by Jack Mars
“He couldn’t remember if he knew you or read about you once. That’s how bad his torture had been.”
Nasiri nodded. He thought about it for a long moment, then spoke.
“Before he disappeared, his ideas had become unsound. He had begun to study radioactive half-lifes, as well as toxic shrouds and the concept of a nuclear winter. He authored papers recommending that Iran step back from developing these weapons, and instead become a world leader promoting nuclear disarmament. Several of us warned him that he was going to a dangerous place, but he was a very headstrong man and would not listen to reason. He was as stubborn as a camel.”
“Even a stubborn man can be broken,” Ari said.
Nasiri didn’t seem to hear him. “By the end, he was becoming increasingly worried, and paranoid.”
“With good reason, wouldn’t you say? The man we met was more dead than alive. He was skin and bones. He had at least two hundred cigarette burns on his body. And believe me, he had much worse injuries than that.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I haven’t told you the half of it.”
“Hamid was crazy. He forgot to keep his toe on the safe side of the line. I cannot help people who forget themselves. I cannot help these students and their uprising. I can only help the ones who want to learn. I can help the ones who don’t want to end up in a torture prison. The rioters will be lucky to escape with their lives. I cannot help them.”
“We need your help.”
“What help can I possibly give you?”
“You worked on your country’s nuclear program. You and Bahman.”
“Of course. It was my duty. It was the duty of all nuclear scientists in the country to build weapons for our self-defense. Whether we wanted to or not. You think us a backward country, a religious autocracy, and that is true, as far as it goes. But there is much more to the story. Iran is a rich tapestry, full of contradictions. It is one of the grandest, most storied civilizations in human history. Look at this university all around us—one of the great universities, a center of science and culture and the arts, certainly in the Muslim world, but also in the larger world. We are not fools, and we are not religious fanatics—we believe in science. We take the oaths they force upon us because we want to live, and we want our families to live, and we want to make the world a better place. Iran will not always be a religious dictatorship, I can assure you of that. The current student uprising will fail miserably, but one day, the ayatollahs will fall.”
“Our two countries are on the verge of a nuclear war,” Ari said.
Nasiri nodded. “I know it.”
“You will never see the ascendancy of Iran’s culture and science if the whole place is destroyed in fire and fury.”
“How can I stop it?”
“You can tell us the location of the nuclear missiles.”
Nasiri sat still for a long moment. He looked at the snow accumulating on the edges of the window pane.
“What will you do?”
“Destroy them,” Luke said. “Call in air strikes. It will prevent a nuclear exchange with Israel. That’s a war Iran cannot win.”
“While Israel gets to keep their own arsenal?”
“Yes. I’m not going to lie to you. They’ve had their missiles for forty years, and they’ve never used them. They won’t use them if they’re not threatened. It will be a return to status quo. A chance for peace.”
Nasiri took a deep breath.
“They will want to kill me. If they find out who told you…”
“We can try to get you out.”
The professor slowly shook his head. “Then they will kill my family in my stead. You look like three very capable men. I’m sure that’s why they sent you. But you’re not a moving company. Can you smuggle out my elderly mother, my uncles, my three brothers and their families, my ex-wife and our two daughters? All quickly and under cover of darkness?”
“No. Just you, in all likelihood.”
The air seemed to go out of Nasiri, like a tire deflating. “I only know one location. You must understand. The program was very secretive. We were kept isolated from one another. Different people worked on different aspects of the project in different places. We often didn’t even know who the people in the other locations were—we had our suspicions, of course. There are only so many people who know how to enrich uranium and miniaturize warheads.”
“What location do you know?” Luke said.
“Parchin,” Nasiri said. “Just east of the city. It is a large, heavily fortified military base. I have been there many times. I’ve seen the missiles with my own eyes. There is a battery of eight missiles there, deep underground, though not as deep as our government might suggest. They drilled a tunnel twenty miles long—it comes from the enrichment facility at Fordo, where I worked for years. It is a highway under the Earth. We were able to develop a secret facility at Fordo that enriched the uranium to greater than ninety percent purity—more than enough for a successful weapon. The weaponized uranium was trucked from Fordo to Parchin. It may still happen for all I know.”
“Were there tests to see if the warheads would even work?”
Nasiri. “Yes. But they took place elsewhere. I know nothing about them, except that they were successful.”
“Does anyone know every part of this?”
Nasiri shrugged. “Possible. There was one person, the director of my project. He is a brilliant man—a passable hands-on engineer, but a man who can synthesize the input of many fields, and make sense of it all. A man who also recognizes his own limitations. He often took meetings at the highest level of government. He sometimes visited other sites, though he would never talk about what he saw.”
“Where is he now?”
“He retired. Became an imam here in the city. He calls himself Ali Mohammed Tehrani and has a popular mosque in south Tehran, near the Grand Bazaar. It’s funny. He never seemed to have a religious bone in his body. I suspect he became an imam to protect himself. A wonderful idea, if you are willing to dress in costume and play a role the rest of your life. It’s hard to accuse someone of treason when they are so obviously devout.”
Abruptly, Nasiri stood. Luke watched him.
