The Enemy Within

Thorn and Rossini sat on opposite sides of a desk piled high with maps, satellite photos, transcripts of intercepted Iranian military communications, and reports published by a dozen different U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies. Some of the data came from the files pulled together earlier that year by the Maestro’s tiny team trying to track down those first rumors of Bosnian Muslim terrorists. More had been scraped up by JSOC–ILU researchers held long after normal hours and sent out to scour the Pentagon’s voluminous databases. After reading through Taleh’s E-mail to his terrorist teams, Thorn had put the entire unit on a de facto war footing.

Both men were exhausted, but neither of them was willing to break for sleep. Their growing certainty that Taleh had something else up his sleeve something even worse than the terrorist campaign drove them onward.

Thorn put down the fragmentary telecommunications intercept he’d been studying, pulled a map of Iran closer to him, and scrawled a hasty note on the map next to one of the Iranian Army’s garrison cities.

Rossini looked up from his own pile of papers. “Another one?”

“Yeah.” Thorn slid the intercept across to the older man. “One of our VORTEX satellites picked up part of a conversation between the commander of the 25th Parachute Brigade and one of his battalion COs. They’re going to full readiness all leaves canceled, extra practice jumps, full equipment draw. The works.”

“Jesus.” Rossini scanned the sheet quickly and then eyeballed the map Thorn had been working on. “There’s a hell of a lot of movement going on over there, Pete.”

Thorn nodded. Although the picture of recent Iranian military activity they’d been putting together was by no means complete, it was increasingly ominous. Significant portions of more than six elite Iranian divisions were either in motion or preparing to move somewhere. Air and naval units scattered across the Islamic Republic were also being brought to higher states of alert.

So far, no one else in the U.S. defense and intelligence communities had spotted the full scope of the Iranian maneuvers. That was understandable. Viewed in isolation, the various clues and bits of evidence meant very little. Few analysts were in a position to see all of the information gathered by America’s satellites, signals intercept stations, and spies. Lulled by Taleh’s phony U.S.-lran detente and immobilised by the terrorist attacks at home, nobody in authority had paid much attention to the tiny warning bells going off.

“Colonel? Maestro? You got a minute?” Mike McFadden came bustling in, clearly excited.

“What’ve you got, Mike?” Thorn asked.

“This just came down the wire from Langley. It’s a summary of the latest Satcom transmission from that Afghan truck driver, ‘Stone.’ ” The young, red-haired analyst held out a two-page color fax with blue stripes running down one side of the cover sheet. The stripes indicated the fax contained information from a CIA agent. “He just reported the final destination for the Iranian 12th Infantry Division and most of the other convoys.”

“And?”

McFadden stabbed a finger down on the map in front of Thorn. “They’re moving to Bushehr!”

Bushehr? Thorn stared at the map. Why Bushehr?

Suddenly, the data they’d been accumulating bit by bit began falling into place with dizzying speed.

“My God,” he said softly. He turned to Rossini. “I’m going to see Sam Farrell.”

The older man looked confused. “Why?”

“To make sure he demands an immediate emergency meeting of the National Security Council.”

“To do what, exactly?”

Thorn showed his teeth in a grim, bitter smile. “To persuade the President and the NSC that we have to kill General Amir Taleh before he kills us.”

The White House

The White House Situation Room was packed to the rafters. The President and his Secretaries of State and Defense sat around a long rectangular table flanked by the Directors of the CIA and the FBI, the Attorney General, the National Security Advisor, and the uniformed Joint Chiefs of Staff. Notepads, pens, and glasses of ice water were precisely squared away in front of each man and woman at the table, along with briefing books hastily prepared for this meeting. Chairs lining the walls were filled by civilian and military aides.

“Major General Farrell, is your officer ready to brief us?” The President’s familiar voice sliced through the buzz of uneasy speculation and concern. Word of Tehran’s complicity in the wave of terrorism had already swept through the administration’s upper circles like wildfire. So far, the threat of prosecution for leaking classified information had kept it away from the media. That and the realisation that revealing the information prematurely would shatter an administration that had rested so much of its reputation on the mistaken assumption the terrorists they were fighting were homegrown radicals.

“Yes, sir,” Farrell nodded. He glanced at Thorn. “You’re on, Pete.”