The Enemy Within

by Larry Bond

  Black smoke swirled across the street, billowing from the wrecked gatehouse. The smell of cordite lingered in the air. Corpses littered the pavement—HizbAllah guards gunned down when Amir Taleh’s assault force smashed its way through into the training complex.

  The leader of his escort force, a short, swarthy sergeant, peered around one corner of the burning building and then motioned Thorn forward. “Safe! Safe! All ended.” He pointed toward the sprawled bodies and drew one grimy thumb across his throat. “Understand?”

  Thorn nodded. He loped through the gate with his escorts in tow.

  The camp itself was a scene straight out of Dante’s Inferno. At least half the barracks and other buildings were ablaze, gutted by rocket-propelled grenades, satchel charges, and cannon fire. Bodies dotted the streets and lawns. Most wore the shapeless fatigues or civilian clothes preferred by the HizbAllah. A few, very few, wore the olive-drab uniforms and green berets of Iran’s Special Forces.

  Soldiers combed through the burning compound, hunting for surviving terrorists with a care and precision that Thorn admired. Those moving were always covered by other teams prone and ready to fire. T-72 tanks and BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicles sat at key vantage points, turrets swiveling as the gunners scanned their surroundings for potential threats and new targets.

  Still trotting forward behind the sergeant, Thorn whistled softly to himself. He’d read many reports on the Islamic Republic’s armed forces. None gave them credit for the kind of professionalism he saw displayed here. Striking at first light, Taleh’s handpicked troops had ripped through Manzarieh like a tornado through a Kansas trailer park.

  “Come!” The Iranian sergeant pointed toward a small band of officers and NCOs clustered near one of the T-72s. Radio antennas and open map cases signaled the presence of a senior command group.

  Thorn easily pinpointed Farhad Kazemi in the gathering. The young captain stood several inches above his companions. His gaze shifted to the shorter, bearded man issuing a rapid-fire string of orders to the assembled officers. At one final word of command they scattered, moving off to rejoin their units. Only Kazemi and the man he’d been watching were left, heads bowed together as they conferred over a map.

  His memories jumped more than twenty years into the past in the blink of an eye. Amir Taleh looked older, more care worn, and more serious, but there were still a few visible traces of the young cadet who had befriended an American teenager adrift in a foreign land.

  The two Iranians turned at his approach.

  Briefly unsure of how to proceed, Thorn fell back on formal military courtesy. He came to attention and snapped off a crisp salute.

  Taleh returned his salute just as crisply. Then he broke the tension by smiling and holding out his hand. “Peter! Welcome! It has been too long—far too long, my friend! You look well. Soldiering must agree with you.”

  Thorn smiled back. Circumstances had changed. Amir Taleh had not. “You don’t look so bad yourself.” He nodded toward the general’s stars on the other man’s shoulders. “Soldiering seems to agree with you even more!”

  The Iranian shrugged casually. “God has willed it.” It was the expression his countrymen always used to turn away the bad luck believed to be inherent in a compliment. “Thank you for accepting my invitation, Peter. I know it took courage to make this journey.”

  Thorn fought down sudden embarrassment. His earlier concerns about this mission paled in comparison to the very real risks Taleh and his men had just run to smash the Manzarieh training camp. They’d just killed more terrorists in half an hour than Delta Force had taken out in its entire history. “Not much courage. I’ve often wanted to come back to your country.” He glanced down at the Iranian battle dress he wore and smiled ruefully. “I just never thought I’d do it while wearing this uniform.”

  Taleh laughed softly. “Well said.” He waved a hand at the shattered, burning compound around them. “Tell me, Peter, what do you think of my little demonstration?”

  “I’m impressed,” Thorn said flatly. He hesitated only a moment before going on. If Taleh had wanted to meet a smooth-talking diplomat, the Iranian wouldn’t have asked for him. “But frankly, I’m also surprised. Cutting off supplies to the HizbAllah is one thing. Declaring open war on them is another.”

