by Greg Rucka
"This will do." He pointed, and she followed the line from his hand, almost laughed when she read the sign painted over the door of the building opposite them. Farsi and English, and the English told her it was an Internet cafe, THE FRIENDLY CAFE, and the irony was practically absurd. Shirazi glanced about the street, then looked at her. "You must wait outside, here. Stay in the shadows."
She nodded, stepped back into the alley from which they'd emerged. Shirazi darted across the street, then slowed, entering the building. She saw him through the window, raising a hand to someone out of sight, and then he crossed the room, disappeared behind the line of heads and monitors. Chace put a hand to her chest, the burning sensation gone, her breathing still pained, but regular. She could feel the butt of the pistol tucked at her waist, digging into her skin. She checked her watch, saw that it was almost seven in the evening, three-thirty or so back in London. Tamsin would be finished with school, would be coming home with Missi, assuming that Tamsin had gone to school at all that day.
Shirazi emerged from the cafe seven minutes later, turning left as he exited, heading for the corner, and Chace stepped out of her shadows, paralleling him from her side of the street. A police car rolled past, part of the traffic, and she kept her head down, and then Shirazi was crossing to meet her, taking her again by the elbow.
"We have a long way to go before tomorrow night," he told her. "It is near the border, only forty, fifty kilometers from it, in Abadan, a point on the river. I printed the map."
He reached into a pocket, pushed a folded sheet of printer paper into her hand, and Chace tucked it beneath her manteau without opening it. "How far?"
"Seven hundred, perhaps seven hundred and fifty kilometers. It is not as bad as it seems, most of it is across desert, unpopulated areas. If we are discreet, we could make it without being detected."
"We need a car."
"Yes." Shirazi pulled back on her elbow, bringing her to a halt once more. She risked a glance up, saw that they were now just outside the glare of a brightly lit marquee of a movie theater. He pointed at the parking lot, just beyond the edge of the lights. "Do you see one you like?"
Chace looked at the cars, trying to remember how many vehicles she'd stolen already since coming to Iran. She couldn't, and realized with morbid humor that she had truly lost count.
"I like the Renault," she told him. The Renault, it turned out, was both a good and a bad idea. A good idea because they had no trouble breaking into it, nor in getting it started; bad because, almost as soon as they were out of Yazd, heading southwest along the highway and into the frigid desert night, one of the warning lights on the dashboard came on, telling them that the car needed gas, and would need it soon. Considering how fortunate she'd been with cars thus far, Chace could hardly hold it against the vehicle.
Some twenty kilometers along the road southwest, nestled in a valley, was Taft, and just outside of town Shirazi pulled to the side of the road.
"There should be a service station still open," he told Chace. "It may be watched. Get in the back, pretend to sleep."
She considered the logic, nodded, and changed her position in the car accordingly. Shirazi set them off again, and Chace propped herself gingerly on her right side, face towards the back of the rear seats, feeling the Renault's motion as they descended further, then leveled out. The car slowed, turned, came to a stop, and diffuse light filtered in around her. Shirazi opened the door, and she heard an exchange in Farsi, stayed still, listening hard for anything that might be an indication of trouble. Then the Renault rocked again, and Shirazi was back behind the wheel, and they were leaving the lights behind.
"No trouble?" she asked, turning and sitting up.
She caught his smile in the rearview mirror, thin and uneasy. "No trouble, no."
Chace reached forward, thinking to pull herself back into the front seat, then thought the better of it as her chest and back sent out separate flares of warning. She winced, wondering what was happening inside of her. She was aware that her breathing had once again become incrementally more shallow, wondered if the dressing on her back had slipped, or if this was some further complication.
"We're going to need to stop," she said, finally. "We need to check the dressing on my back, maybe change it."
Now there was no smile in the reflection off the rearview, just concern, and Chace was heartened by its apparent sincerity. Whether or not he actually gave a damn about her as anything more than a means to an end, she didn't know, and it didn't matter; he needed her as much as she needed him, and both of them, she knew, had already realized they would succeed or fail together.
