Fisher inserted a rock screw into a crack, clipped his rope into the D ring, then rappelled down the face. Ten feet from the bottom, as he drew even with the house’s roofline, he slowly leaned backward until he was upside down.
The rear double doors were open. Through them Fisher saw what looked like a dining nook and next to it, a kitchen. Down a hallway, he could see the shadow of flickering flames dancing on a wall.
He righted himself, dropped the last few feet, then unclipped and sidestepped behind the pomegranate. He waited for a full minute, watching and listening. Nothing.
He moved to the rear doors.
From the side walkway, the gate creaked open, then clanged shut. Footfalls crunched on gravel. Fisher drew his pistol, stepped to the wall, pressed himself against it. A second later, the tip of an AK-47 appeared on the walkway, followed by a man.
“Samad?” the man whispered. “Samad—”
Fisher shot him in the side of the head, then rushed forward to catch the falling body. As he did so, the man’s left foot slid out from under him, kicking a shower of gravel against the wall. Fisher lowered him the rest of the way to the ground, holstered the pistol, and drew the SC-20. He stepped back to the doors, peeked through.
A figure darted across the nook and down the hall.
Fisher stepped through the doors, cleared the nook and kitchen, started down the hall. There were doorways to his left and right, both dark. He checked them: empty bedrooms. From the end of the hall came the sound of steel banging on stone and and image flashed through Fisher’s mind:
Fisher rushed down the hall. At the end, he peeked right, saw nothing. Left, a small living room with a tattered Oriental rug, floor cushions, and an open-hearth fireplace. A man was crouched before it, tossing papers into the flames.
“Stop right there!” Fisher called.
The man froze. He turned. His profile was lit by the flames. It was Abelzada.
He studied Fisher for a moment, then narrowed his eyes.
“Don’t do it!” Fisher warned.
Even as the words left his mouth, Abelzada’s hand was moving. From beside his foot, he snatched up an object, started swinging it around. The gun glinted in the fire-light. Abelzada yelled something, a cry for help.
He needed Abelzada alive, had to have him alive. But crouched as he was, there was no guarantee of a wounding shot and there was no time to change the SC-20’s setting. Fisher fired a round into the hearth beside Abelzada’s head. The man didn’t flinch, kept moving, bringing the gun around…
Fisher adjusted his aim and fired.
Abelzada rocked back on his heels, then crumpled over into the fetal position. His gun clattered to the stone floor. Fisher rushed forward and checked him. Dead. The bullet had missed Abelzada’s bicep by a half inch and entered under his armpit. It was a heart shot.
Fisher looked around, thinking, thinking… The box at Abelzada’s feet was still mostly full of papers He spotted a leather satchel lying on a nearby chair. He snatched it up, stuffed the papers inside.
In the distance, he heard alarmed voices shouting in Farsi.
He keyed his subdermal. “Pike, this is Sickle, over.”
“Go ahead, Sickle.”
“Pike, I am Skyfall; I say again, Skyfall.” Translation: now operating in Escape and Evasion mode. “Home on my beacon, LZ is hot.”
“Roger, hold tight, Sickle. We are en route.”
“Message from Sarani, Uncle.”
Zhao looked up. “Yes.”
“There was an attack. Gunfire in the village.”
“How big a force?”
“Small. They estimate less than a dozen soldiers.”
“Not the Iranians, then. Abelzada?”
“Dead. He was in the process of burning material when he was shot. But if he talked—”
“He didn’t,” Zhao said, then went silent. He folded his hands on his desk and closed his eyes for a few moments. The board had changed; a piece had fallen. Zhao imagined the breach suddenly opening in his line, saw his opponent, now confident, moving ahead.
“What about Abelzada’s team?” Zhao asked.
“In place and ready.”
“Then it doesn’t matter. He’s served his purpose. In fact, this is a lucky coincidence. Do you know why?”
Xun thought for a moment. “Abelzada’s a zealot. He might have been tempted to speak out — to claim credit.”
Zhao smiled at his nephew. “Very good. I’m impressed.”
Xun smiled back. “Synchronicity, yes?”
“Perfect synchronicity.”
53
Two hours later, they were out of Iranian airspace and 110 miles southeast of Ashgabat, crossing the Garagum Desert on their way to Afghanistan.
Bird had been true to his promise. Eighty seconds after Fisher’s call, the Osprey had come roaring through the canyon and swept over Sarani’s rooftops, then popped up, did a tidy hover-turn over the plateau, and dropped the ramp twenty feet from Fisher.
After scooping the papers into the satchel, he’d locked the front door, planted a wall mine opposite it, then gone out the back and planted two more mines along the side walkway before scaling the bluff to await the Osprey. As he mounted the ramp, he’d heard an explosion from inside Abelzada’s house, followed by screaming, then by two more explosions from the walkway.
The Osprey lifted off and Bird went to full power, leaving the same way he came in. A half-dozen desultory rifle shots trailed after them, but Osprey had turned down the canyon and was lost in the darkness.
The trip out of Iran went smoothly. Having had a couple hours to study and refine his flight plan, Bird took them past the radar stations along the border without incident and with a minimum of beeping from the warning alarm.
Now Redding and Fisher sat in the cabin, sorting through Abelzada’s papers.
“Yeah, it’s all in Farsi,” Redding said.
“Got some Mandarin here,” Fisher replied.
He checked his watch: six hours until the
There had to be something coming, Fisher thought. Zhao had meticulously planned his game — had probably spent two or more years laying the groundwork. He wouldn’t be satisfied to simply let momentum and chance finish it for him. So what was his final move? Every base on the U.S.’s East and West Coasts were on full alert.
What was the last task Abelzada had sent his followers on?
Two hours later they entered Afghanistan airspace. Fisher sat down at the com console and waited for his call to be patched through to Third Echelon’s Situation Room. Lambert’s face appeared on the screen. Fisher said without preamble, “Abelzada’s dead,” and then explained. “When I found him he was making a bonfire. I got most of it — a few dozen pages in Farsi; some in Mandarin. And we’ve got Marjani. I suspect with the right incentives,
