The screen flickered and went blank for a moment, finally reverting to the log-in page. She typed in Zarin’s password and was trying to access the facility’s schematic when the door behind her finally opened.
The computer wasn’t responsible, though, and she jumped to her feet as three men with machine guns burst in. Omidi followed a moment later, dragging Yousef Zarin along behind him. The academic’s right leg was broken and it gave way when Omidi let go, leaving him bleeding and confused on the tile floor.
“Do you think I wasn’t watching you?” Omidi screamed. “Do you think I didn’t read the report Zarin wrote about this place?”
“I…,” Sarie stammered. “I thought one of the cage locks was defective. That—”
The Iranian rushed her, slamming an open hand into the side of her face hard enough to knock her to the ground. “We have people monitoring the computers! We saw him rewriting the security subroutines. Now tell me what you’ve done!”
Sarie shook her head violently, trying to clear it. Zarin hadn’t talked. He’d managed to hold out despite the torture he’d endured.
“I…I infected the rest of the lab animals,” she said, sticking to the obvious. “We—”
“I know that,” Omidi said, aiming his pistol at Zarin. “You’ve been working day and night with the parasite. Tell me what you’ve done to it!”
“Nothing!”
Omidi pressed the barrel of his gun into the back of the injured scientist’s head. “Tell me or he dies!”
“That’s what I did — nothing!” Sarie said, being careful not to give away anything his believers couldn’t easily figure out on their own. “I haven’t really sped up the time to full symptoms; I’ve just been infecting the animals with larger and larger loads.”
“The great Sarie van Keuren could think of nothing better than that?” he said, curling a finger around the pistol’s trigger. “Give me the truth! Now!”
It was over. One last diversion that might save a tiny handful of lives was all that she had left. “Okay! Don’t hurt him. I was selecting for parasites that attack the corneas to add blindness to the symptomatology.”
She jerked at the sound of the gun, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the blood and brain matter splashing across her.
“You will show our scientist exactly how you have sabotaged the parasite and how to repair the damage,” Omidi said, redirecting his aim to her.
Sarie stared down at the scientist’s body, no longer feeling fear. No longer feeling anything. Finally, she just raised her hand and extended her middle finger.
78
The truck fishtailed in a bog of deep sand, causing the canvas at the back to flutter open. Through it, Peter Howell could see a similar vehicle close behind, straining to keep up. It’d be a miracle if it made it. Or, perhaps more accurately, it would be a miracle if any of them made it.
He pulled the canvas closed again and scanned the faces of the men crammed in among the sandbags used to make the truck heavier. The stoicism and laser-like focus he’d found so comforting in the SAS were completely absent. Every expression told a different story: hatred — for him, for the British in general, for the Iranian government. Fear. Self-doubt.
A rousing pep talk was probably in order, but since only a few of the men spoke English, it probably wouldn’t have much impact. Instead, he peered out a small hole cut in the canopy, squinting into the sun at the approaching guard towers. There was one on either side of the entry gate, each armed with a well-placed machine gun and manned by soldiers he suspected were far more seasoned than any of his boys — many of whom were now enjoying what would be the last few minutes of their short lives.
Their driver, a rock-solid former special ops man named Hakim, began to brake. They’d done no fewer than fifty live-fire simulations, and Howell was pleased to see the young men around him begin to check their rifles as they’d been taught.
When the truck bumped up onto the concrete bridge, he returned to the peephole. One of the two soldiers in the guardhouse cautiously approached the driver’s door while the other made his way to the back. Howell had no idea what Hakim was saying, but the bored irritation in his voice sounded spot-on over the grinding gears of the truck rolling up behind.
Howell pulled out a silenced.22 pistol, frowning down at it as he listened to the approaching footsteps of the guard. A knife would have been more appropriate for the situation, but Smith, who was in the other truck with Farrokh, had been concerned that it could end up being messy enough to spook their green troops.
The canvas rustled as the guard untied it, and Howell carefully raised the pistol. No need to rush — it would take a moment for the man’s eyes to adjust, and if Hakim was as convincing as he sounded, there would be no reason for anyone to expect trouble.
Howell waited until the flap was fully thrown back, reaching out casually with one hand while using the other to put a round neatly through the man’s eye.
The low-caliber and elaborate silencer combined to produce almost no sound at all, and Howell guided the limp body over the gate. After an inexcusable second-and-a-half pause, two of his men pulled the corpse inside.
The driver of the second vehicle gave a subtle nod through the windshield to indicate that no one yet realized what was happening. The trade-off to putting the machine-gun towers in an ideal position to create a cross fire on the bridge was that their line of sight was blocked by the trucks’ canopies.
Howell wiped a streak of blood from the gate and helped one of his men to the ground. They’d taken photos of the soldiers in the guard shack and had reasonably convincing doubles for both of them, right down to uniforms hand-sewn by the women in Farrokh’s training camp.
The young man did himself proud, walking casually to the window of the driver behind them as Howell climbed out and unloaded a few more of his people. Smith would be doing the same, getting his team into position by the rear wheels.
Howell gave the frightened men next to him the thumbs-up, then calmly stepped out into the open and began firing on the west machine-gun placement. The surviving guard clawed for his sidearm, but Hakim dropped him with a pistol shot before slamming the accelerator to the floor and leaving Howell and his men completely exposed.
As expected, the first volley from the tower guns went wide as the soldiers manning them tried to make the adjustment from boredom to combat. It was obviously not the first time they’d been under fire, though, and it didn’t take them long to realize what Howell already knew: the design and construction of the towers made them completely impervious to the small arms that Farrokh’s fledgling army had access to.
In his peripheral vision he saw Smith and his team concentrating their fire on the other tower and Hakim ramming the gate. The truck managed to get through but then went up on two wheels and teetered for a few moments before tipping on its side. The Iranian tried to crawl through the window but made it only halfway before a sniper from a tower along the facility’s western perimeter blew most of his neck away.
The young man a few feet to Howell’s right was caught in the side by a round from the machine gun, and the Brit dove toward the truck still stopped on the bridge, a loud grinding coming from the transmission as the driver tried to force it into gear.
The gunners in the towers were gaining confidence, and with it came accuracy. Another man went down, and Howell saw Smith running, barely staying ahead of a steady stream of bullets knocking loose chunks of concrete behind his heels.
Inside the shattered gate, men were pouring out of the back of the capsized truck, ducking behind it to stay out of the sniper’s sights but leaving them defenseless if the tower gunners should decide to turn on them.