Chapter Forty-Four

QOM, IRAN

Qom is an ancient city, the center of Shiiite Islam and home to more Muslim seminaries than any other town in Iran. Highly spiritual, it is also highly academic and home to close to a dozen colleges, universities, and research institutes.

As Blake drove along the river, he passed the golden dome and spires of the Ma’sumeh shrine. The place was beautiful, the sort of setting that would look perfect on the cover of National Geographic.

But Blake also knew that, five times in the last thirty years, women had been convicted of “immoral relations” in Qom, and given the harshest punishment possible: death by stoning.

He remembered a video of the punishment being administered. A hole was dug, like the hole for a large post, and the woman, dressed all in white and with her hands tied behind her back, was placed in it, her legs and hips in the hole, and her body exposed from the waist up. The hole was filled and the dirt was tamped down around her to hold her firmly, with her torso, abdomen, and all the vital organs of the body unprotected. Then appointees of the court, and often her accusers, would hurl brick-size stones at the victim until she died as a result of either blunt-force trauma or bleeding to death. In the video Blake saw, the white robe of the victim was scarlet by the time she slumped over, dead.

It was the most barbaric thing he had ever seen, grown men cursing and hurling stones at a mere willow of a woman. Alia once told him that, while “immoral relations” was generally understood to be adultery, sharia law contained no actual definition, so the nature of the act was left up to the courts. In one case, a young woman was stoned solely because she was seen leaving her home accompanied by a man who was not a member of her immediately family. In another, a thirteen-year-old girl was stoned because she admitted she was raped by three men. In her case, the court decided to bury her all the way up to her neck, so only her head would be struck by the stones. That would make death come more quickly: a more merciful sentence in the eyes of the clerics on the court.

And then there was the other thing Qom was famous for: the Fordow uranium enrichment facility, where Iran prepared the base materials for warheads with which to attack Israel. It was located just north of the city.

Blake thought about that as he looked back, in his rear-view mirror, at the receding shrine. It didn’t matter how many mosques and minarets, how many universities, parks and museums Qom was home to. It was also home to death in doses small and large and attacks upon the innocent by the cowardly. That, in Blake Kershaw’s way of thinking, made it the ugliest city on Earth.

He drove hundreds of kilometers out of his way to enter the city from the side nearest Tehran, to the north. That way he would not appear to be coming from Ilam province. The newspapers and the TV stations all along the way were alive with the discussion of a “terrorist attack upon a medical mission” in the west.

Blake didn’t mind being labeled a terrorist. If he terrified the people who ran this country, he could not be more pleased and more proud. But the part about it being a medical mission really stuck in his craw.

He drove through the city, confident his dusty beard and the flat cloth cap made him indistinguishable from the thousands of Iranians driving around him, blowing their horns, passing in the center on two-lane roads, bumping up onto sidewalks as the spirit moved them, and carrying furniture, caged animals, and bolts of cloth on the roofs of their vehicles, all secured by ropes and twine that looked ready to break if someone so much as sneezed at it.

The fuel depot was south of the city, near enough that the minarets and blocky, Middle-Eastern skyline of the town was still visible. And it was guarded more heavily than Fort Knox: armored troop carriers were parked at every entrance, even those that were chained shut, and at the main entrance. Construction trucks entered through a sally port, where a soldier walked the perimeter of each truck while another checked the undercarriage from a pit in the ground.

The place was huge. Blake counted the giant fuel tanks as he drove by: there were eighteen by his count, and they occupied an expanse of land nearly four kilometers long. And there was one other thing he noticed: there were no tankers, no fuel trucks—not anywhere on the property. Either the tank farm wasn’t active yet, or it was never intended to be active, which made sense. A regular fuel dump would be a fireball if it was attached; it was the last place a foreign government would think to look for the political elite of Iran. But if it was a decoy, it was the largest decoy Blake had ever seen. The place was as large as most airports.

That presented a problem. The laser designator in the rucksack in the back of the Nissan was the Northrop model, made in Apopka, Florida, by the same company that made the famous bomb-sight during World War II and it was the latest design. But in Special Forces, three kilometers was always the guideline the teams were given for working with laser designators. Much beyond that and there wouldn’t be enough contrast for the bomb sensor to work with.

That meant, in order to get into a position where his laser designator could reach every single tank in the depot, he would have to be in the center of it.

Driving at normal speed, he watched the apparent movement as he passed the giant tanks, and he saw a second problem; even if he was in the center of them, one or more of the tanks would always be completely blocked by its neighbors.