"I left the kit in Natanz," Shirazi said, after a second. He sounded bitter, disappointed in himself.
"We can make do," Chace told him. "Gauze and Vaseline."
"Vaseline?"
"Petroleum jelly."
"Ah, yes, I understand."
Chace drew another breath, this time aware that it was half what it should've been. The back of her mind began to crawl frantic, warning of the need for air.
"We'll need to do it soon," she said. They climbed out of the valley, back into the desert, and another thirty kilometers or so out of Taft turned into another service area, this one brightly lit in the night, much larger than the one they'd stopped at before. Shirazi parked them away from the pumps, in the shadows near a large building that looked like it had begun its life in the United States, during the fifties, perhaps as part of a drive-in movie theater. The architecture was so absurd that Chace had to keep from laughing at the sight of it, the series of retro-space-age arches that bent over the structure.
"What is that?"
"The Shah," Shirazi said, as if that was all the explanation required. "I will see what they have inside. I should not be long."
He climbed out of the car, and Chace took the opportunity for a last look around the station, seeing it empty, before lying down again as she had in Taft, affecting sleep.
She'd had her head down for long enough to wonder where he was, when she heard the sound of another vehicle entering the lot, the vibration from the engine strong, a diesel, perhaps. Doors slammed, and now there were voices, and Chace moved her hand to the gun at her waist, freeing it so it lay between her and the seat. Light shone in from above, began sweeping the car, and her already diminished breathing grew shorter, and she waited for the beam to hit her.
There was another voice, a shout, and the light cut quickly away. The voices moved rapidly off, and she pushed herself up, peeking through the window, saw that the vehicle looked identical to an old American Army jeep, hardtop, so much so that she wondered if it wasn't one, or a very precise knockoff. She counted four soldiers, rifles raised and set at their shoulders, and all of them were pointing their weapons at Shirazi, who was standing in a puddle of light from the building, hands raised. In one of them, she saw he held a small, white paper bag.
As she watched, one of the soldiers lowered his weapon, reaching forward, towards Shirazi. Another began reaching for his radio, and Chace knew she couldn't allow that; if the call went out, any call at all, that would be it; even should they escape it wouldn't matter, because more would come, soldiers in trucks and helicopters and tanks if need be, and there was no way they would ever outrun or evade them.
She brought her pistol up in both hands, aimed and fired all together through the window, trying to get up on one knee in the back of the car. The shots were devastatingly loud in the enclosed space, and she didn't hear the window as it shattered, firing twice more, and the third shot caught the soldier with the radio in the neck, made him jerk and drop. She shifted her aim, firing again and again, managed to catch another of them, but all had begun to react, and the returning fire in her direction clattered against the car, broke glass and tore through metal. She tried scrabbling back, screamed as something ripped at her right shoulder. Her arm gave out, and she pitched to the side, off the seat, onto the floor of the car.
There was another cascade of shots, a
utomatic-weapons fire, and then, as abruptly as it had begun, it ended. Chace tried to push herself off the floor, found her right arm useless to the task. She fell back, chest heaving for air, and then the rear door was being torn open, and she saw Shirazi, pistol in one hand, the silly paper bag in his other. He swore in Farsi, reached into the car, not for her but for his go-bag, slinging it quickly, then a second time, now pulling her free, hands under each arm, and Chace screamed again when he did it, despite not wanting to, despite not wanting to waste the air.
"Can you walk?" Shirazi demanded. "Can you walk, Tara?"
She nodded.
"Quickly, this way." He slung an arm beneath hers, supporting her, and she bit back on another cry, managed to turn it into a whimper. Her right arm, she saw, was soaked with blood and dangling uselessly. Some distant voice, objective and all-seeing within, wondered idly if it would have to come off. She hoped not; she wasn't certain how she'd hug Tamsin with only one arm.
