The Last Run

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

They had been driving ever since leaving Natanz, even when Chace had used one of the three cell phones Shirazi had taken from the dead men to call the embassy, to make contact with Caleb Lewis. She was wearing a new manteau, this one black, and a new scarf to hide her hair, also black, both provided by Shirazi.

They had taken the dead men's weapons and their ammunition, and all of the bottles of water in the refrigerator, four of them, and some of the food, mostly dried fruit, but some bread, and a wedge of very pleasantly sour cheese. Then, just before they stepped out of the house, Shirazi remembered the surveillance monitor, and stepped back inside long enough to put two bullets into the hard drive that had recorded the video of Chace in the cell.

Then they were in the car, Shirazi climbing behind the wheel of his own Mercedes-Benz, a new E-Class model this time, as far related from the embassy car Chace had been pulled from as was possible. It was only then, when they were pulling out, that he did anything that might've betrayed his own excitement and fear, accelerating so sharply that the wheels cried, spinning uselessly before catching pavement. Then they were speeding along the road.

"Not that I don't appreciate everything you've done," Chace said, "but where are we going?"

"North, again," he told her. "The Caspian."

"You've got a boat?"

"No, we'll use your route."

"My route's fucked in the ear, mate," Chace said. "There is no route."

He'd slammed the brakes, bringing them to a halt as quickly as they had pulled out. "You had a fallback?"

"Tabriz, and it wasn't prepared," she said. "We're not getting out to the north."

"Your people must have another route." Shirazi looked at her, incredulous. "There must be another route!"

"My people have written me off. Because your people shot me, then arrested me."

Shirazi swore in Farsi, the car idling on the side of the road, and Chace realized he didn't know what to do.

"Turn around," she told him. "Take us south, just keep us moving south."

"There is nothing to the south," Shirazi said, but he put the car back in gear, spun them around. "Only the ocean is south."

"Can you swim?" she asked.

He glanced at her sharply, saw that she was smiling, and then burst out laughing.

"I was right about you," Shirazi told her. "You were the one I wanted all along." After the first call to Caleb, she'd turned off the phone and then rolled down the window, flinging it out of the car. It was useless now, compromised, and as all of the phones were the same model, identical in all respects, she didn't want to confuse herself and use it again by accident. She let the window remain open for a few minutes after that, breathing the cold air, feeling the steady throb of her chest with each inhale, each exhale, but there'd been no real difficulty in breathing, certainly nothing like what she'd experienced previously. Then she'd rolled the window back up, readjusted the scarf around her hair.

"How long until they know what you've done?" Chace asked him.

"They may know already," Shirazi said. "My deputy, Zahabzeh, he went back to Tehran early this morning, against my orders, and with your things. I am sure he told our Minister that you were in custody."

"Tall guy? Beard and mustache? Youngish?"

"Thirty, and yes, beard and mustache and tall."

"He questioned me."

Shirazi glanced at her, hearing something in the tone, then back to the road. "My apologies."

"Yes," Chace said. "He was rather insistent."

"You are all right?"

"I'm bloody aces right now, my friend. I've got a bullet lodged somewhere in my chest, an occlusion bandage covering a hole in my back, and a one-way valve sticking out above my left tit. What could be better?"

"I can think of three things, immediately."

Despite herself, Chace laughed, then wished she hadn't. Laughing made the pain in her chest worse.

"Zahabzeh," Shirazi said. "He is a hard-liner, you would say. Always suspicious, always… self-serving."

"You think he suspected what you were doing?"

"He knew something was not right. We had opportunities to take you before Noshahr, and I told him no, and that certainly made him suspicious. It was only Hossein's death that kept him beside me for so long, his fear that he would be held responsible for it. Now, of course, I have freed him from that, because he will blame me."

"He smart?"

"Smart enough."

"Does he know you well? Well enough to guess what you're thinking?"

"No. He doesn't know me at all."

Now it was his tone that caught, made Chace look at him again, more closely. "How long have you been planning this?"

"For years, Miss Chace."

"You can call me Tara."

"Then you must call me Youness."

"Years?"

"Ten years now, I should think. Once the reforms began rolling back. But it was only in my mind to do it, an idea, not a plan, then. After the Green Revolution, that was what made me realize it was time to act. The election, you know, was a complete fraud. I am still somewhat surprised that anyone thought it would be otherwise. We are a police state, Miss Chace, not an Islamic Republic. There is no rule of law, only a rule of power."

