Bandar Abbas, Iran

A LARGE WAVE crashed to the beach, its back end sending a spray of salt water into the air. Mitch Rapp adjusted his turban and wiped the salt water from his face. He looked up and down the coast checking to make sure he was alone. Walking toward the pier to the north, he stopped, picked up a pop can and dropped it into his canvas bag. He continued his hunched shuffle. When he reached the wood pier, he walked underneath and checked the other side. Next, he walked back under the pier and up the incline of beach to check the small recesses where the wooden structure was secured to its concrete foundation.

For the next ten minutes Rapp methodically checked every part of the structure to make sure it was unoccupied. He had picked the landing zone, and it was his responsibility to make sure there were no surprises.

Rapp checked his watch while the wind whistled through the tangled web of wood pilings that supported the pier.

Everything was on schedule. Rapp had given up almost ten years of his life for this moment, and he was not going to let it slip away.

Persian Gulf

THE NUCLEAR-POWERED aircraft carrier USS Independence pounded through the stormy waters. She and her battle group of twelve ships and two submarines had been on patrol in the northern part of the gulf for the last twenty-three days.

Late the previous evening the group had been ordered to proceed on a sweep to the south and east, back toward the Strait of Hormuz Just three hours earlier, under the cover of darkness, the large gray carrier had taken on two U.S. Air Force helicopters, which now sat just amidships of the carrier's island structure.

Both helicopters were painted a flat tan with stripes of a slightly darker brown. They belonged to the 1st Special Operations Wing—the people in charge of getting American commandos in and out of the hairiest places on earth. The first and larger of the two helicopters was an MH-53J Pave Low. With a price tag of close to forty million dollars, the Pave Low was considered the most advanced military helicopter in the world.

It took a crew of six to fly this large and complex helicopter, and its navigational system rivaled those of the most advanced fighter-bombers in the U.S. arsenal. The Pave Low was equipped with the Air Force's Enhanced Navigation System, or ENS. Using twenty separate systems, such as Doppler navigation, automatic direction finders, attitude director indicators, GPS, and a bevy of compasses and gyroscopes, the ENS told the pilots exactly where they were at all times.

This system was what allowed the highly trained aviators of the 1st Special Operations Wing to fly hundreds of miles, at treetop level, in the worst of weather conditions and land exactly on a target within seconds of their stated extraction or infiltration time. Which, in the business of special ops, could mean the difference between success and failure, or more pointedly, life and death. It took an unusual aviator to handle this large, complicated helicopter and the Air Force made sure that only the most qualified pilots were given the controls of these technological marvels.

The second helicopter was only two-thirds the size of the hulking Pave Low. The MD-5300 Pave Hawk was equipped with a reduced version of the Pave Low's Enhanced Navigation System. The smaller, more agile, helicopter would be riding shotgun for tonight's mission. Inside both crafts, the pilots and flight crews were methodically running down their preflight checklists. There would be no room for mistakes. The slightest mistake could result in death and if it happened over land, worse, an international incident.

Iranian Coast

LT. COMMANDER. CLAN Harris held a pair of night-vision binoculars up to his eyes and tried in vain to search the landing area. Even though they were only several hundred yards onshore, he could barely see a thing.

The boat was being thrashed in and out of the stormy sea, which made it impossible to hold the binoculars steady. Just when he had an area framed, the boat would shift and he'd end up staring at the back of a wave ten feet in front of them.

Harris secured the night-vision binoculars in a waterproof pack and stuck his right hand into the neck of his scuba suit.

The commando retrieved the earpiece to his secure Motorola MX300 radio and cupped it next to his left ear. Above the din of water and wind, he shouted, "Iron Man, this is Whiskey Five.

Do you read? Over." Harris's throat mike picked up his words and broadcast them.

The crackled reply came over the earpiece.

"Whiskey Five, this is Iron Man. I read you loud and clear. Over."

Harris turned his back to the wind in hopes that he could hear better.

"We are in position. Iron Man. What's the status of our LZ?"

"Everything is secure."

"Roger that. We'll see you in five." Harris pulled at the neck of his wet suit with his left hand and stuffed the headset back inside. Turning to his men, he shouted, "Grab your gear, and let's get moving."

Each man checked his swim pack and put on his fins and dive mask. When everyone had given the thumbs-up sign, Harris gave the order to go over the sides. Once in the water the SEALs unsheathed their K-bars and punctured the sides of the rubber boat. Musty air hissed its way free.

After ten seconds, the weight of the motor began to pull the deflated boat under the surface and to the bottom.

Seeing the pier from the boat was hard enough; trying to do it from the water was futile. Everyone took a compass reading, and then Harris ordered his best swimmer to take the lead.

The five men swam in a tight formation, checking their heading as they went. After several minutes of rough swimming, they neared the pier, maneuvered around the south side of the structure, and lined up to catch a wave. In unison, the five SEALs rode a wave in on their bellies. One by one they gently landed on the beach, and like alligators they scurried their way along the wet sand until they were safely out of sight under the pier.

Without being ordered, each man moved into a defensive position of cover their Heckler & Koch 10-mm MP-10 submachine guns already extracted from their waterproof packs and ready to fire. Attached to the threaded barrels of the weapons were thick, black water-technology sound suppressors that made the weapons extremely quiet. Two of the men crawled to the north side, two stayed at the south side, and Harris moved to the middle. All of them remained right at the surf line.

The waves continued to pound the beach a clamoring of thunderous echoes reverberated from the tangled maze of the pier. The surf raced up the beach and enveloped all of Harris except his head and weapon. The frothing water subsided in a retreat, and then seconds later was replaced by another wave.

Harris looked around the left side of a barnacle-coated piling and studied the wooden labyrinth before him. The roar of the surf and the howling wind made listening difficult. As Harris looked in and around the maze of wooden supports, the SEAL heard a faint whistle followed by another and then a third. Then, about thirty feet away, a man in a white robe stepped from behind one of the pilings and waved. Harris kept the thick, black silencer of his submachine gun trained on the man's head.

Mitch Rapp approached with his arms extended outward and his hands open.

In a voice just loud enough to be heard over the crashing surf, he said,

"Danny Boy."

Harris took his eyes off Rapp for a second and checked the areas to his left and right. Then rising to one knee, he said, "It's good to see you, Mitch."

Rapp was one of the few people from the intelligence community that Harris trusted. This trust was based on two facts. The first being that Rapp, like Harris and his SEALs, actually put his life on the line and got down and dirty out in the field. The second, Harris had seen Rapp in action, and he was efficient, lethally efficient.