by Larry Bond
That was just as well. In less than twenty-four hours, he would issue the final orders setting the invasion in motion. Six hours after that, the first attack transports would depart Bushehr and Bandar-e Khomeini, bound for the Saudi coast. At this stage, even a half-hour hiccup in the schedule would have been cause for concern.
Taleh turned as General Hashemi, his senior operations officer, approached. The older man looked worried.
“Yes, Hashemi?”
“Captain Kazemi has informed me that you intend to activate his special security plan before our final staff conference.”
Taleh nodded. “That is correct.”
Hashemi hesitated and then said cautiously, “You realize, sir, that such a move may complicate our work at a critical moment? Since there is no sign of any unusual enemy activity, wouldn’t it be more prudent to wait a while longer?”
Taleh shook his head. “No, General. I have not survived this many years by depending on foolish behavior from my adversaries. We will go on a full war footing as scheduled. In battle our soldiers must expect the unexpected. I see no reason that my staff should expect more certainty and convenience in their own lives.”
Despite his native caution, Taleh was sure the first stroke would be his. SCIMITAR would fall where and when he wished, on an ignorant and ill-prepared enemy.
NEMESIS strike force, Incirlik Air Base, Turkey
Colonel Peter Thorn slipped through the side door of the massive hangar hiding his lead C-17 transport from prying eyes and stood watching the American warplanes taxiing across the field.
Officially, the NEMESIS force did not exist. Its black, brown, and gray camouflaged aircraft had been moved out of sight almost as soon as they were wheels down. Heavily armed Air Force security detachments were on guard around the three hangars allocated to his planes. Major General Farrell wanted to make sure the Iranians didn’t get wind of the impending raid. The JCS and the President were equally determined to make sure the Turks didn’t find out. NATO host countries tended to be picky about covert operations launched from their territory.
Inside the hangars, some of the more than one hundred soldiers and airmen under his command were busy making final checks of their weapons and gear. Others were resting—following the old Army tradition of catching up on your sleep whenever somebody wasn’t actively yelling or shooting at you.
Thorn smothered a yawn. He’d tried to grab some shuteye during the seven-and-a-half-hour flight from Pope, but he hadn’t managed very much. He’d told himself that was because of the eight-hour time difference between late night in North Carolina and pale noon sunshine in Turkey. He’d also blamed his restlessness on the pressures of command and on the need to go over every last piece of his plan for the hundredth time.
The truth was both simpler and more complicated. Every time Thorn closed his eyes, he saw Helen lying helpless and in pain in her hospital bed. The last report from Louisa Farrell was not very encouraging. Although the doctors now believed she would live, they weren’t sure she would ever regain the use of her legs.
He felt a sudden stab of sorrow. Helen was so intensely physical, so intensely alive on her feet and in motion. Robbing her of the ability to walk unaided would almost be worse than robbing her of life itself. What kind of life would she be willing to build with him if her injuries were permanent? He stared out across the runway, trying to suppress, for even a short time, his fears for her and for himself.
The noise outside was ear-shattering. Caught unaware by what most people on the base thought was a practice alert, Incirlik was in a sustained uproar. Pair by pair, F-15E Strike Eagles were arriving from bases further west in Europe. As fast as they arrived, ground crews swarmed over them, arming and refueling each fighter-bomber at the double-quick.
Thorn shook his head. If NEMESIS and a follow-up Tomahawk strike failed to stop Taleh’s attack, the planes hurriedly assembling here would be thrown into a series of desperate, extended-range attacks against the Iranian invasion force. Given the relative numbers of aircraft involved and the fact that Iran’s MiGs would be operating close to their own bases, American losses were certain to be high—maybe even crippling.
Tehran
With as much patience as he could muster, Hamir Pahesh lounged in one of Tehran’s many bazaars and waited for his contact to appear. He found the waiting difficult. The normal frenzy of the marketplace was nothing compared to the sense of urgency he had felt for the last several days.
