There was a very slight hit of an ammonia compound.
“You use rocket fuel to power your taxi?” Nuri asked the man.
The cab driver was baffled. Nuri reached into his pocket for some bills.
“I already paid him a fortune,” said Flash, getting out the other side.
Nuri tossed the money on the man’s lap anyway. “Forget tonight,” he told him. “It will be the best for you. Go home to your family and forget everything else.”
Tarid ran inside the bus station. There were only two buses at the queues, and neither was ready to leave. He glanced at the empty driver’s seat of the one at the head of the line, thinking he might steal it. But a bus would be too easy to follow, and besides, he wasn’t sure if he could even drive it. He trotted in front of it, crossing to the other side of the platform.
As he reached the other side, he saw a man walking briskly into the station across from him, his hand in his pocket. Tarid ducked behind a closed newsstand, moving to the opposite end. He started to look around the corner, but stopped as he heard the footsteps; the man was running toward him.
Tarid turned. The station had a low cement wall on the other side of the bus queue, with several openings to a nearby parking lot. He sprang toward it.
As he did, a shot rang out.
“They’ve put a bomb on the Iranian president’s plane,” Nuri told Reid as he got back into the car. “It has some sort of fuel in it — they’re probably going to set it into one of the fuel tanks or the wing area.”
“You’re sure?” asked Reid.
“There was some sort of fuel in whatever Tarid carried to the airport,” said Nuri. He was using the Voice to connect to Reid’s CIA phone, and there was a slight but noticeable delay as the transmissions synced. “I’m guessing at everything else.”
Flash backed the car up into a nearby driveway, then drove back toward the bus station.
“Where is your subject now?” asked Reid.
“He looks like he’s going on a bus ride. I’m going to follow. We may have a chance to grab him.”
“That may not be wise.”
“He’d be a great source.”
“You’ll have trouble getting him out. We may not even be able to get you out.”
“We’ll see what happens,” said Nuri. “I’ll be back.”
“Hey — that SUV is up on the curb,” said Flash. “And it wasn’t there before.”
Nuri realized it was similar to the truck that the man with the flashlight had been sitting in at the complex. He didn’t even need the Voice to make a comparison.
“Stop the car,” said Nuri. He grabbed the door handle. “Come on. Quick.”
Tarid felt the bullet hit him in the leg. the pain felt absurdly minimal, barely a sting from a bee. He was even able to stay on his feet, running behind a car and throwing himself down as two more shots sailed over his head.
It was only when he hit the ground that the real pain began. His leg felt as if it had been twisted below his knee. It was on fire. Then it seemed that something had grabbed his calf. It was a lobster claw, gripping and twisting.
He started to get up but his leg betrayed him. He no longer had control over it.
He was going to die here, in a parking lot outside of Tehran.
What a shame that he hadn’t made love to Simin.
Tarid began pushing himself forward, crawling away.
He heard the footsteps again, louder, coming for him. Desperate, he rolled himself under a nearby car, trying to quiet his breath.
For a few seconds it seemed as if he had escaped. The footsteps grew faint. The lot was silent. Tarid’s head began to float, his body entering protective shock.
Then something grabbed his good leg. He was dragged out from under the car.
The man who’d held the flashlight when he picked up the bomb was standing over him, grinning. He had a pistol in his hand.
Smiling, the man raised the gun to fire.
The Iranian assassin was so consumed with his prey that he didn’t hear Flash and Nuri running into the lot behind him. Nuri went to the left, Flash to the right.
Flash saw him down the aisle, raising his gun to fire.
Flash clamped his left hand to his right, leaning forward slightly — there was no time to think, or even consciously aim; he pointed the gun and fired.
The bullet hit square in the back of the assassin’s head.
Flash ran forward. He gave a double tap of the trigger into the already dead man’s skull, taking no chances.
Nuri raced from the other side of the lot. He slid on one knee next to Tarid.
“They’re going to kill you,” he told him in Farsi. “We will help you escape. Come with us.”
Tarid was in no position to argue. “Allah be praised,” he said, half delirious from the pain and shock.
74
Breanna leaned back in the copilot’s seat and pulled off her headset. Then she pressed the Receive button on the satellite phone and held it to her ear.
“Stockard.”
“The President wants to recover the warhead after the bombers hit,” said Jonathon Reid. “She wants Danny to help recover it.”
“How?”
“The bomb material should be intact. The rest of the warhead will be mangled, of course. They’re pulling together a team of Delta people and a few other experts. I know Danny has done this sort of thing before.”
“Jonathon, I don’t know—”
“This is exactly the sort of mission Whiplash was conceived for,” said Reid. “Adjusting on the fly.”
There were adjustments, and then there were adjustments. Physically picking up a warhead wasn’t the problem. The mission would require them not only to stay in Iran after the bombing, but to stay near the site.
She worried about losing them. She worried about them dying. Whatever danger they were in now would be multiplied tenfold.
Her father had told her about the fear he felt over losing people before he left Dreamland. Ordering an op might be the right thing to do, but that didn’t salve his conscience. He was always haunted by the cost.
“The Delta people are about two hours away from Baghdad,” Reid said. “They’ll hook up with some Agency people in Azerbaijan who just finished helping some of the inspection teams in Iran. They want to use your Ospreys to get in and out. Do you want to talk to the commanders?”
The head of the task force in Azerbaijan was a former Delta Force colonel named Tom Dolan. He was under contract to the U.S. government as a “consultant”—a nifty way of denying direct responsibility for him if things went south on an operation. Dolan told Breanna that his team would be ready to go in roughly two hours.
She sketched a plan to pick up the Delta combat team in Baghdad at the airport, then fly the MC-17 up to Azerbaijan. There, the two Ospreys she was carrying would be off-loaded and used by the task force and Delta to get to the Iraq site. Boston and Sugar would go as well.
Danny was silent as Breanna explained the plan.
“Something wrong?” she asked.
“We’re talking forty troops?” he asked.
“I didn’t ask the actual count. Not enough?”
“Depends on what happens.”
“There’s a Marine combat team.”
“Get them.”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
Danny hesitated. “Yeah, it’ll be enough,” he said finally. “Don’t worry. Once the bombers hit, there won’t be anyone left here. And we’re pretty far from their forces.”