by Mark Henshaw
Salem turned onto Evergreen Mills Road and stared in the mirror. There were no lights behind her. The Woods Road came up on her right at the end of a pine forest and she took the turn, no signal light. The road was wide and newly paved, running behind the local landfill, with no tree cover to hide her from a plane. After a half mile, the road bent to the right and began to wind through a section of woods where the trees grew tall. Salem killed the headlights and opened up on the gas. The road ran without a curve for a bit and she pushed the car up to sixty miles an hour. She navigated by what little moonlight made it down through the trees.
The Banshee Reeks Nature Preserve was another quarter mile beyond, deep into forest. Salem pulled the Ford into the preserve on the left, where a winding dirt road lay beyond, blocked off by a cattle gate. She stared at the path beyond, disturbed. This was not a good place for a dead drop. There was no possible cover for action here, no good excuse that an Israeli diplomat could give for being inside a locked park after hours this far outside the District. Ten years fighting terrorists as part of the Sayeret Matkal had beaten most of that nervousness out of her, but this went against every lesson Mossad had ever taught her.
She reached into her pocket and felt for her diplomatic passport. It would save her from an espionage charge if the Bureau caught her, but suddenly it seemed like a very thin thread on which to hang her freedom.
There was nothing for it. She stopped the car and left it running while she picked the padlock. It was a Schlage, but she’d practiced on the same model and it came open with little effort. Salem pulled the chain out and swung the gate wide enough for the car to pass through. Once inside, she returned and replaced the gate and the chain. She considered the lock. Not many people would drive this back road at this late hour, and the few that did probably wouldn’t see far enough past the tree line to notice an open lock hanging loose on the gate. Still, it was always the little details that broke the big investigations open, so Salem spared two seconds to lock the Schlage again and hide that small bit of evidence of her passing.
• • •
“Target has entered Banshee Reeks,” Rhodes heard, holding the radio up. The surveillance plane was passing overhead, less than a thousand feet up, which had given the surveillance team the freedom to drop back once Salem had passed into the countryside where the traffic was sparse. One of the men in the tech van was watching the Israeli on a thermal camera image sent down from the plane and overlaid on a map of the area, while his partner called out the woman’s location turn by turn.
“This is either a dead drop or she’s meeting an asset,” Rhodes said. “Operational act all the way.” They’d known that from the moment she’d switched to the second Metro train. A search on her license plate and her convoluted route off the toll roads had just served to confirm her intentions.
“This is a bad place for it, for her, and for us,” Fuller said. “She’s got no cover for action to be this far out or to be breaking into the place. And the map says it’s one way in and out. We go in after her, she’ll make us for sure. You want to grab her?”
“Any chance we can keep up with her on foot?”
“Running through the woods if she drives more than a hundred yards or more, and she’d heard us stomping on the leaves at least that far away.”
Rhodes considered the answer. “How long to make a dead drop in there, do you think?”
“Depends on the place, but if I were her, I wouldn’t want to be in there long. Ten minutes?”
Rhodes nodded. “That’s our mark. If she’s on her way out in less than ten, it was a dead drop and we maintain surveillance. If she takes longer than that, then she’s meeting with asset.”
Rhodes picked up his iPad and stared at the map. “Send two units back out to the main road to pick up surveillance again when she comes back out. Other units deploy off the road here by the entrance, lights out. Six men on foot in the trees in case she makes us on the way out and tries to run on foot.”
Fuller nodded, pressed his own mic, and began to issue orders. Black cars and SUVs on four different roads behind began moving in different directions.
• • •
Salem drove, lights off, until the moon reflected off a metal grain silo behind the trees on the right. The woods on that side ended abruptly a little way down, and she turned onto a small dirt trail that bent north off the road.
A fine bit of navigating in the dark, she told herself, with only the fat slice of a waxing gibbous moon to brighten up the swales and ridges that she’d had to cross.
There was a small house just behind the wood line where the paved road met the trail. She stopped the Ford and killed the motor.
Salem exited the car and looked back across the long field. There were no lights she could see, no sound of cars off on the Woods Road now several hundred yards behind her. An aircraft sounded in the distance, but it was very quiet; she couldn’t make out distance or bearing. It was likely that the plane was either coming or going from the municipal airport that the map in her memory said was a few miles to the northeast.
She started walking toward a small building that she could see in the moonlight. A white-tailed deer, a twelve-point buck, was grazing in the field to the south. It saw the woman in the moonlight and ran, its doe and three fawns following behind. She took that as a good sign that she was alone. Other unwanted guests passing through recently would have frightened the animals away as she had done.
The building was small, not old enough yet for the brick to be deeply weathered. The fallen tree that Shiloh had described in his communication plan was a few dozen yards behind, easily found even in the low light. The earth around it was damp enough for her shoes to begin sinking down even though there had been no rain for days. She made her way to the larger end of the downed tree and knelt, stopping short of putting her knees into the moist earth. She could not see inside and finally had to resort to a microlight. The red beam revealed Shiloh’s package inside, an envelope wrapped in a ziplock bag and sealed with duct tape.
