Birjanshah, Khorasahn Province, Iran
April 17, 12:15 A.M.
Kharzai maneuvered the van through the city as if it were his own, cruising openly without trying to conceal his movements. There was no need to hide. No one paid notice to the clean white van with the tinted windows. Anyone who happened to observe them would have quickly turned away. Most would make an intentional effort to avoid eye contact with the occupants of such a vehicle, although they would never run or hide as that would only draw the attention of the men who typically rode in the white vans. The only vehicles in the Republic of Iran authorized to have tinted windows belonged to VEVAK. Nobody on the streets, especially at night, wanted to gain the attention of any agents of the VEVAK. Not even the police would question their business that night as they drove in the agency van. At least there would be no questions until someone discovered the bloody bodies of three VEVAK agents behind the Marshahez bakery.
In less than fifteen minutes, they were out of the city. Once past the edge of Birjanshah, Kharzai accelerated down the narrow, paved highway heading north. At the horizon’s distant edge, shadowy peaks of rugged mountains rose like a row of broken and jagged teeth. At their base lay the airfield that housed a fleet of nuclear-armed aircraft, awaiting the order to deliver a mighty blow against the armies of the Great Satan.
Dark shadows grew from the eastern horizon, encroaching on the mountain’s domain to the north and west, swirling ominously like evil jinn pouring from a lamp. Soon, the massive clouds of dust and wind would fill the night sky, blotting out the celestial bodies as if they never existed. The roar of distant thunder rolled across the landscape, its constant rumble echoing against the mountain walls and across the hilly countryside as the storm’s fury plunged towards the plain.
Ten kilometers out of town, the pavement ended, the road transforming instantly from a relatively smooth gravel surface to a rutted desert track. Kharzai did not slow the van, seemingly oblivious to the road conditions, forcing his passengers to struggle not to end up on the floor from all the bouncing.
“Kharzai!” Esther shouted over the rumble of the tires and squeak of vehicle’s frame being forced over the rough ground at sixty miles per hour. “Slow down or we’ll not be able to fight once we get to the base!”
“Sorry, pretty lady. We’ve got to beat that storm. Just hold on tight and you’ll be fine.”
Karl started to speak, but lost his words when Kharzai abruptly yanked the steering wheel to the right. The centrifugal force of the turn threw Karl against Esther. He thrust his arm behind her head and against the interior wall to keep from crushing her. As the van righted, Kharzai looked in the rearview mirror. Karl’s arm was still behind Esther as if he had been holding her.
“Hey Spaceman, I thought you weren’t ready for romance yet.”
Before Karl could respond, they hit a large bump that turned his words into a grunt. Kharzai laughed aloud as he turned the van off that road and onto another. They traveled one more kilometer down a bumpy dirt trail that seemed to be little more than an animal path. At the end, he stopped the van. The sudden cessation of motion and noise was an almost ethereal experience, like a dream of falling, and like a dream, it only lasted for a moment.
They were parked beside what looked like the ancient ruins of a large town. Liam and Manoosh got out of the van and ran in amongst the ruins. Karl watched through the side window as they entered a partially collapsed building. Startled by their unannounced entry, a large owl burst from the broken roof of the old structure, letting loose a screech that seemed both frightened and angry. Karl was so shaken from the tumultuous drive that the sudden noise and flight of the massive bird elicited little reaction.
The place looked like a ghost town or a Hollywood set for a horror movie. Patches of grass jutted through broken sections of collapsed walls. Wildly angular trees twisted in an unnatural geometric chaos like dead men’s fingers grasping for one more chance at life, beseeching God’s mercy as they stretched through cluttered piles of shattered wood, brick, and stone. The steadily growing wind that blew through the remains lent a menacing voice to the scene. The tree branches crackled and scraped against the ancient shadowy vestiges of long lost habitation as the grass hissed its disapproval. This was a city of the dead.
“What is this place?” Karl asked.
“This is the old city of Birjanshah,” Kharzai explained. “It had been inhabited from the early fifth century until about eighty years ago when a big nasty Godzilla-style earthquake destroyed it. Hundreds of people, including a whole lotta kiddies, died in the quake. It totally devastated most of the region at the time. The epicenter was somewhere nearby. If you ask the mullahs and muftis, they will tell you the place is cursed. Although there are hardly any muftis in Iran, but tons of mullahs.”
