He thought about how he would escape, and worried about having to swim in the Caspian. He wasn’t a bad swimmer, but in his vision now he saw the waves surrounding him. Suddenly, he felt claustrophobic in the dark. Hand shaking, he reached into his pocket for the LED flashlight and lit it. Then, heart pounding, he backed away from the edge of the water.
He collided with Grease and fell. A shudder of fear ran through him, dissipating only after the trooper hauled him to his feet.
“Shit,” Turk muttered. “I thought you were on watch.”
“Gorud’s there. I was making sure you didn’t try swimming.”
“I feel claustrophobic,” he told him, without explaining why. To his surprise, Grease told him that he did, too.
“I don’t know what it is,” added Grease. “Adrenaline builds and then it runs away. It leaves you empty, and you start focusing on stupid things, things that might kill you, but won’t in a million years. It’s related to tension I guess.”
“Yeah,” said Turk.
“You feel that when you’re flying?”
“Not too much.”
“But sometimes.”
“A few times,” admitted Turk. “Mostly, you’re too busy to think about it.”
“I know what you mean.”
AROUND 3:00 P.M. THEY HEARD HEAVY TRUCKS IN THE distance. Turk crawled to the entrance where Grease was keeping watch and peered out at the highway a half mile to the west. The road was empty, but a cloud of dust rose another mile beyond it, near the outskirts of the small village.
“Be nice to have a UAV over us,” said Turk.
“It would show them where to look,” answered Grease.
“There is that.”
Grease handed over the binoculars. There were three military trucks driving on a desert road near the hamlet, coming up from the south. Two troop trucks and a command vehicle—a patrol of some sort.
“You think they’re looking for us?” Turk asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You got any evidence that they are?”
“No.”
“That’s your answer.”
“I’d love to hear something more reassuring.”
“Me, too.”
10
Iran
COLONEL KHORASANI GOT OUT OF HIS COMMAND VEHICLE slowly. The old building reminded him of his mother’s parents’ house in Gezir.
Lovely days. Parties every evening with the neighbors and relatives. Iran was a different place. Some of the neighbors were Sunni, and there would occasionally be long arguments about religion, but with no one thinking of taking some sort of revenge or turning the others in.
“The truck is in the back, Colonel,” said Sergeant Karim.
“The place is abandoned?” asked Khorasani as he walked with his sergeant.
“For years now. We are checking the local records.”
The four-door Toyota had been tucked close to the house, invisible from the road and much of the surrounding area, though not from the air. The pilot who had spotted it had been over the area the morning after the “earthquake,” and swore he had not seen the vehicle.
A very similar pickup was seen on the road near the farm truck that had been destroyed; it was clear in the video from the aircraft. That truck had a dent in the top rail; this one had an identical mark. The first character in the registration plate—all that could be seen—was identical.
But this was entirely the wrong place for the pickup truck to be located. It was closer to the lab, not farther away.
Maybe they were tasked with seeing what had happened. The colonel turned south, gazing in the direction of Fordow, which had a high security plant. There were dozens of others scattered between there and Qom farther south. The precincts were off limits to all but the workers and scientists involved in the bomb’s development. Khorasani himself didn’t even know the location of all of them.
But perhaps the most obvious explanation for the truck was that it wasn’t related at all. Smugglers would use a house such as this to stash their wares. It was empty, but perhaps the airplane had driven them off.
The structure had been abandoned years ago. Part of the wall was missing. Khorasani stepped through, entering what was once a bedroom. All of the furniture was long gone, but there were old photographs tacked to the wall: a family picnic lost now to memory.
The colonel walked through the rooms. Dust was thick everywhere.
Khorasani stood in the middle of what had been the kitchen and stared at the weathered pipes in the wall. He had no other leads. The more work he and his investigators did, the more he came to believe that the “incident,” as he called it, was actually an accidental blast caused by the scientists themselves.
That was unlikely to be admitted.
The truck must be linked somehow. Parking here—maybe they were smugglers, but what if they were spies? What if there were more commandos, eyeing another attack?
Khorasani strode outside. Sergeant Karim was waiting.
“Colonel, it is the captain coordinating the Twelfth Guard unit,” said the sergeant, holding the satellite phone out. “He wishes to take his men off alert. They’re worried about their families.”
“They can worry later,” Khorasani snapped. “Tell him the entire area is to stay on alert. Tell him—tell him we are looking for commandos who stole this truck.”
“Uh—”
“Sergeant Karim, follow orders,” he said, returning to his command vehicle.
11
Iran
TURK HAD TO STAND NEAR THE ENTRANCE TO THE CAVE for the sat phone to work. He was just punching the quick-dial to connect with Breanna when he heard a plane approaching from the north.
“I may have to cut this short,” he said as soon as the connection went through. “There’s a plane nearby.”
“Turk, are you OK?” asked Breanna. He heard concern, even fear, in her voice.
“I’m good. I don’t want to take the chance of being seen. The Iranians have been sending airplanes through the region.” He leaned back against the side of the cave. The plane wasn’t getting any closer. “It should be dark soon. Do we have a target?”
“We have two.”
“You still have two? I thought—”
“I have a coordinate for the area we think is safest for you to operate from,” she said, cutting him off. “The procedure you’re going to have to follow is different than the first strike.”
“How different?”
“They’re still working on things. It’ll be more hands on and you may be making the attack in the morning, near or after sunrise.”
“In the day?”
“Possibly. Probably, I should say.”
Turk looked out across the valley in front of him, letting the words sink in. They were still figuring out exactly what to do—that wasn’t a good sign.
“Turk?”
“Yeah, OK. Those coordinates?”
“I’m sending them via the text system now.”
His satcom beeped, signaling that the information had been sent.
“Call when you’ve arrived. We need you in place by 2200 hours,” Breanna added, using the military term for 10:00 P.M. “So we can download everything to your unit before clearing the launch. We’re going to use the first orbiter as a relay station; some of your programming has to be changed. There’s only a small window to do the download.”
“Understood.”
“THEY’RE INSANE IF THEY WANT US TO GET TO THIS point.” Gorud shook his head. “We’ll have to pass two barracks and an antiaircraft site. They’re crazy. God.”
The CIA officer got up and started pacing. He folded his arms over his chest and began scratching his left bicep frenetically, as if he wanted to tear through the cloth and dig past the skin to the muscle and bones.
Grease glanced at Turk and gave him a look that said, He’s losing it. Then he took out the paper map of the area that had been stored there and examined it. Turk looked over his shoulder.