The Protectors

by Dowell, Trey

  I gathered up her niqab from the bathroom floor and folded it into a manageable pile. When I placed it on the bed next to her, she glanced over.

  “My parents hated the niqab. They called it a useless relic of a closed-minded society.”

  “Then why have one?”

  “I didn’t for many years. Not until I turned twelve. Baba said it was a crime for his lovely daughter to wear a niqab, but better than the alternative.” Her face softened at the mention of her father.

  “The alternative?”

  “He saw how men were beginning to look at me. When my powers began to manifest. I had no idea. I played with my friends, ran through the streets oblivious. But he noticed the stares . . . the way strangers were drawn to me. And in the beginning, I had no idea how to control the power, nor the people it influenced. It was a dangerous time for me. For the entire family. Covering me up was the only reason I made it through my teens in Iran.”

  “You hiding behind the niqab, him living in fear of what might happen if someone got too close—unfair for both of you,” I said. “But it sounds like your father was a very smart man.”

  She fingered her dangling necklace. “Yes. He was.”

  “If you’d grown up in America, he would’ve been the guy sitting on his front porch with a shotgun during your high school years, scaring all the boys away.” I hoped for a smile, but none came, so I started unpacking and left her to her thoughts.

  No need to make things worse by talking. There wasn’t a whole lot an idiot like me could do to make Lyla feel better anyway. My mom and dad were alive and well, no one assaulted me during my childhood, and I grew up in Indiana. What the hell could I possibly say?

  CHAPTER 28

  Lyla hid in the bathroom when room service delivered our dinner that night; made no sense for her to embrace every single employee we ran across. We ate a dish of rice and lamb, flavored with saffron and other spices. The golden crispy rice at the bottom of the bowl was so good I finished off the remnants with my fingers like a barbarian. One of the best things I’d ever tasted, and Lyla blew it off like it was Uncle Ben’s.

  “Please. Tahchin from a hotel? You might as well microwave a pizza and call it Italian cuisine. After we finish this mission, I will take you to a place with real Iranian food.” Lyla folded her napkin and placed it in the center of a spotless plate.

  “For such a discerning critic, you certainly ate your fair share.”

  “I am merely happy to see a room-service menu with options other than hamburgers and chicken fingers.”

  Unconvinced, I went to the bed, where the info on our seven targets lay waiting in neat stacks. I had been happy to find digital copies of all the files on my gauntlet as well. The device made studying the information easier, particularly in the bathroom. The first time I’d tried to take one of the hard copies into the john, Lyla had almost melted down. Telling her I wasn’t planning on actually wiping my ass with the files did not help. Still, I’d gathered enough info from both digital and hard-copy resources to build a strategy.

  “All right, ready to dive in? I’ve got a solid plan for us,” I said.

  “With no input from me?”

  “Hey, I’m the strategy guy. You’re the muscle.”

  “I see.” Her frown and crossed arms spoke more words than her mouth.

  “C’mon, I’m only kidding. It’s my plan, but it’s both of our asses. Don’t be shy about offering your advice,” I said. “First off, I’m thinking we need to start in Shiraz.”

  “Shiraz? That’s nearly a thousand kilometers from here. Why do you want to start with the farthest target?”

  “If we start wide, then work our way back to the capital, we’ll be better positioned for extraction.”

  “But two of the scientists are right here in Tehran. Not in the same facility, granted, but . . .”

  “Doing them now runs the risk of being spotted here, where there are more eyes than anywhere else in the country. Why not wait until we’re ready to bolt, finish them, and leave right after?”

  She sighed. “I suppose.”

  “After Shiraz, we go to Isfahan for the two reactor specialists, then Kermanshah, then Tabriz. After, we can circle back to Qom and Tehran to finish up.”

  “And how long will this cross-country tour last?”

  I paced around the bed, silently calculating the days on my fingers. “At worst, two weeks, but we might be able to do it in ten days if we get lucky.”

  “Two weeks? Are we walking?”

  “Ha-ha, smart-ass. Safe move is to avoid places with video surveillance, which means airports and train stations aren’t good options. We’ll rent a car.”

  “I can’t drive. A woman traveling alone will draw attention from the Basij.”

  “Right, so I’ll do the driving . . .”

  “But I can’t be seen riding alongside a foreigner . . . ,” she said.

  “. . . which is why you’ll have to lie down in the back whenever we’re on the road.”

  Before the sentence was finished, Lyla was on her feet. “You want me to spend two weeks curled up in the backseat of a rental car?”

  “Maybe only ten days—y’know, this plan sounded a lot better in my head.”

  “I am sure it did, Strategy Guy.”

  “Easy, Ms. Spycraft,” I growled. “You’ve read the files, what’s your alternative?”

  I dropped into the bedside chair and relinquished command. Lyla happily took the reins and stalked around the room, biting a long thumbnail and chewing on her thoughts.

  “We need to bring all of them to one location,” she said.

  “Well, yeah, that’d be great. Why don’t we just email them and ask nicely? That’s my point: the Iranians keep the scientists apart for a reason.”