“At the time of the quake,” Esther continued the narrative, “Muslim clerics blamed the handful of Jews and a few Christian families that lived in the town and massacred them in their homes. They thought that would appease Allah for having allowed infidels to live among them. Men, women, children, young and old alike, over two hundred people were killed with no mercy. Their remains are still in their houses today. The clerics declared it off-limits on threat of reviving the curse, so no one ever buried the dead non-Muslims. The wild animals got their fill of meat and left their bones to be bleached in the sun. The surviving residents decided the population would be better off if they all moved and resettled to the south. That’s the current city.”
As she finished the brief historical dialogue, the other two men returned from the haunted ruins, each carrying small but heavy-looking canvas bags that stretched around their contents. The outline of their contents looked like they were stuffed with bricks. Liam got in the back with Karl and Esther. Manoosh took the front passenger seat.
“What’s in the bags?” asked Karl.
“Rainy day insurance,” said Kharzai.
“Semtex,” said Manoosh. “High explosive plastique.”
Kharzai turned back around in his seat and started the engine. He threw the van in gear, rattled them with a whiplash-inducing three-point turn, then took off with a jolt, again bouncing down the incredibly rough road. Regardless of the terrain, Kharzai drove as fast as physics and the bumps and ruts allowed until they arrived back at the intersection with the main road. Two sets of headlights shone from the direction of the city, heading straight towards them.
“Everyone in the back, get down!” Kharzai shouted.
Karl, Liam, and Esther dropped out of sight in the seats as the vehicles, two fuel trucks, passed by quickly.
Kharzai glanced at the back-seat passengers in the rearview mirror and said, “Those are the trucks I saw before I came back to you guys.”
Liam frowned. “What took them so long to get here? It has been nearly two hours since you said you saw them in town.”
“I dunno,” Kharzai said, “probably had to stop and check in with the police as they headed through. At any rate, this means we still have time to get on base before they fuel up those jets. It will be at least another hour before they can get all the gas into the planes and be ready to take off for their targets.”
“Do you have a plan for how we are going to get this done?” Karl asked.
“I am thinking that this is what we should do,” Kharzai said. “First, we drop Liam and Manoosh off at Haran’s farm. They make their way to the planes on the runway and set the Semtex charges in the engines before take-off. There oughta be enough of that explosive to blow half the base to kingdom come. That Semtex is pretty powerful stuff, so we all need to be careful not to be there when it goes off. While they are doing that, the remaining three of us go in through the front gate and cause a distraction of some kind.”
“Front gate!” exclaimed Esther. “How will we do that? This van may be VEVAK, but they will know we are not. Have you forgotten? I am a woman. In case you were not aware, there are no female agents of VEVAK.”
“Liam, show them one of those ID cards you took off the Frenchman’s goons in the alley,” Kharzai said.
Liam took a card out of his pocket and held it up for Karl and Esther to see.
“Take a look at the front of the card,” Kharzai said as Liam handed it over to Karl. “No pictures. The official VEVAK Agency Identification cards have no pictures on them. They use the latest biometrics technology to verify identity. The magnetic strip and bar code on the back have finger print, retina scan, DNA and probably an accurate count of their butt hairs encoded into it, but no pictures. The theory is that they can scan the card to identify the agent but if the card gets lost or stolen, no one else can use it to visibly recognize an active agent and possibly do to him as he does to others. There is also no name. The agents are given a number to replace their name so that no one can retaliate against their families.”
Karl looked at the card, the front of which contained a fifteen-digit number and some Farsi writing. It resembled the kind of layout one would see on any ID card. One notable exception was that where a photograph of the card owner would typically be, there was only the VEVAK logo, a vertical line with two concentric semi circles on either side and some Farsi script beneath it. Karl couldn’t tell if the logo was supposed to be a sword with a design around it or a vulture with its wings raised. Either way, it looked mean. The back of the card had a bar code and a mag-stripe like a credit card.
“So won’t the guards use a scanner at the gate to verify who we are?” he asked.
“Nope. At least, they won’t at this base,” Kharzai went on. “The only scanners that work are in VEVAK offices, the few really large military bases, and a handful of police stations around the country. It was one of those great ideas from within the agency that only got partial funding by their government. They got cards for everyone but only a few dozen scanners. So these guys out in this little temporary outpost won’t have a means to verify the cards or us. They will just have to accept we are who we say we are based on the fact that we have these cards and whatever I tell them.”
He grinned like a child who’d just won the school spelling bee, then he continued, “Another good thing for my plan is that the common soldiers are generally under the false impression that VEVAK agents are your basic infallible supermen types who would never lose their cards. They are also simply terrified of the murderous thugs. They know that if a VEVAK agent feels you have shown them disrespect, they will not only torture you to death, but they will rape every female related to you, then kill your whole family and burn down your home and your parents’ home and eat your dog and stomp on all the dandelions in your neighbor’s yard. But those soldiers could not have foreseen Mega-Spaceman Karl here having the power to put those VEVAK meanies down with a single sneeze from his flaming-nostril superpowers.”
