The Ares Decision

68

After they were relieved of their backpacks, it was made crystal clear that if they fell behind, they would be left to die. And the threat wasn’t an idle one. With the wind picking up again and a high-pressure system pushing temperatures into the single digits, they wouldn’t last long with only their skis and the clothes on their backs.

For now, though, it appeared to Smith that they were safe. The nine men who had ambushed them were disbursed in an ever-​lengthening line across the open plain. He glanced back to check on the man charged with guarding him and saw that he was stopped more than a hundred yards back, leaning weakly on his poles as someone helped him off with his oversized pack and slipped it over his own shoulders. Smith smiled when he realized that the young soldier’s benefactor was none other than Peter Howell.

Beyond the initial barked orders and threats, none of their captors had said much of anything. In fact, Smith still wasn’t dead sure who these men were. Had they been sent by Farrokh? Were they an Iranian military patrol taking them to prison for violating the border? Were they bandits or drug runners interested in a ransom? All questions had thus far gone unanswered.

What he did know was that it was a fairly ragtag unit. Their fitness and skiing ability were all over the place, and their equipment was dated at best and on the verge of falling apart at worst.

Smith picked up his pace, feeling the cold air penetrate his lungs as he closed in on the unfortunate man who had been stuck taking possession of his seventy-pound pack. One of the soldier’s hands was stuffed in his jacket, and he held both poles in the other as he shuffled awkwardly forward, the cold and monotonous grade starting to take their toll.

He was startled when Smith came alongside and yanked down one of the pack’s side zippers but was too tired to do anything to protect himself against the weapon he assumed his American prisoner was retrieving.

Instead, Smith pulled out a pair of state-of-the-art ice-climbing gloves that he’d been carrying as spares. The young man looked at him over wire-rimmed glasses caked with ice and gave a short nod of thanks.

Smith sped up again, passing one exhausted captor after another until he settled in behind the man on point.

“Your team needs a break.”

The man tensed and twisted around, apparently surprised that his prisoner had been able to close the gap between them so quickly and silently.

“Perhaps it’s you who needs the rest?”

By way of response, Smith just thumbed behind him.

The man looked out over the line of stragglers, his irritated frown turning to an expression of disgust when he saw Howell, now carrying both a pack and a rifle, giving an impromptu seminar on efficient snow travel.

“Academics and intellectuals,” the man said in lightly accented English. “They’re loyal to the movement, but even with training so many are…What’s the word I’m looking for?”

“Unathletic?” Smith offered.

The man shook his head, sending a cascade of snow from his hat to his neatly trimmed beard. “Wimps. That’s it. Not like you Americans and British. In the West a doctor and an old man can penetrate the jungles of Uganda, escape one of the cruelest terrorists in the world, and then travel forty miles into the mountains of Iran. You’re killers. Born and bred for it.”

He skied away and Smith just let him go.

“Making a new friend?” Howell said, coming up behind him. The next closest man was more than fifty yards back, struggling to incorporate the Brit’s advice into his skiing technique.

“Actually, I’m getting the distinct impression he doesn’t like us. Based on what he just said, though, I think we found the people we were looking for.”

“And that means we’re supposed to trust them?”

“Don’t have much choice.”

“I used to have a mate who liked to say, ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’”

“Used to have?”

“IED. We never managed to scrape up enough of him to put in a box. I guess he finally answered his own question, though.”

Smith didn’t respond, taking off up the canyon at a pace that once again brought him up behind the man breaking trail. “I think we need to remember that we’re on the same side here.”

“Are we?” he said without looking back. “Like we were in 1953 when the CIA deposed our democratically elected leader and replaced him with a dictator?”

Smith knew he should just remain silent — this man was their only chance to find Farrokh. On the other hand, it wasn’t in his nature to just roll over when his country was insulted.

“Am I mistaken, or was that in response to him nationalizing British Petroleum’s holdings in Iran?”

“Ah, yes. Your oil. The most important thing in the world — more important than the lives of innocents. More important than the democracy you want to force on everyone. That is, everyone but the Saudis, where women aren’t even allowed to operate a car.”

“All we ask is that you send us a relatively stable supply of fuel and don’t harm our citizens. In return, we agree to keep a gigantic money hose aimed at the entire region.”

“And if we don’t want your money? If we want to pursue a nuclear deterrent against your government, which has publicly threatened us with annihilation?”

“That was never our government’s position — it was just a few congressmen shooting their mouths off.”

“But regimes and circumstances change, do they not?”

“I don’t think we’re going to resolve the world’s problems today,” Smith said as the sun dipped behind the mountains. “So why don’t we just say that both of our countries have been very naughty and focus on what’s ahead instead of what’s behind?”