by Dale Brown
“We’re near a road the Quds Force uses to truck arms from the capital to the Taliban in western Afghanistan,” said the captain, leading Turk and Grease to a shallow cave where they could rest. “That’s good and bad—good, because we’re likely to be left alone. Bad, because if someone spots us, they’re likely to be armed. And there’ll be a bunch of them.”
“We’ll be ready, Cap,” said Grease.
“Probably never come. Pilot, you should get some rest.” The captain took a quick look around. “I’ll wake you when it’s time to go. You got about eight, nine hours.”
Turk set the control pack down against the back wall of the cave, then leaned against it. There were no blankets or sleeping bags—they would have been dead weight on the mission.
Better bullets than a pillow.
One of the trainers had said that in Arizona. Not Grease. But who? And when? The sessions, so intense at the time, were now blurred in his memory. Everything was blurred.
He should sleep. He needed to be alert.
“What’d they do with the car?” he asked Grease.
“They’ll get rid of it somewhere.”
“Were they civilians? The people who came to the house. It was a civilian car.”
“I don’t know who they were. Would it matter, though?” added Grease. “We have to do this. We have to succeed. If we don’t do it, a lot more people are going to die. A lot.”
Turk didn’t disagree. And yet he was disturbed by the idea that they had killed the civilians.
“Rest easy, Pilot,” said Dome, checking on them. “You got a busy night ahead of you.”
“Is that my nickname now?” Turk asked.
“Could be. There’s a lot worse.”
Turk shifted around against the backpack, trying to get to sleep. As his head drifted, Turk remembered falling asleep with Li the night before he left. He relived it in his mind, hoping it would help him nod off, or at least shift his mind into neutral.
4
Washington, D.C.
“I’VE NEVER SMOKED IN MY LIFE.” PRESIDENT TODD rose from the chair, defiant, angry, ready to do battle. “Never.”
“I know.” Amanda Ross raised her gaze just enough to fix the President’s eyes. Dr. Ross had been Todd’s personal physician for nearly twenty years, dating to Todd’s first stay in Washington as a freshman congresswoman. “I’m sorry. Very sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Todd folded her arms and tried to temper her voice. They were in the President’s Sitting Room on the second floor of the White House, used by Todd as a private, after-hours office, a place she could duck into late at night while her husband slept in the bedroom next door. Now it was two o’clock in the afternoon, and with the exception of the Secret Service detail just outside the door, the floor was empty, but Todd didn’t want to broadcast her condition to even her most trusted aides. “Just give me the details plainly.”
“It’s a relatively . . . well not rare, but lesser, um . . .” The doctor stumbled for words.
“Lung cancer,” said Todd, a little sharper than she wished. “Yes.”
“I’m sorry, Chris. Madam President.”
“Chris is fine. We’ve known each other long enough for that.” Todd reached her hand to the doctor’s arm and patted it. “I do want to know everything. And I’m not blaming you.”
“I know.”
Todd squeezed the doctor’s arm, then sat back down in the chair. “Tell me everything you know about large cell undifferentiated carcinoma. I won’t interrupt until you’re done.”
“I’M NOT RESIGNING.” PRESIDENT TODD POINTED HER finger at her husband. For just a moment he was the enemy, he was the cancer.
“Resectioning your lung, followed by chemo? Chris-tine.”
The way he said her name, dragging it out so that it was a piece of music—it took her back in time to a dozen different occasions, all difficult and yet somehow happily nostalgic now. She loved him dearly—but if she didn’t stay hard, if she didn’t stay angry, she would crumple.
“I did not take my oath only to give up two years into my term.”
“Three, I think.” He looked over his reading glasses. He was sitting up in bed, reading his latest mystery novel, as was his bedtime habit for all the years she’d known him. “And don’t think I haven’t counted the days.”
“In any event, I’m not giving up.”
“Jesus, it’s not giving up, Christine.”
“I have a responsibility to the people who elected me. To the country.”
“Not to yourself?”
“The office comes first.”
“Well maybe you should think about the sort of job you’ll be doing when you’re vomiting twenty-four/seven from the chemo.”
Her lip began to quaver. She felt her toughness start to fade. “You’re so cruel.”
Daniel Todd put the book down and got out of bed. He glided across the room, forty years of wear and tear vanishing in an eye-blink. He reached down to the chair and pulled her up, folding her gently in his grasp. He put his cheek next to hers. She smelled the faint sweetness of the bourbon he’d drunk earlier in the evening lingering in his breath.
“I love you, Chris. I’ll stand by you, whatever you decide. But honestly, love, just for once, could you please think about yourself? Your health. The Republic will survive.”
“I know it will, Dan.”
The President bent her face toward his shoulder, wiping away the single tear that had slipped from her eye.
And then she was over it, back in control.
“I get to the point where I can’t carry out my duties, then, yes, yes, then I will resign. But the doctor assures me—”
“Now listen—”
“The doctor assures me that it is at an early stage. There’s hope. A lot of hope. And a plan to deal with it.”