The depot was more open to its east. It looked as if its designers left room there for future construction. In fact, there was earth-moving equipment traveling around on that end. And most of the completed tanks were clustered in the other half, on the western end.

And the western end had a hill beyond it, less than half a kilometer beyond the razor-wire fence.

So that settled it. Blake couldn’t cover all of his bases. He’d just have to play the odds.

HE DROVE A DOZEN or more kilometers beyond the depot before turning off the road into open desert. It was a riskier move than he wanted; during the mid-afternoon, his vehicle and the plume of dust beyond it would be highly visible; from the air, it would probably be seen a dozen miles away.

But Blake saw no aircraft and he reflected on the fact that, because of its clandestine purpose, the Iranians had probably declared the depot and all the air space around it a no-fly zone, conveniently providing a cloak of invisibility for intruders such as him.

He found a stand of scrub vegetation next to some boulders and parked the Nissan there, leaving the keys under the lip of the rear bumper so he wouldn’t risk losing them. He left the rifle there as well; a man with a rucksack might be mistaken at a distance as a lost hiker, but a man with a rifle would be a target. Then he shouldered his rucksack and began hiking east.

The nearer he got to the hill, the more careful he became about his approach. When he reached its western edge, the sun was just about to touch the horizon, so he worked into a ravine, where he could be hidden, and drank a quart of water while he waited.

As always, he was astounded by the relative briefness of the desert dusk. An hour after the sun set, the stars were out, and virtually no gray remained in the sky behind him. He put on his night-vision goggles, switched them on, and surveyed the hill in front of him.

Were this a high-security area in a Western nation, Blake’s first concern would have been acoustical surveillance; miniature seismographs, networked together to register vibrations as light as a human footstep. Most American military reservations had them; in the better ones, the operators could distinguish between a coyote and fox running between their devices.

But the construction equipment Blake saw earlier made acoustical surveillance unlikely. The vibrations from a road grader or a bulldozer would carry through the ground for dozens of kilometers in all directions, making the listening devices impractical.

So he went about a third of the way up the shallow hill and then started working his way around it, not going any higher to avoid skylining himself to any watchers in the depot.

The hill was draped with ravines, which made the going slow, but increased Blake’s confidence. He had concealment less than fifty feet away from every point on his walk around the hill. Still, he walked slowly, kept low against the hill, and stopped every thirty seconds to listen. All he heard was the distant drone of an insect.

When he saw the fence-line of the depot, he began to move higher, but stopped more frequently, checking for watchers beneath the red-lamped hulks of the big fuel tanks. Twice with his night-vision goggles he saw guards walking rounds, also wearing NGVs, and he had to melt into a ravine until they were out of sight.

Finally, at about an hour past midnight, he reached the upper limb of a ravine, a place where he could see the sides of ten of the fuel tanks and the tops of another three. That made thirteen, and it made him think of the way the news anchor on one of the Virginia stations always called that number when announcing the lottery winners: “lucky number 13.” Blake didn’t give it much thought, because he didn’t believe in luck.

Using the darkness while he still had it, Blake got out his camo netting, rubbed it in the earth to get it dusty, and then spread it over his hide. He drank more water and used his range-finding binoculars to measure the distance to the various fuel tanks. All thirteen were within two-and-a-half kilometers, and the nearest one was less than half a kilometer away.

The placard dangling from the radio contained his call-sign, the incoming aircraft’s call sign, information on primary, secondary, and tertiary frequencies, instructions for using the headset and whisper—microphone, and a note that the lithium-ion batteries would provide full power for a minimum of eight hours. So he watched the depot until four in the morning, then he turned on the radio, trying the primary frequency. There was no static until he turned the squelch all the way down and even then it was minimal, so Blake kept the earset and its stubby boom mike plugged in, and continued his watch on the depot.

They arrived ninety minutes later, at half-past five: a long motorcade of dark SUVs, an armored personnel carrier at either end. Blake watched as they drove in from the distant sally port and was secretly relieved when they turned his way. Then he watched in amazement as the headlights kept coming until they pulled up adjacent to the nearest fuel tank, the one less than half a kilometer away.

In a few minutes the eastern sky would be so light that it would be risky to use binoculars; the lighter sky could throw a pale reflection against the glass and pinpoint Blake’s hide on the hill. But for a few minutes yet it was still safe, and he inspected the men who got out of the cars.

