Top’s jaw was tight with tension. Timing was going to be critical. If Khalid made an error, he’d be dead in the next few seconds, and then everything would go to shit. He cut a look into the rearview mirror, at the faces of the three freed hostages. They had been held for a year. A whole year carved out of their lives because Ahmadinejad liked using kids as chess pieces in his political games.

Top knew that firing live rounds would likely result in a major political incident, possibly even a renewed threat of war. But there was no way on earth he was going to let Iran take these college students back.

He gripped the steering wheel hard enough to make it creak.

“Papers,” ordered the sergeant, shining a small flashlight directly into Khalid’s face. “Name and destination.”

Khalid squinted into the light as he handed over his papers, which were in a cheap vinyl folder of the kind most people in Tehran carried. His car was a late-model sedan, suggesting that he was at very least someone of note. Moneyed, or perhaps attached to the massive political machine that squatted over the whole country.

One of the guards looked in through the passenger window, peering into the footwell and the backseat, but there was nothing to see. Khalid gave them the false name that matched the ID, and spun a quick story about going to have an early breakfast with a business associate in a small border town. If the soldiers had a computer uplink and ran a check, everything would be there to verify the story.

“Open the trunk,” the sergeant said as he handed back the papers.

“Certainly,” said Khalid and he reached down to pop the latch. Instead he pulled the pin on a flash-bang and simply dropped it out the window at the sergeant’s feet. The sergeant stared down it, totally shocked despite his training. He started to yell a warning, but instantly the flash-bang burst with tremendous force, battering the sergeant away from the car.

As soon as Khalid dropped the device he threw himself sideways and pressed his hands against his ears. The flash filled the night with a brilliant white light. The accompanying bang caught one of the soldiers in its blast radius, and the man screamed and spun away in an awkward pirouette. The other three soldiers whipped around toward the blast and never saw the trunk flip open and two more flash-bangs whip up into the air. The grenades burst five feet above the car hood, catching all three soldiers with its terrible burst of blinding light and crushing noise.