The Enemy Within

CHAPTER 24 MOVEMENT TO THE OBJECTIVE

Iran’s submarine force sortied out of Bandar-e Abbas well after dusk on a moonless, cloudy night. Three black, seventy-meter-long shapes slid quietly past the blinking buoys that marked the main channel. One after the other, as soon as they cleared the harbor area, the diesel boats submerged and went to periscope depth.

Followed by her consorts, the lead submarine, Taregh, crept almost due south through the shallow Gulf waters. She was an ultra-quiet, Kilo-class boat, originally designed and built by the Soviets, and purchased for hard currency from the shrinking, cash-poor Russian fleet. Her forty-five-man crew was the best in the Iranian Navy.

Once he was satisfied that they were safely enroute and free of any shadowers, Taregh’s captain picked up the annunciator microphone.

“Attention to orders.”

He ignored the significant looks and whispers among his control room crew. “We have been assigned an extended exercise one which may last several weeks.

“Our mission is a simple one. We will take station in the Gulf of Oman and begin patrolling, maintaining silent status. Once on station, we will track all ships encountered, especially warships and foreign submarines. I know each man aboard will do his best. That is all.”

In truth, the captain doubted any man aboard believed they were out on only a simple practice run. For two days before they sortied, working parties had sweated around the clock loading provisions and advanced torpedoes. Backed up by hired Russian technicians, the submarine’s officers and senior ratings had run countless tests double-checking every critical propulsion, sonar, and weapons control system aboard the boat. Those extra efforts and the extraordinarily tight security around the Bandar-e Abbas Naval Base were clear evidence of something serious in the wind and water.

The reality was so daunting that the captain wished he could share it openly with his men. Right now, only he, his executive officer, and the submarine’s departmental heads knew their full orders.

Part of what he had said was true. They were heading for a box-shaped patrol area just outside the Strait of Hormuz. And they would indeed be tracking enemy warships. However, his instructions also required him to come up to listening depth at regular intervals. Once he received a specific coded radio signal, the boat’s mission would change dramatically: Taregh would sink all Western warships in its patrol zone. Its sister submarines had similar orders. Together they were expected to lay a deadly barrier across the entrance to the Persian Gulf.

The captain felt a small shiver run up his spine at the thought of actual combat. Any new submarine with untested officers and crew was like an unfired clay pot. The fire might harden it, but some pots cracked in the flames.

Then he shrugged. It would be as God willed it. In any case, all the advantages were his. Taregh was ideally suited to hide undetected in these shallow waters and she would have complete surprise. The first enemy vessel to die would know of his intentions only when a torpedo tore into its hull.

Suddenly, he was eager for the go code.

Just after midnight, the passenger ferry Chamran slipped through the channel between Lavan Island and the rugged Iranian coastline, steaming north through the darkness with its running lights off. Five miles off her port bow, two armed Boghammer speedboats belonging to the Iranian Navy cruised back and forth in a patrol pattern ready to shoo away unauthorised vessels intruding in what was now an unannounced restricted sea zone. There were more passenger ships requisitioned by the Iranian Navy at sea, some ahead of the Chamran and some behind all moving north toward Bushehr, all at fairly regular intervals.

One hundred and fifty miles above the Gulf, an American KH-12 spy satellite passed almost directly overhead and continued silently eastward. Ground controllers had used the 40,000-pound satellite’s on-board thrusters to shift it into a new orbit several days before. Using a MILSTAR satellite as a relay, the infrared photos the KH-12 took were transmitted back to the United States in real time.

It was still dark and bitterly cold outside when the lights began flicking on inside the Delta Force headquarters building.

Summoned by phone from their temporary quarters, sixteen Army and Air Force officers and senior NCOs were waiting inside the briefing room for Colonel Peter Thorn and Sergeant Major Diaz. Together they commanded the four twenty-man Delta troops, five Army helicopters, and three specially equipped C-17 transport aircraft assigned to Operation NEMESIS.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Thorn said briskly as soon as he came through the door.

He waved them down when they started to snap to attention. Inside its closed compound, Delta Force prided itself on its relative informality. Talent mattered more than rank among the outfit’s experienced professionals. They reserved the spit-and-polish show for outside visitors.

Thorn moved to the front of the room while Diaz started setting up an overhead projector. “Sorry about interrupting your beauty sleep, gentlemen. God knows from the look of some of you, you could certainly use it.”

That earned him a strained chuckle.

