The Enemy Within

CHAPTER 22 TARGET ACQUISITION

“Colonel Thorn?”

Peter Thorn stopped his pacing and turned abruptly at the sound of his name. He found himself facing a haggard, unhappy-looking man still wearing a surgical smock.

“My name is Doyle. I’m one of the trauma unit surgeons here. I understand you’re waiting for news about Agent Gray?”

Thorn nodded, holding his breath. He’d been besieging the medical center’s volunteers for information since the paramedics first wheeled Helen off the helicopter and straight into emergency surgery. After making an awkward call to her parents back in Indiana, he’d been left with nothing to do but stare at the pastel walls in the visitors’ lounge. Either that or to sit watching the clock as the hours ticked past.

He fought to control his voice and asked, “How is she?”

“Not good, Colonel,” Doyle said bluntly. He shook his head. “She suffered two very serious wounds. The first injury, the one to her femoral artery, was bad enough. We’ve repaired the artery after some pretty delicate vascular surgery. But she’d already lost a lot of blood and she was pretty shocky when she came in. Despite the units we’ve put into her, her blood pressure is still abnormally low.”

The surgeon frowned. “I think that’s from shock, but I want to monitor her very closely over the next several hours. If her pressure doesn’t start coming back up soon, that could be a sign of continued internal bleeding. I’d have to reopen her to make sure we didn’t miss anything the first time through.”

Thorn nodded grimly. He’d seen enough soldiers wounded in combat to know how dangerous shock could be. It was often the first killer. Helen had survived the first crisis point, but going back into surgery in her weakened state might be more than she could stand.

“Frankly, though, Colonel,” Doyle said slowly, almost reluctantly, “it’s Agent Gray’s second wound that worries me.”

The surgeon lowered his voice. “She took a 7.62 mm ricochet that shattered her pelvis. The impact pushed bone splinters and bullet fragments into her peritoneal cavity.” He spread his hands helplessly.

“So we’re looking at a severe risk of infection even a likelihood, I’d say. I’m starting her on a massive multi-antibiotic regime to fight that off, but it’ll be touch and go for the next forty-eight to seventy-two hours.”

“Christ.” Thorn closed his eyes in pain for a moment and then opened them. “Is that the worst of it?”

Doyle paused. “No, sir. I wish it was. You see, that second bullet struck very near the plexus of nerves at the base of her spine. If those nerves were irreparably damaged… well, she might never walk again.”

Thorn stood silent, afraid to trust his own voice. The thought of Helen, so alive and so graceful in every move permanently confined to a wheelchair was too terrible to contemplate. Finally, he croaked, “Can I see her?”

The surgeon shook his head firmly. “Not now, Colonel. She’s in intensive care and we have her sedated. Leave me a number where I can reach you and I’ll contact you as soon as a visit would be advisable.”

He reached out and put a hand on Thorn’s shoulder. “We’ll do our best for her, Colonel. I promise you that. She’s young and she’s strong. She has a fighting chance to pull through. That’s more than a lot of people who come in here start out with.”

Thorn nodded blindly, barely noticing when the other man left him. After his father’s long, losing battle with cancer, he’d shut part of himself off from others, preferring loneliness to vulnerability. But then, despite all his defences, Helen had found her way into his heart. What would he do if he lost her now? And if she lived, what would she do if she found herself reduced to a life so dependent on others?

“Colonel Thorn?” The young student volunteer’s hesitant contralto cut through his misery. “You’re wanted on the phone. It’s a priority call, sir.”

He took the portable telephone she offered him without comment.

“Thorn.”

“Pete, this is Joe Rossini.” He could hear the deep concern in the older man’s voice. “How’s Helen?”

Fear and sorrow gave his answer a harsh, monosyllabic character. “Not good. She may die. If she lives, she may not be able to walk.”

“Jesus, Pete. I’m sorry.” Rossini stopped for a second and then continued. “Maria and I will pray for her.”

“I’d appreciate it, foe.” Thorn had known that the Maestro and his wife were fairly devout Catholics. He’d always been something of a skeptic himself, but agnosticism was cold comfort now. Prayer might not help Helen, but it certainly could not hurt her. If he had ever needed to believe in the existence of a just and loving God, it was now.

“Have you been able to visit her?” Rossini asked gently.

“Not yet,” Thorn answered. “She’s in intensive care. From what one of the doctors just told me, it might be days before she’ll be out of danger.”

