Larry Bond - Exit Plan

Memories of those dead Basij soldiers merged with the forms Shirin had seen outside Uncle Seyyed’s house. She was a fugitive, and her uncle had paid the price…Suddenly, a frightful thought burst into her mind.

“Yousef, I have to find out if mother is all right!”

The urgency in her tone shocked her husband. “Yousef, is there any way I can call mother? If they tried to arrest Seyyed, VEVAK will take her, too.” As she spoke, her tone changed from urgency to horror at the thought of her own mother in their hands.

“We can’t use a cell phone, or stop to use one somewhere,” he said flatly. “You know that.”

“There has to be something we can do to find out,” she pleaded.

Yousef shook his head and held her hands gently. “What if we could call? Would you warn her? Tell her to run away? And if they were not interested in her before, that call would only draw their attention to her — give them a reason to question her.”

“I had accepted that I would never see mother again, but I hoped we could find a way to keep in touch. But if they’ve taken her like your brother, Ali…”

Leaning against Yousef, grief swallowed her. “They are destroying my family,” she wept. Eventually, she slept, giving herself over to whatever her dreams would hold.

Second Squad Position, Highway 96

1930 Local Time/1630 Zulu

Lieutenant Sistani had walked out to the roadblock. Binoculars were useless now, but he’d taken Alizadeh’s nightscope and carefully studied the scene. The hills on the left blocked any view of his squad’s position from the road, as he knew it would. He’d banned any fires, and the squad had grumbled but obeyed. All of them were in their positions, but he’d allowed some of them to sleep.

Telling Private Yadegar, now manning the post, to stay alert, he walked the four hundred meters back to the squad. The walk helped wake him up. They’d put in a full day’s work before the alert message had arrived, and now with the rush to get in position over, and the enforced inactivity, fatigue was their enemy.

Sergeant Zahedi’s voice echoed across the empty ground. “Lieutenant, urgent call from battalion!” It didn’t sound like good news, and the young officer double-timed back to the command post.

The two noncoms had dug a circular position well back from the road, building it up in front with the spoil and rocks and covering it with a camouflage net. It wasn’t as deep as Sistani would have liked, but oncoming darkness had limited their digging, and he didn’t expect the fugitives to have artillery.

“Sir, it’s the colonel,” Zahedi reported softly, and the lieutenant took the handset.

“Sistani here.”

“Report, Lieutenant. Has there been any sign of trouble?” the colonel asked, as if he were expecting bad news.

“All quiet here, sir. We’ve seen moderate traffic from both directions. They’ve all stopped and nobody has matched the names or descriptions of the fugitives.”

“Any trucks?”

“Yes, sir. We searched them with no results.”

The signal was clear enough so he could hear the colonel sigh. “There’s been another incident just north of Bandar Charak. Four soldiers and a security agent were killed, and there’s no sign that any of the fugitives were hurt. Headquarters says they may have accomplices, and are heavily armed. And an army truck is missing.” The colonel read off a license number.

Sistani had been holding the handset so that Zahedi, standing next to him, could hear as well. He saw Zahedi’s eyes widen, and knew his expression must be similar. The sergeant pointed to his watch, and Sistani nodded.

“When was this, sir?”

“About 1830, an hour ago.”

“Which means if they’re heading southeast on the highway, they could be here at any time.”

“Exactly,” answered the colonel.

“Do we know they’re heading southeast?”

“Not for certain, but that’s the direction they’ve been going.”

“Understood, sir, I’ll take every precaution.”

Sistani turned to the two noncoms. “You heard?”

Both nodded.

He ordered, “Make sure every man is awake and alert. There are to stay hidden at all times. Zahedi and I will check each position every half hour. Afshar, stay by the radio. If you hear firing, report immediately. Do not wait for my order. I don’t know what’s coming, but they won’t catch us off guard.”

Highway 96, West of Second Squad’s Position

2015 Local Time/1715 Zulu

They’d been back on the highway for ten minutes, just long enough for Jerry to get comfortable. He was dozing when Lapointe called out, “Roadblock ahead. Ten klicks.”

Ramey shook off his fatigue and opened his eyes. He turned to look at the screen, while Jerry leaned forward to see.

A barrier lay across both lanes of the highway. The foreshortened figure of a man stood next to it. Lapointe was noting the coordinates. He switched to an area map and marked the spot.

Ramey checked his watch, then called forward to the cab. “Another roadblock in ten klicks. Pointy’s working on a bypass.”

Fazel responded, “Right, I’ll slow to sixty to give him a little more time.” They’d been traveling at up to eighty kph on the highway when they could.

Lapointe was still fiddling with the map, zooming in and out, shifting to different sections. The light from the screen lit his face from below. His expression showed he wasn’t pleased. “Boss, XO, we got a problem. There’s no bypass this time.”

“What? Nothing?” Ramey said, unbelieving. They’d used dirt roads, even gone overland once to get around checkpoints.

“No roads at all. This is the boonies, even for southern Iran. I even looked at using streambeds, but they don’t run anywhere useful. Here’s the problem.” He pointed to some rough terrain on the map. “A little over a klick to the north of the highway is a bunch of steep hills, real rough country. It completely blocks travel on the north side of the highway.”

“And if we head south, we get wet really fast. The beach isn’t even five hundred meters away. A natural bottleneck… All right. How far do we have to backtrack?” Ramey sounded resigned.

“We’d have to pick up a side road at Baverdan.” He slid the map northwest. “See? Almost all the way back to Charak. Then we go east and north to Lavaran, then Armak. That keeps us on the north side of the hills, but the road net only goes to Berkeh Jangal. We can get to Bandar Lengeh and the airfield from there, but it will be from the north and east. And we’ll lose our UAV coverage if we go that far inland.”

Ramey frowned. “The really long way around. How many roadblocks will we hit while we take the scenic route? And without our advance scout, we’d have to run them blind.” The platoon leader rubbed his jaw; his options were between bad and worse. “Show me the UAV image of the checkpoint again.”

Lapointe brought up the picture, a thermal image in false colors. Jerry could easily make out the bright figure leaning against the barrier. One of the man’s arms was bent as if he was holding a cigarette.

“It’s just the one guy,” Lapointe observed.

“He’s gotta have friends,” Ramey countered. “It makes no sense for him to be alone. What else can you see off the UAV feed?”

Lapointe called up several other images, small-scale ones of the highway on either side and one with a larger field of view. He then transitioned over to the live streaming video, watching a pan of the area around the lonely sentry. “Nothing. It’s only four kilometers from the checkpoint to either of these two small towns. Maybe the garrison there is just sending this one man out.”