The key wasn’t in the ignition. He dashed back down, running toward the small building where the office was. The door was locked. Turk put his shoulder against it twice but failed to budge it, so he took the rifle, put it point-blank against the lock and fired. The gun jerked practically out of his hands, but the burst did enough damage that the door swung open. He pushed in, expecting to see the owner cowering inside, but the place was empty.

A large board with keys stood by the door. Turk tossed the ones that were obviously car keys, but that still left him with half a dozen to try.

Outside, Grease had lifted the Israeli into the bus, then gone to work jumping the ignition wires. He had the bus running by the time Turk appeared with the keys.

“Take the car and follow,” he yelled. “Let’s go. Back to the others.”

15

Omidiyeh, Iran

CAPTAIN VAHID SPENT THE MORNING AFTER THE ATTACK in an administrative “freeze.” While the rest of his squadron conducted a patrol around the scientific research area, the pilot was told to prepare a personal brief for the area air commander. That meeting was scheduled for 8:00 A.M.; it was postponed twice, then indefinitely “delayed.” He sat the entire time in a vacant room next to the squadron commander’s office, waiting with nothing to read or do. The only furniture were two chairs, both wooden; one was sturdy but uncomfortable, the other so rickety that he didn’t dare to use it even as a foot rest.

A pair of plainclothes guards from the interior ministry stood at the door. He wasn’t under arrest, but he wasn’t allowed to leave either. He wasn’t given anything to eat.

Vahid had reviewed his mission tapes, and knew that what he had shot down was some sort of light plane, not a drone and certainly not a B-2. It seemed impossible that the plane had made any sort of attack itself, or been involved in one. He had a host of theories, but they boiled down to this: either there had been a genuine earthquake, or the nuclear program had a major accident.

He favored the latter.

Vahid sat in the uncomfortable wooden chair until his butt was sore, got up and paced around until he tired of that, then sat back down. He repeated the ritual until after two in the afternoon, when one of the squadron commander’s aides appeared in the doorway to tell him that the general was finally on his way.

Vahid straightened his uniform. In the days of the Shah—long before he was even born—the Iranian air force was a prominent organization, equipped with the finest fighters in the world—F-14s and F-4 Phantoms. They trained with the Americans, and while the larger Israeli air force might claim it was better, many rated the Iranians just as good. The branch was an elite part of the Iran military and its society.

The overthrow of the Shah hurt the air force tremendously. An order for F-16s was canceled. Needed parts became almost impossible to get. Worse, though, were the questions, innuendo, and accusations leveled at the pilots and the service in general. The air force had supported the Shah to the bitter end, and in the Revolution’s wake, many of the officers were shunned, purged, and worse.

The service regained a measure of respect with the blood of its members during the Iran-Iraq war, where its aces shot down a number of Iraqis and carried out many successful bombing missions. But some thirty years later, the air force continued to be viewed with suspicion by many, especially the government and the Revolutionary Guard, which was jealous of any entity that might have a claim to power and influence.

Politics had always been a distant concern for Vahid, who joined the air force only because he wanted to fly. But the longer he sat in the little room with its bare walls and blue-shaded fluorescents, the more he came to realize that he was a pawn in something he didn’t understand. So when the door opened and General Ari Shirazi—the head not of his wing or subcommand but the entire air force—entered, Vahid was far less surprised than he would have been twenty-four hours before.

The general studied him for a moment.

“You’re hungry,” Shirazi said, more an order than a statement. “Come and eat.”

Vahid followed him from the room, falling in behind the general’s two aides and trailed by a pair of bodyguards. They walked out of the building to the cafeteria, where the VIP room had been reserved for the general. Two sergeants were waiting near the table, already stiff at attention, as the general entered. Shirazi ignored them, gesturing to Vahid to sit before taking his own chair. He folded his arms, worked his eyes slowly across the pilot’s face, then turned to one of the sergeants.

“Get the captain some lunch,” said the general.

“Sir, for you?” asked one of the sergeants.

“I am not hungry.”

The general placed his hands on his thighs and leaned forward. Energy flooded into his face, and determination.

“Tell me, in your own words, everything that happened,” said the general. “Hold nothing back. Begin with the alert.”

“I was with my plane . . .” started Vahid.

He spent the next thirty minutes relaying every detail he could, ignoring the food that arrived. The general listened without interrupting; when Vahid paused too long, he gestured with his index finger that he should go on. Finally, Vahid was back on the ground, taxiing to the hangar area. He recounted the debriefings quickly, adding that he had not had a good look at the damage to the plane himself.

“Do you have the identification of the ground unit that fired at you and struck your plane?” asked the general.

“No, sir. I—I’m not even sure if it was a ground unit.”

“What else would it be?”

“I wondered if an airplane had been far above and fired down from a great distance, random shots, or a missile that went undetected—”

Vahid stopped. The theory was too ridiculous to be credible. The way he remembered the incident, he had been struck from above. But it was impossible. His mind surely had been playing games.

“We’ve looked at the damage,” said the general. “Multiple shots from larger caliber antiaircraft weapons. There is a Sa’ir battery south of Natanz. The weapon was fired; undoubtedly that was your assassin. Fortunately,” he added dryly, “the battery is a Sepa¯h unit.”

Sepa¯h was the shortened term for the Sepa¯h-e Pa¯sda¯ra¯n-e Enqela¯b-e Esla¯mi, the Revolutionary Guard. The general’s implied slur would have been daring in a lesser man; Shirazi was obviously sure of his position—or planning to have the pilot executed shortly.

Vahid was not sure which.

“You will leave us, and close the doors,” the general told the servers. They quickly ducked back into the kitchen. He glanced at the guards and his aides; they stepped out, too.

“There was an accident at their facility,” the general told Vahid. “It is clear from the seismic data. But they are trying to cover it up. That is impossible. Scientists are already explaining about their information. There are some near the president—”

The general stopped abruptly, considering his next words very carefully.

“Some members of the project are claiming that the Americans blew up the facility,” said the general. “They have no evidence for this, of course. On the contrary, we know that was impossible—there were no bombers in the air, or missiles. They would have been on our radar. And you would have seen them.”

“Yes, General.”

“The reports of B-2s—you saw none.”

“None. Yes.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes.” Vahid nodded. And then he thought: This is odd. It’s the truth, and yet saying it feels like a lie.

“Clearly, it was an accident,” continued the general, “but those jackals will do anything to keep themselves alive. They take no responsibility. Nothing. None.”