“You could stay inside, where—”
Emergency sirens that Carr had mounted on the embassy walls stopped him in his tracks. Painfully loud, the wailing sirens pulled double duty, warning everyone on the compound that something bad was going down, and, it was hoped, scaring some sense into any vandals who might be trying to pull a Tehran.
Carr ducked sideways, toward the shadow of some trees, grabbing Ambassador Burlingame by the shoulder of his T-shirt and dragging him along.
“A drill?” the ambassador asked.
Carr crept forward, keeping an eye peeled for the whiplike form of any Jameson’s mambas as he pulled aside the greenery for a better look at the embassy grounds.
“Nope,” he said. “Not a drill.”
“How can you know?”
“Because I’m the one who schedules the drills.”
The scene came into view for both men at the same moment, and their reactions were 180 degrees apart. Burlingame gasped, bolting forward, ready to run headlong to the fence. Carr yanked him back, keeping him in the safety of the trees.
Burlingame attempted to pull away. “I have to get down there.”
“Hang on,” Carr hissed, taking a better grip on the ambassador’s shirt. He was fully prepared to tackle the man if he had to. “We won’t do anyone any good if you’re caught up in whatever this is.”
Burlingame’s chest heaved. “Your people gave no indication?”
“None,” Carr said, still concentrating on the melee below. Three women he recognized as embassy spouses had been swimming with their kids in the pool not far from the back fence when the sirens went off. Embassy staff drilled with their families for all sorts of disasters and emergencies. Even the kids had scrambled out of the pool and were now running toward the chancery. Six heavy Camaroonian MRAP vehicles had taken up strategic positions outside the fence.
“A siege,” the ambassador whispered.
An embassy staffer Carr recognized as Karen from Human Resources leaned out an upper-floor window with what looked like a satellite phone, before ducking quickly back inside when she saw the MRAPs. Carr thought it odd that she’d risk leaning out for a call until he saw the demolished antenna array on the roof. They’d heard a couple of booms before they came around the mountain, but they’d been muffled by the thick foliage and Carr had chalked them up to aircraft or a distant military drill.
His hand dropped to the fanny pack, tapping his own Glock to make sure it was still there. He had one extra magazine with fifteen more rounds, giving him thirty-one in all. The pistol made him feel a little better, but it was hardly enough to mount a counterattack. In addition to the sidearm, he had a folding Benchmade knife, a small Streamlight flashlight, and a cell phone. He went for the phone first.
“Good idea,” Burlingame said. “Maybe someone in the chancery can tell us what’s going on.”
Carr tried the security office first, got nothing but a fast busy signal. The troops that had rushed the embassy had likely jammed the towers. They’d probably cut the landlines as well.
Carr lowered the phone.
“Cell phones are a no-go,” he said. “We need to get you to a secure location and find a landline or satellite phone to call this in.”
The ambassador took several deep breaths, trying to calm himself. “What the hell, Adin? Did Cameroon just declare war on the United States?”
“It looks that way, sir,” Carr said. “We need to go.”
“We can’t just leave.”
“That’s exactly what we’re going to do, Mr. Ambassador.”
Burlingame gasped, pointing downhill.
“Damn it!” Carr hissed.
Sarah Porter, the wife of the deputy chief of mission, was dragged from one of the MRAPs and shoved into a waiting jeep. Her hands were cuffed behind her.
“Mrs. Porter…”
Burlingame grabbed Carr by the forearm. “We have to follow that jeep.”
“Sir,” Carr said. “Mrs. Porter is awesome. She’s like that really cool aunt that most of us had a crush on when we were kids. But my first priority is your safety.”
Burlingame gave him a side-eyed glare. “I can tell you want to go after her. I’m just giving you an excuse. An order, really.”
Carr weighed his options. There were several friendly embassies in the area, but there were also a lot of unfriendly-looking military vehicles patrolling around them. No, the Peace Corps offices were a better choice. They weren’t secure, but they were close, less than two kilometers away on the east side of the golf course. They’d do their best to see where the Army took Mrs. Porter, and then he’d stash Ambassador Burlingame at the Peace Corps offices until he got a handle on what was going down — or the cavalry arrived.
“You’re the boss,” he finally said.
“Maybe Boko Haram infiltrated the military, do you think?” Burlingame asked as they moved, peering through the foliage toward the compound.
“No,” Carr said. “It looks like a coup or something. If it was Boko we’d be hearing a heck of a lot more gunfire.”
“At least it’s political then, and not religious.”
Carr ducked to the right, hopping over a decaying log that looked like a good home for a snake. “Mr. Ambassador,” he said grimly. “To some people, politics is a religion.”
16
Reza Kazem and his men — seven in all — pressed their chests into the muddy soup, shoulders hunched against a steady downpour, rifles out in front ready to deploy quickly if the need arose — which it would, and very soon. Countless silver waterfalls, born of the heavy spring rains, streaked the gunmetal mountains, turning gullies into streams and streams into rivers.
They carried long knives and assorted versions of the venerable Russian Kalashnikov, some with folding stocks, some with blond wooden furniture, others with a plastic that reflected distorted images of their nervous faces. Guns were not easy to come by, and target practice drew unwanted attention even out of town. Their kit, it seemed, had been cobbled together by someone who looked at a magazine photograph of the gear an insurgent should have. A few of the items, like the coil of para cord dangling from one’s belt, were generally superfluous. Others, like the three metal carabiners clipped to Raheem’s load-bearing vest, looked ridiculous and posed a real danger to the mission. Still, Kazem left the men to their own devices when it came to gear. The blood of a revolutionary coursed through the veins of every Iranian — even, or especially, those who had grown tired of life since the last one.
Kazem had wanted bad weather. Officials tended not to bother with too much of anything that required them to get out of their vehicles in this kind of rain. The storage facility outside Tehran was a plum assignment, absent the frequent skirmishes farther south in Baluchistan. The hiss of rain and skittering rockslides dampened any noise of approach, but even now, the sound of laughter spilled from the tin guard shack inside the gate.
“This makes no sense,” Raheem said from Kazem’s left. The mosquitolike whine in his voice made it difficult to be sure if his cheeks were wet with rain or tears. “I only count four guards.”
“Do you wish there were more, brother?” Kazem asked, locking eyes with the other man.
“No… I…” Raheem looked away as if to shake off a trance. “Something is not right. Our information said there would be at least eight on duty and as many as ten.”
“Thanks be to Allah that there are so few, then,” Kazem said. “It makes our job all the easier.”
Kazem looked at the other men, all fresh and eager, but, more important, they had to fall under his spell. Raheem, who always grew nervous before a rally or event, had shown a strong heart in the past. Too much independence was problematic.
The likelihood of success was directly tied to the plan’s brazenness — and to the fact that Kazem had more than a little help from the inside.