Dale arrived at the three-wheeled yellow auto rickshaw and shoved Nadia in the back. “Stay as low as you can,” he said in Farsi. “We’re going to be all right. I’m getting you to the US consulate now.”
She nodded, terrified. He took his backpack from her and tossed it on the front seat. The truck started with the key turn and he put it in gear, moving forward slowly, impeded by the throng of people walking all around him.
He laid on the rickshaw’s meager horn and decided the anemic squeal wasn’t worth it. Screw it. Around there people must have to dodge those things all the time. He sped up, seeing the whites of panicked eyes and flashes of anger on faces as he nudged a few people with his hood.
Finally, he broke free onto a small curving frontage road. It was supposed to lead to another that would double back south and then toward a major thoroughfare that would head upriver and east to the consulate. He got the rickety three-wheeler up to twenty mph, pleased with the distance he was now putting between himself and the Taj. But it didn’t last long.
He screeched to a halt in gridlocked traffic.
The cops had set up a roadblock. Dale had known the police response to the call he’d made to the front desk would be swift. Back in 2008, real terrorists had invaded the larger Taj Hotel in central Mumbai, killing thirty-one people. The Taj Lands End was a sister property on the water, but the association would be inescapable for the entire Indian populace, especially the Indian Police Service.
He was forced to turn left to get away from the blockade, which would take an hour to get through. He leaned over his shoulder to check on Mrs. Rahimi.
“Ma’am,” he shouted over the whining clatter of the two-cylinder engine, “you okay?” He hit a pothole before jumping a curb. He saw her bounce off the bed’s rusty metal.
She glanced up at him with a combination of anger and alarm. “I have no idea what is happening,” she said. “Who was trying to break into the room?”
Dale was busy dodging pedestrians, occasionally nudging the narrow vehicle onto the sidewalk to get around them. He was averaging about ten miles per hour. The consulate was four miles away.
“To keep you safe, I won’t go into details. But your husband has been doing important work to keep peace in the world. I’m not sure how much he told you. I was supposed to meet him along with you and your daughter to get everyone to safety. The people trying to break in back there have other ideas.”
She nodded as she repositioned herself on the metal. They banged along for another thirty seconds.
Dale eventually looked over his shoulder and asked, “Why are you here alone?”
“I’m just following Zana’s instructions,” she said.
“I guess that makes two of us. But where’s your daughter?”
“You know about Sahar?”
“I didn’t know her name. Or yours. But your husband and I have been communicating for years. He told me he had a daughter. I was expecting to see the whole family for this trip out.”
“My daughter died tragically in January,” she said over the revving engine as Dale jumped another curb.
Processing this, he was silent for a few seconds, busy. “Sorry. Hold on.”
He veered the truck across an intersection and headed into oncoming traffic. Mumbai’s chaotic streets had turned into something of an advantage. Several vehicles honked and swerved out of his way. He wasn’t sure he was on the right road anymore, but he knew if he kept moving east, he’d eventually run into a river, which would then lead to the consulate.
“You say she died tragically,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at her once he’d found some freedom on the road. “I’m very sorry for your loss. Can I ask what happened?”
“She was on the plane that they took down. The airliner in Tehran. She was on her way back to Canada. A student.”
Dale was looking straight ahead. After a few seconds, he realized the significance of what she’d said. “Plane crash? You mean the Ukrainian jet the Iranians shot down by mistake?”
“Yes. I was there. I saw the whole thing from the ground.”
Dale nodded, considering what Nadia had said. That had been about when Meredith had come out to his house. At least he had Nadia talking now. “What’s your husband’s full name?”
“I’m not sure I’m allowed to tell you. I thought you would know.”
“Ma’am, look around you right now. Do you really think that matters? My mission is to get you and him back to the US safely.”
She bounced off the cargo bed again with a yelp. He mumbled an apology and went back to driving.
Half a minute passed before she answered. “His name is Zana Rahimi. He said he met you when you were a student in Montreal. You don’t remember him?”