“That still doesn’t answer how you are going to get me in there,” Esther said. “Women are not allowed on military bases.”
“Don’t you worry yourself, pretty lady. You’ll be fine. I have a plan, a really good plan,” Kharzai said.
The road forked. Kharzai slowed and followed the left branch. They traveled half a kilometer to where the road ended in front of a small two-story house. The lower half of the house was built of cinder block, with a narrow door in the center and two tiny windows set on either side like dark eyes. The upper half of the structure was built of large dark stones stacked like an afterthought atop the first floor. A man came out the front door. He was tall and solidly muscled, but looked apprehensive as he watched the vehicle come to a stop. He did not approach the van, rather waited near the door, as if blocking the entrance with his body. The van stopped and Kharzai shut off the engine. Liam and Manoosh got out and rounded the van into the man’s view. At the same time, Kharzai put down the driver’s side window. Once he saw their faces, his expression relaxed. He strode forward, spreading his arms in greeting towards Liam. He hugged the big Irishman and kissed him on the cheeks then repeated the greeting with Manoosh.
Manoosh said something in Farsi. The other man responded and motioned towards the van. Liam turned towards the vehicle and the other two followed. A shocked expression crossed the man’s face at the sight of Karl and Esther in the back seat. Manoosh’s explanation of their presence elicited a smile from the man and he reached out with both hands towards Karl. Karl accepted his two-handed greeting in kind. The man shook his arms vigorously and spoke in rapid Farsi.
“This is my cousin, Haran,” Manoosh explained in English. “He is very excited to meet a real astronaut, and wishes he could invite you in for dinner. When the situation is different, if you are still here, he certainly will.”
“Tell him I would be honored.”
“Hey. What about me?” Kharzai said in English. “Don’t I get dinner too?” He repeated the words in Farsi.
Haran said something to him that made Esther laugh out loud and Liam chuckle.
“What did he say?” Karl asked.
“He said that Kharzai is always welcome in their house, but that the goat and pheasant don’t play chess.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t worry about it, Spaceman,” Kharzai said. “It’d take way too long to interpret the thought-picture. Just laugh and smile and pretend it makes sense.”
Karl grinned and nodded. Liam reached past him and pulled the bags of explosives out. He slung one over his own shoulder and handed the other to Manoosh, who did likewise.
“We’ll make our way across the fields until we reach the airbase, then try to get these bricks onto the planes,” Liam said. “There’s bound to be a large force of guards and who knows how many sentries on the runway.”
“Most likely at least one per plane, maybe more,” said Kharzai.
“Haran has a couple of stolen army uniforms for us to wear and promised that the runway security lighting would have some problems.” Manoosh smiled. “Since he was the head electrician on the project, I am sure there will be some shadows for us to hide in.”
“Let’s hope,” said Liam.
The giant Irishman slid the side door of the van closed and the three men jogged away towards the dark fields beyond the house.
The Persian turned the van around in the front yard and headed back towards the fork in the road. Kharzai reached the console between the front seats and took out a large white zip-tie strip. He looked at them through the mirror and stretched his hand back to Karl.
“Put this on Esther’s wrists. Tie it behind her back. Make it tight, but don’t cut off her circulation. We don’t want it to actually hurt her. It just has to look convincing.”
Esther snapped her eyes to Karl, then to Kharzai. She backed into the corner of the bench seat, against the side of the van. A pale look of terror washed over her. “What are you doing?” she demanded, a quiver in her voice. “I will not let you tie me up unless you tell me your plan, Kharzai!”
“Calm down. Calm down, Esther. You know me, right? You know you should be able to trust me. We are merely going to pretend you are our prisoner. Nothing more,” Kharzai said. “We have to tie you because that is what VEVAK does with their victims. Don’t worry, you probably won’t get hurt. Not any more than the rest of us will, at least. Karl will pose as an associate of Gilles, and I as a VEVAK agent. This way, we can get in, and hopefully distract the pilots and guards long enough for the guys to get done with the explosives.”
She gave him a cold stare. “I hate being tied.”
“If you have a better idea, now is a good time to share it.”
“Maybe we could just hide her under the seat,” said Karl.
