The Leveling (34 page)

“We’ve got a bomb.”

Mark spoke the warning a second before he actually saw the metal disk in the rider’s hand.

He popped open the door to the Peugeot, ran three steps, threw his shoulder into the approaching motorcyclist, and knocked him off his bike.

The metal disk left the rider’s hand and sailed high through the air. It landed on the trunk lid of the Peugeot. There was no bounce, just the loud
thunk
of a magnet attaching itself to metal.

Amir Bayat yanked open his door. In the backseat the ayatollah was trying to unlock the rear passenger door, but it was a manual lock and he couldn’t get his old fingers around the knob. The motorcyclist sprinted toward the gray Saipa that was blocking traffic. Mark ran after him.

The flash came, blinding white, and was followed by a deafening bang.

Mark’s first thought was that the actual blast wave hadn’t been that bad. Then he realized he was facedown in the road, several feet away from where he’d last been standing.

The motorcyclist was already climbing into the Saipa at the front of the traffic jam. Mark caught a fleeting glimpse of the driver. He looked Chinese.

Mark turned back to the Peugeot. The windows were shattered, the trunk lid had been blown off, the rear seats were burning—and half of the ayatollah’s head was missing.

All around Mark, people were screaming, leaving their cars in the street and running for safety. Mark stood, looking for Amir Bayat, then stumbled back toward the car. Amir Bayat lay facedown in the
joob
. Water and bits of garbage rushed over his head.

Daria ran up and started pulling Amir out of the water. Mark gave her a hand.

The Iranian’s right leg was in shreds. Mark saw bits of bone and cartilage.

“Help me get him to my car,” said Daria.

Bayat left a slug-like trail of blood in his wake, but halfway to Daria’s stolen Paykan, he began to cough. Daria yanked opened the rear door.

Mark heaved Bayat halfway into the car, stuffed his legs in the rest of the way, and jumped in next to him.

Daria threw the car into first and took off as fast as she could.

Mark ripped a manual-window handle off the side of the door, stripped off his shirt, tied it tightly around Bayat’s wounded leg, slipped the window handle under the shirt, and began to tighten the tourniquet.

Bayat moaned something about a hospital. He banged on the window of the car with his fist, but in a weak, dazed, halfhearted way. Mark wasn’t even sure Bayat knew what was going on with his leg.

After eight twists the bleeding slowed to a trickle. Mark used the knife strapped to his ankle to cut a long strip of fabric from the Paykan’s upholstery. He used that strip of fabric, along with another window handle, to fashion an even tighter tourniquet.

“He’ll live,” Mark said, when finished.

Daria had turned off Valiasr and was rocketing down an empty alley. “I’ll get us out of town.”

“I need a hospital.”

Bayat had passed out after noticing that half his leg was gone. Then Mark had taken a blanket that had been covering holes in the Paykan’s upholstery and placed it over Bayat’s legs. Bayat was now awake and more lucid than before.

“Who hit us?” asked Mark.

Bayat’s turban had washed away in the
joob
. His wet hair was dripping into his eyes.

“VEVAK would never do something like this.” Bayat’s breathing was labored. “Not to my brother. My brother, is he—”

“He’s dead.”

“I need a hospital.”

“If you don’t know who ordered that hit, how do you know you’ll be safe at the hospital?”

“I know a doctor—”

“What about your Chinese friends. Could they have turned on you?”

“No.”

“You’re going to take us to my colleague. Now, as we agreed. After that we can talk about a doctor.”

Bayat stared out the window for a while. “There is a house, in the mountains,” he whispered, laboring to speak. “Drive first to Karaj, then north toward Dizin. After an hour the road will split. Go west. Soon you will see a private road, down this road is the house. I need a doctor.”

“I heard you the first time.”

Alborz Mountains, Iran

A
FTER HIS BRIEF
burst of lucidity, Bayat slipped back into a netherworld. His eyes were closed, his head hung limp on the back of the seat, and his face was contorted by pain. Every so often he’d let out a string of whimpers.

They hurtled through Karaj, and then sped north through a series of dumpy little towns with small houses clinging to steep hillsides, through green valleys filled with tall aspen trees, past little concrete roadside mosques where travelers could pray, and across the flanks of several barren hills. A half hour outside of Karaj, they passed a lifeless reservoir. After an hour, Mark smacked Amir on the cheek.

“Where does the road split?”

Amir moaned. “Keep going.”

“For how long?”

Amir didn’t answer. Mark wondered whether he was dying.

“How long?” Mark repeated.

“Soon.”

The Paykan began to struggle as the road became steeper. The air grew colder. Mark saw a little patch of snow tucked into a shady ravine. A few cars with ski racks—headed for Dizin, an aging resort that had been built during the reign of the Shah—sped by them.

They came upon the split in the road and bore off to the west. Five minutes later Amir said, “Here.”

To their right was a dirt driveway blocked by ugly steel gates.

“There will be a guard,” said Amir, breathless. “I must speak with him.”

