CHAPTER 23: SHOWDOWN
Tehran, Iran
Karimi Family Home
11:30 PM Local Time
The house was small, tucked away in a neighborhood that had been built for the families of men who worked in the ministries that surrounded it. The walls were white, the windows dark, the door closed against the night that was settling over the city. Inside, a woman slept in a bed that was too large for her alone, her hand reaching for a man who was not there, her dreams filled with the face of a husband who had been gone for months, who called when he could, who promised that he would come home, who was never there when she woke.
The extraction team moved through the darkness with practiced precision. Six operators, all veterans of missions like this, all volunteers for an operation that would take them into the
