Black Operations- the Spec-Ops Action Pack

by Eric Meyer

  The kid squirmed in terror, his face pale, “No, no, I will do whatever you want.”

  “Good, we need to take a look at the records on your main server. Which machine do you use for admin?”

  He pointed to the nearest terminal, “That one.”

  “Good, let’s log in and see what we can find.”

  He sat down and logged in as administrator. Talley saw rows of mixed Arabic and Western characters fill the screen. He looked at Anika.

  “Can you understand this?”

  “I think so, yes. I brought along a data stick. I’ll transfer any files I find that look promising and look at them later.”

  “Okay.” He looked at the Arab, “You, get out of there. We’ll take it from here.”

  “Yes, Sir, I won’t cause any problems. What is it you’re looking for?”

  “One of your clients, he used the id ‘Archer’, or maybe the name Arash. You heard of him?”

  The Arab blanched, and his eyes shifted away, “Er, no, Sir, not that name. I never heard of it. Never!”

  The kid was one of the worst liars he’d ever encountered. Talley gripped the front of his shirt and rammed his Sig against his mouth. It was harsh, and he hated himself for roughing up a kid, but if his mission failed, the consequences would be far worse.

  “Last chance, kid. Who is he? Either you tell me now, or I blow your head off.”

  “Abe, I’ve got it,” Anika said quietly. “He’s definitely a client, and it looks as if he comes in here every evening about,” she looked at her watch, “now. Eight o'clock, 2000. He’s due any moment!”

  Talley was still holding the Arab boy, and he jammed his pistol harder into his face. “What does he look like? Quick, it’s your only chance to live! Describe him.”

  “Please, don’t hurt me. He is a Westerner. He comes in with a message pad and looks at it to send his messages. Twice he came in with a religious man, an Ayatollah, the man who runs the Basij, the Morality Police.”

  “Yeah, good. Describe this Westerner to us.”

  “He…”

  Gunfire erupted in the room. It came from a small vent they hadn’t noticed on the opposite side of the room, four loud shots. Talley leapt for cover, pushing Anika to the floor, and Guy went the other way, reacting like lightning to the threat. He shouted at the SAS man.

  “Guy, get out there. Find him and stop him.”

  “On the way.”

  “Anika, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  He looked at the Arab, but it was too late. Two of the bullets had taken him, one in the chest, one in the stomach. It was obvious the wounds were fatal, and he lay on the floor, blood pumping out onto the cheap carpet. While he watched, the kid gasped out his last breath and lay still. Talley got to his feet and looked at the main server. The other two shots had ripped right through the unit, destroying the drives. He could hear shouts and screams as people reacted to the shots. Then the door opened and Guy came back in.

  “He got away. There’s no sign of him.”

  “Okay, we have to get out of here. Anika, we’re leaving.”

  They ran through crowds of screaming customers. The rear door was open, and men and women were streaming out the back way, in case it was a police raid. They followed them out onto the street and walked rapidly away from the café. Talley knew they’d just lost their best chance of identifying Arash.

  Now we're no further forward than before we first arrived in the country. Whoever shot the kid inside the café deliberately destroyed the hard drive. It could only have been Arash, or one of his people. Which means we were close, real close. But our shadowy opponent always seems to be a couple of steps ahead of us. The door of opportunity has slammed tight shut in our faces. We're no nearer to finding Arash or stopping the transfer of the warheads. We're fucked!

  Chapter Seven

  Anika found a cab that took them out of the city. Talley was seething with anger, how the hell could this guy always be ahead of them? And yet so far, they’d evaded capture by the Iranians. It was weird, almost like a riddle. He felt the answer was so close he could almost reach out and touch it. And touch Arash. And kill him. They walked the last couple of blocks in silence and went inside the derelict brick factory. Domenico was waiting for them.

  “Did you find anything?”

  Talley shook his head. “Someone shot the guy before he could tell us. All we know is he’s a Westerner.”

