Targets of Opportunity Read Free Page B

see if he could discover anything, at least about the identity of these people. Either way, he was prepared to take the action he knew he must and make his escape. His plan was simple. If the assassins arrived tonight he would wait until they entered the house, then set off the explosion. It would kill his servant—who was standing in for Jaber in this tableau—as well as the men who would have come for him. If they did not arrive, he would initiate the explosion anyway and, by all accounts, Ahmad Jaber would be reported as the victim of some Western reprisal, a martyr in the cause of Allah, an Iranian hero.
    Either way, it would take time for the authorities to properly identify the mutilated corpse in his bedroom, which would give him the opportunity he needed to follow his route to safety, through the back roads of his native land, moving west and into the border area near the Iraqi city of Erbil, where several Iranian diplomats were seized a couple of years before by American Special Ops personnel. The last leg of his journey would take him into the Sulaymaniyah province of Iraq, a Kurdish territory controlled by the United States. There he would turn himself over to the Americans, who would gladly accept the surrender of a senior IRGC official.
    He allowed himself a grim smile as he sat on the stony ground, staring at his home below. This was a well-to-do area by Iranian standards, the houses set comfortably apart, offering that illusion of privacy enjoyed in residential areas everywhere. It left Jaber to wonder who among his neighbors might have guessed at the secret life he had led all these years. What a convoluted world he inhabited. What an ironic end to his illustrious career.
    As the night wore on, he could not help but consider another option. The notion of his own redemption was nearly irresistible. What if they came for him and he managed to capture one of these assailants, to have the chance to question him, perhaps to learn what all of this was about? What if he could then prove that he was still loyal to the cause, that he had not betrayed his country? A tempting prospect, of course, but he admitted to himself that he was not suited to such a confrontation. He was a terrorist, not, as the Americans would call it, a gunslinger. His job was to plan destructive actions to be carried out by others, not to put himself in the line of fire.
    For the present, escape was the most viable path.
    As the moments dragged slowly by, Jaber had no problem remaining alert—the fear of death is a dependable adrenal trigger. He spent the time staring at his home, a squarish structure of classic architecture. He looked around this affluent neighborhood, set just to the north of the Pasdaran district. Unlike the modern towers that reached to the sky near the Niavaran Highway, this was a quiet area, set among hills, with a view of the Alborz mountain range in the background. He allowed himself a melancholy thought, realizing how much he would miss this home and this life, while knowing that things had developed too quickly for him to allow emotion to influence his judgment. He had made his decision and would yet have to make other difficult choices in the moments and days ahead.
    And then, as he rued this situation, he saw three men approaching his house from three different directions.
    Very professional, he observed approvingly.
    Even in the darkness he could make them out through his small field binoculars. They appeared to be Hispanic, just as Seyed had told him, and each was carrying an automatic weapon slung over his shoulder, each wearing a backpack. They stopped and removed their packages, then laid out the materials before them.
    Interesting, Jaber thought as he watched them prepare incendiary devices. It had not occurred to him that they might arrange his death by planting explosives instead of a straightforward assassination, such as a gunshot to the head or a knife to the throat. Whoever they were, they wanted it to