Salem pulled it out, killed the light, and listened as the world around her sharpened up again—the plane was still there somewhere, but she heard nothing else.
She made her way back to the car, holding the package against her body, trying to fox-walk in silence, but in the dark she could not see all of the leaves and branches underfoot and a few snapped and crunched as she moved—another reason this was a bad place. Stealth was impossible in these woods, too much underbrush and leaves.
She passed the house, half expecting the FBI to come rushing out, rifles drawn. No one emerged as she walked past, the little building looking as dark as before. Salem kept moving and reached the car. She looked around again and listened. All was as it had been for the last ten minutes. She mounted up.
• • •
“She picked something up,” Fuller noted. The infrared image from the drone circling above couldn’t reveal what she’d taken from the tree, but Salem’s movements were not difficult to discern. “No meeting with an asset.”
Rhodes swore. “I’d love to know what’s in the package.”
• • •
In her seat, Salem stared at the envelope. Was it against some protocol to open it in the field? She could remember no rule forbidding it, and she had found herself wondering for most of the drive out what secrets Shiloh had left for her here in these woods.
She pulled out her folding knife, cut through the duct tape, and pulled the plastic bag open. The envelope was sealed and she sliced it along the short end. Inside were several folded sheets of bond paper and a thumb drive. She opened the documents and riffled through the pages. Most looked like regular intelligence reports with headers full of impenetrable crypts and code words, classification markings and lists of recipients. But the sheet on top looked like a common letter. Thinking Shiloh perhaps had written it to her, she read it through twice.
British Senior Intelligence Service (SIS) liaison has identified the buyer as Asqar Amiri, a
British expatriate working from Kish Island for the Iranian government to arrange the clandestine acquisition of arms and sanctioned nuclear materials . . .
No, this was not for her, Salem realized, and it was no typical intelligence report. There was no author or recipient listed, no crypts or code words, nothing to reveal the provenance of the letter.
There was no time for such questions now. She folded the papers and returned them to the envelope, which went back into the plastic bag. She closed her knife and stuffed it and the papers into her satchel on the passenger seat, then started the car.
• • •
Rhodes looked out into the woods. His eyes had adjusted to the dark and he knew roughly where the units and men were in the trees, but could make none of them out. That left him satisfied. If he couldn’t find them, neither would Salem.
Fuller checked his watch, a military analog whose hands glowed a dim tritium green. “Ten minutes.”
Rhodes looked into the back of the van to the junior officer watching the drone feed. “What’s her status?”
The younger man waited a few seconds to answer. “Rabbit is in her vehicle.”
“It was a dead drop,” Rhodes said.
Fuller lifted his radio. “Subject is outbound, approaching main gate in two minutes. All units stand by”
• • •
Salem drove slowly back out, looking into the woods ahead every time a curve approached. The moon lit her path, but she could not see far into the trees. She considered turning on the headlights, but decided against it. The chances that anyone would see them from the road were small, but small was not zero.
She reached the gate and stopped. She had seen nothing for the length of the road, not an animal or bird anywhere. She supposed that the sound of her engine, however quiet, had been enough to frighten them away from the road.
Perhaps.
Salem rolled down the driver’s-side window a few centimeters so she could listen to the woods as well as see them. She tuned out the noise of the engine and heard only silence at first, then insects. No birds, no sound of any other car coming up the Woods Road.
The plane was still there . . . no louder, no quieter.
Where was the airport? Five miles? She had been on her errand more than ten minutes now, far more than enough time for the plane to cover that distance or fly out of earshot if moving in some other direction. Was it another plane? She didn’t think so . . . the engine noise was pitched no higher or lower than before.
The plane must have been circling, she realized, and pulling a very tight circle very near her position to sound so close for so long.
It was a fine place for an ambush. The Mossad officer had seen it on the map hours before. The Woods Road had no way off except the openings only at the ends, a mile apart, with no other intersections and trees walling it in on both sides for its full length. If anyone—the police, the FBI—blocked off the ends, escape by car would be impossible. It would be easy for her to lose a human running through the woods at night, but dogs would be another matter. She knew there was a subdivision to the northwest of her position, the county landfill to the east. She could jump that fence, but she could not possibly make it to the main highway on foot by any route before any pursuers did in a car.
Had Shiloh set her up? No, she decided. There was real intelligence inside the package, something valuable. But that did not mean she had not been followed. Where they could have acquired her tail, she didn’t know. There would be time to analyze that later.
Salem’s options were limited. Nothing moved in the dark ahead, but that did not mean that the black woods were empty.
If the Americans were here, when and where would they move?
You cannot pull a subject from a moving car, her instructors had taught her years before.
She had been a fool to lock the gate behind her, she realized. She would have to get out of the vehicle to open it again. She would be in the open, on foot, a half-dozen meters from the vehicle. She could run the gate, but if the Bureau was here, it would set them off and she doubted she would get ten meters onto the road before they cut her off.
Salem scanned the tree line again. If the Americans were here, they were well hidden. If she opened the door, the interior lights of her car would destroy her night vision, blinding her for a few crucial seconds.