"I'm not sure I understand."

"Ah, well, I am not sure I am explaining myself very well." His shoulders lifted, dropped again in an exaggerated shrug. "It is the difference between the reality and the promise. The promise brought people into the streets, particularly our women, you see, because they believed what they had been told. But the reality brought the Basij into the streets, with their sticks and their batons, with the Republican Guards holding their leash, and the two could not coexist. They cannot coexist. Until the promise is realized, I cannot, before God, serve the reality."

Chace nodded, not speaking. They were racing along the road, and if it had been any other country, she would have suggested Shirazi slow down, to try and not draw attention to the vehicle. But it was his country, and he knew it, and if nothing else, she couldn't argue with wanting to put as much distance between themselves and Natanz as possible. The landscape was radically different from what she had seen in the north, along the Alborz, much more like the deserts of the American Southwest, bare and hard, bathed in gold by the setting sun.

"Do you believe in God?" Shirazi asked her.

Chace thought of Tamsin. Then she thought of Tom Wallace, and the way he had died in Saudi Arabia.

"I want to," she answered. Chace called the embassy again just past five-thirty in the evening, thinking that enough time had surely passed by now for Caleb to have relayed her initial message to London, and for London to have responded, to have prepared an exfil plan for her and Shirazi. She debated with herself before making the call, however, worried about the exposure, afraid that she was being too hasty. If Shirazi was correct, the search for them was certainly on by now, and there was a good chance that any conversation would be overheard. Having to call a third time would only create greater risk.

She dialed the number from memory, asking again for Caleb Lewis, and the call went through much more quickly than it had the first time, which she took as a good sign. That Lewis answered before the phone had finished its first ring she took as even better.

"It's me," Chace said.

"Your father called," Caleb Lewis said. "He has the following message for you: delighted you have acquired rare cougar. Stand by to record the following."

Chace swore silently, with her free hand began searching around her in the car, yanking open the glove box, then the compartment in the armrest beside her. Shirazi shot a worried glance her way, and she saw that he had a pen clipped to his breast pocket, reached out and plucked it free, clicking its end. She bared her arm, wedging the phone.

"Proceed."

"First sequence, F-T-R-E-A-F-L-T. Second sequence, E-Y-E-I-E-Y-R-A. Third sequence, R-R-E-L tomorrow. Confirm."

"Confirmed."

"Dad says you know it like you know yourself."

She grinned. "Understood."

The line went dead, and Chace switched off the phone, lowered the window, and winged the mobile out of the car. She closed the window again, examined her arm, began decoding the message with the pen, still writing on her skin. It was dark enough in the car now that halfway through the process she was forced to turn on the interior light, but once she did, the work was completed quickly enough.

Chace stared at what she'd written on her arm, then clicked the light off again, offering the pen back to Shirazi, who shook his head, vaguely amused by the gesture.

"They have a plan?"

"Yes," Chace said. "Exfil location and a time. Do we have GPS?"

"I had hoped to use yours, but Zahabzeh took it."

"The car doesn't have one, the sat nav?"

"See for yourself."

Chace leaned forward, grimacing as she did so, fiddling with the control dial for the display on the center of the dashboard. She brought up the map screen, and instead of seeing a display of Iran, instead found a message in Farsi.

"Translation?"

" 'That feature has been disabled in this vehicle,' " Shirazi told her. "But we're near Yazd, and I was thinking it was time we switched vehicles there. We should be able to find an Internet cafe, or, at the least, a store with a map. The coordinates, what are they?"

"To the west of here, near the border with Iraq, I think." Chace read the numbers off her arm in the weak light. "Know where that is?"

"Not precisely. You are correct, though, it would be near the border. They'll take us overland?"

"Possibly."

"That does not give me comfort. The border is well guarded since the war, will be even more so with Zahabzeh looking for us."

"I can call them back if you like," Chace said. "Tell them it's not going to work for us."

Shirazi's laugh, this time, was more forced. "No, no. That would be even less wise." They dumped the car outside of Yazd fifty-six minutes later, Chace standing watch while Shirazi removed the plates, locking them away in the trunk. He had a satchel, a shoulder bag, and he put the water and food and two of the pistols inside of it, he and Chace each carrying another, concealed. When she saw the bag, Chace had a good idea what it carried, and a glimpse inside while Shirazi was loading it confirmed it; it was his go-bag, stacks of rials and American dollars, some clothes, and several reams of paper. A rainbow flash of light caught her eye, the refraction from a CD.

