Tehran, p.1
Tehran, page 1
CONTENTS
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Also by Ty Patterson
Acknowledgments
Quote
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
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Copyright ©2023 by Ty Patterson, Three Aces Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
They say it takes a village to produce a book. In my case, many continents have been involved. Sure, an author’s job is a solitary one, but writing is just one part of putting out a book.
My beta readers, who are around the world, are my first responders. I owe a debt of gratitude to them for getting into shape all the words I write.
Donna Rich, my proofreader, and Merwie Garzon, my editor, have been invaluable in polishing the book.
Lastly, a special thanks to Debbie Gallant, Tom Gallant, Michelle Rose Dunn and Cheri Gerhardt, who have supported me since the beginning.
To my wife and son, for their sacrifices in supporting me.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.
Rumi
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction and while it is based in real countries and features several landmarks, I have taken considerable liberties and literary license in depicting how the countries work and with their landmark attractions as well.
1
Tehran
‘Over here,’ someone whispered from an alley.
Zohra Hashimi looked over her shoulder and saw the police cruisers behind them. She panted as she ran, clutching her bag like a shield against her chest.
‘Over here,’ the voice whispered again. ‘They haven’t seen you.’
She darted into Gholami Street, from where the voice came. Hands caught her wrists and guided her into the darkness. Light reflected off a broken window and briefly illuminated a pale face.
Another woman. There were a bunch of them, hurrying in the darkness, picking their way carefully.
‘Where are we going?’ her voice quavered.
‘To a safe house,’ a woman answered. ‘We will stay there tonight, until the morning.’
‘Don’t you know about it?’ another woman asked sharply. ‘It was shared in the messaging app we use.’
‘Is she a protester?’ yet another girl asked. ‘How do we know she is not the police?’
Zohra was slammed against a car. Someone brought out their phone and lit her up with its flashlight.
‘She isn’t wearing a scarf over her head.’
‘That doesn’t mean anything. Search her.’
Rough hands patted her down. They snatched her bag and went through it.
‘Where’s your phone?’
‘I lost it when I was running away from the police,’ she lied. ‘That’s why I don’t remember the safe house.’
‘Here’s her identification card … oh.’ The voice went quiet. ‘Search her on the internet.’
Another woman typed her name in a search engine and came up with several hits.
‘Not that one,’ she muttered, ‘not her … there! I found her. She is not lying. She’s a student like many of us. She is from University of Tehran. Come, khahar,’ sister, ‘let’s go. We have wasted enough time.’
Zohra fell in with them. Around twenty of them, she counted the shapes. Many of them were in their twenties. I am older than all of them, she thought, but they accepted me for who I am.
She knew that was down to her identity card. It gave her credibility. And, it wasn’t fake.
She stumbled over a tin can which rattled loudly.
They froze. Cruisers went down Sattar Khan Street, sirens wailing. Officers’ yells came to them with only a layer of office and commercial buildings as protection.
They turned into an alley, where one of the women went to a building. A bank’s sign hung outside it. She fumbled at the door and opened it carefully.
How did she know about it? Zohra wondered. She followed the women into the lobby and down a staircase.
‘Here.’ Someone turned on the light. ‘We will be safe from the police.’
Zohra checked them out. Twenty. Her initial count had been right. All of them seemed to be college students or early in their careers.
‘Okay, turn out the lights. Bathroom is upstairs. Go softly without making any noise. This building is safe for tonight only.’ The speaker had hard eyes and a tattoo of a dragon on her forearm.
They sat on the hard floor. Some of them sang songs. Others told jokes and stories to each other.
Zohra had no one to talk to. She didn’t know any of them. She felt the hard shape of her phone, that she had hidden in her shoes.
Her panic didn’t subside.
Will they still protect me if they know who I am?
She slept and woke up to a loud crashing.
‘IT’S THE POLICE,’ a woman screamed.
‘How did they know we were here?’ another voice shouted.
‘GO!’
They ran up the stairs and there, uniformed officers were waiting for them. Zohra gasped in fear. She reached down to her right shoe, slowing her climb, and brought out her phone from beneath her heel where she had hidden it.
Women shoved past her as they tried to escape through the lobby.
The sounds of the officers’ sticks and the shrieks of the women being clubbed, filled the building.
She texted a message with trembling fingers.
Baradar, I don’t know who else to reach. I need your help. Please save me.
She hit send and while trying to return her phone to its hiding place, was jostled forward. It fell to the floor and before she could retrieve it, a hand darted, picked it up and it disappeared.
Zohra tried to see who had taken it. There were still a few women behind her. She turned, but her hair was grabbed by an officer who shouted furiously at her and brought his cane down on her head, and she saw and heard nothing else.