  He nodded toward the dead terrorists strewn in every direction. “What you’ve done here can’t be undone. After today, the HizbAllah and the other radical groups will want your head on a pike. No matter what happens between our two countries, you’ve put yourself and your troops awfully far out on a very slender limb.”

  “True.” Taleh seemed unworried. “And that is exactly why I wanted you to see this operation. I wanted you to see how deadly serious I am about ending Iran’s connection with these extremists.”

  The Iranian shrugged. “Of course, I will not deny that I have my own reasons for destroying the HizbAllah and the others like them. Although I am a good Muslim, the terrorists and their supporters in the Pasdaran and the Parliament have often been my foes. Crushing them strengthens my own position.”

  Thorn nodded. That squared with what little U.S. analysts knew about the current state of Iranian politics. “Sounds like classic economy of force.” He smiled. “I suspect old ‘Gut ’Em’ Duszinski would be pleased.”

  Taleh’s dark eyes lit up in amused recollection. He had gone through the Ranger School a few years ahead of Thorn, and Sergeant Major Duszinski was a legend in the U.S.-trained special warfare fraternity. After surviving six tours in Vietnam, the hard-nosed veteran had come home to teach ambush tactics at the Ranger School. Generations of soldiers since then had grown to cordially hate the man’s guts. But none of them had forgotten the commonsense lessons he’d pounded into their aching brains.

  The Iranian leaned forward and tapped Thorn on the shoulder. “You understand me. This is why I asked your superiors to send you, a friend and a soldier—a fighting soldier—as their representative. I will be honest. I do not trust your country’s politicians or your diplomats.”

  Taleh smiled briefly. “For that matter, I do not trust my own politicians or diplomats. None of them, American or Iranian, will tell the plain truth if they believe a lie will suffice.”

  Thorn nodded. Taleh’s wry sense of humor was still intact.

  He glanced again at the shattered terrorist training compound. In less than an hour, the soldiers commanded by his boyhood friend had crushed a powerful nest of terrorists who had haunted the United States for years. Both the magnitude of Taleh’s operation and the size of the gamble the other man was taking overwhelmed and chilled him. In one fell, bloody swoop, Taleh had severed the Iranian military’s ties to Islam’s crazed extremists. It was astounding—almost unbelievable. But seeing was believing. Dead terrorists did not lie, and those Taleh’s troops had gunned down were men who had tormented the West for decades.

  Suddenly impatient at the prospect of further diplomatic sparring, Thorn turned back to the Iranian. By openly attacking the HizbAllah, his friend had performed a valuable service for America. Taleh had also put his own life and career on the line. That kind of commitment deserved plain talk. “I guess the question is: Where do we go from here? You know my country will be grateful for your actions today. But what do you want from us in return?”

  “What do I want? I want many things, Peter.” Taleh shrugged again. “But I do not expect too much too soon. Iran and the United States have a long history together—an unfortunate history in recent years. True?”

  Thorn nodded silently, thinking of the long, sorry string of hostage crises, bombings, murders, and retaliatory strikes.

  “It will take time and much hard work to dissolve the enmities built up over so many years,” Taleh said quietly. “But in the short term, I would like to offer my cooperation in the fight against these terrorists. My forces will deny them further safe haven inside Iran. And I can offer documents, pictures, and other records that your intelligence services will find invaluable. In return I wan
t assurances against renewed missile strikes or other hostile actions aimed at my forces.”

  “And later?”

  “Later I hope that our two nations can work more closely on a number of fronts.” The Iranian studied him closely. “We both know that Iran is a poor country. This mindless, uncoordinated campaign of terror has cost us dearly. We have been isolated politically and economically for far too long. I am hoping that your leaders will help me change that.”

  “I see.” Thorn did see. He was enough of a strategist to know what Taleh’s offer of closer ties with Iran might mean for the United States and the whole Middle East. Ever since the Shah’s fall from power, the U.S. and its Western allies had been searching for a way to stabilize the vital region. Their first choice, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, had proved itself an untrustworthy ally and an incompetent foe. The current alternative, Saudi Arabia, was a weak reed—sparsely populated, corrupt, and cordially loathed by most of its neighbors. If there truly was a chance that Iran could be lured back into the community of civilized nations, he knew the White House and the State Department would jump at it.