  “But there has to be something that would cause them all to be brought together. A threat, for example. One man controls all of their protection details, yes?”

  “Yeah, gimme a sec.” I grabbed the nearest file stack and looked through the information in the summary sheet. “Plainclothes units from the Revolutionary Guard provide protection for all the top-level scientists. Most of them are on loan to the Atomic Energy Organization from special forces.” I skimmed ahead until I found the organizational chart. “Head of the detail is a guy named Amir Harandi.”

  “Why not go for him?”

  “I already considered it, but intel says he’s a ghost. No picture, no location. After the Israelis blew up one of Harandi’s prized protectees last year, his whole detail got the black-ops treatment. It’d be harder to find him than the scientists.”

  She considered the problem for a moment. “Go higher up the list. At some point, there has to be a general in the Revolutionary Guard overseeing surveillance and protection. The Guard is the only group the Ayatollah would trust to protect his nuclear program.”

  I scanned the documents. “Two levels up. Harandi’s boss’s boss is a general attached to the Revolutionary Guard.”

  “Where is he based?” When I looked up, my expression answered before my mouth could. “He’s here, isn’t he?”

  “Yep. General Mahmoud Ahmadi.”

  “And generals based in the capital don’t have to live on military bases. He probably has a home in northern Tehran, doesn’t he?”

  “Don’t know, file says he lives somewhere I can’t pronounce. E-L-A-H . . .”

  “Elahiyeh,” she finished over me. She was in full-on eureka mode now: eyes wide, thumbs rubbing against her index fingers, lips spitting out words almost as fast as her mind generated them. “The high-end district north of the city, full of mansions, gardens—only the rich or most favored live there.”

  “Yeah, but a general?” I said. “Don’t you think he’d be too hard to get to . . .”

  “That’s why he’s perfect. An army general oversees much more than
a single security detail; he’ll be too detached from the day-to-day operations of Harandi’s team to need more protection than a normal general. At the same time, he’s so far up the hierarchy, Harandi will obey his orders without question—without getting verification from anyone else.”

  “So if the general were to tell Harandi all of the scientists were needed in Tehran . . . ?”

  “He could deliver them to our doorstep.” She let out a victory grunt and pumped a tiny fist in front of her. “We are using my plan. It’s better than yours.”

  “I don’t know if better is the right term. Both plans accomplish the mission goals . . .”

  “Except mine is faster, easier, and carries less risk.”

  “Yeah, well, if those things are important to you.” My grumbling was authentic, but halfhearted. I’d underestimated not only Lyla’s sense of the lay of the land, but also her abilities in the field—her powers weren’t the only things that’d evolved over the years.

  No one likes being upstaged, particularly at the one skill they prize, but I recognized that I’d screwed up. Lyla’s plan was better, and it meant she was even more formidable than I first assumed. If we stayed on the same page and if Lyla didn’t let a lifetime of bad memories entice her into seeking payback . . .

  This mission could be a goddamn cakewalk.

  “All right, Ms. Ravzi. We do it your way.”

  CHAPTER 29

  The next morning I took a reconnaissance trip to Elahiyeh. The taxi ride up north was an eye-opener in more ways than one. A blanket of smog spread over most of central and southern Tehran, generated by 10 million cars and motorcycles, trapped in place by the Alborz mountains to the north. Many of the pedestrians covered their faces with handkerchiefs as they scurried along the sidewalks, and the face coverings had nothing to do with the morality police; the brown haze made it tough to see and even tougher to breathe. As the cab drove north, though, the elevation took a gradual rise and we climbed out of the city’s heat sink. With every block, the air and scenery got a little less disgusting. Gone were the dingy side streets and kebab vendors, replaced by tall condominiums and eventually large homes set back from the road, fronted by sprawling gardens.

  The section of Elahiyeh where Ahmadi lived was ritzy to say the least. We drove by a half dozen foreign embassies, and each one looked like a palatial estate. I activated the GPS on the gauntlet when we turned off of the highway so I could tell how close we were to our destination. When we got a block away, I switched the gauntlet’s screen to video-camera mode and grabbed the handgrip at the top of the window to my right. The position allowed the camera to point directly out the passenger-side window so I could record the approach. I’d given the cabdriver the wrong address on purpose, so when he got to Ahmadi’s street, he’d have to drive past the general’s house in search of a higher street number that didn’t exist.

  The cabbie slowed to check addresses, so we came to the general’s house at a crawl. Two guys in black suits and sunglasses stood outside wrought-iron gates blocking the driveway entrance. The house sat at least fifty yards beyond the gates, not quite palatial but certainly on the high side of luxurious. Iranian military life obviously had perks; General Barrington would have soiled himself to live in Ahmadi’s mansion.

  When we got close to the driveway, one of the two guards took a lazy step toward the street and motioned for the cabbie to keep going. The wave opened his suit jacket enough for me to see the submachine gun hanging underneath. The other guard eyeballed me as we passed, but I was partially hidden behind my upright arm. I’d use the recording later for in-depth snooping, but for now, I was just a guy in a cab not even bothering to stare back.

