Overlord Read Free Page B

praising God and its oft-mentioned counterpart, “Death to the great Satan.”
    The slow-moving Mercedes turned and made its way through a small storm of flying paper and other detritus that had accumulated since the revolution against the shah began. As the car’s occupants watched through tinted windows a large white van appeared at a street corner and then flashed its headlights. The Mercedes followed suit and gave their return signal. Two large Toyota Land Cruisers sped ahead of the white van as it soon pulled out of the darkened street. The black Mercedes quickly fell in line to the rear of the small column. They were soon joined by five supporting Toyota all-terrain vehicles brimming with armed men.
    The two vehicles with their military escort slowly slipped out of town just after 1:45 A.M. and with their escort quickly wound their way out of the still-smoldering city of Tehran. They slid past the darkened United States embassy where student militants were holding fifty-seven American hostages. The small man riding in the backseat of the Mercedes shook his head. Even though he was younger than most of the occupying students holding the embassy, he knew tweaking the nose of America at this critical juncture of the revolution was dangerous to say the least. Although he had met only three or four Americans in his time at school he knew them to be the most impulsive people on earth—and in his mind that made them dangerous. He watched the students as they lounged around the thick iron gates of the U.S. embassy. The university student took a deep breath and rubbed the skin of his beardless face.
    It took thirty minutes to reach their mysterious destination. The van pulled off to the side of a barren road and allowed three of the Toyotas to pull up to the gate surrounding the compound. Three men exited the first vehicle and confronted the uniformed guards at the gate. The small man in the Mercedes watched as the very last of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi’s loyal Army members were rounded up at gunpoint. Again the young man shook his head in disbelief as the guards would no doubt be shot at the new regime’s earliest convenience.
    The young student was beginning to think the revolution was taking on an air of desperation. Many of his fellow intellectuals were as concerned as he. For the moment there was nothing he could do about it. Someday the religious fools would find that the enemy was not within the Iranian state borders, but outside of it.
    The man and his roommate had been awoken and taken from their small apartment with no apology and told they were to accompany the armed men on a most secretive trip to the outskirts of the city. The young man had been up most of the night studying and was not pleased with being taken from his bed. He glanced at his friend in the backseat and shook his head once more.
    “If they wanted to shoot us would they have taken us all the way out into the middle of nowhere?” his friend asked.
    “No, I believe if we threatened them in any way they would just walk into our apartment and shoot us there. No, this is something else. Now relax, worrying about it won’t change our fate.”
    His roommate leaned over and whispered, “They have no compunction about shooting anyone they see as a threat. I’ve noticed of late quite a few of our forward-thinking friends have suddenly decided to take the short road out of town.” The young bearded man looked through the tinted window. “And this is a short road out of town.”
    The large double-door security gate was finally opened and three of the guards from the first three Toyotas were left behind as the new security for the state-run facility. The Mercedes drew past following the van and the man’s eyes locked with the guard that held the gate open. He looked like a brute and a ruthless killer from the old days of the Persian Empire. The black beard framed a face that seemed to be full of hatred.
    “All I know is that if they don’t get the