“You can’t stay there that long, Pete. Not now.”

“I know.” Thorn knew he had to set his personal anguish aside at least for the moment. The nation still faced a crisis, and Helen and her HRT teammates had put their lives on the line to obtain the information he and his analysts needed. His job now was to make sure their sacrifices hadn’t been in vain. “Has the Bureau turned up anything useful in that damned house yet?” “Some,” Rossini said guardedly. “Look, Pete… this isn’t really a secure line.”

“Hell. Sorry.” Thorn ran a hand across his weary eyes. He must be losing it to overlook something so elementary. He’d come dangerously close to blabbing classified information over the open airwaves.

From the first breathless television news bulletins he’d seen, Flynn had handled the situation perfectly. The FBI had sealed off the entire area around the terrorist safe house. No residents or media people were being allowed anywhere close by. The Bureau’s preliminary statements said only that its agents had surprised a suspected neo-Nazi group inside the house, and that there had been a prolonged firefight one in which all the terrorists were killed. Reporters were being told that the house itself had been utterly destroyed by fire either in a blaze set accidentally or tear-gas grenades or as part of a suicide pact by those trapped inside. They were also being told that all the bodies found inside the ruins were charred beyond easy identification.

There were still other terrorist cells operating in the United States, and Flynn was determined to conceal just how much information the FBI had been able to recover from the safe house.

“Sam Farrell wants you back pronto, though,” Rossini advised. “I’m told there’s a helo enroute to Walter Reed now.”

Though his sorrow remained, Thorn felt part of his Fatigue drop away. If the commander of the JSOC wanted him back at the Pentagon that badly, the information recovered in the raid on the terrorist hiding place must be pretty hot. “Understood, Maestro. I’m heading for the pad.”

Thorn scrambled down out of the helicopter and hurried toward the nearest entrance. Rossini was there waiting for him. Already briefed, the security guards and soldiers stationed at the doors passed the pair of them through with a minimum of fuss.

Thorn returned their salutes impatiently and glanced at the older man.

“How much have Flynn’s people been finding?”

To his relief, Rossini clearly understood that he needed to work right now more than he needed a sympathetic ear. The analyst started filling him in, limping slightly as he tried to keep up with the rapid pace Thorn set through the Pentagon’s corridors. “A lot. That place the HRT knocked over was a miniature armory. The FBI’s still cataloging all the weapons and explosives they found, but they’ve learned enough to tie the people inside to the press club bombing and those blown-down transmission towers for sure. The C4 and detonators match the traces left at both scenes.”

“What about the bodies?”

“No firm identification yet,” Rossini answered. “Two were clearly Caucasian. The other two could be either Hispanic or Middle Eastern in origin…”

“Some rabid, neo-Nazi group,” Thorn interrupted bitterly. “Those bastards were pros.”

“Uh-huh. Looks like our hunch was right,” the older man agreed. “Mike Flynn said pretty much the same thing. He’s having the bodies shipped to their D.C. lab for more detailed examination.”

Thorn nodded. The FBI’s forensics experts should be able to develop a fair amount of information about their dead terrorist John Does. Even if their fingerprints were not on file here or anywhere abroad, dental work and the evidence of old injuries or illnesses could provide useful clues as to their places of birth or prolonged residence. That level of forensics work would take time, however certainly days and probably weeks. He had been hoping the HRT raid would produce more immediate results. “Any documents or papers turn up?”

Rossini shrugged. “Several sets of false ID passports, driver’s licenses, even credit cards. All topnotch work.”

“Naturally.” Thorn started down the stairs leading to the Pentagon’s basement. “Nothing else, though?”

“Nothing on paper, Pete.” Rossini limped after him. “But the NSA’s still going over the laptop computer Helen found.”

“What?” Thorn stopped dead, narrowly avoiding a collision with the older man. “I thought that was destroyed. Flynn said one of the suspects blew it to hell with an AKM burst.”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Rossini said. He explained. “Apparently a round clipped the hard drive, but the NSA techs think they may still be able to recover some of the data it contained. They’re working on it now.”

Greg Paige, a gangly, twenty-something computer specialist in the NSA’s T Group, finished readying the damaged hard drive sent over by the FBI for his data retrieval attempt. Not a particularly difficult job, he thought with a mild trace of contempt for the cyber-challenged. A portable computer’s hard disk was less than three inches wide and barely an inch thick. It was also buried inside a concealing case. Wrecking the information a portable contained by hitting a target that small was staking more on luck than most people realised. And in this case, the shooter had not been lucky.