“Well,” Dale said, “he didn’t contact me until years later. He never told me who he was. He wanted to protect you and your daughter, of course. He’s very clever.”
“Yes. He’s a nuclear physicist who became a computer scientist.”
“Where did he work?”
“At first in Tehran at a research facility. But then a few years ago, he started on some kind of government mission. It was somewhere in the northwest. He was allowed home only on scheduled breaks. You’ll bring him, yes?”
“Is he there now?”
“I think so. He was home for Sahar’s funeral. There were guards watching him. He told me about this trip to India and I started preparing. He was careful not to speak to me after that—for my safety, he said. I had no idea what I was in for.”
“Me either,” said Dale.
“How will you get him out now?” she asked. “Did he give instructions in the letter?”
Dale veered across another intersection and onto a wobbly bridge. They were crossing over the delta of the Mithi River. There was a larger road ahead that would follow it to the northeast. Once he merged with it, he’d be one turn away from the consulate. But as usual, it was packed with cars that were barely moving. He could see police vehicles streaming the other direction, their blaring sirens making things worse.
“It would seem that your husband thinks it would be safer for you to get out first. Sounds like he used your daughter’s mourning period as a reason for you to get out of the country.”
“Yes,” she said. “I was supposed to go to a yoga retreat.”
“Right. But I’m guessing that your husband is attached to some pretty important work right now and isn’t permitted to leave.”
“I don’t know.”
“Right. Anyway, I’m sure he has a plan.”
“And what is your plan, Mr. Reza? Where are you taking me?”
“Another few miles up the road and we’ll be at the US consulate. From there it will be easy. But I want you to stay down, just to be sure. As you saw, there are some people out there that would like to get to you before we get you back to the US.”
She nodded. “Do you think—”
Before she could finish the question, two noisy metallic clanks interrupted her. An ingot of metal tore loose and rattled around the bed. A hole appeared in the small tailgate. She screamed.
“Climb up front!” Dale yelled at her.
With his free hand he seized her shirt and pulled her forward. With the other he veered across the street.
“They’re shooting at us?”
“Yes.”
He turned up a narrow alleyway, clearing it by only a few feet to either side. It widened with sidewalks after a hundred feet. They were lined with people, dogs, buildings covered in bamboo scaffolding. He looked back through the mirror.
“Down!” he shouted.
A white minivan had attempted to make the turn to follow, but it wouldn’t fit. It sat at an angle, stuck at a pinch point between protrusions of the bamboo walls. Dale saw a muzzle flash. The bullet hit the low tailgate again, scattering more metal. He guessed the Russians were trying to take out his tiny tires, a tough shot. He could also see that he had the advantage in the smaller vehicle.
He turned right down another narrow alley, back toward the river, thinking he was home free. There was daylight ahead. Through another dark cluster of ghettos, he could see rows of government buildings on a spacious boulevard. But frustratingly, there was a maze of crossing streets to get through first. He told Nadia to lie flat and did what he could to reassure her. He punched a button on his phone.
Meredith’s personal cell phone rang. She was at her desk watching the news. Her team had been on and off with the Marine Air Wing and the State Department. She was way, way out on a limb with the brass at this point.
She looked at her phone and saw it was John.
“Hey,” she answered, her voice hushed. She left the ops room and leaned against a wall in the hallway, looking for privacy.
“Meth, I got some problems here,” he said immediately, shouting over the clattering engine.
“We’re not on a secure line.”
“Yeah, I know.”
She could barely hear his voice over the noise. “I’ve been watching the news,” she said. “Do you have him?”
“Sort of,” he said.
Sort of? Before she could tear his head off, he kept talking.
“I’ve got a situation here, Meth.” There was a loud bang as his vehicle jumped a curb. “The op was burned. Same kind of guys that were at my house. They’re on our ass right now.”
“Fuck. Just give me the tactical details.” She was standing up straight, squashing the phone to her ear, struggling to hear him.
