After the robotic gun was designed and manufactured, it was broken down into individual pieces. Over the last four months, those parts had been smuggled one by one into Iran. Once it had all arrived, a team of Sunni Baloch engineers had reassembled the weapon and installed it into the bed of one of the tens of thousands of blue Nissan Zamyad pickups that filled the streets of Iran.

While Imri fired up the electronics and began system-checking the cameras, Nir and Doron readied the gun. Lifting the cover, Doron laid in the ammunition belt. Then once he closed it back up, he pulled the cocking lever to charge the weapon. Stepping back, Nir moved in to check everything Doron had just done. He didn’t expect to find any mistakes, but in this kind of operation, you check everything twice. Meanwhile, Doron had moved on to ensure that the explosive charge was armed and ready to blow.

“This is Term 6. Everything is a go on my end,” Lahav said after a few minutes.

“Everything is a go here. Move to pickup.” Nir looked at Doron, who nodded.

“Root,” sounded off each member of the team—except for Yaron, who was already walking up the road.

After making sure no traffic was coming, Imri and Doron dropped out from the back of the truck. They would follow Yaron’s path. Nir hit the timer on this watch, set for four minutes, then began to position the tarp so the barrel of the gun had a clear shot.

So far, all had gone smoothly for Operation Unholy Father. Nir laughed when he first heard the name, mainly because it was so perfect for their target—Dr. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, known as the Father of the Iranian Bomb. His official title was head of Iran’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, or S.P.N.D. As all in the Mossad knew, though, this was just a fancy way of saying he was the one most responsible for the weaponization of Iran’s nuclear program.

Fakhrizadeh had been on a Mossad target list for more than 14 years, but he was almost impossible to get to. More than one assassination attempt had been prepared, then aborted. When Nir heard Netanyahu call the doctor out by name during his vault press conference, he had a feeling Fakhrizadeh had graduated to the top of the Mossad’s kill list. He just didn’t know his team would be the ones doing the killing.