Chapter Fourteen

They slept through the day, the earthen walls of the cave keeping the air around them bearable, if not cool. When the sun was low enough to put nearly the entire wadi into shadow, Pardivari went out and opened the windows on the SUV.

“Like an oven in there right now,” he said. “Need to let some heat out. You hungry? We got us a treat. MREs, boy: turkey goulash!”

Blake laughed and accepted the pale tan plastic package. “How many of these you eat a week?”

“Not many. Only when I’m on the move, like this, and I don’t get out and move unless I have to. Mostly I stay with my church folks. They eat a lot of rice . . . chicken and goat. That sort of stuff: your standard Middle Eastern menu. Far as I’m concerned, this here’s a little taste of the old days, back when I was a green beanie.”

Blake set part of the ration aside to heat. “What about home? You ever miss it?”

Pardivari stepped out of the cave for a second, gauged the height of the sun, and sat in the entrance. “Suppose I do, sometimes. Lot of what I miss isn’t there now. My folks had me after the time when most people are done raising kids; they both passed back while I was still in the Army.”

He slid his food out of its cardboard container. “If why I stay here is what you’re gettin’ at, I guess the work is the main thing. It’s the best-kept secret in Western media that Christianity is the fastest-growing religion in the Middle East. Here in Iran, Ahmadinejad tries to keep a herd on that by permitting a certain number of churches and then controlling what they can do, and how. That’s where the house churches come from. It’s like the underground was in occupied France, only it all revolves around faith. These people put their lives, their livelihoods, their homes, and their families on the line every time they gather to pray. I can’t help but admire that . . . makes me want to do what I can to help them.”

Pardivari fell silent. “I’d better get the engine started. This old girl runs pretty good when she’s warmed up, but she stalls pretty easy when she’s cold. Like me, I guess; the older you get, the longer it takes to get the aches and stiffness out, so you can start movin’.”

He nodded at Blake’s MRE package. “We’ll take those with us, bury ’em an hour or two out. This here cave’s a pretty good hide; I might want to use it again sometime.”

THEY DID JUST THAT, swinging off-course and stopping to bury their waste after two hours of driving in the dark. They used the stop to re-fuel as well, replenishing the vehicle’s tank from a jerry can of diesel. Then they were back on the move, Pardivari driving the little SUV at a pace barely faster than a man could run. The terrain turned more stony and the missionary was wearing night-vision gear. Even with it, he had to swing off-line frequently to avoid patches of boulders.

Blake didn’t talk. He could tell from Pardivari’s frequent glances at the compass that the missionary was doing the math in his head, calculating the deviations from their heading and then adding the degrees back in to put them back on course. The lack of conversation and the rocking of the Pushpak had their effect and after half an hour or so Blake nodded off.

He woke when the vehicle swung abruptly to their right and accelerated. Blake sat up and reached back, taking the pistol out of its waistband holster. He looked at Pardivari. “What’s up?”

Pardivari swung off between two truck-size boulders.

“Chopper,” he said. “On our six.”

He threw the Pushpak into neutral and yanked on the emergency brake. “Better bail.”

The two men ran away from the SUV and took cover behind a smaller group of boulders. Blake could hear the rotor noise from the helicopter now. He located it and saw the running lights. As he watched, a searchlight stabbed down from the approaching aircraft, swept the ground for five seconds, and then winked out again.

“They onto us?”

Pardivari shook his head. He was still wearing the night-vision gear. “Don’t see how. We’re headed toward the village, but I’ve swung east, to avoid Ilam—capital of the province, good-size city. No one knows we’re taking this route except me.”

The pitch of the noise went up as the helicopter bore down on them. The searchlight came on again and swept the empty ground between their patch of boulders and the larger rocks, where the truck was hidden.

“Worked,” Pardivari said as the helicopter raced by, not two hundred feet off the ground, rotor noise dropping in tone as it passed. “Those big rocks soak up lots of heat during the day. They’re still radiating it; masks the signature of the jeep, if they’re using thermal.”

He watched the helicopter as it flew northwest. “That’s a Toufan. Attack helicopter: Iran began building them, couple years ago. Vahidi, the defense minister, worries about tanks coming out of Iraq . . . or across Iraq.”

Blake cocked his head, listening.

“More coming,” he said. “Not the same type. Different rotor noise.”

This time it was a group of five helicopters flying in a loose V formation. They were flying nearly a thousand feet higher than the Toufan, but following the same course.

“Hueys?” Blake asked.

Pardivari rocked his hand. “Bell 214s. Like a Huey, only bigger. Holdovers from back before the revolution. What they use when they have to move troops in a hurry. Five of them can carry seventy people plus crew . . .”

He looked to the south. “More coming.”

Another flight of five helicopters swept over.

“You said seventy troops apiece?” Blake asked.

“That, plus two flight crew per chopper.”

Blake did that math. “Wow. That’s . . .”

“You got it,” Pardivari told him. “A full company of air cavalry.”

“Is it common for them to move troops like this?”

Pardivari stood up, scanning the southern horizon with the night-vision goggles.

“Not common at all. Like I said, the Bells date back to the time of the shah. Iran has a good refit program—so good they can pretty much build a 214 from scratch if they need to. Your oil dollars at work, don’t you know. But ten of them is probably about a third of what they have operational right now. So this? This is pretty major.”

They began walking back to the SUV.

“You know what bothers me the most though . . .” Pardivari said as they got to the Pushpak.

“What’s that?”

Pardivari pointed northwest.

“Them boys are all headed in the same direction as us.”