by Greg Rucka
“The Admiralty has agreed to the plan?”
“Provisionally. If we can get permission to hit the tanker, they’ll bring in HMS Illustrious to stage from, and they’re offering SBS support for the exfil, as long as we can get Minder One and Cougar out onto the open water.”
“They won’t go inland?”
“They have expressed reservations. Something about armed soldiers and foreign soil, I believe.”
“Ah, yes, I’m told that’s called ‘an act of war.’ ” She actually smiled before asking, “And they can make it onto the open water?”
“Working on that part now. But if we’re going to use the Hadi as a distraction, we’ll have to do it by morning tomorrow in zone. Any later and instead of a distraction, we’ll have confusion, and that will hinder as much as help.”
“Yes, agreed. Very well, Paul, I’ll sell it to the Prime Minister. But I know what he’ll say.”
“He’ll say that if we don’t pull this off, it’s my job.”
“Ah, at long last, Paul,” C said. “You’re learning.”
On the plasma wall, the Hadi floated placid and stable, beginning to steam forward, into the Persian Gulf. On the headset, Crocker listened to the countdown.
“Impact, impact, impact,” Moss said. “Good impact.”
Nothing visibly changed on the screen.
“Not seeing anything,” Seale murmured.
“Confirm impact,” Crocker said into the mike. “No visual.”
“Above the waterline, you’ll not see anything yet,” Moss said, and Crocker thought the man was decidedly pleased. “Triple-D device, sir, directed charge low to the hull. She’s bleeding now, sir, trust me.”
As if in response, Hadi began to turn to port, and on the screen Crocker could now discern motion on the deck of the ship, antlike figures moving aboard the massive oil tanker. Crocker wasn’t certain, but on the surface of the water he thought he was seeing the first striations of color, the rainbow refraction of oil on water.
“Congratulations, sir,” Moss said in his ears. “It’s a bouncing baby environmental disaster.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
IRAN—HORMOZGAN PROVINCE, ABADAN
13 DECEMBER 1658 HOURS (GMT +3.30)
TO: HEAD OF STATION, TEHRAN—BARNETT, L.
FROM: DIRECTOR OPERATIONS—CROCKER, P.
OPERATION: ICECROWN
MESSAGE BEGINS_
REQUIRE YOU DISPATCH STATION NUMBER TWO TO ABADAN. SECURITY DIVISION TO PROVIDE BACKUP DURING TRANSIT AND ON GROUND. STATION NUMBER TWO DIRECTED TO SECURE TRANSPORT DOWNRIVER ABADAN BY WHATEVER MEANS NECESSARY. VITAL TO REACH RZ ALPHA WITH MINDER ONE AND PACKAGE: COUGAR AT 2245 LOCAL, NO LATER, THEN PROCEED RZ BRAVO ALL SPEED FOR EXFIL.
STATION NUMBER TWO DIRECTED TO CLOSE BUSINESS OUTSTANDING PRIOR TO DEPARTURE.
STATION NUMBER TWO AUTHORIZED TO DRAW ANY MATERIEL IN SUPPORT OF ACTION.
STATION NUMBER TWO AND SECURITY ESCORT ORDERED TO DRAW ARMS.
_MESSAGE ENDS
It wasn’t until Barnett had handed him the Beretta compact from the gun safe in the office, along with a box of ammunition, that Caleb realized, whatever happened next, he was finished in Iran.
“Hope to God you don’t have to use it, Caleb,” Barnett said around his cigarette. “And hope even more that if you do, you kill whatever bastard is aiming at you.”
Caleb stared at the pistol in his hand, alien and ugly and entirely unfamiliar to him. He had performed dismally on his pistol drills at the School, had barely qualified, in fact. It seemed to him absurd that he should be trusted with such a thing, especially now, especially with what was at stake. He tucked the weapon into his backpack, along with the box of bullets, setting them beside his sat phone and GPS unit, then took the stack of rials Barnett was now offering him. He split them up amongst the backpack and his pockets.
“Medical supplies, you think?” Barnett asked him.
“MacIntyre’s already taking care of it,” Caleb said. “He’s bringing a full kit, think it’s even got a bottle of oxygen in it.”
