Deathrace

31

General Reza Ruhollah stared at the colonel who had commanded this facility until the heathens attacked it. General Ruhollah was in no mood to tolerate traitors.

"Colonel, I relieved you of your command here. I restricted you to your quarters. What are you doing in my office?"

"I must protest, General Ruhollah. My men have been subjected to your illegal orders. My guard troops have been sent into the field without proper rations. You have ordered my subordinates to rebuild the assembly plant, but have given them no resources."

"Colonel, I'm telling you one more time to keep your mouth shut. Not one more word."

"I still must protest, General Ruhollah. My men have been slaughtered at the hands of a well-equipped military force. I ask that adequate protection be given-" The Colonel stopped.

General Ruhollah lifted a German-made machine pistol and fired six rounds into the Colonel's chest. He slammed backward, hit the wall, slid down, and died as he lay on the floor, his eyes still wide in total disbelief.

Two aides rushed into the room. "Get this trash out of my office and clean up the mess. I have to call for more troops. Quickly now."

General Ruhollah went back to his desk. He picked up the phone and was soon asking for more reinforcements from Shiraz and Bandar-e Bushehr.

"You can have two thousand troops here within eight hours," he stormed on the phone. "I don't need authorization from Tehran. I'm ordering you to send those troops to Chah Bahar this morning, and have them here before dark. Get them moving, combat-ready, with three days of ammunition and rations. Move them now."

He hung up and made another call similar in nature to the Army Commander at Bandar-e 'Abbas, which was much closer. He demanded the troops be on hand by four that afternoon. When he hung up, an aide came in the room.

"General, there is an aircraft landing at the small field. It may be the Army Supreme Commander. It is the same kind of two-engine turboprop plane he usually uses."

"Thank you, Major. Meet him, and see that he's brought here at once with all normal courtesy."

The General sat back and smiled. He would show his one superior in the Iranian Army the damage, his moves so far, and his plans for stopping the attacking force before it could reach the coast.

He would have nearly a thousand troops on hand before dark. They would be deployed at the end of every road leading into the mountains around Chah Bahar. He would throw in as blocking units all he could find. He would continue to drop in twelve-man paratroop teams to block all normal avenues south. He would use the jets from Bandar-e 'Abbas to search for and harass any movement they heard about.

The enemy force was still a mystery. It had wiped out all but three men on the first patrol he sent out. Twenty-seven men dead, two of the escapees wounded. It was a potent force he was following. He must do everything he could to Stop it.

He was sure that General Shahr would agree. The devils must be hunted down, and slaughtered, then their nationality broadcast to the world as invaders and murderers of the lowest order. It had to be a Western power, but which one? Perhaps it was Israel; they were tricky and deadly.

He heard a car pull up outside his office and stood, straightened his tie, and brushed off his uniform. He looked at the wall and floor where the Colonel had fallen. All signs of the blood had been cleaned up.

As the door opened, he stood and snapped a salute.

"General Shahr, good morning. If I had known you were coming, I would have had a fitting welcome for you."

General Shahr was short and heavy. He wore five stars on his shoulders, and a scowl on his face.

"This nuclear plant, this bomb making — why didn't I know anything about it?"

"My General, I was simply following orders of our honored President and some of his highest advisors. I am only their active tool to get the project completed."

"And you have failed miserably. Even now I understand you draw in our troops to find the attackers. Why can't our half million troops track down this band of saboteurs you estimated at no more than twenty?"

"They are professionals, General. Deadly, deceptive, experts at concealment. We will find them. By nightfall we will have them blocked off from the sea. They can't go through Pakistan. We will close the circle and slaughter them to a man."

"You will have no more part in the battle, Ruhollah."

He froze in place when he heard his superior disregard his title and use only his name. It was a sign that all was not well.

"You have deceived your superiors, you have conspired behind my back to seize this power and, with it, control Iran and all of the peninsula, and most of Islam. For that you are a traitor to Iran, and you must pay the price."

General Shahr took a revolver from his waistband and shot General Ruhollah twice in the chest. Ruhollah slumped to the floor, both hands holding the holes in his chest. He looked up at his commanding officer and started to say something.

General Shahr shot him in the head, and General Ruhollah slammed to the floor, blood pooling beside his head and running down to the stars of his rank on his shoulder.

General Shahr nodded, called in his men to remove the body, then settled down to the situation map on the wall, and began making phone calls.

Ruhollah was an idiot to think he could get away with this. He had been monitored all the way. As soon as the project was a success, Ruhollah would have been eliminated, and the Army would have taken the credit. He would have ousted the President, and overruled the Ayatollah, and he, General Shahr, would have ruled two-thirds of the Arab world with his bombs, and the threat of his bombs.

Now they were set back at least two years, and he knew they would be monitored closely by the foreign powers. Still it could be done with total secrecy, and with an underground facility. He had plans for it already.

He turned back to the map. If he were a military force running for safety, exactly where would he go after heading south? Continue on that way, divert to the east and slip through the porous border with Pakistan, or sit, and wait for some kind of an air rescue? Any of the three were possible. He reached for the phone to check on the nearby bases and see if they had been alerted. It would be a busy afternoon.