by Larry Bond
The Iranian looked in through the open driver’s-side window. “Show me your orders—”
Phut. Sergeant Alberi leaned across the Afghan truck driver and shot the astonished guard in the head. The man toppled backward without a sound.
Thorn popped open the door on his side and dropped onto the street before the other stunned guards could even begin to react. His submachine gun stuttered, kicking against his grip as he walked three-round bursts across the top of the redoubt.
Sand sprayed out of torn sandbags. Blood sprayed out of torn men.
Thorn stopped firing. Nothing moved near the gate. Now for the enemy soldiers posted on the roof. He spoke softly into his throat mike. “Take ’em out, Four Charlie.”
Eight sniper rifles cracked suddenly, firing so close together in time that it almost sounded like one long, tearing shot. A few more scattered shots followed as Lindsay’s snipers engaged new targets. Then the Barrett Light Fifties fell silent.
“One Alpha, this is Four Charlie,” the sniper reported. “The roof is clear. Go on in.”
Thorn scrambled back into the truck and waved Pahesh forward. Grinning like a madman, the Afghan threw the vehicle in gear and drove through the open gate. The other trucks followed them into the interior courtyard.
Delta Force assault teams piled out of the trucks while they were still moving, fanning out across the courtyard to cover every door and window leading into the headquarters building.
Thorn snapped a fresh magazine into his submachine gun and followed them inside.
NEMESIS command team
Twenty minutes later, the smoke from flash/bang grenades and burning papers and furniture still eddied through the bullet-riddled headquarters. Large numbers of dead Iranian soldiers and staff officers were scattered through the corridors and in several of the offices. But there were too few corpses wearing the right kind of rank insignia.
The top commanders of the NEMESIS force were meeting inside an empty office on the building’s second floor. None of them were pleased. When he heard his second-in-command’s first report, Thorn had to fight an impulse to smash his fist into the nearest wall in frustration. Instead he asked again, “You’re sure, John?”
Major John Witt nodded flatly. “Dead sure, Pete. I went over the bodies myself. There’s not a high-ranking officer among ’em.” He rubbed a hand wearily across his shaved head and then continued his report. “We got plenty of majors, captains, lieutenants, and enlisted guys. But nobody else. And there’s no sign of Taleh.”
Christ, what a fuckup, Thorn thought in despair. At first, he’d thought their attack had gone off without a hitch—at the cost of only two Delta Force soldiers lightly wounded. They’d even secured the headquarters complex without alerting anyone outside the area. Now, though, it was clear that their intelligence had been wildly off the mark. Neither Taleh nor his top-level invasion command staff had been inside the Khorasan Square building. He and his troops had hit the wrong damned target!
His eye fell on the two troopers setting up a SATCOM radio near an open window. Once they had a clear signal, he was going to have to report the failure of their mission to Washington.
Diaz stuck his head into the office. “I have something I think you should see, Pete.”
“Where?” Thorn asked tightly.
“The HQ comm center. I think we may be able to draw a bead on our Iranian friend.”
“Show me.” Thorn grabbed his weapon and followed the sergeant major down three flights of stairs into the basement. On the way they passed Delta Force troopers checking bodies for identity cards. Major Witt believed in being thorough.
The communications center was a large room just off the staircase. Banks of high-frequency radios, telephone switchboards, and teletype machines lined three of the walls. The fourth held a large street map of Tehran with various locations marked. Most of the equipment was old—1970s and 1980s vintage—but there were a few newer computers and fax machines on a group of desks cluttered in the center of the room. There were more corpses huddled on the floor or sprawled across the desks. The comm center at least had been fully manned.
Diaz led him straight across the room to where a Delta Force trooper, Master Sergeant Vaughn, stood tracing circuits and switches on one of the telephone switchboards. “Show the colonel what you found, Tony.”
Thinner than most of the men who made it through the Delta selection course, Tony Vaughn was one of the outfit’s top technical specialists and linguists. He pointed to a set of panels. “See these?”
Thorn nodded.
