11

OFF BANDAR’ABBS, IRAN

The hardest part was waiting before launching the mission. Rankin busied himself with equipment checks and plans, but eventually all he could do was sweat, the excess energy seeping out from the pores of his skin. He wanted to be onshore, rescuing Ferguson—bailing the asshole out, as usual—but prudence dictated they wait until dark. Conners had the site under surveillance; the situation was pretty stable, given the circumstances.

Though in Rankin’s opinion, a bullet in the head might teach Ferguson a lesson.

Rankin had learned to meditate while recovering from a shoulder injury when he was a corporal; he didn’t use the full lotus position he’d learned in the yoga class—too goofy in the submarine, with SEALs all around—but he did sit still in the mess area, hands resting on his knees, eyes zoned into a distant space. It helped for a while, settling his muscles and controlling his breath, but inevitably the adrenaline of the people around him pierced through the temporary veil.

When the time finally came to climb into the escape chamber and board the minisub, Rankin moved slowly but deliberately, as if trying to hold his muscles in check. He sat on the bench of the ASDS next to the SEAL team’s leader, a large, blond-haired master chief petty officer from Minnesota about Rankin’s age. The others called him MC, partly because of his rank and partly because of his name—Mark Carpenter. But he also had the air of an emcee, silently surveying everything and calmly maintaining order.

When the ASDS was ready to slide off the submarine, MC looked at Rankin, lowering his head slightly as if to say, “Are you ready, Soldier Boy?” Rankin nodded. Rather than speaking, MC tapped the navigator, who passed the signal on to the helmsman.

The submarine pushed through the water, a bit unsteady at first. The ride took barely twenty minutes. Rankin wasn’t a very strong swimmer, but the watchfulness of the two SEALs assigned to shepherd him to shore irked him; Rankin felt like a recently weaned lamb, crowded by two sheepdogs all the way to shore.

He saw the signal when they were still a good thirty yards from the rocks. The others made him stop and tread water while the coded sequences of signs and countersigns were exchanged and repeated. It was absolutely prudent and necessary, but Rankin felt mostly annoyance, and when the SEALs finally started swimming forward he realized that he had grown somewhat used to working with Ferguson, whose easygoing demeanor infected everything the Team did, even authentication procedures.

It was an odd realization—if anyone had asked, Rankin would have said flatly that Ferg was far, far too ready to cut corners and take chances.

Conners squatted near the rocks with the flashlight when Rankin pulled himself onto the dry land.

“Hey,” said Conners. He put his hand out and helped him up.

“Yeah,” answered Rankin.

“They’re just local security people, as far as I can tell,” Conners told him. “I got it all psyched out.”

Rankin called over the SEAL team leader and introduced him. Conners filled them both in on the layout and lineup. The other local Iraqi spy was watching the site. They’d gotten close enough to use the boom; the people at the factory had bought the Russian cover story and were torn between demanding a ransom and just letting the two men go.

“I just talked to our guy. No change,” said Conners. He had sketched out the facility on a piece of paper. “Pretty straightforward. Two guys at the front gate, a couple of roamers. Pretty light security. No problem with eight guys.”

“You sure there’s no change?” asked Rankin.

“Fifteen minutes ago, no change. We’ll call again once we’re close. He doesn’t talk English,” Conners added. “I used the handheld to get some Farsi and English back and forth.”

“Is the waste in there or what?”

“Can’t tell for sure,” said Conners. “But I don’t think so. They’re counterfeiting DVDs.”

MC took the paper from Rankin.

“Come on,” said Conners. “Our bus is over here.”

“Bus?” asked Rankin.

“What, you expected a BMW?” said Conners. “The guy who’s watching the facility has a brother who owns two buses. He’s our driver. It looks like a school bus. Don’t worry, he says we won’t get stopped.”

“Why don’t we just get a fuckin’ fire truck and go lights and sirens?” said Rankin in a sneer.

“I thought of that,” said Conners. “But I couldn’t find one.”

“You’ve been hanging around Ferguson too long,” said Rankin.

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“You’d think they’d give us some free samples to while away the time,” said Ferguson.

Keveh didn’t laugh.

Ferg got up slowly from the plastic chair, holding his hands out so that the guard at the door would realize that he was just stretching his legs. The Iranians didn’t seem to know what to do with them; Keveh said one of the guards had mentioned that they had to call their “administrator,” who apparently wasn’t at the factory. They obviously weren’t going to call the police—the bootlegging operation was illegal and would either get them into trouble or necessitate a serious round of bribes.

Ferguson had floated hints that they would pay a ransom, but their captors hadn’t actually asked how one might be paid. He figured Conners and the cavalry would wait until dark to bail them out; with a little luck this would be merely a burp in their schedule.

The guard stared at him as he stretched. He had a pistol at his belt, easily takeable—obviously the man wasn’t too experienced guarding prisoners. Ferg figured it was safe enough to wait; besides, the security office was next door, and there was no telling whether there might actually be someone who knew what he was doing there.

Ferguson began stretching; he felt cramped as well as tired—then pulled over one of the plastic chairs. The guard said something in Farsi. Ferg motioned that he was going to do a push-up against the seat, then did so, hamming the routine up.

“What are you doing?” Keveh asked.

“Limbering up,” said Ferg.

“He thinks you’re nuts.”

“That’s good.” Ferguson reeled off a few sentences of Russian about the beauty of the white leopard in winter, then added in English “You think they’re going to feed us?”

