Ground Zero Read online

  Bolan and Yuri now stood on Iranian soil, looking at the rising plains and seeing nothing. This was one of the few areas in Iran that was not mountainous or hilly, and although this meant that they could not be easily ambushed on arrival, it was spare enough to make both men feel exposed.

  “So where’s the cavalry?” Bolan asked, looking around.

  Yuri checked his watch. “We’re ahead of time. Fifteen minutes.”

  Bolan nodded. “Then I suggest we find cover of some kind so we can wait unobserved.” But where? Among the flat sands and softly rising plain, there was little they could use. They dug out a hole, covered it with plastic sheeting they carried in their duffel bags and camouflaged it with a layer of sand. It would be useless in daylight, but in the dark it would be easily passed over by patrol boats skirting the shore, or from the air.

  It was a long fifteen minutes. Bolan did not check the time, but his own tingling nerves told him that their contacts were late. If their part in this action had been discovered, then it left the two men exposed and without backup. That was not a pleasant prospect in a country that had little to do with the outside world and was locked down within its own borders.

  While the time dragged, Bolan thought about the mission: he had a twofold task. The first was to infiltrate Tehran with the help of regime opponents and take out the politician in the guardian council who had been instrumental in providing funding to radical cells across the United States. The information that had been taken from the smartphone he had captured in NYC had been specific. One man had been the driving force, though whether he had been operating with full approval of his government was open to doubt. The way in which the Iranian political system operated, with its unwieldy mix of Islamic tradition and parliamentary democracy, made it sometimes hard to see where ultimate responsibility lay. All politicians and administrators were answerable ultimately to the supreme leader, a cleric to whom even the president had to present policy and legislation for approval. Yet it was doubtful that the cleric had a full grasp of everything that went on within a system that the melding of East and West had made labyrinthine.

  The named official was the one to eliminate, and in a way that made it clear his assassination was a warning: further action would not be tolerated.

  That was the first part of the mission. As if that were not enough, he was to try to enter Parchin and recon the base for any signs of the development of nuclear weapons. If there was some, again a warning shot was to be fired across the bow, a cease-and-desist order, making the regime aware that their activities had been noted. Anything overt that could be traced back to the United States would cause an international incident. Something that looked like an accident was required.

  As soon as he had achieved the first part of the mission, the second would have to be undertaken with maximum speed. He felt sure that Yuri was a man who could be trusted to be efficient, but what of those who were already late for the rendezvous?

  He could hear the distant whine of an engine as a vehicle approached across the plains. If it was their pickup, he resolved that as the mission progressed he would adapt and improvise on the given strategy in whatever degree it took to ensure that only he and the big Russian took risks, and only risks that they could weigh adequately.

  The pickup vehicle was a flatbed truck that was used for transporting fruit. Pallets and crates were still tied in the rear. Two men occupied the cab. One was smiling, the other taciturn. They reminded Bolan of an old vaudeville act from TV movies when he was a kid. The smiling man—Mahmoud—apologized profusely for the delay, claiming that they had been avoiding police in the city and so had taken a roundabout route. Akhbar, the silent one, was impassive and stone-faced, staring about as if expecting hordes of military to overrun them at any moment. Mahmoud spoke to them in Farsi and was obviously familiar with Yuri. He greeted him warmly and had no hesitation in using his native language.

  “We’re wasting time,” Bolan snapped, interrupting the fulsome apologies. “Let’s get going. Where are we headed?”

  “Rasht,” Mahmoud replied, his tone suddenly more sober as he took the measure of the soldier. “It’s just down the coast from here but too busy to risk landing. Since the revolution, more and more people are in the cities. We used to be a nation of land dwellers, and now we are all children of the cities. They say that over half of us now live in cities, and by the time I die—God willing I live a long life—then nearly nine-tenths of us will be crammed into concrete and clay. It is not a great city, but it is where my brother lives and where he does his business. We will go to his home and you will meet him. I am just your deliveryman.”

  “That was more than I really needed to know, but thanks anyway,” Bolan murmured, noting Yuri’s grin.

  “Forgive me, my friend, I talk too much. I have to, as Akhbar here does not.”

  “I doubt he gets a chance to get a word in,” Bolan said.

  “He could not, even if I was silent,” Mahmoud said, his face clouding. “He did too much talking against the government when he was a young man, and they silenced him by coming at night and slicing out his tongue. That was twenty years ago, when your Desert Storm put fear in us all, but not always for the same reasons. That’s a lot of talking I have to make up for.”

  The rest of the journey lapsed into an uneasy silence, and Bolan was relieved when they reached their destination.

  The sun was starting to rise as they entered Rasht, and the city was coming to life. Bolan and Yuri hunkered down in the cab, sandwiched between Akhbar and Mahmoud, with their blacksuits covered by borrowed clothes. That was why even the slightest delay had caused the soldier concern. Before sunrise it would have been harder to see into the cab of the truck, and there would have been fewer people on the streets. Now the populace was beginning to rise and go about their business, and as a result there was also a larger presence of police and military on the streets.

