Vengeance

36 NATANZ, IRAN

The faint beat of a helicopter’s four-bladed rotor dissipated in the darkness as an MH-60M Black Hawk skimmed fast and low through a ravine in the Karkas Mountains, attempting to avoid detection by the Natanz complex’s air radar system. Harrison was confident in this endeavor; he had been aboard one of two Black Hawks that had penetrated Pakistan’s military defense radars without being seen, with his helicopter landing inside Osama bin Laden’s compound walls without being heard.

Although the Black Hawk could carry nine combat-equipped troops, there were only five aboard the helicopter, plus the pilot, Bob Lesher, code-named Falcon, who was a former Night Stalker — a member of the U.S. Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment.

As they neared their destination, Harrison checked his equipment one last time. Like Khalila and the three men beside him, he was dressed in black gear, outfitted in commercial body armor, night vision goggles, and a headset. Rather than the standard MP-7 easily associated with U.S. Navy SEALs, all five team members carried commercially available Sig Sauer MCX Rattler short-barreled machine guns with suppressors.

The Rattlers were small and light, weighing only six pounds each, which had been a crucial factor in their selection since the team would be maneuvering in tight spaces at times tonight. As usual, Khalila also had a spring-loaded knife strapped to each forearm. The explosives required for tonight’s mission had been evenly divided between the five team members, each carrying a black backpack.

The unit’s makeup resembled that of a SEAL four-man-fire team plus Khalila. Whoever had selected the personnel for tonight’s mission had thought through the scenario. Two of the men were explosives experts — Leviathan and Pile Driver — since they would split into two teams after gaining access to the facility. A master rappeler, Cutlass, had been assigned due to the team’s planned descent through a vertical ventilation shaft. Harrison, as the only former military officer, had been tagged as the fire team leader.

Falcon’s voice came across Harrison’s headset, announcing they were approaching their destination. Harrison and the rest of the team pulled their night vision goggles over their eyes. The Black Hawk airframe shuddered as the pilot pulled back on the cyclic and adjusted the collective, and the helicopter angled toward the bottom of the ravine. The Black Hawk slowed to a hover, then the wheels settled into the dirt.

Harrison led his team from the helicopter, stopping beside a nearby rock outcropping where he examined the GPS display on his wrist. They were three hundred yards from their planned entry point, although the journey would cover more distance. They would have to climb the adjacent ridge then drop into the next ravine before beginning their ascent of Pickaxe Mountain.

As the Black Hawk rotor spun down to a halt, Harrison led the team up the ridge, where they got their first look at Pickaxe Mountain rising before them. The Black Hawk had landed inside the perimeter fencing, so their first obstacle was the covert mountain ascent, avoiding any surveillance cameras. Harrison and the others had each been issued a handheld electrical current detector capable of sensing the presence of nearby powered equipment such as cameras or other electronic devices. None had been detected thus far.

They ascended the mountain in single file, eventually reaching their planned ingress location — the ventilation exhaust shaft from the upper level — which was located within a small crescent-shaped depression in the mountain surface. As the team peered over the nearest outcropping at the covered ventilation shaft, Harrison’s current detector indicated the presence of electronic equipment. As he scanned the area, Leviathan spotted it first.

“Surveillance camera at two o’clock, embedded in the rock wall.”

It was a small device, only about four-by-four inches, painted to blend into the mountain, and was mounted in a location almost impossible to approach without being seen.

Almost impossible.

“Cutlass,” Harrison said softly into his headset, unsure if the camera had audio capability in addition to video.

“On it,” the wiry rappeler said. “Leviathan and Pile Driver, I’ll need your help.”

The two men joined Cutlass as he circled around and climbed the ridge behind the camera, stopping atop the crescent-shaped outcropping twenty feet above it. Not wanting to hammer a spike into the mountain rock, which would have been a noisy event, he handed one end of a rope to Leviathan and Pile Driver.

Cutlass was already wearing a rappelling harness, which was nothing more than a waist strap attached to loops that encircled his thighs. He hooked the rope via carabiners to the loops in a manner that would allow him to stop his descent at the desired location, but more important, enable free use of both hands.

Standing with his feet on the edge of the precipice, he leaned forward and loosened his grip on the rope. He descended headfirst for twenty feet, pinching the rope between his feet along the way before stopping just above the camera where he locked himself in place.

Cutlass then reached into a breast pocket and retrieved a thin two-inch-diameter disk. He placed the disk near the camera lens, facing in the same direction, and pressed a button on the disk’s side, taking a video recording. After a few seconds, an indicator on the disk flashed green.

He pressed the button again, sending an electronic signal that scrambled the camera’s video, then slipped the disk in front of the camera and pressed it against the lens, where it stuck in place. He pressed the button a third time, activating the disk. The camera would now see a video clip played in a loop instead of a live feed, allowing the CIA team to approach the ventilation shaft unnoticed.

With the disk covering the camera lens, Cutlass flipped around and dropped down onto the mountain surface, joined by the other four team members. After examining the ventilation shaft covering, they determined it was welded in place, providing only narrow slits for the air to escape. However, they had come prepared, and Leviathan and Cutlass retrieved handheld plasma torches from their backpacks. It took only a few minutes before the torches cut through the metal, and the ventilation lid was lifted out of the way.

It would be a long descent to the first level, requiring a thin but strong line, which was fastened to the base of the ventilation shaft. Cutlass went first as the team descended two hundred feet before reaching a large spinning exhaust fan blocking their way. He placed a small device on the fan casing and energized it, causing a current surge through the fan motor, shorting it out.

After the fan stopped spinning, the team squeezed past the blades and reached the ventilation shaft intake cover, where Cutlass used his plasma torch to cut through the cover fasteners. Holding the cover in place with one hand, he cut the final fastener with the torch, then lowered himself and the cover silently into the upper level of the Natanz complex.