by Greg Rucka
“Don’t say no,” Caleb told him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
IRAN—30.241350 BY 48.464821
13 DECEMBER 2245 HOURS (GMT +3.30)
The jeep, Chace decided raggedly, had probably saved their lives, despite the price she had paid in acquiring it. A military vehicle, it had allowed them to drive almost entirely unmolested, speeding out of the desert through the night, down from the plateau towards the Gulf.
But the price for it, she was beginning to think, might have been a little too high. She was starting to believe she wasn’t going to make it.
There’d been three bags of Ringers, or its Iranian equivalent, in the kit, and Shirazi had fed all of them through her IV between that first panicked stop and sunrise. She was certain that was the only reason she was still around. The pain in her chest was constant and almost unbearable now, and it wasn’t until he’d hit her with the morphine that she realized she must’ve been screaming. When the sun rose she understood that it hadn’t been the night making her so cold. Through the narcotic haze she knew she was in shock, and falling deeper, the way she knew that while the morphine had stolen her pain, it probably hadn’t done her respiratory system any favors. At some point, she’d begun coughing, and there was the taste of blood in her mouth.
Now it was dark again, and she thought her eyes were open and that it was night, but she really wasn’t sure.
“Tara?”
She blinked, blinked again, saw Youness Shirazi looking down at her. She croaked at him, mouth coated in copper dust.
“We’re here,” he was saying. “I think we’re here. Come, I will help you stand.”
He reached for her, pulling her by her ankles, then wrapped an arm around her waist, and then she was upright, wobbling, clinging to him with her left arm. There was a river in front of her, water flowing quickly past, and the smell of it hit her, strong with oil. She coughed, felt blood in her mouth, tried to spit it out, but instead it ran down, over her chin. She couldn’t even spit right.
“The pickup,” Shirazi said. “By boat?”
She shook her head, not disagreeing, simply not knowing. Shirazi was walking with her carefully, and then he was lowering her, propping her against something as cold as she was, and Chace looked up, saw that they were beneath a bridge, the jeep parked perhaps ten meters away. Shirazi set his satchel down beside her, then checked her pupils, one eye, then the other. Then he checked his watch, frowned.
“I am going to look for them,” he said. “I will not be long.”
He started to straighten up. Chace grabbed for him with her left hand, the only one that was still working.
“Gun,” she whispered, and even that hurt like hell, just the effort to say the single syllable.
He looked at her, confused, then nodded and pressed a pistol in her hand. She tightened her grip around the butt, barely felt the sensation of the weapon in her grip. With effort, she got her finger through the guard, onto the trigger, watched as Shirazi made his way through the shadows, then into the comparative light of the night, turning out of sight. He was going to check the road, she realized, just to be sure they weren’t coming by car.
She closed her eyes, opened them again, saw a boat on the river, two figures silhouetted at the wheel. She heard voices, distant and dreamlike. She closed her eyes again.
When she opened them this time, there was someone coming towards her. She thought it was Caleb, started to say his name, and then he was on her, and she saw that she had been wrong. It wasn’t Caleb.
She was looking at Zahabzeh.
For a second Chace was certain she was hallucinating, the morphine still playing tricks with her mind. She’d seen wonderful, horrible things with the morphine. Tom in her arms and Tom torn apart and Tamsin burning alive with fever, and this was horrible, the end of a nightmare, his hand coming at her out of the darkness, and her mind flashed on that hand tearing at her back, opening her chest to the air, and she tried to kick, bring the gun up, scream, all at once. The only thing that worked was the kick, ineffectual, and then one hand was over her mouth, the other hand tearing the pistol out of her grip, and the back of her head hit concrete, and the world went bright before swirling into shadow again.
She was being moved, pulled to her feet, the hand still silencing her. Chace saw the boat on the water, bobbing steadily, felt her feet dragging over the grass on the bank, out of the shadows. There was more light now—not much, but she thought she saw three figures on the boat.
Zahabzeh pushed her down to her knees. There was a van parked nearby, just off the road, and two other men coming towards them, but Zahabzeh wasn’t paying any attention to them. He was focused entirely on the boat. He ran the slide back on the pistol he’d taken from her, pointed it at her head, much the way Shirazi had done only the day before.
Somehow, she didn’t think this would end with Zahabzeh declaring his desire to defect.
“I’ll kill her!” Zahabzeh shouted at the boat. “I will shoot her here and now!”
Chace wobbled on her knees, barely able to stay upright. There was movement on the boat, she saw one of the figures with a rifle. She didn’t think it was Caleb, too large, maybe the other one, MacIntyre. That gave her hope, for an instant an almost indescribable feeling of triumph despite all her pain.