“There’s a team of shooters behind us. They attempted a snatch at the meet. Suffice to say they really don’t want us to get to our destination. We’re going to be coming in real hot. Tell them to look for a yellow delivery truck, one of those shitty little three-wheeler things they have here. Can you make sure they know that? I’m basically going to be charging the gate.”
“John, wait. Things are pretty tense there right now. You can’t ram the gate. They think there are Islamic terrorists on the loose. They’re on lockdown. I assume that was you.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Sorry. I needed something drastic. You have to make it work, Meth. I’m sorry.”
She swallowed. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure it out. How far out?”
“Five mikes.”
“Just get there, John,” she said. “We’ll be ready. Just get there.”
“I will.” He hung up.
Dale pushed his phone back into a cargo pocket. He checked on his passenger. He saw another alley with daylight between the buildings. Beyond it there was what looked like a riverbank. He turned and caught a brief view of busier streets up ahead. A white minivan waited at one of the intersections.
“What the fuck!” he yelled aloud.
There was no way they could have followed him. There was no way they could have anticipated he would be poking out here. Even if they knew he was headed to the consulate, it faced the other direction.
Reluctantly, he turned away from the river, back into the maze of little twisting alleys. At the next corner, there was some space between the buildings. He paused for a moment, leaning out his open window, craning his neck to look up at the sky.
That was when he saw the drone.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. “Thought so.”
It was the same annoying black aerial robot he’d seen back at his hotel room. If it stayed aloft, he was screwed.
“Right turn,” Dmitry said.
“I can’t,” Oleg shot back. “Too narrow.”
Maria was behind them, looking at an old-fashioned paper map. “Skip this street,” she said. “Is he still going south?”
“Yes,” said Dmitry, studying his laptop screen. The yellow three-wheeled truck with the dirty white canvas back was at its center. “See him here? He seems like he’s trying to get to the road by the river. But he’ll be blocked.”
“I don’t see him,” Maria said, leaning forward.
The minivan hit a bump and all of them lurched for a moment.
Recovering, she looked at the laptop. “Where’d he go?”
Dmitry zoomed in. “He was here . . .” His fingers swept over the keyboard. “He’s under this bridge somewhere.”
“You need to see what he’s doing.”
Dmitry nodded.
She put a hand on the driver’s shoulder. “Oleg, turn right up here. That will put us a block behind him.”
“If we can’t see him, maybe he’s ditched the vehicle? Could he be proceeding on foot?”
“It’s why we need to get the drone low enough to see under the bridge.” She paused, looking at the map. “We’re in embassy row. I think he’s making for the US consulate here.” She pointed to a spot on the laptop.
“Right,” Oleg said. “Makes sense.”
“Get that drone down there,” she said.
Dale had pulled the vehicle up onto a curb beneath the two-lane bridge. The bridge was about twenty feet off the ground. It was crowded with pedestrians, motorbikes, and the occasional three-wheeled rickshaw. Below, where Dale had parked, the alley seemed to be a sort of driveway for residences. Dozens of older citizens squatted on the ground or sat in low chairs near small door stoops. A handful of motorcycles went by now and then. By Mumbai standards, it was downright quiet.
After cautioning Nadia to remain still and low in the back of the truck, Dale got out and stood in the alcove of a doorway under the bridge. An old man across the street sat watching him, saying nothing, as though this kind of thing happened every day.
Dale put a fresh mag in his Glock and held it at his side. Even this didn’t seem to bother the old man.
There was a buzzing sound echoing off the buildings. Dale pressed his back against the door, listening. It got louder, louder, louder still.
Now.
He stepped from the threshold and saw the little quad copter moving toward the yellow truck. It was twenty yards away, hovering ten feet off the ground, trying to get a view under the bridge. Dale raised his arms in a three-point shooter’s stance.
Aiming at the drone’s center, he started firing. About half of the shots rang true. The first knocked the drone sideways. It recovered and turned toward him, its camera angling toward Dale. The next hit it square in the face. It started to fly higher. Dale put five or six more rounds into its belly until the Glock’s slide locked open.
