The Protectors

by Dowell, Trey

  One by one, the atomic quartets arrived and ran into Aphrodite’s warm embrace. Took almost a full day of sporadic deliveries but by sundown the following evening, all seven men and their security entourages were under Lyla’s direct control. Soon after, we hosted an action-packed meeting in the dining room, where she encouraged the scientists to brainstorm the least visible, most effective way to fuck up their life’s work. Have to admit, even though I couldn’t understand a word, watching our Benedict Arnold think tank in action was the pinnacle of entertainment. The scientists acted like wheel-and-deal bazaar vendors—argue fervently, shake their heads, walk away, then come back with a smile as one of their counterparts forwards another idea.

  The bodyguards lingered nearby. The men talked quietly and played cards in groups—either they couldn’t understand what their charges were discussing, or they just didn’t care. The guards’ instructions from Lyla were to continue their duties and never discuss the meeting or our presence, which seemed like the most efficient way to handle hired muscle.

  The general’s cook slaved over dinner for the entire houseful of men, and by the time dessert plates slid onto the tables, our traitorous eggheads had come up with a workable strategy. Lyla didn’t give me all of the specifics, but it involved tweaking the math just enough to lower yields and make it look like the enrichment process wasn’t working. They’d work fruitlessly for a year or so before fixing the problem, only to have additional issues working on the implosion sequence that initiates nuclear fission . . . blah-blah-blah.

  I didn’t completely understand what the scientists meant, but that was the beauty of our gambit. Government minders, politicians, and army officials were no different than me—none of them would know why nuclear development was taking so long. And since Iran’s leaders kept the scientific core of the program apart and under strict guard, no one could possibly suspect the entire team of collusion.

  It’s not like the Ayatollah checks anybody’s math.

  Blame would flow like water toward the path of least resistance: the program’s parts suppliers—Russia and China—for faulty products and poor workmanship. The Iranians’ core national belief that the industrialized world, allies and enemies alike, secretly wanted their program to fail would play nicely into our strategy.

  Once the powers that be got tired of waiting, or even remotely suspicious, our group of saboteurs would put the program back on track—but only long enough to orchestrate an epic failure during Iran’s first full-on atomic bomb test. Nothing too destructive, just a botched explosion that results in the irradiation of the testing grounds, and sends the program back to square one. After that, the CIA could work on a mass defection if they wanted . . . extract the whole bunch out of the country in one fell swoop. Iran would replace them, but the damage would be done.

  The lead scientist, Hooshmand, brought over his clipboard with a piece of paper covered in scribbles: numbers and projections gathered from his colleagues. He told Lyla the group estimated the process would set the Iranian nuclear program back almost ten years, and the dude had a mile-wide grin plastered to his face when he said it.

  Not bad for a day’s work, eh?

  But in the midst of our great victory, something happened. After everything Lyla and I had been through the last few days . . . the fights, the chases, our talks . . . the thing I was enjoying most was the momentum. The building emotion I felt for her. How each day felt closer, more intimate than the one before. The way she looked at me. Like the old days.

  Looking at Hooshmand, though, standing in a crowd of embraced minions, I felt an irony-toed boot kick me in the gut. I’d seen his smitten look too many times before—in my own goddamn mirror. And I remembered what the “old days” had led to. The despair . . . the torturous nights alone, wondering when the pain would end. No way was I going through that nightmare again. She could talk about her “evolution,” and the kinder, gentler Aphrodite Effect all she wanted—as far as I was concerned, it wasn’t worth the goddamn risk. What I felt wasn’t a budding relationship, and it damn sure wasn’t love. All lies and trickery. I’d sooner take a bullet in the head than lose the only true freedom I had left—my will.

  I glanced at Lyla and she smiled back as though everything was fine—nothing to see here, just destroying the lives of a bunch of unsuspecting fools—and a mini-explosion of anger and fear detonated in my brain. Every single day I spent with Lyla was just one day closer to looking like a lovesick idiot with a clipboard. Left me with a singular, panicked thought:

  Get the hell out of this room. Run.

