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left it at his dead drop. While he waited for an answer from Tel Aviv, he found an excuse to go back to Omidifar’s office and this time he brought his camera.
    It took two months of back and forth as the experts debated the merits of Shoshan’s plan. The deciding factor ended up being the air force’s lack of confidence in their own ability to take out the facility with anything other than a nuclear strike. During those two months Shoshan furthered his plan, exploring the recesses of the third subfloor, locating and photographing as many steel I beams as he could. He passed everything along anticipating the questions before they came. During that time Shoshan also began construction on a false wall in the back of his storage room, foreseeing the necessity to hide the materials he would need to conduct his sabotage.
    Shoshan spent countless hours alone with his thoughts trying to piece everything together. Simply striking at one or two points would not do the job. The plan would have to be comprehensive, and that meant it would take hours to carry out. Charges would need to be placed. He would be exposed the entire time, as would the explosives. Even the most witless guard would be likely to stumble upon the devices.
    The solution came one afternoon when the facility suffered a brief power outage. Shoshan was cleaning a rest room on the second subfloor when it happened. The room went pitch black for a few seconds and then the emergency lights came on. Shoshan stared up at the square unit attached to the wall just below the ceiling. It consisted of two adjustable floodlights mounted near the top of a beige metal box approximately a foot and a half long by a foot and a half wide. Shoshan left the bathroom and looked down the long hallway. He counted four more emergency lighting units in this area alone. That night he photographed the lights and wrote down the make and model number. The next morning he informed Mossad that he had found a solution to their problem.
    Five weeks later the first shipment of a dozen units left Haifa for Mumbai, India. After clearing customs the shipment was repackaged and sent up the coast to the Iranian free trade zone of Chabahar. From there it made its way inland to Isfahan. Two more shipments followed the same route. Each day Shoshan would pull up to the main gate of the facility on his motorbike, which had two saddlebags and an old plastic milk crate strapped to the back fender. The milk crate was almost always filled with parts. The guards had come to expect this. Inside each saddlebag, though, was a counterfeit emergency lighting unit. Not once in a month’s time did the guards ever ask him to open the bags.
    Following the schematics Shoshan had been through countless dry rehearsals. The experts back in Israel had thought of everything. Instead of using C-4 plastic explosives they packed the devices with relatively new thermobaric explosives. The thermobaric explosives would work extremely well in the underground confines of the facility, literally sucking all oxygen from the air and creating an enormous vacuum effect. They weighed less than conventional explosives and packed nearly three times the punch. Having the devices detonate at precisely the same time created another problem. Running det cord between each of the two units was dismissed immediately. Detonating the devices remotely was also impractical. There was no way for a radio frequency to penetrate all the concrete and steel. The solution was to install a highly accurate clock within each device. Via a master remote Shoshan had the ability to set a designated time for all of the devices to detonate. He did this in his storage room before putting them in place.
    Twenty-six devices weighing eight pounds apiece. Just 208 pounds of explosives. Demolition firms used far more explosives to bring down buildings in nice neat little piles. That, however, was not Shoshan’s objective. He was not trying to topple a building, and he