The Enemy Within (60 page)

Mohammed fumbled for the weapon stuck in his trousers and then froze suddenly, his eyes wide, as Diaz ground the muzzle of an M16 rifle into his ear.

“Slowly, pal. Very slowly,” the sergeant major said softly. “I’d sure hate to mess up my nice new uniform with your tiny little brains.”

Diaz held his weapon on target until another Delta trooper stepped in and relieved the big trucker of his pistol. Without pausing, a third member of the command team bound Mohammed’s wrists behind his back and marched him away to-ward the parked C-17s.

Thorn turned back to the dumbfounded Afghans. His eyes sought out those of Pahesh. “It seems~hat Mr. Mohammed will not be joining us this evening after all. Do any of your other associates feel a burning desire to go on strike?”

The older man shrugged, amusement plain in his own expression. “I will ask them, Colonel Thorn. But I suspect they will see reason and profit in doing as you ask.”

A hasty, whispered conference in Pushtu confirmed Pahesh’s assessment. None of the other Afghans looked very happy at this unexpected turn of events, but none of them seemed unhappy enough to prove treacherous.

Nonetheless, Thorn planned to take out a little insurance of his own. He glanced at Diaz. “Tow, please tell Major win I want one of our Farsi speakers riding shotgun in each truck cab. And have these gentlemen taken back to their vehicles.”

“Sure thing, Pete.” Still holding his M16 at the ready, the sergeant major trotted off into the darkness. Escorted by other Delta Force soldiers, the three remaining truck drivers followed him at a discreet distance.

Thorn turned back to the older Afghan. “Now, Mr. Pahesh, if you’ll come with me, I’ll tell you where we need to go and what we plan to do.” He led the way back down the ridge, pleased by all the activity he could see around the parked aircraft.

Nobody was wasting any time. The sixty men he was taking into Tehran were carting their weapons and equipment toward the waiting trucks. A fourth twenty-man troop would remain behind to provide security here. They were busy deploying machine guns, antitank guided missiles, Stinger
SAM
teams, and sniper teams to cover all avenues of approach to the improvised landing strip. Aided by some of the C-17 crewmen, Scott Finney’s helicopter crews were already beginning to assemble their birds four lJH-1N Hueys and a tiny AH-6 gunship.

Now that they all were safely on the ground inside Iran,
NEMESIS
was starting to take its final shape.

DECEMBER
14

Near the Khorasan Square headquarters

(D
MINUS
1)

Three hours after leaving the isolated desert landing strip, the five canvas-sided trucks pulled off to the side of a quiet Tehran street and parked. Their long trip northward had been uneventful. The forged travel orders supplied by Pahesh got them through the checkpoints without much trouble. After all the military hubbub of the past several days, trucks full of Iranian soldiers no longer drew much attention. Even the most curious citizens and police had been sated by the sight of so many weapons and olive-drab vehicles moving through their streets. In any case, it was past midnight and few lights were on anywhere in the sprawling, sleeping city.

Thorn dropped out of the back of the lead truck and went forward to speak to Hamir Pahesh. The Afghan slid out from behind the wheel and joined him on the pavement.

The older man pointed down the road. “The headquarters is three blocks further up this avenue, Colonel. You know the building?”

Thorn nodded once. He’d spent so many hours studying the blueprints and satellite photographs he felt sure he could practically find his way blindfolded through Taleh’s lair.

He glanced up at the apartment houses on either side of this street. None of the plain concrete five-and six-story, flat-roofed buildings would have won any architectural prizes for elegance or style, but he was not interested in esthetics. They were important because they were the tallest buildings in this poor, rundown neighborhood and because they offered a clear line of sight to the roof of the Khorasan Square military headquarters.

Thorn turned back to the Afghan. “Will your friends obey my orders, Mr. Pahesh? You know this will be very dangerous.” “They will obey you,” Pahesh said firmly. “All of us have seen war before, Colonel.”

“Fine.” Thorn spun on his heel and strode to the last truck in line.

Captain Doug Lindsay peered down at him through a half open flap. With his flaming-red hair and mustache dyed black, the commander of the
NEMESIS
force sniper teams looked alien, almost unrecognisable.

“You ready for us, Pete?” the younger man asked.

Thorn nodded. “You know the drill, Doug. You’ve got five minutes to move your people into position. Then, when I give you the word, you do your stuff. Clear?”

“Clear.” Lindsay swung away from the opened flap. “Everybody out. Shaw takes the building on the left. I’ll take the building on the right. Let’s move!”

Thorn watched the heavily laden soldiers scramble out over the truck’s tailgate before heading back to his own vehicle. Without further orders from Lindsay, the snipers formed up on the street and then split apart. Four two-man teams crossed over to the other side and entered the tallest apartment building on the block. Four more teams disappeared inside the nearest tenement.

Breathing normally even under the weight of his weapon and other gear, Captain Doug Lindsay took the narrow, dimly lit stairs to the roof two at a time. Boots rang on concrete as his troops followed him up.

