“Good.” Breanna glanced away for a moment, collecting herself. “How long before they get there?”

“Hard to say. They were already up near the original rendezvous point.” Danny looked at the three-dimensional holographic display in front of him, tracing the area. “It’s a couple of hundred miles back east. And they’ll have to go south to avoid patrols and whatever else the Iranians put out there.”

“Will they make it in time for tomorrow night?” Breanna asked.

“I can’t even guess. Not at this point.”

“I have preliminary numbers,” said Jonathon Reid from his station. “Just under four megatons. On par with Chagai Two, roughly, at least. Given that the device wasn’t completely ready. It was a close call. A good, good mission.”

Reid rose. Chagai II was an early Pakistani atomic test. Though Western experts continued to debate the matter, it was generally regarded as something of a failure, since it didn’t yield anywhere near the explosion that was intended, which was at least eighteen megatons. (The blast yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima measured between thirteen and eighteen megatons.) The final measure would take some time to determine, using instruments that would provide different data sets, including the magnetic distortion—while the underground explosion did not yield an electromagnetic pulse effect like a high-altitude bomb would, even the extremely slight disruption it produced could be analyzed. In any event, while the yield of the bomb was relatively small, it was still large enough to do considerable damage, and contaminate the area where it was used for decades to come.

“I told the President we would give her a more complete update at the half hour,” Reid told Breanna. “We won’t have visual imagery for another few hours, but the seismic data should be quite enough.”

“We can take some of the video from the WB-57,” Breanna said. “It’s quite impressive.”

“Agreed.”

“Have the Iranians said anything yet?”

“They know something is up—the communication lines went down with the explosion. But it should take them a while to realize the extent of it. They may fear the worst. We’re monitoring the local communications with ferret satellites, so we’ll know pretty much as soon as they do.”

“Mr. Reid, you better look at this,” said Lanny Fu, a CIA analyst tasked to monitor current intelligence from sources outside the operation. “The Iranians just made a status request for all facilities under the Qom directorate.”

“Right on time,” said Reid as he turned back to Breanna. “They fear there’s been an accident or an attack. Their procedure now will be to ask each one to check in, and in the meantime they’ll send someone to the targeted facility.”

“Sir,” interrupted Fu. “The significance here—there’s a code number for a facility on the list that we have no record of.”

“What?”

“I believe there may be another bunker somewhere.”

“I’m sure you’re mistaken,” said Reid. “They have been well calculated. Double-check.”

“I already have,” said Fu. “The analysts have been alerted. We’re working on it.”

“Another lab?” said Breanna.

“I doubt that,” insisted Reid. “I strongly doubt it.”

3

Omidiyeh, Iran

IN THE FIRST FEW MOMENTS AFTER HIS AIRCRAFT WAS struck, Captain Parsa Vahid thought for sure he would have to bail.

Rather than setting off a panic, the knowledge calmed him. It also saved the plane.

Vahid, like many well-trained pilots, became in the crisis a logical, methodical engineer. He worked through a long list of procedures and directions necessary to save the aircraft. If one thing didn’t work—if too much fuel was leaking from one tank, if a control surface didn’t precisely respond—he switched to another, then another, and another, moving on down the checklist as calmly as an accountant tallying the numbers of a sale.

Even when he landed the plane, he confined his thinking to a very narrow checklist. He taxied to the maintenance area, trundling past the white skeleton of a transport that had been battered by an Iraqi attack some twenty-five years before. He shut down the plane and then, finally freed of his life-or-death lists, rose in the cockpit and took the deepest breath of fresh, desert air that he had ever managed.

He was met on the tarmac by the base commander, who asked with a grave face how many of the American B-2s he had seen.

“There were no B-2s,” said Vahid. “There was a small plane, a light plane. My missiles shot it down.”

“There must have been B-2s,” said the general. “They have blown up Natanz.”

“What?”

“There is no contact with one of the plants. We were asked to try, and failed.”

“There was no B-2. I shot down the only plane.”

The commander shook his head. Stunned, Vahid walked slowly to the nearby transport vehicle. Rather than taking him to his squadron room, where he ordinarily would debrief, he was driven to a bunker at the far end of the military complex. The colonel in charge of intelligence met him outside the entrance and led him downstairs to his office.

“I’d like to change from my gear,” Vahid objected when they arrived.

“You will change when we are done.”

The room smelled of fresh concrete. It was much larger than the squadron offices upstairs. Two long tables, twice the size of normal conference tables, sat at the middle of the room. There were only chairs, but each was a well-padded armchair.

The interview began as soon as he sat down.

“How long after takeoff did you encounter the enemy bombers?” asked the colonel. He was tall and thin, with glasses, a beak nose, and a brush moustache above a thin and close beard. In the harsh light he looked as if he were a cartoon character, a caricature of an officer created as a foil for a popular hero.

“I never encountered enemy bombers, or any bombers,” said Vahid. “I will tell you what happened.”

“First answer my questions,” said the colonel. He lifted his glasses higher on his nose. “How many bombers did you encounter?”

“You keep talking about bombers. There was one aircraft, a light plane. Maybe a Cessna. A small trainer at most.”

“It was more likely an American Predator,” suggested the colonel.

“I—”

“You shot it down.”

“I believe I shot something down,” answered the pilot. He had never encountered the American UAV known as the Predator, but he was naturally familiar with the profile, and the plane he had encountered bore little resemblance to the drone. “But I think it was—”

“I think that is what you encountered,” insisted the colonel. “A Predator.”

“You’ll see when you recover it, then,” said Vahid. He was trying to keep his temper in check, but couldn’t help the note of sarcasm that crept into his voice.

“How many other planes were there?”

“None. I saw none. Check my video record.”

“Sometimes those are not complete.”

“Yes, at times there are things not recorded,” said Vahid, finally surrendering. It was foolish to resist; the man was trying to help him. His goal was probably to spare the commander and the air force in general, but to do that most effectively, he had to help Vahid as well.

There would soon be other interviews, much more difficult.

“Men in the heat of battle do not know everything that is going around them,” said the colonel. “They cannot fly that way. They have to focus on the immediate threat.”

Vahid nodded. “What happened at Natanz?” he asked.

The colonel stared at him.

“The Americans attacked it?” the pilot prompted. “But the facilities are many miles beneath the ground. No one could attack them. Unless they used a nuclear bomb. Did they use a nuclear bomb on us?”

“You are not the one to be asking questions. You know absolutely nothing, beyond the fact that you did your duty. You shot down a plane.”