He didn’t waste any more time. “I just got a call from Sam Farrell. The President has activated NEMESIS.”

His commanders sat up straighter.

Thorn nodded. “We’ve run out of time. New intelligence shows that the Iranian offensive is probably now less than seventy-two hours away.” He raised his voice slightly to reach the back of the room. “Ready, Tow?”

Diaz nodded and dimmed the lights.

“These satellite photos came down the wire from the National Reconnaissance Office fifteen minutes ago,” Thorn explained.

The short, stocky NCO slipped each picture into the projector, keeping pace as Thorn ticked off the information they revealed. “Both the CIA and the DLA now estimate there are more than four front line infantry divisions closed up and in their final assembly areas near Bandar-e Bushehr. Additional formations, all of them tank and mechanised units, have been spotted moving by rail to Bandar-e Khomeini.”

He watched their reactions closely, pleased to see that every man appeared fully alert and utterly focused. “Even more important than that, KH-12 and LACROSSE radar satellite passes yesterday and early today picked up signs of significant naval movements. First, the Iranians have shut down their regularly scheduled ferry services to the offshore islands. Those ships are now sailing north toward Bushehr. Second, their entire submarine force has left Bandar-e Abbas, apparently heading for the Gulf of Oman. If we needed anything else, the NSA reports that all Iranian army, air, and naval units switched to a new set of codes and ciphers six hours ago.”

The lights came back to full brightness. Thorn stepped forward. “This is not a simple exercise or drill. They’re getting set to go and to go soon.”

Heads nodded in agreement with his assessment. The final pieces of the Iranian operation were falling into place. Switching codes and frequencies was a classic precursor to any significant military move, and no one with any economic sense moved that much shipping around on a whim.

Thorn swept his eyes over the little group of officers and senior sergeants, picking out individuals. Keenly aware that they were looking to him for direction, he kept a tight rein on his expression. Beneath the impassive mask, however, he could feel the old eagerness, the driving urge toward action, welling up inside. He could tell they felt much the same way.

Still, he had no illusions about the dangers involved in the mission ahead. Despite their intensive work over the past several days, NEMESIS was still very much an improvised, pick-up-and-go operation. If the plan started falling apart under the stress of unexpected events, it would be up to the men in this room to pick up the pieces and carry on against all odds and no matter what the cost.

Thorn focused on the commander of the NEMESIS helicopter detachment.

“Your guys ready, Scott?”

Captain Scott Finney, a compact Texan so calm other people often thought he was asleep or dead, nodded. “Yep. No sweat.”

“How about yours, Mack?”

The tall, lanky Air Force lieutenant colonel commanding their C-17 transports shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind making a few more practice runs, Pete, but we can do it without them.”

One by one, the majors and captains commanding the four Delta troops gave him the same answer. No one was very happy about cutting their planned prep time short, but no one was ready to ask for further delay now that the Iranians were poised and ready to attack.

Ordinarily, Thorn did not believe in giving pep talks especially not to men like those in this room. Most were already veterans of half a dozen special operations some of them so secret that only the barest hints had filtered out to the world beyond the Delta Force compound. Still, he wanted to impress on them his absolute conviction that NEMESIS, no matter how difficult and no matter how dangerous, was a mission with purpose a mission with a critical and achievable objective.

“One thing we know from the computer messages we’ve intercepted is that Amir Taleh is a control freak,” Thorn said firmly. “Taleh is the focus of political and military power inside Iran. He runs the Iranian armed forces pretty much as a overman show. All crucial orders pass through his headquarters. His field commanders are highly unlikely to begin an invasion without a clear directive from him personally.

“So our job is essential. If we stop Taleh, we stop this war before it starts. Everything else is secondary. Everything. Understood?”

They nodded solemnly.

“Very well, gentlemen,” Thorn said calmly. “Have your troops saddle up. We move out at 2030 hours, tonight.”

In the Persian Gulf Twenty miles outside Saudi territorial waters, an old wooden chow chugged through calm waters at a steady ten knots, relying on its auxiliary motor for power instead of its furled, lateen-rigged sails. Crates, boxes, and bales of varying sizes crowded the boat’s deck. To all outward appearances, the chow was nothing more than a simple trading vessel one of the hundreds that plied the Gulf on a daily basis. Her crew, too, appeared utterly ordinary: a mix of wiry young lads and weathered old men clad only in Tshirts and shorts against the noonday sun.

