by Greg Rucka
"I want her alive," Shirazi whispered, then motioned them forward, watched each of them drop into a crouch, their pistols held in both hands, low and ready before them. Shirazi looked to the opposite bank, Zahabzeh visible for an instant as he motioned his own men to spread out.
He slung the submachine gun from its strap over his shoulder, letting it rest against where he wore his bag, and from his pants Shirazi pulled the silencer to his pistol, then quickly screwed it onto the barrel of the gun. Going low himself, he moved quietly forward, Javed just visible to his left, Parviz a little further ahead on the right. He checked the water again, saw that Chace had removed the tarp covering the boat, revealing a slim and low rigid-hulled craft, perhaps only eight meters long, two large outboard motors at its stern. Small and fast and perfectly appropriate for what she was trying to do.
They were nearly opposite her now. Shirazi scanned the far bank again, trying to find Zahabzeh, saw him for a moment between trees, and then he saw Hossein, backing up the stairs from where the boat was moored. He reached the top, Chace now ascending after him, and Shirazi couldn't read her body language, but Hossein took a half-step back in response. She started to lunge for him.
That was when Zahabzeh and his men opened fire.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
IRAN-NOSHAHR, JAME CANAL
11 DECEMBER 0258 HOURS (GMT +3.30)
Something was wrong.
Chace had seen hints of it at the safehouse, before Falcon had gone to take his lie-down. It wasn't so much that the man was nervous or even afraid; those were to be expected, those were basic human emotions, and if a man fleeing for his life from the country of his birth didn't exhibit them, that would have been beyond suspicion, that would have been confirmation, and Chace would have known just what to do; she'd have broken his neck and dumped him on the side of the Chalus-Tehran Road, and damn to his family name and his potential value to SIS and the CIA and the Parks and Rec Commission and all the rest.
But it wasn't just that he was scared.
It was that he was the wrong kind of scared. Caleb Lewis woke her with a gentle touch on the shoulder, bringing her instantly and fully awake. She'd been asleep for less than forty minutes.
"London," the young man said. "Timetable's moved up, they're saying you have to go now."
She sat up, began pulling on her boots, asking, "Did they say why?"
"They're worried about the weather tomorrow night."
"Get Falcon."
He left the room without another word. Chace got to her feet, tying her hair back beneath her silk scarf. She smoothed her manteau, checked her pockets, making sure she knew where everything was. Papers, cash-rials and Euros-the GPS unit, sat phone, and her little folding knife. From the next room, she heard Caleb's voice, speaking Farsi, and Falcon answering. The older man's words were coming fast, and she could hear the anxiety threading each of them, didn't need to understand the language to guess at his meaning.
MacIntyre was standing in the main room when she emerged.
"Get the car ready," Chace told him.
She took half a moment to find her smile, then brought it with her into Falcon's bedroom. As much as the GPS unit and the knife in her pocket, the smile was another tool, to be used with the same precision. Whether he liked it or not, Falcon had already defected, had done so the moment he left Karaj with Chace. He had left his own country and moved into hers, and so she smiled to let him know that he was welcome, that he was safe, that she would care for him.
Falcon was still speaking in Farsi, but he switched to English when he saw her. "You said we would be able to rest here. You said we would have time here."
"Yes, I did say that. But it's better this way. The sooner you're out of the country, the less chance of discovery. You'll have to trust me, Hossein."
"I need my clothes, my things."
"Everything's in your bag," Chace told him. "Come along, sir, we've got to get moving."
She took his elbow the way she had several times already, and guided the man out of the bedroom. Caleb went ahead, picked up Falcon's small duffel, and the front door opened, MacIntyre returning. Along with the breath of cold air, she could smell the exhaust from the car idling out front.
"Do we have a coat?" Chace asked. "It'll be cold."
MacIntyre pulled a parka from the peg by the door, helped Falcon on with it. Chace motioned to Caleb to follow her, then stepped outside, to the car. She waited while he shoved the duffel into the backseat.
