The last run (queen and country)

by Greg Rucka

  Shirazi shook his head in disgust, moved his glare from Zahabzeh to Kamal while the others remained in stunned silence. "Fine, then you will be the longest to die. But if you think that will spare the rest of us, you're fucking wrong. None of you sees it yet, do you? It's our bullet in his neck! And when they find that-and they will find that-they will want to know why we murdered the Supreme Leader's nephew. And they will want to know why we are acting against the State. And they will want to know when we joined the counterrevolutionaries. And then-then-they will shoot us."

  Javed started to speak. "But we aren't-"

  "They won't care!" Shirazi shouted.

  Zahabzeh looked to the body of his other man, Mahmoud, then back to Shirazi. "If we find the woman… if we find this spy…"

  "Yes," Shirazi said. "Alive."

  "Alive she could talk. Dead, she won't be able to argue."

  "No one will hear her. No, she must be brought in alive. Questioned. Put on trial. And then she can take the bullets meant for us. That is the only way."

  The other men were motionless still, the only signs of life the regular puffs of condensation that marked their breathing. Shirazi and Zahabzeh stared at each other, and Shirazi was certain he saw accusation, even the hints of suspicion, in his deputy's eyes. He knew what the younger man was thinking; that this had always been Shirazi's folly, that he had pushed too far, and taken unnecessary risks. And now, Shirazi was sure, Zahabzeh had to wonder if this next gamble would play like the ones before, if it would fail, if it would bring all their ends.

  "All of us must agree," Shirazi said. "All of us together, or all of us will die."

  Another moment, and then Zahabzeh gave the slightest nod, reached into his coat for his phone. "Local police?"

  "And militia. Roadblocks, helicopters, boats on the water, all of it. Give them the description of the spy, and stress that she's to be taken alive." Shirazi indicated Hossein's body. "Inform them about this, but give no details, no identification of either body. Bring the cars around. She can't have gone far, not if she's wounded. We'll try their safehouse first."

  Men scattered, Zahabzeh speaking quietly, authoritatively, on the phone, and for a blessed moment, Shirazi had no eyes on him, nothing he had to say, and he had time to think. After a moment, he knelt on one knee, took the small penknife he carried from his pocket. Murmuring an apology to the dead man, he lifted Hossein's shirt, feeling his way along the cooling skin until he found the bandage at the left side of the corpse's abdomen. Shirazi ripped it free, then, with the tip of his blade, dug into the half-healed flesh until he freed the tiny transmitter he and Zahabzeh had implanted in Hossein's side. He stuffed it into a pocket, closed the knife against his thigh, rose.

  Zahabzeh had finished his calls, and already the sound of sirens could be heard in the distance. "I told them to check the airport first."

  "Good."

  "It won't take them long to identify him," Zahabzeh said. "As soon as they do, they'll notify Tehran. Tehran will have questions."

  The cars were pulling up now, the sirens crying louder, coming closer. Shirazi could see the first flashes of red and blue through the trees of the park. Tehran would indeed have questions, many questions, and unless they could find Tara Chace, and find her quickly, Shirazi wasn't at all sure his answers would suffice. From the start, he had decided that she was the one he needed, the only one for him.

  Until this moment, he hadn't known how right he was. They were at the airport, the tiny terminal between Chalus and Noshahr, where Shirazi had unceremoniously taken over the administration offices, the dawn beginning to bleed in through the windows. Six men standing around a large map that had been pulled down from the wall and spread on the table, Parviz marking checkpoints with a pen. He handed it off to Kamal, who drew in the patrol routes of the boats, the helicopters, then gave it in turn to Javed, who marked each and every roadblock that had been set up along the major roads in the last two and a half hours.

  Shirazi gazed at the map for a long time after the markup was completed, not moving, lost in his thoughts. Someone offered him a cup of tea, and he took it without thinking, drank it without tasting it, lost in the lines of terrain. His eyes kept going back to the water, back to the Caspian, what had to have been the initial exfil point. There had to have been a ship waiting for them, or a helicopter, something far from the shore. That had been clever, he thought, that would have worked.

