Green nodded. “Yeah, four or five rounds.”
Barrkman pointed to his right front. “I think it was over there. Hard to tell how far.”
Langevin pressed the transmit button. “Alpha, this is Bravo. Over.”
“Alpha here.”
“We just heard shots farther into the blast zone. Maybe a klick or so west of us. We’re going to look. Over.”
“Be careful, Bernard.”
“Always. Out.”
When the grass turned from brown to dead, Esmaili stopped. He set down his burden beside what appeared a hurricane-blasted tree and looked around. He noted a prominent rock fifteen meters away and unlimbered the folding shovel. Digging in the earth beside the rock, he scooped out a hole large enough to accept the backpack and stuffed it in the hole. Then he filled in the hole, spreading the excess dirt far enough away to avoid notice.
Esmaili sat on the rock, sipping water. Then he took three compass bearings and wrote them on a pad, but he felt confident of finding the place again without map references.
The rifle bullet slashed past his right ear. Before the sound subsided, Esmaili was flat on the ground, reaching for his AK.
He squirmed to the edge of the rock, searching for his assailant. He felt the bile rising from his stomach, more from disappointment than fear.
When no other shots followed, Esmaili sorted the possibilities.
The Iranian reckoned that an ambitious, self-confident youth would not sit it out.
Esmaili low-crawled through the ruined grass, back a few meters from the trunk of the tree. In a few minutes a crouching figure approached from the west.
From his prone position twenty-five meters away, Esmaili identified the rifle before the face. The scoped Galil told him all he needed to know. “Hazim!”
The young marksman spun at the sound of his name. Before he spotted his teacher, he felt the impact of a 7.62 round in his right shoulder. He dropped the trophy rifle and slumped to his knees, crying in anguish and in pain.
“Don’t move!”
Esmaili rose high enough to check his surroundings. Seeing no one else, he swung to his own left and approached Hazim from the right side. The stalker had crumpled to the ground, holding his shoulder with his left hand. He moaned and sobbed, talking unintelligibly.
Esmaili knelt beside his pupil and tossed the Galil away. The Iranian regarded the young Lebanese as if he were a specimen under a microscope. Pale complexion, a sheen of perspiration on the face, eyes wide.
“You were a decent pupil at one time, but you never learned to call your shots. That one went to my right. And you could not have been more than 150 meters away.” His voice carried a
Hazim raised himself on his left elbow. “Traitor! You murdered the brothers! I saw the bodies!”
Esmaili’s left hand snaked out, quick and hard. The blow stunned the boy for a moment. Before he could react, Esmaili said, “Fool! I gave you a chance to escape. You would have been wise to take another direction. Now…”
“Kill me, traitor! You’re going to do it anyway so do it now.”
Esmaili slung his AK and pulled the marksman to his feet. “You damned, stupid young idiot!” He shook the boy roughly, causing a yelp of pain. “You can still get out of here.” He shoved Hazim eastward and retrieved the Galil.
“You’re… you’re not going to kill me?”
Esmaili waved violently. “Go! Just go!”
Still disbelieving, Hazim forced himself to walk. Amid the pain and weakness, he tried to sort out the rationale for letting him live. Surely the Teacher knew that if Hazim recovered he would tell what the Iranian had done, where he had buried the weapon. But why send him away? Why…
Hazim looked back, saw Esmaili traipsing ten paces behind him. They had gone about two hundred meters and the Lebanese countryside lay before them. Israel was somewhere off to the right. Maybe the Teacher was going there…
The round from Esmaili’s AK struck Hazim at the base of the skull.
Accelerating his pace, Esmaili barely looked down.
48
Ahmad Esmaili saw them before they saw him.
He went prone in the grass, now brown again rather than dead. He looked at them through Hazim’s scope.
When it was obvious that the searchers would pass barely one hundred meters from him, Esmaili laid down his rifles. He stood up, raised his hands, and began walking.
Pitney saw him first. In Arabic he shouted, “Do not move!”
Esmaili froze in his tracks. He recognized the intruders as professionals.
While Barrkman and Green kept watch, Pitney and Langevin talked to the stranger who seemed to wander alone and unarmed in an extremely violent place. But first they searched and cuffed him.
“What was the shooting over there?” Pitney asked.
“Oh, four men were killed. Nobody else was there.”
The cop in Robert Pitney began to surface. “What are you doing out here by yourself?”
Esmaili decided now was the time. “I have knowledge of a nuclear weapon and wish to sell that information to the Israelis.”
Half an hour later Omar Mohammed arrived. He deployed Ashcroft, Brezyinski, and Furr on perimeter security, then looked at the man who gave his name as Ahmad Esmaili. Mohammed took a chance and asked in Farsi, “How is it in Tehran?”
Esmaili smiled, feeling increasingly confident. “There is much nuclear activity, my friend. I was with Dr. Momen recently.” He raised his manacled hands. “I could show you.” Mohammed uncuffed him, explaining, “He says he knows of a weapon.”
Langevin was skeptical. “How can he prove that? And where is it?”
After the translation, Esmaili tore a page from his notebook and handed it over. Langevin recognized a reasonably accurate set of Cyrillic letters and numbers. “This is a serial number of a nuclear demolition device?”
Mohammed confirmed that it was.
“Where is it?”
Esmaili grinned self-confidently. “That information will cost the Zionists a great deal of money.”
“Colonel!” The captain ran to Livni as he entered the operations block. “Colonel, we just heard from the
