“Abilene.”
One of Josh’s men two rows back said, “They grow ’em mean in Abilene.”
“You’re about to find out just how true that is.”
“Old man like you,” Josh scoffed, “probably need to carry you.”
“We hit ground zero,” Duboe said, “you’ll be eating my dust.”
“Big words, old man.”
The laptop gave off a soft chime. Duboe said, “We take the left fork two hundred meters ahead. Pass through a village. The road enters the foothills immediately after. Turnoff is a dirt road ten miles beyond this turning.”
Marc asked through his comm link, “Hamid, you catch that?”
“Yes. Is good.”
The road swung away from the river, trundled through a ramshackle collection of hovels, and started to climb. The curves were easy at first, the slope gentle. But soon enough the road entered a series of switchbacks so severe the buses ground down to first gear and fought for a hold. The men stared over the precipice at villages and moonlit fields and a distant ribbon of water.
Marc asked, “How are we doing on time?”
Their aim had been to arrive in the night’s final hour. Duboe checked his watch against the GPS and replied, “We’re in the green.”
Marc moved up the central aisle and sat in the seat opposite Fareed. “You good to go?”
“Yes, everything very clear.” Fareed hesitated, then was urged on by a whisper from one of the other Iranians. “Only please, one question.”
“Fire away.”
“How we are to return? I ask…” Fareed stopped because Josh had moved forward to crouch beside his seat.
Marc said, “Go on.”
Fareed eyed the soldier nervously. “If you do not plan to return, is good. No, not good. But we are with you still.”
“I do not send my men on suicide missions,” Josh said. “Rangers do not leave Rangers behind.”
“Josh, be cool,” Marc told him.
Fareed said, “When the border guards do not check in, their headquarters will worry. The truckers, they will also call and complain about the wait and no guards. The Revolutionary Guard, they will send, what you say…?”
“Reinforcements.”
“Yes. Many. And they will patrol all the border area.”
Marc said, “We have a plan. That’s all I can tell you right now. But we are coming back, and you are coming with us.”
Josh leaned in close and said, “You are part of our team. My task is to do the job, then get the whole team out alive.”
Fareed studied the soldier’s face, and decided, “I am thinking it is very not good to have you be my enemy.”
“You got that right.”
Duboe called forward, “Turning is five hundred meters on your left.”
Josh patted Fareed’s shoulder. “Time to put your game face on.”
The Iranian frowned. “What is this, game face?”
But Josh was heading back down the aisle.
– – The road was far more than a simple trail, as Marc had suspected ever since seeing the image of the seven trucks. The turnoff was rutted and barred by a rusting metal gate with signs in Farsi. Barbed-wire fencing stretched out in both directions. Josh and Marc checked the fence for trip wires, then broke the lock and pulled the gate wide. They motioned the buses forward, then off-loaded the trussed and still unconscious border guards into heavy undergrowth.
Josh and Marc walked ahead of their transport for several hundred meters, checking for pressure mines, wires, motion detectors. They found nothing. When they reached the first bend, Josh sidled up beside him and said, “If they’re wired for sound, it’s too well hidden to find.”
Marc nodded. “My guess is they mostly rely on the fear factor.”
The road had been freshly graveled, packed and graded, then covered with a thin layer of pine straw. When they returned to the bus, Duboe pulled a sat phone from his pack and said, “Time for ET to phone home.”
Marc gave a single nod.
Duboe punched in a number, lifted the bulky handset, and said, “Do you have us?” He listened, gave Marc a thumbs-up, then asked, “Can you give us a live feed?”
Duboe cradled the sat phone on his shoulder and keyed the computer. “Okay, I’ve got it. You’ll give our friends a heads-up for the return journey? Roger that. Duboe out.”
Marc slipped in beside Duboe as Josh leaned over the seat. The satellite image showed darkened buildings, little more than etched shadows. Cooking fires burned like candles. Men were strips of red, mostly prone on what appeared to be bunks. Josh said, “Spooky.”
“Tell me,” Marc agreed. He tapped his finger down the right side of the village’s only lane to their target building. “Still got the jumble of bodies in there.”
“Looks like the house left of target is used as barracks,” Duboe said.
“Our plan is to get in and out without waking them,” Marc said.
“You know what they say about military plans,” Duboe replied. “They only hold together until the first shot is fired.”
As they continued their slow rumble forward, the hills lined with sage and desert pine grew steeper. The air through the open windows was spiced with a minty flavor. The temperature was now cool enough to dry their sweat and make breathing easier.
The first hint of dawn began to appear to their right, a faint wash more gray than blue. Overhead, the last stars faded away. The moon remained, heavy and silver and hugging the valley’s opposite peaks. The pines rose like black sentinels to either side of the road.
Duboe said, “Guard station at four hundred meters. I show two bodies. Both standing.”
Marc ordered the buses to stop. But when he started down the aisle, Josh gripped his arm and said, “My team has trained for this all our lives.”
“Get it done.”
Josh pointed to a couple of his men. Together they slipped silently down the steps and into the trees. Marc heard the Iranians behind him murmuring, no doubt surprised at how the trio were in plain sight one moment, then gone the next. Outside the bus, a bird offered a first chirp.
Duboe said, “I count eight guards in the village. Two in front of our target, both stationary, possibly asleep. Two on the path behind the house. Four more on the move.”
Marc nodded but did not speak. Thoughts about what lay up ahead had given way to a memory, one he had not thought of in years. When Lisbeth had entered the hospital that final time, Alex had moved into Marc’s Baltimore home. Nothing had been said. Marc had simply come back from the hospital to find Alex cooking dinner. They had not talked much, not that night and not in the five weeks that had followed. But Alex had always been there. Through the last hard hours. The funeral. The dark nights that followed. Alex had cooked and coaxed and gently helped Marc form borders around the shapeless days.
It was only now, as Marc stood on the periphery of a Persian village, that he saw how Alex had given meaning to the word servant.
Marc turned his face to the lightening sky and murmured, “I’m coming.”
Chapter Forty-Four
S ameh rose the next morning just after five, as hungry as he had been in years. When he had arrived home
