"What's this?" he said, gesturing to the Kalashnikov barrels poking out the shack's windows. "Perches for birds?"
"My operators," I said, "getting a crash course in life behind enemy lines. How on God's green Earth did they get you into Tehran, Casaday?"
O.K. Casaday grinned without apparent sincerity. He was old-line CIA; I had rubbed up against him a few times in Vietnam, and occasionally since. He was the sort of shadow operative who didn't put much stock in notions like sincerity.
"That spooky ace bastard Wegener, from GSG-9," he said. "Arranged to slip me in as a member of a Krauthead TV crew."
"The people pointing guns at you are all ace bastards, Casaday," I pointed out. "Hearts and minds. Do you speak German?"
He laughed. "Fuck no. But then, neither do many of these sand niggers."
"Don't get cocky; a lot of Iranians've worked as Gastarbeiter in Germany. Who's your friend?"
The pickup driver had dismounted and leaned his back to the door. He looked like a local, with a dark hawk's face and curly black hair. He wore Levi's and a white T-shirt that molded itself revealingly to his iron-pumped pecs, but he had that spoiled rich-boy look to him. I can recognize it right off; I have a touch of it myself.
"Name's Daravayush," Casaday said, lifting the hat and taking a handkerchief from a pocket of his white linen suit and mopping the line of his blond hair. It was getting thin, I was pleased to note. I was forty-five, ten years older than he was, and mine wasn't. "He's your trusty guide and native bearer. Used to be one of the Shah's bodyguard."
I raised a brow. I had encountered little rich Iranian boys who thought they were tough before. But Pasdaran — the Iranian Revolutionary Guard — and SAVAMA, Khomeini's secret police, were hunting former members of the Shah's entourage with fanatical zeal. What they did when they caught them was unpleasant even by the standards of Third World atrocities. To run the risks he was by staying in-country, our interpreter had to have some unlooked-for depths.
"You been in touch with Desert One?" Casaday asked.
I nodded. You might have read about the hijinks at the base camp, since they weren't classified, as our part was: how Delta blew up a gasoline tank truck and captured a busload of Iranian peasants. But you have to understand, what happened there had no effect on us — until later.
"Well, you're getting your two AC-130 gunships flying top cover tonight, as promised. The Iranians have those two Phantoms ready to scramble at Mehrabad, and that armored division still has elements at the Ordnance Depot near the Embassy."
I nodded. This was all known and factored in. Our mission planners estimated that the armored vehicles at the Abbas Abad depot would take a minimum ninety minutes to reach the Embassy after the alert was raised, even though it was just a few blocks away. I concurred, knowing something about how regular soldiers conduct their affairs — and not just in the Third World, either. Still, it was reassuring to know the Night Shadows would be up there with their Gatling guns and 105-mm howitzers, in case the tanks or the Phantoms tried to wade in.
Casaday climbed back into his jeep. "I can't say it hasn't been real," he said, and drove away.
I gestured the boys and girls out of cover. "Let's get ready to roll, people. We have a diplomatic reception to attend in just a few hours. We don't want to be late."
"Who's this?" Billy Ray said, pointing to the pickup driver.
"Our guide. Name's Daravayush."
"Gesundheit," said Jay, with an eye on the Damsel, of course.
Daravayush grinned. "You can call me Darius," he said in excellent English. "It's the Western form of the name."
"Are you an ace?" Damsel asked, eyeing his biceps.
"No. I was told that you would make me one."
She got a little vee between her brows. I took it he did not light her Bunsen. Well, they could hash it out themselves. I got busy getting my grumbling troops in motion loading our traps in the truck.
The neighborhood Komiteh was trying to do its Ayatollah proud. They had a clapped-out little Paykan sedan pulled across the street, and fires going in oil drums either side of it — for dramatic effect no doubt, but also for warmth; Tehran is high desert, nestled right up against the Elburz Mountains. It gets cold at night in April.
"What do I do, boss?" Darius asked out the Chevy's open widow. He had an edge of nerves to his voice.
"Drive right up," I said. "I'll Handle it."
Tehran had that dark hunkered-down look of a city in a war zone. According to our intelligence that was mainly beause the zanies had purged the people who knew how to run the power grid, but occasionally you heard a pop or a little rainsquall ripple of gunfire, off in the distance. Periodically you got the boom of something bigger, bouncing around along the boxy modern buildings and blue mosque domes.
We'd gotten into central Tehran by freeway, getting waved through a couple of Pasdaran checkpoints without a pause. Now we were working our way down on the Embassy from the north. The Embassy itself was in a fairly non-residential district, but unfortunately we had to pass through a few neighborhoods on the way. That meant exposing ourselves to the mercies of officious Soviet-style block committees.
Or exposing them to ours; that was the kind of role we'd picked to play.
As the truck's brakes squealed us to a stop I gave my crew the once-over. Chung was wound tight as a bull-fiddle, just vibrating. Damsel sat right up next to him, her highly Occidental hair and face obscured by the folds of a kaffiyeh, her highly female figure muffled by bulky paramilitary drag. During the day she'd been showing more and more attention to the sergeant, which had caused Billy and Ackroyd to throw out their chests and strut around her even more.
Right now Ackroyd was flexing the forefinger of his right hand as if to warm it up. His "gun," he called it; it was the crutch he needed to make his projecting-teleport trick work. His real gun was propped against the side of the truck, getting its furniture all banged up. He had no interest in firearms, claiming that his ace gave him all the firepower he needed. I had not managed to pound into his head that the piece was necessary to sustain our appearance.
He wasn't a stupid man, Jay wasn't. Not by any means. He just didn't see anything past his preconceptions. I wouldn't think that would be a big help as an investigator, but military analysis types are the same way. Go figure.
I couldn't see Ray's mouth for his headdress, but his eyes smiled at me, mean and green. He cracked his knuckles. I gave him a little nod. Yeah, boy, we might need to see how much of a Wolverine you are.
The Librarian was hastily tucking his copy of Hardy under his fanny. He still had that idiot composure. No worries about him breaking here, anyway.
Lady Black was in the front seat with Darius, huddled under a black chador head-covering that went quite naturally with the rest of her getup; she looked like every other woman in Iran who didn't want to get her face slashed by the fundamentalists. The veil was a major help. There was no way we could explain wandering the streets of Tehran with a black woman. She must have been sweltering, but she didn't complain once the whole trip.
I jumped out of the pickup bed, ostentatiously readjusted the Tokagypt in my belt, and swaggered forward with my finest terrorist bravado. Which was fine indeed, since by that time in my long, bad life I was a pretty experienced terrorist.
There were a half dozen of them in their baggy Western-castoff style clothes, a couple of wizened old codgers, couple middle-aged men with important bellies, an adolescent with a cocked eye and an eight-year-old with a mock Kalashnikov carved out of wood. A cheap portable radio was scratching out Vivaldi, of all things. The allegro non molto from Concerto Number Four, "Winter," from The Four Seasons. Western classical music was the only music the mullahs would let the government radio play.