One round had utterly mangled the machine’s floppy drive and internal modem. Another had torn a gaping hole in the computer’s battery. But a third bullet had only scored the outer casing of the hard disk itself. The drive’s bearings and heads were completely undamaged. Finding out what it contained required little more than transferring the assembly to another machine and running a simple diagnostics program.

Humming a made-up tune off-key, Paige finished making the last cable connections and hit the power switch. He swung back to his keyboard as the new machine’s monitor blinked on.

“Piece of chocolate cream cake,” the NSA specialist mumbled to himself. He quickly scrolled through the hard disk’s directory, ignoring standard listings for off-the-shelf commercial word processing, communications, and accounting programs. If he didn’t find anything else more intriguing, he could always go back through those hunting for signs someone had buried other, less innocent pieces of code inside them.

As he had expected, a few of the disk’s sectors were damaged rendered unreadable when the bullet clipped its casing but most were fine.

Paige stopped scrolling when he reached a program whose name he did not recognise: BABEL.EXE. He shook his head in disbelief. “Well, well, well… how very cute.”

Someone the FBI was interested in had a very dry sense of humor.

He probed deeper into the program, summoning up its inner workings. Line after line appeared on the screen an intricate interweaving of complex algorithms clearly intended to turn plain text into meaningless gibberish and back again. Paige smiled. Pay dirt.

To make absolutely sure he was right, he fed one of the pieces of E-mail intercepted from CompuNet into the suspected program. Seconds later, a complete, plain-text message flashed onto his screen.

Paige read through the translated E-mail once in surprise and then a second time in growing horror. Still staring at his monitor, he reached out for the phone on his desk and punched in an internal number. “This is Greg Paige with Group T. I need to speak to the deputy director. Right away!”

The Pentagon Rossini poked his head into Peter Thorn’s office.. “Pete? I think you’d better come see this.” The Maestro sounded strained.

Thorn looked up from the investigative reports Flynn had faxed over from the terrorist safe house, slowly realising that he had been staring at them for minutes without really seeing them. His brain still seemed to be functioning at half-speed. Despite his determination to throw himself into his work, he was finding it difficult to focus on anything beyond Helen Gray. So far his hourly phone calls to Walter Reed had yielded little more than the news that she was still in critical condition and still in intensive care.

He made an effort to gather his scattered thoughts. “See what?”

“The NSA found the encryption program they were looking for on that computer Helen captured. They’re downloading the complete set of decoded E-mail from our terrorist friends into our database now.” Rossini looked almost ill. “It contains a damned ugly surprise.”

Thorn was on his feet instantly, following the older man next door into his cramped office.. “Show me.”

Rossini handed him a printout without comment. A time/date stamp at the top showed that it had been transmitted from London on October 12.

Thorn stared down at the printout in his hands in shock. Taleh? Amir Taleh had organised this terror campaign? The terrorists posing as American extremists were Taleh’s creatures? His friend was the man responsible for these atrocities against innocent civilians? The man ultimately responsible for Helen’s terrible injuries? The man whose actions might cost him the one person who meant more to him than anyone else in the world?

It was insane utterly unbelievable. How could the man who had been like a brother to him all those years ago be capable of such evil? How could Taleh have changed so much?

Thorn’s face darkened. Maybe Taleh had not changed after all. Perhaps the evil had always been inside him a core of malice hidden behind a mask of honor and friendship.

He crushed the sheet in his hands without thinking, caught up in cascading images of the past months. The Iranian had conducted a brilliant and cunning masquerade to conceal his true intentions. Taleh’s attacks on the HizbAllah, his push for renewed U.S.-lranian diplomatic relations, and even his offer to help track down the missing Bosnian terrorists all had been nothing more than a gigantic deception, a blindfold pulled over American eyes while he readied his organised butchery.

Thorn tossed the crumpled printout aside in sudden, blind fury. Clearly, he had been one of the Iranian’s favorite dupes a trusting conduit of disinformation to the highest reaches of America’s counterterrorist forces. His hands curled into fists. The bastard had used him. Taleh had asked him to come to Iran to renew their friendship and to seek new ties with America all the while plotting to use his old friend’s trust as a shield for this murderous campaign.

