Chapter 7

The intelligence types were ecstatic over the capture of Hawk. There was no question about it, we were going to get all of the shit details from now on. By that, I meant that a job that was really tough was going to handed to us, and we would be expected to bring home the bacon. Oh, well, that was what made this job so interesting.

Hawk gave up so much intel (intelligence) that the system was overloaded. Now the problem was not finding a job for us but was deciding which job would be the most fruitful. They had us hopping all over the place inside Afghanistan going after high-value targets. They even sent us into Iran and Pakistan after some of them. The trips into Iran were the most sensitive because they did not want to shake up the Russians too much. The Russians kept sucking up to the Iranians because they were such good customers for nuclear materials. In fact, that was one of our missions.

The Iranians had contracted with the Russians for a nuclear bomb that could be carried by a team of agents and assembled on the spot where the explosion was to take place. Because these were the ultimate in suicide bombers, shielding was not a significant problem. The radioactive parts were shielded only enough to slow down the development of too high a level of radiation sickness so that the bomb could not be assembled. Once the bomb went off, the question of radiation sickness became moot for the suicide bombers.

The development work was done out in the boondocks in a mountainous region where it would be hard to detect loose radiation. Of course, the Russians who were there to develop the weapon and to train the Iranians in its use were reluctant to develop radiation sickness, so this did slow down the development and training cycle.

An underground facility under a large mountain was constructed. The facility had the development labs and such, but it also had rather elaborate and posh living accommodations for the Russians. Our job was to go in, destroy their ability to make nuclear bombs, and to kill the Russian technicians. It did no real good to kill the Iranians because more suicide bombers could be recruited with little effort.

The GPS coordinates for the facility were given to us, and we were transported as close as was prudent on trucks. From there, we would have to walk, but that was not a serious problem for us. We had the usual detailed maps and high quality photos to use to get to the facility, and we had a rendezvous point where we would be picked up after the nuclear facility was destroyed.

Four days were budgeted for us to reach the targeted facility, with a chance of taking five days if we ran into some kind of difficulty. Our intention was to avoid contact with the Iranians if at all possible. We were supposed to run back to Afghanistan if it looked like we had been detected. The point was to make sure that the bomb development facility did not get any idea that they were our target.

Well, we did most of our movement at night after we dismounted from the trucks. Actually, we were a lot more comfortable after we left the trucks because we felt a lot less conspicuous. Those trucks raised too much dust to do a very good job of being inconspicuous. We really didn't need the trucks, but they were traditional in this sort of mission, so we would have upset too many people to do without them. We could have jogged at 30 MPH, which was as fast as the trucks could move on that crummy road, and we would have raised a lot less dust. Oh, well, the armchair generals had to have some input or we would never have gotten the mission.

It was near dawn when we dismounted from the trucks, and Emily directed the placement of the camouflage while the trucks waited for dark to return to base. We used the remaining darkness to put as much distance between us and the trucks as possible just in case the trucks were spotted. The trucks had a cover story just in case they were captured. We hoped not because it would mean a rather painful death for the men left with the trucks if that happened.

We halted and made camp about five miles from the trucks and 12 miles from the target. It was not a very comfortable camp because it got only a little warmer as the sun rose. By this time, we were up pretty high, so we had the temperature compounded by the altitude. Even the sex was not as much fun as it would have been if the weather had been warmer.

At last, we ate our supper of MREs and policed (cleaned) the area before we left. We had hardly gone a mile when we encountered a border patrol of Iranians headed back to their camp. Our dark gray uniforms made it nearly impossible for them to see us, so we were able to kill every one of them without firing a shot. We knew where their base camp was from the photos, so it was not necessary to take the time to question any of them. Furthermore, we figured to reach our target before they were missed, so we just left them where they lay and continued our hurried march.

We managed to get to the entrance to the underground facility a little bit early, but we figured that it was late enough at night that we could go ahead with our attack. Our two snipers had sound suppressors for their rifles so they were able to pick off the guards at the entrance without being spotted. The guards were so sure that they were well hidden that they were caught completely unawares and dropped without sounding any alarm.

We were prepared to act in case an alarm had gone off, but we got lucky because of the complacency of the guards. In fact, that complacency carried over throughout the rest of our attack. They were just too sure of their safety and security.

We entered the facility just after the changing of the guard, so we figured that we would have at least two hours, and maybe four hours before anybody noticed any change in the situation. Our plan was to be finished with our job and have destroyed the facility before that time was up.

Our problem at this point was that we had no map of the actual installation, so we were going to have to find where everything was located. That shouldn't be too difficult, but it could slow us down. Our first target was to find the elevators; this place was not likely to be all on one level. Uh-oh, dammit, here comes somebody!

What a relief! That "somebody" turned out to be a cleaning woman. Alonzo sent two women to grab her—he figured that she would be less frozen in fear if she were captured by women. Jess and Helen were the two he sent, and Jess was able to talk to the woman in Persian. The woman was quite willing to talk to Jess; it seemed that she hated the men who worked there. None of them would talk to her except to give her orders, and a few of the men had raped her.

The woman said that the whole facility, as far as she knew, was all on one level. She also gave Jess a good description of the general layout of the facility. The woman was obviously not an Islamic fanatic, so Jess advised her to get our of the facility as soon as possible because we were going to blow it up within the next hour. That really scared the woman because she had heard that there was a monster bomb being assembled in a place she described as "the workroom." She was not allowed in there, but the word around the facility was that the bomb was ready to be shipped out.

Jess got quite a bit of useful information from the woman before she was sent running to safety. When Alonzo heard what the woman had said, he revised the plan. He wanted to find the bomb as soon as possible and set it off. Surely, that would destroy this facility and kill everybody inside. That would accomplish all of our goals.

We headed for the workroom by following the woman's instructions. Even moving at our best speed, it took us 15 minutes to reach the area we were searching for. Once we went into the development lab, it was easy to find the bomb. It was about the size of an apartment refrigerator lying on its side. Hadly immediately spotted that the covers over the fuse area had been removed; why, he couldn't say. Possibly, there were some last minute improvements being made.

We formed a protective screen around Hadly and the device while he examined it. He announced that he could adapt his explosives and fuse to set the nuclear bomb off. Even it the nuclear bomb didn't explode, his explosives would have reduced it to nothing more than radioactive rubble that would make this part of the facility totally unusable for years. That would mean that the plutonium in the bomb could not be salvaged and used for another bomb.