The drone went silent. Its rotors froze. It plummeted toward the earth with all the aerodynamic aplomb of a flying set of car keys. Dale walked over to the electronic carcass in the street, which lay twitching and humming. He stamped the remaining life out of it with his bootheel.
“We lost visual,” Dmitry said, stating the obvious.
He’d watched the man in the ball cap aiming a pistol for just a moment before his screen went to fuzz. He closed his laptop.
Maria looked at the map. “Shit. Our only chance to cut him off is to circle back here and come up from the south.”
“We could put Pyotr and Vlad over here,” Oleg said. “If they sprinted on foot, they might be able to gain a firing position on this street. Then we drive up from the south to surround them.”
Maria nodded. “Right.” She turned to the two Spetz operatives in the backseat. “You hear that?”
She explained the plan to them again, using the map. They got out of the van and checked some radio equipment. Moments later they were trotting up the street, sniper rifles slung across their backs.
Dale headed north. The consulate was frustratingly close now. If he had been on the raised freeway up above, this would have been a piece of cake. Instead he’d been busy down there in the alleys, avoiding the Russians in the minivan.
But he was pretty sure the Russians were fucked now. He’d taken out their eyes and he had this goofy little vehicle that was pretty useful for ducking in and out of alleyways. He jammed the accelerator to the floor, picking up speed, jumping a curb here and there in his attempt to break out to a bigger road.
That was when there was a loud bang under the hood. The rickshaw sputtered out.
“Oh, come on!” Dale shouted, attempting to restart it. Exasperated, he slammed the dash with his fist. “Piece of shit!”
Nadia knew what was happening. She looked on, worried. Two or three curious Indian civilian men in their mid-twenties wandered up to them as the man behind the wheel beat the tar out of the dashboard.
They wore long rags and smiled knowingly. Nothing like seeing someone lose his mind over one of these poorly made pieces of junk.
Dale didn’t have time for this.
He hopped out of the rickshaw and pulled Nadia free. Another curious kid on a small motorcycle had stopped. The new kid stood grinning with the other guys. Dale didn’t know what was so damn funny.
They stopped smiling when he raised the Glock at them. He gestured toward the kid on the motorcycle, but leveled the weapon at the whole gang to make sure no one got any ideas.
“Off,” Dale said. “I need the bike. You guys can have the truck. The keys are sitting in it.”
It didn’t matter whether the men understood English or not. They understood the Glock. They backed up. The kid got off his motorbike. Dale reached in a cargo pocket and took out a handful of rupees. He had no idea how much money it was—could have been twenty bucks or two hundred. He stuffed it in the shirt of the motorbike kid. He gestured for them to get farther back. Nadia climbed on the seat behind him, hugging him tight.
He put the bike in gear and started toward the river road.
Up ahead in the daylight, he saw something truly beautiful. A massive tilt-rotor Osprey aircraft had slowed over a building, which Dale thought might be the US consulate. Its engines were at an angle as it moved from horizontal flight to vertical.
In the otherwise unworldly hash of the Mumbai slums, it was nothing short of a big, glorious haze-gray apparition. He could see a gunner in the cargo door, God bless him.
Nice work, Meth.
He slowed the bike for a second, tapping Nadia’s knee. He pointed at the magnificent aircraft. “That’s us,” he said, surprising himself with a surge of pride.
Mission fucking accomplished, he thought.
She nodded. For the first time, he saw some relief in her eyes. Dale gunned the bike and approached the river road. When he saw a way to get up on the road via a concrete walkway, he stopped and dialed his phone.
“Yeah,” Meth said after the first ring.
“An Osprey?” Dale said, grinning in spite of himself. “Nice, Meth!”
“It took some doing. You have no idea.”
“Listen,” he said. “Change of plans. We’re coming in on a motorcycle. It’s red. I’m wearing a blue baseball hat. My passenger is a woman in a green shawl.”
“Wait. What? What do you mean, a woman in a green shawl?”
“It’s a long story. Just have the Marines ready at the gate. We’re coming in hot.”
He hung up. He knew she’d be pissed. She’d get over it.
