Tom Clancy Under Fire (13 page)

Jack stepped directly backward to maintain the sight line, and began scanning the roof. He would find no shell casings, he knew, but if this was where Weaver had died, there might be something. Using the toe of his boot, he began raking the gravel aside.

There.

He stopped and knelt, shoveling gravel with his hands until he’d uncovered a circle three feet in diameter. A patch of the exposed tarpaper was discolored a pale yellow. Jack leaned over and sniffed. He wrinkled his nose. Bleach. In the middle of the patch was a bullet hole. Jack took the pen from his pocket and poked it into the hole but felt nothing.

He put it together in his head: Seconds after Weaver shoots Balaclava, someone kills Weaver himself, then collects the rifle, the shell casings, the spent round embedded in the tarpaper, and Weaver’s corpse, then goes down to Seth’s apartment, puts the body in the tub, then returns to the roof to dump bleach on the blood pool—all while the police sirens are converging on the area. Had this man sat inside Seth’s condo while the police did their door-to-door, or had he calmly left, rifle hidden under his coat?

Whatever the answer, Jack now knew he was dealing with one ice-cold, and well-trained, operator.

Edinburgh, Scotland

Their safe house, a rental cottage on Pettycur Bay, was less than ideal, with a cottage close on their left, but it did have three things Helen had demanded for the operation: a basement, a garage for their van, and a landlord who took cash and considered a handshake better than a contract. Helen had told the old man she would be attending the university next year for her postgraduate degree in art history and that she wanted to spend the summer getting to know the area along with three of her fellow students. The landlord had simply nodded, smiled, and taken the cash.

With any luck, Helen planned to be gone before the next month’s rent was due.

•   •   •

“HE’S A BULL,”
Yegor said, emerging into the kitchen from the basement stairs. Just before the door swung shut behind him, Helen could hear muffled, angry cries from below. “If he keeps this up we’ll need chains. You would think he’d be exhausted by now. I know I am.”

“Leave him. No one can hear him.”

Almost seven hours had passed since they’d trundled the boy and Amy into the van.

After leaving the campus, Yegor had driven the route as he’d practiced several times before, heading directly north to Leith, where he pulled over to wipe the synthetic snow from the license plates before turning onto the coast road. Thirty minutes later they crossed Forth Road Bridge and were headed up the coast, rapidly putting miles between them and Edinburgh.

In the backseat, Olik had sat with headphones pressed to his ears, listening for signs of alarm from either the university security force or the local police. All was quiet. That wouldn’t last, Helen knew. Whoever had slid open that curtain back at Chancellors Court had seen something. Whether it had been alarming enough to call the authorities, only time would tell.

Yegor limped to the sink and splashed some water over his face. He gingerly touched the top of his left ear and winced. In going to the ground with “the bull,” Yegor’s ear had been smashed against the pavement, and the left side of his rib cage was on fire, from either a break or a deep bruise.

“I’ll see to those in a bit,” Helen said. “Sit, I’m making eggs.”

Olik came down the stairs and joined Yegor at the table. In the front room Helen could hear the strains of giggling and vaudevillian music. Roma had found a cartoon network. The man was worrying Helen, more so than before. He was no longer sullen, but simply withdrawn, speaking only when spoken to, and then only in curt replies. This hadn’t gone unnoticed by Yegor and Olik, Helen was sure.

“How’s the girl?” Helen asked Olik.

“Sleeping. I gave her something.”

“I want you to check on her every fifteen minutes. The same with the boy, Yegor.”

Yegor nodded.

Olik asked, “What’s our next step?”

Helen checked her watch. It was almost four a.m. here, so almost seven in Kizlyar. “I’ll make the call in four hours.”

Iran

P
ROVIDING THEY DIDN’T
get stuck in one of Tehran’s often-unpredictable rush-hour jams on their way out of the city, Ysabel told him, the four-hundred-mile journey to Nemin would take about five hours. Though the highway speed limits outside the capital were only 110 kph, they were only lightly patrolled by police.

At six p.m. they pulled off the highway and into a gas station on the southern edge of Ardabil, Iran’s northernmost metropolis and, according to Ysabel, the home of fine silks, carpets, and the best pizza in Iran.

Jack got out and started pumping gas while Ysabel went inside to prepay and get them something to drink. When she emerged Jack nodded at the gas pump’s display. “Translate that for me.”

“Nine thousand rial per liter. About a dollar twenty a gallon.”

“Wow. Must be nice.”

She laughed and handed him a bottle of water. “Jack, you do know where you are, right? We’ve got a few gallons of oil laying around.”

“Funny,” he replied, then thought.

