rifle from his grasp. Their eyes locked for a brief moment in time, their faces only inches apart. “Don’t do that again,” Harry whispered, his voice a low hiss. “ Ever . If it happens after deployment, people will die. Because of your stupidity.”
He pulled away from the Iranian agent, smoothly ejecting the half-empty clip from the AK, slamming another into the breech with a practiced motion. “Fresh targets!” he ordered, his voice calm and level, as though nothing had passed between them.
The Air Force airman assisting them with the firing exercise stepped quickly forward, replacing the target. Harry waited a moment until the man had stepped back out of the way, then dropped to one knee, flicking the rifle’s heavy safety off with a loud klatch .
Harry carefully squeezed the trigger, aiming for the head of the silhouette, holding the rifle in a rock-hard grip as lead streamed from the Kalishnikov’s muzzle, burst after burst of fire. Controlled lethality.
The banana magazine was half-empty when he stopped a moment later, rising to his feet. There was a single ragged hole in the forehead of the silhouette, scarcely larger than a silver dollar.
He turned back to Davood, tossing the AK at him. Uneasy silence hung for a moment over the range as the two men glared at each other. “Let’s get cracking,” Harry said finally, turning away.
Davood took another long look down the range, at the mutilated silhouette, and slowly nodded. He dropped back into his prone position, ready to fire. They didn’t have the time to waste…
4:08 P.M. Tehran Time
The base camp
“So, that’s the situation at present, major.” Dr. Mahmood Ansari looked back down the trailer’s corridor, then turned back to the man at his side.
“You’re certain?” Hossein asked, still unable to believe his ears. “But the archaeologists—I mean, they…” his sentence trailed off.
“That is why I am keeping them in isolation,” the scientist replied. “Eleven died, four survived. I need to know why .”
“Tehran will be wanting to know the potential of this. What do I tell them?”
Dr. Ansari turned, seeing the light shining in the major’s eyes, realizing the full import of the question. And he shuddered inwardly.
“Give me time to think about it.”
Farshid nodded. “Twenty-four hours, doctor. Then I will need an answer.”
Major Hossein stepped outside the lab trailer, his hands still trembling nervously. The power . The possibility.
He needed something to settle his nerves and he dug into his pocket, coming out a moment later with a pack of cigarettes. American Marlboros, cigarettes he had obtained off the black market. They were expensive, but he had lost his taste for the local weed after his years in Iraq, where anything American could be readily obtained. Decadence? Perhaps. Despite his position in the Revolutionary Guard, he wasn’t a man religious enough to dwell on his sins. Or the penitence he was supposed to have felt.
He took a long drag and sighed as the nicotine flooded through his system, giving him a brief exhilarating rush. He had asked the scientist to evaluate the discovery’s potential, but the truth was, he didn’t need an answer. He knew .
The Iranian nuclear program had floundered for years. The cyber-sabotage of the Israeli-American STUXNET and STARS viruses had only been the beginning. Scientists had gone missing, parts had malfunctioned–at one point a reactor had nearly red-lined and been stopped only moments away from turning southern Iran into the wasteland of a second Chernobyl. All that work. And now at his very feet, all around him, lay something far more insidiously powerful, discovered by a Jew , of all things!
And he would be a part of this, if he lived. A shudder ran down his spine, as he remembered Malik. They had buried him just the day before.
Farshid closed his eyes, willing the image of his friend’s agony to go away, willing it to vanish. There would be