“They’re patch panels to several remote sites. Phone calls come in here to the main center and this gear reroutes them elsewhere automatically,” Vaughn explained. “Now, what’s interesting in all of this spaghetti wire is that I’ve found a series of switches that show that several primary circuits are being routed to one site—but not to any of the others.”
“They’re tied into an auxiliary command post,” Thorn realized suddenly.
Vaughn nodded. “Exactly.” He led the way back to the desks in the middle of the room and hefted a pile of loose-leaf binders. “So that’s when I started looking through their latest comm logs.”
The noncom flipped the top log open to a page near the end. “And this is where I hit pay dirt.” He tapped an entry. “Here’s what the chief watch officer noted for 1210 hours, 13 December: ‘MAGI Prime transferred to Aux Site Three. Command circuit, staff phones, emergency circuit routed to Aux Site Three.’”
Thorn swung toward the wall map of Tehran. A walled compound near the intersection of two major avenues was clearly marked as Auxiliary Site Three. A soccer stadium lay to the east just across the street. The location was painfully familiar to any Delta Force officer with a knowledge of his own unit’s history. His jaw tightened. “I’ll be damned! The son of a bitch has set up his new command post smack-dab in the middle of our old embassy!”
He shook his head, angry at himself for underestimating Amir Taleh’s cunning yet again. With the clock counting down toward a major military move, transferring his headquarters was a reasonable precaution for the Iranian general to take. He suspected it would also give the man a twisted sense of pleasure to issue the orders that would emasculate America’s economy from inside the embassy buildings Iranian militants had used in 1979 and 1980 as a prison for their hostages.
Thorn and Diaz took the stairs back up at a dead run.
Witt and the others were still waiting for them inside the second-floor office. “We’re in contact with the CAC,” the major said.
Thorn went straight to the SATCOM, slipped on the headset offered to him by one of his soldiers, and picked up the microphone. “Nemesis Lead.”
“This is Centurion,” Farrell’s voice answered. To oversee the mission, the general had flown down to the Special Operations Command headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base. SOCOM’s Crisis Action Center had secure computer, phone, fax, and satellite links to the Pentagon, the CIA, the White House, and every major U.S. military headquarters around the world.
“What is your status, Nemesis?” Farrell asked.
“Not good. We’ve missed the primary target, Centurion,” Thorn reported quietly. He quickly filled the other man in on what they had learned and then said, “I recommend we delay our evac, move the force, and immediately attack Taleh’s alternate HQ.”
“No way, Pete,” Farrell replied. “Look on the bright side. You’ve shot the hell out of Taleh’s lower-echelon staff. That alone should throw his operations for a loop. Going for anything more now is too dangerous.
“The embassy compound is nearly eight klicks from your current location. You don’t have time to drive there, set up for a new assault, and go in. Finney’s birds are only twenty minutes out right now. Hell, the Navy’s first Tomahawks are already on the way. You’re going to have cruise missiles raining down around your ears in less than thirty minutes.”
“I know that, sir,” Thorn said stubbornly. “But I do not believe
we have an alternative. Taleh is not going to let himself be sidetracked by one lousy commando raid and a missile strike. This is our only chance to nail the bastard. None of our missiles are going to hit anywhere close to him. We either kill the son of a bitch now, or he will launch his invasion and then we’re screwed.”
“Wait one,” Farrell said finally. The satellite link went silent.
Thorn turned toward Diaz and Witt. “Start rounding the teams up. I want everybody packed and ready to move in ten minutes.”
Both men exchanged startled glances. Delta Force doctrine frowned on attacking without surprise. Of course, Delta Force doctrine also frowned on suicide. They hesitated.
Thorn stared hard at them. He didn’t have the time or inclination to conduct a council of war. Not right in the heart of an enemy capital. “You heard me, gentlemen. Move!”
“Yes, sir.” Diaz and Witt sped off to fulfill his orders.
