The Ares Decision

78

The truck fishtailed in a bog of deep sand, causing the canvas at the back to flutter open. Through it, Peter Howell could see a similar vehicle close behind, straining to keep up. It’d be a miracle if it made it. Or, perhaps more accurately, it would be a miracle if any of them made it.

He pulled the canvas closed again and scanned the faces of the men crammed in among the sandbags used to make the truck heavier. The stoicism and laser-like focus he’d found so comforting in the SAS were completely absent. Every expression told a different story: hatred — for him, for the British in general, for the Iranian government. Fear. Self-doubt.

A rousing pep talk was probably in order, but since only a few of the men spoke English, it probably wouldn’t have much impact. Instead, he peered out a small hole cut in the canopy, squinting into the sun at the approaching guard towers. There was one on either side of the entry gate, each armed with a well-placed machine gun and manned by soldiers he suspected were far more seasoned than any of his boys — many of whom were now enjoying what would be the last few minutes of their short lives.

Their driver, a rock-solid former special ops man named Hakim, began to brake. They’d done no fewer than fifty live-fire simulations, and Howell was pleased to see the young men around him begin to check their rifles as they’d been taught.

When the truck bumped up onto the concrete bridge, he returned to the peephole. One of the two soldiers in the guardhouse cautiously approached the driver’s door while the other made his way to the back. Howell had no idea what Hakim was saying, but the bored irritation in his voice sounded spot-on over the grinding gears of the truck rolling up behind.

Howell pulled out a silenced.22 pistol, frowning down at it as he listened to the approaching footsteps of the guard. A knife would have been more appropriate for the situation, but Smith, who was in the other truck with Farrokh, had been concerned that it could end up being messy enough to spook their green troops.

The canvas rustled as the guard untied it, and Howell carefully raised the pistol. No need to rush — it would take a moment for the man’s eyes to adjust, and if Hakim was as convincing as he sounded, there would be no reason for anyone to expect trouble.

Howell waited until the flap was fully thrown back, reaching out casually with one hand while using the other to put a round neatly through the man’s eye.

The low-caliber and elaborate silencer combined to produce almost no sound at all, and Howell guided the limp body over the gate. After an inexcusable second-and-a-half pause, two of his men pulled the corpse inside.

The driver of the second vehicle gave a subtle nod through the windshield to indicate that no one yet realized what was happening. The trade-off to putting the machine-gun towers in an ideal position to create a cross fire on the bridge was that their line of sight was blocked by the trucks’ canopies.

Howell wiped a streak of blood from the gate and helped one of his men to the ground. They’d taken photos of the soldiers in the guard shack and had reasonably convincing doubles for both of them, right down to uniforms hand-sewn by the women in Farrokh’s training camp.

The young man did himself proud, walking casually to the window of the driver behind them as Howell climbed out and unloaded a few more of his people. Smith would be doing the same, getting his team into position by the rear wheels.

Howell gave the frightened men next to him the thumbs-up, then calmly stepped out into the open and began firing on the west machine-gun placement. The surviving guard clawed for his sidearm, but Hakim dropped him with a pistol shot before slamming the accelerator to the floor and leaving Howell and his men completely exposed.

As expected, the first volley from the tower guns went wide as the soldiers manning them tried to make the adjustment from boredom to combat. It was obviously not the first time they’d been under fire, though, and it didn’t take them long to realize what Howell already knew: the design and construction of the towers made them completely impervious to the small arms that Farrokh’s fledgling army had access to.

In his peripheral vision he saw Smith and his team concentrating their fire on the other tower and Hakim ramming the gate. The truck managed to get through but then went up on two wheels and teetered for a few moments before tipping on its side. The Iranian tried to crawl through the window but made it only halfway before a sniper from a tower along the facility’s western perimeter blew most of his neck away.

The young man a few feet to Howell’s right was caught in the side by a round from the machine gun, and the Brit dove toward the truck still stopped on the bridge, a loud grinding coming from the transmission as the driver tried to force it into gear.

The gunners in the towers were gaining confidence, and with it came accuracy. Another man went down, and Howell saw Smith running, barely staying ahead of a steady stream of bullets knocking loose chunks of concrete behind his heels.

Inside the shattered gate, men were pouring out of the back of the capsized truck, ducking behind it to stay out of the sniper’s sights but leaving them defenseless if the tower gunners should decide to turn on them.

The sound of the truck behind him going into gear rose above the drone of the machine guns, and he rolled out of the way as it started forward, taking heavy fire.

“Blow the bridge, you bloody idiots!” Howell said to himself as he fell in behind the vehicle.

As if they’d heard him, a sudden, searing blast knocked him to the still-intact concrete.

Dazed, he did his best to focus on the east tower, watching it sway for a moment before tipping toward the one on the other side of the bridge.

“Hakim, you beautiful bastard,” Howell said when the structures collided and the machine guns went silent.

During their reconnaissance, they’d moved the charges meant to take out the bridge to the base of the tower. Hakim had spent most of his career attached to an elite demolition unit and personally guaranteed that the tower would fall exactly like it had. Of course, Howell hadn’t believed it. How often did things actually go to plan once the shooting started?

The second truck was inside the perimeter now, picking up speed as it closed on an enormous steel door set into a rock outcropping. Howell ran to the east edge of the bridge and fell into a prone position above Smith, who was dug in at the lip of the protective moat.

The vehicle was up to at least forty when it hit, the impact setting off charges hidden beneath the floorboards. It was impossible to tell if the door had been breached, but Howell silently saluted the dead driver’s courage as he flipped the lens cover off his scope.

“What am I looking for?” he shouted.

“Towers at nine o’clock and three o’clock are active,” Smith yelled back. “There are men coming in from the north trying to get an angle on our guys in the overturned truck.”

Howell peered through the scope, finally catching a glimpse of movement along the west fence line. He squeezed off a round and winged the first of six men running for the cover of a boulder about 150 yards away.

“Oh, and Peter?” he heard Smith say as he searched for another viable target. “It’s good to see you still breathing.”