The Enemy Within

Taleh claimed he wanted to end Iran’s undeclared war against the United States and its allies. The safe-conduct pass and the invitation to use it were intended as proof of his sincerity.

Discreet invitation or no invitation, there were plenty of high-ranking people in the Pentagon and the State Department who believed this mission’s timing was an act of total insanity. Despite Taleh’s cautious overtures through a CIA source, normal diplomatic relations between Iran and the United States were still nonexistent. Certainly, no U.S. analyst had an accurate read on the Islamic Republic’s chaotic internal politics. Under those conditions, the naysayers argued, sending one of America’s top commandos to Tehran was like handing Iranian extremists a gift-wrapped package for torture, interrogation, and ransom.

As the designated package, Thorn hoped like hell the naysayers were wrong. Neither he nor his boss, Major General Sam Farrell, the head of the Joint Special Operations Command, put much faith in secret messages and diplomatic feelers. Words didn’t mean much when your life and freedom were on the line. Pictures and telecommunications intercepts were another story.

U.S. spy satellites were picking up solid evidence that Tehran was reducing its support for international Islamic terrorism. Transcripts of NSA-monitored signals between terrorist training camps in Iran and their headquarters in Lebanon, Syria, and Libya were full of complaints about Iranian refusals to pay them or provide promised weapons. The latest satellite photos were also significant. Some of the camps run by smaller organisations now stood abandoned, apparently unable to operate without assured Iranian backing. But the larger, more self-sufficient groups the HizbAIlah, for one were very much in business. Their facilities were still bustling, crowded with terrorists recruited from around the globe.

Those camps were the reason Amir Taleh said he wanted Western military observers on the ground inside Iran itself.

Hydraulics whined as the Swiss DC-10 slowly banked left and then levered off, lining up with the unseen runway. Thorn felt a series of heavy thumps through the cabin floor beneath his feet. The landing gear was coming down.

He glanced out the window to his left. The smog pall cut so much sunlight that he could see a faint reflection of himself. Green eyes stared steadily back at him out of a lean, sun-darkened face. The face looked boyish, but he knew that was a measure of the reflection, not reality. He was thirty-eight and there were already a few strands of grey in the light brown hair he wore longer than Army regulations usually allowed. There were also tiny crow’s-feet around his eyes fine lines worn into the skin by wind, weather, and the pressures of command.

Thorn looked out past his own mirrored image, matching the countryside below to the memories of his youth. On the surface, nothing much seemed to have changed in the twenty-two years since he’d last seen Iran.

Clusters of drab, flat-roofed buildings were visible through the haze now, stretching along the straight line of the Tabriz-Tehran highway. Trucks, buses, and passenger cars crowded the wide, paved road, weaving in and out without apparent regard for traffic rules or safety. Mountains loomed in the distance, dark against the barren, treeless plain.

As a teenager, Thorn had come to Tehran to live with his father, a highly decorated U.S. Special Forces NCO assigned to help train the Shah’s Army. Three years of his life had passed in a whirlwind of learning and adventure as he’d explored the maze of Tehran’s narrow back streets and hiked through the rugged countryside outside the city. Along the way he’d acquired enough Farsi to mingle easily with every element of Iranian society all the way from the ruling elites down to the poorest porters in the bazaars.

He had also made a number of friends. Some were American and British, the sons and daughters of businessmen and diplomats working in Iran. But chief among all his friends had been a young Iranian named Amir Taleh.

Taleh, four years older and already an officer cadet, had taken Thorn under his wing, showing him a side of Iran few Westerners ever saw and yanking him out of trouble whenever that proved necessary. Their personalities and interests were so similar that some of their fellows had begun referring to them teasingly as brothers. Neither of them had fought hard against the notion. Their friendship had seemed a great constant in a changing world. They had stayed in touch even after Thorn went home and while Taleh went through Ranger School in the United States.