Strike Force

Najar looked at Saidi, then grimly at the Civil Air Patrol commander. “We have two men aboard the helicopter, Ed,” he said darkly. “We surrendered our primary weapons to the lieutenant colonel before he agreed to take us to you, but we all have hidden backup weapons which they did not discover. We are prepared to kill every one of you and take the helicopter if you resist.” Harlow was afraid that was going to be his response. He carried a Beretta pistol — loaded but not chambered — and he noticed that both Najar and Saidi glanced to his hip and had probably already decided how they were going to take it away from him. He had no doubt they could do it, too.

“If this is some kind of joke, you two, you just threatened me and all of these children who are on a required training exercise for the U.S. Air Force Auxiliary,” Harlow said seriously. “I’ll see to it that you’re thrown in prison for twenty years if this turns out to be a gag.”

“Ed, call anyone you need to call — but please, do it quickly,” Saidi pleaded. “We brought our State Department liaison and the National Guard unit commander with us — we would’ve brought another helicopter filled with officials if we had the time.”

“Ed, listen to me — we need to go, so you have to make a decision,” Najar said. “The only other fact I can tell you is that if we meant the princess any harm…”

“Stop calling her that,” Harlow protested. “She’s Katelyn, my friend, my subordinate, and out here, my responsibility.”

“…I guarantee you, we would not have hesitated to kill you and all these children to accomplish our mission. We’re out in the middle of nowhere — we could kill all of you right now and we’d be in Canada and halfway to safety before anyone discovered your bodies. That’s what the Pasdaran would have done if they found the princess first.”

“I said, stop calling her that!”

“It’s who she is, Ed,” Najar said. “I think you’ve known that for a long time now yourself, haven’t you?” Harlow said nothing, but he was perfectly correct — he had noticed she was different, and now he knew why. “You’ve seen there is something special about her. She has the courage, the intelligence, and the compassion of a princess — you’ve seen it, as have we and a handful of insightful American teachers we’ve encountered since living in protective custody in the United States.”

Harlow thought for a moment. He looked toward the Black Hawk helicopter and saw one of the two men inside peering back at him, and he knew he had to think of something to verify all this. After a moment, he withdrew his satellite phone from his pocket and dialed his home number — very relieved when he realized that Najar and Saidi, the Iranian bodyguards, allowed him to use the phone. If they were here to harm any of them, that’s the last thing they would have wanted.

“Hello?” Harlow’s wife answered.

“Hi hon, it’s me.”

“Hey. How’s it going out there? Any problems?”

“Nothing too out of the ordinary,” he replied, hoping his wife wouldn’t pick up the tension in his voice — and then again, hoping she would. “Can you do me a favor, sweetie?”

“It’ll cost you tonight, stud.” When he didn’t respond, she turned serious. “Sure, babe. Go ahead.”

“Hop on the Internet and Google something for me, would you?”

“Hold on a sec.” A moment later: “Okay, shoot.”

“We’re discussing the recent stuff happening in Iran, you know, about the military insurgency they’ve been talking about?”

“Yeah.”

“We got to talking about who was in charge of Iran before the clerics. Can you look that up?”

“Sure. One sec.” It did not take long at all: “You mean the Shah? Reza Khan Pahlavi.”

Najar was writing something down on a notepad even before Harlow asked: “How about before him?”

“Hold on.” A moment later: “Got it. Before the Pahlavi dynasty it was the Qagev dynasty, seventeen eighty to nineteen twenty-five. Before them it was the Zand dynasty, seventeen fifty to seventeen sixty-four. Before that…”

“That’s what I was looking for, hon, the Qagev dynasty,” Harlow interrupted. “We were discussing anyone still alive from the Qagev dynasty. Anything on that?”

Najar held up his notepad. It read: “Mohammed Hassan Qagev II, Dallas, Texas, 3 sons, 4 daughters.”

“Hold on,” Harlow’s wife said. “This is fun. Are you still out in the field?”

“Yes.”

“On the satellite phone? Must be costing a fortune.”

“Babe…”

“I got it right here, Mr. Impatient. Yes, there is a guy still alive from that dynasty. His name is Mohammed Hassan Qagev. And how about this? He lives in the United States — in Addison, Texas. He has a Web site where he blogs on what’s happening in Iran.”

“Anything else about him?”

“Lots. His wife looks like Angelina Jolie, big lips, big tits — you’d like her. He has seven kids…no, wait, it says here that all of them were killed by Iranian secret agents in Europe and Asia. How sad.”

“Does it say when?”

“No.”

“Anything else?”

“Wait, I’m reading…no, nothing much else…hey, this is interesting.”

“What?”