“Wise. No telling the state she’ll be in when you get her.”
Caleb appreciated that Barnett hadn’t said “if you get her.”
“VEVAK’ll be on you the moment you step outside, you know that,” Barnett said. “They’ll be on the car to the airport, and they’ll have the flight plan before you’re in the air, and they’ll be waiting for you when you touch down. Even with the confusion on the ground, all this running about because of the Hadi, you’re still going to have a hell of a job losing them, and you’re damn well going to have to do it if you’re to pull this off.”
“I was trying not to think about that, actually.”
“That’s enough of that. You’re a better agent than you give yourself credit for being, Caleb. Doubt is good, it keeps us honest. But too much of it is a poison.” Barnett put a hand on Caleb’s shoulder for a moment, the paternal manner manifest once more. “You were a good Two, lad, and I’ll make certain that goes in the permanent file.”
“Thank you, sir.”
They shook hands.
“You’re a hell of a spy, Caleb,” Barnett said.
The surveillance was blatant on the way from the embassy to the airport. Two cars, front and back, and only when they rolled out onto the field, to the airplane kept and piloted by the British mission in Iran, did the other vehicles back off, parking within twenty meters. Caleb lent MacIntyre a hand moving their few bags from the car onto the plane, and once everything was aboard, he looked back, saw that men had emerged from the cars. One of them, he was sure, was Zahabzeh, but at this distance it was impossible to read the man’s expression, what he was thinking.
Caleb couldn’t imagine his thoughts were kind ones, and for a moment he felt an absurd kinship with the man. He didn’t know him, in truth didn’t want to, but both of them, he recognized, were subordinates, both of them followers, now asked to lead, and he had to wonder if it sat as uncomfortably on Farzan Zahabzeh as it did on himself.
MacIntyre, like Caleb, had brought a go-bag. Or so Caleb thought. Until they were in the air and the man opened it, withdrawing a rifle with a folding stock. Caleb turned his attention from the map he had spread open before him, watched as MacIntyre checked the weapon, breaking it down and then reassembling it before stowing the long gun away once more. Then MacIntyre pulled a pistol from the bag, a Browning, and repeated the procedure.
“You’re loaded?” MacIntyre asked.
“Not yet.”
The man looked over at him with brown sleepy eyes. “Think you’ll have a better time to do it, then?”
“I suppose not.” Caleb folded the map away, unzipped the flap on his backpack, took out the Beretta and the ammunition. He loaded the clip slowly, struggling to get the last bullet locked into place, aware that MacIntyre was observing him the entire time. When he finished, he dropped the pistol into his pocket and looked at MacIntyre, not certain if, or even what, he should say.
“Don’t think of it as killing,” MacIntyre told him. “Think of it as saying ‘Stop that’ in a very clear, very permanent voice.”
It was warmer in Abadan than it had been in Tehran, in the low sixties Fahrenheit, clear and without humidity. Caleb went to pick up the car from the rental station within the decrepit terminal. He had the keys in his hand and was headed to the vehicle itself before he caught the first hint of local attention. It wasn’t at all surprising, but for an instant he felt near-panic, wondering what he might do or say if he was stopped with the gun in his pocket.
But it wasn’t going to happen, and he knew that. To Zahabzeh, Caleb was secondary, a consolation prize at best; and for exactly the same reason that they hadn’t been stopped upon leaving the embassy, heading to the airport, they weren’t going to be stopped in Abadan. At least not yet. Zahabzeh had to let them run. They were his only possible leads to Chace, to Shirazi. They were his bird dogs.
Knowing that didn’t particularly make him feel much better.
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The car was a Khodro, an old one, and Caleb brought it around, waited until MacIntyre had loaded the vehicle and hopped in before pulling out onto Route 37, heading south, then east, into the heart of Abadan. The sun was just beginning to set as they drove past the refinery fields. The massive storage containers loomed along both sides of the road for five, six kilometers before giving way to the city itself. On the outskirts, they passed old houses crowned with badgirs, the ingenious natural air conditioners that had been invented centuries earlier, which relied on convection to pull hot air out, to pull even the slightest breeze in and down.