  The Italian chuckled. “So we’re down to only a hundred thousand people inside the country. I think we may have a problem finding him from that description. We may as well pack up and go home.”

  “Not quite.”

  They looked at Anika.

  “I managed to copy some files before the server was destroyed. I’ll take a look at them now. Maybe it’ll help us, maybe not. Give me a half hour.”

  “I’ll give you anything you want if you can get this operation back on track.”

  “I may take you up on that, Abe Talley,” she replied.

  He looked severely at Rovere, who was doing his best to keep a straight face. She disappeared to find and boot up her laptop.

  “Love is a smoke made with the fumes of a sigh,” Domenico said. “As the immortal Shakespeare once…”

  “Button it!”

  “Sure, sure,” he replied, chuckling and then walking away, whistling another jaunty tune.

  While she worked on the data, Talley prowled around the derelict factory. He climbed the stairs to the second floor and found the sentries were alert and watchful, using their NV gear to watch for any signs of trouble. He continued wandering the dusty wreckage of a once proud business, wondering how it had all gone wrong, and what had happened to those who once made their living there.

  It’s always the same answer. Scratch the surface of poverty and degradation in the Middle East and you’ll find a mullah, an imam, an ayatollah. And still the people believe in them.

  There was little more he could do but wait and pray Anika recovered something useful. If not, Domenico was right; they may as well pack up and go home. Time was running out, there were only three days before the nukes were due to be transferred across the border. He inwardly cursed this opaque, gloomy society, ruled with an iron cruelty by religious fanatics. Yet where such sick debauchery as they’d seen at the Café Yusef went almost unchecked. The major players were able to buy off the cops, while the average Joe in the street was whipped and punished to stay in line. The whole country was upside down, outwardly religious and ultra conservative, yet inwardly, as rotten and stinking as the carcass of a dead polecat. The place was just a delusion practiced on the poor long suffering populace. Then Anika emerged from the derelict storeroom she’d been using to work in. Her face was thoughtful. Then he saw her expression, and his hopes soared.

  Christ, she’s found it!

  “What is it?”

  “I think I have something.”

  “Thank God. Go on.”

  He realized the men were staring at them and listening. Domenico and Guy edged closer.

  “I uncovered an ayatollah who exchanged messages both with the ID 'Archer', and with Javeed. It’s too much of a coincidence. Would you bring Javeed to me? I need him in on this.”

  They brought the Iranian. He’d been shut inside an old brick kiln. He was filthy, covered in soot and dirt, and unrecognizable from the sleek man they’d first encountered. He could have been a coal miner, but he was calm, seemingly resigned to his fate.

  Probably expects to die, Talley thought. He could be right. There's plenty of time yet, for all of us.

  “Javeed, I need your help.”

  He nodded dully but didn’t speak.

  “You forwarded emails to and from an ayatollah. They included a carbon copy to the ID ‘Archer’, do you recall? There were discussions about uranium enrichment, trigger systems, and components of a nuclear bomb.”

  They all saw the fear in his eyes. “I had no choice. You must understand that. The ayatolla
hs rule this country. When they threatened me…”

  “Javeed, I don’t care. You said before you didn’t know, but I think you do. Tell me about this man.”

  The Iranian sighed, his shoulders slumped, and he started to speak. “The man you refer to is Ayatollah Faridoon Majidi. He is very powerful, many people fear him.”

  “What does he do, this Majidi? Is he in government?”

  He looked at her as if she was stupid. “Faridoon Majidi? He is the head of the Basij, the Morality Police. He has his headquarters inside the Revolutionary Guard Barracks. He is one of the most powerful men in Iran, and the most feared. That’s how he got away with coming to the Café Yusef. People were too frightened to make a complaint.”

  “You recall that Revolutionary Guard Barracks?” Guy interjected. “Opposite that old cinema where they came to arrest us. They took us across the road and put us in a cell before the prison transport came. It’s a local headquarters for the Basij.”