Mark took out his knife and slipped it under the blanket covering Bayat’s legs. He pressed it against the tourniquet. Bayat winced.

“This guard, he doesn’t get close to the car,” said Mark. “I see him raise a weapon, I cut the tourniquet.”

Daria pulled up to the gate. And waited. And waited some more.

“Where’s your man?” asked Mark.

Amir lifted his head and strained to see through the front windshield. “I don’t know.”

“Is this gate always manned?”

“Always.”

“Is it locked?”

“Yes.”

Mark produced his cell phone. “Call your men.”

“The phone won’t work here.”

Mark checked, and indeed there was no reception. He considered getting out of the car and trying to scope out the situation on foot. But that would take time. Someone might be watching them now.

He leaned across Amir Bayat and used the butt of his knife to smash out the window.

“Sorry,” he said to Bayat. “The window handle was broken. Call out to your man.”

Bayat sucked in a few quick breaths, then called, “Farid?”

“Louder.”

“Farid! Open the gate!”

Mark waited. The road beyond the gate cut through the base of a ravine that was lined with stunted juniper trees and a few larger white pines. Jagged rock-strewn hills walled in the property on three sides, but it was completely open toward the south, letting in plenty of sun. Landslides of black and dun-colored
scree had gathered around the base of the ravine. A flock of gray-bellied crows circled overhead.

“Fuck it,” Mark said to Daria. “Ram the gate. Get us to the house. We’ll improvise.”

Daria threw the Paykan into reverse, executed a quick turn, and then slammed into the gate with the rear of the car. The Paykan’s trunk crumpled, but the gate popped open. Once through, she turned the car around again and floored it. The Paykan bounced over the pothole-riddled road, and the rear bumper, half of which had fallen off, clattered loudly as it hit rocks in the road.

A two-story house built into the hillside at the end of the ravine came into view. Hidden from the road, it was vaguely reminiscent of a Swiss chalet, albeit a utilitarian one. The green metal roof was rusting in places. A long second-floor balcony with steel guardrails stuck out from the front. Brown paint was peeling off in places on the front of the house, where the sun was the most intense. Tucked behind an overgrown privet hedge, and barely visible from the driveway, was the front door.

“Ram the front door,” said Mark.

A man appeared on the second-floor balcony. With a gun. Daria sped up and ducked below the steering wheel.

A few shots hit the roof of the car. Daria kept the Paykan on course. When she was a few feet from the house, she slammed on the brakes. The car skidded into the front door, smashed it open, and came to a stop halfway inside the house.

Mark jumped out. “Stay in the car, low on the floor, with the engine block between you and the house,” he said to Daria. “But call out for help, in Farsi, as if you’re hurt. It’ll confuse them.”

“Who’s them?”

“Who the hell knows.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Me neither. If things get too hot, take off without me.”

Amir Bayat was still upright, but the force of the collision had thrown him forward, so that his chin now rested on the back of the front passenger seat.

Mark leaped over the hood of the Paykan and stepped silently into the house. A stairwell with a chunky wood banister led to an upper floor. Because the house had been built into a hillside, half of the first floor was underground, and there were no windows on the back wall. The lime-green carpet was soiled. The place stank of cigarette smoke and mold.

Now that he was inside, Mark noticed delicate shafts of sunlight streaming in from bullet holes all around him. In the corner lay a dead bearded man. Iranian, Mark guessed. A small trickle of blood, still bright red with oxygen, streamed down his forehead. Whatever fighting had taken place in the house had only ended recently.

Footsteps pounded across the floor upstairs. Judging from the sound, Mark guessed there were at least two men up there.

“Farid!” called Daria in Farsi, from the car. “Help me, I can’t move.”

Mark crouched behind the stairwell. One set of footsteps drew close to the top of the stairs, and then someone fired down the stairwell. If the shooter made it to the base of the stairs, he’d have a clear shot at the Paykan. He’d see Bayat and hear Daria.

Daria called out for help again.

Someone bounded down the stairs taking three at a time and firing an AK-47. Mark waited until the barrel of the gun was just past the base of the stairs and then he swung his knife deep into the chest of a slender man who looked Chinese. He yanked the gun out of the man’s hands, aimed, fired two lethal head shots, and bounded up the stairs.

A voice cried out a question in Chinese from the upper floor. Mark couldn’t understand it, but he tried to repeat the question back, hoping to cause confusion even for just a second.

Below, Daria cried out for help again, but this time, she spoke Chinese.

Mark reached the top of the steps and crept down a short hall to a kitchen, stepping over two dead Iranians on the way.

In the kitchen, pots were drying in a rack next to the sink. A bag of rice had been left out on a stained Formica counter. One of the oak cabinets had been left open, revealing an assortment of mismatched glasses inside. He grabbed a glass and hurled it through a set of double doors.

It shattered on the far living room wall, beneath a large framed photo of a glowering Ayatollah Khorasani that hung over a fraying fake-leather couch.