"What's on the disk?" she asked.

"Disks," Shirazi said, zipping the satchel closed and slinging it over his shoulder. "And every personnel file I could lay my hands on. This way. Keep your eyes down, try to conceal your face, and do not speak. I will do the talking."

Chace lowered her eyes as much as she dared, Shirazi taking her by the elbow, and together they walked along the streets of Yazd, bustling with dinner-hour traffic. The further south in Iran one went, the more conservative the country became, and here, wherever she looked, Chace saw women wearing the chador, hiding everything but their eyes, and even with her manteau and maqna'e, she felt underdressed and exposed. Shirazi set a brisk pace and, shuffling to keep up, despite her long legs, Chace felt a burn in her chest, joining the ever-present background ache.

There were soldiers at the corner ahead of them, nearly a dozen that she could see, milling around a vehicle, and Shirazi turned them left, heading east along a narrow street, past ancient mud-brick buildings. The lane twisted, wandering, and she was having trouble catching her breath now, was about to tell Shirazi they had to stop, to slow down at the least, when they emerged suddenly into a newer part of the desert city, hearing music, bright lights shining from windows opposite them. Shirazi halted.

"This will do." He pointed, and she followed the line from his hand, almost laughed when she read the sign painted over the door of the building opposite them. Farsi and English, and the English told her it was an Internet cafe, THE FRIENDLY CAFE, and the irony was practically absurd. Shirazi glanced about the street, then looked at her. "You must wait outside, here. Stay in the shadows."

She nodded, stepped back into the alley from which they'd emerged. Shirazi darted across the street, then slowed, entering the building. She saw him through the window, raising a hand to someone out of sight, and then he crossed the room, disappeared behind the line of heads and monitors. Chace put a hand to her chest, the burning sensation gone, her breathing still pained, but regular. She could feel the butt of the pistol tucked at her waist, digging into her skin. She checked her watch, saw that it was almost seven in the evening, three-thirty or so back in London. Tamsin would be finished with school, would be coming home with Missi, assuming that Tamsin had gone to school at all that day.

Shirazi emerged from the cafe seven minutes later, turning left as he exited, heading for the corner, and Chace stepped out of her shadows, paralleling him from her side of the street. A police car rolled past, part of the traffic, and she kept her head down, and then Shirazi was crossing to meet her, taking her again by the elbow.

"We have a long way to go before tomorrow night," he told her. "It is near the border, only forty, fifty kilometers from it, in Abadan, a point on the river. I printed the map."

He reached into a pocket, pushed a folded sheet of printer paper into her hand, and Chace tucked it beneath her manteau without opening it. "How far?"

"Seven hundred, perhaps seven hundred and fifty kilometers. It is not as bad as it seems, most of it is across desert, unpopulated areas. If we are discreet, we could make it without being detected."

"We need a car."

"Yes." Shirazi pulled back on her elbow, bringing her to a halt once more. She risked a glance up, saw that they were now just outside the glare of a brightly lit marquee of a movie theater. He pointed at the parking lot, just beyond the edge of the lights. "Do you see one you like?"

Chace looked at the cars, trying to remember how many vehicles she'd stolen already since coming to Iran. She couldn't, and realized with morbid humor that she had truly lost count.

"I like the Renault," she told him. The Renault, it turned out, was both a good and a bad idea. A good idea because they had no trouble breaking into it, nor in getting it started; bad because, almost as soon as they were out of Yazd, heading southwest along the highway and into the frigid desert night, one of the warning lights on the dashboard came on, telling them that the car needed gas, and would need it soon. Considering how fortunate she'd been with cars thus far, Chace could hardly hold it against the vehicle.

Some twenty kilometers along the road southwest, nestled in a valley, was Taft, and just outside of town Shirazi pulled to the side of the road.

"There should be a service station still open," he told Chace. "It may be watched. Get in the back, pretend to sleep."

She considered the logic, nodded, and changed her position in the car accordingly. Shirazi set them off again, and Chace propped herself gingerly on her right side, face towards the back of the rear seats, feeling the Renault's motion as they descended further, then leveled out. The car slowed, turned, came to a stop, and diffuse light filtered in around her. Shirazi opened the door, and she heard an exchange in Farsi, stayed still, listening hard for anything that might be an indication of trouble. Then the Renault rocked again, and Shirazi was back behind the wheel, and they were leaving the lights behind.

"No trouble?" she asked, turning and sitting up.