  Shots cracked nearby. Thorn’s head lifted in surprise.

  Squads of Iranian Special Forces troops were walking slowly through the compound, methodically firing into each of the bodies littering Manzarieh Park’s streets and blood-soaked lawns.

  Taleh saw the question on his face and nodded somberly. “Yes. My troops are killing any terrorists who may only have been wounded.”

  He held up a hand to forestall any protest Thorn might make. “I know what your codes of military justice say about such things, but you must understand our position here. As you pointed out, we are now at war with the HizbAllah. Since they will show me no mercy if I fail, I will show them none now. In any case, every fanatic we take alive is only another prisoner the others will try to free—a constant irritant, perhaps even a danger to us again someday. Dead, they may become martyrs, but martyrs cannot hold a rifle or turn a detonator key.”

  He was right, Thorn knew. The UCMJ contained specific procedures for dealing with prisoners—procedures laid out with lawyerly precision. But very few of the rules written for an antiseptic courtroom were easily applied under combat conditions. And by its very nature counterterrorism was a murky field—one full of moral ambiguity and cruel necessity. Very few people outside the tight-knit organizations dedicated to fighting the shadowy war against terrorism understood that. Look at the public furor that had erupted several years before when a British SAS team ambushed several IRA guerrillas in Gibraltar and shot them down without warning or mercy.

  He looked up. Taleh was still waiting for his response. The hardships of the Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war had made his friend far more ruthless than he remembered. But this was the other man’s fight and his home ground. Second-guessing his decisions now would serve no useful purpose. He nodded his reluctant understanding.

  The Iranian seemed satisfied. “Good.” He glanced at his watch and signaled Captain Kazemi over with a quick gesture. “Farhad will escort you back to your quarters for now, Peter. I will join you there after my prayers.”

  Taleh clapped him on the shoulder again. “Then we can eat together and discuss these matters at greater length. We can also talk of the old days—the better days of our youth.” He swept his eyes over the smoldering ruins of the Manzarieh camp. “And in considerably more pleasant surroundings.”

  MAY 10

  The U.S. State Department, Washington, D.C.

  Twenty-four hours and seven thousand grueling air miles after leaving Iran, Lieutenant Colonel Peter Thorn finished debriefing the last set of self-proclaimed State Department experts on the results of his mission. He gritted his teeth as the door to the conference room swung shut behind him and turned to the senior officer at his side. “I swear to God, sir, I’ve never seen such a group of pompous, arrogant …”

  “Calmly, Pete. Calmly.” Major General Sam Farrell steered him away from the room and down a tiled corridor toward an elevator. He pressed the down button and stood back. “Our current lords and masters of the Foggy Bottom may be pompous. They are arrogant. But they most certainly are not deaf.”

  “Sorry, sir.” Thorn took a deep breath and then released it slowly. Farrell was right. He would gain nothing by losing his temper right in the State Department’s inner sanctum. He’d never thought debriefing this administration’s coterie of foreign policy experts would be a walk in the park. So why should he kick when they turned out to be as obnoxious as he’d expected?

  Oh, they had been polite enough—on the surface anyway. They’d listened fairly attentively to his outline of General Taleh’s moves to rid Iran of the HizbAllah and to the recap of his conversations with the Iranian leader. But there had been a dead silence when he’d offered to take questions. More telling still, he and Farrell had been completely ignored during the prolonged discussion that followed his briefing.

  In fact, it had become very clear that the band of corporate lawyers and former academics who made up the State Department’s current policy elite were utterly uninterested in the views of those they saw as uniformed robots—as simple men suited only to obey orders from their civilian superiors. Instead, Austin Brookes, the elderly, courtly Secretary of State, and his inner circle were a lot more interested in claiming total credit for Iran’s sudden change of heart. Thorn had heard enough abstract nonsense about back-channel diplomacy and geopolitical “levers” in the past two hours to last him a lifetime.

