Chapter 2

“A U.S. convoy was hit today in what appears to be a change in tactic for Iranian insurgents, aiming more at foreign troops rather than at the civilian population. Reports are sketchy at this point but sources have said that a suicide bomber drove up behind the convoy along the Visible Highway before firing a rocket propelled grenade at a black hawk helicopter and then blowing up the vehicle, killing himself and three Army personnel and injuring six others. There has been no word about the state of the black hawk that has been allegedly shot down due to the media black out on the incident. This attack is the latest in a long line of what appears to be a surge of Insurgent attacks beginning in August this year and comes a day after three more U.S. soldiers were killed in action…” The woman on the television buzzed. The new CNN correspondent for war-torn Iran she was. Richard Blaine has seen her before. On television when she was the weekend anchor for CNN. Makes you wonder if this was a promotion or a demotion for her Blaine thought to himself.

He sat in the infirmary wing of his new workplace, the “Ministry of American Occupation” as the locals liked to call it. The friendly politicians call it the “American Embassy”. To the unfriendly ones, it’s the “Shed in the Whitehouse Backyard that is the Middle East”. To Blaine, it was simply the “CIA’s Base of Iranian Operations”. He sat on a soft clean and comfortable gurney with a gauze patch on the left side of his head, to stop the bleeding from a gash that he sustained as his SVU flipped over in the explosion.

His doctors had cleared him and he was free to leave. He just wanted to stay a bit to watch the news story and to savour the time before he became an “agent of the occupation”. He looked to the clock up on the wall to his right. Half past three. He had a meeting with the important people at five. Military commanders, Iranian government officials, Parliamentary committee members. So called movers and shakers of Tehran. He decides to get out of the gurney and head to the showers, to rinse out as best he could the smell of blood and death out of his tortured body.

Tags: american embassy, american occupation, army personnel, black hawk helicopter, black out, civilian population, clock up on the wall, cnn, cnn correspondent, gurney, insurgent attacks, iranian government, military commanders, movers and shakers, parliamentary committee, population reports, richard blaine, rocket propelled grenade, suicide bomber, weekend anchor
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