"His clothes," she said. "Did you find anything?"
"Nothing. Nothing in the bag."
Chace chewed on her lip. Through the open door, she could see MacIntyre zipping the parka closed, as if dressing a child. Falcon wasn't looking at him, nor was he looking out, at her, and that struck her as odd, as well. She was his lifeline now, she was the one who would keep him safe. In her experience, defectors subconsciously fixated on the first ally they encountered during their escape, rarely letting them out of their sight. She wondered if the business with the manteau had been too much, if she had offended him so deeply by showing skin that she'd destroyed his trust in her.
"You know what to do now?" she asked Caleb.
"We'll sterilize the house as soon as you're gone," he told her. "Our initial plan was to head back to Tehran as soon as you two cleared out, but given the hour I'm having second thoughts. We may push out departure until morning. Less suspicion, I'd think, if we're driving in daylight."
Chace considered, remembering the checkpoints she and Falcon had passed on their way north. "Probably wise."
The young man looked relieved. "I'll be glad to be out of here, if you don't mind me saying."
"I don't mind you saying it at all." She offered him her hand, and he seemed surprised by that, needed a half-second before shaking it. "You're ever in London, let me know, I'll take you round the pub."
"That'd be wonderful."
Caleb smiled awkwardly, and Chace again thought how very young he looked. She opened the passenger's door, motioned for Falcon to come and join them. MacIntyre followed him out. She got him into the car, closed the door, then climbed behind the wheel herself, rolling down the window.
"Straight up Shir Aqai," Caleb told her. "Then right on Farabi. The road will curve northeast along the park. Mooring point is in your GPS."
Chace nodded, put the car in gear.
"Pleasure doing business with you," she said.
"Godspeed," MacIntyre told her.
The road signs were marked in both Farsi and English, and Chace found the park without difficulty, stopping on the northeast corner. There had been almost no traffic on the roads, only distant headlights that had turned away before she could even see the cars that made them. She checked her mirrors again, and again didn't see anything that alarmed her. Beside her, in his seat, Falcon was doing the same thing, but more obviously, twisting around, trying to look in every direction at once.
She killed the engine, leaving the keys in the ignition, then reached around to the backseat for Falcon's bag and set it in his lap. "We're on foot now."
"Is it a boat? We're taking a boat?"
"This way, sir."
She climbed out of the car, pulling the GPS from beneath her manteau and switching it on without looking, instead watching as Falcon came around to join her. There was a street lamp some two meters away, and in its illumination she could see the shine of sweat on the man's face, despite the cold. She checked the GPS, got her bearings, and, putting one hand on Falcon's shoulder, began leading him through the park.
They moved in silence, just the sound of their steps and Falcon's heavy breathing as they threaded their way through the trees. They passed a picnic area, then a small gazebo, and when the GPS told her that she was only eight meters from where she wanted to be, Chace saw the canal and stopped them both in the shadows. She switched the device off, stowed it away once more, checking the terrain, straining to hear anything other than the slight rustle of the wind and the water. Still n
othing.
A wooden platform had been constructed on the side of the canal, ahead, and as she led Falcon forward she saw the steps running down, perhaps no more than eight feet, to a small landing. The RHIB, covered, was tied up against it, rising and falling ever so slightly on the swell. She led him down carefully, scanning the opposite bank before looking back to check their own. No one and nothing. The wooden stairs were slick with frost, and Falcon moved painfully slowly, as if afraid he might fall.
She had to let go of him at the base to uncover the boat. She freed the tarp, bundling it up and stuffing it beneath the wheel, at the bow, and when she turned back to Falcon, she saw that the man had retreated, now backing up the stairs. Chace hissed at him to get down, starting up after him, and suddenly the thing that had been wrong all along, the thing she had missed, struck her, as clear and cold as the night itself.