If they had Shirazi on the boat and MacIntyre had a rifle, she knew who he was aiming it at.
It wasn’t Zahabzeh.
“My people are coming!” he shouted. “They are on their way! Give him up! Give us back Shirazi and you can still escape, you can take her with you!”
Something Tom had told her, when she had first joined the Section, came back to Chace. There were only three ways a Minder ever left, he’d said. They were promoted, they quit, or they died. Most of them took option number three.
“They won’t,” she whispered, surprised at the weakness of her own voice, unsure even if Zahabzeh could hear her. “He’s gone.”
Zahabzeh shouted something in Farsi, and the two men took hold of her, brought her to her feet, and she cried out at the pain in her shattered arm, then laughed when he put the pistol against her head.
“Give him back!”
“Shoot me,” Chace whispered.
In her ear, she heard the gun go off.
She had just enough time to be honestly surprised that it was Zahabzeh who pitched forward, and not herself, when there was a flash of fire from the boat, the crack of a high-powered rifle. The man holding her right arm twirled away, and almost instantly she heard another shot, and the one at her left fell forward, as well. For a second, Chace thought she was going to fall herself, wobbling unsteadily on her feet.
Then there was an arm around her waist, and Caleb Lewis was holding her up, pistol in his other hand.
“You’re safe,” he told her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
LONDON—VAUXHALL CROSS, OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF SERVICE, “C”
14 DECEMBER 1022 HOURS (GMT)
C leaned forward in her chair, pouring for herself what Crocker thought was a self-congratulatory second cup of tea from the china pot, before sitting back and looking at him with a slight smile. Rayburn, in his chair, and Szurko, beside him on the couch, were likewise jubilant, all of them in their proper place for the traditional morning meeting.
“She’ll be all right, then?” C asked.
“They operated on Chace as soon as she was aboard Illustrious,” Crocker said. “As of an hour ago, she was stable, and had regained consciousness, though only for a short while. Her shoulder was badly damaged by a rifle round; will most likely require reconstructive surgery.”
“And Shirazi?”
“Minders Two and Three took him out via RAF from Kuwait as of oh-four-hundred,” Crocker said. “They should have him at the Farm before nightfall. Minder Two reports that Shirazi brought a goodie bag out with him: a list of all VEVAK agents working abroad, including within the U.K.”
C moved her cup of tea to her mouth, but not b
efore Crocker saw the smile. “That should earn us some favors from Box.”
“I’d hope so,” Crocker said.
She took a sip from her cup, set it back on the saucer, then set both on the side table and regarded him. “The Prime Minister phoned me this morning, Paul, once he’d received word of the successful completion of Icecrown. He made a point of saying to me, specifically, that I was to pass on his compliments to you for executing such a successful reversal of fortune. You not only spared the Government a humiliation, you handed them a triumph.”
“The Prime Minister is being generous.”
“If that’s everything?” C asked.
“There is one more thing …,” Crocker said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
LONDON—VAUXHALL CROSS, OFFICE OF D-OPS
25 JANUARY 0848 HOURS (GMT)
The phone on the desk rang, the red one, bleating once, twice, then a third time, before Kate stuck her head through the open doorway, asking, “You’re going to get that?”
Very gingerly, right arm still aching at the shoulder, the muscles still relearning their role, Tara Chace picked up the handset.
“D-Ops,” she said.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am indebted to the following for their assistance in the creation of this novel. While much of the action is clearly anchored in fact, this is a work of fiction entirely, and any verisimilitude is due, in no small part, to the help of the following individuals.
To Lee “Budgie” Barnett, a hypothetical spy, who went above and beyond to answer several questions of the FCO. If you’re still under surveillance, feel free to give them my number. I’d love to talk to them.
To Alisdair Watson and Antony Johnston both, for fielding my absurd cultural queries promptly and thoroughly. To Arnaud Savry, for late-night translation work. My French is rusty; yours, sir, is clearly not.
Special thanks to Gerard “Jerry” Hennelly, who continues to be an endless font of information regarding what exactly goes in the black bag, how it’s used, and when to use it. Your help on this book was enormous and essential, and I am, as always, grateful.
To those who asked not to be named: thank you.
And finally, to my wife and children, for once again enduring my departure into a world far removed, and for welcoming me back when I returned.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born in San Francisco, Greg Rucka was raised on the Monterey Peninsula. He is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven novels, including five featuring Atticus Kodiak, and numerous comic books, including the Eisner Award–winning Whiteout: Melt and Bat woman: Elegy. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his family.
Table of Contents
Preoperational Background: Chace, Tara F.
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Acknowledgments
About the Author