Brought face-to-face with the magnitude of the Iranian’s treachery, Thorn’s whole view of the world wavered. He was accustomed to making fast, accurate judgments about people and then trusting those judgments with his life. Taleh’s betrayal struck at the heart of his confidence, weakening his own faith in himself.

His breathing slowed as reason returned. The anger remained, but it was now an icy, calculating enmity.

Amir Taleh was obviously a man of hidden malice, but he was not a fool. The Iranian must have realized that the United States would eventually discover his nation’s responsibility for this terrorist offensive. No sane man could hope to keep so large an operation secret forever. He had to know the kind of awful vengeance that would descend on Iran’s head once his duplicity became clear.

Peter Thorn stood motionless in Rossini’s office, staring at nothing while his mind grappled with questions that seemed to have no rational answer. Why would Taleh involve himself and his country in this slaughter? What could he possibly gain that would make the inevitable price worth paying?

It was well past midnight.

Thorn and Rossini sat on opposite sides of a desk piled high with maps, satellite photos, transcripts of intercepted Iranian military communications, and reports published by a dozen different U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies. Some of the data came from the files pulled together earlier that year by the Maestro’s tiny team trying to track down those first rumors of Bosnian Muslim terrorists. More had been scraped up by JSOC–ILU researchers held long after normal hours and sent out to scour the Pentagon’s voluminous databases. After reading through Taleh’s E-mail to his terrorist teams, Thorn had put the entire unit on a de facto war footing.

Both men were exhausted, but neither of them was willing to break for sleep. Their growing certainty that Taleh had something else up his sleeve something even worse than the terrorist campaign drove them onward.

Thorn put down the fragmentary telecommunications intercept he’d been studying, pulled a map of Iran closer to him, and scrawled a hasty note on the map next to one of the Iranian Army’s garrison cities.

Rossini looked up from his own pile of papers. “Another one?”

“Yeah.” Thorn slid the intercept across to the older man. “One of our VORTEX satellites picked up part of a conversation between the commander of the 25th Parachute Brigade and one of his battalion COs. They’re going to full readiness all leaves canceled, extra practice jumps, full equipment draw. The works.”

“Jesus.” Rossini scanned the sheet quickly and then eyeballed the map Thorn had been working on. “There’s a hell of a lot of movement going on over there, Pete.”

Thorn nodded. Although the picture of recent Iranian military activity they’d been putting together was by no means complete, it was increasingly ominous. Significant portions of more than six elite Iranian divisions were either in motion or preparing to move somewhere. Air and naval units scattered across the Islamic Republic were also being brought to higher states of alert.

So far, no one else in the U.S. defense and intelligence communities had spotted the full scope of the Iranian maneuvers. That was understandable. Viewed in isolation, the various clues and bits of evidence meant very little. Few analysts were in a position to see all of the information gathered by America’s satellites, signals intercept stations, and spies. Lulled by Taleh’s phony U.S.-lran detente and immobilised by the terrorist attacks at home, nobody in authority had paid much attention to the tiny warning bells going off.

“Colonel? Maestro? You got a minute?” Mike McFadden came bustling in, clearly excited.

“What’ve you got, Mike?” Thorn asked.

“This just came down the wire from Langley. It’s a summary of the latest Satcom transmission from that Afghan truck driver, ‘Stone.’ ” The young, red-haired analyst held out a two-page color fax with blue stripes running down one side of the cover sheet. The stripes indicated the fax contained information from a CIA agent. “He just reported the final destination for the Iranian 12th Infantry Division and most of the other convoys.”

“And?”

McFadden stabbed a finger down on the map in front of Thorn. “They’re moving to Bushehr!”

Bushehr? Thorn stared at the map. Why Bushehr?

Suddenly, the data they’d been accumulating bit by bit began falling into place with dizzying speed.

“My God,” he said softly. He turned to Rossini. “I’m going to see Sam Farrell.”

The older man looked confused. “Why?”

“To make sure he demands an immediate emergency meeting of the National Security Council.”

“To do what, exactly?”

Thorn showed his teeth in a grim, bitter smile. “To persuade the President and the NSC that we have to kill General Amir Taleh before he kills us.”