  But Tabriz, he realized, that wasn't clever at all. That was expected.

  She wasn't going to Tabriz, he realized, and he turned his head, put his hands on the map, covering the routes east and west from Chalus. North and south-not north, either, because certainly the exfil was blown, and there was no way she could have cleared the shore unnoticed. South, it had to be south, and it was such an absurd thing for her to have done that he was all the more certain she had done it.

  "Sir?"

  Shirazi looked up, saw Zahabzeh standing only two feet away, holding out his phone, his expression grave. Shirazi hadn't even heard it ring.

  "Sir," Zahabzeh said. "Your presence is requested in Tehran."

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  IRAN-ALBORZ MOUNTAINS, 38 KM SSW CHALUS

  11 DECEMBER 0746 HOURS (GMT +3.30)

  Chace sat in the driver's seat of the stolen Samand with a new syringe in her hand, the car half-hidden in a copse of spring pines, snow on the ground, and a view that would have been spectacular if she'd had the time or inclination to pay it any heed. The pain in her chest had grown appreciably more acute in the last hour, her breathing shallowing with the increasing pressure from within, now becoming, once again, dangerously short.

  She hadn't meant to put it off for this long, in fact, but circumstances had prevented her from acting prior. Twice on the drive south she'd narrowly avoided roadblocks, each time tipped off to their presence by the line of cars backed up along the roadway. The first time, she'd turned before becoming stuck in the traffic jam, had followed side roads through forest and fields, circling around back to the highway. The second time, as soon as she'd seen the congestion, she'd reversed, taken the first turn she could off the road, ending up on a dirt track that wound its way steeply higher and higher into the mountains until she'd crossed into snow. Every time she'd thought it safe to pull off and stop, another car had appeared, each of them heading the opposite direction, none of them official-looking, but they had been enough to make her keep going.

  Checking her mirrors and the view out the windows, Chace thought she was as safe as she was likely to get for the time being.

  She stepped slowly out of the car, moving cautiously, stiffly, the syringe still in her hand. The air bit at her, cold and yet surprisingly pleasant against her skin. She was still wearing the torn manteau, had driven with the wool blanket from the police car wrapped around her shoulders and covering her head. Somewhere along the line, she didn't know where or when, she had lost her maqna'e. She made another survey, listening to the world as much as trying to see it, all the while fighting the creeping panic caused by her slowly increasing breathlessness.

  She heard nothing, saw nothing.

  Carefully, she spread the blanket out over the hood of the car, then brought out the first-aid kit, as well as all of the supplies she'd managed to grab from the pharmacy. The owner of the car had left an unopened bottle of Zam Zam Cola rolling around on the floor, and she took that now, opened it, and then opened the box of amoxicillin. She swallowed two of the antibiotic pills, and used the soda to wash them down, the cola tepid and sticky sweet in her mouth. Last, she put one of the pistols she had taken from the police on the blanket, within easy reach, should she need it.

  Stepping back from the side of the car, Chace raised her right leg and threw out a kick at the driver's side mirror. It broke away easily, snapping clear of the Samand with a crack that bounced off the snow and vanished amongst the trees. The kick had hurt, cost oxygen, and she needed a moment to steady herself against the car, for the bright spots of light t
o fade, before she was ready to bend and pick up the mirror.

  Thus far, the only examination she'd been able to give herself had been cursory, as opportunity had allowed. The arrival of daylight had made things a little easier, and she'd confirmed what she already knew as she drove; she hadn't taken a hit to the front. While the chest pain had been significant and constant, an ache that moved through her like a tide, she'd begun to discern within it a purer note, high on her back, below the shoulder, where she couldn't reach and couldn't see.

  Chace set down the mirror long enough to remove the manteau. Free from her arms and off her shoulders, the long shirt began to slide down, but then snagged, and she had to bite back on a cry as fresh misery sliced along her back. Gravity continued to pull, and the manteau suddenly fell the rest of the way, and instantly Chace could feel blood trickling down her back, and just as quickly, the pressure in her chest expanded, her ability to draw breath stealing away.

