I climbed three flights of stairs, dropped my keys twice, and finally opened the lock. As soon as I was inside I closed and relocked the door and fell back against it with an exhale that came all the way up from my shoes.

My dog, Ghost, was waiting for me, wagging his tail and looking at my hands to see if I’d brought him anything. He’s a big white shepherd, 105 pounds of muscle and appetite. Ghost was cross-trained in a variety of useful skills from combat to rescue; and though he was useful in ordinary bomb detection, he couldn’t disarm a nuke.

I knelt down and hugged him. I kissed his furry head.

“This one’s going to be a bitch, fuzzball,” I told him.

He looked at me with those liquid dog eyes that always seem deep and wise. He whined a little, catching my mood or perhaps smelling my fear. Then his whole body went rigid as he stared past me. Not to the closed door, but to an empty space on the wall. I followed the line of his gaze, willing myself to see what he saw, but a dog is a dog and they see things we can’t. No matter how much we want to.

I listened to the silence, wondering if I’d just heard a soft voice whisper my name again.

But, no … there was nothing.

When I looked at Ghost, he was no longer staring at the wall.

“What is it, boy?”

Ghost, being a dog, just looked at me.

I mean, really … what had I expected him to say? My palms were sweaty and I wiped them on my thighs. Then I fished some dried goat strips out of my jacket pocket and dropped them on the floor. Ghost is peculiar in that he eats his food delicately, one piece at a time, making it last.

Minutes crawled by as I waited for the Mossad shopkeeper to send over the battery. The thought of those moments being chipped off the block of time remaining until those nukes went active was making my heart hurt. I was sweating and it wasn’t the heat in that stuffy little room.

I fished for more goat and my fingers scrabbled over the flash drive. That drove everything else out of my head.

Rasouli said that there were four nukes scattered throughout the Mideast oil fields, and three more unknowns. Maybe one in the States.

“Holy God…” I breathed. Ghost cut a sharp look at me and gave a soft woof.

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Thirteen

Southwestern Iran

Twenty Kilometers from the Kuwait Border

Ten Hours Before …