  Talley nodded. “If he is Arash, that’s where we have to go to get to him. Look on the bright side, Guy. It’s not Ahmadinejad. Going after him would have been a bastard.”

  Guy smiled. “What about the Westerner? We know nothing about him. It could be he’s on Arash’s payroll, or he could be Arash himself, and this ayatollah is one of his gomers.”

  Talley looked at Javeed. “Have you seen this guy? He could he be an American, or maybe a Brit.”

  “I am sorry. I do not know him.”

  “Okay, we’ll have to go for Majidi. He’s the only name we have. If we take him out, the operation could collapse like a pack of cards.”

  “How are you planning to do this, Boss?” Guy asked. The other men watched and waited for the answer; one that could seal their fate, and possibly result in their deaths.

  Talley grimaced. “We have to find a way to bypass the Revolutionary Guard to get to Majidi, that’s the obvious ball breaker. We need a way into their barracks.”

  There was complete silence as they looked at each other, as if he’d just pronounced a sentence of death on them.

  “I can get us in there.”

  They all looked at Anika. Finally, Domenico asked the question that was on their minds.

  “How?”

  “The qanats.”

  “The qanats?” Talley was dubious, and then he recalled the nightmare. They were trapped in a qanat by rising water. Anika called out for his help, and she had died. He pushed it to the back of his mind.

  “A few months ago,” she continued, “I uncovered a map giving details of a previously unknown series of qanats that runs from Niavaran, taking water from the mountains all the way to Tehran. Preliminary excavations show a well at Nezam Abad, about two kilometers from the city center, which give access to the main system. It runs all the way through to Martyr’s Square, and according to the map, there is a well that actually surfaces inside the Pasdaran Barracks.”

  Domenico for once looked unhappy.

  “However we get inside, there must be a couple of thousand troops in there. It’s an impossible situation. ”

  “No more than a thousand, according to recent intelligence reports,” she corrected him.

  “And there are twenty of us.” He shook his head. “It’s not good odds. We’d be better off if we took this guy out when he’s away from that place.”

  “As far as I know, he rarely ventures out of there, and when he does, it’s always unannounced. The Basij is not the most popular organization in Iran, and there are a lot of people who’d like to kill him. We have to get to him while he’s inside. It’s the only way.”

  “It’s crazy!” Guy persisted. “Abe, there has to be an easier way.”

  “I don’t think there is.” Talley shook his head. “Ever since we’ve been inside this damn country, they’ve been ahead of us every step we’ve taken. All we’ve managed to do is fight our way out of trouble. They were on to us before we even reached the dig, and the shooter who killed that poor guy in the Café Yusef is still running around, trying to block our moves. It’s no way to achieve what we came here to do. Okay, we have a name, that’s progress, but only if we go ahead and deal with this character before someone else takes another pop at us. If Majidi won’t come out of the Pasdaran Barracks, we’ll have to pay him a visit before he’s alerted and spirited away.”

  “Abe,” Rovere murmured, “a thousand men in there. Are you serious?”

  “We can do it, Dom, but we’re going to need help. First, we’ll need some kind of a diversion to get those troops out of the barracks. We’ll also need to lay on air cover in case we run into trouble when we’re inside.”

  Welland nodded thoughtfully. “It could be done, but there are a lot of ifs, Boss. Will that qanat takes us in there, can you be sure about that?” he looked at Anika.

  “My assessment is that the qanat will be usable, and it definitely runs under the barracks. But I can’t be sure until I see it.”

  “So we could put this operation in place and find we can’t even get inside?”

  “It could happen, yes.”

  He looked at Talley. “Like I said, too many ifs.”

  “I hear you. Nonetheless, this is what they pay us for, and this could be the most important operation we’ve ever undertaken. It’s time to finish this. We have to sneak in there, take down this fucker Majidi, and sneak out without them being any the wiser.”

  They worked halfway through the rest of the night putting the elements of the plan together. Talley finally pronounced he was satisfied, until he talked to Admiral Brooks and told him what he’d need.