2
Tunisia
The heat was oppressive. It hung like a heavy blanket, weighing down life forms especially those that hadn’t learned to adapt.
‘It’s hot,’ Bwana complained in their comms.
‘It’s the Sahara,’ Zeb wiped sweat off his forehead. ‘What did you expect?’
‘A five-star hotel, a pool, jacuzzi, the works,’ Beth said sarcastically.
Zeb grinned at Bwana’s silence. They were deep in Tunisia, in the desert which was in the south of the country. The nearest town was Tieret, to their left and the Libyan border was to their right.
Dunes, scraggly shrubs and an endless expanse of desert as far as the eye could see.
Except for the camp of nomadic goat herders that were five-hundred meters away. A gathering of tents around which the animals wandered, their bleating audible in the distance.
‘Our intel was correct?’ Chloe asked doubtfully when a herder came out of one of the tents and drove the animals to the shelter of a large tarp that was spread over poles. The man was dressed in a burnous, a long-flowing cloak that protected the body from the heat and also allowed for air circulation, and a cheche, a long scarf that was wrapped around his neck. He swatted a stick lightly on one of the goat’s rumps.
Zeb lowered his binos, wiped his eyes and raised them again. ‘Not our intel. CIA’s. You read it as well.’
The CIA’s dossier had been categoric. Ivan Petrov, a senior Russian general, had fled Moscow after his protests about the Ukraine invasion had made his survival risky. Humint had confirmed his sighting in Tunisia and elint, by way of satellite and drone imagery, had obtained photographs of his presence in the goat-herding camp in the desert.
The Agency operators were enjoying downtime in Morocco when Clare, their director, greenlit them.
‘Extract him. You are the only American assets on the ground close to him. He was in the Kremlin’s inner circle. What he knows will be invaluable to us. Russia’s game plan, which other countries it might invade, troop movements, weapons, their nuclear plans … all that will help us and Ukraine. On top of that, he sat on the General Staff of the Armed Forces. He will know about GRU operations and assets around the world. He is so valuable that we need to hot-extract him.’
‘What if he isn’t willing, ma’am?’ Bear had objected.
‘Don’t give him a choice,’ she had replied.
With that as their mission brief and the CIA file for more information, the operators had arrived in the country in the dark. They had flown to Douz, a city that was the gateway to the Tunisian Sahara and had driven for over five hours on the C211 highway and had left their vehicles outside a petrochemical plant near Tieret and had trekked over the dunes to where they had made camp, five hundred meters from the collection of tents.
They had dug trenches in the sand, wrapped themselves in heat-protect blankets and lay hidden.
The sheets over them were long-life, battery-powered, that either cooled or warmed the body depending on the ambient temperature. They were equipped with water packs that let the operators sip from them and couldn’t be detected by thermal imaging.
The operators had to thrust their heads out of their comfort to recon the camp, which was when the heat of the desert hit them.
‘There are twelve bodies in that camp,’ Meghan said. ‘Our drone launch at the dawn confirmed that many heat signatures. One of them has got to be Petrov.’
‘That goat herder is the first dude we’ve seen,’ Roger drawled. ‘Why would Petrov come here, in the middle of the desert in North Africa? There’s nothing here. It won’t be the first time CIA’s intel was wrong.’
‘You saw the photographs,’ Chloe reminded him.
‘Those could have been taken in any desert camp in the world. Tents, goats and sand look the same everywhere.’
‘We are here, now.’ Bear growled. ‘You got a better idea of how we could confirm his presence?’
‘Sure. Rog will walk up to the camp and say howdy, Texan style,’ Beth said sarcastically. ‘The herders will welcome him. They’ll offer him tea and biscuits and tell him, oh, here’s Petrov, the Russian general. Do you want him?’
‘I don’t think they have biscuits,’ the Texan retorted, but it was a weak protest. No one won in verbal sparring with the twins.
Zeb wriggled out of the comfort of the blanket cautiously to raise his head above the trench for a better look. The goat herder had disappeared into the larger tent which appeared to shimmer as bodies inside it moved. A man poked his head out briefly, shouted at the animals and withdrew.
‘That’s dude number two,’ he said softly. He glanced at his watch. Just past twelve pm. The heat will only increase from now on. Will anyone come out?
They could play the waiting game and approach the tents when it grew dark but there was no surety that the herders wouldn’t break camp and move.
They’re driving those goats to some town where they can trade them. They won’t be here for long.
He crawled out cautiously. ‘I’m going for a closer look.’
‘What?’ Beth exclaimed. ‘We have no cover. You think they won’t spot you?’
