On the way they passed Delta Force troopers checking bodies for identity cards. Major Witt believed in being thorough.
The communications center was a large room just off the staircase. Banks of high-frequency radios, telephone switchboards, and teletype machines lined three of the walls. The fourth held a large street map of Tehran with various locations marked. Most of the equipment was old 1970s and 1980s vintage but there were a few newer computers and fax machines on a group of desks cluttered in the center of the room. There were more corpses huddled on the floor or sprawled across the desks. The comm center at least had been fully manned.
Diaz led him straight across the room to where a Delta Force trooper, Master Sergeant Vaughn, stood tracing circuits and switches on one of the telephone switchboards. “Show the colonel what you found, Tony.”
Thinner than most of the men who made it through the Delta selection course, Tony Vaughn was one of the outfit’s top technical specialists and linguists. He pointed to a set of panels. “See these?”
Thorn nodded.
“They’re patch panels to several remote sites. Phone calls come in here to the main center and this gear reroutes them elsewhere automatically,” Vaughn explained. “Now, what’s interesting in all of this spaghetti wire is that I’ve found a series of switches that show that several primary circuits are being routed to one site but not to any of the others.”
“They’re tied into an auxiliary command post,” Thorn realized suddenly.
Vaughn nodded. “Exactly.” He led the way back to the desks in the middle of the room and hefted a pile of loose-leaf binders. “So that’s when I started looking through their latest comm logs.”
The noncom flipped the top log open to a page near the end. “And this is where I hit pay dirt.” He tapped an entry. “Here’s what the chief watch officer noted for 1210 hours, 13 December: ‘MAGI Prime transferred to Aux Site Three. Command circuit, staff phones, emergency circuit routed to Aux Site Three.’ ”
Thorn swung toward the wall map of Tehran. A walled compound near the intersection of two major avenues was clearly marked as Auxiliary Site Three. A soccer stadium lay to the east just across the street. The location was painfully familiar to any Delta Force officer with a knowledge of his own unit’s history. His jaw tightened. “I’ll be damned! The son of a bitch has set up his new command post smack-dab in the middle of our old embassy!”
He shook his head, angry at himself for underestimating Amir Taleh’s cunning yet again. With the clock counting down toward a major military move, transferring his headquarters was a reasonable precaution for the Iranian general to take. He suspected it would also give the man a twisted sense of pleasure to issue the orders that would emasculate America’s economy from inside the embassy buildings Iranian militants had used in 1979 and 1980 as a prison for their hostages.
Thorn and Diaz took the stairs back up at a dead run.
Witt and the others were still waiting for them inside the second-floor office. “We’re in contact with the CAC,” the major said.
Thorn went straight to the SATCOM, slipped on the headset offered to him by one of his soldiers, and picked up the microphone. “Nemesis Lead.”
“This is Centurion,” Farrell’s voice answered. To oversee the mission, the general had flown down to the Special Operations Command headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base. SOCOM’s Crisis Action Center had secure computer, phone, fax, and satellite links to the Pentagon, the CIA, the White House, and every major U.S. military headquarters around the world.
“What is your status, Nemesis?” Farrell asked.
“Not good. We’ve missed the primary target, Centurion,” Thorn reported quietly. He quickly filled the other man in on what they had learned and then said, “I recommend we delay our evac, move the force, and immediately attack Taleh’s alternate HQ.”
“No way, Pete,” Farrell replied. “Look on the bright side. You’ve shot the hell out of Taleh’s lower-echelon staff. That alone should throw his operations for a loop. Going for anything more now is too dangerous.
“The embassy compound is nearly eight klicks from your current location. You don’t have time to drive there, set up for a new assault, and go in. Finney’s birds are only twenty minutes out right now. Hell, the Navy’s first Tomahawks are already on the way. You’re going to have cruise missiles raining down around your ears in less than thirty minutes.” “I know that, sir,” Thorn said stubbornly. “But I do not believe we have an alternative. Taleh is not going to let himself be sidetracked by one lousy commando raid and a missile strike. This is our only chance to nail the bastard. None of our missiles are going to hit anywhere close to him. We either kill the son of a bitch now, or he will launch his invasion and then we’re screwed.” “Wait one,” Farrell said finally. The satellite link went silent.
Thorn turned toward Diaz and Witt. “Start rounding the teams up. I want everybody packed and ready to move in ten minutes.”
Both men exchanged startled glances. Delta Force doctrine frowned on attacking without surprise. Of course, Delta Force doctrine also frowned on suicide. They hesitated.
Thorn stared hard at them. He didn’t have the time or inclination to conduct a council of war. Not right in the heart of an enemy capital.
“You heard me, gentlemen. Move!”
“Yes, sir.” Diaz and Witt sped off to fulfill his orders.
After several agonisingly long minutes, Farrell’s voice came back over the SATCOM. “It’s a no-go, Pete. I took your request all the way up to Satrap.” Satrap was the code name assigned to the President for the duration of NEMESIS. “He believes the risks of continuing are too high, so he’s ordered us to abort the mission. Between the damage you’ve already done and the inbound Tomahawk strike, he believes we’ll knock the Iranian timetable off kilter enough to win any war.”
“Then he’s wrong,” Thorn said heatedly.
Farrell’s voice bristled. “What you or I think doesn’t matter a damn, Colonel. Point is: That’s the President’s decision. So you’re going to pull your people together and get out of there as per the plan! Is that clear?”
Thorn did not answer right away. Conflicting thoughts were tumbling through his mind one after another at great speed.
He understood the President’s desire to take a small victory and bring the Delta Force home unbloodied rather than chance more lives in a high-stakes gamble. It was a desire he shared a duty he owed his own men. he knew every soldier on this mission better than most men knew their own brothers. The NEMESIS assault force had been lucky so far. Its luck could not last. Pushing deeper into Tehran after Taleh meant accepting casualties maybe a lot of them.
There was more. He had devoted his whole adult life to the military. He had sworn an oath to obey all legal orders from his superiors. But did his career mean more to him than doing what was right? Should his oath stop him from taking action that would right a great wrong and prevent an even greater evil?
The chaos sparked by General Amir Taleh’s terrorists had already cost thousands of American lives. The war the Iranian planned in Saudi Arabia might easily kill thousands more. Could he fly away and let that happen? Could he leave the man responsible for Helen’s wounds alive and free to plot again?
He could not. Taleh’s campaign had demonstrated America’s vulnerability to organised terrorism. Other fanatics and despots around the world would eagerly follow his lead unless the United States showed plainly that it would exact a terrible price from them. That there would be no negotiations, no comfortable pensions, no forgiveness nothing but a bullet in the head or a bayonet in the guts.
Thorn made his decision. “Centurion, this is Nemesis Lead. Regret unable to comply with your last. Mission proceeds, out.” He knew those words would force any court-martial panel to convict him out of hand, but right now nothing else seemed important.