  “You’re seriously asking me to station an armed drone over Tehran? Tell me I’ve misunderstood you, Lieutenant.”

  “No, Sir, you haven’t. That’s exactly what we need.”

  “You know it could start a war? If the Iranians caught on to a NATO drone over their capital, well, it’s a damn good thing they’re not in possession of nuclear weapons right now. They’d sure as hell have their finger on the button, and ready to launch a strike against us.”

  “That’s why we’re here, Admiral, to stop them.”

  Brooks sighed. “Yeah, I know why you’re there, Talley, and I know the operation is critical. But I don’t want to start one war to prevent another one. We sent you in there to work undercover, not park your tanks on Ahmadinejad’s front lawn.”

  “Which is why I’m asking for the Avenger. It worked last time around.”

  “I damn nearly lost my job over that one, Lieutenant. That drone was one of only three currently operational in the Mid East, and it’s highly secret. If the Iranians got their hands on one of those babies, we’d spend the rest of our careers counting penguins on the NATO Antarctic Research Facility.”

  “They won’t find out, Sir. That’s the idea of a stealth drone.”

  “Don’t play games with me, Talley. You know as well as I do, things that aren’t supposed to go wrong have a habit of doing just that.”

  “Admiral, we don’t have a choice. We can’t assault the Pasdaran Barracks without air support. It would be impossible. Neither could we use more men. It would attract too much attention. The only way to do this is with smoke and mirrors.”

  “The quickness of the hand deceives the eye?”

  “Exactly, Sir."

  “Yeah, let’s hope so.” He sighed heavily. “Very well, I’ll arrange for the Avenger to be in place when you need it. God help us all if it goes wrong. Anything else?”

  “No, we can handle the rest of the operation.”

  “How will you cope with a thousand Revolutionary Guards?”

  “We’ve arranged a diversion. Guy Welland has an idea that should draw them away from the barracks.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “A mock assassination attempt.”

  “You’re posing as government assassins? That’s not far from the real truth,” Brooks chuckled.

  “We’ll stage a suicide attack, an attempted assassination on the President of the Isla
mic Republic of Iran. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”

  There was silence for a few, long seconds. Finally, Brooks replied. “Yeah, I reckon that would get their interest.”

  But Talley felt uncomfortable, even using that single word, ‘assassin’, reminded him of Kay’s bitter diatribe, accusing him of being a government assassin.

  She knew where to stick the knife in, plum center into my sense of duty and honor. Whichever way I jump, I'm screwed, either with my family or with my unit.

  * * *

  It was pitch dark when they searched for the well that would give them entrance to the qanat. It was an area of waste ground lying between two decaying apartment blocks in Nezam Abad, a suburb of Tehran. The area was given over to cheap housing for the poorer section of the community. This being a Muslim country that constituted the overwhelming majority. Earlier, Guy and Virgil walked partway back into the city and hotwired a delivery truck, plain white and unwritten, to transport the unit into the city. After nightfall, they dropped off Talley’s assault team close to the entrance to the qanat, and then drove away to start working on the diversionary attack. Talley smiled to himself. Buchmann had packed all their spare explosives into the truck. The plan was to drive to the Iranian Parliament building, two klicks from Nezam Abad, jam the gas pedal to the floor and aim it at the main entrance. It would be timed for when Ahmadinejad was due to appear for an important speech. Just before they struck, Anika would put an anonymous call through to the cops, warning of a threat to assassinate the President. During previous attempts by rebels to kill him, she’d told them the Pasdaran flooded the area to protect the President. Guy and Virgil were was dressed like locals. Javeed would go with them, to act as a guide and interpreter if they ran into any trouble.

  “If that doesn’t pull them out of the barracks, I don’t know what will,” Guy had smiled, enjoying the idea of tearing a gaping hole in Iranian security. “You’ll hear it explode, no matter how far underground you are. Better pray it doesn’t bring the roof down.”