Swanson was down behind the crest, his back against a tree and the map spread before him, talking by encrypted telephone with Sybelle Summers back at Camp Baharia. “The site is very active. Something is going to happen soon. A pair of Russky jeeps carrying four guys pulled in a few minutes ago, and a man in a white doctor’s coat is leading them around.”
“Can you get to the building?”
“No way. We’re in a good hide about seven hundred meters away and uphill, but there is a big clearing around the site, the same kind of discoloration and dead foliage that we found at the first one. Too much ground to cover undetected in broad daylight, and we don’t know how many people are in there. Some IRG are also in the area.”
“How is your passenger?”
“Holding up good. We’re all watching to be sure she doesn’t get too weirded out and do anything stupid if she actually sees her brother down there.”
“Okay. Call if you need me. Slider Base out.”
As soon as he terminated the call, Travis Hughes was at his side. “We need you up there, Shake. The white coat dude is pointing at us.”
“THE WIND NORMALLY COMES from that wooded high ground to the north and pushes on down through the valley,” explained Director Ali Kahzahee, sweeping his hand toward the range of foothills that led down to the plain on which the site was located. “Our weather forecast today is ideal, with some rain moving in this afternoon. You can already feel the breeze building up, and it will increase, coming from that way. Obviously, we have placed the experimental stations downwind.”
Juba was not interested in a weather report. “Is this the final test?” He had left his men at the jeeps while the director gave him a tour.
“I believe so,” replied Kahzahee, lifting his chin in the direction of the cages. “It worked perfectly in animal trials, and I have a high level of confidence that it will work down there today.”
They strolled casually, discussing details, to the first cage, a six-by-six wire enclosure crowned by circles of concertina wire. Three men were inside, all emaciated and fearful of what the day would bring. Two had been arrested during crackdowns on government dissidents and the third was a common criminal, but it made no difference now. They knew they had left the category of human beings and were now just expendable laboratory rats, listening in horror to the explanation Director Kahzahee gave to Juba.
“At this station, there will be a one hundred percent fatality rate within five minutes. First will come an icy feeling as the liquid goes into their pores and attacks their pulmonary systems, which will make them strangle and suffocate. When they attempt to wipe it away from their skin, they spread it to uninfected areas. The effects are irreversible and very painful. Our autopsies have shown significant damage to the major organs as the oxygen supply is terminated.”
Juba looked at the terrified dark eyes. They were scared, yes, but still there was a spark of defiance. Stubborn people, but it no longer mattered.
Another fifty meters and they came to the second cage, this time with a man, a teenaged boy, and a middle- aged woman with long gray hair as the experimental subjects. Juba had a faint recognition. She was a famous writer who had been heavily critical of the government. Once he placed her face, he ignored her. “This group will have the same reactions as the first. I anticipate complete success.”
“They will all die within a few minutes?”
“Yes.” The director made the same predictions at the next two cages, still spaced fifty meters apart, then they approached the next to the last enclosure, which was 250 meters from the first one. “This is where things change sharply. Even with the prevailing breeze today, all of the subjects in the final enclosure will survive for much longer and may recover entirely with proper medical help.”
Juba liked what he had heard. “Well, Director Kahzahee, it sounds good. Let’s get on with the test and see if you have earned your money.”
They returned to the jeeps, where the rest of the scientists had gathered with their measuring equipment and a metal container the size of an oxygen tank. Everyone put on hazmat suits. They were upwind, but none wanted to take a chance with the deadly genie that was about to be set free.
“THERE HE IS! I see Mahmoud!” Delara Tabrizi grabbed Kyle Swanson’s arm. “There in the second cage with the woman with gray hair. He’s alive.”
Swanson shifted his own binos over and saw the three people clustered together behind the wire. “It’s impossible to get to them right now,” he said. “We have to wait.”
“I can go by myself. They will not suspect a woman, and then you can shoot them all from up here and call in airplanes.” She started to stand, and Swanson pulled her down hard.
“Listen to me! I’m in charge here and you are a free rider. You don’t do anything at all,
“I cannot just let them kill my brother!”
“You will not be allowed to compromise this mission, Miss Tabrizi,” he warned. “Our job is to see what is in that building and what they are doing. We will save the boy if we can, but right now, we all stay put. Travis, sit on this woman if she tries to go anywhere.”
Swanson turned back to the scene below. There was nothing they could do now but watch. When he saw the men below donning their biochem protective gear, he turned and softly said, “Everybody get the MOPP suits on. Right now.”
All four of the watchers slid out of sight below the ridgeline and struggled into their protective gear, with Hughes helping Delara figure out the bulky outfit. Even the smallest size was too big for her and hung around her in folds.
Kyle ignored her. He needed a plan. Something.
MAHMOUD TABRIZI KNEW HE was going to die today. He had not really expected to live very long anyway after his awakening to the ideas passed along by some of his friends, subversive talk about establishing some other form of government in Tehran, a loosening of the police state tactics, and profound questions about the teachings of the mullahs. That was treason, and he knew it and didn’t care, and he had become known in places where revolution was discussed. Three weeks short of his seventeenth birthday, as he sat on the dirt in a barbed wire cage, he believed that although his contribution had not been much, he had made a difference among the coming generation of students in Iran.
He thought about his sister, Delara, the only other surviving member of their family, and prayed that Allah would bestow many blessings upon her. Mahmoud never believed that religious nonsense that women were lesser than men, nor that he was going to live in some fairy-tale paradise once he died. What counted was what one did while one lived.
The teenager reached out and took the hand of the woman in the cage with him. She had made a difference in the struggle, and he felt honored that they would be together at the end. Although her clothes were now shabby and she was very weak, she had wielded the power of written words. Her poems and stories had bounded across international borders, and the government had been unable to stop them, so they arrested and tortured her. “Do not be afraid, Mother,” Mahmoud said. “No matter what these dogs have done to you, or will do to us, you will always be one of our true warriors.”
The woman looked at the boy with her watery eyes and tightened her grip on his hand. “Freedom, my young friend Mahmoud. Let us cry out for freedom, even with our final breaths.”
A TECHNICIAN IN A white hazmat suit drove a four-wheeled ATV to the first cage, pulling a cart with a pair of large containers strapped inside. He parked just beyond the reach of the prisoners and unhitched the trailing cart. He secured the canisters so they pointed in the correct direction, then adjusted a nozzle that would diffuse the gas inside when the valve was opened. When one was empty, the other would begin to unleash its deadly contents. The three men trapped inside the cage had lost their fear and were
