Lion of Babylon

by Davis Bunn

  Once the man was outside, Fareed’s voice rose a full octave, picked up by one of the Iranians riding in the second bus. This second man hollered at Fareed. Marc assumed the second man was displaying anger after hearing how Fareed had dropped all of their bribe money. Someone farther down the bus’s aisle laughed softly. Marc hissed the men to silence.

  The customs officer must have realized he risked losing at least some of his cash. He turned away from the second bus. With a final disgusted swipe at Fareed, he stomped back toward the guardhouse. He had not asked for any papers.

  Josh started the bus, ground the gears, and greeted Fareed with, “Way to play the scene, baby.”

  “I do good, yes?”

  Duboe intoned, “And the winner for best actor is, can I have the envelope please.”

  Marc let them cheer a moment, then said, “Okay, get ready for Act Two.”

  – – The Iranian border crossing was something else entirely.

  They rounded a concrete barrier and rolled forward the quarter mile. Ahead of them stretched the same pitted asphalt, the same limp flagpole, the same decrepit house. But the three bearded guards who awaited them all wore tailored black uniforms and very alert expressions.

  Fareed hissed, “Revolutionary Guard.”

  “Is that normal?” Marc asked.

  “I have never legally passed the border.” Fareed discussed it with the other two Iranians on their bus. “We are thinking, yes.”

  From his position behind the wheel, Josh muttered, “We got trouble.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m being pointed to a parking spot on the other side of that truck to our left. Looks like they’re sending the second bus to the right side of the customs house.”

  Marc keyed his comm link. “Hamid, you there?”

  “Very much yes.”

  “Tell your driver to get in tight to our bumper. Don’t let them split us up.”

  “I hear and obey.”

  “Everybody check their comm links are on, then lock and load. Here we go.”

  The customs officers wore their trousers tucked into their boots, like paratroopers on parade. But their beards were scraggly, and the fronts of their shirts were stained. They carried side arms, with the holster flaps snapped in place. Josh drove the bus slowly, saluting the officer through the windshield.

  Marc asked, “Who’s behind the wheel in bus two?”

  “Is Yussuf.”

  “Have him pull over to our left,” Marc ordered. “Ignore that guard yelling at you out there; his gun is still holstered.”

  Outside their bus, the first officer had been joined by a second. Both began shouting and waving their arms. Josh pulled around a truck laden with burlap sacks filled with vegetables. Through the open window, Marc smelled earth and some peppery fragrance. The truck driver stood by his load, gaping at the two buses moving against the officers’ orders and now grinding to a halt on his load’s other side.

  Fareed asked, “Do I go out?”

  “Stay where you are,” Marc said.

  “If I am not coming, they will grow more angry.”

  “Hold tight.” Marc crouched and edged forward. “Josh, can you handle their backup?”

  “Got it.” The buses had old-fashioned windows that slid open on runners. Marc would have thought it impossible for a full-grown man to exit through one. But Josh made it out so swiftly that he was gone before the customs officer started pounding on their door.

  Marc slipped into the driver’s seat and gripped the lever that opened the door. “Fareed.”

  “Yes?”

  “Hold your breath.” He slapped open the door.

  The customs officer stomped up the metal stairs, shouting garlic into Marc’s face.

  Calmly, Marc drew the gas canister, aimed the nozzle, and sprayed.

  The officer choked once and then sprawled at his feet.

  Duboe sprang forward. “Glad to know that sucker works.” He pulled the plastic cuffs from his belt and lashed together the man’s hands.

  One of Josh’s men came up beside Duboe. He slapped a strip of silver tape over the officer’s mouth as Duboe secured the man’s ankles with a second tie.

  “Hamid?”

  “Here.”

  “We have one down and secure.”

  “We have taken out a second.”

  Marc watched Duboe and Josh’s man haul the limp body down the aisle and deposit him in an empty row. “How many left?”

  From Hamid, “One comes around truck now, he heads for your bus. Inside the guardhouse I do not know.”

  “Hang tight.” Marc raised up from his seat and saw Josh slip from beneath the truck. He attacked the third officer from behind. The man collapsed without a sound.

  Marc hurried down the stairs and helped Josh maneuver the inert officer into the bus, where he was tied and gagged and deposited beside his mates. “Fareed, Josh, let’s go. I need one more volunteer.”

  Duboe was already up and moving. “I’m your man.”

  Hamid was there to meet them as they came around the dark front of the bus. “What now?”

  “I need one of your men,” Marc said. “Not you.”

  “But I-”

  “A team leader needs to stay and direct operations if things go wrong.”

  Hamid did not like it, but he turned and said, “Yussuf.”

  When they were joined by Hamid’s man, Marc said, “Tell him to track close to Josh. Fareed, you’re on point. Duboe, you shadow his footsteps. Everybody check their comm links. Fareed, you have the rest of the money?”

