Greg Rucka: The last run

She nodded, stepped back into the alley from which they'd emerged. Shirazi darted across the street, then slowed, entering the building. She saw him through the window, raising a hand to someone out of sight, and then he crossed the room, disappeared behind the line of heads and monitors. Chace put a hand to her chest, the burning sensation gone, her breathing still pained, but regular. She could feel the butt of the pistol tucked at her waist, digging into her skin. She checked her watch, saw that it was almost seven in the evening, three-thirty or so back in London. Tamsin would be finished with school, would be coming home with Missi, assuming that Tamsin had gone to school at all that day.

Shirazi emerged from the cafe seven minutes later, turning left as he exited, heading for the corner, and Chace stepped out of her shadows, paralleling him from her side of the street. A police car rolled past, part of the traffic, and she kept her head down, and then Shirazi was crossing to meet her, taking her again by the elbow.

"We have a long way to go before tomorrow night," he told her. "It is near the border, only forty, fifty kilometers from it, in Abadan, a point on the river. I printed the map."

He reached into a pocket, pushed a folded sheet of printer paper into her hand, and Chace tucked it beneath her manteau without opening it. "How far?"

"Seven hundred, perhaps seven hundred and fifty kilometers. It is not as bad as it seems, most of it is across desert, unpopulated areas. If we are discreet, we could make it without being detected."

"We need a car."

"Yes." Shirazi pulled back on her elbow, bringing her to a halt once more. She risked a glance up, saw that they were now just outside the glare of a brightly lit marquee of a movie theater. He pointed at the parking lot, just beyond the edge of the lights. "Do you see one you like?"

Chace looked at the cars, trying to remember how many vehicles she'd stolen already since coming to Iran. She couldn't, and realized with morbid humor that she had truly lost count.

"I like the Renault," she told him. The Renault, it turned out, was both a good and a bad idea. A good idea because they had no trouble breaking into it, nor in getting it started; bad because, almost as soon as they were out of Yazd, heading southwest along the highway and into the frigid desert night, one of the warning lights on the dashboard came on, telling them that the car needed gas, and would need it soon. Considering how fortunate she'd been with cars thus far, Chace could hardly hold it against the vehicle.

Some twenty kilometers along the road southwest, nestled in a valley, was Taft, and just outside of town Shirazi pulled to the side of the road.

"There should be a service station still open," he told Chace. "It may be watched. Get in the back, pretend to sleep."

She considered the logic, nodded, and changed her position in the car accordingly. Shirazi set them off again, and Chace propped herself gingerly on her right side, face towards the back of the rear seats, feeling the Renault's motion as they descended further, then leveled out. The car slowed, turned, came to a stop, and diffuse light filtered in around her. Shirazi opened the door, and she heard an exchange in Farsi, stayed still, listening hard for anything that might be an indication of trouble. Then the Renault rocked again, and Shirazi was back behind the wheel, and they were leaving the lights behind.

"No trouble?" she asked, turning and sitting up.

She caught his smile in the rearview mirror, thin and uneasy. "No trouble, no."

Chace reached forward, thinking to pull herself back into the front seat, then thought the better of it as her chest and back sent out separate flares of warning. She winced, wondering what was happening inside of her. She was aware that her breathing had once again become incrementally more shallow, wondered if the dressing on her back had slipped, or if this was some further complication.

"We're going to need to stop," she said, finally. "We need to check the dressing on my back, maybe change it."

Now there was no smile in the reflection off the rearview, just concern, and Chace was heartened by its apparent sincerity. Whether or not he actually gave a damn about her as anything more than a means to an end, she didn't know, and it didn't matter; he needed her as much as she needed him, and both of them, she knew, had already realized they would succeed or fail together.

"I left the kit in Natanz," Shirazi said, after a second. He sounded bitter, disappointed in himself.

"We can make do," Chace told him. "Gauze and Vaseline."

"Vaseline?"

"Petroleum jelly."

"Ah, yes, I understand."

Chace drew another breath, this time aware that it was half what it should've been. The back of her mind began to crawl frantic, warning of the need for air.

"We'll need to do it soon," she said. They climbed out of the valley, back into the desert, and another thirty kilometers or so out of Taft turned into another service area, this one brightly lit in the night, much larger than the one they'd stopped at before. Shirazi parked them away from the pumps, in the shadows near a large building that looked like it had begun its life in the United States, during the fifties, perhaps as part of a drive-in movie theater. The architecture was so absurd that Chace had to keep from laughing at the sight of it, the series of retro-space-age arches that bent over the structure.

"What is that?"

"The Shah," Shirazi said, as if that was all the explanation required. "I will see what they have inside. I should not be long."

He climbed out of the car, and Chace took the opportunity for a last look around the station, seeing it empty, before lying down again as she had in Taft, affecting sleep.

She'd had her head down for long enough to wonder where he was, when she heard the sound of another vehicle entering the lot, the vibration from the engine strong, a diesel, perhaps. Doors slammed, and now there were voices, and Chace moved her hand to the gun at her waist, freeing it so it lay between her and the seat. Light shone in from above, began sweeping the car, and her already diminished breathing grew shorter, and she waited for the beam to hit her.

There was another voice, a shout, and the light cut quickly away. The voices moved rapidly off, and she pushed herself up, peeking through the window, saw that the vehicle looked identical to an old American Army jeep, hardtop, so much so that she wondered if it wasn't one, or a very precise knockoff. She counted four soldiers, rifles raised and set at their shoulders, and all of them were pointing their weapons at Shirazi, who was standing in a puddle of light from the building, hands raised. In one of them, she saw he held a small, white paper bag.

As she watched, one of the soldiers lowered his weapon, reaching forward, towards Shirazi. Another began reaching for his radio, and Chace knew she couldn't allow that; if the call went out, any call at all, that would be it; even should they escape it wouldn't matter, because more would come, soldiers in trucks and helicopters and tanks if need be, and there was no way they would ever outrun or evade them.

She brought her pistol up in both hands, aimed and fired all together through the window, trying to get up on one knee in the back of the car. The shots were devastatingly loud in the enclosed space, and she didn't hear the window as it shattered, firing twice more, and the third shot caught the soldier with the radio in the neck, made him jerk and drop. She shifted her aim, firing again and again, managed to catch another of them, but all had begun to react, and the returning fire in her direction clattered against the car, broke glass and tore through metal. She tried scrabbling back, screamed as something ripped at her right shoulder. Her arm gave out, and she pitched to the side, off the seat, onto the floor of the car.