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“We’re only 200 kilometers into the Atlantic. The Second Captain drove us out at dead slow ahead, we think because it was trying to avoid ASW detection. It must have worked, we shook the ASW forces. We’re on the track now. Quzwini is calculating a speed change based on weapon-assembly time. We should be speeding up in a few minutes. We’ve lost the diesel/battery compartment. If we lose the reactor we’re in bigger trouble. There is some damage to the propulsion cables to the propulsor motor, but we’re limping along as is for now. We think there was some outer-hull damage from the blast, took out the aft-hull sonar arrays. But the important thing is the reactor is whole, the Second Captain functioned and we’re still watertight.”

“Sihoud?”

“Still with us, and pressing me to hurry up the mission … Sleep some more, sir, I’ll be back in a few hours. When you can sit up we’ll figure out how to assemble the missiles.

Colonel Ahmed says he can do it.” Tawkidi looked away to the medical officer. “See to it that he rests. Shoot him up if need be.”

“Sir.”

The door shut behind the navigator, and Commodore Sharef felt a needle pinch his arm. Soon he was floating, feeling an out-of-place euphoria, until he thought he was again on the bridge of the Sahand staring at the sky …

NORTHERN IRAN

Commander Jack Morris of seal Team Seven rested his head against the vibrating bulkhead of the V-22 Osprey, able to sleep better in a plane driven by the Marine Corps.

He was jostled awake by his XO, Black Bart. He had asked Bart to get him up an hour before they arrived at the drop zone so he could review this crazy mission one last time.

By the light of a hooded flashlight Morris looked over the op-order, shaking his head.

Bart handed him a large styrofoam cup of coffee, steaming hot. Morris took it aboard slowly, reading the eighty-page op-order a second, then a third time. The airframe of the hybrid transport airplane-helicopter shuddered at drop-minus fifteen minutes. Bart went down the row of commandos, waking each one up, handing out coffee to the seals.

Morris checked the small oval window. It was dark outside, a faint light from the moon fighting the growing overcast.

The clouds were taking on a pregnant featureless look, as if snow would be in the forecast. The landscape of the north Iranian Koppeh Mountains below was covered with snow, the dingy sooty snow that had been around awhile.

Soon it was five minutes to drop. Morris pulled on his parka, his balaclava hood, the boom mike and earpiece of the scrambled VHF radio in place beneath the fabric of the hood; A combat backpack, his MAC-10 machine gun with spare clips, a Beretta automatic pistol, five Mark 10 flash-bang grenades, five Mark 25 high-explosive grenades and five Mark 14 stun grenades. And a Hershey bar — just in case.

The aircraft slowed and shook violently as the large-diameter propellers tilted up to act as helicopter rotors, the plane slowing and descending to the snow-covered mountainside.

A hydraulic thump as the landing gear extended and locked in, then a slight shock of touchdown. The aft door came open, blowing in frigid air. The seal team rushed out. Bart was the last man out, the V-22 lifting off just as his boot left the ramp of the door, the rotors again tilting to the horizontal as the aircraft turned back to the south and climbed over the ridge. Morris looked over the mountain to the north and waved the team on. They started off, crunching through snow that had been rained on. When they climbed the low ridge between rows of mountains the complex of the Mashhad weapons lab came into view. The lab was not a large one, the main facility several single-floor oblong steel buildings in a row, the structures linked by a larger brick building to the north. A few maintenance and motor-pool shacks littered the fenced-in area. The fence was not a high-security perimeter, erected more to keep out animals than intruders. There was a guard shack on the north side but no sentry was visible by binoculars. Morris dispatched his platoons to their separate missions, his three-man platoon planning to go in a hole they would cut in the fence, break into the middle metal building and work their way to the brick wing. He waited ten minutes for the sentry to be neutralized, got a brief go signal on the VHF and went into the fence cut.

It was a short jog through the ice-covered snow to reach the roll-up door of the nearest metal building. Next to the roll-up door was a regular entrance door. Morris tried it, found it locked and gestured to Pinky Williams. Pinky flashed out his tools, picked the lock and opened the door.

It was a dimly lit high-bay area, probably used to load trucks by the look of the weight-handling monorails alongside the roll-up door. Local time was zero three hundred, and the loading area was deserted. It was also useless to them. Morris and the platoon headed through the far door, a hallway, checking the rooms on either side.