  Fighting panic, Chace picked up the mirror in her left hand, turning her head to catch its reflection, and she saw the blood leaking down her back, followed its trail to the wound, a small, narrow, leaking hole above the back of her bra, just inside the shoulder, narrowly missing the scapula. The fabric of the manteau had sealed it, had acted as a bandage, allowing a clot to set, and she understood now what had happened to her, what was happening, what was going to happen. Removing the manteau had reopened the wound, allowing air to again invade her chest to crush her lungs. She was still standing, albeit with difficulty, still had enough air to know she had to work quickly.

  There were multiple bandages in the first-aid kit, various sizes, squares of gauze, rolls of tape, even fabric for fashioning a sling, but not what she needed, no occlusion bandage. Putting gauze over the wound-even if she could somehow reach around to it, which she couldn't-would do nothing; the dressing would be too permeable. She needed something solid, something with which to make an airtight seal.

  She abandoned the kit for the moment, tried to keep herself from moving too quickly as she climbed back into the car, searching the interior. The thought struck her that the bullet was still inside her, and a new surge of panic tried to take hold, clawing, this time more desperately. If the bullet was rattling around in her chest cavity it could be cutting up organs, arteries, her heart. She could be hemorrhaging internally, not a tension pneumothorax but a hemothorax, bleeding slowly, filling her like a bottle until she drowned in her own blood.

  "One thing at a time."

  It took her a moment to realize the whisper was her own.

  She snapped open the glove box, pulling the contents free. Crammed in the corner, crumbs of some substance lining the bottom, she found a small, clear plastic bag, and she grabbed it, extracted herself slowly from the car. She was sipping for air now, hearing herself wheezing with each tiny breath. Her throat ached.

  Using the roll of tape from the pharmacy, she laid four lengths around the plastic bag, working as quickly and carefully as she dared, making certain each segment overlapped. The seal would have to be perfect, nothing could come between the plastic and the wound, and with difficulty she reached back and unfastened her bra, letting it drop. She took one of the scavenged syringes, stuck it in her pocket, and then, taking the makeshift dressing carefully in one hand, moved to the boot of the car, where she set the bandage flat, adhesive side up.

  Chace hiked herself into a sitting position on the boot, her back to where she had placed the plastic, and slowly leaned herself backwards, trying to position herself and the wound atop it. The posture took even more of her air, balance awkward, the shock of the colder metal against her already cold, bare skin. She saw blue sky, points of white light swimming in her vision. Then she was lying with her back against the car, cold stealing into her skin, legs over the side. She tried a breath, and its success was limited, and she didn't know if that was because the bandage was in place now, or simply because the boot itself was sealing the wound. In either case, the wound was, for the moment, closed.

  But there was still too much air in the pleural space, still too much pressure for her lungs to work properly.

  Without sitting up, Chace took the syringe from her pocket, carefully stripping its wrapping away. She pulled the cap, the plunger, brought the needle to the point she had punctured herself before, and, like before, with both hands, drove it into her chest. The release of pressure was instant, this time the hiss of air lost behind her involuntary scream. She sobbed fresh oxygen into her lungs, her hands falling to her sides, pounding on the car in furious pain. It had hurt before, but this time it was worse, this time it was almost unbearable.

  But she was breathing again, she realized, breathing the way she should, and with careful hands she withdrew the needle from her chest, heard it roll against the boot, fall to the snow. With effort, she sat upright, and the pain that moved with her was manageable, and still she was breathing. When she turned her head, she could see a smear of her blood on the car, but the bandage was gone, where it needed to be, fixed to her back.

  Chace slid back to her feet, moved to the front of the car. Her bra lay in the snow, and she picked it up, shaking it clean, then slipped herself back into it, closing it gingerly at her back. She heard the plastic crinkle, pressed further against her skin by the shoulder strap. Its aid to the bandage was questionable, she supposed, but anything would help, anything to keep the wound sealed.