  We got to the end of the block and I told my driver I must have gotten the address wrong. “Can we go back to the hotel? I need to get the piece of paper with the correct address. Can’t believe I came all the way out here without it.”

  The driver’s eyes narrowed in the rearview mirror and for a moment I couldn’t tell if he was suspicious or just really bad with English.

  “You use me to drive back here from hotel when you get paper?” he said.

  “Uh, I guess so.” He had a puzzled look on his face. Definitely bad with English. “Yes, you can drive me back when I get the address.”

  When he heard the magic word, the cabbie’s face burst into a smile as he mentally banked the large fare from another round-trip to Elahiyeh. He could think whatever he liked. I had what I wanted: video surveillance without having to set foot out of the car, plus the simple fact of those two goons outside the gate.

  No one guards an empty house.

  —

  “Well, did you get what we needed? And why didn’t you call me from the car? What was the point of buying more prepaid phones if you won’t use them?”

  Lyla’s frustration at letting me go alone for surveillance was more than evident.

  “Practicing your interrogation techniques for later? If so, gotta say—you suck. One question at a time, please.”

  “Someone is grumpy. Things did not go well?”

  “Nah, they went fine. Up until I gave the cabbie the impression I was going to use him for a return trip to Elahiyeh. He was pretty pissed when we got back and I told him I changed my mind.

  Her eyes flared and a huge smile spread over her face. “That was you outside? I heard the driver yelling from in here!”

  “The guy had lungs, that’s for sure. Course it’s hard to get offended when I can’t understand him. He started off cussing me in English, but I laughed when he called me ‘a cow of a man.’ Then he switched to Farsi and raised the volume.”

  She made a weak attempt to cover her snicker.

  “What? Could you hear what he was saying?” I asked.

  “Um . . . yes.”

  “Well?”

  “He, uh, called you an idiot.”

  “Is the Farsi word for ‘idiot’ a paragraph long? Because he yelled for a while.”

  “A polite translation.”

  “Nice. Where are the morality police when you need them?” I removed the gauntlet and tossed it to her. “Feel free to take a look; I recorded the approach. Doesn’t seem too bad. Two guards at the gate.”

  She spent a few minutes playing the footage in a loop before handing the device back.

  “So we go tonight?” she asked. The anticipation in her voice made me grin.

  “Yep. We’ll wait for dark. Only saw one light pole on the street and it’s four houses down. Should be easy to get close enough to the gate for you to work your mojo.”

  “And we pray Ahmadi is there.”

  “If not, I’m sure one of the goons would be thrilled to tell you all about the general’s schedule.”

  “I am nothing if not persuasive.”

  —

  We spent the rest of the day lounging around the room, reading briefs, and trying to relax. I caught a short nap but Lyla wanted nothing to do with sleep. Didn’t surprise me; she was finally taking a first step fourteen years in the making. Ever since the day she’d left, and probably before that, she’d dreamt of changing the face of her home country. We’d talked about it back during our UN days, when we were both idealistic. Cynicism had long since extinguished my change-the-world fire, but Lyla’s still burned brighter than her dazzling eyes.

  She was dressed and ready to go a full hour before sunset.

  Watching her pace the room and roll the kinks out of her neck brought on a flood of memories. Different countries, different hotel rooms, but always the same Lyla in the moments before action . . . amped, focused, and ready to go. During our tenure with the UN, covert activity had been the only time either one of us ever felt free—on our own, with no scientists, no prying questions, no invasive tests. Granted, our “freedom” had been a temporary illusion, but in the middle of an assignment, the mirage disappeared behind the mission. We’d l
earned to focus on the only two things that mattered: the objective and each other.

  Even now, years later, the same process took hold. The slow dissolve just happened: Lyla’s psychotic raving, Tucker’s threats, the future’s uncertainty—all washed away. All that remained was a mansion in Elahiyeh.

  And Lyla.

  Outfitted in black cargo pants and a streamlined black turtleneck, primed like a sprinter waiting for a starter’s pistol to set her free. The same as before, yet so different. More powerful, more capable now . . . and still so goddamn attractive.

  I shrugged the Kevlar top over my shoulders and positioned the interwoven titanium plating directly over my chest. I stared at her formfitting clothes and before I could stop myself, said, “I’m concerned that shirt won’t allow sufficient blood flow to your brain.”

  Lyla paused and removed a hair tie from her wrist. She bit on it while she bundled her hair into a ponytail.

  “Loose clothing makes noise when I move. Tighter means more stealth,” she mumbled with the band between her teeth. After she pulled her mane together in a gleaming black sheath, she threaded it through the band. “I’d be more concerned that my tight shirt won’t allow sufficient blood flow to your brain.”

  It was unnerving to see how quickly we could jump back into our old pattern of back-and-forth. Not the smartest play, considering the stakes, but flirting with Lyla was like slipping on a comfy leather jacket: warm, cozy, and felt right. And it wasn’t just a relic of the old days, either. All that we’d fought through and experienced since London had only intensified the allure. Made me want the flirtation . . . to see how she’d respond. For a few moments, at least, until I remembered the one constant when it comes to playful banter: there’s always an undercurrent of desire beneath the words, and desire clouded everything.