  Mahmoud negotiated the narrow streets with skill and speed, landing them in the courtyard of a building that rose around them on three stories. The white reflected the already rising sun, while the cool stone of the courtyard housed palms and shrubs in tubs and beds. As the truck entered, two young men slammed large wooden gates shut behind them, securing them with a gate bar. A middle-aged man came out of the main building to greet them. He shook Yuri’s hand.

  “We meet again. I always hope it will be under better circumstances, but they never seem to come.”

  “Perhaps they may. This is the foreigner Mr. Schevchenko wishes you to assist.”

  “You speak our language, or do you wish me to converse in English?” the man asked Bolan in tones that bore little trace of any accent.

  “Your language will be fine. In your country, it would be only courteous,” he added, noting to himself that Yuri had avoided mentioning his nationality. He knew his accent would give him away in English, but perhaps less so in his halting Farsi.

  “Come inside. We will eat and discuss what is to be done,” the man said warmly, leading them through and into the cool interior of the building. Inside, it was suffused with a muted electric glow, and the cold morning air was dispelled by hot-air heating. The two young men who had closed the doors followed them and took the borrowed robes from Bolan and Yuri, vanishing into the depths of the building, as had Mahmoud and Akhbar, only to reappear bearing trays of yogurt, tea and fruit that they placed on a table in the center of one room. There were low, Western-style couches around, and the man beckoned them to sit and partake. Both men were glad of the chance for a repast before the next stage of their mission. While they ate, they listened to what the man had to say.

  “I do not know if you know who I am,” he began. “Yuri, of course, is familiar with me, as we have conducted business of one sort or another on many occasions. I am Nouri Razmara, named after my great-uncle, who was assassinated over sixty years ago so that the corrupt government of th
e time could replace him as prime minister. Since then, this country has always been in the grip of dogma, whether it be the politics of the Shah or the religion of the Ayatollah. There is no place for freedom in either of these extremes. All I—and the men with whom I am allied—seek is the freedom that you have in the West. We could be a great player in world affairs—instead, we are ostracized and marginalized.”

  “That is your point of view, and I see no reason to argue over the matter,” Bolan said carefully. “But I fail to see what this has to do with the matter in hand or the arrangements that have been made. That is my only concern.”

  Razmara waved dismissively. “Of course, you are right to be concerned only with what is necessary to you. But it is vital I try to communicate to you the dedication we have to your mission. It is a difficult one. Parchin is a fortress, and so in its way is Tehran. We have put much thought into this. Of course we could buy the muscle, as I think you would say, but we could not guarantee their tongues short of cutting them out. And that would attract unwanted attention,” he added with some humor. “We have used only those who we know well. That means that they are not necessarily fighters, but they can support you.”

  Bolan nodded. Razmara spoke as though he expected some dissent from the soldier, yet this was exactly the way that Bolan would have chosen to play it.

  “All we require from you is the transport, the backup and the route out after we have achieved our objective. It is best that the fewest people possible are involved in the actual action. One, we would not wish to endanger men who live here or their families should reprisals take place. Two, we are trained and your men are not. That would make them a liability, no matter how well intentioned, as I’m sure you know. Three, the nature of this work means that the fewer people on the ground for this, the better. Are we clear about that?”

  Razmara nodded. “That is good. We can continue with no problems awaiting us from the inside. The outside will present a problem enough.”

  “I hope that’s something you have addressed,” Bolan said quietly. “Now, how about you outline your plans for getting us to the locations and the arrangements that you have made to ease our way on arrival?”

  “Of course,” Razmara agreed. “After we have finished here, the first move is to transport you to Tehran for the night. As you may be aware, the city is to the southeast of Rasht, and the roads between them will get you there in a matter of hours. Once there, we have a safe house for you until the night falls.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “There are millions of people in this city. It has some of the most advanced scientists in the world, with the capabilities to work on the Hadron Collider and to be one of the foremost nations in the world when it comes to cloning animals. A massive producer of gas and petrochemicals and a nation that has had a nuclear program since the fifties.”

  Bolan stood at the window of the fourth-floor apartment in the center of Tehran, a modern building that overlooked a mosque that could have been built in the past year or in the time of Mohammed, so traditional and permanent was its design. He spoke softly, and when he paused Yuri looked up from cleaning his BXP10 and interjected.

  “You sound almost as though you work for the Iranian tourist board,” he said with humor. “Your point is what, exactly?”

  “That the people back where I come from have no idea about this nation. About what it really is and the danger it could truly represent if it chose. For the past thirty years or more, since the last Shah was deposed, because of the fundamentalist nature of the rulers, the American media and the people—hell, maybe even the government for all I know—has looked on Iran like it’s some kind of dirt-poor, shuffling-in-the-dust Arab nation. We fight and worry about their oil, but never really take that into the equation. This is a nation that mixes the radical and dangerous in technology with a worldview that seems at least a millennium out of step with the rest of the world. It’s very deceptive and very dangerous because of that.”

  “Then I guess it’s your job to make your superiors aware of this when you return. Perhaps they do know, but choose not to represent that to the people?”