He got her to the jeep, dumping her into the passenger seat, then hurried around to the other side, climbing behind the wheel. Chace croaked at him, trying to reach for the top of the manteau with her left, clawing at it. The engine kicked alive, and then they were racing out of the station's lot, into the darkness, just darkness all around, until Shirazi realized and switched the headlights on.
"They didn't call it in," he told her. "You were just in time, they never had a chance to report it, but the station will. We have to get off the main road, we have to put distance between them and us."
Chace's fingers caught the neck of the manteau, and she pulled at it uselessly, feeling the strength in her left arm fleeing, as if trying to imitate her right. She croaked at Shirazi again, trying to say his name, but he was bent over the wheel, eyes fixed ahead, barely sparing a glance to the mirrors.
With the last of her strength, she slapped at his arm, and he looked at her then, and whatever he saw made his expression open in alarm. She motioned to the manteau, unable to speak, her fingers pawing lamely at the buttons on her front. He looked back to the road, then to her, reached out with his free hand, and she put hers on it, trying to guide his palm over her chest, trying to press it to the catheter. His hand slipped out from beneath hers, moved to her back, pushed her forward in the seat until Chace's head was against the dashboard. She felt his hand on her back, then beneath the manteau, and then there was an incredible pain as his finger plugged the hole in her back.
She wheezed, inhaled with a sob, exhaled, repeated, this time taking air deeper.
"Tara?" Shirazi said. "Tara? What can I do?"
She ground her teeth together, the pain from the wound in her back enough to eclipse the trauma from her shoulder. "Don't… move your… finger," she managed to say. "Catheter… has a one-way… valve…"
From the corner of her eye, she saw him nod, still driving with one hand on the wheel, the other on her back. With the entry wound blocked, the catheter was allowing the air trapped in her chest to escape, but the problem, quite obviously, was that as soon as he moved his finger, it would happen all over again. She was dimly aware that the new wound was a problem as well, but wasn't quite sure why.
"You're losing blood," Shirazi said.
That was it, she was losing blood. "Kit," Chace whispered. "First-aid kit?"
"We'll need to stop."
"Don't. Not. Yet."
He glanced at her, back to the road again, then shook his head. "No, we have to stop."
She tried to protest again, but the pain was simply too intense then. The jeep slewed to a side, barely slowing, and they came off paved road onto dirt, the transition rattling them both, and the movement of his finger wedged in her back made her cry out again. She bit into her lip, trying to ignore it, to feel past it, felt her teeth pop skin, tasted blood.
Then the jeep stopped, and Shirazi was shifting carefully around, hand still anchored to her.
"Tara, listen to me. I have to move my hand now. The kit, this is a Guard's jeep, they have a good kit. Pressure bandages, occlusion dressings, they have all of it. But I have to have both hands."
Chace nodded feebly.
"Try to remain calm. Try to stay calm."
The pain in her back exploded, fresh and renewed, as soon as his finger slipped from the wound. She was barely aware of his movement, of him straining around beside her, reaching into the back of the jeep. Her breathing went again, this time disappearing with terrifying speed, and Chace was aware that she couldn't make a sound now, even if she wanted to. His hands were on her back, on her skin, and she felt something tear, a distant vibration through her flesh, and in the silence of the jeep and the night, she heard the air hissing out of her chest, from somewhere below her chin. He gently pulled her back from the dashboard, sat her upright in the seat. She heard his door open, then, a moment later, hers, and he was working at her shoulder, now.
"Clean wound," he was saying. "It went straight through. You saved my life, Tara. Thank you."
She opened her mouth, then closed it again. It suddenly seemed like too much effort to speak. When he was finished doing whatever it was he was doing to her shoulder, he slipped his hands around her, pulled her out of the jeep. She tried walking, but her legs went boneless, and he had to drag her around to the rear of the vehicle. With some effort, he got her inside, laying her on her back. He tore the left sleeve of the manteau, exposing her arm to the elbow, and there was an almost insignificant pain, and she saw that Shirazi was now hanging an IV bag from a hook on the side of the jeep.