Kharzai gave an incredulous stare in the rearview mirror, “Seriously, Spaceman, did you hit your head on the landing? She’s petite, but I don’t think we could crinkle her up small enough. This is a minivan; not quite enough room.”
“It’s okay,” Esther said, “but you had better not leave me tied up any longer than necessary.”
She turned her back to Karl and presented her hands to him behind her back, wrists pressed together. Her movements were slow, like a condemned woman, resigned to her trip to the gallows. Karl held her wrists together and gently pulled the zip-tie closed. She winced when it tightened, even though he left it loose enough so that it did not cut into her skin. He straightened the seatbelt around her to keep her from falling over.
Esther turned in the seat and faced Karl, barely maintaining control. Tears moistened her eyes above the quivering jaw and trembling lips.
Guilt smacked his gut. “Don’t worry,” he told her, “everything will be all right. At the first sign of trouble, I will cut you free.” As the words left his lips, he realized he did not have his knife. He had left it in the SUV Kharzai had ditched.
“Hey, Spaceman,” called Kharzai, “we are going to be coming up to the gate in a few minutes. Get up here in the front seat with me, and try to look Gilles-ish. We will go with your real name; plenty of French dweebs named Karl out there.”
Karl quietly moved into the seat, climbing over the console and slipping his legs into the space in front of the seat as Kharzai twisted away so as not to get a knee to the side of his head. Manoosh was tall as well, so the seat was adjusted to leave plenty of room for Karl’s long form. He instinctively snapped the seatbelt on across his chest.
“What are you doing that for?” asked Kharzai.
“You drive like a maniac,” said Karl.
“VEVAK don’t wear seatbelts. Seatbelts are for sissies.”
“Well I am not VEVAK, I am a sissified French double-agent dweeb. And you drive like a maniac, so I am going to wear my seatbelt.”
“Suit yourself, Astroboy. Just be in character when we get to the gate. Whatever character that is that you can do naturally. And don’t get me killed, I have a date with a hot uni-brow chickie in Tehran next week. Don’t want to miss it.” He switched to English and spoke in a lascivious tone. “She once showed me her butt-naked bare ankle.”
“Her ankle?”
“Yup. You don’t see that too often in this country. I’m hoping to actually see her toes this time. Ooh baby, I’m getting all hot and bothered, better calm down there studly man. Don’t need them visions of toenails dancing in my head on this job.”
Karl glanced back at Esther. She stared out the window, fear sucking the glow from her face, as if she were reliving a nightmare. He could not think of anything to say or do to calm her, and, deciding that nothing would help, he turned back to Kharzai.
“How long have you been in the field?”
“A long, long time. Eight years? Ten?” Kharzai shrugged. “My sock puppet lost count and the hash marks I carved on my inner thighs are all blended together now.”
“Aren’t they supposed to pull you in once in a while?”
“They tried, but I don’t return the calls to my answering machine.”
“Aren’t you concerned about the stress level? Or have you already gone insane?”
“By the CIA psychiatrists’ standards, that happened long ago. But my handler and I have an agreement that as long as all the voices in my head keep singing in harmony, we’re gonna be all right. Oops...speaking of singing, gate up ahead. It’s show time, babies.”
Karl followed Kharzai’s pointing finger and looked ahead. As the van rolled over a rise in the dirt road, he saw a small guardhouse at the outside edge of a double-layered chain-link fence. The fence, topped with spirals of razor wire, was twice the height of the soldier standing beside the boxy structure. A three-meter space of churned-up soil spread between the layers of fence which was likely, Karl assumed, seeded with land mines. The kind of garden that never blossomed. A tall guard tower stood ten meters inside the inner fence.
Kharzai slowed, glancing at Esther in the rearview mirror, then stopped the van in front of the gate, a long metal pole parallel to the ground blocking their way. “Are you ready, ma’am? Make it a good show.”
A young soldier brandishing a Heckler & Koch G3A6 assault rifle stepped out of the guardhouse. Three other soldiers standing just inside the second section of wire froze in position as the van approached, rifles at waist height pointed at the vehicle, fingers ready near the trigger guards. The guard approached them, signaling to Kharzai to roll down the window. Another soldier stepped from the guardhouse and walked around to the passenger side of the vehicle, weapon held casually, but still pointed at Karl.
Karl glanced up to the tower where at least two soldiers manned a large machine gun that was also trained on their vehicle. Drawing on his meager theatrical talent – he’d only been in one play in high school, a bit part with three lines – he forced himself to look calm and unconcerned while his stomach twisted into knots.