She was supposed to be Falcon's savior. She was supposed to be his protector. He had abandoned everything to fly with her to safety. By all rights, he should have been sticking to her like a shadow. Yet whenever he could, he would put as much distance between them as possible. It wasn't because she was a woman.
It was because he had no intention of leaving with her at all.
"You son of a bitch," Chace said.
She pushed hard off the last step, nearly slipping, reaching for him. He tried to turn away, to run, but she caught him at the collar, and to her right Chace saw a muzzle flash, heard the air rip. Falcon screamed, went dead-weight in her grip, and she stumbled forward as another chatter of shots rang out, nearly falling, and this time the flash was almost directly ahead of her, perhaps ten meters away. The air shivered and sung around her head. Movement, now to her left, and shouting from behind, a man's voice screaming in Farsi from the opposite bank. All in an instant Chace realized Falcon was dead, that she had been boxed, that if she went for the Zodiac their crossfire would chew her apart. As ambushes went, it had been perfect, leaving her with only two choices: she could surrender or she could die.
Even as she understood all of this, she realized she was moving, heard herself screaming filth and obscenities, and there was a man directly in front of her, a strobe-light impression of a narrow, clean-shaven face and eyes open too wide, whites bright in the darkness. She grabbed the barrel of his gun with her left hand, twisting and pulling, as she ran into him, through him, punching straight into his trachea with her right, feeling her fingertips crush and shatter cartilage. He went down choking on his own blood, backwards, and Chace did, forward, tumbling over him, saw the grass and soil bursting around her as she regained her feet. She had his submachine gun in her hand, pointed it left, heavy on the trigger and firing blind, running for her life. Shots followed her.
The car was where she had left it, her lungs aching, burning, by the time she reached the door. More voices were shouting in Farsi. She yanked the door open, and bullets crashed into the metal to her right, where she had stood half an instant before, as she dove into the car. She dropped the submachine gun, twisted the key so hard in the ignition it broke in her hand, but the engine gave life, and she stomped the accelerator, ducking her head as the windows on her side exploded in sequence, showering her with glass. The car shot forward, bumped, and Chace brought her head up, heaving the wheel to point herself back towards the road. More bullets crashed into the car, the rear window disintegrating, the front windscreen suddenly a spider's web.
Then she heard only the sound of the car, the cold winter air rushing in from every direction, the sound of herself sobbing for breath. She turned right, then left, then right again, driving too quickly, all the turns at random, until she saw the sign for Chalus to the west, and the symbol of an airplane on a post, an arrow directing her towards the airport, and she followed it. She tried to get her breathing back under control, and in the glare of the airport lights, she saw blood all over the steering wheel, her hands, the seat, the dashboard.
There was a car park on the left, ahead, and she turned into it, came to a jerking halt. She pushed open the door, and a shower of broken glass fell from the still-running car onto the pavement. She followed it out, taking the gun with her, hearing more glass fall from her clothes, where it had caught in the folds of the manteau. That explained the blood, she thought, all the glass, she'd been cut, it was a miracle she hadn't been cut to ribbons, in fact. She was still out of breath, still light-headed from adrenaline. There was another Peugeot nearby, a knockoff made by Khodro, a Suzuki, a Benz, another Samand. She began trying doors, finding them locked, until finally she used the butt of the submachine gun to shatter the driver's window on a dark green Nasim, and then again, once inside, to break the housing over the ignition on the wheel.
Her fingers fumbled with the wires, and by the time she managed to get the engine started she was gasping for air, and she knew that the blood still spilling out of her wasn't from the glass. The pain came up suddenly, as she put the Nasim into gear, a kick in the back so furious and cruel it made her sob aloud, and her vision blurred with tears from the intensity of it. She managed to get the car out of the lot, back onto the road to Chalus, and every breath was a struggle between pain and pressure. Her vision fogged gray, cleared, then clouded again. She gulped uselessly for air, each attempt met with an ever-worsening agony. She was reduced to breathing through her nose, short, ineffective sips of oxygen that were only prolonging the inevitable.
