Vengeance

38 NATANZ, IRAN

Harrison checked his watch: twenty minutes.

It had taken them fifteen minutes to set the explosive charges, and they had wasted another five minutes debating how to fight their way from the centrifuge control room to the staircase. Opinions vacillated between a sprint toward the staircase and a direct charge toward the Iranian guards, hoping to reach the centrifuge maze before incurring serious injury. Each option had a greater than zero chance of success, since they were wearing body armor and would be moving fast. Harrison was about to give the order to charge the centrifuges, which would minimize their time in the open, when Khalila began removing her body armor.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Both options suck,” she said.

“You’ve got a better idea?”

“I do,” she replied as she finished shedding her body armor, then crawled to the female technician.

She removed the blood-stained white lab coat and hijab from the dead woman, then pulled them on.

After reaching the control room door on her hands and knees, she lay prone on the ground and crawled on the floor, crying out in Farsi. She emerged from the control room, moving in a slow Army crawl toward the Iranian guards, keeping her face tilted toward the ground as she begged for help.

The Iranian guards took the bait. There were two guards behind the nearest centrifuge, and one of the guards responded to her cry for assistance, guiding her toward him. When she approached the centrifuge he was hiding behind, he crouched down and extended his hand, pulling her to safety between himself and the other guard.

Khalila held onto the man’s arm, thanking him profusely for his help between feigned sobs of relief and cries of pain. She pulled herself slowly to her feet, staying close to the man so he couldn’t get a clear look at her face until she stood erect.

His eyes narrowed as he stared at the strange six-foot-tall woman, realizing his peril too late.

Flexing her wrists, Khalila released both knives, hidden beneath her lab coat sleeves, into her hands. She drove one knife up beneath the man’s jaw and into his brain, then turned and stabbed the other guard through an eye. As the second man collapsed, she pulled the carbine from his hand and put a bullet into the head of the guard on her left, then swiveled to her right, putting a round into the fourth guard’s face.

She emerged from behind the centrifuges, sprinting back toward the control room, where she shed her lab coat and donned her body armor again, then retrieved her firearm. After stepping from the control room, she joined Harrison and Leviathan in a sprint toward the staircase. Leviathan, running beside her, had stopped to check on the guards while Khalila put on her body armor.

“Nice work,” he said.

They reached the staircase without further incident, ascending to the upper level as the sound of gunfire grew louder. Harrison stopped at the staircase exit, surveying the ongoing firefight. Unlike on the lower level, there seemed to be no concern about the effect of stray bullets. Cutlass and Pile Driver had killed two of four Iranian guards, but the remaining two had the former Delta Force operators pinned down, unable to reach the ventilation shaft in the middle of the level. However, the two guards had their backs to the staircase.

Harrison took aim, putting three bullets into each man.

As all five members of the fire team headed toward the ventilation shaft, Khalila checked her watch.

Ten minutes.

When they reached the ventilation shaft, Cutlass retrieved the end of the rope they had used to descend into the facility, then each team member retrieved a small motorized winch from their backpack. Khalila went first, feeding the end of the rope through the device, then she engaged the clutch and activated the drive. Holding onto the winch with both hands, she rose into the ventilation shaft, slowing her ascension speed as she approached the disabled exhaust fan. Once past the blades, she increased speed to maximum.

Even with the motorized ascent, it was a long journey to the surface. After reaching the top of the ventilation shaft, she slowed the winch to a halt, then pulled herself from the vent. She checked her watch.

Three minutes.

Khalila waited impatiently as the other team members exited the ventilation shaft, her anxiety growing as the time ticked down. After helping Leviathan from the vent, only Harrison remained.

Thirty seconds.

She peered into the dark shaft, detecting the sound of Harrison’s winch pulling him upward.

“Hurry!” she shouted.

“The winch is at max speed,” was the faint reply.

Twenty seconds.

Harrison reached the top of the ventilation shaft with only ten seconds remaining. Leviathan helped Khalila haul him from the opening as time reached zero.

As Harrison tumbled to the ground, the mountain trembled, followed by a fiery plume shooting upward from the vent, streaking skyward.

“Time to get moving,” Harrison said as he regained his feet and glanced at the plume. “That’s a calling card we don’t want to be anywhere near.”

“We got a bigger problem,” Cutlass said, pointing up the mountain slope, illuminated by the fiery ventilation exhaust.

The explosion had dislodged a portion of the mountain surface, which was sliding down toward them.

“There’s a ledge along the cliff, directly below us,” Cutlass shouted, “if we can get there in time!”

He led the way, sliding down the mountainside as quickly as possible. Khalila and the others joined him, and after a few seconds, two things became apparent. The first was that the cliff edge wasn’t far away. The second was that they were moving too fast; there was no way they could stop their descent before they reached the cliff. Cutlass seemed unfazed, descending toward the cliff edge at breakneck speed. Apparently, falling off the cliff was preferrable to being buried beneath a landslide.

Cutlass reached the edge of the cliff, then disappeared from view. The ground slipped away from Khalila a moment later, and she fell through the darkness for several seconds before she hit the ground, landing on her side. She lay stunned on a ledge for a few seconds until strong hands grabbed and pulled her closer to the mountainside. As rocks and dirt cascaded over them from above, Harrison covered her body with his own.

She lay beneath him until the mountain raining down upon them ceased. Thankfully, they were close enough to the mountain face that most of the rubble passed harmlessly a few feet farther out from them.

“You okay?” Harrison asked.

“I’m fine.”

He adjusted his headset and contacted the other team members. They were scattered on the ledge, but everyone had survived, although Cutlass had broken an arm.

Khalila was lying on her back with Harrison still atop her, so Khalila whispered, “This isn’t the time or place, Riptide.”

She spotted Harrison’s faint smile as he rolled off of her. Then he contacted Falcon, informing their Black Hawk pilot that they were on their way back.