The Enemy Within

More trainees were busy on firing ranges outside the base perimeter, honing their combat skills with a wide array of different weapons. The periodic crack of high-powered sniper rifles being zeroed in blended with the steady rattle of automatic-weapons fire. Other men clustered around Iranian Special Forces officers demonstrating rocket-propelled grenade launchers, mortars, plastic explosives, and shoulder fired SAMs.

The convoy kept moving, accelerating down the road and out into the countryside. They drove for fifteen minutes before pulling up to a stone cairn by the roadside the only landmark visible in the whole bleak landscape. Another GAZ jeep and two senior noncoms with clipboards waited near the cairn, occasionally consulting their watches.

Taleh turned to Basardan for an explanation.

“I sent a-platoon of twenty men out on a twenty-kilometer hike this morning. They have three hours to complete the march.” The camp commandant nodded toward the cairn. “That is the finish line.” Taleh waited. The glint in Basardan’s eye told him there was more to this exercise than a simple road march.

“Each man carries a rucksack filled with thirty kilograms of rocks.”

Taleh could hear Kazemi suppress a soft, astonished whis tie. He understood his aide’s amazement. The grueling march the colonel had outlined surpassed anything in the standard Iranian Army regimen.

Kazemi leaned forward from the back of the jeep. “And if they do not finish within the three-hour deadline, Colonel?”

“They fail the course,” Basardan said flatly. “Permanently.”

The young captain sat back, silent, while Taleh exchanged glances with the colonel. The trainees did not know it, but there were no return-trip tickets from Masegarh. His orders dictated the most extreme measures to maintain absolute secrecy.

Taleh saw the leading group of marchers first. He pointed down the road. “There they are, Colonel.”

The four men were still several hundred meters away, tiny in the distance and barely visible through the shimmering heat waves. All wore the same olive-drab fatigues and reeled under the weight of the bulging rucksacks slung from their shoulders. As they came steadily closer, Taleh could hear their hoarse voices egging each other on.

He nodded. That was good. Very good. Even in pain and near the edge of utter exhaustion, these men were still a group not a pack of lone wolves.

At last, half carrying one man who’d stumbled and nearly gone down, they trotted the final hundred meters to the cairn and collapsed panting on the ground. Taleh studied the four men with interest. One looked like an Arab, probably a Palestinian. Another might be a Turk or a native of one of the former Soviet republics. Two were Bosnian Muslims one dark-haired, the other fair. All in all, a mix typical of the camp’s population.

One of the noncoms who had been waiting checked their names off on his clipboard. The other stalked forward to the middle of the huddle of gasping trainees. “Congratulations, little children. You made it.” He paused. “Trucks are waiting to take you back to the camp.”

Still too breathless to speak, they looked up with smiles that were faint on worn faces. One by one they levered themselves off the ground and staggered painfully to their feet. Slowly the smiles faded. There were no trucks in sight.

The Iranian sergeant nodded pleasantly. “The trucks are eight kilometers that way.” He pointed back down the road. Away from Masegarh.

All of them stared back at him, mouths hanging open in shock and despair. The dark-haired Bosnian shook his head wordlessly, moaned, and collapsed like a puppet with all its strings cut. The Turk simply sat down, numbly staring at the ground between his feet.

“Impossible. Impossible,” the Palestinian gasped. He pointed a shaking finger at the stone cairn. “That is the end mark. The finish. You told us that.”

“Yes, that is true,” the Iranian Special Forces sergeant agreed patiently. His tone hardened. “But circumstances change. Plans change. You must expect the unexpected.”

The fourth man, one of the Bosnians, silently nodded. His fair hair and pale blue eyes made him stand out from his darker companions. His actions were even more different. He turned to the others and began pulling them back to their feet, all the while urging them on. “Come on, Selim! To your feet, Ahmad! Up, Khalil! You want to rest? We’ll rest at the trucks!” His voice, though hoarse, still carried a note of utter conviction and confidence.

Stooping, he slung his arm around the other Bosnian and moved off at a tired, weaving half-trot. The others followed him.

Taleh and Basardan looked at each other and nodded somberly. The attrition rate at the Masegarh camp was three out of four. It was easy to see which of these men would survive.

“What is his name?” Taleh asked as the trainees staggered off into the distance. -

“Sefer Halovic.”

Headquarters building, Masegarh Special Forces camp.