  Lyla noticed my expression as I turned to walk away. She caught me by the arm before I could. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Don’t say that . . . you’re upset. Why?”

  “Doesn’t matter. You did your job. Now we can get outta here.” Hooshmand stood nearby, wearing a goofy grin. Made me want to punch him. I pulled away from Lyla’s grip and headed for the door.

  Several of the bodyguards milled about near the entrance to the dining room, and I had to wade through them to exit. Before I could leave, a shadow turned the corner from the hall and blocked the doorway, and when I say “blocked” I’m not really doing the act justice.

  Every bit as big as Mr. Reyes, a man eclipsed the entryway. He wore black pants and a white button-down shirt that struggled at the seams to contain his barrel chest. His face was covered by a short, trimmed black beard, and his eyes darted around the room before settling on me. Guy looked almost as angry as I felt.

  “Who the fuck are you?” I asked. The guards murmured and I felt them back away. The general spoke up from behind and I twisted my head in his direction. No clue about most of what he said, but I recognized one word.

  Harandi.

  Amir Harandi, the black-ops ghost who’d been ordered to stay away while we interrogated his men, must have taken it personally when his teams were accused of allowing Mossad to turn his protectees into traitors.

  Lyla’s familiar tone permeated the room, seconds from transforming the intimidating man into yet another of her minions. I turned back to look at the unlucky puppet in front of me. There was a flash of movement, then a change in Lyla’s voice as she began shouting her words.

  Just as I noticed Harandi’s gun, he shot me right in the chest.

  CHAPTER 32

  When you actually see a guy pull the trigger of a gun pointed at you, a superpowered individual’s options are no different than anyone else’s. You can close your eyes, cuss, or crap your pants—or hell, you can do all three. Luckily for my underwear I got no further than the first.

  When the bullet slammed into the chest plate, the impact punched me over like an off-balance cardboard cutout. I heard Lyla scream “No!” as I flailed backward. My head thunked against the carpet, and hundreds of exploding lights filled my vision.

  Add another concussion to the collection.

  Everything was a little hazy in the seconds that followed. A lot of high-volume Farsi; the general shouting orders and Harandi’s voice yelling back. Then a handful of angry words from Lyla, and a stampede of bodies rushed by me toward the doorway. After that, all I heard were punches and grunts. No more gunshots, at least.

  Before I could get over the wooziness and lift my head, I opened my eyes and saw Lyla’s face above mine. Frantic, she kept repeating the word no and pawing at my chest. She knelt beside me, pulled the duster open, and poked her finger into the bullet hole above the plate. When she yanked it back and saw no blood on the tip, she whimpered and collapsed on my chest. The weight of her entire body pressed against mine. Her arms couldn’t reach underneath my prone torso to hug me properly, so she just squeezed her forearms against my rib cage.

  I sucked air between clenched teeth and shouted, “Son of a bitch!”

  She propped up to look at me. Her eyelids were inflamed and rimmed with tears. “Are you all right?” she half cried.
If I doubted her affections moments before the gunshot, Lyla was making an excellent rebuttal argument now.

  “As much as I enjoy having you on top of me, this hurts.”

  One eye squinted open and saw Lyla’s concern. “I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry,” she said. “Thank God you’re unhurt . . .” Her hands cradled my head above the rug.

  “If you get off, all is forgiven.”

  She helped me to my feet, and after a moment of uncomfortable staring at one another, we finally thought enough to find out what had happened to Harandi. Once the sea of bodyguards parted, we saw him. Aphrodite’s mob had given the big man a severe beat-down after tackling and relieving him of his weapon. Harandi hadn’t gone down without a fight, though. His face was bloody and swollen, as were several of his panting, sweaty bodyguards.

  “Beaten half to death by your own men. Can’t be a good feeling,” I said. “Why the hell didn’t he listen to you? I heard you embracing him.”