He topped off the tank, then replaced the pump nozzle. As he climbed into the Mercedes’s passenger seat, his phone rang. It was Gavin.

“What’s up?” Jack said.

“Suleiman Balkhi and the Bayqara Group.”

“Tell me.”

“The group’s real, but Balkhi’s not—at least, he’s not employed there. I triple-checked it. The man might exist, but he’s not who he claims to be.”

“What about his cell-phone number?” asked Jack.

“It’s valid. I’ve asked Mr. Clark to look into it. Could be Balkhi’s with VAJA,” Gavin said, referring to Iran’s primary intelligence agency.

“My thought exactly.”

“One other thing: Gerry looked into Wellesley and Spellman. They’re legit. Wellesley’s with SIS’s Maghreb and Gulf States Division. Spellman is NCS.”

The CIA’s National Clandestine Service was the new name for the Directorate of Operations. “Which department?” asked Jack.

“Apparently, he’s ‘without portfolio,’ as the Brits say. Essentially, Spellman’s a free safety.”

“Okay, keep me posted. Tell Gerry we’re headed to a town called Nemin to meet Seth’s agent—”

Ysabel broke in, whispering, “Farid Rasulov.”

“If you don’t hear from me or Ysabel by ten o’clock our time, you can assume things went bad.”

Jack disconnected. He asked Ysabel, “How long until we’re there?”

“Thirty kilometers, but from here the roads get worse. We’re heading into the Elburz Mountains. An hour, give or take.”

•   •   •

BY NIGHTFALL
they’d reached Nemin, a town of about ten thousand sitting on a mostly barren plain surrounded by brown hills. At this distance, perhaps a few miles away, Jack could see the slopes and peaks of the Elburz Mountains against the night sky.

Ysabel followed the main road into the city proper. Jack found the architecture surprisingly utilitarian. If not for the occasional Islamic-style façade on some of the shops, he could imagine himself in any small U.S. town.

“I’m nervous, Jack,” Ysabel said softly.

“Understandable.”

“Let’s go back to Ardabil and have pizza.”

“You can drop me off near the farmhouse. I’ll come find you after it’s over.”

Ysabel glanced sideways at him, her face illuminated by the dashboard lights. “How could you ask me that?”

“I thought you were serious.”

“I wasn’t. I was sharing. Now shut up. Check my gun, will you? It’s in my purse.”

Jack reached behind the seat, pulled out the revolver, and flipped open the cylinder. “You’re good,” he said, then returned the gun to her purse.

“It won’t be enough, that one and yours, if things go . . . Well, you know what I mean.”

Jack did, and the answer was no, her revolver and his nine-millimeter probably wouldn’t be enough to protect them if they were walking into a trap. While Ysabel’s pizza idea did have its appeal, if there was any hope of reaching Seth, it lay at this farmhouse.

“We’ll be fine,” he said.

When they reached the city center, the Mercedes’s navigation system told them to turn right onto Imam Khomeini, which took them southeast, past a sports stadium, then onto an unlit gravel road bordered by drainage ditches half full with standing water. Ysabel drove for another half-mile, then pulled onto the shoulder and doused her headlights. She studied the car’s navigation screen for a moment, then tapped a spot with her index finger.

“It’s up ahead on the right side. You see the light pole?”

“I see it.”

“That’s the driveway.”

Jack checked his watch. It was 7:20.

He took the binoculars out of the center console, lifted them to his eyes, and panned down the driveway to a clearing, where he saw a ramshackle two-story farmhouse with peeling white paint. Jack zoomed in on it. The windows were partially boarded up, but not the front door. Like most of the buildings in Nemin, the house had a distinctly Midwestern feel to it. Diagonally across from the house stood a barn, and beside it a small shed, before which sat a pair of rusting steel drums.

“I don’t see any cars,” Jack murmured.

He handed the binoculars to Ysabel. She scanned the area, then said, “I don’t see any, either, but that barn is big enough.”

A good point,
Jack thought. If Ervaz had in fact arrived early, and not alone, and there were cars inside that barn, then there was little doubt they were walking into an ambush. The problem was, the only way to know for sure was to walk into it.

Jack leaned closer to the car’s nav screen and used his index finger to scroll the picture. After a few moments he found what he was looking for. He turned to Ysabel.

“Is your car all-wheel drive?”

•   •   •

FOLLOWING THE WAYPOINT
Jack set in the Car’s nav system, Ysabel drove past the farmhouse, shut off her headlights, then turned right onto a narrow dirt track shielded from the farmhouse by a screen of trees and overgrown brush. With her eyes scanning the road ahead, Ysabel slowed beside a sloping gap in the shoulder, did a K-turn, and backed onto the dual-rut tractor path. The Mercedes’s ground clearance, significantly less than any tractor, scraped on the raised center dirt strip as she reversed toward the tree line. As Jack had instructed, she kept her foot off the pedal, using the hand brake instead to slow the car to a stop.