She caught his smile in the rearview mirror, thin and uneasy. "No trouble, no."

Chace reached forward, thinking to pull herself back into the front seat, then thought the better of it as her chest and back sent out separate flares of warning. She winced, wondering what was happening inside of her. She was aware that her breathing had once again become incrementally more shallow, wondered if the dressing on her back had slipped, or if this was some further complication.

"We're going to need to stop," she said, finally. "We need to check the dressing on my back, maybe change it."

Now there was no smile in the reflection off the rearview, just concern, and Chace was heartened by its apparent sincerity. Whether or not he actually gave a damn about her as anything more than a means to an end, she didn't know, and it didn't matter; he needed her as much as she needed him, and both of them, she knew, had already realized they would succeed or fail together.

"I left the kit in Natanz," Shirazi said, after a second. He sounded bitter, disappointed in himself.

"We can make do," Chace told him. "Gauze and Vaseline."

"Vaseline?"

"Petroleum jelly."

"Ah, yes, I understand."

Chace drew another breath, this time aware that it was half what it should've been. The back of her mind began to crawl frantic, warning of the need for air.

"We'll need to do it soon," she said. They climbed out of the valley, back into the desert, and another thirty kilometers or so out of Taft turned into another service area, this one brightly lit in the night, much larger than the one they'd stopped at before. Shirazi parked them away from the pumps, in the shadows near a large building that looked like it had begun its life in the United States, during the fifties, perhaps as part of a drive-in movie theater. The architecture was so absurd that Chace had to keep from laughing at the sight of it, the series of retro-space-age arches that bent over the structure.

"What is that?"

"The Shah," Shirazi said, as if that was all the explanation required. "I will see what they have inside. I should not be long."

He climbed out of the car, and Chace took the opportunity for a last look around the station, seeing it empty, before lying down again as she had in Taft, affecting sleep.

She'd had her head down for long enough to wonder where he was, when she heard the sound of another vehicle entering the lot, the vibration from the engine strong, a diesel, perhaps. Doors slammed, and now there were voices, and Chace moved her hand to the gun at her waist, freeing it so it lay between her and the seat. Light shone in from above, began sweeping the car, and her already diminished breathing grew shorter, and she waited for the beam to hit her.

There was another voice, a shout, and the light cut quickly away. The voices moved rapidly off, and she pushed herself up, peeking through the window, saw that the vehicle looked identical to an old American Army jeep, hardtop, so much so that she wondered if it wasn't one, or a very precise knockoff. She counted four soldiers, rifles raised and set at their shoulders, and all of them were pointing their weapons at Shirazi, who was standing in a puddle of light from the building, hands raised. In one of them, she saw he held a small, white paper bag.

As she watched, one of the soldiers lowered his weapon, reaching forward, towards Shirazi. Another began reaching for his radio, and Chace knew she couldn't allow that; if the call went out, any call at all, that would be it; even should they escape it wouldn't matter, because more would come, soldiers in trucks and helicopters and tanks if need be, and there was no way they would ever outrun or evade them.

She brought her pistol up in both hands, aimed and fired all together through the window, trying to get up on one knee in the back of the car. The shots were devastatingly loud in the enclosed space, and she didn't hear the window as it shattered, firing twice more, and the third shot caught the soldier with the radio in the neck, made him jerk and drop. She shifted her aim, firing again and again, managed to catch another of them, but all had begun to react, and the returning fire in her direction clattered against the car, broke glass and tore through metal. She tried scrabbling back, screamed as something ripped at her right shoulder. Her arm gave out, and she pitched to the side, off the seat, onto the floor of the car.

There was another cascade of shots, automatic-weapons fire, and then, as abruptly as it had begun, it ended. Chace tried to push herself off the floor, found her right arm useless to the task. She fell back, chest heaving for air, and then the rear door was being torn open, and she saw Shirazi, pistol in one hand, the silly paper bag in his other. He swore in Farsi, reached into the car, not for her but for his go-bag, slinging it quickly, then a second time, now pulling her free, hands under each arm, and Chace screamed again when he did it, despite not wanting to, despite not wanting to waste the air.

"Can you walk?" Shirazi demanded. "Can you walk, Tara?"

She nodded.

"Quickly, this way." He slung an arm beneath hers, supporting her, and she bit back on another cry, managed to turn it into a whimper. Her right arm, she saw, was soaked with blood and dangling uselessly. Some distant voice, objective and all-seeing within, wondered idly if it would have to come off. She hoped not; she wasn't certain how she'd hug Tamsin with only one arm.