Traffic was thicker near the heart of the city, end-of-the-day commuters, one shift returning from the refineries as another went out to continue feeding the petrobeast. Caleb kept his eyes open for a place to stop, somewhere he and MacIntyre could get a meal. He finally parked outside a café just south of downtown. They exited the car, and while Caleb went inside to buy them each a cup of chay, MacIntyre stayed behind and searched the Khodro.
When Caleb returned, MacIntyre was holding a small, black square in his hand. “What should I do with it?”
Caleb set his tea on the roof of the Khodro, took the tiny tracking device, then tossed it underhand into the road. Traffic had crushed it to bits before he’d had a chance to pick up his tea again.
“You hungry?” Caleb asked. “I’m hungry. Let’s get something to eat.”
They found a downscale food stand another two kilometers south, closer to the forest of palm trees that grew all along the banks of the river. Water flowed past Abadan to the east and the west, river channels that had been artificially deepened and widened to accommodate the loading of pure light crude. The soil closest to the banks was lush and, even now, in winter, green. They ate outside, MacIntyre keeping one eye on their car, Caleb watching the people around him. For the first time since reaching Iran, for reasons he could not explain, he felt relaxed, and chatted cheerfully with the vendor who made their dinner.
Then MacIntyre said, “Mr. Lewis,” and Caleb turned to see a black van pulling up, double-parking beside their Khodro, two jeeps with soldiers accompanying it. The soldiers stayed put, but out of the van came Farzan Zahabzeh, followed by two others. Zahabzeh turned back to them, spoke something Caleb couldn’t hear, but its meaning was clear enough, and when he reached their picnic table, he was alone.
“Mr. Lewis,” Zahabzeh said, in English. “I wish to speak with you.”
“Have you eaten?” Caleb indicated the bench opposite him. “The chelo mahi is outstanding.”
Zahabzeh shook his head, dismissing the offer and the pleasantry together. He looked meaningfully at MacIntyre, then back to Caleb. “I should like to speak with you alone.”
Caleb shrugged, and MacIntyre got to his feet, went back to where the car was parked, leaning against it, watching them.
“We want Youness Shirazi,” Zahabzeh said, after a moment. “You want your agent back. Let’s make a deal.”
Caleb didn’t answer, looking at the man opposite him. While he’d seen him before, could remember him perfectly from the night in Noshahr when he’d tried to enter the safehouse, he didn’t look quite the same. Caleb suspected it was mutual, and not solely because of the bruise he was now sporting at the side of his head. But the weight of what had transpired in the last two days—God, was it only two days?—clearly sat much more heavily on the man opposite him.
“You are planning to rendezvous with her,” Zahabzeh said. “That is obvious; that is the only reason you can be here.”
“I’m here to monitor the cleanup of the Hadi,” Caleb said.
“We are past playing games. I am offering you a deal. We take our man, you take yours, and that will be the end of things. We will reset the board. We will forget everything. Even Hossein.”
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Caleb said. “I’m here to report on the oil spill in the Gulf. That’s all.”
Zahabzeh made a noise, anger breaking free of its confines, and Caleb saw the man’s body tense before Zahabzeh was able to force himself to relax again. He got to his feet.
“Youness Shirazi is a traitor,” Zahabzeh told him. “He will be executed for what he has done. Anyone assisting him is either a traitor or an enemy of Iran. If the former, they will be shot. If the latter … we will do what we must to protect ourselves.”
He turned, returning to the van, not bothering to look at MacIntyre, not bothering to look back.
Caleb watched as Zahabzeh and his men loaded up once more, pulled away. One of the jeeps went with them, but the other one drove halfway down the block before stopping. The soldiers within remained seated, but he could see them watching him.
He thought about that for a bit, then decided he wanted to finish his dinner.
It was full dark by the time he was finished, and when they headed to the car, he told MacIntyre it was time for him to drive. They settled into their seats. MacIntyre started up the Khodro, driving easily, heading northward again. The jeep that had remained parked, watching them, pulled out to follow.
“We’re going to have to get a boat,” Caleb said. “And we’re going to have to lose them before we do it.”
“How lost do we want them to be?”
“Whatever it takes,” Caleb said.