Rolling down the window, Kharzai leaned out, smiled big, and spoke in Farsi, motioning to Karl, “Salam doosteh javanam, goftam morahjaeh bokonam va inja hastam. In mardhamdoostameh noh—namish, Karl. Uh vahbastehyeh Gilles hast, pass beh Karl rahst bahsheed yah ahkhrateh shoma mesleh afsareh possahbonehbedashgooni beshey.”
Karl did not understand what Kharzai was telling the young soldier, which was something like: “Hello my young friend, I said I would return and here I am. This is my new partner, Karl, he is an associate of Gilles, so don’t cross him or you will end up like the infidel police officer did yesterday.”
The soldier nodded towards Karl, trying to look tougher than his youthful face could honestly portray. Karl stared back at him with a cold, expressionless Gilles-like glare and the boy responded with stiff nervousness.
“Bonjour, Monsiuer Karl,” said the soldier then continued in Farsi, “Hadiyeh-ee-keh shoma beh pilots qoal dadeed ahvordeed? Hammeh ruz behrayeh on sohbat kardeh budand.” He stretched his neck and peered into the back of the van, pointing towards Esther.
Roughly translated: “Did you bring the gift you promised for the pilots? They have been talking about it all day.”
Kharzai’s face transformed from the fun-loving childish expression that typically adorned his visage into a frightening, evil smile that would’ve given Gilles the creeps. He nodded and responded to the guard. As he spoke, Karl looked back at Esther. Her eyes grew suddenly wide with horror.
“Ahrah Baba, in zahn poshteh minivaneh. Behrahyeh unha yek hadiyeh-eh jastay bazdi kardeh daram. Fehkr mikonam ke unha qolfagir beshand qhashangterineh zahneh Khorasano behrahyehtoon bepesham. In zahn na estafahdeh nist valli bah tazrobeh behtareh.”
(“I did, she is in the back. A neatly wrapped gift for them. I think they will be even more surprised when they find that I brought the most deliciously lovely woman in Khorasahn province for them. Not a virgin, but her experience will make her that much more fun, I should think.”)
Esther stared at Kharzai as if he were transforming into a hideous monster before her eyes. Karl did not know what Kharzai had said, but the abject terror that filled Esther’s expression translated well enough that this was not heading in a good direction. Confused, he continued to follow Kharzai’s cues as the Persian led them along.
A lusty grin distorted the guard’s face as he backed up, making a strange-looking gesture with his eyebrows to the other man, like an eight-year-old telling a dirty joke he didn’t really understand. He waved them through the gate, which his partner raised by leaning on the short end of the pole, shouting something obscene-sounding to the soldiers inside the compound. They laughed and tried to peer into the van as they drove by. One of the soldiers shouted to Kharzai and pointed to a cluster of two-story square metal buildings at the edge of the runway. Two hundred meters beyond those structures, Karl saw the silhouette of several fighter jets in a formation, crouching in the half-light of sodium-vapor lamps glowing high on poles, like so many falcons waiting to be loosed on their prey. Walls of shadow broke the lighted space. Every third lamp was dark.
As they drove across the compound, passing closer to the runway, Karl made out the aircraft more clearly, counting eight MiG27s and two MiG31s, older models from the eighties. If the planes were maintained well enough, it wouldn’t make a difference how old they were, hundreds of the American fleet’s F-15 and F-16 fighters from the same era were still going strong. For that matter, he’d read that F-4 Phantoms from the sixties had been retrofitted as drones for use in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The two trucks that had passed them on the way in were parked in front of the planes, long hoses drawn to the wing fuel ports. Kharzai drove to the front of the building the guard had pointed out. He stopped the vehicle near a door in the wall of the metal-sided structure, shut off the engine, and got out. He motioned for Karl to get out as well. Both had folding stock AKM rifles they had taken from Gilles’s men strapped loosely over their shoulders. One hand on the pistol grip, Karl opened the sliding side door to the back of the van. Sitting on the back seat, stiff and unmoving, Esther shot a terrified glance at Kharzai, then turned to Karl. Her eyes had the look of one betrayed to death by a friend, a terror that could not be comforted, apologized for, or explained away. She turned back to Kharzai.
“I don’t know what you are doing, Kharzai,” she said in a trembling voice, “but don’t let me get hurt, I will never forgive you if this doesn’t work.”
“There is no need to fear anything, Esther,” Kharzai said under his breath. “Things always work for the best for those who do what is right. Now try to stay in character and let’s move it.”
He gestured with his rifle for her to get out. A ghostly howl rolled from between the buildings as the wind from the storm front picked up, sending a shiver along Karl’s spine.