He got her to the jeep, dumping her into the passenger seat, then hurried around to the other side, climbing behind the wheel. Chace croaked at him, trying to reach for the top of the manteau with her left, clawing at it. The engine kicked alive, and then they were racing out of the station's lot, into the darkness, just darkness all around, until Shirazi realized and switched the headlights on.

"They didn't call it in," he told her. "You were just in time, they never had a chance to report it, but the station will. We have to get off the main road, we have to put distance between them and us."

Chace's fingers caught the neck of the manteau, and she pulled at it uselessly, feeling the strength in her left arm fleeing, as if trying to imitate her right. She croaked at Shirazi again, trying to say his name, but he was bent over the wheel, eyes fixed ahead, barely sparing a glance to the mirrors.

With the last of her strength, she slapped at his arm, and he looked at her then, and whatever he saw made his expression open in alarm. She motioned to the manteau, unable to speak, her fingers pawing lamely at the buttons on her front. He looked back to the road, then to her, reached out with his free hand, and she put hers on it, trying to guide his palm over her chest, trying to press it to the catheter. His hand slipped out from beneath hers, moved to her back, pushed her forward in the seat until Chace's head was against the dashboard. She felt his hand on her back, then beneath the manteau, and then there was an incredible pain as his finger plugged the hole in her back.

She wheezed, inhaled with a sob, exhaled, repeated, this time taking air deeper.

"Tara?" Shirazi said. "Tara? What can I do?"

She ground her teeth together, the pain from the wound in her back enough to eclipse the trauma from her shoulder. "Don't… move your… finger," she managed to say. "Catheter… has a one-way… valve…"

From the corner of her eye, she saw him nod, still driving with one hand on the wheel, the other on her back. With the entry wound blocked, the catheter was allowing the air trapped in her chest to escape, but the problem, quite obviously, was that as soon as he moved his finger, it would happen all over again. She was dimly aware that the new wound was a problem as well, but wasn't quite sure why.

"You're losing blood," Shirazi said.

That was it, she was losing blood. "Kit," Chace whispered. "First-aid kit?"

"We'll need to stop."

"Don't. Not. Yet."

He glanced at her, back to the road again, then shook his head. "No, we have to stop."

She tried to protest again, but the pain was simply too intense then. The jeep slewed to a side, barely slowing, and they came off paved road onto dirt, the transition rattling them both, and the movement of his finger wedged in her back made her cry out again. She bit into her lip, trying to ignore it, to feel past it, felt her teeth pop skin, tasted blood.

Then the jeep stopped, and Shirazi was shifting carefully around, hand still anchored to her.

"Tara, listen to me. I have to move my hand now. The kit, this is a Guard's jeep, they have a good kit. Pressure bandages, occlusion dressings, they have all of it. But I have to have both hands."

Chace nodded feebly.

"Try to remain calm. Try to stay calm."

The pain in her back exploded, fresh and renewed, as soon as his finger slipped from the wound. She was barely aware of his movement, of him straining around beside her, reaching into the back of the jeep. Her breathing went again, this time disappearing with terrifying speed, and Chace was aware that she couldn't make a sound now, even if she wanted to. His hands were on her back, on her skin, and she felt something tear, a distant vibration through her flesh, and in the silence of the jeep and the night, she heard the air hissing out of her chest, from somewhere below her chin. He gently pulled her back from the dashboard, sat her upright in the seat. She heard his door open, then, a moment later, hers, and he was working at her shoulder, now.

"Clean wound," he was saying. "It went straight through. You saved my life, Tara. Thank you."

She opened her mouth, then closed it again. It suddenly seemed like too much effort to speak. When he was finished doing whatever it was he was doing to her shoulder, he slipped his hands around her, pulled her out of the jeep. She tried walking, but her legs went boneless, and he had to drag her around to the rear of the vehicle. With some effort, he got her inside, laying her on her back. He tore the left sleeve of the manteau, exposing her arm to the elbow, and there was an almost insignificant pain, and she saw that Shirazi was now hanging an IV bag from a hook on the side of the jeep.

"We've got to keep going, Tara," he told her. "We've a long way to go still."

She nodded at him, and he turned to climb back into the driver's seat.

"Youness?" Chace asked softly.

He stopped. "Yes, Tara?"

"Why do they keep shooting me?" she asked.

She didn't understand why he laughed.