The third car back, he spotted him: short dark hair, pronounced jaw, thick lips, and scraggly beard. It was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Blake watched as he entered what appeared to be an inspection hatch on the near side of the gate. The Iranian president went in and he did not come out. He was followed five minutes later by a bearded, turbaned figure: Khameini—ayatollah, and Supreme Leader of Iran.

In ten minutes, only the drivers of the SUVs were left, and they departed in motorcade fashion again; the eastern sky was lightening and the fuel dump appeared to be nothing more than a fuel dump again.

The sky became gray and Blake used the rangefinder to measure the distance to the hatch the president of Iran and his entire security council had just disappeared through. The display showed him 421 meters.

Blake was almost positive the shock wave from a bunker-buster could do some pretty hefty damage at 421 meters.

He was just beginning to take down his camouflage netting when a pebble rolled down the hill.

Blake froze. Another pebble rolled down and he heard voices, laughter, and the distant squawk of a radio.

“So you boys think this hill is a good observation post as well,” Blake whispered. “Ain’t that inconvenient.”

He listened some more. The Iranian soldiers sounded like they were on the very summit, fifty meters higher than him and a good two hundred meters distant. It looked as if he could still do his job.

Blake thought about the note he’s sent to Alia: If there’s a way that’s humanly possible, I’ll come back to you.

That’s what he’d written. And there was a way that was possible. All he had to do was sit tight, let the window for the mission come and go, do nothing, and then walk out once the Iranian lookouts had left their hilltop post. That would get him home safe.

But that wasn’t what soldiers do.

Blake thought the scenario through again. A regular general-purpose bomb, like the old Mk 84, had a blast radius of 365 meters. A GBU-28—a bunker buster—was better than twice as heavy.

Then again, part of its energy was going to be absorbed by the hardened installation it was hitting. But Blake wasn’t about to kid himself; he knew he was going to get hurt in what was coming next.

Hurt, yes. But killed?

Blake thought of how he’d closed that note to Alia: Pray for me, sweetheart.

He hoped she was praying.

Blake uncased the laser designator, extending the back two of the tripod legs all the way, keeping the front one as short as it could go, and set it up on the side of the ravine. When he powered it up, it was noiseless, a black-on-green LCD power meter the only visible sign it was working.

Blake sighted on the hatch of the bogus fuel tank, pressed the designator button, and got a green light in the viewfinder: that and a confirmation that he was 421 meters away.

One of the distant Iranians began singing. He didn’t have all that good a voice.

Twenty minutes later, there was a crack in Blake’s headset.

“Evening star, morning star.”

Blake checked the laminated card on his radio; the call signs were correct. “Morning star, this is evening star.”

“Illuminate for function.” The voice was very passable English, but the accent was odd. It was almost as if someone was trying to sound Israeli.

“Illuminating now.” Blake pressed the switch on the laser designator.

“Good signal,” the pilot radioed. Now his voice sounded middle-European; a Russian Jew, Blake supposed. “Evening star, interrogative: what is your position relative to target?”

“Morning star, I am on a reciprocal heading of 268 true from target.”

There was a pause, then a response. “What is your distance?”

Blake hesitated, then responded, “Distance four-two-one meters.”

This time the response was immediate. “Evening star, you are too close. Move back.”

Blake put his hand over the boom mike, concerned the Iranians above would hear him. “Negative that. Enemy in area. Acknowledge drop is danger close. Proceed.”

A longer pause. “Are you sure?”

Blake flicked the switch on the laser designator to steady-on and took his hands away, keeping his eyes near the viewfinder, trying to see if he could lay flat in the minimal cover of the ravine. The crosshairs in the viewfinder began to move up the tank.

“Oh, man . . .” One hand on the designator, holding it steady, he pressed the transmit button on the radio. “Morning star, now or never. Enemy right on top of me. Pull the trigger, bud; it’s time.”

There was a fifteen-second pause, then the pilot radioed one last time: “Weapon away.”

For a full minute, nothing happened. Blake began to wonder if they’d dropped a dud. Then a garbage-can-size crater appeared just above the hatch on the tank, the tank bulged, and Blake could see a giant white bubble of super-compressed air rushing toward him. He released the designator and dropped, wishing gravity would work faster.

He never heard the explosion and never saw smoke or flame. There was pain throughout his upper body, as if the biggest, baddest dude in the whole world just hit him with a two-by-twelve, and after that, the universe went black.