MacIntyre nodded slightly, downshifting. Caleb checked the mirrors, then the windows. He didn’t see the van, and he didn’t see the second jeep anywhere. It was possible that Zahabzeh had backed off, had even turned his attention elsewhere, but Caleb doubted that, particularly the latter. Yes, they were close to the border with Iraq, so close, in fact, that the river flowing past the western side of the city served to mark it, but Zahabzeh was still counting on them to lead him to Shirazi and Chace. If he’d backed off at all, it was only to make them think it was safe to run.
Caleb checked his watch, saw that it was forty-eight minutes past eight in the evening. Less than two hours until the rendezvous. An hour at most to get the boat, another hour to reach the pickup. There wasn’t a lot of time.
They had entered a traffic circle, and Caleb realized that MacIntyre was now beginning his second loop, accelerating. A horn blared. In the mirror, he saw the jeep coming up behind them, trying to keep pace. They went around a third time, fast enough that the tires protested, and then a fourth, the squeal from the wheels louder, the grin on MacIntyre’s face making him look like a boy deep in mischief. Cars ahead of them, behind them, were pounding their horns, and the Khodro was bleating at them in return, and they rounded the circle a fifth time. Now the jeep was ahead of them, not behind.
MacIntyre wrenched the wheel hard, right, and the rear of the car broke free, tires smoking even more furiously than before, and they shot west, accelerating, and turned, turned again, and again. Caleb saw the speedometer brush past a hundred and twenty kilometers an hour, swiveled in his seat to look back, and they were braking again, hard, turning again, and the jeep was nowhere to be seen.
They headed east, towards the river, driving quickly, and then the road narrowed as they passed into thick palms growing deep alongside the banks. MacIntyre turned them south, skirting the shore, killing their headlamps and slowing, and they could see boats moored along the water. Caleb reached for his backpack, pulled the GPS unit out and switched it on, taking a reading.
“Keep going south.”
“We’ll need a boat.”
Caleb shook his head. “Not yet. Keep going south.”
They continued following the river. Somewhere above them, they heard a helicopter drone, rotor pitch fading as it moved away, west.
“Mr. Lewis, we need to stop, find someone who’ll sell us his boat.”
“We’re not going to buy a boat,” Caleb said. “We buy a boat, there’s nothing to keep the guy who sells it from taking our money and then calling Zahabzeh.”
“Steal one, then.”
“Can you pilot a boat?”
“No, sir.”
“Neither can I.” Cale
b leaned forward in his seat, catching lights shining on the water. “Stop here. Get our things.”
MacIntyre did as ordered, Caleb following, slinging his backpack over his shoulders. He felt for the pistol, still in his pocket, took it out and chambered the first round.
“Follow my lead,” he told MacIntyre. “Don’t shoot unless you have to.”
“Never do, sir,” MacIntyre responded, pulling out the Browning.
They made their way along the bank, then down to the small jetty, towards the boat with the lights burning inside. Caleb could hear strains of music, a radio playing, perhaps. The boat was a small one, maybe twelve feet, no longer, with the wheelhouse above the sunken cabin. He saw a shadow against the light, waited a few seconds for signs of other movement, other occupants, and not seeing any, stepped aboard.
He reached into his coat, pulled out one of the stacks of rials, holding it in his left hand. With his right, he raised the pistol.
“Excuse me,” he said in Farsi, stepping down into the cabin.
The occupant, possibly the owner, was fixing a glass of tea from a small, single-coil burner, and he jumped in surprise, spinning around, then froze at the sight of Caleb, the money, the gun. He was a small man, mid-fifties perhaps, with a weather-beaten face coated in gray-and-black stubble.
“What—what is this?”
“We need to use your boat,” Caleb said. He lowered the pistol, held up the rials, then tossed them forward, to the man, who caught the bundle, more out of reflex than intention. “We need you to take us down to the Gulf. We’ll be making a stop along the way.”
The man stared at him, then at the thick sheaf of bills in his hands. He ran a thumb against their edge, looked up again, this time past Caleb’s shoulder, to where MacIntyre was standing behind him.
“I say no you will kill me?”
Caleb took a second bundle of rials out of his coat, this one from the inside pocket, tossed them as he had the first. The man was ready this time, caught them easily.