Farsi-speaking soldiers stopped long enough on every landing to yell stern warnings at any sleepy Iranian civilians who poked their heads out of apartments to see what was going on. “Everyone inside! This is Army business!”

Doors slammed shut again as the building’s inhabitants obeyed their shouted orders. No one who lived this close to General Amir Taleh’s headquarters wanted trouble with the Army.

Five flights up, Lindsay pushed open an unlocked metal door and came out onto the tenement’s flat roof. It was deserted. He nodded to himself, noticing his breath steaming in the cold night air. In the summer they would have found people camped out here driven out of their tiny, crowded apartments by the heat. Now, this close to the winter, temperatures were already dropping fast toward freezing once the sun went down.

Followed by the sergeant who would serve as his spotter and backup, the Delta Force captain moved closer to the edge of the roof He dropped prone and started setting up his weapon, conscious of the faint rustle of clothing and scrape of metal on either side. The rest of his teams were moving into place.

Lindsay slid an eleven-round magazine into his Barrett Light Fifty sniper rifle. Nearly five feet long and weighing in at thirty-five pounds, the M82A1 Light Fifty was badly misnamed, but it had several features that made it perfect for special operations use. First, it was a simple, rugged, semiautomatic weapon accurate out to twelve hundred meters. Second, it fired the same enormous .50-inch Browning round used in the U.S. Army’s heavy machine gun. More than three times the size of the 5.56mm bullets used by most modern assault rifles, the .50-inch round had enormous penetration and lethality. To handle the recoil, the Barrett Light Fifty was equipped with a muzzle brake and a thick butt pad. A biped mounted near the muzzle helped steady the rifle.

With practiced ease, the Delta Force officer attached an ITT-made optical sight to his weapon and peered through the scope. Two AA batteries powered an image intensifier that turned the night into day. He flicked to 8x magnification and shifted his aim to one of the emplacements on top of the squat, drab building roughly four hundred meters away. His crosshairs settled on an Iranian soldier seated behind a twmbarreled ZU-23 light antiaircraft gun. The man looked tired and bored.

Lindsay held his aim steady. The ZU-23 was virtually useless against modern attack aircraft, but its rapid fire could murder infantry caught out in the open. He frowned. Something seemed odd. Fewer than half the defensive positions atop the enemy headquarters were manned. Maybe this guy Taleh wasn’t so thorough after all.

One by one, his teams reported that they were in position.

Lindsay contacted Thorn and confirmed their readiness. “November One Alpha, this is Sierra Four Charlie. We’re dialed in. Standing by.”

“Understood, Four Charlie. We’re moving now.”

The sniper focused all his attention on the bored Iranian antiaircraft gunner, waiting for the single command that would open the attack. He could hear motors revving up on the street below.
NEMESIS
was under way.

Three trucks crammed with Delta Force soldiers rolled down the Avenue of the 17th of Shahrivar, heading for Khorasan Square. A fourth truck veered right, peeling off to come in behind the main entrance to the headquarters building. The men it carried would seal off a rear exit, killing anyone who tried to escape outside when the rest of the attack force went in.

Peter Thorn rode up front now. A staff sergeant who spoke Farsi fluently sat wedged in between Pahesh and him. The sergeant, an olive-skinned man named Alberi, wore Iranian Army insignia identifying him as a captain.

Alberi also held a 9mm pistol outfitted with a Knight noise suppressor in his lap. Although the device made it impossible to fire more than a single shot without working the slide to manually feed another round into the pistol’s breech, it reduced the sound of firing to that of a child’s air rifle.

Thorn carried a Heckler & Koch MP2000 submachine gun. The weapon, an advance over the similar MP5, had a silencing system built in. Holes in the barrel allowed some of the propellant gases to bleed away, slowing the rounds being fired to below supersonic speed and cutting the noise they made dramatically. For open combat, the gas bleed holes could be closed. Right now, he had the weapon set for silent fighting.

They turned into the square and rumbled straight toward the headquarter’s main gate. The truck’s headlights flashed across a guard post that barred direct access to an open courtyard visible beyond the gate. When they were within fifty meters, an Iranian soldier came forward, signaling them to stop. Four more sentries manned a sandbag redoubt built adjacent to the entrance. Two were talking to each other, arguing cheerfully about something. The others leaned against the piled-up sandbags near a light machine gun sited to sweep the square. One of them had a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

Pahesh stopped right in front of the gate and cranked his window open.

The soldier who had flagged them down walked right up to the truck cab, yawning slightly. The guards here must be very used to comings and goings at irregular hours, Thorn decided, vaguely surprised by their nonchalance. He had expected somewhat tighter security.

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 flashbang grenades and burning papers and furniture still eddied through the bullet-riddled headquarters. Large numbers of dead Iranian soldiers and staff officers 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 secondin-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 dear 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.