“Fucking booby trap,” Charlie shouted.
Someone knew we were coming all right. And that someone had left his calling card.
CHAPTER 16
Three of Charlie’s men carried me to one of his Mercedes. A searing pain stung the back of my eyes, like a flash of blue fire, but it was nothing compared to the throbbing in my ears. You don’t realize how sensitive the auditory cells of the ears are until you walk into the shock waves of a bomb blast like the one that had just hit us. My world was more or less a blur, but my mind was already calculating. By the sound and the impact of the blast, I was figuring dynamite or plastique. Probably a half-pound satchel bag in any case. Anything more would have brought the roof down on top of us. I was thinking an M2A1 timer, but there were a dozen methods of igniting a satchel charge that were just as simple. Anyone with junior-grade demolitions skill or a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook could put together a satchel charge in about fifteen minutes flat if they had the right shit. No sweat.
The bitter taste in my mouth made me think of sodium nitrate, which made me think of dynamite. Throw in a little nitroglycerine and you’re all set. Touchy stuff. Very touchy stuff. The problem with nitro was the very real possibility of blowing yourself up. I’d seen it before. Obviously, the bomber who’d lured us into his trap had some experience. I would still have put my money on plastique.
Charlie’s guys laid me across the backseat. I rubbed my eyes and blinked until my vision cleared. There wasn’t anything I could do about the pain except put it out of my mind, so that’s what I did.
Charlie leaned over me. I heard him say something so insanely out of place that I couldn’t decide whether to cringe or shake his hand. “It just got personal.”
His voice echoed with the kind of distance and composure that reminded me just how much violence had been a part of Charlie’s life over the years.
I felt like I’d been pummeled from head to toe with a sledgehammer, but I managed to say, “What about your guys?”
“One down, and hurt bad. My nephew Azran,” Charlie hissed. “One dead. Lukas. He’s been with me forever.”
Four of Charlie’s bodyguards hustled toward us. They gripped the corners of a blanket with a badly wounded man stretched across the middle. This had to be Azran. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five and reminded me of Charlie in another lifetime.
They lowered him to the ground next to the car, and I heard a painful groan. It was the kind of groan you heard when the life was draining out of a man, and I knew he needed serious attention, and needed it right now.
Two more guards approached with a second blanket, this one dripping with blood. Had to be what was left of the guy who had entered the hotel on the point and taken the brunt of the blast. It was an ugly sight, and I felt a sour mixture of remorse and anger stirring inside me. The anger was winning out. The guy was dead because of me. He was dead because Charlie was repaying a debt, and his men were on the line for it. What did they know about the bond that Charlie and I had formed thirty years ago? What did they care? Nothing.
“Charlie, you have to get him to a hospital, and fast, brother,” I said, nodding at the wounded man. He was clutching the blanket like a man dangling from a tightrope and blood foamed on his lips. I knew the signs, and it wasn’t good. “The explosion tore up his lungs. I’ve seen it before.”
I didn’t really mean a hospital. I knew a hospital was out of the question. Even a hospital in the most democratic nation on earth would raise serious questions when they saw an injury like this. Here in Tehran, with national security a phobia infecting every fabric of society, the alarm would be deafening. But a man like Charlie had to have someone on the payroll, a doctor at a walk-in clinic or rehab center. Violence was an inherent factor in his business. You had to have contingencies.
Azran coughed. Blood flowed from his mouth and ran to his neck. His eyes clenched, and a painful wheeze replaced the coughing. Charlie braced himself against the Mercedes, like he had lost the strength to stand up on his own. Protecting these men was his responsibility. For a split second, he looked old and lost, but the moment passed. He gritted his teeth, and the color returned to his cheeks. His eyes burned like gimlets. He powered up his cell phone and began to dial frantically.
“I know a place,” he snapped. He ordered Azran loaded into the backseat of one of the Mercedes. “You’re going, too.”
“No way,” I said definitively. “We can’t risk that. I’m fine.”
I wasn’t fine. I felt a wave of nausea rolling over me. A cold sweat had broken out on my forehead and was dripping into my eyes. Earlier, I had dismissed Lady Luck as a crutch for the lazy and the wicked, but the truth was that she had been faithful to me over the last week and never more than two minutes ago. A couple more steps, and it would have been me lying under a blanket next to Lukas, making a widow of my wife and leaving three kids fatherless. Or it could just as easily have been me squirming on the ground, throat scorched, lungs shredded like popped balloons.
“Have a couple of your boys take me to the safe house,” I managed to say. “And make sure the safe house has a decent liquor cabinet and a hot shower.”
“You look like shit, my friend.” There wasn’t an ounce of sympathy in his voice. The anguish and the anger had drained from his face. All that remained was a stoic mask. For a split second, our gazes met, but I didn’t see even a hint of resentment in his eyes. I wouldn’t have blamed him had there been.
Charlie shouted orders to three of his men as the wail of sirens harkened in the distance. Then he climbed into the Mercedes next to his nephew, and the car leaped away from the curb. We were only a matter of seconds behind him. But when Charlie’s ride reached the intersection, they turned south. The Mercedes carrying me went straight for two more blocks before swinging into a neighborhood filled with brick cottages. You couldn’t call the pain in my head a headache; it was more like an internal train wreck. I didn’t know whether to be sick or to put a bullet in my head. Instead, I curled up on the black leather of the backseat. I faded in and out as we rolled through the city.
I sensed the Mercedes slowing. I opened my eyes as it turned and plunged into a garage beneath a three-story building. Might have been an apartment house. Maybe a small hotel. The door scrolled closed, entombing us in darkness before a weak fluorescent light flickered from the ceiling. The guards hustled out. One opened my door and helped me up a short flight of stairs, across a carpeted foyer, and up a second flight of stairs, which seemed to go on forever. My knees felt weak. My eyes blurred.
I sensed a door being opened, but that was the last I remembered.
I came to on a surprisingly comfortable bed. I don’t know what I’d been expecting; maybe a broken-down couch in a flophouse. I was light-headed, but I could feel the crisp white sheets and smell the fabric softener. Odd, what hits you first. What hit me second was that the nausea was gone. Okay, good start.
The room was dark, but the air, like the sheets, was remarkably clean. Something pressed across my face. I jerked my hand toward it. Then relaxed. There was a plastic tube lying across my upper lip. My fingers traced the shape of a cannula clipped under my nostrils. I followed the tubing to a green oxygen bottle on the nightstand. Night’s purple glow outlined the dark curtains over the windows. And then the question: how long had I been here? I calculated. The bombing has occurred in midafternoon, around 1:30 P.M. I couldn’t see a clock, but it had to be late evening, given the light.
In a span of two seconds, I self-diagnosed. Heart rate: fifty-eight. Decent. Lungs: not great; in fact, they hurt like hell. Obviously, the bomb blast had caused some damage. Flex index: 82 percent. Better than expected. Headache: throbbing, but better.