Dead Drop, page 14
“Stable boy has this on so tight,” Kahlidi said, adjusting the stallion’s cheek piece, loosening the noseband.
Dale watched the Iranian’s expert manner. “How’d you get so familiar with horses? I thought career Quds men spent their time teaching ignorant kids in madrassahs to blow themselves up.”
Kasem looked sideways at Dale. The smile was still there but had dimmed a few watts. “We do have an actual country, you know,” he said. “Families and farms. Mothers and fathers. Pets. My grandfather ranched on the Golestan plain—near the Caspian. We raised Bakhtiaris there. This fellow here,” Kasem rubbed the Arabian, allowing the horse to lick his shoulder, “is much like a Bakhtiari. Tall, lanky, fast. Come on.” He led the horse toward the stables.
“What about this one over here?” Dale asked, walking alongside. To the right was another horse, its large black eye blinking at them over the stable gate. “Is he an Arabian too?”
Kasem tied his stallion to an iron bar. He squatted and bundled some loose hay for the horse. “No, not that one,” he said, feeding the mare. “See the yellow mane, golden forelock, mottled color? She’s a Tennessee Walker. Fair racer, smooth gait. But she’d lose to my Half-Arabian, here—and definitely to one of my Bakhtiaris.” Kasem turned to offer the Tennessee Walker some hay. The spotted horse ate from his hands.
Dale watched, shifting the bag on his shoulder, shuffling his feet. He looked up through the open trapdoor of a hayloft. “Seems like they’re low on hay.”
“Yes. Supposed to be a delivery today. Took too long. They’re CIA security men. Not livestock managers.”
Dale looked at his watch. He was hoping to set out on Mollymawk at dawn, which would mean getting to bed early. “Well—seems you like it here anyway.”
“After two months in a cinder-block cell? Yes, the past weeks have been much, much better.” He went farther into the stable. He moved to the side of the horse and reached for the leathers on its ribs.
“Meredith will be glad to hear that,” Dale said.
Kahlidi looked up at Dale, pausing. “She’s been here a few times, you know. Your wife shows up like a tornado, turning the place over with her army of shrinks and analysts.”
“Ex-wife. And I guess I’m the storm’s aftermath.” Dale patted the side of the messenger bag, raising it slightly. “I’m here to talk about Kasra.”
Kahlidi stood very still. He stopped adjusting the leathers. “Finally,” he said.
Dale heard footsteps shuffling behind him. He turned to find a Special Activities man in the driveway, a guard with a walkie-talkie and a pistol on his hip. “I’ll escort you up to Mr. Smith’s residence,” he said. “Just make sure I can see you in the cameras. I’ll be monitoring.”
Ten minutes later, up the stairs in the fortified living quarters over the stables, Kahlidi stood and paced, his face reddened, hair messed. “I must have told your wife a thousand times,” he said with sharp, chopping hand gestures. “Why didn’t she listen to me?”
The folders Dale had brought in the satchel lay scattered on the ground. Alongside them was a folded two-day-old copy of The Times, a London newspaper. Kasem had slapped the entire pile from the table in a rage.
The Iranian stepped over the mass of papers. He stood by the bulletproof polycarbonate window, looking over the fields. Two horses, a Morgan and a Thoroughbred, stood in the pasture, grazing, their shining coats reflecting the sun. He sighed. “Why didn’t she listen?”
“She did,” John replied.
Kasem squatted and picked up the photos. He looked again at the image of the abduction. He could see the top of Kasra’s head, bundled under a man’s arm.
“They’re Hezbollah,” said Kahlidi, disgusted, tapping the photo. “I know the MOIS colonel that would have sent them. Maloof. These men,” he put his toe over a second photo, “are his cutouts. Dangerous zealots.”
Dale listened. “I’m sorry, Kasem.”
“I told you all to move faster.”
“You did. But we had a hell of a time finding her.”
“Do you know what’s going to happen to her now?” His eyes were searching Dale’s face, his fists clenched.
“No. They’ll take her back to Iran?”
