Adira held his gaze, a question in her dark eyes.

The general breathed out slowly and a look of pain crossed his face. ‘We need to go in, Captain, but not alone this time. We need our muscular friends from across the water. The Americans are bound to go in, and when they do, we will be with them.’ General Meir Shavit paused and looked deep into his niece’s eyes. ‘Addy, Iran cannot have this terrible power, now or ever. You must bring it down around them; leave nothing standing, leave no one to remember anything.’

Adira nodded once, her face like stone.

‘There is one more thing.’ The general handed Adira a sealed folder. The red cross on the front signified its secrecy. ‘The Americans have developed a new form of warfare, like nothing we have ever seen before. Our best agents have been able to obtain little more than a codename: Arcadian. We hope to have more information soon, but for now . . .’ He shrugged as he indicated the slimness of the file. ‘They will probably use this weapon on the mission, Addy. Seek it out, and bring it or the seeds of its creation back to us. It may be Israel’s only hope in the coming storm.’

SIX

Major Jack Hammerson stared at the computer in front of him but without seeing what was displayed on the screen; instead, his focus was turned inwards, contemplating the call he had just received from an old friend. General Meir Shavit had confirmed what Hammerson already knew about the Iranian gamma pulse, its strength and location, and that none of it was good.

It had been one of America’s fears for decades: a nuclear-armed regime that hated the West. Everyone in the military had expected it to be the North Koreans – a nightmare, sure, but they were manageable, they were for sale. But Iran – shit! After twenty years, there was still no hint that they wanted to play ball. This was the start of an arms race across the Middle East that would lead to unsecured warheads being mislaid, sold or stolen, then potentially turning up in some terrorist’s arsenal. If some idiot with a hundred bags of ammonium nitrate could blow the shit out of an Oklahoma office block, kill 168 people and cause nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars worth of damage, then the thought of a nuke hidden in the back of a pick-up didn’t bear thinking about. For Israel, it was even worse – they literally had the devil on their doorstep.

Hammerson gripped one of his large hands in the other and cracked his knuckles. The Israeli general had assumed the US were going in and had offered them access to Mossad’s Middle Eastern covert networks, scientific resources, plus a ground base for landing and take-off. Shavit had been most insistent that the US team meet at the Israeli base before travelling on to Iran. ‘Acclimatisation’ he had called it. ‘Bullshit’ Hammerson called it. The general was up to something. He’d also promised two Israeli experts – one a specialist in the field of geophysical and astrophysical sciences; the other an authority on language and logistics. Hammerson guessed at least one of them would be a Mossad torpedo.