He moved to some shelving beneath the window. Everything was a mess. There were stacks of papers along the shelves. He pulled out a pile of folded maps and laid them out on top of the low shelf top. He stood in front of the window.
“I have maps of the Fordo facility, the secret enrichment center there, and how it connects by tunnel to the silos sites at Parchin. It may help you.”
“You have the maps here?” Ed said.
Nasiri laughed. “It helps when they call you an absent-minded professor. You can walk out with the secrets of the universe, and they think you are being forgetful.”
He reached to his right, to a small table lamp on top of the shelf. It was the kind with a bending, snakelike arm that could direct the light wherever you needed it.
“Don’t do that,” Luke said.
Nasiri clicked on the light. “I just want to show you how—”
Instantly, a hole punched through the window and Nasiri’s head popped apart. Blood and bone sprayed. His body continued to stand for half a second, as if it didn’t understand what had just happened, then fell bonelessly to the floor.
Luke, Ed, and Ari dropped as one.
“Dammit!” Ed said. “Sniper.”
“Kill the light,” Luke said. “Kill the light!”
Ed reached up with a heavy book and knocked the light off the shelf. The glass bulb tinkled as it shattered. More holes appeared in the windows. One of the windows cracked apart and shattered into several pieces.
“Anybody get a look at where those shots came from?”
“These windows are across a plaza from another faculty building,” Ari said. “I noticed that coming in. They must have taken up residence in an office across the way. How did they know?”
“Those two dead guards at the prison might have given
them a tip,” Ed said.
They had dragged the bodies of the guards up to the roof and left them in the snow. But they made no serious effort to get rid of them. What were they going to do with them? Toss them off into the streets?
“How’s the professor?” Luke said, already knowing the answer.
“How is he? Did you see his head break open and his brains come splattering out?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Well, then.”
No one said another word. They lay on the floor with Nasiri’s corpse for several seconds. Luke could feel the clock ticking. Their opponents were already on the move. The bad guys had all the advantages—they were on their home turf, and they knew exactly where this office was located. They knew the layout of the whole area.
Down on the streets, Luke and company were going to be dead men. Even so, they couldn’t stay here.
“Ed, grab those maps, man. We better get going.”
* * *
They moved silently through the halls, like wraiths.
Even their footfalls were light, making no sound on the marble floors. Luke’s senses were on red alert—his hearing, his eyesight, his sense of smell—everything was on, picking up the slightest cues from the environment.
Ed was on point, his MP5 out, magazine in, full auto. He had three more magazines loaded along his belt. If it came to a confrontation, there was going to be no sneaking out of here. Overwhelming force was all that would work, and it was going to be LOUD.
Ari was next, shadowing Ed, moving low along the walls opposite from and behind him. He was ready with his Uzi.
Luke brought up the rear, barely behind Ari, almost touching him, and facing backward. Any attack was likely to come from both sides, a pincer move.
Ed arrived at the door to the stairwell. He crouched at the bottom of it. With the barrel of his gun, he reached across and opened the door an inch.
DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH.
Someone in the stairwell was overeager, on hair trigger. The short burst of automatic fire shredded chunks from the door, high, near the handle and above. Smoke and dust rose from the impacts. Ed turned and looked back. His eyes met Luke’s. His shoulders slumped. He shook his head and pointed downward. Then he pointed upward. There were shooters in the stairwell, both above them and below them.
Ding!
There was an elevator across the hall from the stairs. And someone was inside of it.
“Ed?”
“Fourth floor, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Coming this way.”
“Don’t kill them,” Luke said. “Whoever’s in there, we need them. Catch them, don’t kill them.”
“What if there’s ten people?”
“Leave two alive.”
Luke’s mind moved at warp speed, searching for answers. He hit on one. These people didn’t know who they were dealing with. Not yet. They had the stairs staked out. They were coming up in the elevator. Maybe they thought the office had been infiltrated by radical students, students they simply imagined they were going to hunt down and kill.
Luke shook his head. He hoped that was it.
He removed his handgun from his shoulder holster. He took a silencer out of a pocket of his cargo pants. He threaded it into the barrel of the gun and screwed it in tight. He was ten feet from the elevator, pressed to the wall, on the same side of the hallway.
“Ed, how’s that elevator?”
“One more. Here we go.”
“Give me a head count and draw them out. They’ll be so focused on you, they won’t see me here. I’ll take free shots at whatever’s available, and you guys finish the leftovers. Copy that?”
“Copy.”
Ed and Ari moved to either side of the doorway, guns aimed across the hall and into the elevator. Luke squatted along the wall.
He would only get a shot if someone came out.
“Come on out, boys,” he whispered. “Come on out.”
Ding!
The doors opened.
Suddenly, there was shouting in Farsi. Ari shouted, the men inside shouted.
“Drop your guns!” the men in the elevator shouted. “Do not move!”
“Three men!” Ed shouted in English. “Three men!”
Two men stepped into the hall, guns trained on Ari and Ed, shouting.
Ari and Ed shouted back, guns trained on the men.
It was a standoff. Dangerous, dangerous. The first trigger pull would cause a bloodbath on both sides.
