The Enemy Within

Tomahawk 12 was the last of six cruise missiles targeted on the headquarters building. One missile’s guidance unit failed in flight, sending it crashing into the side of a mountain near the southern Iranian city of Shiraz. But all four of the others screamed straight in on target, gutting the structure with thousand-pound warheads. Ripped apart by the repeated bomb blasts, the Exxon building’s upper floors teetered and then collapsed into the street. Now this last missile dispensed tiny, HE-laden bombletsover the ruined Revolutionary Guards headquarters. Their rapid-fire detonations shredded steel and glass and flesh and anything else over a fifty-meter square area.

White House Press Statement “At 3:00 A.M. eastern standard time, elements of the United States Navy launched approximately one hundred Tomahawk missiles at Iran. Their targets were the military installations, economic facilities, and official ministries used by the Iranian government to plan or facilitate terrorist attacks against the United States, most recently the murderous and unprovoked bombing on the Golden Gate Bridge. Based on initial assessments, we believe this retaliatory strike inflicted heavy damage on all intended targets. Our own forces involved in the operation suffered no losses.

“Though we regret any loss of life, the government of the United States earnestly hopes the Islamic Republic of Iran will draw the appropriate conclusions from this action and immediately and unconditionally abandon its support for international terrorism.”

CHAPTER 1 MANEWERS

FEBRUARY 6

Near the Holy City of Qom, Iran.

A cold, bitter wind whipped across Iran’s barren central plain, whirling sand, dust, and charred bits of paper and clothing across a scene of utter devastation.

General Amir Taleh picked his way carefully through the rubble and uncertain footing, favoring his right leg. He stopped momentarily to get his bearings. Bearings on what? he asked himself angrily. Taleh fought the urge to pick up a piece of shattered concrete and throw it.

A slender, physically fit man, with a neatly trimmed black mustache and beard, Taleh wore a heavy winter coat over his light olivegreen fatigue uniform. The only adornments on his clothing were the stars on his collar tabs indicating his rank in Iran’s Regular Army. Nothing else showed his status as Chief of Staff of the armed forces. Even now, the self appointed guardians of his nation’s Islamic Revolution were not fond of rank and class distinctions.

He was standing amid the burned-out wreckage of what had been the most sophisticated electronics facility in Iran. Only a ragged outline of the exterior walls remained, showing its original size. Ten thousand square meters of factory space and sophisticated equipment lay jumbled inside with no more value now than a slum’s rubbish heap. Explosives experts picked their way carefully through the rubble, looking for unexploded bomblets, while in one corner two men with Green Crescent armbands wrestled with a body still partly buried in the debris. Police and Pasdaran guards kept civilians out, but just beyond the barrier a large knot of silent men and women waited for word of those still missing.

Almost nothing was left of the electronics plant one of Iran’s precious-few facilities able to fabricate and repair integrated circuits and other high-tech electronic components.

Taleh was tired, his leg hurt, and he was coldly furious with the fools who had poked and prodded a sleeping lion into swiping back. And for what? For nothing! A few newspaper headlines and a few more graves in the Martyrs’ Cemetery. Certainly, nothing of lasting worth!

The Iranian general scowled. He had been at the Defense Ministry when the American retaliatory strike hit yesterday. He’d only escaped death because he had been visiting one of his subordinates when the missiles arrived. One Tomahawk had hit the corner of the building containing his offices obliterating them.