“I know there’s hope.”
Todd rested against her husband’s arms for another few seconds, then gently pushed him away. She took his hands, and together they went and sat on the edge of the bed.
“When are you going to go public?” he asked.
“I’m not sure yet.”
“You can’t keep it a secret.”
“I realize that. But there’s a lot going on at the moment.”
“Chris-tine. There is always a lot going on.”
“I think what I’ll do is announce it right before the surgery. That’s the most appropriate time.”
“Says you.”
“Yes, but I’m paid to make that decision.” She smiled at him; Reid was always telling her the same thing. “Besides, there’s no sense worrying people beforehand.”
“You won’t tell your staff?”
“I will. But doing that is almost a sure guarantee that it will go public.”
“What about your reelection campaign?”
“That—That is a problem.”
“You’re not running for reelection.”
“No. I agree.” Todd had given it a great deal of thought. Even if things did work out right—and she was sure they would—she didn’t think the public would vote for someone who’d had lung cancer. True, attitudes about cancer were changing, but they weren’t changing that much. Todd herself wasn’t sure whether she would give someone a job knowing he or she had cancer that would require aggressive treatment. So the best thing to do would be not to run. She’d been on the fence anyway; this just pushed her off.
“I’ll avoid the issue for a while,” she told her husband. “If I make myself a lame duck, Congress will be even more of a pain.”
“Avoid the issue, or put off a decision?” asked her husband.
“The decision is made, love.” She let go of his hand and patted it, then moved back on the bed. Her nightgown snagged a little; she rearranged it neatly.
“They’ll
hound you until you say something, once the news about the cancer is out.”
“True. But I’m used to that. The big problem is lining up a successor.”
“You’re going to line up a successor?”
“If I can, yes.”
“How?”
“With my support. I have my ways.”
“Not Mantis?” He meant Jay Mantis, the vice president.
“Don’t even think it.” Privately, Todd called him the Preying Mantis, and it was anything but a compliment. He was the most duplicitous person she had ever met in politics, and that was saying a great deal.
“Who then?”
“I’ll tell you when I’ve made up my mind.”
“I have some ideas.”
“I’ll bet you do.” She pulled back the covers and pushed her feet under. “I have more immediate problems to worry about over the next few days.”
“Chris.”
“Don’t be a mother hen.”
“A father hen.”
Todd let her head sink into the pillow. Her health would wait; she had to deal with the Iranian mess first. Which meant a few hours nap, then back to work.
“Feel like going to sleep?” she asked her husband.
“To bed, yes. Sleep no.”
“That sounds a lot like what I was thinking. Let me turn off the light.”
5
Iran
BY NINE O’CLOCK TURK HAD GIVEN UP ALL ATTEMPTS at sleeping and lay on his back, eyes open, staring at the ceiling of the cave they were huddled in. He was ready for the mission, ready to succeed. But time moved as if it were a man crawling across the desert inch by inch.
He got up and left Grease sleeping to see what the others were doing outside. Dread, the medic who had looked him over, was pulling a radio watch, manning the communications gear with Gorud, the CIA officer.
“How we doing?” Turk asked Dread. The main com gear was a surprisingly small handheld satellite radio-phone that allowed the team to communicate with Whiplash and its parent command. Dread also had a separate device to talk to other team members who were working in Iran, including two-man teams watching the target. There was a backup radio, much larger, in a pack.
“We’re all good,” answered Dread. “I thought you were sleeping.”
“Can’t.”
“I have some sleeping pills. Like Ambien, but stronger.”
“I heard that stuff will make you sleepwalk.”
“Not this. Puts you down and out.”
“Then I might not get up. You got any coffee?”
Dread shook his head. “Can’t cook here. Might see the smoke or the flame. Or maybe smell the coffee. If we had any.”
“None?”
“Got something that’s basically Red Bull. You want it?”
“No, maybe not.”
“Caffeine pills?”
“Maybe I’ll try to sleep again in a little while.” Turk sat down next to him, legs crossed on the ground. “Any sign that we were followed?”
“No. That house hadn’t been lived in for at least three months,” added Dread. “Don’t know what they were up to. Came to buy it or maybe have sex. Two guys, though.”
“Weird, being in somebody else’s country.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just—nothing. They don’t seem to know it’s a war.”
“It’s not a war. We don’t want one. That’s why we’re here, right?”
“Are you ready to do your job?” asked Gorud. His voice sounded hoarse.
“Yeah,” answered Turk.
“Then worry about that.”
“I don’t have to worry about that. I can do it,” added Turk, feeling challenged.
Turk stayed away as the Delta team traded shifts. Around noon he had something to eat—a cold MRE—then tried once more to sleep. This time he was successful; nodding off after nearly an hour, he slid into a dull blackness.
The next thing he knew, Grease was shaking his leg back and forth.