  The sun found her through the trees as she cleared the hood of the car. Using her knife, she cut a hole in the center of the blanket, large enough for her head, then drew it over her, wearing it like a poncho. She examined the manteau, bloodstained and torn, and again with the knife cut as large a clean strip as she could, then used that to cover her hair. She shivered beneath the blanket, exhausted, took another look around her, seeing the trees and the mountains and the snow shining.

  It was going to be a beautiful day, she realized. The Alborz were both an aid and a hindrance. Certainly, the terrain made the chance of running into anyone, let alone a checkpoint or a roadblock, that much more unlikely, but conversely, anyone she was liable to meet would be justifiably more suspicious of a strange foreigner in their midst. She had no map, either, only the GPS, and her desire to head south, back to Tehran, notwithstanding, she had to follow the road where it led.

  That wasn't the worst, however. The higher the road went, the more the air pressure outside changed, the more the pressure in her chest would be exacerbated. She had two needles left, and no desire at all to have to use either of them.

  Shortly after ten in the morning, Chace judged she had put enough distance between her last stop and her present position that she pulled to the side of the road. By some miracle, she'd managed to keep hold of both the small GPS unit and her sat phone, and now, for the first time, she felt it was safe to try using both. Her breathing, while still wildly uncomfortable, was steady and effective.

  Exiting the car, Chace took one of the two pistols, tucking it into her jeans at her waist. She used the GPS first, taking a reading, and saw that she was further west than she had hoped, though without a map to aid her, she was unsure of her precise position. She noted the altitude, as well, almost seventeen hundred meters, and that was cause for worry. She would need to descend, and soon, or else risk further complications to her injury.

  She left the GPS on, setting it atop the roof of the car, then opened her sat phone and switched it on. To her chagrin, the battery indicator was reading less than a quarter charge. The phone beeped, the screen clearing, ready and waiting.

  Chace dialed from memory, waited, and when she recognized Lex's voice on the other end, said, "Minder One, black, repeat black, am on open line."

  "Minder One, confirmed," Lex said. And Chace could swear the woman, for the first time in their acquaintance, had relief in her voice. "Status?"

  "Coldwitch is bust, opposition was waiting at exfil. Falcon is dead. I am blown and wounded, repeat, blown and wounded, confirm."

  "I confirm. Are you mobi
le?"

  "Am mobile. Location, stand by." Chace reached for the GPS with her free hand, checking the coordinates once more. "Am at thirty-six point forty-three sixty-one seventeen by fifty-one point naught-six twenty-three eighty-seven, confirm."

  "I confirm. Coms check?"

  "Low battery. Fifteen minutes, probably less. Note, cannot exfil by air, repeat, will require medical treatment prior to airlift."

  "I confirm, negative air. Next communication, seven minutes from mark."

  Chace checked her watch, saw that blood had dried on its face. She scraped at it with a nail. "Mark."

  "Out."

  The line went dead, and Chace switched the satellite phone off, then the GPS, climbed back into the Samand. In six minutes she'd switch the phone on again, and thirty seconds or so after that it would trill, and Alexis Ferguson or, better, Paul Crocker would be on the other end. D-Ops' voice, sharp and sure, telling her what to do, where to go, how to proceed. Telling her how he was going to bring her home.

  Chace shivered again, drew the wool poncho closer around her body, heard the plastic bag on her back crunch as she moved. Sunlight lanced through the windscreen, suddenly and deliciously warm on her face, turning her drowsy. She closed her eyes, mind wandering free, instantly finding Tamsin, so far away. The fever, had it broken yet? Was she all right? Then she was seeing Tom Wallace, perfect in memory, a flight of fancy as Tara held their daughter in her arms, showing her to him. Look what we made, look at this beautiful creature we created.

  Her eyes snapped open, Chace starting in the seat, quickly checking her watch. For a second, she couldn't remember the mark, then saw it had been six minutes, six minutes already, and she hurriedly climbed out of the car, turning the sat phone on, and no sooner had it beeped, confirming its signal, than it was ringing.

  "Minder One," Chace said. "Go."

  "Here's what you're going to do, Tara," Paul Crocker said.