"We've got to keep going, Tara," he told her. "We've a long way to go still."
She nodded at him, and he turned to climb back into the driver's seat.
"Youness?" Chace asked softly.
He stopped. "Yes, Tara?"
"Why do they keep shooting me?" she asked.
She didn't understand why he laughed.
CHAPTER THIRTY
LONDON-VAUXHALL CROSS, OPS ROOM
13 DECEMBER 0418 HOURS (GMT)
"You're either a fucking lunatic, or you're a genius," Julian Seale said. "I still haven't decided which."
"Let's find out." Crocker adjusted his headset, nodded to Lex. "Go alive."
"Going live," she said, fingers flying on her keyboard.
On the plasma wall, in the upper-right quadrant, taking over a quarter of the screen in total, static lines appeared, then steadied, resolving into an image, black and white. Poole filled the screen, pulled back, adjusting the camera from his end, then his headset, and then Crocker could see Lankford seated past him in the command post, and Colonel Moss beside them both.
"Icecrown, standing by," Poole said.
"Status?"
Moss leaned forward. He was wearing his commando blacks, and the resolution from the satellite feed made his mustache look like a ragged smear of ink across his upper lip. "SPT stands ready. Waiting on your order, sir."
"Make it bleed," Crocker said. "They can't come out via air," Crocker had told Poole ten hours earlier. "And they can't take the Caspian route, that would never work twice."
Poole looked up from the map spread on Crocker's desk, frowned. "Then the northwest routes are out for the same reason. Turkey, northern Iraq, etc."
"That's what I'm thinking."
Poole moved his finger on the map, drawing a line east. "Afghanistan's out, too."
"Right."
"Doesn't leave much room."
"It leaves the south."
"That's the Persian Gulf, Boss."
Crocker tapped the map, southeast Iran. "Abadan."
"You're sitting on the Iraqi border there, same problem," Poole said.
"If you go west, which is what they'll think we're doing. Instead, we take them south…" Crocker's index finger followed one of the two blue lines bracing Abadan to the east and west, rivers running down into the Persian Gulf. "… by boat, have them met at the foot of the delta-say, by the SBS-transfer them to a RHIB, and then from the RHIB to a naval vessel in the Gulf."
"
I like it," Poole said, after a moment. "But I foresee problems, namely getting the Admiralty to commit to bringing any of its precious toy boats in that close to Iranian waters. They'll cry 'Silkworm' and argue that the danger of a missile strike against the vessel is too great a risk; they'll tell the PM that one defector and one spy versus two hundred sailors isn't an equitable trade, and they'll be right."
Crocker scowled, looked up as there was a knock at the open door, Daniel Szurko sticking his head into the office, a blue file folder in one hand. "Paul?"
"Something I can do for you, Daniel?"
Szurko stepped in, smiling awkwardly at Poole. "Minder Two."
"D-Int."
"Something I can do for you, Daniel?" Crocker repeated.
"Hmm?" Szurko canted his head, looking down at the map on the desk. "Figured it out yet?"
"Working on it at the moment," Poole said.
"You have to get them out via the Gulf, you know." Szurko looked from Poole to Crocker. "It's the only possible route."
"Yes, we've just been discussing that," Crocker said. "The question is, how to give the exfil room to run."
"I've been wondering that, too." Szurko smiled at them both, then remembered the file in his hand, offered it abruptly to Crocker. "Meet Hadi."
"Hadi?"
"I think she can help. Let me know if there's more I can do."
He left the office, humming to himself. Poole watched him go. After a second, he said, "That's called eccentric, yes?"
"That's called brilliant," Crocker said, and showed Poole what was in the file. "We have device launch," Moss said. "Seventeen minutes, forty-six seconds to target."
"You know where to put it, Colonel?" Crocker asked.
"We're your Special Projects Team, sir. It's our job to know where to put it."