Kahlidi sat on the bed, dropping the photos beside him. He leaned forward and looked at the newspaper. It had been folded to the small quarter-column that reported the kidnapping. “With media,” he said, tapping the paper, “probably not for a while. They probably have her in hiding in some safe house now—denying involvement. But eventually she’ll be handed to MOIS. She’ll go back to Iran. Evin Prison.” The Quds officer sat on the bed opposite Dale. He dropped the paper to the floor. He held his head with his palms.
“You may not want to hear this right now, Kasem,” Dale said. “But your best option is probably to go back into Quds. Quick. Meredith says your cover is about ready. They want to slip you in through Iraq, make it look like you’d escaped from Kurds. You’ll be a hero.”
“Oh, Meredith would love that, wouldn’t she? As soon as I show up, the MOIS head of counterintelligence, Maloof, will frame me—blame me for missing your spy, Rahimi, probably blame me for whatever fallout has happened since. He’ll slap me in irons in Evin, have Kasra gang-raped in front of me, force me to confess. He has all the leverage now—thanks to your wife’s delay. I’d told Meredith that she needed to take care of Maloof before I went back. This is bloody bullshit.” He stared at the floor.
“There’s still time to do a deal here, Kasem,” Dale said. “You need to trust us. If you need us to get Maloof, we can.”
“You mean trust Meredith,” Kasem sneered. He started to say something else but took a look at Dale and stopped short. His shoulders hunched as he held his head in his hands. He spoke to the floor. “I had plenty of information to trade. But . . . with this . . . with Kasra . . .”
To give him some privacy, Dale walked to the window and stared out at the road. A quarter mile down the long-fenced driveway, he saw a large flatbed hay truck pulling up to the gate. The horses were running toward the fence. They seemed to be able to smell it.
“How long would it take them?” Kahlidi asked after a few seconds, still staring at the floor. “To activate this cover? It would have to be a few days of prep at least, wouldn’t it? And I’d need proof that Maloof has been eliminated.”
“I really don’t know,” said Dale, still looking out the window. Toward the back of the hay truck, he saw something odd. A dark circle, a head. He wondered if workers typically rode in the back, like garbage men. Seemed unsafe. “Not my area of expertise. Maybe a week?”
“Whatever they’ve come up with . . . I’d need to be comfortable with it.”
“You can probably drive the whole story,” said Dale, watching the truck. The way the hay was stacked seemed strange. A gap in the middle, as though the load had been hollowed out. “Maybe there’s some way to trap this Maloof guy at his own game. Think about that.”
“Meredith’s going to want something in return for this. Immediately.”
“Yeah,” said Dale. “She will.” A guard had walked down from one of the hay fields and stood at the gate, keeping a safe distance from the truck. Dale saw the guard pull a walkie-talkie off his hip, move to the rear of the truck, looking up at the hay bales.
“But whatever you have to trade,” Dale continued, “sounds to me like it’s going to be worth it.”
The gate began to slide open. The truck moved forward up the drive.
“There is something,” Kahlidi said. “Can you call her? Get her here tonight? It’s this initiative she’s been after. Tell her I’m ready to talk about Taniyn.”
Dale saw the guard reach for the weapon on his hip. But before drawing the pistol, the security man went suddenly limp, falling out of sight into the long grass. The tiniest mist of pink drifted in the air where the guard had just been standing.
Almost instantaneously, the hay truck’s engine roared. A big man leapt off the back. His face was hidden by black cloth.
“Get down!” Dale shouted, dropping to the floor.
From his stomach, he turned to the surveillance camera at the ceiling, gesturing wildly, trying to get the attention of the Special Activities man who was supposed to be monitoring them in the main house. Kahlidi crept up next to him.
Dale heard a loud boom coming from the direction of the main house, then a muffled pop, followed by two more a few seconds later. Dale reached for his cell phone, tried to hit the speed dial for his CIA driver. The call failed. He tried the same with Meth. There was no cell service. Jammer in the truck, he thought.
He looked at the structure of the secure room above the stables. It occupied half the second floor of the barn, alongside the hayloft. Other than the polycarbonate window that faced the driveway, there was only a dormer vent over their heads, too small to be of use. The only door was hardened metal, secured by a buzzing cypher lock. There was no other way out.
A large crash toward the main house vibrated the floor. Dale looked at Kahlidi. The Quds man’s eyes were wide.
