The Disciple

“Gentlemen,” I said, “tonight’s target is the Ministry of Defense. Joe, your job is to provide me with a diversion big and bad enough that you pull the Revolutionary Guards and uniformed army people out of the hallways in the executive wing. I intend to go in through a window in that wing. G. W. and his guys will deliver me there and pick me up when I come back out.”

“How much time will you need?” Joe Mottaki asked.

“Fifteen minutes, at least.”

“Dream on, fool. There is no bloody way. I can try for ten, but after that you’re solo.”

“Ten minutes, then.” What else could I say? My life’s ambition was to be a live spy, not a dead burglar.

No one asked what I was after. They didn’t need to know.

While we were discussing the night’s festivities, I stripped to my underwear and do

All of this stuff had been parachuted into the country, including a duffle bag with a t.d. marked on it.

As I rooted through it, checking to make sure everything was there, Joe Mottaki asked, “How come they used those initials?”

“The letters stand for Tulip Delany,” I told him. “She’s a girl I used to date occasionally in high school.”

“You’re really full of it, Carmellini.”

“Don’t ever forget it,” I told him proudly. I hoisted the bag to my shoulder, just to see if I was stout enough to handle it. For a short distance, anyway.

“Let’s get the rest of this stuff stowed and get on with it,” I said.

We climbed a ladder to get out of the tu

Behind the building in an alley was a large tracked vehicle with a humongous ca

“One of my guys,” Joe Mottaki said. “We borrowed this earlier this evening. It’s a one hundred and fifty-five millimeter self-propelled howitzer, a Raad-2, or Thunder- 2.”

“Didn’t you guys use something like this in Indonesia?”

“You are remarkably well informed,” Joe said slowly. “Let’s hope this thing comes as a surprise to our Islamic Revolutionary Guard friends.” He glanced at his watch. “You have precisely twenty minutes, Tommy, then we open fire.”

I checked my watch, nodded once, then threw my stuff into the backseat of the car that G. W. was driving. I got in beside him and he fired up the tiny motor. “Hi-yo, Silver,” I said.

He gu

In truth, it wasn’t much of a plan, but it was all we had.

“You feeling lucky tonight?” G. W. asked.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Well, tell you what, Kemo Sabe. You better be damn quick with the knife and gun tonight. Don’t take any chances. They waylay you in there, you’re on your own. We ain’t riding to the fucking rescue.”

“Yeah.”

“Kill anything that moves,” G. W. added.

“Yeah.”

“You nervous?” he asked, glancing at me.

“Yeah.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Motoring through the night streets of Tehran in an Iranian army self-propelled, tracked howitzer drew no attention from anyone, a circumstance that caused Joe Mottaki to smile grimly. The possibility that someone might steal a howitzer in order to do evil, nefarious things obviously seemed so remote as to be ludicrous to people living in a police state, which Iran certainly was. One of the reasons, doubtlessly, was the certain knowledge that anyone caught doing so would have a short, grim life expectancy as an enemy of God.

Joe Mottaki certainly didn’t suffer from illusions about the Muslims, who in the Middle East often taught their children that Jews were cursed by God, who would never again be satisfied with them. What the Iranian holy warriors would do to a Mossad agent, if they caught him, was something that couldn’t be printed in a family newspaper. To be sure, Joe had no intention of being caught; the pistol he carried was not for shooting nasty Iranians but himself. Or his two Mossad colleagues, if it came to that.

Tonight he directed the man at the wheel with short commands as the lightly armored vehicle rolled through the streets at 25 mph, well short of its top speed. Unfortunately, it was leaving a trail in the soft asphalt that a blind man could follow; tracks were notorious for that. So far, no one was following. That would soon change, and Joe knew it.

He had the driver stop the Raad- 2 in an intersection on a low hill, over a mile from the Defense Ministry, which was just visible between the buildings. This was almost point-blank range for the artillery piece. Joe Mottaki glanced at his watch.

He growled at the gu

“There’s two tanks in front of the building,” the gu

“The crews are around, someplace,” Joe Mottaki said. After thirty years of life, he was a confirmed pessimist. Which was good-as everyone in the Middle East well knew, pessimists usually lived longer. If nothing else, they got a ru

“Ready now,” the gu

Mottaki checked his watch. “One minute,” he said. Then he gri

George Washington Hosein and I put on small radio headsets and clipped the transmitter/receivers to our belts. We tested them as we drove up to the Defense Ministry.

He let me out of his car on the empty sidewalk by the ministry. The heat of the day had dissipated some, but the sidewalk still radiated the heat. I opened the rear door of the sedan, pulled out the duffle bag and hoisted it to my shoulder. Then I walked over to the side of the building, which was also still warm. It was built in the shape of a giant U, and we were adjacent to the southern wing. The main entrance was on the crosspiece, which faced west.

Ghasem Murad had drawn me a crude map, and I had committed it to memory. Fifteen windows from the east end of this wing, he suggested, might be best. Despite congenital paranoia, which I had assiduously cultivated from puberty onward, I believed him.

I counted windows, then stepped to the proper one. The window was at least ten feet off the pavement, perhaps eleven, and the wall was poured concrete, ugly as hell and smooth, without a handhold.

I glanced at my watch. Thirty seconds.

Fortunately for me there wasn’t a soul out and about except for me and my friends, all three of whom were standing near their cars holding their submachine guns, ready to kill somebody. The sight of them bucked me up a little.

I pulled the rope and grappling iron from my bag-it was right on top-and flaked it out. Tied the end of the rope to the bag.

Ten seconds. I counted them down.

At zero nothing happened. Uh-oh.

Just when I was ready to toss my trash back in the car and boogie, something big crashed into the building. Sounded like it hit the main section. Then I heard a deep, muffled boom, a heavy weapon some distance away. I didn’t know where Joe parked his howitzer, but he sure knew how to shoot it.

I twirled the grappling hook and threw it through the window over my head. It smashed the glass and went in. I tugged and it came right back out. Threw it again… and this time it caught on something. I steadily tightened the rope, the hook held, and I went up the rope hand over hand.