High Assault. Don Pendleton

confined to a wheelchair after an attack on Stony Man grounds by KGB surrogates had left him paralyzed from the waist down, sat off to one side, running the briefing media presentation components from a keyboard built into his chair.

      Built like a power lifter, the barrel-chested Kurtzman still routinely did sets of the bench press with 250 pounds for nearly a dozen reps. In contrast to his heavy build the two big men seated at the massive conference table in front of him seemed built more for endurance, despite impressively muscular builds.

      The fox-faced Briton, David McCarter, was a consummate pilot and driver, as well as being a former member of the British Special Air Service. He had seen combat around the world in places as diverse as Oman and Belfast before coming on board as a shooter for the Farm’s Phoenix Force. Now, years later, the brown-eyed Englishman commanded that team and had committed violence on behalf of the U.S. government in every region of the globe.

      “What have you got for us?” he asked, his English accent mellow after years in United States.

      “Tell me it’s something good,” Carl Lyons answered.

      The blond leader of the three-man Able Team was a former LAPD homicide detective. Lyons lived up to his moniker of Ironman. There was no better pistol marksman or fitter athlete than Lyons on the Farm’s teams. He had the subtlety of a bull in a China shop, combined with the acumen of a veteran espionage agent. When Carl Lyons ran into a problem he put his head down and battered his way through it.

      “We’ve been waiting for a long time for some actionable intelligence on this,” Hal Brognola said. “A long time. Several years, in fact.” The Fed’s suit was rumpled and he spoke from around the stump of an unlit cigar. He gestured toward Barbara Price, who stood unselfconsciously in her sweat-stained workout gear. “Barb?”

      The Stony Man mission controller nodded once curtly, obviously eager to get into the meat of the briefing.

      “Gentlemen,” she said, “let me tell you about Stage One. Quite a while ago national intelligence estimates began warning the Oval Office about an increased threat focus coming from Iran. These threat focus assessments had little to do with Iraq or with Tehran’s burgeoning nuclear program. In fact, the assessments were not Israel centered in nature.”

      Intrigued, McCarter lifted an eyebrow and glanced over at Lyons, who shrugged. Behind them, Kurtzman hit a button on his keyboard and an Iranian in an army general’s uniform appeared on the monitor at the head of the table.

      “The intelligence was disparate, piecemeal and often obtuse. The Oval Office asked Hal to put Bear and his cyber team on it to try to analyze what we were seeing,” Price continued.

      Kurtzman powered his wheelchair forward toward the head of the table. “We had precious little to go on,” he admitted. “Everything that was Iranian intelligence, Hezbollah, Hamas or Iraqi special groups related had to be screened to see if it fit with any other irregular activities worldwide. We figured out that whatever they were up to, it had something to do with the U.S. directly and not through surrogates or proxies. Mostly we got lost in smoke and mirrors.”

      “Don’t be modest, Bear,” Hal Brognola said. “You were two weeks ahead of the golden boys at INR in identification of Stage One.” The big Fed referred to the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

      The bureau had few or no field operatives of its own, but was instead tasked with performing oversight and analysis of information gathered from other branches of the U.S. intelligence community. In both the cases of pre-9/11 threats and the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, the INR had offered up the only dissenting voice in the national intelligence estimates and had subsequently come to be seen as the nation’s premier brain trust on intelligence.

      Beating them on a point of analytical determination had provided Aaron Kurtzman with a moment of quiet pride.

      “If this has been going on for a while, then why are we just now hearing about it?” McCarter asked.

      “Because we didn’t have any operational intelligence,” Price replied.

      “You couldn’t find anyone for us to shoot or hit over the head?” Lyons asked.

      Hal Brognola removed the unlit stogie from his mouth. “Exactly,” he said. “Bear and his team were putting together a jigsaw puzzle from half a dozen different boxes while in a dark room.”

      Barbara Price spoke up. “Stage One is an umbrella term for some sort of operation directed at the United States. It includes several separate but connected operations and projects that are all being run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and their black ops unit, the Ansar-al-Mahdi. We were only ever able to tie a couple of low-level couriers and agents to the project. That included this man.” She pointed to the Iranian on the monitor screen. “Colonel Muqtada Ayub of a Basij division near Tehran.”

      “Basij?” McCarter frowned. “I thought they were a local militia, like a National Guard for the Revolutionary Guard.”

      “Yes and no.” Price nodded. “They are an auxiliary paramilitary force. But they also serve in law enforcement, emergency management and social and religious organizing in their respective areas. They also serve as a secret police militia against the general population doing morals policing and suppressing the activities of dissident groups.”

      “Nut jobs?” Lyons asked. He took pride in a direct approach many often referred to as crass. He also liked to claim it was part of his charm, though he had never met anyone who actually agreed with him about that.

      “Highly motivated nut jobs,” Brognola specified. “They provided the martyr volunteers for Iran’s human-wave attacks against Saddam Hussein’s army during the Iran-Iraq war.”

      “It seems Colonel Ayub is also connected by marriage to a prominent cleric on the Revolutionary Council,” Price added. “He’s the highest ranking operative we’ve been able to connect to Stage One so far.”

      “He’s a big, fat intelligence node just waiting to be hacked,” Kurtzman added. “With what he can tell us, I’m sure I’ll be able to piece together this puzzle in no time.”

      “Getting him would be a major coup,” Price said.

      “Where is he now?” McCarter asked. “I assume somewhere we can get to him.”

      “Yes,” Price answered. “Specifically we have him located in a safehouse in Hayaniya, a Shiite-militia-controlled neighborhood in northwestern Basra. Carmen will provide you momentarily with a briefing packet of operational details for you to go over with the rest of Phoenix once we’re done here.”

      “That explains what David’s going to be doing,” Lyons spoke up. “How about Able?”

      Price acknowledged him, then nodded to Kurtzman. The computer specialist used his thumb to strike a key, and the picture changed to a surveillance shot of a Middle Eastern man in civilian clothes. “That individual is Aras Kasim,” she said. “A known agent of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence, VEVAK.”

      Lyons leaned forward, reading a sign in Spanish in the picture behind the man. “Where’s he at? Caracas?”

      “Yes. You can thank the very thorough Carmen Delahunt for giving you someone to knock over the head, Carl,” Price answered. “Two days ago a CIA interagency memo had Kasim meeting with Ayub in Basra. This morning a brief by DEA agents surveilling Juan Escondito showed him in a meeting with Kasim.”

      “An Iranian intelligence operative meeting with a Venezuelan narco-trafficker?” Lyons grunted. “That is big. We can run with this.”

      “Good. Carmen will have your operational details ready to go in a couple of minutes, as well.” Barbara Price looked down at her team leaders from the head of the conference table. “Go out and bring me these men so we can shut the Iranians down.”

      Both David McCarter and Carl Lyons were grinning as they rose from their seats.

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