shooters while hoping he was moving faster than the spreading and invisible cloud of gas. The wind was on his right cheek, not directly behind him, so that improved his chances of escaping. Wet droplets splashed on his arms and face.
The sustained chatter of an AK-47 being fired on full automatic broke the rhythm of the incoming rounds. One of his Chechnyans was returning fire, taking the attention of the attackers and buying Juba a few more steps. The hired gunman was covering the escape in an effort to protect his own paycheck and called out, “Juba! Start the helicopter!”
Juba was standing completely up now, panting and sprinting hard toward the field where an old UH-1 Huey helicopter was stationed, his heels pounding hard. The droplets continued to splash on him. The chopper’s rotors were sluggishly beginning to turn, and the engine was coughing. Almost out of breath, he reached the bird and jumped into the cargo area, rolling flat on his back, his fist tight around the briefcase handle. “Go!” he yelled. “The gas is escaping.”
The Americans had sold a lot of aging Hueys to the old shah before he was deposed, and the helicopters were a common sight around Iran. The pilot had been running his checklist even before the shooting started. He wasn’t worried about some stray bullets, because the Hueys had proven in Vietnam that they could soak up gunfire and keep flying. Bullets were not the threat, but there might be a veil of deadly gas outside his cockpit.
Juba slammed the big side doors shut, found a dry towel, and wiped his face and arms and hands hard, staring straight ahead at the big drops hitting the broad front windows, some of them coalescing into pools.
The pilot made an emergency takeoff, kicking the helicopter to full throttle to let the powerful downdraft of the overhead blades dissipate any gathering fumes. They had to get out of the zone. The tail of the Huey rose sharply up and the heavy nose was almost pointed at the ground; then the lift began as the skids came off the ground. The bird, slowly at first and then more rapidly, sailed along the meadow and then made a sudden jump into the sky, climbing high and fast away from the burning site. No one else had made it out to the field, and the pilot didn’t really care.
KYLE SAW THE THIRD bodyguard hiding behind a Jeep and spraying wildly with an AK-47. The man did not know what he was shooting at and was just throwing out a hail of bullets in hopes of making the attackers duck, or at least pause. Above the racket, Swanson had clearly heard the man shout the name of Juba, but he could not take time to analyze who he was calling to. Swanson pinned the scope on him and saw something happening to his target that made him pause before squeezing the trigger.
The Chechnyan not only stopped firing but dropped his weapon and slapped at his skin. His face was twisted in surprise and then in pain. The bubble of poison gas released by the attack had crawled over the bodyguard, and he was trying to rub it away. Then he began to breathe it, and he stood and ran, as if there were some shelter, grabbing at his throat as if strangling. Kyle understood that the man was trying to reach the water hose and maybe scrub away the lethal drops that were congealing into a gel on his body.
“Cease fire. Cease fire,” Swanson called to Tipp and Hughes. “The gas has them now. Let their little miracle finish them off.”
“Shoot them!” demanded Delara.
“No need,” Kyle replied. “What those men did to your brother is now happening to them. I will kill any who might survive.”
“One got away on the helicopter,” noted Joe Tipp. “I tried to nail him, but he was low and moving fast.”
“Yeah. I took a shot at the Huey, but it was too far away for the Dragunov.”
A slow thirty minutes passed and an uneasy stillness came to the area, as if nature were eager to take back the dead zone. Things someday would grow here again. No curious soldiers came looking for the source of the shooting and explosions because the all-clear siren had never sounded.
The light rain began falling heavier, which would help dampen the traces of the gas.
“I want to bury my brother,” said Delara.
Kyle was eating an MRE ration. “I don’t think we can do that. The body is contaminated now, and we don’t know what the stuff is. In fact, you probably should not even look at it, and you definitely cannot touch him.”
She was also standing. “I don’t care. He was my brother. I cannot just leave him out there.”
“As much as I hate it, we have to leave them all out there. We are taking a huge risk just going into the building for a few minutes.” He stuffed the half-eaten ration back into his pack. “Look, Miss Tabrizi. Whatever was being concocted down there obviously is one of the greatest weapons-grade poison gases ever created. A real terrorists’ cocktail, and we don’t know its properties-sarin, ricin, anthrax, whatever. We have seen how it kills without conscience, and the bad guys have it, which means thousands of people are now in jeopardy. Your brother gave his life fighting these maniacs, so don’t you think he would want you to do everything you can to bring them down?”
She was near him. Delara knew what he said was true, but…“He is my brother,” she whispered softly.
She looked so small, and there were tears in her eyes. Kyle stepped close and wrapped his arms around her. “I know. I am so very sorry.”
“Our chopper will be here in ten minutes, Shake. Let’s do it.” Travis Hughes had his MOPP suit on.
“Right. Tipp, you cover us from up here with the RPK, then take Miss Tabrizi over to the field where that other helo was. Make that the designated landing zone.”
“I want to go with you!” Delara’s response was immediate.
“No. You really don’t,” Kyle answered, but with a gentle tone instead of that of a combat commander. “You will want to remember your brother as who he was. You don’t want your last memory of him to be a close view of what they did. Please, Delara, I’m asking that you stay here with Joe. Travis and I are doing a quick search and then we’re out of there. Speed is necessary, and you would slow us down…maybe put us all in danger.”
He and Hughes were already moving, leaving no time for discussion. Delara watched them go and turned to Joe Tipp, who was scanning the area with his binos. “He’s right. Let’s finish this and get out of here,” said Tipp. “Kyle is good at this stuff. Trust him.”
“Kyle? That is his name?”
“Oh, shit,” Tipp said. “Forget I said that.”
Swanson and Hughes moved as cautiously as if skating on frozen glass, determined to touch nothing unless absolutely necessary. They ignored the bodies and the exterior destruction and, wading through a thin film of lingering smoke, moved into the building. The mist was gone, but rain was coming down harder.
The body of the man they recognized as the leader of the scientists was on the floor, killed not by the gas but by two bullets to the back of the head at close range. Hughes had his camera running and took pictures as Kyle probed deeper into the office area, his weapon at the ready. A pile of papers had been thrown onto the floor. File drawers hung open. Desks were empty.
The door at the far end of the room stood open, and the two Marines started downstairs. The lights were still on, and they entered a spacious area of several rooms crammed with laboratory equipment and electronics gear. Every computer had been destroyed, the screens smashed and the hard drives removed and crushed. Shelves were lined with covered containers, and at one end was a sterile room that could be entered only through an airlock. It was empty except for more counters and scientific gear.
The place seemed to Kyle to mirror the one they had been in earlier in southern Iran, only this one was still intact. He shuddered to think of the experiments that went on in this place. Through another door and down more