She shut off the engine.

“Good enough?” she asked.

“Perfect.”

“Do you think anyone saw us?”

“If they’re in there waiting, probably.” That was fine with Jack. If noticed, their stealthy approach to the farmhouse might force the occupants into action. Maybe. This was the part Jack hated most about these situations—the uncertainty. Eventually you had to make a move, and often blindly or nearly so.
Defense rarely wins the fight,
he reminded himself.

He asked Ysabel, “Should I bother trying to talk you into staying here?”

“I wouldn’t.” She said it with a smile, but there was a set to her jaw that told him she was serious. She didn’t like being coddled, and he’d been doing some of that.

“Okay, let’s go. If you hear even one gunshot, go back to the car. I’ll be right behind you.”

“Promise?”

“Promise,” Jack replied with his own smile. “Unless I’m shot, that is.”

They got out, walked around the edge of the tree line, then headed for the farmhouse’s rear wall, some hundred feet away. The rutted, cold soil crumbled beneath their feet, keeping them off balance. With the nine-millimeter carried in the ready-low position, Jack scanned the house’s windows and corners, watching for the slightest movement.

“Still with me?” Jack whispered.

“Yes.”

They kept moving and were soon standing with their backs pressed against the farmhouse’s wall. The lowermost window was a foot above Jack’s head. He got Ysabel’s attention, pointed at his eye, then at hers, then at the corner of the house to their right. She nodded her understanding. Jack sidestepped down the wall, his eyes moving from the windows above them to the corner he was approaching. When he reached it, he stopped. Behind him, Ysabel gave him another nod and a half-smile. Jack leaned closer to her and whispered, “We’re going for the barn. We’ll be exposed between it and the house. I’ll watch the barn, you watch the house.”

“Got it.”

“If you see anyone in the windows or anyone comes out the front door, fire a round in that direction, then head back to the car.”

“Okay.”

Jack led the way down the side wall, peeked around the next corner, saw nothing moving on the front porch, then kept going, turning in circles and scanning for the farmhouse’s windows as he stepped into the open. When he saw Ysabel had passed the porch and had eyes on the front of the house, Jack turned his full attention to the barn. Ysabel’s gun handling wasn’t perfect, but it was solid enough.

Through the barn door’s slatting he saw a pair of headlights glow to life, casting striped shadows on the ground. Jack never stopped moving but adjusted his course and headed for the steel drums in front of the shed, where he knelt down, the nine-millimeter trained on the barn doors. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure Ysabel had done the same.

She whispered, “Jack . . . what—”

“Eyes on the house,” he whispered, then shouted, “You in the barn! Can you hear me?”

“We hear you,” came the Russian-accented reply. “Are you Seth’s friend, the one I have been talking to?”

“First things first: How many are you?”

“Three.”

“Come out, hands up. Stay in the headlights.”

“Yes, yes, we’re coming.” The man’s voice was steady, without a trace of panic. “I’m opening the doors.”

Jack heard the squeaking of hinges and the double doors swung open, their bottoms scraping the ground. Dust billowed in the glare of the headlights. Slowly, three figures emerged from the barn. As instructed, their hands were up.

“You on the left,” Jack called. “Step into the light.”

When the group was ten feet away, Jack ordered them to stop and turn around to face the headlights.

“Which one of you is Ervaz?” asked Jack.

The man closest to him said, “I am.”

“Why the dramatic entrance?”

“We wanted to let you know we were here. I thought it better than simply coming out of the doors. I did not mean to scare you.”

You failed,
Jack thought. He took a deep breath, willing his heart to slow. “How did I end our last e-mail exchange?”

“I don’t understand.”

“At the end of my e-mail, what did I type?”

“Uhm . . . may I check my phone? It is in my left coat pocket.”

“Slowly.”

The man reached into the pocket and withdrew a phone. He looked at the screen for a few moments, then said, “A dollar sign.”

“Good answer.” This was Ervaz.

Behind him, Ysabel whispered, “Very smart of you.”

“Thanks. I’m checking the barn. If any of them move, shoot.”

Slowly Jack rose from behind the barrels, stepped around them.

“I’m checking the barn,” he told Ervaz. “Stay put.”

“You still do not trust me?”

“No.”

Staying clear of the headlights, Jack walked past the men until he reached the corner of the right-hand door, then peeked around the edge. There was no one. He walked through the barn, cleared it, then reached through the car’s window and shut off the headlights.