Stephen Coonts - The Disciple

“Okay,” Emerick said slowly.

“Remind your agents that they are not bodyguards; they are observers.”

“What they are is law enforcement officers,” Emerick said curtly. “If a crime happens in front of them, they will try to apprehend the perps-and prevent anyone else from being hurt.”

“Fine. Just tell them not to stop a bullet to save Azari’s worthless hide.”

Myron Emerick stared at the admiral, then said, “Okay.” Changing the subject, he asked, “How will you know if Azari squeals to his case officer?”

“The Iranians will put Davar Ghobadi against a wall and shoot her,” Jake said. “They won’t need her anymore.”

I saw the helicopter long before I heard it. It was running without lights, but I picked it up right away with the night vision goggles while it was still ten miles or so away, several thousand feet below where I sat.

He was making big, slow oblongs. As I watched I realized he was working closer. Coming this way.

The realization that he was probably keeping a car under surveillance crystallized in my nervous mind.

Finally I saw the car, still three miles or so away, crawling up that dirt road toward the pass.

The chopper was higher now, almost at my elevation. I wondered if he could hover at this altitude.

Even if he couldn’t, if he thought Davar was meeting someone up here, he could call for help, blockade the road. The road leading off the mountain to the north, too. We would be trapped up here, sure as shootin’.

Once I realized what he was up to, I got behind a tree and braced the AK against it. Selected automatic fire.

I didn’t have long to wait. Within a minute, while the car was still a couple of miles down the grade, he came scooting for the pass, no doubt looking it over.

I watched him come, found that aiming the damned rifle with goggles on was difficult, to say the least. Now I could hear his engine and the rotor whop, faintly at first, but getting steadily louder as he approached. I jerked the goggles off and dropped them.

Now I saw him, a darker shape in the dark night.

He was only fifty or so yards away, right over the road, and I could see the glow of his cockpit lights when I squeezed the trigger. Holding the rifle on the cockpit as best I could and tracking the chopper as it flew from my right to left, I gave him a long burst, sprayed him good.

When I released the trigger, the machine was in a gentle descent on the north side of the ridge and the sounds of my shots were echoing around me. The helicopter kept going down, the sound fading. I was having trouble following it with my eyes-it seemed to be veering right… straight into a steep slope, where it crashed. I saw a flash and heard the crunch, and the engine fell silent. Flame flickered, then became brighter. I thought the chopper might explode, but several moments passed and it didn’t. Just burned steadily.

I put on the night vision goggles and took a squint. The crash was at least a mile away, and the flame made it impossible to see anything near it.

I checked in the other direction. The car grinding up the hill was still a good distance away.

I gathered my stuff and began working down the steep slope to the road. I was walking south toward the edge of the cut when the car came up the hill and stopped beside me. Davar was in the passenger seat, wearing her boy’s outfit.

After I took off the goggles, I opened the rear passenger door and climbed in.

“Did you people see the helicopter that was keeping an eye on you?”

“What helicopter?” Davar said, obviously shocked.

“I shot it down. It’s over there on that slope, about a mile away. Someone will miss it soon, so we better do our talking and get the hell off this mountain. Why in the name of God did you pick this damn place for a meet?”

She ignored the question. The driver was looking me over, checking the AK. He was about thirty-it was hard to tell with just the panel lights illuminating them. A head of unruly hair, a nice shirt and a short beard, which was more of a fashion statement than a religious one.

“My cousin Ghasem.”

“Hey,” I said, reluctant to take my hand off the pistol grip of the rifle.

“He wants you to send a manuscript to America.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“A manuscript,” she repeated. She held up the package for my inspection.

I was underwhelmed. I had just shot down a helicopter and killed a planeload of men for a fucking manuscript ?

“I can do that,” I agreed, trying to keep the anger out of my voice. “Then what?”

They obviously hadn’t thought that far ahead. Confusion reigned for ten or fifteen seconds. “Pass it to Azari,” Davar said.

“That jerk may be a shill for the mullahs,” I said roughly. “Someone is feeding him information he isn’t getting from you. Whatever this manuscript is, you want it to see the light of day, better come up with another plan.”

They started to discuss it, but I cut them off. “I’ll send it to my boss-he’ll figure it out. Ghasem, pull down the road a hundred meters or so and turn around. My car is there. Anything else?”

Ghasem got the car in motion.

“You wanted to see a bomb factory,” Davar said. “If you deliver the manuscript to safety, Ghasem will take you there.”

Oooh. Things were looking up, which always made me suspicious. I am getting so damned cynical. A friggin’ manuscript, and now an offer of help! Who is running the universe this week, anyway?

Ghasem found the spot where I’d stashed my ride and began turning. Far below, coming up the grade from the north, I saw a set of headlights.

It took him three back-and-forths to get the car turned. I was sure he was going to get it stuck, but he didn’t. When he had the car pointed back toward Tehran, I opened the door and got out. Held the door open and asked, “Where and when?”

He named a restaurant. Three days from now.

Davar passed me the manuscript, which was wrapped in paper and held with a string.

“See you then,” I said and slammed the door.

The car drove off.

I didn’t waste a minute. Got in my car and backed out. Left the headlights off and began following them down the grade. After a few hundred yards, I put the night vision goggles back on.

If they got stopped on the way down or on the road into town, I intended to bail out and abandon the car.

With each turn of the road the tension increased, if that was possible. I was sweating, my hands were so wet they were slippery, and I had on too many clothes. I didn’t stop to take anything off, but I rolled down the window several inches, and the fresh air helped.

There is nothing worse than waiting for the ax to fall… and it doesn’t. Not in this minute, or the next. Or the next. Had I been a praying man, I would have wrestled with the Lord that night.

Finally we got low enough to pass shacks and huts beside the road. Some old trucks sat in the yards. Now there were occasional vehicles on the road, more as we entered the suburbs.

With one corner of my mind I wondered about the manuscript: What could it be? Plans for a weapon, an account of Ahmadinejad’s perverted love life, or perhaps the dirt on secret negotiations with the Russians?

Two hours after we left the pass, I was in the embassy looking at the manuscript. It was handwritten in Farsi by a person with tiny, crabbed handwriting, and I couldn’t read a word of it.

Ten minutes later I was on the encrypted satellite phone talking to Jake Grafton.

Brigadier General Dr. Seyyed Hosseini-Tash was a nervous man, Ghasem thought. Today, at the long-awaited test of the neutron generator, he exuded everything but confidence. His uniform was rumpled, and, despite the pleasant temperature inside the tunnel in which they stood, the brigadier was visibly perspiring. Although he was a major general, Ghasem’s uncle Habib Sultani never wore a uniform, preferring civilian clothes instead. In contrast to Hosseini-Tash, who was in charge of the weapons of mass destruction program, which of course included the manufacturing of neutron generators, Sultani appeared collected and in control.