His last radio conversation with the CIA controller he knew as Granite had sent him straight back to Tehran at the best speed he could manage. The journey had taken him longer than he had planned. At every major road junction, he’d fought congestion as military convoys rolling the other way strained Iran’s primitive road net. The soldiers and their vehicles all seemed to be heading south for the coast, most for Bandar-e Bushehr.
The Afghan shook his head. Meeting the CIA’s needs for this mission had proved extraordinarily difficult. Right now, the only thing more important to Iran’s armed forces than an empty truck was a full one.
Luckily, there had been many empty trucks returning north, some of them driven by his own countrymen. Among his fellow Afghans, he had found two men he knew and two friends they trusted. All four had some experience in moving illegal goods, and they were all less than pleased with the Shiite Iranian government. They had agreed to collaborate with him on an unspecified, though very profitable, undertaking. They would join him soon.
In the meantime, though, he had other details to attend to. Two of his recruits were off buying enough black-market gasoline for their five trucks.
That left the not-so-small problem of papers. Five trucks traveling together, empty, without travel papers, were sure to be stopped at the first roadblock. He got enough grief from the Pasdaran swine even when his papers were in order. Luckily, the comings and goings of the regular military should provide the perfect cover. If, that was, the man he was waiting for came through …
“Hamir! My friend! Hello!”
Pahesh turned abruptly. Ibn al-Juzjani, an old acquaintance, if not truly a friend, had silently appeared beside him.
Stealth was a valuable skill in the smaller man’s line of work. Pahesh knew him from his days as a mujahideen, but al-Juzjani wasn’t a fighter. The little man had helped smuggle weapons across the borders between Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. He was still in the same line of work.
“Peace be with you, Ibn,” Pahesh greeted him languidly. It took considerable effort to appear disinterested. “You were successful, I hope?”
Al-Juzjani’s sly brown eyes twinkled. “Yes, with the blessings of God. Come, follow me.”
The smuggler preferred to transact his business out of a nondescript shop near the edge of the bazaar—one of many in this district selling televisions, transistor radios, and VCRs. The proprietor, a third or fourth cousin in al-Juzjani’s extended clan, reserved a private room for his use.
Once they were out of sight of prying eyes, Pahesh scanned the documents the smuggler offered him. There were two sets of forged travel orders—one for a trip out of Tehran and another set for the return journey. They weren’t perfect, but he’d seen enough real travel documents to know these would pass.
He nodded in satisfaction. “Good enough, Ibn. These will suit me very well.” Ordinarily, he would have expected to sit, drink tea, and talk over old times with al-Juzjani, as was the custom when doing business, but he had no time left for pleasantries. He held out a wad of rials.
The other man held up a hand. “Alas, my friend, you know better than that. Rials are worth less than the paper they are printed on in my line of work. Besides,” he said slyly, “my suppliers were so busy with their other endeavors that I had to pay extra to persuade them to complete your little task.”
Pahesh swallowed his impatience and his resentment. He had expected nothing more from al-Juzjani. He sometimes thought the man only breathed because the air around him was free. He arched an eyebrow.
“How much more do your suppliers require?”
“Another one hundred American dollars.”
Pahesh considered that. Even with the clock running, it would be a mistake to simply accept the smuggler’s first price. Folding too easily would only tell the little man just how important those papers were to him.
He snorted and spread his hands wide. “Alas, Ibn, that is impossible. My funds are wholly tied up in this small enterprise of mine,” he lied.
“I see. What a pity.” The smuggler stroked his chin and then shrugged. “Perhaps I can persuade them to accept ninety-five dollars.”
They haggled pleasantly for another few minutes before settling on a mutually acceptable, if extortionate, price. He was not worried about using American currency to settle his debt with the smuggler. Tehran’s black market used dollars exclusively and Iranian banks exchanged it freely—though at a terrible rate. In truth, he had never expected al-Juzjani to accept Iranian rials.