The White House Situation Room was packed to the rafters. The President and his Secretaries of State and Defense sat around a long rectangular table flanked by the Directors of the CIA and the FBI, the Attorney General, the National Security Advisor, and the uniformed Joint Chiefs of Staff. Notepads, pens, and glasses of ice water were precisely squared away in front of each man and woman at the table, along with briefing books hastily prepared for this meeting. Chairs lining the walls were filled by civilian and military aides.

“Major General Farrell, is your officer ready to brief us?” The President’s familiar voice sliced through the buzz of uneasy speculation and concern. Word of Tehran’s complicity in the wave of terrorism had already swept through the administration’s upper circles like wildfire. So far, the threat of prosecution for leaking classified information had kept it away from the media. That and the realisation that revealing the information prematurely would shatter an administration that had rested so much of its reputation on the mistaken assumption the terrorists they were fighting were homegrown radicals.

“Yes, sir,” Farrell nodded. He glanced at Thorn. “You’re on, Pete.”

Thorn appreciated the symmetry of Farrell’s decision to let him conduct the brief. He had played an unwitting role in Amir Taleh’s diabolically clever deception plan. Now he was being given an opportunity to make amends by punching a hole through the tissue of lies surrounding Iran’s true objective.

He rose from his chair and moved to the plain wood lectern at the front of the room. Its raised front concealed an array of buttons, knobs, and switches that gave the briefer control over the room’s computer-driven displays.

By rights the concentrated gaze of the most powerful political and military leaders in the United States should have made him nervous. Instead, he felt nothing beyond the same cold anger that had filled him since he first learned of Taleh’s treachery.

“Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Colonel Peter Thorn, and I command the JSOC’s Intelligence Liaison Unit. This briefing is based on satellite photography, signals intercepts, and on human intelligence from CIA assets inside Iran much of it received over the past seventy-two hours,” he began in a quiet, confident voice. “By now you all know that General Amir Taleh, the Chief of Staff of Iran’s armed forces, is the prime mover of this terrorist campaign directed against us.”

Heads nodded around the table, some of them impatiently. This was old news by Washington standards. Most of them had read the intercepted dispatches proving that the terror groups operating in the United States were receiving their orders from the military high command in Tehran.

“What you do not know,” Thorn continued firmly, “is the reason we believe General Taleh has committed his country to such a risky course of action.”

He tapped a button on the lectern. The large video monitor behind him came on, showing a map of the Persian Gulf region. Blinking symbols on the display showed Iran’s armed forces in motion.

“As you can see,” Thorn said flatly, “a sizable fraction of Iran’s conventional military forces are on the move. These forces include Tehran’s most elite divisions and its most sophisticated ships and aircraft. Although the Iranians are making significant efforts to conceal the full scope of this sudden mobilisation, we now know that the majority of these units are heading here to Bandar-e Bushehr.” He touched another bunon, highlighting the port city.

Thorn paused briefly to let the President and his advisors take in the vast size of the Iranian buildup and then went on. “Put bluntly, Mr. President, Taleh’s open diplomatic lures toward us and his covert terrorist campaign here have all been nothing but a smoke screen a calculated and successful effort to conceal Iran’s true objective for as long as possible. He has been buying the time he needs to complete these massive military preparations.”

“And what exactly is this man’s real aim, Colonel Thorn?” the President asked. His eyes were still fixed on the outlined port of Bushehr.

Thorn answered him quietly but with absolute conviction. “General Taleh is preparing to conduct a major amphibious operation across the Persian Gulf within the next seven to ten days. He intends to invade Saudi Arabia.”

There were gasps around the crowded table and throughout the room.

“Surely that’s not possible!” the President exclaimed, clearly stunned. His eyes roamed around the Situation Room, seeking someone, anyone, who would contradict such a dire prediction.

“On the contrary, Mr. President. Such an operation is not only feasible it is likely to succeed,” Thorn cut in decisively. He was determined not to offer any excuse for inaction or delay. “Taleh has systematically strengthened Iran’s armed forces. Their weapons are better. Their maintenance and supply units are better. Most important of all, the Iranian officer corps is more professional and more capable than at any time since the fall of the Shah. Iran is once again a major military power in the Gulf region.”

“Hold on, Colonel,” the Secretary of Defense, a quiet, scholarly man, protested. “Aren’t you jumping to conclusions prematurely? Isn’t it possible that these Iranian troop movements indicate a possible offensive against Iraq and not against Saudi Arabia?”

