Chapter 10

Kermanshah Province, Iran. June 2013

The unremarkable man this time was different from the one in Syria.

Older. Quieter. The kind of stillness that came from doing something a long time rather than from training. He met her at a location she was driven to blindfolded and when the blindfold came off she was in a room with bare concrete walls and a table with a folder on it and a single overhead light.

She was getting used to rooms like this.

“Major General Davood Shirazi,” he said. “Quds Force. He’s been running weapons and trainers into southern Iraq for three years. IEDs that have killed thirty-one American soldiers and approximately four hundred Iraqi civilians trace back to his supply chain.” He slid the folder across the table. “He’s careful. Rarely leaves Iran. When he does it’s fast and unpredictable.”

She opened the folder.

Shirazi was in his late fifties. Heavy jaw, close cropped gray hair, the bearing of a man who had spent decades being deferred to. He looked at the camera in his surveillance photograph the way powerful men looked at everything — like it existed for his benefit.

“He’s moving,” the man said. “Tomorrow night. Road convoy from a Quds Force facility near Kermanshah heading toward the Iraqi border. He does this maybe three times a year and we’ve never had positioning to act on it until now.” A pause. “We have positioning now.”

“How long is the window?”

“The convoy passes a specific point on the road at approximately 2200. There’s a ridge above the road — your position is already marked on the terrain map.” He tapped the folder. “Distance to the road from the ridge is nine hundred and forty meters.”