The years seemed to have drained from his voice, which resonated with the certainty and confidence that Omidi remembered from decades before.
“Continue to Avass,” Khamenei said. “I have contacted the police there, and they are gathering others who are loyal to God and the revolution. They will offer protection until the military can reach you.”
“How long?”
“The first transport plane should arrive in less than four hours.”
“Four hours,” he repeated quietly. It seemed like an eternity. The forces that had breached their defenses would almost certainly know by now that he had escaped and would be coming for him.
“Excellency, I—”
The window next to him exploded, showering him with glass as the truck swerved violently. Omidi dropped the phone and slid to the floorboards, protecting the briefcase with his body as bullets pounded the door next to him.
His driver was bleeding from a deep cut in his forehead but managed to regain control of the vehicle. The man in back had been slammed into the cab and was struggling to swing the machine gun in the direction of the riflemen who had appeared on a ridge bordering the east side of the road.
A moment later, the satisfying roar of the mounted gun replaced the ring of bullets on the door, and Omidi rose enough to see over the dashboard while the driver wrung all the speed he could from the engine.
A rusting compact car appeared from behind a low rise in front of them, entering a narrow section of road bordered by a deep ditch on one side and a cliff face on the other. It continued to pick up speed, and Omidi saw unwavering resolve in the hunched position of the man behind the wheel. He was going to ram them.
The sound of the machine gun grew in volume as it turned on the approaching vehicle, ripping through the grille, pockmarking its hood, and finally tearing away most of the roof.
The car skidded left and then careened right, its driver’s head now held on by nothing more than a thin ribbon of skin. The truck’s right fender took most of the impact, slamming the much smaller vehicle into the rock wall and grinding along its length.
The machine gunner’s back was pressed against the cab again, and he was laying down suppressing fire, moving smoothly between the intermittent muzzle flashes fading behind them.
“Mehrak! Are you there? Mehrak!”
Khamenei’s tinny voice was audible again, drifting out from beneath the truck’s seat. Omidi remained on the floorboards, reaching around blindly for a few moments before laying his hand on the phone.
“Yes, Excellency. I’m here.”
“What happened?”
“We were attacked. The resistance is obviously aware that this is the only road leading away from the facility.”
“Are you injured?”
“No. I’m fine.”
“And the parasite?”
Omidi tapped a code into the briefcase’s keypad and popped it open, revealing nine separate vials.
“Intact.”
“Praise be to God.”
“If there are terrorists on the road, Excellency, there may be more in the village.”
“I’ll contact our people in Avass and warn them. They will be waiting to escort you in.”
“Thank you, Excellency.”
“Mehrak, I know I don’t have to impress upon you how important it is that those vials reach Tehran intact. We have seven men with U.S. visas standing by. We must strike quickly and fatally before the Americans can move against us.”
83
“This is all we have?” Smith said, staring down at a single grenade that looked like World War II surplus.
The young man standing in front of him nodded weakly, bending at the waist and trying to slow his ragged breathing.
“How hard would it be to get back to the main entrance?”
“There were four of us when we entered,” he replied in thickly accented English. “I’m the only one left.”
“Jesus, Sarie. How many of those monkeys are there?”
“Thirty-one. And two people not counting the one you killed.”
“Everybody back!” Howell shouted as the clatter of claws became audible down the hallway.
They’d erected floor-to-ceiling barricades on both sides of the corridor, but the available materials — mostly office furniture — made for a fairly porous barrier. Howell and Smith stood in the middle of the floor with their pistols at eye level as the others retreated behind them. The animal was approaching fast, brief flashes of crimson through the gaps.
Despite its less-than-impressive construction, the barrier did what it was designed to do. The monkey hit hard and immediately went for an obvious hole they’d made sure was large enough to be enticing but not so large that it would be easy to fully pass through. The macaque got its head in but then was stalled when its shoulder got caught. Smith held his fire and let Howell use his superior marksmanship to put a round through the top of the animal’s skull.
“It worked!” Farrokh said, coming up behind them. “I have to admit I had my doubts.”
“We were lucky,” Howell responded, checking his clip. “One is easy to handle. Maybe even two. More than that and they’re going to get through.”
He was right. As bad as infected humans were, they were relatively large, slow targets compared to these little horrors. And according to Sarie, there were six full-grown chimps that wouldn’t be drawn in by the gap left in the barricade. They’d make their own.
“What now?” Farrokh said. He was holding a walkie-talkie in his hand, but after his initial success in getting the grenade brought down to them, all attempts to raise his men had failed. Beyond knowing that their reinforcements had arrived, they were completely in the dark as to what was happening outside the hallway they’d barricaded themselves in.
“Sarie, you’re sure this is the door Omidi went out?” Smith said.
“Positive. The fact that it’s locked means it leads outside,” she said and then pointed to a smear of blood on the floor. “And that’s mine.”
“Then we have to get through.”
“The steel’s too thick,” Farrokh said. “That grenade won’t penetrate.”
He was right. Putting the explosive directly against the door would probably just bend the metal — making it even harder to open.
“Perhaps…,” Farrokh continued hesitantly.
“What? If you have an idea, speak up.”
“I’ve never worked on this type of mechanism specifically, but I used to be an engineer. If you were designing this, how would you make it lock?”
“Sure…,” Smith said, focusing on the wall to the left of the door. “Why make things any more complicated than you have to? All you need is a simple actuator that moves something to block it.”
They worked quickly, tearing down the rear barricade and using the pieces to create a structure that would help direct the blast against the wall next to the door. It left them unprotected, but at this point, there was no choice but to go all-in.
When they were finished, Smith pulled the rusty pin on the grenade. “Everyone back!”
They ducked around the corner and flattened themselves against the wall as the explosive detonated, filling the air with a haze of shattered concrete.
It worked. The mechanism was exposed, but also twisted and charred. Smith used his hands to clear away the debris while Farrokh examined the design.
“This is it,” he said, pointing to a simple steel rod lodged against the main gear.
Smith picked up a piece of concrete and swung it repeatedly at the bar, bending it back while Farrokh and his men pulled on the door. It moved a couple of inches and then stopped.
“Harder! Come on!” Smith said.