After several agonizingly long minutes, Farrell’s voice came back over the SATCOM. “It’s a no-go, Pete. I took your request all the way up to Satrap.” Satrap was the code name assigned to the President for the duration of NEMESIS. “He believes the risks of continuing are too high, so he’s ordered us to abort the mission. Between the damage you’ve already done and the inbound Tomahawk strike, he believes we’ll knock the Iranian timetable off kilter enough to win any war.”
“Then he’s wrong,” Thorn said heatedly.
Farrell’s voice bristled. “What you or I think doesn’t matter a damn, Colonel. Point is: That’s the President’s decision. So you’re going to pull your people together and get out of there as per the plan! Is that clear?”
Thorn did not answer right away. Conflicting thoughts were tumbling through his mind one after another at great speed.
He understood the President’s desire to take a small victory and bring the Delta Force home unbloodied rather than chance more lives in a high-stakes gamble. It was a desire he shared—a duty he owed his own men. He knew every soldier on this mission better than most men knew their own brothers. The NEMESIS assault force had been lucky so far. Its luck could not last. Pushing deeper into Tehran after Taleh meant accepting casualties—maybe a lot of them.
There was more. He had devoted his whole adult life to the military. He had sworn an oath to obey all legal orders from his superiors. But did his career mean more to him than doing what was right? Should his oath stop him from taking action that would right a great wrong and prevent an even greater evil?
The chaos sparked by General Amir Taleh’s terrorists had already cost thousands of American lives. The war the Iranian planned in Saudi Arabia might easily kill thousands more. Could he fly away and let that happen? Could he leave the man responsible for Helen’s wounds alive and free to plot again?
He could not. Taleh’s campaign had demonstrated America’s vulnerability to organized terrorism. Other fanatics and despots around the world would eagerly follow his lead—unless the United States showed plainly that it would exact a terrible price from them. That there would be no negotiations, no comfortable pensions, no forgiveness—nothing but a bullet in the head or a bayonet in the guts.
Thorn made his decision. “Centurion, this is Nemesis Lead. Regret unable to comply with your last. Mission proceeds, out.” He knew those words would force any court-martial panel to convict him out of hand, but right now nothing else seemed important.
Farrell was aghast. “Jesus, Pete! Don’t do this! You can’t—”
Thorn switched the SATCOM off and changed frequencies on his tactical radio, shifting to the channel reserved for the NEMESIS helicopter force. “Hotel Five Echo, this is November One Alpha. This is a wave-off. I repeat, a wave-off. Primary target has shifted to a new location. Standby for the data.”
“Roger, One Alpha.” Captain Scott Finney’s laconic voice came up over the circuit. The rotor noise in the background made it clear that Finney’s Huey transport ships and the AH-6 gunship were airborne and closing rapidly on Tehran from the south.
Thorn flipped open his map case, hurriedly scanning for the grid coordinates of the old U.S. Embassy. “On my signal, new exfiltration point will be …” He rattled off the coordinates and listened carefully while the helicopter pilot read them back to him.
“Got one point, One Alpha,” Finney said calmly. “My birds don’t have the gas to loiter over the city. We’re gonna have to turn back and refuel. That will put us at least another ninety minutes out. Think you and your boys can hang on that long?”
“Affirmative, Five Echo,” Thorn said, praying that he was right. “We’ll be there waiting for you.”
Auxiliary Command Post Three,
inside the old U.S. Embassy, Tehran
General Amir Taleh sat up on his cot when Kazemi came through the door to his quarters. The young captain looked distinctly worried. “What is it, Farhad?”
“We’ve lost contact with the main headquarters and with all elements of the SCIMITAR assault force, sir.”
What? Frowning, Taleh swung himself around, stamped his feet into his combat boots, and began lacing them up. Except for his boots, he was already fully dressed. “Are there any power outages in the city? Any other unexplained communications failures?”
Kazemi shook his head. “No, sir. Everything else seems normal. There have been no reports of disturbances. But all our secure phone and telex links routed through the main building are down.”