“There’s a team assaulting the property,” Dale said in rapid staccato, lying on his stomach. “I saw one male driving the hay truck, other assaulters on the back, using the hay for concealment. My cell phone’s jammed, probably with a device on the truck, maybe a drone. Whoever they are, they took down a guard in the field—sniper, overwatch.” Another explosion boomed. “That,” Dale said, “is them breaching the main house, probably neutralizing the guard by now. They’re going to be breaking in here next. Must be your people.”
“My people!” Kahlidi shouted at him. “We couldn’t mount an operation like this.”
“You’ve been out of the loop. They could have figured something out by now.”
Kahlidi crawled toward Dale. “Not like this. What are we going to do? There’s no way out of here. I’ve looked before.”
Dale’s eyes searched the room. There were four metal twin beds with mattresses bolted to the floor. Only Kahlidi’s was made up. There were no floor lamps, only overhead can lights. Two chairs around a small table. Even the picture frames were bolted, devoid of glass.
“You’re right,” said Dale. “We have to let them break in.”
“What?” shrieked Kahlidi. “Are you armed?”
“No.” Dale slid sideways, rose to a knee at the bed, pulled up one of the bare twin mattresses.
“What are you doing?” cried Kahlidi. Another loud boom.
Dale was pulling the mattress across the room. He turned his head toward Kahlidi. “Get up. Get another one. We need all four.”
“Why?”
“That was a C-4 strip charge I just heard, designed for a breach. Those other pops are flash-bang grenades. They’re clearing the house, probably setting up on the other side of this one right now. But it won’t blow easy. Look at the hinges—blast resistant. Come on, pull them up. Drag them over here, under the door.”
“What are we doing?” the Iranian said, pulling on a mattress.
“Based on that beast of a door, they’re going to set up a shaped charge, here. A regular breaching charge wouldn’t be enough. The door’s going to fire in, blow right off the hinges. Then they’ll throw flash-bangs before running in. Come on!”
“How do you know?” Kahlidi pulled a mattress toward the door.
“Feels like a snatch op. Otherwise, they’d have just bombed our whole building. Here. If we get under this mattress, the door’s going to blow off or down. They’ll run right over us.”
“But who the hell are they?”
“If they’re not your guys, then they have to be Mossad,” said Dale, shuffling under the mattress, thinking of his Maui scrape. “They’re the only ones this good—other than us—and they’re very interested in whatever it is you have to say. Now get down under here. Be ready when I say to go.”
“Mossad . . . ,” Kasem whispered under the confines of the mattresses, his voice hollow.
“Put it out of your head.” Dale’s voice was hot and muffled under the mattress. “After they run over us, we have one shot to hop up, drop to the stable and get the fuck out of here.”
It was oddly quiet under the smothering weight of the bedding. Then a thump, vibrations coming through the floorboards. “They’re here,” Dale whispered.
“This is insane.”
“They’re at the door now. Setting up the breach charge. Be ready to run for it. And keep your mouth open to guard against the air concussion.”
Boom.
Kasem started to rise, pushing against the mattress, scrambling up.
“No!” Dale rasped, pulling him back down, hard. “That’s not it. It didn’t go. They’re going to try a stronger charge now. A big one that’ll—”
Boom!
The explosion stole the air from his lungs, cutting him off. Even under the mattress the blast left his ears ringing. The heavy door fell, squashing them. Dale’s hand had still been on Kahlidi’s back, holding him down. The falling door overextended Dale’s elbow, a sharp pain. He pulled it back under his chest, coiled himself in a flexed push-up position, and prepared to rise.
Loud pops, flash-bangs, suppressed pistols, ears ringing. Footsteps, running over the door—over them.
Go.
Dale sprang up, flinging off the heap of bedding, yanking Kahlidi with him, rolling from under the heavy door. Dale pushed Kahlidi into the hallway, toward the loft. The Iranian went forward on his hands and knees first and then made it to his feet, stumbling forward. Dale was right behind him, hurling himself across the splintered threshold. Blinded and choked by smoke, he lost sight of the Iranian.