“No, sir,” Thorn said. “First, Iran’s elite divisions and Air Force units are moving away from its land border with Iraq and there are no signs of any higher alert these. Second, why would General Taleh conduct a murderous campaign of terrorism on our own soil simply to distract us from a planned attack against Baghdad?”

Silence greeted that. Although no one welcomed the thought of another war, few could doubt that Washington or its allies would strenuously object to seeing the Gulf region’s two most powerful and troublesome states again entangled in conflict. The same could not be said of Saudi Arabia. The vast oil reserves controlled by the House of Saudi were vital to the world’s developed economies and to U.S. national security.

“What about the Saudi armed forces?” an aide asked aloud. “They’re well equipped. Can they defeat this Iranian invasion on their own if we warn them in time?”

Thorn shook his head grimly. “Not a chance! Most of the Saudi troops are deployed in the north against Iraq, around Riyadh guarding the Royal Family, or as security forces for the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Even if they could be redeployed in time, their military value would be nil.”

The military men inside the Situation Room nodded. Saudi Arabia’s armed forces had performed reasonably well during DESERT STORM after intensive retraining by American advisors. Since then, however, the Saudis had slipped back to their older, more slipshod methods of operation. Much of their high-tech weaponry was out of commission, awaiting repair. Once ashore, Iran’s revitalised divisions could slice through the weak Saudi Army practically without breaking stride.

“If this is all true, then clearly we must deploy our own forces to the Gulf… as a deterrent,” Austin Brookes, the Secretary of State, said. He looked horribly depressed. Thorn knew that the successful rapprochement with Iran had been one of his cherished projects. The public revelation that it had been nothing more than a ruse in an undeclared war would finish the elderly man’s career as the nation’s chief diplomat. It would also rob him of any hope of future reputation.

“We simply have no other choice.”

There wasn’t time to deploy a sufficient force to Saudi Arabia. Even using the propositioned equipment stockpiled in Kuwait, it would take at least four days to put a lone mechanised brigade in the region. Additional forces would take far longer to arrive. U.S. aircraft could be on the ground at Saudi airfields in forty-eight hours but it would take far more time to move the munitions, ground crews, and spare parts required to conduct a prolonged campaign against the revamped Iranian Air Force. Once the Iranian invasion actually began, all U.S. troop movement bets were off. The ports and airfields needed by arriving American reinforcements were bound to be among Taleh’s first targets.

“Even if we had enough time, Mr. Secretary, it would be impossible for us to conceal the signs of a major military move into Saudi Arabia,” Thorn added flatly. “And that could easily trigger the very thing we are attempting to prevent an Iranian invasion. Taleh’s preparations are so advanced that he can launch his attack on virtually a moment’s notice.”

At Farrell’s quiet signal, he stood back from the lectern, listening as the discussion grew more and more heated, and more and more desperate. The level of rancor did not surprise him. Clearly, the President and his national security team were all too aware that they faced a political and military disaster. Command of the Saudi oil reserves would give Tehran a potential stranglehold over the global economy. Catapulted to status as the most powerful Islamic nation in the world, Iran would be free to smash its foes and reward its friends at will. Decades of diplomacy and the careful application of American military force would be erased in the blink of an eye. The West would face its ultimate nightmare: a powerful Islamic alliance dominated by one able and ambitious man, Amir Taleh.

He kept his eye on Sam Farrell. The head of the JSOC had a fine sense of timing and the ability to navigate smoothly through troubled political waters. Both men had agreed on the only possible course of action before the meeting began.

And both men knew the first hurdle would come in persuading their superiors to take the high-stakes gamble needed to stop Taleh’s invasion before it got off the ground.

After the futile wrangling had lasted for several minutes, he caught a tiny nod of Farrell’s head. Thorn mentally crossed his fingers. It was time to pitch his plan.

“We have only one viable option, Mr. President,” he broke in suddenly.

“We must launch a special forces operation aimed at destroying the Iranian high command before Taleh and his generals can strike. Taleh is the focus of political and military power inside Iran. He is also the mind controlling the terror offensive in our own nation. Kill him and the Iranians will be disorganised even vulnerable.”

Heads swung his way. Most of the men and women around the table were clearly astonished by his abrupt suggestion. A few, those with a better understanding of Iranian politics, looked thoughtful.

“If we’re lucky,” Thorn continued forcefully, “eliminating Iran’s top military leaders will force them to abandon their invasion plans. Even at worst, it should sow enough confusion to buy us the time we need to strengthen Saudi Arabia’s defences.”