  “I don’t know . . . ,” Lyla said. She clamped her arms across her chest. Twice in one night, she’d failed to embrace someone when needed. I’d never seen her fail on a normal person before. Not once.

  General Ahmadi approached and pointed to his own ear as he spoke. Lyla nodded and her arms unfurled. “Aha. The general says Harandi is deaf in one ear since last year’s Mossad bombing. I feel better now.”

  I reached beneath my shirt to get a hand under the titanium plate and massage my tender chest. “That makes one of us. See if Harandi alerted anyone else, will ya?”

  While several guards restrained the big guy, Lyla let him have it up close—eyes, ear, and smell. He couldn’t have been in too much pain, because he took the embrace a lot better than Roof Guy. Harandi smiled like a moron and started talking.

  When Lyla stepped away, she looked concerned. “He called for a response team when he got here and didn’t see any gate guards. We need to go. Now.”

  The general listened to everything Harandi said and motioned for Fahrook. “I have a car. Take you anywhere,” he said.

  Fahrook accompanied me back through the house to the garage while Lyla put the finishing touches on Harandi, bringing him on board with the same line of bullshit all his men and the scientists would spew if anyone asked. When she joined me in the backseat, I asked her how they were going to explain all the injuries.

  “Sparring. You know how much boys love to fight,” she said.

  “And the hole in the ceiling?”

  She laughed. “I left that one up to them. We’ll see how creative they can be. I got phone numbers and email addresses for both Ahmadi and Hooshmand, so we can contact them later if we really want to find out. Not to mention keep tabs on the progress of the nuclear program at our leisure.”

  I sank back against the soft leather of the gleaming black Mercedes and we rolled outside. For the moment, my near-death experience combined with our quick escape pushed my embrace-phobic meltdown into the background. More than anything, I wanted to enjoy the silence and bask in the victory—we’d done everything Tucker asked, and then some. Fahrook maneuvered the big vehicle through the gates, then down the street toward the highway. As we accelerated up the ramp and out of Elahiyeh, I turned to Lyla.

  “We really did it. Wiped out Iran’s nuclear program in one day.”

  I only saw half of her smile because she didn’t turn from the window.

  “I believe we did.”

  CHAPTER 33

  The drive back to the hotel took thirty of the most relaxing minutes I’d had in the last decade. I cracked the window and let the breeze blow over my closed eyes. Even the acrid scent of smog didn’t put a dent in my mood. What we’d accomplished . . . what we’d changed . . . went far beyond seven scientists and their security entourages. Our intervention meant the Iranians couldn’t grip the nuclear scimitar they coveted—and therefore wouldn’t be able to hold it over the heads of dozens of countries. This corner of the world was now safer for everyone: the Iranian people, America and her allies, and the roughly two billion people in the region. Lyla and I had single-handedly altered the course of the Middle East. It was the kind of thing they’d promised we could do, back when the four of us joined up and saw the first United Nations poster for the Protectors. Back when changing the world sounded like an achievable goal. A real thing.

  Before the CIA came out from behind the curtain, of course. And the knowledge that the Agency was only concerned with maintaining the status quo, and even more important, America’s spot in the status quo driver’s seat.

  But as I slid back deeper into the seat of Ahmadi’s Mercedes, all that bullshit boiled off. I’d finally made a real difference, done what I’d always wanted to do—hell, maybe what I’d been meant to do.

  And goddamn, it felt good.

  By the time we pulled around the hotel fountain, my hand was heavy on the door handle.

  I turned to Lyla and said, “Have Fahrook take a couple of loops around the block. Consider it a victory lap. I’ll meet you up in the room, although there’s a pretty good chance I’ll be asleep by the time you get there.”

  Lyla grinned. “It’s been a big day, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it has.” I thumped the leather between us to punctuate the moment. “See you upstairs,” I said, then opened the door and slipped out.

