Alex growled. “Sam, give me the M203, and keep flooring it.” Alex took the grenade launcher and checked the rounds still in the modified drum clip – ten left – plenty.

Bullets started to whack into the armored sides of the truck, and he could see at least two men preparing shoulder mounted RPG launchers – now or never, he thought.

Alex leaned out of the truck and fired round after round of the plug-like grenades, targeting the jeeps, the RPG handlers, and then the phalanx of soldiers, until all ten rounds had been expended.

The detonations were almost instantaneous and a curtain of fire, flesh and debris filled the tunnel. Alex pulled himself back into the cabin.

“Brace!”

They passed through the flaming wall, bumping over the remains of one molten jeep, and heading toward a massive set of steel doors that still hung open. Beyond, a dark sky beckoned.

Alex checked his watch. “Three minutes. About to get real hot, people.”

The deep detonation was an earthquake that threw them around like they were encased in a toy, and a vent of flame shot from the tunnel, blasting into the dark sky, making the night into daytime while Sam struggled to hold the wheel.

The flame was shut off, as the tunnel caved in on itself. They sped on, and behind them the world collapsed. They had over 150 miles of night desert to cross, in a hostile territory, while outpacing a toxic, nuclear shock wave.

Not a single one of them would complain for a second.

CHAPTER 14

Jack Hammerson leaned back in his chair, a pair of strong blunt hands clasped together across his stomach. He faced a huge screen set into his office wall that showed an image of the nighttime desert in the Mashhad District of Northern Iran. Even though it was night, the illumination settings of the VELA satellite feed made it as clear as daytime.

The small town of Tous suddenly rose about fifty feet in the air, like it was sitting upon a huge blister about to pop, and then with a venting of boiling gasses from a million cracks over a two-mile radius, it simply fell back in on itself, forming a massive sunken crater. Anything and everything below ground would have ceased to exist.

Hammerson continued to watch the screen. To him, it looked like the earth had just been pounded by a mighty fist, or titanic hammer.

“So strikes the hammer of God.” He smiled. “That’s what happens when you play with fire.”

He knew the drill; mining accident, the government would say for the local and international press. Nuclear accident, the Iranian military would agree.

Hammerson grunted. They did it to themselves, Hammerson would say, if any of his superiors asked of their involvement. He turned away from the screen. His recovery teams were already waiting in Turkmenistan to pull Alex and the team out.