The Enemy Within

Thorn nodded once. He’d spent so many hours studying the blueprints and satellite photographs he felt sure he could practically find his way blindfolded through Taleh’s lair.

He glanced up at the apartment houses on either side of this street. None of the plain concrete five-and six-story, flat-roofed buildings would have won any architectural prizes for elegance or style, but he was not interested in esthetics. They were important because they were the tallest buildings in this poor, rundown neighborhood and because they offered a clear line of sight to the roof of the Khorasan Square military headquarters.

Thorn turned back to the Afghan. “Will your friends obey my orders, Mr. Pahesh? You know this will be very dangerous.” “They will obey you,” Pahesh said firmly. “All of us have seen war before, Colonel.”

“Fine.” Thorn spun on his heel and strode to the last truck in line.

Captain Doug Lindsay peered down at him through a half open flap. With his flaming-red hair and mustache dyed black, the commander of the NEMESIS force sniper teams looked alien, almost unrecognisable.

“You ready for us, Pete?” the younger man asked.

Thorn nodded. “You know the drill, Doug. You’ve got five minutes to move your people into position. Then, when I give you the word, you do your stuff. Clear?”

“Clear.” Lindsay swung away from the opened flap. “Everybody out. Shaw takes the building on the left. I’ll take the building on the right. Let’s move!”

Thorn watched the heavily laden soldiers scramble out over the truck’s tailgate before heading back to his own vehicle. Without further orders from Lindsay, the snipers formed up on the street and then split apart. Four two-man teams crossed over to the other side and entered the tallest apartment building on the block. Four more teams disappeared inside the nearest tenement.

Breathing normally even under the weight of his weapon and other gear, Captain Doug Lindsay took the narrow, dimly lit stairs to the roof two at a time. Boots rang on concrete as his troops followed him up.

Farsi-speaking soldiers stopped long enough on every landing to yell stern warnings at any sleepy Iranian civilians who poked their heads out of apartments to see what was going on. “Everyone inside! This is Army business!”

Doors slammed shut again as the building’s inhabitants obeyed their shouted orders. No one who lived this close to General Amir Taleh’s headquarters wanted trouble with the Army.

Five flights up, Lindsay pushed open an unlocked metal door and came out onto the tenement’s flat roof. It was deserted. He nodded to himself, noticing his breath steaming in the cold night air. In the summer they would have found people camped out here driven out of their tiny, crowded apartments by the heat. Now, this close to the winter, temperatures were already dropping fast toward freezing once the sun went down.

Followed by the sergeant who would serve as his spotter and backup, the Delta Force captain moved closer to the edge of the roof He dropped prone and started setting up his weapon, conscious of the faint rustle of clothing and scrape of metal on either side. The rest of his teams were moving into place.

Lindsay slid an eleven-round magazine into his Barrett Light Fifty sniper rifle. Nearly five feet long and weighing in at thirty-five pounds, the M82A1 Light Fifty was badly misnamed, but it had several features that made it perfect for special operations use. First, it was a simple, rugged, semiautomatic weapon accurate out to twelve hundred meters. Second, it fired the same enormous.50-inch Browning round used in the U.S. Army’s heavy machine gun. More than three times the size of the 5.56mm bullets used by most modern assault rifles, the.50-inch round had enormous penetration and lethality. To handle the recoil, the Barrett Light Fifty was equipped with a muzzle brake and a thick butt pad. A biped mounted near the muzzle helped steady the rifle.

With practiced ease, the Delta Force officer attached an ITT-made optical sight to his weapon and peered through the scope. Two AA batteries powered an image intensifier that turned the night into day. He flicked to 8x magnification and shifted his aim to one of the emplacements on top of the squat, drab building roughly four hundred meters away. His crosshairs settled on an Iranian soldier seated behind a twmbarreled ZU-23 light antiaircraft gun. The man looked tired and bored.

Lindsay held his aim steady. The ZU-23 was virtually useless against modern attack aircraft, but its rapid fire could murder infantry caught out in the open. He frowned. Something seemed odd. Fewer than half the defensive positions atop the enemy headquarters were manned. Maybe this guy Taleh wasn’t so thorough after all.

One by one, his teams reported that they were in position.

Lindsay contacted Thorn and confirmed their readiness. “November One Alpha, this is Sierra Four Charlie. We’re dialed in. Standing by.”

“Understood, Four Charlie. We’re moving now.”