He tripped on an iron bar lying on the floor—a dynamic entry breacher, a cross between sledgehammer, spade, and twin-bladed crowbar. Dale picked it up as he came to his feet. He saw Kahlidi ahead, dropping through the hayloft.
Dale felt a hard tug at his arm, a hand, yanking him. Someone was shouting. A big man faced him. The man was thick, head wrapped in a balaclava, beard visible on the neckline. Dale dropped to the ground, slipping the man’s grip. He rolled, reaching for the breaching tool, angling it up, struggling to swing the heavy bar up. The big man was already diving for Dale, falling fast, preparing to pin him down.
Dale angled the sharp end of the tool upward, bracing. The man’s thick stomach met with the double-bladed crowbar, falling forward, pushing the butt end of the tool out of Dale’s hand, slamming against the floor. Impaled, the assaulter fell to the side, screaming, flailing at the tool with both hands. A pistol with suppressor dropped to the floor. Dale took it, aimed, pulled the trigger three times, the rounds suppressed. Phht, phht, phht.
At least one hit the man just above the ear, tearing away a chunk of skull. The man thudded to the floor planks, the iron bar still sticking from his gut. Dale rolled away, scrambled to his feet. He raised the barrel into the gray smoke of Kasem’s quarters and fired twice more before leaping through the open door. He turned and ran for the trapdoor.
He landed hard in the stable below, rolling in loose alfalfa to absorb the fall’s energy. He coughed—ribs hurting, knees stinging. He ignored the pain and limped forward toward the light. He still had the pistol in his hand—a Sig Sauer nine-mil P365, he realized with a glance at it. He’d last seen one in Maui. The big man he’d just killed . . . Five rounds left.
Another assaulter was at the hay truck, a black cloth on his face, something hanging from his back. No, Dale thought. Too short. Ponytail. Woman. She saw Dale’s pistol and rolled to the ground, raising her own pistol. Dale shot her in the shoulder. She returned fire, her aim off. Dale took a knee and shot her again, hitting the top of her head. Phht. Three rounds left.
He heard footsteps on the floor above. They’d be on him now. He heard a horse bray, saw Kahlidi climbing onto it. He ran for the stallion and grabbed the Iranian’s kicking leg. He shoved the pistol in his leather belt and clawed at the Iranian’s arms, pulling himself up on the horse’s back. One, two, three running steps before he levered his leg far enough to swing his weight upward. The Iranian tugged at Dale but was also struggling to get control of the Arabian. Dale finally managed to throw a leg over the horse, straddling it behind Kahlidi’s saddle.
The horse pivoted, facing back toward the stables. Another assaulter was coming out, small. Another woman, Dale thought, a black assault rifle in her hands, suppressed. There was a larger man behind her, same weapon. Dale emptied his mag. A ragged volley, he was sure he missed. But the assaulters took cover, dove to the floor. “I’m Winchester, empty!” He shouted at Kahlidi, showing the open slide as the horse rounded the barn, galloping down the slope. Dale dropped the pistol to the ground and used his free hand to get a better grip.
“Heeya, heeya!” Kasem was yelling, kicking the Arabian hard. Dale hugged the Iranian’s waist, struggling to stay on the horse’s back, everything moving beneath him. The horse’s coal-black coat was slick. Dale hooked a leg around Kahlidi’s, clawing at him, struggling to stay on.
He was finally able to look forward, over the Iranian’s shoulder. He felt a buzz like a passing insect, a rush of air. It zoomed by his head, back to front. He ducked, nearly falling again. Overwatch.
“That way,” Dale shouted into Kasem’s ear, hugging him tightly, risking a free hand to point toward the woods. “Down there. Get in that tree line, now, now!” Dale ducked low.
The Iranian hunched forward, kicking the horse furiously. Unbelievably fast, Dale thought uselessly, worried about falling off the wildly galloping animal.
He stayed low, thinking the sniper would have a decent shot, waiting for it, cringing. But they were farther down the slope now. The tree line was getting closer. Over Kahlidi’s shoulder, Dale saw a fence before the trees, a tall one, the horse running straight for it. Dale hugged Kahlidi tightly, holding on, squeezing his own legs around the horse’s haunches. “You see that?” he shouted.