Maria checked in with her two operatives set up on a bridge up ahead. She’d directed the minivan to head up to the north and circle back. Theoretically, they were on both sides of the building now, one north, one south. The minivan was perched at the turn just before the consulate driveway. She saw the enormous Osprey aircraft slowing into a slow-moving hover. Only the Americans flew the Osprey.
The radio crackled. “I have a guy in a blue ball cap and the woman in the green shawl coming up the road on a motorcycle,” he said. “What do you want me to do?”
Maria straightened. “It has to be them. Can you get a shot at one of the tires?”
“We’re on a bridge over the freeway. Yeah, maybe.”
“Do it.”
Dale saw some dust rise up in front of him. At the same time, a chunk of asphalt bounced up and ricocheted painfully off his knee, tearing the fabric of his pants. Without even thinking about it, he veered the motorcycle to the right, weaving behind a city bus. He pulled over and prodded Nadia off. He laid the bike down. He could hear the giant Osprey moving to a hover over the consulate. There was a bridge up ahead before the driveway to the building. Shooters. He dragged the bike into an alley; he lay flat on the ground next to Nadia. He’d have to call Meth back. She answered before he even heard a ringtone.
“Meth—we got snipers now, the real deal. Need some help from that Osprey,” he said.
“Do you have Cerberus or not?”
“I have his wife. It’s a little complicated. He sent her in first. We have to take care of her or he’s not coming out.”
He realized Nadia was staring at him with wide eyes, but had no time or inclination to protect her sensibilities.
He heard Meredith curse on the other side of the world.
“First thing’s first,” he said. “I’ll get him. In the meantime, I got two shooters on a bridge between me and the consulate. They’re wearing light blue polo shirts—cricket jerseys, actually. And . . . hold on.” He studied the road ahead. He saw the white minivan parked. “There’s also a white minivan just outside the entryway to the consulate. It’s a hostile. I need those Marines to nail it or we’re not coming in and this whole thing falls apart.”
“We can’t just shoot up India’s largest city, John. That’s not the ROE.”
“Fire if fired upon, right? Well, I’ve been fired upon. I’m on the home team here.”
Meredith was thinking how this would certainly ruin what was left of her already flagging career. “Even so, they’re in the middle of a terrorist lockdown. We’re going to scare them to death. This is just—”
“Sounds like the perfect cover story. You nail these fuckers, then tell the Indians they’re the bad guys from the hotel. It’s halfway true. You’ll just need a little time to stage it.”
Twelve thousand miles away, leaning against the hallway wall, Meredith considered what he was saying. Impossibly, she thought it was actually a pretty good idea. She allowed herself a very deep sigh.
“Okay,” she said. “Bridge outside the consulate, two shooters and a white minivan nearby. I’ll see what I can do. We have the air wing on the other line.”
Maria was shouting at her fire team, trying to get confirmation of whether Dale’s bike had been hit or not. They couldn’t tell. He’d taken it off the road. As she spoke, she was watching the big Osprey, which seemed to have broken its hover. It rose about two hundred feet higher and started rotating on its axis. Its nose tilted menacingly as its engines angled forward in a roar.
Toward her.
“Oh, shit,” she said. She looked ahead to the narrow alleyways of the ghetto she’d just raced out of. “Head to those buildings. Now! We need cover!”
Oleg slammed the accelerator down and the van leapt over a median. A dozen yards before they were in the safety of an alley, Dmitry screamed. A fifty-caliber bullet from the Osprey’s door gunner had come ripping through the roof and entered his thigh. A second one put a hole between him and Oleg. A third shattered the window by Oleg’s ear. One second later they were in the alleyway, in cover. The van had slammed into a building, wrecked.
Through her earpiece she heard her shooters reporting on the Osprey. They were running for it. Then nothing. She leapt out of the crumpled van and walked back to the street. The Osprey was hovering over the driveway to the consulate. She saw a man on a motorcycle with a woman clinging to his back speed up the drive toward a line of Marine guards. They let him through and the gate closed.