Flynn felt cold. Shahrud was the site of Iran’s most advanced ballistic missile facility. Whatever MIDNIGHT involved, it sure as hell wasn’t anything straightforward like smuggling small arms, explosives, or drugs to some terrorist group. Not even close. Suddenly unable to sit still any longer, he jumped up from the chair and started to prowl around the small room — feeling a lot like a tiger caged in a zoo… and just as helpless.
The Iranian watched him for a few moments before asking, “So what will you do now, Mr. Duarte?”
Flynn grimaced. “I’m damned if I know just yet,” he grudgingly admitted. The one downside of his oh-so-clever plan to contact Daneshvar covertly was that it had meant effectively putting himself in a box. With that Raven Syndicate surveillance team parked just outside the house, he was stuck here until the Iranian went back to work the next morning — dragging his watchers with him.
He frowned. Sure, once the older man left, he’d regain his freedom of movement. But to what end? Everything he’d learned to this point was still just hearsay, the unsupported word of a single Iranian dissident. To have any hope of triggering real action by the U.S. or by some other friendly government, the Quartet Directorate needed solid evidence. Which still left the job of digging up that proof solidly planted on his shoulders.
The Shahid Darvishi shipyards themselves were definitely a no-go area. Especially now that MIDNIGHT was so close to its start date, security would be tighter than ever, with every vehicle that entered the security zone undoubtedly searched from top to bottom. Even if Daneshvar was willing to risk his own neck, it would be impossible for him to smuggle Flynn in for a closer look at the Gulf Venture and its secret cargo.
So what alternative was left?
He turned to Daneshvar. “Do you know which route this truck convoy is taking from the Shahrud missile site?”
The older man frowned. “For certain? No.” He stroked his beard reflectively for a moment. “But given the tonnages involved, there are only so many roads which can safely handle loads of such magnitude. And once the convoy gets closer to Bandar Abbas, there is really only one highway it can use.” He turned to one of his bookcases in growing excitement and pulled out a thin paperbound volume. “I have a road atlas here.”
“Show me,” Flynn said tersely. He followed Daneshvar’s finger as he traced a route along the network of roads connecting northeastern Iran with the Persian Gulf coast. The other man was right, he realized, seeing the single major highway connecting Bandar Abbas with that part of Iran’s interior.
The rough contours of a plan began to take shape in his mind. His eyes narrowed while he calculated the distances involved and tried to get some sense of the terrain he might encounter. He shook his head as the difficulty of what he’d have to do became clearer. What he had in mind could work, he decided, but pulling it off without getting killed was going to take both luck and a willingness to improvise on the fly when his “plan” fell apart — as it inevitably would.
Given the odds against success, Flynn realized, he’d better report first to Fox in Florida and to Laura Van Horn and the rest of the ops team waiting anxiously in Afghanistan. He sat down again, took out his cell phone, and started composing the message needed to fill them in on what he’d learned so far — and what he planned to do next.
His report, written in Spanish, was camouflaged as a chatty personal note about his travels in Iran. Sent to an email address registered in Venezuela, it would be automatically forwarded from there. “Querida madre y padre, he llegado a la encantadora ciudad de Bandar Abbas y he recibido una cálida bienvenida de mi anfitrión,” he typed slowly, silently cursing the phone’s tiny virtual keyboard. “Dear Mother and Father, I have arrived here in the delightful city of Bandar Abbas and received a warm welcome from my host—”
Once Flynn finished, he sat back, placing bets with himself on how long it would take to hear back from anyone. Not long, as it turned out. His phone pinged once just a few minutes later, signaling the arrival of a text message, also in Spanish, from Fox. Translated, it strongly recommended against his planned course of action, arguing that it was far too dangerous and unlikely to yield usable data. But the message ended, as he’d known it would, with Fox’s grudging permission to go ahead if he still thought it best. Much as he probably would have liked to do so, the Quartet Directorate’s American head of station knew better than to second-guess an agent in the field.
Van Horn’s reply showed up just after he finished confirming his intent to Fox. It was short and to the point: “Solo dime dónde y cuándo.” “Just tell me where and when.” Flynn grinned. She was a woman after his own heart.
Nineteen
Route 71 was a divided highway that ran from Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf coast all the way north through the holy city of Qom and on to Tehran, nearly eight hundred road miles inland. Just a little over forty miles north of Bandar Abbas, it passed through a small valley occupied by the tiny village of Gohreh. Small fields and groves of fruit and nut trees lined the highway for a few hundred yards. The little cluster of sand-colored buildings that made up Gohreh occupied the higher, less fertile ground east of the road. Craggy, boulder-strewn heights rose on all sides, separated by heavily eroded defiles. Formed millions of years ago by the collision of two massive tectonic plates, these steep ridges were an extension of the southern Zagros Mountains. They ran east and west like waves frozen in a tempest-tossed sea of stone.
Half a mile north of the village itself, Nick Flynn lay in wait on the forward slope of a gentle rise, an offshoot of the much higher ground climbing to the east. This hill overlooked Route 71. A few clumps of shrubs and dwarf trees paralleled the highway and climbed a little way up its barren slopes. He was prone in a shallow trench he’d scraped out by hand in the softer soil under the low-hanging branches of one of those dwarf trees. To help screen his hiding place from the road, he’d arranged tufts of dried brush along the lip of the trench, with gaps just big enough to see through.
His Austrian-made motorbike was laid carefully on its side close to his hide. He’d covered it over with a tan bedsheet bought for an exorbitant price in Bandar Abbas. Rocks held down the four corners of this cotton cloth, and he’d heaped dirt and more bits of brush across it as added camouflage.
Flynn raised his head above the edge of his shallow trench and peered down the slope. Ahead, in the west, the sun was sinking fast behind a sheer-sided ridge that climbed nearly three thousand feet above the valley floor. It would be dark in less than an hour. The heights behind him were already fading into shadow — still fully touched by light only at their very highest points. He’d finished digging himself into concealment a little over an hour ago, working in fits and starts to avoid being spotted by any of the occasional vehicles driving by along the highway. Since then, not a single car or truck had come north or south — which probably meant the Iranians had started blocking traffic to clear the way for their convoy from Shahrud.
To make sure he was ready, he powered on his phone and checked its battery level and camera settings. Everything still looked good. He settled back down again. Now to see if he and Daneshvar had guessed right.