Feeling self-conscious in his unaccustomed civilian garb, Lieutenant Kazem Buramand leaned down through the chow’s forward hatch After the dazzling brightness outdoors, the hold below seemed pitch-black. It took several seconds before the Iranian naval officer’s eyes adjusted enough to make out the ten men squatting comfortably around a mound of their own equipment.

All of them wore the camouflage fatigues and green berets of Iran’s Special Forces. Besides their personal weapons, they were equipped with radios, two light machine guns, handheld SA-16 SAMs, demolition charges, directional mines modeled on the American claymore, and antitank mines.

“Is there a problem, Lieutenant?” their leader, a captain, asked softly. Scarred by Iraqi grenade fragments, his narrow face had a permanently sardonic cast that always unnerved Buramand.

“No, sir,” he stammered. “But we are two hours outside Saudi waters. I thought you would like to know.”

“Yes.” The Special Forces officer nodded politely. “Thank you. I assume we have not received any recall order.”

Buramand shook his head. “No, sir. None.”

He had been monitoring the sophisticated communications gear he had brought aboard the chow almost continuously, half expecting to hear the repeated code words that would bring this boat and the others like it scurrying back to port. Instead, he had heard nothing beyond the steady hiss and crackle of static. It was just beginning to dawn on the young naval officer that all their weeks and months of training had been in earnest.

“Very good.” The captain tipped his beret over his eyes, leaned back against his bulky pack, and said quite calmly, “Then please wake me when it gets dark. My men and I will help you prepare the Zodiac rafts for our little trip to the shore.”

The Iranian city of Bandar-e Khomeini lay at the northern end of the Persian Gulf, one hundred and fifty miles north and west of Bushehr. In peacetime it served as an oil terminus. Now its docks were crowded with valuable cargo of quite another kind.

Shrill whistles blew as another heavily loaded freight train rumbled slowly down a spur line and out onto Bandar-e Kliomeini’s largest pier. Although heavy tarpaulins muffled the massive shapes on each flatcar, Brigadier General Sayyed Malaek’s experienced eyes easily made out more of the T-80 tanks and BMP infantry fighting vehicles belonging to his 32nd Armored Brigade.

Everywhere the bearded, hawk-nosed brigadier looked, he saw signs of hurried activity. Out at the end of the long pier, working parties of his own men were busy fueling and arming the vehicles brought down from the Ahvaz Garrison by earlier trains. Dockworkers and sailors scurried among the neat rows of tanks and APCs, guiding those that were ready aboard the waiting ships.

Five vessels were moored at Bandar-e Khomeini. Three were the Navy’s Ropucha-class tank landing ships. Together, they could carry more than seventy of his tanks and six companies of infantry. Two more vessels were car ferries hastily modified to safely lift another company’s worth of the brigade’s vehicles.

Malaek checked his watch and smiled. His troops were well ahead of schedule.

Bushehr Air Base Arc lights strung around the airfield perimeter cast artificial daylight across a scene of frenzied activity.

The first echelons of the SCIMITAR strike force more than fifty advanced combat aircraft were parked in hastily constructed shelters spaced around the Bushehr base. Additional squadrons were moving to full readiness at fields ranging northward in a wide arc from Bandar-e Abbas to Aghajari and Khorramshahr.

Major Ashraf Bakhtiar stood near the revetments assigned to his Su-24 Fencer squadron, carefully overseeing the ordnance handlers fitting antiradar missiles and laser-guided bombs to his planes. Other teams were hard at work across the runway, outfitting the MiG-29s that would escort his fighter-bombers to their targets. Trolleys towing carts piled high with missiles, bombs, and decoy pods trundled to and fro around parked aircraft.

He raised his eyes to the eastern horizon, noting the hint of pale pink that signaled the coming dawn. The high, concealing clouds of yesterday and the day before were gone. A new front was moving in one that would bring clear skies and light winds for the next several days.

Bakhtiar smiled and rubbed his hands together. He and his crews would have perfect flying weather. Perfect war weather.

General Amir Taleh looked at the bustle around him with undisguised pleasure. The Khorasan Square headquarters building was a hive of purposeful activity. In every room, staff officers hunched over keyboards or spoke into telephones, urging greater speed on the field commanders. Enlisted men updated status boards or carried messages and printouts. The long, hard months of training, reorganisation, and reform were coming together perfectly. His staff was functioning like a well-oiled machine.