  Fahrook must have made his laps quick, because Lyla got up to the room barely three minutes after I did. When I opened the door, she launched through the entryway and jumped into my arms, slamming me back against the wall.

  “We did it,” she half whispered, half screeched in my ear, loud enough to make me wince.

  As tired as I was, Lyla felt like a refrigerator with arms and legs. I staggered backward until she finally let go and bounced back down to her feet. Victory obviously did something entirely different for Lyla’s energy level than it did mine.

  “Jesus! Take it easy.”

  She tapped my chest armor with a playful punch.

  “Yeah, uh, no chest punches, please. Got shot,” I grumbled.

  “Don’t be a baby . . . this is a huge success.”

  I nodded. “Now I know how you must have felt after North Korea.”

  Her eyes widened. “This is better than North Korea.”

  “Because this was your home. I get it.”

  Before I could turn and walk back to the bed, she reached out and took my hand. “It’s better because of you, Scott. Because we’re a team again.”

  Only then did I notice how she was standing, like before in the alcove. Close. Enough to make me worry—for just a second—that in her manic state, she’d try to kiss me. In my emotional and physical exhaustion, that was baggage I simply did not need.

  Instead, she twirled away and ran to the balcony doors, throwing them open to the night. The overwhelming feeling in my gut was surprise. Not that we didn’t kiss, but at the sharp pang of disappointment that lingered when she didn’t make the attempt.

  I flopped onto the bed, still in my duster, while the ceiling fan pushed the heat of the room straight down on my back. Didn’t bother me one bit—victory makes anything feel like a hot-oil massage. When I twisted my head to look toward the balcony, I saw Lyla hopping around like a giddy teenager, stripping layers and flinging them to the floor as she babbled.

  “We need to celebrate, don’t you think? I wish room service offered wine. Any alcohol. Even beer would suffice. Oh, wait, you know what I would really love? Let’s go dancing! There’s got to be an underground club in the tourist district . . . two or three conversations with locals and I could . . .”

  I turned facedown and mumbled, “That is an epically bad idea,” into the beige bedspread.

  Her voice morphed into that of a hyperserious, overly important ass clown—evidently what she assumed I sound like. “My name is Scott and I wear tight jeans and speak like an authority on all topics. Things are always epi
c and awesome and I have a monopoly on brooding thoughts and Lyla is always wrong.”

  When I looked up again, her smile broadcast her pride in the imitation.

  “I totally don’t sound like that. Lyla is wrong again. Epically.”

  She guffawed and ducked down to the floor behind her bed to scramble unseen into a T-shirt and shorts.

  “Besides,” I continued, “I’ll celebrate with you plenty once we’re back in the Western world. Dinner, drinks, dancing . . . whatever you want.”

  “Promises, promises . . .” The words floated up from behind her bed.

  “Besides, now comes the best part of the whole operation,” I responded.

  “Which is?”

  I sat up and shrugged off the duster, then rolled up my sleeve. “Calling in.”

  After I enabled the gauntlet’s comm function, getting through to the States was as easy as punching the tiny icon marked TUCKER-OPS. The video call went through and my least favorite spook was soon staring up from the screen. It was dinnertime back in D.C., assuming he’d gone home from England, and Tucker looked less formal than I’d ever seen him: no uniform or sunglasses, just a plain navy short-sleeved golf shirt. In the background I noticed bookshelves filled with thick volumes, bracketing a redbrick fireplace. He was a suit and tie away from being the host of a PBS program.

  “Finally. You’ve been in the field for two days and not a single peep. I assume you’re calling to let me know you’ve arrived?”

  “Yes. We’re in-country, safe and sound. Thanks for asking.”

  “We have new intel on your primary targets, which you’ll need to download immediately. It appears as though some of them are being relocated. You know, if you’d keep the gauntlet’s data link active, new information would be pulled down off the satellite automatically.”

  “I’d rather not have the Agency know my position at all times.”