The Enemy Within

All he knew was that the Americans couldn’t wait until the end of the week to hear what he’d learned. He’d gathered more information at the noontime break, and still more just now, with the convoy stopped for the day.

“Roger, Stone, ready to copy.”

Pahesh recited his message composed, changed, and polished a hundred times as he drove. “Iranian 12th Infantry Division left barracks in Zahedan zero six hundred hours today, 4 December, with all elements and extra fuel and ammunition. Another unit, identity unknown, may be arriving in Zahedan to take over its duties. Convoy passed through Kerman in the afternoon and is now headed for Shiraz. Ultimate destination is unknown. Message ends.”

The American voice at the other end read back the message, then said, “Received and understood. Please stand by.”

“Stand by?” wondered Pahesh. He looked around nervously, but could see nothing in the darkness.

“Stone, this is Granite.” The voice was different, more purposeful.

“Could this simply be a routine redeployment?”

The Afghan shook his head in reflex before he remembered they could not see him. “No. The Iranians have an urgent deadline. Two officers have already been punished for not meeting their schedules.”

There was what seemed a long pause before the American replied. “All right. Can you give us an update in twelve hours?”

“Yes.” Then Pahesh corrected himself. “I will try. I must go now.”

“Understood.”

Pahesh turned off the machine and hurriedly repacked it.

He was late. He hadn’t counted on an extended conversation. The others would be looking for him.

Tucking the satellite radio pack under his coat again, he strolled as quickly as possible back to his truck. As soon as there was enough light, he checked his watch. Only twelve minutes had passed since he’d left the roadside. He felt the tension ease.

Fatigue replaced the tension, and he quickly unrolled his pallet near one of the fires. Pahesh crawled in, reasonably sure the Komite, Iran’s hated secret police, were not going to arrest him before dawn. Before he dropped off to sleep, he found himself going over and over his brief communication with the Americans. It was good to know they were taking him seriously. Instincts honed by years of war told him this long road march was the first stirring of an evil wind.

CHAPTER 21 HORNET’S NEST

DECEMBER 4

Washington, D.C.

Outside the Hoover Building, the capital city’s streets were filling up with rush-hour traffic. Even in the present crisis, the hundreds of thousands of workers employed by the various government agencies, businesses, and law firms seemed to be determined to carry on as much of their daily routine as possible. For all the outward show of normalcy, however, the unpredictable, ever more frequent, and apparently unstoppable terrorist attacks were striking nerves already worn raw.

False alarms were triggered more and more often, with less and less provocation. Whole buildings emptied into the streets at the sight of a package without a return address. Phoned-in threats prompted widespread closures of the Metro or the region’s major highways. Entire neighborhoods, from wealthy, trendy Georgetown to the hopelessly poor northeast sections of the city, barricaded themselves in by day and by night, desperately hoping they could seal themselves off from the terrorist contagion. The drab, olivegreen Army Humvees arid Bradley armored fighting vehicles posted to cover the capital’s major intersections and traffic circles only increased the sense of crisis.

London had been bombed flat during the Blitz and periodically targeted by the IRA, but Washington, D.C., had existed in relative peace for many years. Not since the riots following Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.‘s assassination had racial tensions been so high. And not since Jubal Early’s tattered Rebels fell back toward the Shenandoah Valley in 1864 had so many in the American capital felt the oppressive dread of knowing that a deadly enemy lurked close at hand.

Around-the-clock television coverage fed the public’s barely controlled panic. The first pictures of each new terrorist outrage were played over and over again on every news channel, magnifying their scope and impact. In the fiercely competitive war for exclusives, every wild rumor found a reporter to repeat it, deny it, and then repeat it afresh often the same reporter and often within the same hour.

Even the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation was not immune to the general paranoia gathering force across the country. The security detachments manning its entrances had been reinforced by U.S. Army Rangers. Razorwire entanglements surrounded the building, keeping pedestrians, the press, and potential terrorists at a distance.

Deeply worried by the signs of widespread, almost crippling fear he saw all around him, Peter Thorn followed Helen Gray into the conference room adjoining Special Agent Mike Flynn’s office.