Austin Brookes stared at him, clearly appalled by his proposal. “You cannot be serious, Colonel!” The Secretary of State turned to the President. “Surely, sir, no responsible government can support a plan to assassinate its foreign rivals? Our own laws clearly prohibit killing rival heads of state. Such conduct would be infamous!”

Infamous conduct! Thorn thought angrily. What the hell did Brookes consider the murder of American women and children? Still on the rising crest of his anger, he rode roughshod over the older man’s objections.

“Taleh is not Iran’s official head of state. He’s a military leader and a legitimate target in time of war. And that, Mr. Secretary, is exactly what we’re facing here a war.”

Brookes sat back, pale and clearly flustered at being contradicted so abruptly by someone so much his junior.

No one around the table jumped to the Secretary of State’s defence. Thorn realised suddenly that most of the senior people in this administration were old hands at reading the prevailing winds. They could sense the growing sentiment in favor of eliminating Amir Taleh. It was the only course of action that offered any hope of avoiding the catastrophe he had so vividly conjured.

The Chief of Naval Operations spoke up strongly. “The colonel is dead right, Mr. President. We have to wipe out this General Taleh and his top aides.”

Then he shook his head. “But he’s wrong about the means, Mr. President. Putting Delta Force troops on the ground inside Tehran is far too dangerous. Too many things could go wrong. Too many American lives would be at risk.” The admiral leaned forward so that the room lights gleamed off his balding pate. “We hold a decisive technological superiority over Iran. I suggest we play to our strengths, not to our weaknesses. I say we leave the job of crippling their high command to a massive, time-on-target, Tomahawk attack, followed by air strikes using precision-guided munitions.”

The Air Force’s Chief of Staff nodded his agreement with the admiral’s proposal. “We can put together a strike package that should blow the hell out of this Taleh’s headquarters within seventy-two hours, Mr. President.”

To Thorn’s relief, Sam Farrell intervened. In a clash of brass on brass, the JSOC chief’s general’s stars carried more weight than the eagles on his own shoulders.

“Blowing apart a building is not the same thing as killing a man, sir,” Farrell said. He turned to the others grouped around the table.

“During DESERT STORM, we used hundreds of Tomahawks and laser-guided bombs in an effort to kill Saddam Hussein. We failed.”

They nodded their understanding. America’s air war and lightning land campaign against Iraq’s dictator had driven his forces out of Kuwait. But it had not killed him or driven him from power.

“No, sir.” The head of the JSOC shook his head grimly.

“The only way we can be sure we’ve eliminated Taleh and his top aides is to root them out on the ground up close and personal. Anything short of certainty means risking the loss of the Saudi oil fields to invasion.”

Farrell turned his gaze on the President. “My troops have trained hard for just this kind of mission, sir. They know the risks. They can do the job. Just say the word, and we’ll start moving!”

The President nodded slowly, looking far older than his years. While his top aides sat fidgeting, he studied the blinking symbols on the electronic map in silence, apparently hunting for other, less risky options. That was understandable. If the Delta Force failed, the repercussions and resulting casualties would tear his administration apart. But the risks of inaction were even more appalling.

Finally, he shook his head. Something about the set of his shoulders told Thorn that he had made up his mind.

The President turned to Thorn and Farrell. “All right, gentlemen,” he said hoarsely. “Draw up your plan for a Delta Force raid on Tehran! But I want to see it before I make a final decision.”

Before Thorn could protest any further delay, Farrell caught his eye and shook his head slightly. He sat back. The general seemed satisfied by what they had accomplished. Presumably, the older man knew enough about the way this White House worked to be confident the President would approve their final plan.

Thorn just hoped the JSOC commander’s confidence was justified. They were already pushing the outer edge of the time envelope for planning, organising, and carrying out a large-scale commando attack.

He paid little attention to the meeting’s closing formalities. His mind was already far, far away wrestling with the challenge of inserting a strike force deep into the heart of an enemy country.

A medley of raised voices around the room contradicted door. Thorn recognised Jefferson T. Corbell, the administration’s political guru, from news photos. The small Georgian snorted. “Well, I guess you and General Farrell won your point, Colonel. You mind telling me just who you think will lead this suicide mission?”

Thorn did not hesitate. “I will, Mr. Corbell.”