Besides, the money was of no consequence. Pahesh would cheerfully have handed over his entire, hard-earned fortune to secure those papers. They were his passport to a better life.
His little convoy of five trucks headed out from Tehran shortly after noon, plowing southward through the ever-thinning traffic on a paved, two-lane road to Robat Karim, a small town roughly one hundred kilometers from the capital. Except for a few large, expensive cars—Mercedes sedans—whose owners could either countermand or safely flout the regulations, most of the other vehicles on the highway belonged to the military.
Their forged documents got Pahesh and his companions past police checkpoints without much trouble. The papers were ostensibly issued by the Pasdaran. Even with General Amir Taleh in power, nobody with half a brain wanted to look too closely at the activities of the Revolutionary Guards.
At the town of Kasham, they turned off the highway onto a winding gravel road, heading west into a flat, dry landscape littered with stones. A few miles out of town, even the gravel surface ended, leaving only a dirt track barely wide enough for a single truck.
Despite the poor road, Pahesh kept his speed as high as he dared, and then a little higher. The sun was now only a few fingers above the western horizon. He faced it as he drove, slitting his eyes against the glare as though he were staring down an adversary.
The odometer was his master. The clock was his enemy. It was vital that he reach the right spot before dark.
Keeping one hand on the wheel, Pahesh fumbled through his duffel bag and pulled out a small device the size of a handheld calculator. He switched it on and waited. First one, then two, three, and finally five small green lights glowed on the front of the little machine. Each light represented a GPS—global positioning system—satellite whose signal it was able to receive. With five satellites, the receiver could fix his position to within three meters.
At the moment, the receiver’s readout showed latitude and longitude values almost matching those given him by Granite.
He studied the landscape ahead. There. He saw the landmark he’d been looking for—a long, low, east-west ridge that paralleled the road a few hundred meters to the north. The sun was just touching the horizon.
Once he was abreast of the hill, Pahesh pulled off the road and stopped. He clambered down out of the truck cab and stretched—well aware that he still had much work to do. A gust of icy wind warned him of the cold night ahead.
The others dropped out of their trucks and came to join him. They seemed puzzled to find themselves so far from anywhere. They stared back and forth from the long, low ridge to the straight dirt road laid across the empty landscape like a pencil line on a piece of paper.
Mohammed, a big man with an unkempt beard, was the most suspicious. “You are sure this is the right spot?”
Pahesh nodded calmly. “I’ve done this before,” he lied smoothly. He turned to the other three men. “Move your trucks off the road and wait for us. Mohammed and I have a little scouting to do.”
Without waiting to see if they obeyed him, he got back in his truck and headed west through the growing darkness. As he drove, he scanned the terrain closely. Granite’s orders ran through his memory: “Make sure the road is not blocked, and that the ground is flat for at least fifty meters to either side. Watch out for potholes or large boulders.”
A little over a kilometer to the west, the road curved slightly, disappearing around the ridge and into the distance.
Pahesh nodded to himself. It would suffice. The only thing in that direction was a small village another twenty kilometers further on. At night, in the winter, this should be an empty and abandoned area. Or so he hoped.
He parked at the curve and waited for Mohammed to join him. “Park your truck off the road as though it has broken down. Then build two fires, one here and one over there,” he said, pointing across the road. “Keep the fires small and keep watch, but do nothing unless I say otherwise. You understand?”
The big man nodded slowly, staring down the long stretch of road to the east. “So this shipment of yours comes by air, then?”
Pahesh frowned. Since he first met the man, Mohammed had been questioning him—digging whenever possible to find out more about what they were up to. Without his friend Agdas’ recommendation, he would never have taken on a man who was so nosy. Agdas, though, had promised him that the big man could keep his mouth shut when it mattered.
“Yes,” he answered shortly. “The goods I am expecting are large—very bulky.” That much, at least, was true—though it was cloaked in a lie. “Are you armed?”
Mohammed nodded, and lifted up his coat enough for Pahesh to see a dull black shape tucked in his waistband.