Everything had gone wrong. The boat was gone. Falcon was dead. She would never make the RZ on the Caspian. The safehouse was compromised, MacIntyre and Lewis both either arrested, dead, or escaped and heading for Tehran. She was alone in a police state, her cover blown, and certainly would be the target of a massive manhunt, if she wasn't already.
But the worst of it was, she knew now that she'd been shot. She was suffocating, and from everything her body was telling her, it was getting worse. At the most, she had ten minutes of consciousness left to her. Chalus was six minutes away to the west.
If Chace could find a doctor's office, even a veterinarian's, she might survive.
If she couldn't, she was going to die of asphyxiation.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
IRAN-NOSHAHR, 2 SHIR AQAI (SIS SAFEHOUSE)
11 DECEMBER 0317 HOURS (GMT +3.30)
Sterilization of the safehouse was completed within eight minutes of Chace's departure, a relatively minor affair concluded in short order. Caleb took the card with Falcon's fingerprints into the bathroom, setting fire to it over the toilet and letting the paper burn until the flames threatened his fingers, before dropping it into the bowl. The charred paper sizzled out, and he flushed what remained of it away before making a second sweep of the green-and-white-tiled room, checking the shower stall, the reservoir tank on the toilet itself, the sink, all the cabinets. He found nothing.
He took the bedroom that Chace had used next while MacIntyre went through the other, where Falcon had slept, albeit briefly. Minder One had lain above the covers rather than beneath them, and aside from the slight crush of sheets, the memory of her body, there was no sign other than the impression her head had made in the pillow and a single blond hair. Caleb puzzled over the hair for a second, taking it with two fingers and for a moment wondering what he was meant to do with the incriminating item before accepting that he was, perhaps, being overly paranoid. He opened his fingers, watched the hair fall and float back to the bed.
He was back in the main room, packing up the laptop, when MacIntyre emerged from the other bedroom, saying, "Clear."
"Then I think we're good," Caleb said.
"We'll be good when we're back in Tehran, sir," MacIntyre said, and then, as if fearing there'd been too much reproach in his voice, added, "I was thinking of putting on the kettle."
Caleb snapped the clasp on the laptop bag closed, set it beside the chair, was about to agree that, yes, a cup of tea would be nice about now, when he heard the echo from outside. He looked to MacIntyre, already halfway to the kitchen, saw that the other man had stopped, hearing i
t as well.
"Helo," MacIntyre said, his voice dropping. "Two of them, sounds like."
"What do you think?"
MacIntyre shook his head, still listening, and Caleb listened, too, then tugged at his left cuff, exposing his watch. Thirty-three minutes past three in the morning, and two helicopters flying overhead, already the Doppler echo fading, maybe heading north, to the water, though with the foothills bouncing the echo he couldn't be sure.
"They'd be on the water by now," Caleb said.
MacIntyre waited until the sound faded, then looked at him, not needing to say what both were thinking. They'd be on the water now if everything had gone right.
And two helos flying overhead at half-past three in the morning meant that things had certainly not gone right.
"I should inform London," Caleb said. "Barnett, at the very least."
"And say what? That we just had an overflight by two helicopters? That maybe it's gone tits up?"
"We should do something."
"There's nothing we can do, Mr. Lewis," MacIntyre said. "You want to go out there, do a recce? If they've brought in helicopters, they've damn well turned out the police and the local militia, as well. We stomp around in that, we're going to get done for ourselves. Nothing we can do."
"We can't just sit here. If she's in trouble, if she's running-"
"We let her run. Nothing we can do."
They stared at each other for several seconds. There was no flaw in MacIntyre's logic, Caleb knew that, but the frustration rose in an overwhelming crest all the same. The only benefit to it that Caleb could find was that it was such a strong sensation, it consumed the lead pill of fear in his stomach.
Then they heard the sound of cars racing down the road, coming their way.
"Fucking hell," MacIntyre muttered. "Motherfucking hell."