“The guard doesn’t know.”

“Send him out to ask,” said Ferg. “I’m getting hungry.”

Keveh asked in Farsi if the guard might get them some food. The man shook his head, then explained that he was not in charge—they would have to wait there until his superior arrived. He, too, was hungry.

As the guard was speaking, Ferguson heard footsteps in the hallway. He rested his left hand on the chair, listening. There was a loud pop in the distance, from near the entrance—with a swift motion Ferguson picked up the chair and tossed it at the guard’s face, following underneath with a dive at the man’s midsection. Ferguson twisted around and up, pushing his legs underneath him and pinning the hapless guard to the ground. A quick kick to the man’s chin ended any possibility of resistance.

“Down,” Ferguson yelled at Keveh, grabbing the gun from the holster. “Get over to the side. They’re using flash-bangs. Keep your eyes closed and head covered.”

He crawled out of the way just as the hinges of the door flew open with the loud report of a shotgun blast. Rankin and a SEAL in battle dress and blackface pushed into the room with a bang; within three seconds a gun barrel pointed at each occupant’s head.

“Watch where you point that thing, Skippy,” said Ferguson, who’d put the pistol he’d taken under his body.

“You’re lucky I don’t pull the trigger.”

“Then you’ll have all those friendly fire reports to fill out,” said Ferguson. He held up his hands so it was obvious to the others that he was a good guy, and gestured to Keveh. “He’s ours.”

“They’re all right, they’re okay,” said Conners, rushing in behind them.

Rankin pushed the Iranian guard to the corner of the room, trussing him with plastic cuffs. Ferguson, meanwhile, went out into the hall.

“Right, turn right,” yelled Rankin, following him out.

“Gotta get my hideaway,” Ferguson told him. “They took it.”

“Fuck that,” said Rankin. “Let’s go.”

“That stinking Glock is my personal weapon,” said Ferguson. He trotted down the hall toward the far end of the corridor, where two SEALs were watching the approach from a second hallway. Ferguson signaled to them to follow, then went toward the office where he’d been searched.

He kicked the door in and threw himself back as the two SEALs poked their guns inside. The lone occupant was hunched behind a desk in the corner. One of the SEALs shouted in Farsi for the man to throw down his weapon. He shouted again, and the man raised his hands to show he wasn’t armed.

As Ferguson slipped between the SEALs into the room, he spotted a shadow in the corner of his eye. With a quick lunge he pushed on the door and then grabbed his would-be assailant, disabling him with an elbow shot to the solar plexus after pulling him forward. A gun flew to the ground.

“Fucking rent-a-cops,” he said, grabbing the Beretta from the floor.

Tears were falling down the other man’s face.

“Oh we ain’t going to hurt you,” Ferg told him. “We ain’t even going to tell the mullahs on you. Where’s my fuckin’ gun?”

As the man babbled in Farsi for his life, Ferguson noticed a metal cabinet against the wall. He went to it, pulled at the door; when he saw it was locked he blew off the handle with a bullet from the Beretta. The thin metal mechanism shattered, and the doors slapped open.

His Glock was on the top shelf, along with his rad counters and the small plastic container with his synthetic thyroid pills, which was what he had really wanted to retrieve.

“Are you fuckin’ comin’ or what?” demanded Rankin from the hallway.

“On my way,” said Ferguson, gulping the pill he had missed.

“A bus, Conners?” asked Ferguson.

“The train was busy.”

“Kinda feels like we’re going home after the big track meet,” said Ferguson. “And we lost or something.”

“I wouldn’t call the mission a smashing success,” said Rankin.

“It ain’t over till it’s over,” said Ferguson. No matter what the circumstance was, Ferg thought, Rankin could be counted on to have a stick up his ass.

Generally sideways.

“So, Ferg, you star in any of their movies?” Conners asked.

“I wanted to, but there was a language problem,” Ferguson told him.

“What are we going to do now?” Keveh asked.

“Well you and your buddy can either be evacked to the U.S. or just go home.”

“People saw us.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Ferg told him. “Come back with us. The SEALs’ll take care of you. Right, MC?”

“Sure,” said the SEAL team leader.

“We’ll stay,” said Keveh.

“You sure, buddy?”

Keveh nodded.

“Good. All right, Skip and I’ll go check the ship out.”

“What about me, Ferg?” asked Conners.

“You hang back with the bell-bottom boys, Dad. You look tired.”

“Fuck you.”

“Nah, you do. MC, I’ll take two of your guys for backup. That cool?”

“We’ll all go with you.”

“Too many people,” said Ferg. “Dad and I already figured it out. We need you to stay on the perimeter so you can cut off anybody that comes up from that barracks at the north. If we’re quiet, we’re in and out.”

“What if you’re not quiet?” asked MC.

“Then we’re in and out a little faster, and you guys get some action,” said Ferg. “We’ll try for quiet. Worst case we go out on the water side.”

“What about yourself?” said Conners. “You’re not tired?”

“I never get tired.”

“You on amphetamines?” asked Rankin.

“I’m high on life, Skippy.”

“I just saved your ass,” said Rankin.

“And I’m glad you did.”

“Show a little respect.”

“I respect you, Skip. I just don’t want to sleep with you.”

“I don’t get you, Ferguson. I don’t get you at all.”

“The day you get me, Rankin,” said Ferg, “is the day I hang it up.” He smiled at him. “But thanks for saving my ass anyway.”