“If we were, they’d be here by now, right?”

Gorud thought they should leave the school bus in the barn, but Turk suggested that it might work better as a decoy—if the planes they’d seen and heard earlier were part of a search party, making the bus easier to find would give them something to do. By the time they spotted it and then checked it out, it would be nearly nightfall, maybe later. He volunteered to drive it himself down along the highway.

“I’ll get rid of it while you’re organizing to go,” Turk said. “I’ll point it south on the highway.”

“You’re not going,” said Grease.

“You sound like my mother. It’s better than waiting around.”

“I’ll follow you in the pickup,” said Grease.

The ride back to the highway was longer than Turk remembered, and bumpier; he didn’t reach it for a good fifteen minutes. When he did, an SUV approached from the direction of Sar-e-Kavir; Turk sank behind the wheel, hoping whoever was in the vehicle wouldn’t get a good glimpse of his face. The SUV continued south, moving at a good pace; Turk drove out cautiously, starting to follow. His speed gradually picked up, the bus accelerating slowly but steadily. After about five minutes Grease sped up in the pickup and began flashing his headlights. Turk slowed, then pulled off.

“I kept it running,” he told Grease when he reached him in the truck. “If they find it with the motor on, it’ll be a mystery. Maybe it will buy us more time.”

“Wishful thinking,” said Grease.

“It’s all we got,” replied Turk as they headed north to join the rest of the team.

19

Iran

BACK IN THE FLIGHT ROTATION, CAPTAIN VAHID FOUND himself assigned to a late afternoon patrol, flying what was in fact a combat air patrol mission over the area of the atomic lab, though officially the mission was written up as a “routine observation flight.” Given the air force’s fuel woes, the fact that it was being conducted at all meant it was hardly routine, but that was the least of the official lies involved.

Vahid was not allowed to overfly the epicenter of what was officially termed the earthquake area; he had to maintain a five mile buffer between the ostensible fault point at all times. He tried avoiding the temptation to glance at the area, though he couldn’t help but notice the roads in the vicinity were empty. Checkpoints had been established; rescue teams were supposedly heading in to help relieve victims, but there was no surge of aid. Clearly, the state and national authorities were still confused about what to do.

Vahid accepted that what General Shirazi had told him was correct; it made the most sense and fit with what he himself had observed. He wondered if the facts about what had happened would ever come out. It would be much easier to blame the Americans or the Israelis than to admit that the project had suffered a catastrophic setback. On the other hand, blaming the Americans or the Israelis would be tantamount to admitting that the Iranian nuclear program was not aimed at producing a peaceful source of energy rather than a weapon.

Everyone knew, of course, that it was aimed at making a bomb. But admitting that it was a lie before the bomb was completed would be a great loss of face. Only when the weapon was completed could it be revealed. Then the lie would not be a lie, but rather a triumph against Iran’s enemies.

Vahid knew this the way he knew that one plus one equaled two, as every Iranian did. “Truth” was a subjective concept, something directly related to power; one accepted it as one accepted the fact that the sun rose and set.

With General Shirazi as his backer, he knew his future was bright. Squadron commander was in his sights. Wing commander would not be an unattainable goal. There were already signs of his improved standing: he had been assigned the squadron’s reserve jet and given the most sensitive area to patrol.

Vahid ran his eyes around the gauges, confirming that the aircraft was operating at spec, then checked his six, glancing briefly in the direction of his wingman, Lieutenant Nima Kayvan, who was flying off his right wing and about a half mile behind. Their box north of the Zagros Mountains was clear of clouds, as well as enemies. The flight had been completely uneventful—another sign to Vahid that the Americans had not struck the lab, since they would surely be conducting reconnaissance and perhaps a follow-up raid.

The ground controller’s adrenaline-amped voice caught him by surprise.

“Shahin One, stand by for tasking.”

“Shahin One acknowledges.” Vahid listened as the controller told him there had been a terror attack in Jandagh; he and his wingman were to head west and join the search for a school bus.

“So now we go after auto thieves,” said Kayvan on the squadron frequency as they changed course. “What would the Jews want with a bus?”

Kayvan certainly had a point, but Vahid chose not to answer. The wingman was an excellent flier, but his mouth would one day land him into much trouble.

Jandagh was some three hundred kilometers away, across a series of high desert mountains and a mostly bare landscape. Vahid immediately snapped to the new course, tuning to the contact frequency he’d been given for the Revolutionary Guard unit assigned to coordinate the reaction. He tried for several minutes but couldn’t get a response to his hails.

“We’ll go down to three thousand feet,” he told Kayvan. “Look for anything moving.”

“Goats and sandstorms included?”

They saw neither. The ground appeared as empty as the sky. Kayvan did see something moving near a road about two miles west of their course north, and they made a quick pass, only to discover a pair of dump trucks and an excavator working a gravel or sand pit. Swinging back toward their original vector, the commander of a local militia unit contacted Vahid on the radio and asked him to help check a vehicle a civilian had spotted south of Sar-e-Kavir.

“We have another unit to rendezvous with,” Vahid told him.

“I am making this request at the order of the special commander,” explained the officer, saying that the colonel who originally requested the air support had now delegated him to use it. The radio garbled the name of the commander—it sounded like Colonel Khorasani—but as the officer continued, Vahid realized the special commander was a member of the Pasdaran—the Revolutionary Guards—assigned to investigate the “earthquake.” The fact that there would be an investigator had been mentioned by the intel officer at the preflight briefing: alienating the Pasdaran was a greater danger than American F-22s.

“That’s over a hundred kilometers away,” said Kayvan, once again using the short-range squadron radio so his disrespect wouldn’t be overheard. “They don’t have other planes?”

“You’d rather sit on the ground?” snapped Vahid.

“I would rather see the girl who will be my bride. And we do not have much fuel.”

The wingman was right. Vahid did a quick calculation, and figured that once they reached Sar-e-Kavir they would have about ten minutes of linger time before having to head back to their base.

“We’ll make the most of it,” he said. “Stay on my wing.”

“I do not plan to disappear.”

Vahid found Highway 81. The road climbed over the desert ridges, paralleling a route once used by silk traders; well before that, it had overlooked the edge of a vast lake. Now the area was largely desolate. Barriers lined long sections of the road to cut down on the sand drifts.

Passing over a pair of white four-door pickup trucks heading north on the road, Vahid angled his jet toward a collection of ruins ahead on his left. He descended quickly, thinking he might catch a glimpse of anyone hiding amid the old clay brick walls and foundations. But he was by them too quickly to see anything other than shadows and broken earth.