A few hundred metres from the fence, the streets of the Blue Area were almost deserted. A cool breeze played across Tom’s face, although he still felt clammy. He shuffled along the sidewalk, his ankle beginning to ache from the drop. As he passed a large, detached house surrounded by a brick-built privacy wall he saw a man watching him from an upstairs window and did his best to speed up. He wasn’t sure where he was going. He just wanted to get the hell out.
He thought about ringing Crane. But what could he do? he asked himself. Maybe he could get an asset to pick me up? As he took out the cellphone from his bag, he watched a police squad car slow down as it levelled with him. A white Honda Civic with a dark-blue stripe down the middle, the words “CAPITAL POLICE” on the side. An officer peered over and shone a flashlight into Tom’s face.
“You. Stand still,” he shouted in Urdu.
The car eased into a rest stop about three metres ahead, and Tom sensed his heart rate race. As the cop opened the passenger door Tom risked walking towards him, doing his best to calm himself down. The cop was maybe twenty, clad in dark pants and a light-blue shirt, a black beret riding high on his thin, pockmarked face. He figured the cop had taken him for a vagrant or worse. He was filthy and dishevelled, his clothes ripped. Not your average Blue Area occupant. Then: maybe the ISI has put out an APB already, he thought. But the cop’s hand didn’t go for his handgun in a leather holster on his hip.
“What are you doing here?” the cop asked.
“I’m lost,” Tom said as he reached him.
The cop raised a hand to his lapel radio, said, “You’re coming with me. You–”
He didn’t get the rest of the sentence out. Tom had taken advantage of the raised hand, whipping out a stinging right hook to the liver just below the floating ribs. The cop groaned and sank to his knees. Tom thought about bringing his elbow down onto the back of the cop’s neck, just hard enough to keep him quiet, but the punch had left his victim gasping for air and it wasn’t necessary. Instead, he reached into the bag and pulled out his suppressed SIG. Rushing forward, he ducked down into the space where the car door had been left open. The other cop was older, probably in his mid-forties, with a bushy moustache and double chin. His left hand was pulling at a Steyr AUG rifle lodged upside down in metal brackets between the two front seats.
“Don’t do it,” Tom said, the SIG raised.
The cop’s hand hovered over the rifle before slowly moving back to his waist.
“Take off your radio,” Tom said.
The cop obeyed. Tom reached over and took it from him, threw it to the ground and stamped on it. Pointing his suppressed SIG, he shot the car radio with a round, the circuit spitting out sparks. The cop almost leapt off his seat with shock.
“Ease your sidearm out. Toss it over here,” Tom said, motioning to the seat next to him.
The cop did so. Tom unclipped the rifle’s magazine and slipped it into his bag, together with the cop’s Beretta before ducking out.
“I’ll just disarm your friend. Then you can drive him away. No one is going to get hurt here.”
“He looks hurt to me,” the cop said.
“Maybe his pride, is all.”
“You will never get out of Pakistan,” he said.
The cop grinned. For a fleeting moment, Tom thought the cop knew something. He had no idea how, unless the ISI had in fact distributed his description. Either way, he needed to move. His grinning face had rattled him. He walked over to the winded man, smashed his radio and disarmed him. He started to run, sprinting for a hundred metres or so, ignoring the pain in his ankle.
He saw an alley bordered by a small, wooded park area to the left, and the side security wall of a hotel to the right. He checked the wall for CCTV cameras and shielded his eyes as he spotted one. He guessed he had less than half an hour before the cops reported the incident back at the station. He took off down the side alley, deciding to get out of Islamabad on his own, remembering what Crane had said about using a cab if his car gave up on him. With luck, it would be the quicker option.