The Afghan nodded. He had expected no less. His countrymen usually felt naked without at least one weapon concealed somewhere. “I will send someone to relieve you in half an hour.”
Pahesh climbed back into his truck and drove off without looking back. To find the others, he followed the truck tracks with his headlights as they led him over the ridge.
The rest of his little band were gathered around a small fire of their own, and they were cooking a light supper. The circle of bearded faces, lit only by the leaping flames, reminded the Afghan strongly of the days long ago—the days in his own country when the mujahideen ruled the hills and mountains and kept their Soviet foes in fear.
He lugged his duffel a short way from the fire and set up his SATCOM radio. He did not hide his actions from others, but he did not invite them closer either.
Somewhere off in far distant America, Granite was waiting by the radio for his signal. “Granite here.”
“This is Stone,” Pahesh reported. “We are in Kabul.” Translated, that meant they were at the proper coordinates and there were no obstructions blocking the road.
Even across the ten thousand miles, he could hear the relief in the American’s voice. “Understood, Stone. Expect your shipment tonight.”
Pahesh paused and then said, “Wish them safe journey.”
After stashing the radio out of sight again, he rejoined his compatriots at the fire.
“These friends of yours will arrive soon?” Agdas asked quietly.
“Soon,” Pahesh agreed.
“Can you tell us yet what this cargo of yours is?” the other man pressed. “This is mysterious … even for you, Hamir.”
“Yes, it is.” The Afghan shrugged. “You will see soon enough.”
“So what now?” one of the other men asked. “What are we supposed to do in the meantime?”
Pahesh smiled at him across the campfire. “We wait, my friend. We wait.”
CHAPTER 25
NEMESIS
DECEMBER 13
NEMESIS strike force, south of Lake Van, near the Turkish-Iranian border
(D MINUS 2)
Lit red by the setting sun, November One-Zero, the lead C-17 Globemaster assigned to NEMESIS, flew eastward toward Iran at twenty thousand feet, drawing jet fuel down a boom from the giant KC-10 aerial tanker just above and ahead.
The formation’s two other C-17s, November Two-Zero and Three-Zero, were in position to the rear right and left, each tanking from their own dedicated KC-10.
“We’re nearly full up, Mack,” November One-Zero’s copilot reported.
“Roger,” Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Thomas McPherson replied. He spoke to the tanker’s boom operator. “Ready to disconnect, Foxtrot Alpha.”
“Understood, One-Zero. Pumping stopped.” The operator aboard the KC-10 paused briefly and then announced, “Released.”
White vapor puffed into the darkening sky as the jet fuel boom popped out. McPherson slid his throttles back a tiny bit and watched the KC-10 pull further ahead.
Within seconds the two other C-17s finished gassing up and broke away from their own tankers. November Two-Zero slid into position behind McPherson’s plane, while the third Globemaster, brought this far as a spare in case one of the first broke down, slotted itself into the KC-10 formation.
“Coming up on Point Echo,” One-Zero’s copilot warned. They were nearing the coordinates preselected for their covert entry into Iranian airspace.
McPherson nodded. “Got it. Here we go.” He drew a breath, steeling himself for the difficult flying ahead. “Navigation lights off.”
“Nav lights off,” his copilot confirmed, flicking switches that shut down the blinking lights on the C-17’s fuselage, tail, and wingtips.
“FLIR on. TFR on standby,” McPherson said. His wide-angled, heads-up display—HUD—came on, showing the dark, rugged landscape ahead and below them in clear, black-and-white detail. To allow them to fly below Iranian radar and through the middle of the jagged mountains around Tehran, Air Force technicians had specially modified each of the C-17s assigned to NEMESIS. The LANTIRN-type pod installed in each aircraft’s starboard fuselage cheek contained both a FLIR, a forward-looking infrared sensor, and a terrain-following radar.
He spoke into the intercom system. “We’re starting the E-ticket ride, Pete. Have your guys strap in.”