Taleh reached for the sidearm on a footlocker beside his cot and buckled it on. He looked up at his aide. “Order the Komite to send a patrol to Khorasan Square. I want a full report. Prepare a repair detail at the same time. If our communications have been knocked out somehow, I want them back up in short order!”
“Yes, sir.”
“In the meantime, place the headquarters security force on full alert. Post the troops yourself, Farhad. I want nothing left to chance, is that understood?”
The captain nodded again. “Yes, sir.” He hesitated. “Should we break radio silence to contact the assault division HQs directly?”
Taleh pondered that briefly. The final preparations for SCIMITAR were entering a critical stage. Without secure links to his far-flung units, the odds of catastrophic confusion or delay multiplied greatly. On the other hand, a sudden surge in military radio traffic now was bound to draw unwelcome attention from the American and Saudi intelligence services.
No, he decided, he would not act prematurely. He would not be goaded into a mistake by ignorance. He shook his head. “Not yet, Farhad. I need more information first. Send out those patrols!”
NEMESIS force, near central Tehran
Thorn hung on tight as Pahesh threw the big truck around another corner at high speed, narrowly missing a black 4×4 tearing past in the opposite direction. He caught a momentary glimpse of bearded men wearing green fatigues when their headlights swept across the other vehicle. “Who were those guys?”
“Komite,” the Afghan answered grimly.
Thorn nodded. The Iranian authorities were starting to wake up. He checked his watch. “How much further?” he asked.
“Not far. Perhaps two kilometers.”
An enormous flash lit the night sky ahead of them—to the west, out near the Mehrabad International Airport. “What …” Pahesh started to ask. A rolling thunderclap silenced him.
“Our missiles,” Thorn shouted into his ear. The leading edge of the Navy’s Tomahawk strike had arrived.
There were more flashes now, spreading across the horizon and marching closer and closer to the center of the city. Tehran’s antiaircraft batteries suddenly cut loose, spewing shimmering curtains of fire into the air. Pieces of steel shrapnel from the shells they were firing began clattering down across roofs and streets. Amid the din, Thorn could barely make out a high-pitched rising and falling wail. The city’s air-raid sirens were going off.
Followed closely by the other four trucks, Pahesh turned left onto a wider street. Five hundred meters ahead, the road opened up into a
large public square. On the south edge of the square, the satellite towers soaring above a building surrounded by barbed wire identified the main Tehran telegraph office.
Oh, shit, Thorn thought, that’s on the target list. He leaned toward the Afghan …
Hit squarely by a Tomahawk carrying a thousand-pound warhead, the telegraph office vanished in a searing white flash. Shattered chunks of concrete and mangled pieces of metal flew outward from the center of the blast, crashing down across the square and smashing into the other buildings nearby. The ground rocked wildly under the impact.
Pahesh slammed on the brakes.
Mounds of rubble from damaged apartment houses and hotels blocked most of the street. Many of the buildings around the square were already ablaze and the fires were growing—fed by ruptured natural gas lines.
The Afghan leaned out through his open window, already reversing as he waved the other trucks back toward a narrow side street leading north.
Outside the U.S. Embassy compound
Five minutes after the last Tomahawk cruise missile detonated over Tehran, Delta Force teams were advancing cautiously up both sides of the wide north-south thoroughfare locals still called Roosevelt Avenue. They were leapfrogging forward in pairs, using doorways and parked cars for cover. Two hundred meters behind the first assault teams, Hamir Pahesh’s trucks ground forward slowly with their headlights off. More U.S. soldiers advanced beside the vehicles—ready to act as a reserve or to block any Iranians coming up from the rear.
Thorn turned his head when Diaz ducked into the doorway behind him.
“Still no reaction?” the noncom asked quietly.
“Not a peep.” Thorn scanned the area ahead again through his night vision goggles. He could make out a large part of the embassy now. Barbed wire laced the top of the brick wall that surrounded the compound. There were no lights showing behind any of the windows in the upper floors of the chancery building. The Amjedeih soccer stadium bulked to the east, right across from the embassy complex.
