The Disciple

Inside the factory his men were busy placing de mo lition charges around the machinery and in the stockpiles of completed roadside bombs awaiting shipment to Iraq and Afghanistan. Paczkowski strode into the office. Two of his troopers were hurriedly packing every sheet of paper they could find into boxes. One of them already had the only computer unplugged and was wrapping it in bubble wrap, which he had brought along just in case he got this opportunity. The monitor and keyboard he left on the desk.

“Hurry up,” Captain Pac muttered, but his men didn’t need encouragement. They were working as quickly as possible.

“We have a visitor.” He heard these words in his left ear. Sounded like the pilot of the lead helo, who was still strapped in with engines turning. “Police.”

“Fry?” Paczkowski said on the tac net.

“I’m on it, Captain.”

Fortunately Warrant officer Fry, the Special Forces team’s second in command, was a fluent Farsi speaker.

“Rodriquez?”

“Got him covered, boss.”

Paczkowski checked his watch. The men had another two minutes before they were scheduled to leave.

The two cleaning out the office grabbed their bundles and headed for the front door of the factory. Another two sergeants came in and picked up boxes of paper. The enlisted men on the team were all sergeants and, as Paczkowski well knew, were probably capable of ru

One box of documents remained, so the captain called another sergeant in to get it. The captain needed both hands free to make calls on the two networks.

When his men inside had their charges placed and the fuses ru

Paczkowski now had a decision to make, one that he hadn’t pla

He knew that he had two other men watching the cops. If the policemen made the slightest move to harm Fry, or to detain him, the troopers would kill them both on the spot.

He keyed the radio to talk to the TOC. “Sixty more seconds.” Then he keyed the tac net. “Sixty seconds, and if the cops are not leaving, drop them.”

He got mike clicks in reply as he checked the second hand on his watch.

Captain Pac stared through the door at the two cops like a wolf watching sheep. He was perfectly willing to kill the two Iranian cops-he could clearly see that there were just two. He had seen the results of roadside bombs up close and personal, had seen men with arms and legs blown off, had seen men killed. These two weren’t responsible for that carnage, but this was their country and they were in the way, so if they didn’t leave they were going to have to take the fall.

Without thinking, Captain Pac pulled the.45 automatic from the holster strapped to his thigh. He kept it pointed down, at the ground. Fortunately Fry had turned so he was facing the factory, which meant he had maneuvered the cops into turning their backs on the building.

Pac glanced one last time at his watch. Ten more seconds. Fry had crossed his hands in front of his chest and shifted his weight to one foot. Very good. Fry was one cool customer.

“Five… four… three… two… one,” Paczkowski muttered, then motioned to his men and walked through the door. He headed straight for Fry, who looked completely relaxed and nonchalant.

When Pac was fifteen feet from the cops, one of them saw the troops trotting toward the chopper and turned quickly to look at the factory.

Pac already had his pistol up at arm’s length. He fired once, dropping that cop, then shifted and shot the other one, who was trying to turn and draw his pistol at the same time.

“Let’s put them in the police car,” he shouted at Fry, “then drive it over by the building.”

“Looks like more police heading your way,” said a voice over the radio. “Two minutes, maybe.”

One of the cops was still alive. Fry shot him again; then Fry and Captain Pac loaded the Iranians into the car. Fry drove it over to the building as the rest of the team piled onto the choppers. The one in front was filled first, so it lifted into a hover amid a spray of loose gravel, turned left ninety degrees, then accelerated as it climbed. The second one, with Warrant officer Fry aboard, went as Paczkowski ran for the last one. He was barely aboard when he felt it lift from the gravel.

As the chopper went over the street, he saw another police car coming around the corner of the factory.

Runyon Paczkowski dug into the backpack he had left aboard the chopper and pulled out a radio transmitter. He turned it on, waited for a green light, then checked the frequency.

The chopper was about a mile from the factory, flying at two hundred feet above the city, when Pac lifted the red shield that guarded the detonator button and pushed it. He glanced out of the open chopper door, looking back the way they had come. Sure enough, the factory was going up in a huge ball of fire. Lord, it looked like half of Tabriz was exploding!

Sergeant Rodriquez eased his head out, too, and pounded Paczkowski on the back.

In the War Room of the Pentagon, Jake Grafton and the generals watched the ScanEagle feed of the factory going up. Less than a minute after the detonation, the heat from the explosions wiped out the infrared picture. The light from the blast and ensuing fires showed nicely on the natural-light television video. Then something, smoke, probably, obscured the picture. The smoke was warm, so the infrared picture merely glowed.

After a minute or so the drone pilots had their birds into clear air, and the sensors refocused. The initial blast seemed to have leveled the factory, but the rubble was now afire and burning intensely.

The generals shook hands all around, then got up and left. Jake stayed in his seat and called Sal Molina on his cell. “They got it.”

“Everyone okay?”

“I think so. They’re on their way back to Iraq. Got some mountain passes to get through, but the weather is acceptable.”

“Call me tomorrow when you get a copy of the debrief.”

“Yessir.”

Jake leaned back in his chair and rubbed his forehead. The three Hind helicopters had an hour to fly before they crossed the Iraq-Iran border. Once in Iraq, they would refuel on the ground.

The army had pulled out all the stops to make this commando raid happen-yet if the Iranians acted quickly, they could still catch the he li copters carrying the troops. Too bad Paczkowski had to blow the factory immediately. It would have been much better if the timers on the de mo lition charges had detonated the bombs an hour from now, when the choppers were safely in Iraq.

Jake Grafton well knew the burdens of command, and he appreciated the risk Paczkowski had decided to run. The mission came first, so he had detonated the charges rather than take the chance the police would find and disarm them. If the Iranians shot the choppers down, the surviving Special Forces solders and helicopter crews would just have to fight their way out of Iran or die trying. But that bomb factory would be history.

“Twenty-first century or not,” Jake Grafton said aloud, although the duty officers twelve rows down couldn’t hear him, “we still need good soldiers.”

WHAT HAS THE GOVERNMENT DONE WITH $200 BILLION IN OIL REVENUES? the headline screamed in the Tehran newspaper. I thought that an excellent question. Iran had been living on its oil revenues, and now that the price of oil had dropped almost a hundred dollars a barrel, the flow of cash was greatly diminished. The government was hurting for the cash to fund the social programs that kept the population alive. The mullahs, of course, were paid government salaries, so they didn’t share in the common man’s pain.