A third man, taller than the others, stepped into the hallway.
CLACK!
Luke’s gun bucked as he took the top half of the man’s head off.
The two men turned, looking for the shooter who had just killed their commander. Instantly, Ed and Ari were on top of them, rifle butts cracking skulls. Luke ran forward, gun pointed. He kicked the Iranian’s guns away from their outstretched hands.
Luke recognized their distinctive uniforms—dark green coats and pants, black turtleneck shirt with gold logo shaped like a globe at the throat, green baseball caps with the same logo, and white gloves.
These were the fearsome Revolutionary Guards. These were the guys who stomped on the slightest hint of dissent in Iranian society. These two had probably been out killing college kids earlier today.
Luke didn’t mind killing men like these.
“Get them up!” he said. “Get them up! Let’s go. We’re out of here.”
The plan had formed instantly, mercilessly. He looked at Ed and Ari. His eyes felt wild. He had been to this place before. Total combat, and these were the men to do it with. There was no fear in their eyes. They were alive, alert, ready to move.
“They’re going downstairs, we’re going upstairs. To the roof.”
He looked at Ari. “Are there buildings close to this one?”
Ari nodded. “Yes. Across alleyways, that sort of thing. A few jumps, we can move away from here. They might be big jumps.”
“That’s what we’ll do. Ready?”
“Ready.”
Luke looked at Ed.
“Born ready, white man.”
He and Ari lifted the two men off the floor. They were both confused, hands at their sides. Luke went to the door of the stairwell. Ari and Ed were right behind him. He pushed open the door, then ducked back. Ari and Ed shoved their charges into the stairwell and dove in after them.
Automatic fire came from the stairwell below.
DUD-DUD-DUD-DUD-DUD.
The two Revolutionary Guards jittered and moved as the bullets hit them.
Ari sprayed bullets from his Uzi down the stairs.
Ed fired up the stairs.
A body came tumbling down.
They shoved the bullet-riddled Iranians down the stairs. Ari and Ed ran upstairs, Luke three feet behind them. He vaulted the dead body on the stairs. More fire came from behind them, but the bullets hit the wall of the landing.
“Go man, go!”
They sprinted up the stairs, two at a time, guns everywhere at once. This was the dangerous time, trapped in a stairwell. Luke could hear the boots of the Iranians pounding up the stairs behind them. The men shouted, almost screams of horror, of tragedy, as they passed their dead comrades. Well, too bad. The Iranians would have done the same to the students, had there been any.
Up ahead, they were coming to the door to the roof.
Ed was the fastest and reached it first. He stopped short.
“Wait! Wait!” He touched the door. He put his ear to it and listened.
Luke turned around.
“Come on, Ed. Don’t wait all night. We got bad guys right behind us.”
“Man, a chopper out there and we all get cut to pieces.”
Footsteps pounded up the stairs.
Luke worked an angle on the stairwell below him. He checked his gun. AUTO. This was about to become a shit show.
He glanced back. Ed opened the door a crack, peeked outside.
Ah, hell.
Luke pul
led an Israeli grenade from his belt, yanked the pin, let the compressor go, and tossed the thing over the railing. He heard it bouncing down the stairs.
He turned and ran. “Fire in the hole!” he screamed.
Ed and Ari saw him coming and heard him scream. Their eyes went wide and they burst through the door as one. He was one second behind them. Then they were out on the roof and running across it in the rain and sleet. There were no helicopters. There was no one up here. The wind whipped across the rooftop.
“Fire in the hole!” Luke screamed again.
He dove to the surface of the roof, sliding in the thin cover of snow and ice. It was a gravel roof and it bit into his hands, his elbows and knees. Ahead of him, Ed and Ari hit the deck and covered their heads. Luke did the same.
He waited. What was taking so long?
He almost rolled over, gun trained on the doorway. But…
BA-BOOOOM.
The roof trembled. The door blew off and flew through the air, breaking into flaming pieces. Red and orange fire burst from the stairwell, a ball of it, the heat washing over Luke’s back. The last chunk of burning door floated to the roof. Dirty black smoke poured from the hole where the stairwell used to be.
Ari and Ed were both looking back, their faces red from the reflection of the flames.
“That’s a hell of a grenade, man,” Luke said.
Ari shrugged. “We make the best.”
Ed worked his way to his feet. Suddenly, another man was there. Same outfit, green coat, green baseball cap, white gloves—another Revolutionary Guard. He was a young guy with a thick mustache, and he emerged from the shadows along the parapet. Instantly, Luke knew his deal—he had seen his buddy killed by Ed, and retreated up the stairs ahead of their onslaught.
He had his hand gun out now, drawing a bead on the big man.
Luke scrambled to find his own gun. In all the commotion, he had dropped it, the silenced pistol.
“Ed!”
Ari leapt to his feet and tried to tackle Ed. It didn’t work. The two men stumbled along together.
BANG.
The bullet hit… something.
Luke found his gun in the snow. He rolled onto his side, gained his target, and fired. Outside, with the damping effect of the snow, the gun sounded like nothing. A stapler. A typewriter key being punched.