The Enemy Within

Halovic watched closely as the three excited Americans began loading their new military hardware into the back of the Blazer. He was still faintly astounded by their greed and ignorance. Apparently, they really believed that someone would sell them equipment so far below the black-market price without expecting anything in return.

He stayed motionless until long after Burke and his companions were gone, making sure nobody else had observed this covert transaction. Then, as quietly as he had come, he slipped back down the hill to the spot where he’d concealed his own vehicle.

Like fat, lazy fish, Burke and the others had swallowed his lure. And when at last they were reeled in, the lines at tacked to them would lead the American authorities only in directions General Taleh wanted them to go.

SEPTEMBER 18

Special operations headquarters, Tehran

(D MINUS 88)

The squat, drab concrete building just off Khorasan Square had an evil reputation among the poverty-stricken residents of central and southern Tehran. Built decades ago as a local headquarters for the SAVAK the Shah’s feared secret police the deep basements within its massive walls were rumored to contain torture chambers and mass graves. When the Shah fell, the Pasdaran, the Revolutionary Guards, moved into the building. Their fanaticism and heavy-handed repression soon blackened its name further. Now new masters ruled the roost.

Soldiers in the camouflaged battle dress and green berets of Iran’s Special Forces manned checkpoints closing off the nearby streets. More troops garrisoned sandbagged emplacements on the roof, wielding an array of machine guns, light antiaircraft guns, and shoulder-launched SAMs. Nobody went in or out without an escort provided by soldiers personally loyal to General Amir Taleh.

Although the Khorasan Square building showed up in official documents only as an “auxiliary command post,” Taleh had turned it into his principal special operations headquarters. More than a hundred handpicked staff officers were stationed there each part of a giant analysis and planning cell charged with shepherding his complex master plan to completion. To maintain airtight operational security, they worked, ate, and slept inside the facility.

The general himself had an office buried deep in the building’s basement. Detailed maps and operations orders covered each of the room’s four walls. Those showing the United States displayed a spiderweb of safe houses, arms caches, and targets spreading across the country at an ever increasing pace.

As the schedule tightened, Taleh found himself spending more and more time poring over the daily status reports transmitted by each team. To ensure that he could wield the different cells as a coordinated weapon when they took aetion, all command and control functions were ehanneled through his headquarters. Under no circumstances were the teams allowed to communicate with each other. If American counterintelligence penetrated one, they would learn nothing that could lead them to the others.

He flipped through the latest sheaf of computer printouts brought in by Farhad Kazemi, noting potential problems and successes with a dispassionate eye.

SITREP: UON 46 LION Prime Via MAGI Link to MAGI Prime:

1. LION confirms special weapons drop made to Aqan Sword contact BURKE. Payment received. Further direct contact evaluated as unnecessary, possibly hazardous. Aryan Sword behavior is undisciplined and erratic. They will not respond to positive control, but may well undertake actions on their own initiative.

2. LION sections have now completed strike reconnaissance on all first-wave assigned targets. All targets are viable.

3. LION Prime recommends Target BRAVO TWO for the initial action. Information contained in today’s Washington Post suggests the following options…

Taleh read Sefer Halovic’s latest situation report with growing satisfaction. He’d made the right choice there, he decided. The young Bosnian was proving a superb team leader in a critical sector intelligent, ruthless, and obedient to orders. Just look at his success in achieving useful contact with the American extremists. Only four of the other action cells scattered across the United States had made similar contacts and none to the same degree.