That was just as well. In less than twenty-four hours, he would issue the final orders setting the invasion in motion. Six hours after that, the first attack transports would depart Bushehr and Bandar-e Khomeini, bound for the Saudi coast.

At this stage, even a half-hour hiccup in the schedule would have been cause for concern.

Taleh turned as General Hashemi, his senior operations officer, approached. The older man looked worried.

“Yes, Hashemi?”

“Captain Kazemi has informed me that you intend to activate his special security plan before our final staff conference.”

Taleh nodded. “That is correct.” Hashemi hesitated and then said cautiously, “You realise, sir, that such a move may complicate our work at a critical moment? Since there is no sign of any unusual enemy activity, wouldn’t it be more prudent to wait a while longer?”

Taleh shook his head. “No, General. I have not survived this many years by depending on foolish behavior from my adversaries. We will go on a full war footing as scheduled. In battle our soldiers must expect the unexpected. I see no reason that my staff should expect more certainty and convenience in their own lives.”

Despite his native caution, Taleh was sure the first stroke would be his. SCIMITAR would fall where and when he wished, on an ignorant and ill-prepared enemy.

Colonel Peter Thorn slipped through the side door of the massive hangar hiding his lead C-17 transport from prying eyes and stood watching the American warplanes taxiing across the field.

Officially, the NEMESIS force did not exist. Its black, brown, and grey camouflaged aircraft had been moved out of sight almost as soon as they were wheels down. Heavily armed Air Force security detachments were on guard around the three hangars allocated to his planes. Major General Farrell wanted to make sure the Iranians didn’t get wind of the impending raid. The JCS and the President were equally determined to make sure the Turks didn’t find out. NATO host countries tended to be picky about covert operations launched from their territory.

Inside the hangars, some of the more than one hundred soldiers and airmen under his command were busy making final checks of their weapons and gear. Others were resting following the old Army tradition of catching up on your sleep whenever somebody wasn’t actively yelling or shooting at you.

Thorn smothered a yawn. He’d tried to grab some shuteye during the seven-and-a-half-hour flight from Pope, but he hadn’t managed very much. He’d told himself that was because of the eight-hour time difference between late night in North Carolina and pale noon sunshine in Turkey. He’d also blamed his restlessness on the pressures of command and on the need to go over every last piece of his plan for the hundredth time.

The truth was both simpler and more complicated. Every time Thorn closed his eyes, he saw Helen lying helpless and in pain in her hospital bed. The last report from Louisa Farrell was not very encouraging. Although the doctors now believed she would live, they weren’t sure she would ever regain the use of her legs.

He felt a sudden stab of sorrow. Helen was so intensely physical, so intensely alive on her feet and in motion. Robbing her of the ability to walk unaided would almost be worse than robbing her of life itself. What kind of life would she be willing to build with him if her injuries were permanent? He stared out across the runway, trying to suppress, for even a short time, his fears for her and for himself.

The noise outside was ear-shattering. Caught unaware by what most people on the base thought was a practice alert, Incirlik was in a sustained uproar. Pair by pair, F-1SE Strike Eagles were arriving from bases further west in Europe. As fast as they arrived, ground crews swarmed over them, arming and refueling each fighter-bomber at the double-quick.

Thorn shook his head. If NEMESIS and a follow-up Tomahawk strike failed to stop Taleh’s attack, the planes hurriedly assembling here would be thrown into a series of desperate, extended-range attacks against the Iranian invasion force. Given the relative numbers of aircraft involved and the fact that. Iran’s MiGs would be operating close to their own bases, American losses were certain to be high maybe even crippling.

With as much patience as he could muster, Hamir Pahesh lounged in one of Tehran’s many bazaars and waited for his contact to appear. He found the waiting difficult.. The normal frenzy of the marketplace was nothing compared to the sense of urgency he had felt for the last several days.

His last radio conversation with the CIA controller he knew as Granite had sent him straight back to Tehran at the best speed he could manage. The journey had taken him longer than he had planned. At every major road junction, he’d fought congestion as military convoys rolling the other way strained Iran’s primitive road net. The soldiers and their vehicles all seemed to be heading south for the coast, most for Bandar-e Bushehr.

The Afghan shook his head. Meeting the CIA’s needs for this mission had proved extraordinarily difficult.. Right now, the only thing more important to Iran’s armed forces than an empty truck was a full one.