“Time to get up,” said the sergeant.
Turk rolled over from his back and pushed up to his knees. His neck was stiff.
“We’re leaving in five,” said Grease.
“Got it.”
“We’ll get food at the airport.”
“OK.” Turk unzipped the control backpack and checked it, more out of superstition than fear that it had been taken or compromised. Satisfied, he secured the pack and put it on his back.
It was three o’clock. He wished it was much later.
“Car’s here,” said someone outside.
Turk was surprised to see the civilian Toyota from the night before making its way up the rock-strewn trail. He thought they’d gotten rid of it.
“The three of us will use the car to get to the airport,” said Grease. “We’ll be less conspicuous. The rest of the team will be in the troop truck a short distance away. Put the backpack in the trunk.”
“I don’t want the control unit out of my sight.”
“You’re not going to leave the car.”
“It stays with me.” Turk’s only concession was to take it off his back and put it on the floor between his legs.
“If we are stopped at a checkpoint, you are Russians,” said Gorud after Turk and Grease climbed into the backseat. Gorud was at the wheel and a Delta soldier named Silver took the front passenger seat; his accent was old New York, so thick it could have been a put on.
“We are all Russians,” repeated Gorud, making sure they knew their cover. “We are looking for new oil fields and business opportunities.”
“Right,” said Turk.
“You all speak Russian,” answered Gorud.
“Da,” said Silver.
“Yeah,” said Grease, who then added a phrase that translated to the effect that Gorud could perform several unnatural acts if he had any question of the sergeant’s abilities.
Gorud scowled but turned to Turk. “Captain?”
“Ya govoryu na russkim dostatochno khorosho?” answered Turk.
“Tell me that you’re an engineer.”
“I don’t know the word.”
“Inzhenr.”
Gorud worked him through a few different phrases. Turk couldn’t remember much—it had been years since he’d spoken much Russian, and then it was mixed with English as he spoke with his aunt and grandmother. But any Iranians they met were very unlikely to speak any themselves, and in any event, the CIA officer had told him he shouldn’t talk at all.
“For once we agree,” said Turk.
“Use a Ruuushan accent with your Enggg-lish,” said Gorud, demonstrating. “You speak like this.”
“I’ll try.”
“Say ‘I will’ instead of ‘I’ll.’ Do not use slang. You are not a native speaker. You don’t use so many contrac-shuns. Draw some syllables out. Like Russian.”
Turk imagined he heard the voices of his relatives and their friends speaking in another room, then tried to emulate them. “I will try to remember this,” he said.
“Hmmph,” answered Gorud, still disappointed.
Turk folded his arms, leaning back in the seat. The CIA officer passed out passports and other papers that identified them as Russians, along with visas that declared they had been in the country for three days, having landed in Tehran. Among his other documents was a letter from a high ranking official in the Revolutionary Guard, directing that he be admitted to an oil field for inspection; the letter of course was bogus and the oil field far away, but it would undoubtedly impress any low ranking police officer or soldier who was “accidentally” given it to read.
The euros they were all carrying would impress him even more. Or so Turk believed.
He felt the vaguest sense of panic as a car approached from the opposite lane. It eased slight
ly as the car passed, then snuck back despite the open road ahead. It was hours before dusk; Gorud was vague about how long it would take to get to the airport, and not knowing bothered Turk.
Gorud’s attitude bothered him more—the CIA operative ought by all rights to be treating him with respect, and as a coequal: without him, there was no mission.
A pair of white pickup trucks sparked Turk’s anxiety; similar trucks were used throughout the Middle East and much of Africa by armies and militias. But these were simply pickups, with a single driver in each. Turk closed his eyes after they were gone.
“Just get me to the damn helicopter,” he muttered.
“What?” asked Grease.
“I just want to get on with it. You know?”
“It’ll be here soon enough. Don’t wish yourself into trouble.”
The rugged terrain around them was mostly empty, though occasionally a small orchard or farm sat in a sheltered arm of a hill along the highway. They passed a small village to the west, then passed through a larger collection of battered buildings, metal and masonry. Sand blew across the lot, furling and then collapsing on a line of concrete barriers, which were half covered in sand dunes.
“Old military barracks,” said Silver. “Abandoned a couple of years ago.”
“Glad they’re empty,” said Turk.
Gorud raised his head and stared out the window as they came around a curve at a high pass in the hills. The city lay ahead, but he was looking to his left, past the driver. Turk followed his gaze. He could see a rail line in the distance and tracks in the rumpled sand. What looked like several revetments lay a little farther up the hills. A large dump truck sat in the distance, the setting sun turning its yellow skin white. There were more beyond it.
“What’s going on here?” Silver asked.
“Good question,” said Gorud. “There are mines—but . . .” His voice trailed off.
“But?”
“Missiles, maybe,” he said. “Or something else.”
A reminder, thought Turk, that the problem they were dealing with was vast, and might not—would not—end with this operation.