The Ares Decision

75

Jon Smith adjusted his stiff legs into a slightly less uncomfortable position on the hard ground. They were 180 miles northeast of Farrokh’s training camp, and the last quarter of the trip had been done on horseback. Quiet and efficient in the torturous terrain, granted, but a mode of transportation he’d last employed at his fifth-birthday party.

He swept the tripod-mounted night-vision scope slowly, taking in the double chain-link fence, the guard towers, the machine-gun placements. Worse, though, was what he didn’t see: a building. The entire bioweapons lab was underground — deep underground if Farrokh’s intelligence was right.

There was a stone outcropping at the center of the heavily defended perimeter, and he could see a smooth gray section set into it. Steel doors about twenty feet square and of unknown thickness. It was hard to imagine a worse scenario that didn’t actually involve giant alien robots.

“You still haven’t been able to get a schematic of the facility?” he said quietly. They were lying in the rock-strewn sand a mile east of the fence. Getting any closer would demand military skills his companion lacked.

“I’m afraid not,” Farrokh replied.

“Old building permits? Architectural plans? Inspection reports?”

“The information blackout is absolute. In some ways, too absolute. It was the sudden disappearance of all information relating to this place that first led us here.”

The towers and the outer fence looked new and haphazardly constructed of local materials. The apparent shoddiness, though, was an illusion — the result of the Iranians’ trying not to erect structures that would create a pattern that could be identified from above.

Smith adjusted the scope again, focusing on the base of the easternmost of two towers protecting the entrance. Even though he knew exactly where to look, it was an impressive thirty seconds before his eye picked up movement.

Peter Howell and an even older retired Iranian special forces operator had spent the last five hours beneath a dirty piece of canvas, inching their way toward the facility’s outer defenses. They’d finally made it to the top of the low berm that was their objective and Smith heard the vibration of the phone on Farrokh’s hip. The Iranian looked down at it for a moment and then held it out so Smith could read the text on the screen.

Ditch. 2Ms deep 4Ms wide. bridge booB trapped.

He’d suspected as much but had been hoping for a little luck. Any assault that attempted to breach anywhere but the main entrance would get trapped and cut to pieces by the machine guns in the towers.

“So it’s through the front door or not at all,” Farrokh said.

Smith nodded in the darkness but couldn’t help thinking that the most likely scenario was not at all. There was no way for an adequate force to approach without being seen for miles and no way to avoid stopping on the bridge, which was apparently rigged to blow at the first sign of trouble.

Farrokh punched in a brief response and then returned to his spotting scope as Smith rolled onto his back and looked up at a sky full of stars. He wondered if Sarie was still alive. If she was in that bunker.

“What can you bring to the party, Farrokh?”

“Fifty good men willing to die for what they believe in.”

And that was exactly what his green troops would do if they went up against battle-tested soldiers in an entrenched position.

“Artillery?”

“No. We have some explosives, but no way to deliver them other than by hand.”

“What about technology? Can we cut communications to the facility?”

“No, they’re using satellite and there’s no practical way for us to jam the signal.”

“What about power?”

“There are no lines in, so it must be generated on-site.”

Smith let out a long breath. This wasn’t an operation that could be done by half measures. Breaching the security and then not finishing things created the possibility of the parasite escaping. If they got in, the place had to be sterilized. And Sarie van Keuren had to be either retrieved or eliminated.

“You need to let me talk to my people, Farrokh. We might have enough information to convince them to enter Iranian airspace. We have bunker busters that—”

“Out of the question. I will not use the American military against my country.”

“I am the American military.”

“A bit different, wouldn’t you say?”

“Millions of lives are at stake, Farrokh. This isn’t a—”

“What if you had known for a fact that the Iraqis didn’t have weapons of mass destruction? Would you have helped the Iraqi air force cross your border and destroy your military bases in order to stop an invasion that has spread death and misery throughout the region? We have fifty men willing to die at my order, Colonel. Nothing more.”

Smith rolled onto his stomach again, fantasizing about slamming a rock into the back of the Iranian’s head and taking his phone. Unfortunately, he’d noticed him entering a PIN to unlock it with every use and he hadn’t been able to determine what that PIN was.

“You’re the boss, Farrokh. Call Howell and your man back. I want to be well clear of here before the sun comes up.”

The Iranian punched in another text and a few moments later the phone vibrated with a response.

nt yt. got idea. gnteed fun 4 all.