Luckily, there had been many empty trucks returning north, some of them driven by his own countrymen. Among his fellow Afghans, he had found two men he knew and two friends they trusted. All four had some experience in moving illegal goods, and they were all less than pleased with the Shiite Iranian government. They had agreed to collaborate with him on an unspecified, though very profitable, undertaking. They would join him soon.

In the meantime, though, he had other details to attend to. Two of his recruits were off buying enough black-market gasoline for their five trucks.

That left the not-so-small problem of papers. Five trucks traveling together, empty, without travel papers, were sure to be stopped at the first roadblock. He got enough grief from the Pasdaran swine even when his papers were in order. Luckily, the comings and goings of the regular military should provide the perfect cover. If, that was, the man he was waiting for came through…

“Hamir! My friend! Hello!”

Pahesh turned abruptly. Ibn al-Juzjani, an old acquaintance, if not truly a friend, had silently appeared beside him.

Stealth was a valuable skill in the smaller man’s line of work. Pahesh knew him from his days as a mujahideen, but al-Juzjani wasn’t a fighter. The little man had helped smuggle weapons across the borders between Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. He was still in the same line of work.

“Peace be with you, Ibn,” Pahesh greeted him languidly. It took considerable effort to appear disinterested. “You were successful, I hope?”

Al-Juzjani’s sly brown eyes twinkled. “Yes, with the blessings of God. Come, follow me.”

The smuggler preferred to transact his business out of a nondescript shop near the edge of the bazaar one of many in this district selling televisions, transistor radios, and VCRs. The proprietor, a third or fourth cousin in al-Juzjani’s extended clan, reserved a private room for his use.

Once they were out of sight of prying eyes, Pahesh scanned the documents the smuggler offered him. There were two sets of forged travel orders one for a trip out of Tehran and another set for the return journey. They weren’t perfect, but he’d seen enough real travel documents to know these would pass.

He nodded in satisfaction. “Good enough, Ibn. These will suit me very well.” Ordinarily, he would have expected to sit, drink tea, and talk over old times with al-Juzjani, as was the custom when doing business, but he had no time left for pleasantries. He held out a wad of rials.

The other man held up a hand. “Alas, my friend, you know better than that. Rials are worth less than the paper they are printed on in my line of work. Besides,” he said slyly, “my suppliers were so busy with their other endeavors that I had to pay extra to persuade them to complete your little task.”

Pahesh swallowed his impatience and his resentment. He had expected nothing more from al-Juzjani. He sometimes thought the man only breathed because the air around him was free. He arched an eyebrow. “How much more do your suppliers require?”

“Another one hundred American dollars.”

Pahesh considered that. Even with the clock running, it would be a mistake to simply accept the smuggler’s first price. Folding too easily would only tell the little man just how important those papers were to him.

He snorted and spread his hands wide. “Alas, Ibn, that is impossible. My funds are wholly tied up in this small enterprise of mine,” he lied.

“I see. What a pity.” The smuggler stroked his chin and then shrugged.

“Perhaps I can persuade them to accept ninety-five dollars.”

They haggled pleasantly for another few minutes before settling on a mutually acceptable, if extortionate, price. He was not worried about using American currency to settle his debt with the smuggler. Tehran’s black market used dollars exclusively and Iranian banks exchanged it freely though at a terrible rate. In truth, he had never expected al-Juzjani to accept Iranian rials.

Besides, the money was of no consequence. Pahesh would cheerfully have handed over his entire, hard-earned fortune to secure those papers. They were his passport to a better life.

His little convoy of five trucks headed out from Tehran shortly after noon, Flowing southward through the ever-thinning traffic on a paved, two-lane road to Robat Karim, a small town roughly one hundred kilometers from the capital. Except for a few large, expensive cars Mercedes sedans whose owners could either countermand or safely flout the regulations, most of the other vehicles on the highway belonged to the military.

Their forged documents got Pahesh and his companions past police checkpoints without much trouble. The papers were ostensibly issued by the Pasdaran. Even with General Amir Taleh in power, nobody with half a brain wanted to look too closely at the activities of the Revolutionary Guards.

At the town of Kasham, they turned off the highway onto a winding gravel road, heading west into a flat, dry landscape littered with stones. A few miles out of town, even the gravel surface ended, leaving only a dirt track barely wide enough for a single truck. Despite the poor road, Pahesh kept his speed as high as he dared, and then a little higher. The sun was now only a few fingers above the western horizon. He faced it as he drove, slitting his eyes against the glare as though he were staring down an adversary.

