More red on the screen. Aircraft 5 was not responding.

Lost. Turk mentally wrote it off. The UAV would dive into the hills, exploding on impact.

Tapping the target area on the sitmap, he looked at the image of the bunker provided by the NASA plane. A small flag appeared at the side; he tapped the flag, and was presented with a three-dimensional wire-frame drawing in the center of the screen. He enlarged it with his index finger.

“Compare infrastructure to known. State deviations,” he told the computer.

“Congruency, one hundred percent.”

Nothing had changed since the mission was drawn up. They were good to go.

The computer provided an assortment of data on the bunker. One set of numbers in particular caught his eye: there were 387 people in the facility.

Turk hadn’t expected that many; the briefing had indicated a skeleton crew of guards, at best, given the hour. The number seemed very high, but there was no time to double-check it.

The UAVs dropped in twos and threes from the oval path they’d been flying, diving for the air exchanger opening. They were subsonic but still moving incredibly fast, just over 550 knots on average. He saw them in his mind’s eye falling above his shoulder, shooting stars on a fateful mission.

“Proximity warning,” buzzed the computer. “Control unit moving out of range.”

Turk jerked his head up and yelled. “Pilot, get the plane back into the right parameters. Put us where I told you. Now!”

12

Iran, near Natanz

CAPTAIN VAHID CHECKED THE LONG DISTANCE RADAR scan on his MiG-29 a second time, making sure it was clean before contacting his controller.

“No contacts reported,” he said. “I am zero-two minutes from Natanz.”

“Copy, Shahin One. You have no contacts reported.”

It took a moment to process the controller’s simple acknowledgment. Obviously excited, his Farsi had a heavy southeastern accent, and the words jumbled together with the static in Vahid’s headset.

Natanz was under blackout conditions and the pilot couldn’t see the faintest shadow of the facility to his left as he approached. Nor could he see any sign of its several satellites, or the support facilities arrayed around the region. Shrouded in literal darkness, the vast infrastructure of the country’s nuclear arms program Vahid was tasked to protect was as much a mystery to him as it was to most Iranians.

Vahid didn’t think much of the program. To him, it was a needless waste of resources—the air force could be greatly expanded with a hundredth of the funds, the navy could gain more submarines, the army strengthened. All would provide Iran with weapons that could actually be used, as opposed to the bomb no one would dare unleash, lest the retaliation result in the country’s death sentence.

And there would be money left over for food and gasoline, in chronic short supply these past few years.

Vahid was careful not to share these opinions. Even Jalil Zandi, the legendary ace and great war hero, had been jailed twice for saying things that contradicted the ayatollahs.

The controller called back with further instructions, alerting Vahid that he was sending two of the other three MiGs that had scrambled after him farther north. The third would patrol around Natanz.

So it was definitely a wild-goose chase, Vahid thought. But at least he was flying. The MiG felt especially responsive tonight, as if anxious to prove her worth.

“You are to proceed east in the direction of the original sighting,” added the controller. “Other aircraft are being scrambled. Await further instructions.”

Acknowledging, Vahid shifted to the new course. The air force was using a lot of its monthly allotment of jet fuel tonight, he thought; they’d pay for it in the coming weeks.

Banking toward Nain, his long range radar picked up a contact. It appeared only momentarily, the radar confused by the scattered returns of the hills. Vahid changed modes but couldn’t get it back.

Still, there had to be something there: very possibly the light plane he had been scrambled to find. He altered course slightly and readjusted the MiG’s radar to wide search. Reaching for the mike button, he was about to tell the controller that he’d had a contact then thought better of it. Send out a false alarm and he would be quizzed for hours about why he failed to turn anything up. Better to wait until he had something more substantial than a momentary blip.

13

Iran

THE PROXIMITY WARNING STAYED ON AS THE FIRST nano-UAV hit the mesh screen, the Cessna’s pilot fighting a rogue air current in the foothills to get back in the proper position. But Turk didn’t need to take over the swarm: the Hydra struck within two millimeters of the programmed crosshair, exploding perfectly and blowing a hole through the outer filter assembly. Two seconds later the second UAV hit the large grate positioned three meters deep in the shaft. The thick blades of steel crumbled, leaving the way clear for the rest of the swarm.

The proximity warning cut off a second later. By then the control unit had switched the video feed to UAV 1 inside the airshaft. Turk saw the seams whip by like lines on a highway pavement, the aircraft dipping down the five-hundred-meter tube that led to a Z-turn and the air exchanges.

There was no way Turk could have piloted the craft through the turn, even though its speed had slowed considerably. The computer puffed the nano-UAV’s wings, fired the maneuvering rocket, and spun the Hydra through the Z. Two more aircraft followed, forming an arrow-shaped wedge that hit the interior fan assembly like a linebacker barreling into an ill-protected quarterback. They blew a hole through the exchange mechanism large enough for a bus to squeeze through.

Unfortunately, they did their job a little too well: there was a hairline fissure in the wall directly below the fan assembly. Weakened by the shock of the explosion, the wall began to collapse within seconds.

Ten UAVs made it through, though two were damaged by debris. And now Turk went to work. He managed to save two Hydras that had not yet entered the complex. The rest were caught in the landslide as the upper portions of the bunker began to implode.

By the time he turned his attention back to the lead aircraft, it was within seconds of the targeted chamber in the basement of the complex. Maneuvers and air friction had slowed the aircraft below ninety knots, but that was still incredibly fast. Finishing a straight run nearly two miles into the heart of the complex, the lead Hydra slammed into the grill of an air vent and exploded, opening the way to a hallway in the cellar of the complex. This time there were no fatal flaws in the workmanship, and no debris to stop the nine aircraft that followed. Turk caught a glimpse of something on the ground as the next feed snapped in—an Iranian scientist or engineer had been close to the vent when it exploded; blood was pouring from his head onto his white lab coat.

There were people in the hall—he saw heads as the UAVs dashed down the corridor into an open space. There was metalwork ahead, the large, circular gridwork he’d memorized as the sign that they had reached the target room. The target itself was the cluster machinery below.

The UAVs orbited above, forming another wedge to strike.

And then there was nothing, the feed switching back to the two aircraft above.

Nothing?

God. We’ve failed, he thought. I failed—I lost it right at the end. Damn. Damn!

And then, trying to think what he would do next, how he might retrieve the situation somehow with only two aircraft and a blocked passage, he saw a puff of smoke in the right corner of the feed from Hydra 35. He grabbed the joystick and took control of the aircraft. As he did, the smoke blossomed into a vast cloud and then ocean. The ground in the distance shook. The earth seemed to drop, imploding with a vast underground explosion.