still quiet — no patrol or attack helicopters spinning up. Surely they issued the alert already. What are they waiting for?”
“Maybe Zolqadr doesn’t want to blast his own base to smithereens with his rockets — at least not yet,” Buzhazi said. “Let’s not wait to find out. What about our scroungers?”
“They’re still loading up trucks as fast as they can,” Zhoram said. “I told them to get ready to move out at any moment.”
“The moment is now,” Buzhazi said. “Everyone out. If the men have to drop them to escape, so be it.”
“Yes, sir.” As he issued the evacuation orders, they heard sounds of turbine engines spooling up. They turned toward the flight line and saw pilots and crew chiefs running toward the attack helicopters parked below. “Fire in the hole!” Zhoram said, and he activated the remote-control detonators for the explosives they had planted on the choppers. But only two of the six detonators activated. After a few moments of confusion, the Pasdaran crewmembers started heading back to the undamaged helicopters, with security forces frantically scanning the area with assault rifles, looking for the source of the attack.
“Damn it, four detonators didn’t go off,” Zhoram swore. “My men picked the wrong time to screw up.” Buzhazi wondered about that: his saboteurs had been nothing short of miraculous up until now, planting devices in the most unreachable yet vital spots with very little apparent difficulty. Now with this, their most important mission, four crucial explosives fail to operate…? “You’d better get out of here, sir.” Zhoram signaled to his security man, who lifted a grenade launcher, loaded a 30-millimeter anti-personnel round, and fired one at the closest helicopter. He managed to scatter the crewmembers for that chopper only, but the other three helicopters still made preparations for takeoff.
“Don’t stay up here too long, Kamal,” Buzhazi said, scrambling for the ladder.
“Don’t worry, Hesarak — I’ll be right behind you,” Zhoram said.
Security forces on the flight line were already returning fire, forcing Zhoram’s guard to scramble for cover. Zhoram picked up his own grenade launcher and fired a round at the Pasdaran guards, but more defenders were on the way and returning fire, and the helicopters were almost ready for takeoff. He adjusted the grenade launcher’s sight for maximum range, aiming for the helicopter that seemed the most ready for takeoff, and fired. But he was a missileer, not an infantryman. It had been years — no, decades — since he had fired a grenade launcher, and he had never fired one like this, and his round flew far from the mark. Moments later the helicopter, a Russian-made Mil Mi-24 attack helicopter, lifted off.
Damn, he swore at himself, they were too late. Zhoram could see the quad 12.7-millimeter machine gun in its remote-controlled chin turret turning back and forth, active and looking for targets — namely, whoever had been lobbing grenades onto the flight line. Zhoram couldn’t tell what kind of weapons were on its stubby weapon pod wings, but he assumed they were even nastier than that machine gun. Time to get off this roof and out of this area. He shouted, “Get going! Get off the roof! Now!” His guard wasted absolutely no time — he was across the roof and sliding down the ladder in the blink of an eye. Zhoram slung his grenade launcher over one shoulder, looped the bandolier of grenades over the other, and ran as fast as he could toward the…
From less than a kilometer away, the machine gun’s bullets arrived before the sound did, and with an extremely accurate eye-pointing telescopic sight slaved to the pilot’s helmet, he could not miss. Over four dozen