  “That wouldn’t be the first time, or the last. I just hope that this idea of sending out a warning without triggering another Iraq or Afghanistan war works. If it requires more overt action, or causes Iran to react unduly, then there may be problems.”

  “Now that, my friend, would be a very bad thing,” Yuri commented, gesturing to emphasize his point with the detached stock of his submachine gun. “My employer and those like him rely on the flow of goods and services to remain free. The regrettable upheavals in the two nations you mention have severely restricted trade, and my employer and his comrades are great exponents of the Keynesian theories of free trade. Besides, I had family who served the Red Army in Afghanistan.” He mock shivered. “An awful place, I am told. I suspect that the past thirty years have done little to improve it. For that to happen here—”

  “Is very unlikely. If the rumors about Parchin are true, then it could all go in another direction far too easily. No, for our respective reasons and our respective employers, it would be best if we achieve the right result over the next thirty-six hours.”

  Bolan turned away from the window and the city going about its business below them. Apart from the heat and the fact a large majority of the men and all the women were in traditional Muslim dress, they could have been in any major capital. The apartment that served as a safe house was owned by a businessman whose company was involved in import and export of machinery involved in refining and engineering. That had made it easier for him to run a sideline in the import and export of another kind of hardware than it may have been for Razmara. The businessman, who maintained his anonymity to the soldier and his compatriot by expediently sending two lackeys to greet them, had plundered his illicit stock to leave them weapons that could be added to their own ordnance.

  Razmara had swapped the flatbed truck for a Mercedes with tinted windows that had once again been driven by Mahmoud, with Akhbar the silent shotgun. The roads between Rasht and Tehran were of good quality, and with the vehicle being that of a respected businessman who often made the journey between the two cities, they made good time with little to no chance of being intercepted. Once in Tehran, the driver had negotiated his way to the apartment building near the center of the city, where he had taken them into the underground garage.

  “Nouri makes this trip often—our contact, who wishes to remain unknown to you because of his own nervousness, is both a friend and colleague. It is stupid that he feels safe with you not knowing his name. If you are captured and tortured, you know more than enough to lead to him anyway, but...” Mahmoud shrugged.

  “I’ll try to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Bolan commented.

  After ascertaining that they weren’t being followed, and with suitable traditional covering so that their faces would be masked to the building’s security cameras, Mahmoud took them to the fourth floor by elevator, where he bade them farewell and good fortune before leaving them in charge of two taciturn and nervous young men who displayed the armament left for them before making their excuses to leave. But not before leaving them with a tablet that carried maps, photographs and video of their target, his home and the surrounding area.

  In truth, the soldier was glad when they departed. It left the two professionals with a chance to familiarize themselves with their objective and also to ensure that their equipment for the evening’s work was primed.

  The ordnance they had been left was a mixed bag. Yuri was delighted and amused to find that a Dragunov sniper rifle had been left for them, disassembled.

  “I trained with one of these when I was a military man,” he reminisced, caressing the detached barrel. “It is a fine gun, and accurate to a hairsbreadth when you know how to use it.”

  “But completely inappropriate,” Bolan interjecte
d.

  “Of course,” Yuri mused. “It is a shame that we cannot carry out a distance hit on our target. That would make the getaway a lot easier.”

  “Not when we have to find somewhere secure to set up a four-foot-long gun and then take it to pieces and ship it out without giving ourselves away,” Bolan explained.

  “You are right, sadly,” Yuri agreed.

  They had also been left a couple of 9 mm RAP-401 pistols, of South African manufacture; some C-4 plastique and detonators; two HK PSG1 semiautomatic rifles that chambered 7.62 mm NATO rounds with a number of twenty-round box mags; and two Benelli MT3 combat shotguns with folding stocks. Bolan was not averse to the latter, their twenty-seven-shot per round .33 caliber pellets of double 0 buckshot being useful for maximum damage and confusion in confined spaces. It seemed a shame not to take advantage of the ordnance that had been left for them, but it presented them with two main problems.

  The first was that, for this part of the mission in particular, they did not want to be weighed down, which was why the ordnance they carried with them had been picked for the optimum balance of effectiveness and weight. The second was that although it would have been in some senses better to travel light and pick up ordnance along the way, it would be traceable. Even though it was contraband, it would not take much in the way of forensics to trace them back to the importer who was running piracy. They could not guarantee they would return from their mission or not be forced to leave some of the hardware behind them. From there, the network of dissidents would soon be uncovered. Bolan did not want to be responsible for the chance of so many deaths. Yuri did not want to have to explain such an eventuality to his employer.

  So the soldier and his companion stuck to the ordnance they had brought with them in the duffel bags. Yuri was fond of the BXP10 SMG, which he had trained with during his army days, so familiar with the weapon that it seemed like an extension of his arm. He also carried a Glock 23 semiautomatic pistol, its 13-round mag of 165 gram SpearGold Dot jacketed hollowpoint rounds being, to his mind, of maximum efficiency. He carried spare ammunition for both, as well as for the SIG Sauer P229 that he carried as a single-shot weapon.