The odometer was his master. The clock was his enemy. It was vital that he reach the right spot before dark.

Keeping one hand on the wheel, Pahesh fumbled through his duffel bag and pulled out a small device the size of a handheld calculator. He switched it on and waited. First one, then two, three, and finally five small green lights glowed on the front of the little machine. Each light represented a GPS global positioning system satellite whose signal it was able to receive. With five satellites, the receiver could fix his position to within three meters.

At the moment, the receiver’s readout showed latitude and longitude values almost matching those given him by Granite.

He studied the landscape ahead. There. He saw the landmark he’d been looking for a long, low, east-west ridge that paralleled the road a few hundred meters to the north. The sun was just touching the horizon.

Once he was abreast of the hill, Pahesh pulled off the road and stopped. He clambered down out of the truck cab and stretched well aware that he still had much work to do. A gust of icy wind warned him of the cold night ahead.

The others dropped out of their trucks and came to join him. They seemed puzzled to find themselves so far from anywhere. They stared back and forth from the long, low ridge to the straight dirt road laid across the empty landscape like a pencil line on a piece of paper.

Mohammed, a big man with an unkempt beard, was the most suspicious.

“You are sure this is the right spot?”

Pahesh nodded calmly. “I’ve done this before,” he lied smoothly. He turned to the other three men. “Move your trucks off the road and wait for us. Mohammed and I have a little scouting to do.”

Without waiting to see if they obeyed him, he got back in his truck and headed west through the growing darkness. As he drove, he scanned the terrain closely. Granite’s orders ran through his memory: “Make sure the road is not blocked, and that the ground is flat for at least fifty meters to either side. Watch out for potholes or large boulders.”

A little over a kilometer to the west, the road curved slightly, disappearing around the ridge and into the distance.

Pahesh nodded to himself. It would suffice. The only thing in that direction was a small village another twenty kilometers further on. At night, in the winter, this should be an empty and abandoned area. Or so he hoped.

He parked at the curve and waited for Mohammed to join him. “Park your truck off the road as though it has broken down. Then build two fires, one here and one over there,” he said, pointing across the road. “Keep the fires small and keep watch, but do nothing unless I say otherwise. You understand?”

The big man nodded slowly, staring down the long stretch of road to the east. “So this shipment of yours comes by air, then?”

Pahesh frowned. Since he first met the man, Mohammed had been questioning him digging whenever possible to find out more about what they were up to. Without his friend Agdas’ recommendation, he would never have taken on a man who was so nosy. Agdas, though, had promised him that the big man could keep his mouth shut when it mattered.

“Yes,” he answered shortly. “The goods I am expecting are large very bulky.” That much, at least, was true though it was cloaked in a lie.

“Are you armed?”

Mohammed nodded, and lifted up his coat enough for Pahesh to see a dull black shape tucked in his waistband.

The Afghan nodded. He had expected no less. His countrymen usually felt naked without at least one weapon concealed somewhere. “I will send someone to relieve you in half an hour.”

Pahesh climbed back into his truck and drove off without looking back. To find the others, he followed the truck tracks with his headlights as they led him over the ridge.

The rest of his little band were gathered around a small fire of their own, and they were cooking a light supper. The circle of bearded faces, lit only by the leaping flames, reminded the Afghan strongly of the days long ago the days in his own country when the mujahideen ruled the hills and mountains and kept their Soviet foes in fear.

He lugged his duffel a short way from the fire and set up his SATCOM radio. He did not hide his actions from others, but he did not invite them closer either.

Somewhere off in far distant America, Granite was waiting by the radio for his signal. “Granite here.”

“This is Stone,” Pahesh reported. “We are in Kabul.” Translated, that meant they were at the proper coordinates and there were no obstructions blocking the road.

Even across the ten thousand miles, he could hear the relief in the American’s voice. “Understood, Stone. Expect your shipment tonight.” Pahesh paused and then said, “Wish them safe journey.”

After stashing the radio out of sight again, he rejoined his compatriots at the fire.

“These friends of yours will arrive soon?” Agdas asked quietly.

“Soon,” Pahesh agreed.

“Can you tell us yet what this cargo of yours is?” the other man pressed. “This is mysterious… even for you, Hamir.”

“Yes, it is.” The Afghan shrugged. “You will see soon enough.”

“So what now?” one of the other men asked. “What are we supposed to do in the meantime?”

Pahesh smiled at him across the campfire. “We wait, my friend. We wait.”