She closed her eyes and tried to recall the map she had studied on the table at the embassy that morning, struggling to remember all of the possible routes, the locations of the roads, the developments.
She opened her eyes. There was one possibility.
In years past, she would not have tried it, but Shiloh was important, perhaps vital to her country’s survival now. Whatever the full contents of Shiloh’s package were, they would be a clue that could lead the FBI to Israel’s friend. Salem had a duty to deny them that if she could.
• • •
“What is she waiting for?” Rhodes muttered. Salem had stopped her car, the engine still running, but the Mossad officer hadn’t gotten out for almost a minute.
“She made us,” Fuller said. It was a guess, but one that seemed more likely the longer the woman sat in her car. He took Fuller’s radio and lifted it, holding it close to his face.
If it was a trap, there was one way to test it.
Salem put the car in reverse. The Ford’s lights came on.
• • •
“She’s running!” Rhodes yelled. He cursed then yelled into the radio. “All units, move!”
• • •
The headlights seemed to come on from every direction at once, engines suddenly roaring to life. Large SUVs moved forward, sealing off the Woods Road at either side of the nature preserve entrance in both directions, their doors opening, men and women pushing out, automatic weapons raised. Salem heard rustling behind her and turned. Men erupted from the underbrush behind her, carrying rifles.
Salem spun in her seat, looking out the rear window, and fed gas to the engine, running the vehicle backward until it was moving at eighty kilometers per hour. The headlights shone past her, brightening the woods. Salem pushed hard on the brakes and cranked the wheel hard, and the car spun on the asphalt. The wheels hit dirt and grass as the Ford rotated. Salem was switching the gear and pushing down on the accelerator long before the car had finished the turn, and it shot forward, never having stopped.
“Where’s she going?” Rhodes yelled.
“No idea,” Fuller muttered.
The junior officer in the back stared at the electronic map on one of his monitors. He didn’t wait for authorization before calling out to the other cars on his own headset. “All units, subject has a possible escape route through the subdivision to the northwest.”
“Units Alpha, Bravo, Delta, Go! Go! Go! Echo, you’re on us!” Rhodes yelled. The SUVS in the formation pulled back, arced into short turns, then leaped forward, engines screaming into the darkness. Rhodes pointed at Salem’s car, lights receding fast. “Stay on her so she doesn’t backtrack.”
Fuller stomped the accelerator.
Two FBI chase cars had smashed down the gate, the lock breaking open and the chain shattering. The leader was closing the distance only a few dozen meters behind her now, a black van with a black sedan behind. That was helpful. She’d thought the SUVs would come in, but the Americans were coming after her in cars no more built for off-road runs than her own. She had the small advantage of having driven the road once now and knowing how sharp the curves were. She drifted to the outside, slowed a little, and suddenly accelerated through the turn. The van behind her tried to follow, but it was top-heavy. Its tires slid on the asphalt and the vehicle sailed off into the woods, its headlights going dark as it smashed sideways against a tree.
“I thought you could drive this thing!” Rhodes watched as Echo, the sedan that had been trailing behind them roar past, not slowing as the driver heard his superior’s yell and decided no one in the van needed medical attention.
Fuller grimaced. “She
’s not built for this,” he grumbled. He pressed the accelerator again and the van grabbed the dirt and gravel under its tires and moved toward the road.
The small house where she’d stopped before was getting closer. Salem killed the car’s lights and spun the wheel hard right, pushing hard on the brakes to dump some speed.
The car immediately began to shake, the wheels grinding on dirt and then bouncing on gravel as it jumped off the blacktop onto the narrow trail. Not expecting the turn, the Bureau sedan behind her sailed past, wheels locked and white smoke erupting from underneath as the driver tried desperately to slow enough not to roll the vehicle when he turned it. The car sailed off into the open field, the occupants saved from being thrown around only by their restraints. The special agents would be yelling into their radios, calling for reinforcements to deploy . . . where?
Salem pushed the car as fast as she dared on the uneven trail, afraid that some large rock would emerge from the dark and break an axle or rip out the gas tank. She was moving over unknown ground now. She heard debris hitting the undercarriage at a furious rate, like gunfire.
The trail curved to the left. She took the turn, then saw the break in the trees through the right. She spun in that direction, plowed forward, and the trees fell away. She was in an open field now, sloping down to the east. There was a building ahead, a large maintenance structure at the end of a paved road, lit by streetlamps. The dirt trail ended at the building’s entrance and the car smoothed out again as the wheels rose up onto the asphalt. She floored the accelerator and smashed through the chain-link gate closing it off.
The road curved twice in a large backward S, and then she was in the subdivision she had seen on the map in her head. All of the streetlamps were on, the houses dark except for porch lights, and she hoped that no one would be walking on the road at this late hour. Salem got the car up to speed, a hundred kilometers per hour. The road was almost straight here and she would reach the four-way stop where the Woods Road came arcing around from the east in less than a minute. If the FBI had not cut off that intersection, she would have a chance.
