The Iranian gave him a quizzical look and thumbed back at his men. “Do you really think it’s necessary?”
He was right. They were clearly petrified. It was unlikely that there was enough money in the world to get them to come into contact with those bodies.
They continued on, clearing every room in sequence, finding some empty and others strewn with corpses. None had been attacked by the animals they’d run into when they entered, though. They’d been executed.
Smith backed out of a room containing two people slumped over their desks, once again feeling a sense of relief at not finding Sarie. In truth, though, it would be better if he had. His problems were bad enough without her in the hands of Iranian Intelligence.
A dull whine started in the distance, and he froze, listening to it separate into a chorus of shrieks as it closed on them.
“Are you hearing that?” Howell said. “It’s not going to be two of them this time.”
He was right. It was impossible to pick out individual voices in the screams of the approaching animals. If his team got caught in the confined space of the hallway, they wouldn’t last thirty seconds.
“Inside!” Smith said, leaping back into the room with the others close behind. He slammed the door behind them only to find that the deadbolt was extended far enough to prevent it from fully closing.
“Farrokh. The lock. Can you get it to retract?”
The Iranian knelt to examine it. “No. It’s electronic. Controlled centrally, probably.”
“Incoming!” Howell shouted, grabbing a rifle and slipping the barrel through the narrow gap between the door and the jamb.
There were at least ten of them, coats so wet with blood that they were leaving streaks on the floor and walls as they charged. Smith dropped beneath the Brit, aiming his.45 into the corridor and trying futilely to track individual targets.
“Farrokh! Hold the door.”
The Iranian shoved his back against it and waved his men over to help him. Their prayers were just barely audible over the howls.
81
The arm appeared again, flicking around the crack in the door and grasping desperately at darkness. Sarie jerked back, tangling herself in the coats hanging in the crowded closet but keeping a death grip on the leather belt looped over the knob.
She stabbed at the arm with the sharp end of a broken broom handle, connecting with the blood-soaked biceps on her fifth try. The man gave no indication that he even noticed, adjusting his strategy from groping blindly for her to trying to pry open the door.
All she wanted to do was cover her ears to block out his enraged screams. And maybe she should. There was no way out of the facility, and she would eventually get tired, while he would just keep coming until his heart failed. If she let him in, it would be over in a minute. Maybe less.
He managed to get a shoulder through, and she could see his face in the dim light — the saliva hanging in long, pink strands across his beard, the wide eyes trying to catch a glimpse of his prey.
She swung the broom handle at his face, and it tore a deep gash beneath his eye. Other than making him even more grotesque, though, it accomplished nothing. Dropping her useless weapon, she put a foot against the wall and gripped the belt with both hands, trying to use her superior leverage to trap him between the door and the jamb.
Her forearms felt like they were on fire and her palms were slick with sweat, causing the leather to slip slowly but irretrievably through her fingers. The door opened another few centimeters, and the man’s head intruded a little farther, the gash in his face flowing with parasite-infested blood. She felt the heat of it splash across her hands, but it didn’t matter. In a few seconds she wouldn’t be able to fight anymore — she’d lose her grip, the door would fly open…
And then he was gone.
The extended deadbolt clanged loudly as she pulled it into the metal jamb, her mind unable to process the meaning of the muffled shouts and gunfire outside.
A few moments later, fingers curled around the edge of the door and began trying to pry it open again.
“Get away from me!” she screamed, grabbing the broom handle and narrowly missing the hand when it was jerked away at the last moment.
“Sarie! Is that you?”
The hand reappeared and she slashed at it again.
“Let go of the door, Sarie! And for God’s sake, stop trying to stab me!”
The accent wasn’t Iranian. It was American. And there was something familiar about it.
“Sarie. Listen to me. Open the door, okay?”
The belt fell from her hands and she squinted into the light as Jon Smith lifted her from the closet.
“Are you all right?” he said, looking her over for cuts that the parasite could have invaded, finally settling on her leg. “What happened? Is it from an attack? Did it—”
She shook her head and threw her arms around him, sobbing uncontrollably. The man who had been trying to get to her was lying on the floor fifteen meters away with most of the top of his head missing. Peter Howell was standing next to the body, keeping watch over the empty hallway with three armed Iranians.
“I’m sorry, but there’s not much time,” Smith said, gently pushing her away.
“Less than you think,” Sarie said, wiping at her eyes. “Omidi’s people made the parasite transportable. I tried to stop him, but he’s gone. And he took it with him.”
Smith looked up the hallway as the howls of monkeys started echoing along it. Luck had played a significant role in their surviving their last encounter — the fact that none of the animals had been small enough to get through the crack in the door or large enough to push it open, combined with a one-in-a-thousand shot that he still couldn’t believe he’d made. The gods wouldn’t be as kind the next time around.
“What do you mean gone, Sarie?”
“I mean he got in a truck and drove away.”
82
Mehrak Omidi squinted through the dusty windshield at the road disappearing into the horizon. The rutted surface and the insecure position of the guard manning the machine gun in back was limiting them to eighty kilometers per hour — a speed that seemed impossibly slow.
“How far are you from Avass?”
Omidi held the satellite phone with his shoulder and scrolled on a handheld GPS. The village, a crumbling rural outpost with fewer than three thousand residents, was too small to be noted on it, but based on the topography he could make a reasonable estimate.
“Less than an hour, Excellency.”
“And the facility?” Ayatollah Khamenei said. “What is the situation there?”
“The infection is loose inside and the main door has been breached.”
“Was it the Americans?”
“Iranians. Members of the resistance, I suspect. But there can be little doubt that the Americans have a hand in it.”
“Then they know a great deal.”
“Too much, Excellency.”
The alien sensation of fear was slowly working its way to his belly. There was no way to go back — they had burned every bridge behind them. Bahame was almost certainly dead, and according to the international press his guerrilla army had been all but wiped out. Whatever Jon Smith’s fate, it was certain that he had told his superiors everything he’d learned and the Americans would act on that information — with allies if possible, alone if necessary.
“Excellency, I’m sorry. I—”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for, Mehrak. You have been nothing but a loyal and tireless soldier in the service of God.”