Andrew Kaplan - Scorpion Deception

“What about me? I had nothing to do with this. I came to warn him about the Swiss,” Zahra said, indicating Scorpion as they were led out into the cold night, their breath visible in the headlights. There were three vehicles parked in the snow, a white police panel van and two sedans. A half-dozen people stood under the lights outside the hotel entrance down the slope, watching.

“They’re waiting at Evin Prison,” Scale told her. “You’ll have a long time to tell them about it. A long time.” He looked at Scorpion. “I’ll see you again, Westermann agha .”

Scorpion didn’t answer. He looked down at the snow so his eyes wouldn’t reveal what he was thinking.

One thing was clear. Ghanbari wasn’t the Gardener. And he didn’t have anything to do with the Bern attack. Sadeghi-and it seemed he might or might not be the Gardener-had gotten a cell phone in Ghanbari’s name and ID and used it to coordinate the attack with Scale. Part of the plot was that if it came back on Iran, it would throw suspicion on Ghanbari instead of Sadeghi. Meanwhile, back in Washington, Rabinowich, Harris, and the National Security Council were acting on the assumption that Ghanbari had ordered the attack. That’s what they were telling the President. Scorpion could see how it would unfold. The Iranians would do a show trial in front of the whole world using the Americans’ own evidence to prove Ghanbari was a CIA spy. And they would drag him in front of the cameras to prove it. They would claim that the CIA had ordered the attack on Bern to falsely justify a war against an innocent Iran. He had to get this to Langley.

The guards bundled them into the police truck. Two of them, armed with what looked like MPT-9s, Iranian clones of the H amp; K MP-5 submachine gun, climbed in with them. The rear cargo door was shut, and they heard it locked and barred from the outside. Scorpion sat on a bench on the side of the truck, sandwiched between Ghanbari and Zahra. One guard sat opposite them, the other near the rear door, their submachine guns cradled across their knees.

A window at the back of the truck cab showed another guard and a driver getting in and starting up the truck. Scorpion assumed that Scale and one of his men got into one of the sedans and two of the other Revolutionary Guards got into the other. They would box the truck in, front and back, down the mountain. It wasn’t that far; seventy kilometers. In little more than an hour he’d be in an interrogation cell in Evin Prison and no way out.

The truck started. They moved slowly, crunching through the snow to the road, and began a slow descent down the curving mountain road in the darkness. Scorpion glanced at the cab window. He could see the taillights of the sedan ahead of them. Scale and one of his men, he assumed. Although he couldn’t see out the back, he knew the other sedan would be in place following them, perhaps five or ten meters behind.

He glanced around the interior of the truck. If he was going to make an escape, it would have to be now from the truck, before they got into Tehran. Once inside Evin Prison, escape would be near impossible. He leaned against Ghanbari, who appeared in shock, making it seem he’d been jostled by the ride, and whispered in English.

“Suppose I said I believe you. You had nothing to do with Bern.”

“It’s true. It’s Sadeghi. Kta’eb Hezbollah. It must be,” Ghanbari whispered back.

“Khafe sho,” the Revolutionary Guard opposite them snapped. Shut up.

“Listen to me,” Scorpion whispered back. “In a minute all hell’s going to break loose. I need you to rip off my right shoe and sock. Can you do that?”

“I don’t understand,” Ghanbari whispered.

“I said, shut up!” the guard growled.

“It has to be fast. Pull off my shoe and sock. There’s a scalpel taped to the bottom of my foot. Use it to cut my hands free,” Scorpion whispered. “Can you do it?”

“I said ‘shut up’!” the guard shouted, pointing his weapon at Scorpion.

“ S’il vous plait, monsieur, je suis suisse. Je ne comprends pas ,” Scorpion said in French, trying to look meek and frightened. Please sir, I’m Swiss. I don’t understand.

The guard looked at him with contempt. “Harum zadeh,” he muttered. Asshole.

Ghanbari looked stunned. Scorpion wasn’t sure he was going to do it.

“If you don’t, they’ll kill us all,” Scorpion whispered, and leaned against Zahra. “I need you to distract the guard,” he told her.

“How?” she whispered.

“You’re a woman. Think of something,” he whispered, and smiled meekly at the guard, who snorted with contempt at him. Scorpion looked away, toward the back door and the other guard and at the truck floor.

“ Khahesh mikonam ,” please, Zahra said. “My ties are too tight. They’re hurting me.”

She twisted to show the guard her hands tied behind her. He just looked at her.

“Please,” she repeated, tears in her eyes, standing and nearly falling. “I’m just a woman. It hurts!” she whimpered, backing to the guard, holding out her tied hands behind her, arching her back and in the process presenting her gorgeous rounded posterior to him. The guard stared mesmerized at her buttocks in tight jeans. This was something unimaginable for an Iranian woman to do.

“Get ready,” Scorpion whispered to Ghanbari, crossing his leg so his right shoe was touching Ghanbari’s leg. As the truck lurched, Zahra fell on the guard’s lap. For an instant his view of Scorpion and Ghanbari was blocked as she sprawled on him.

Ghanbari turned his back to Scorpion and pulled off his shoe and sock in a few seconds with his tied hands. Zahra was tangled wriggling on the guard’s lap. The other guard tried to move toward them, holding on as the truck swayed on the road. Scorpion felt Ghanbari’s fingernails digging at the sole of his foot, clawing at the flesh-colored adhesive tape then ripping it off. Swaying with the truck, Ghanbari hacked at the plastic tie handcuffing Scorpion’s wrists with the scalpel that had been attached to the tape. Scorpion pulled hard but the plastic tie held taut. Zahra tumbled to the floor of the moving truck. It wasn’t going to work, he thought, and then suddenly he felt his hands free.

As the second guard reached for Zahra, to pull her up, Scorpion moved. He used the Krav Maga submachine gun disarm, wrapping his right arm around the guard’s arm, trapping the hand on the MPT-9. With his left arm he did a downward elbow smash to the guard’s jaw, then an upward elbow smash while twisting the submachine gun out of the man’s grasp with his right hand. Then, with both hands stroking up with the MPT-9’s butt, he smashed the guard’s jaw. Before the guard crashed to the floor of the truck, Scorpion fired a single shot into the other guard’s head, killing him. Zahra screamed as the guard’s blood splattered the side of the truck.

From the floor, the guard whose gun he had taken grabbed at his leg to pull him off-balance. As the guard he’d shot toppled over, Scorpion raised the MPT-9 by its muzzle and smashed the butt down hard on the other guard’s head, cracking his skull. The man collapsed, unconscious. Scorpion glanced at the cab window. The guard next to the driver stared wide-eyed through the glass, swinging his weapon into position.

“Hold on!” Scorpion shouted to Zahra and Ghanbari in English as he sent a burst through the cab window and a second burst lower down, through the metal partition, to shoot the two guards sitting in the cab in the back. The face of the guard in the cab window was gone, and the driver was slumped over the wheel. The truck swerved almost ninety degrees and careened off the road, bouncing wildly out of control down the steep mountain slope. Scorpion was tossed off balance onto the bodies of the two Revolutionary Guards, all of them tumbling around as if inside a washing machine.