Throughout the past decade, however, Iran remained dependent on foreign technology — from Russia, China, and especially on North Korea, which alone could supply the actual rocket motor assembly for the Shahab series. That made her vulnerable in the event of war: to blockade, and to being unable to replenish her means of delivery.
Both the planners for Operation Bold Fire and the senior officials within the Tehran government had been divided on the question of whether to wait on the invasion of the Musand'am peninsula until the facility at Darya-ye was complete. If they did wait, Defense Minister Admiral Mehdi Baba-Janzadeh and his supporters had argued, Iran would be in an ideal position to hold the Americans at bay simply by the threat of nuclear, chemical, or bacteriological attack. The Ayatollah
Khamenei and his supporters, however, had pointed out — accurately — that Iraq's perceived NBC capabilities had not deterred either Desert Storm or the American invasion in 2003. Iran's nuclear force could not be expected, therefore, to deter an American invasion of Iran.
In fact, the closer Iran got to being able to deploy weapons of mass destruction, the more likely was a preemptive strike by either the United States or, conceivably, by Israel. All remembered well Israel's air strike against the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981.
In the end Khamenei and his people had won the argument… in large part because of the failed American penetration of the Darya-ye complex just a few weeks before. Clearly, the Americans suspected the nature of the facility beneath Kuh-e Gab, and they would continue to try to learn its secrets. If Iran actually dared use the weapons stored and assembled there, the Americans would retaliate in kind — of that there could be no doubt — and that would be an economic and political disaster for the nation, one which the Tehran government knew it would not survive.
Better, they argued, to launch Bold Fire while relying purely on conventional weapons. If America could be goaded into appearing to be the aggressor, Iran would have a political victory without needing to fire another shot; in fact, there was a better-than-even chance that the Americans would back down entirely. It was an election year in the United States, after all, and the voters were wary of another long and bloody engagement, such as the long-running insurrection by Iraqi Sunni fundamentalists. Give them a bloody nose, and they might pull out. If they fought back, Iran could hold out long enough for the Islamic world to rally to her side.
And there were those five warheads at Kuh-e Gab, to use as an absolute last-ditch resort. Constructed of plutonium acquired from former Soviet military personnel in Kazakhstan and Ukraine, using triggers smuggled in from North Korea and from Pakistan, the mere suspicion that they existed served as some measure of deterrence against a U.S. invasion, the warning message of Iraq notwithstanding. And attacking before the special weapons facility was completed gave them a measure of surprise. If the Americans suspected what was under Kuh-e Gab, they would expect Iran to hold its plans until the facility was fully operational.
In fact, Darya-ye was functional, though some of the defensive systems were still being assembled; functional enough that the IRGC could begin the final assembly of at least five weapons delivery systems there.
What they didn't know was that the U.S. Navy SEALs were in the hills three hundred feet above the tunnel entrances to the complex, watching with considerable interest, and reporting everything by satellite to the USGN Ohio and to Washington.
Things were coming to a head faster than anyone had realized.
18
The sun had long ago turned the crumpled flanks of the Kuh-e Gab into a blazing furnace. During the night hours, the eight SEALs of Delta One had set up their OP, literally burrowing into the ridgetop above the military base by scraping shallow trenches into the stony soil, then stretching camouflaged tarps from pegs two feet above the ground to create a patch of shade.
It was still damned hot, but the shade and the insulating effects of the walls of the shallow trenches helped. Had they waited out the day laying in the direct sunlight, they swiftly would have succumbed to heat exhaustion or sunstroke. They moved as little as possible, and drank as freely as possible from their water stores.
Two SEALs at a time, however, were always on watch, laying side by side at the edge of the tarp shelter, in a position that let them look down both on the tunnel openings directly below and onto the fenced-in military compound three-quarters of a mile down the valley.
In the intense heat of the Gulf in late June, activity in the Kuh-e Gab base had slackened off considerably. Most of the sentries remained inside, or stood in patches of shade cast by buildings or vehicles. Even so, at around noon Tangretti and TM1 Avery were watching through powerful binoculars as a flatbed truck arrived at the main base from the north, escorted by a pair of BMP-2 armored personnel carriers and a truck full of soldiers.
Through their binoculars, they could see a large something on the back of the transport, a roughly cylindrical shape strapped down securely and covered by canvas. The convoy was waved through the main gate, and the flatbed and one of the APCs proceeded up the narrow valley to the tunnel entrances. In a brief flurry of activity, the flatbed was backed into the third tunnel from the left, vanishing inside. After a brief wait, the APC returned down the valley to the main base, and activity at the tunnel complex — at least outside in the sun — returned to the slow and languid pace of midday in the tropical summer.
Tangretti and Avery captured the whole operation through the powerful lenses of a digital video camera. Behind them, connected to the camera by a gray cable, was a sixteen-pound AN/PRC-117F satellite communications unit — affectionately called a "prick" — its separate cruciform antenna set up on a small tripod in the glare of the sunlight outside the tarp shelter. A KY-99 crypto device was hooked up to the prick, providing signal security. The antenna was focused on a military geosync satellite high above the southern horizon, which was relaying the image back down to the Ohio's Combat Center, as well as to watchers in the Pentagon basement, 6,500 miles and eight time zones away.
"What do you think?" Avery asked in a whisper. They were too far from the nearest Iranian troops to be overheard, but SEAL training and long habit are powerful conditioners.
"It's something important."
"A warhead, maybe? It was about the right size for a Sahab nose cone."
"Could've been an air conditioner, for all we know." Tangretti shifted the angle of his binoculars slightly. "Still… "
"What?"
"I see four more flatbed trucks down there, exactly like the one that just went inside the mountain."
"I see 'em."
"Tarps and chains lying on the backs, but no cargo loads."
"Five air conditioners?"
"Or something."
The upper end of the valley, just beyond the tunnel entrances where the canyon kinked around from northwest to southwest, was fenced off and guarded, effectively turning it into a part of the main base at the canyon mouth. The four empty flatbeds were parked side by side against this westernmost fence.