  At least Taleh was proving a man of his word.

  His troops had pounded two more HizbAllah camps while Thorn was still in Iran. And a preliminary analysis of the data he’d brought back from Taleh showed that many of the dead were terrorists who had been on the U.S. government’s Most Wanted lists for years. In the long run, Thorn thought, that mattered a hell of a lot more than which set of American bureaucrats counted coup for making the Iranians see sweet reason.

  One thing more was sure. Taleh was thorough. He played to win at all times. He accepted no excuses—not from his subordinates and not from himself. That was something Thorn found familiar. It was the way he’d lived his own life from boyhood on.

  “Coming, Pete?”

  “Yes, sir.” Thorn hurriedly collected his wandering thoughts and followed his commander into the elevator. Without talking they rode down to the car waiting to take them back to Andrews Air Force Base. He and Sam Farrell had been friends for more than ten years and the older man knew when to let him simmer.

  But as soon as the staff car pulled out of the curving State Department drive and turned onto a busy, traffic-choked street, Farrell broke the silence. “Everything set for your change-of-command ceremony next month, Pete?”

  “Yes, sir. And Bill Henderson’s ready and raring to take charge.” Thorn could hear the reluctance and regret in his own voice. He had commanded Delta’s A Squadron for two years now—two of the happiest, most fulfilling years of his life. He’d relished every minute spent leading the officers and men widely regarded as the finest troops in the U.S. Army.

  Nothing lasted forever, though—especially not in the Army. His command tour was up and it was time to hand the outfit over to his deputy. Time to take on a new assignment. Although that was long-hallowed Army routine, he knew that not even the colonel’s silver eagles he’d be pinning on at his new post would ease his sense of loss.

  Giving up command of the squadron was bad. Giving it up for a staff job was worse. And giving it up for a staff job at the Pentagon was awful beyond all measure.

  On the strength of his successful covert mission to Iran, Farrell had wangled him a new post as the head of a special intelligence liaison unit, an outfit charged with tracking and evaluating terrorist groups that might become JSOC targets. It was just the kind of ticket he needed to punch to climb higher in the military hierarchy. Somehow that wasn’t much comfort. Like many officers who saw themselves as “warriors” first and career professionals second, Thorn regarded an
assignment to the Pentagon with sheer, unadulterated loathing. The massive building was a maze of interservice politics, petty backbiting, paperwork, paperwork, and more paperwork.

  He frowned, aware that Farrell was watching him with just the faintest hint of mingled sympathy and amusement. Oh, he’d ride the desk he’d been assigned and he’d do his best, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

  Thorn shook his head in frustration. Cut loose by Iran, the HizbAllah and the other radical Islamic factions were on the run. They were vulnerable. And now, no matter how he looked at it, he was left with the disquieting feeling that he had been shunted off to the sidelines right when all hell was breaking loose for the terrorist bastards he’d been preparing to fight all his life.

  CHAPTER 3

  SHARPENING THE STEEL

  MAY 22

  In Iran, west of Shiraz

  (D-DAY MINUS 207)

  The camouflaged UH-1H Huey helicopter clattered west, following the trace of a winding valley deeper into Iran’s Zagros Mountains.

  Seated right behind the pilot and copilot, General Amir Taleh found the view beautiful but daunting. Razor-edged mountains soared high above the helicopter, some three or four thousand meters high. The peaks were brown, tan, dun—every earth-colored shade imaginable. Naked to the harsh sun beating down out of a cloudless sky, every sheer rock wall and jumbled boulder field radiated heat.

  He glanced down. The narrow valley they were flying over was also a stark unrelieved gray and brown, the color of rock and bare earth. Nothing green seemed to grow along the banks of a bone-dry stream bed that filled only during the region’s short winter.

  The Huey bucked up and down suddenly, rocked by strong gusts that clawed at the fragile craft. The deeper into the mountains they flew, the more turbulent the air became.

  “Masegarh Base, this is Tango One-Four. Request permission to land. Over.”