  “Is here.”

  “Start for the customs house. Tell them you need to pay your duty. Tell them loud as you can.”

  “They will think I am insane, offering money without argument.”

  “Good.” Marc turned to the others. “Have your spray and your firearms at the ready. Track Fareed, stay unseen. If the officers don’t emerge from the guardhouse, hit it hard.”

  Josh asked, “What about you?”

  “I’ll circle around back, try to find a rear entrance. Let me know when you’re in position. Ready? Let’s move out.”

  Fareed started around the rear of the truck, out where the lights were brightest. The rest of them slipped forward to where the truck’s hood met the shadows.

  Beyond the light’s perimeter there was nothing but rocky earth and the detritus of a guard station. Marc moved silently, tracking Fareed. Josh and Yussuf molded to the wall by the side window as Marc moved around back. Duboe held to one pace behind Fareed, playing like a dumb lackey, both men doing their jobs extremely well. Fareed crossed the parking lot, fanning the bills over his head and calling loudly.

  Rounding the back of the guardhouse, Marc found a door whose upper half was glass. A shade was pulled down, but a tight slit of light shone at the bottom. Marc risked a glance, saw a large room lit by a bare overhead bulb, and a pair of legs stretched out from behind a side cupboard.

  Marc tested the handle, turned it silently. The door was latched at shoulder height. Marc caught a glimpse of a ready room with a burner and a bare table and chairs. He smelled old coffee and grease.

  “Three guards in the front room,” Duboe muttered in Marc’s earpiece.

  “Go.”

  Marc slammed his good shoulder into the door. The latch snapped off. He piled into the rear room and surprised the officer whose chair leaned against the side wall. His belt was open, gut spilling over his trousers. He froze in the process of lifting a cigarette to his mouth. Marc sprayed him tight in the face and raced through the door leading to the front.

  Pistol in one hand and canister in the other, Marc flung open the door and ran silently down the narrow hall.

  He entered the front room to find Fareed gaping at a guard, who was in the process of rising and aiming a gun at his chest. The guard’s face was turned away from Marc, so using the spray risked bringing Fareed down instead. Marc hammered the guard in the temple with his gun.

  The ro
om was suddenly very crowded as Josh and Yussuf shot through the door. Duboe went for the guard closest to the doorway, shoving him across the room and ramming him against the wall.

  Marc spun and chopped at the third guard, but the man used the radio to shield himself as he tried to aim his side arm. Marc rammed the table hard into the man, then leaped over and gripped the gun hand, bringing it down into the radio. Sparks flew and the guard jerked as the electric current drilled him. The man slumped to the floor beside his two mates.

  Marc rasped, “Anybody hurt?”

  Fareed puffed, “Is all good.”

  While Josh sprayed each of the downed guards, Marc checked out the front door. The parking area was silent, the night empty. “Let’s move these guys out the back way.”

  They were struggling across the rocky earth when Hamid and two others appeared. Together they bundled the limp bodies into the second bus, where the prisoners were trussed and gagged and sprayed a second time.

  Marc and Duboe and Josh stepped out and checked the night. The trucker still stood on his rig’s other side, his hands full of papers. He was watching the guardhouse and muttering to himself. Beyond the barrier separating them from the Iraqi border, a long row of trucks waited their turn. Two motors rumbled. Otherwise the night was silent.

  Marc said, “We’re done here. Let’s move.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  E leven and a half miles past the border, the terrain shifted drastically. Marc knew the exact distance, because Duboe’s laptop came equipped with a military-grade GPS. Josh watched the shifting map over Marc’s shoulder. “They plant a satellite on permanent duty overhead, just for little old us?”

  Duboe did not respond.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  A half-moon had risen above the ridgeline. To their right, a rocky stream glinted as it meandered along a wide gulley. Josh said, “Come monsoon time, that whole valley will be filled to the brim. The water will hold enough force to carry away trees, trucks, bridges, whole villages.”

  Duboe asked, “Where’d you see that, Afghanistan?”

  Josh did not reply.

  “What I figured,” Duboe said.

  The valley was lined by tall slender trees with bushy tops, shaped like a child’s drawing. Duboe said, “Reminds me of the cottonwoods back home. You never go wrong, digging for water around a cottonwood. No matter how dry the country. Only problem is, the roots can go down twenty feet or more.”

  Josh asked, “Where you from?”

  “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 va
lley’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 the previous evening, he declined Miriam’s offer of a late dinner and went straight to bed. He would have preferred to eat something. But if he had sat at the table, the three would have fed him questions with the food. And Sameh had not been ready to talk.

  He slipped from the darkened bedroom, padded into the kitchen, and was surprised to discover Miriam and Leyla seated by the courtyard door.