The Chimera Vector

Chapter One Sophia didn’t exist. Officially. Unofficially, she squeezed the trigger. The Minister of Defense’s head popped like a grape. She pulled the c*****g handle back, releasing the empty shell, then drove it forward. New round in the chamber. Through the scope on her Steyr HS rifle, she shifted her aim to the parked motorcycle, now laden with explosives that her team had attached. The Minister’s personal guards—Takavaran, Iranian Special Forces—scattered, searching for the shooter. She was using one of their issued weapons, but they wouldn’t find her from this range. She fired again. The 50-calibre round roared across downtown Tehran with the sound of a thunderclap. The explosives detonated, tearing open the Minister’s car and shredding everything around it, including his body. A cloud of dust billowed outward. Easy part was over. Now she had to extract. Sophia pocketed her shell casings, then crawled back from the edge of the rooftop. On the other side of the world, the Fifth Column were busy inventing a previously unknown terrorist group to claim responsibility for what Sophia hoped would be regarded as a suicide bombing. The rifle’s bipod detached in seconds, but field stripping the weapon took a bit longer. She rolled up the rifle components in her sleeping bag and stuffed it into her backpack. Her second in command, Damien, was waiting patiently at the bottom of the stairs. He scratched his unshaven chin with the armband of his $5 imitation Ray-Bans. He started for the elevator. ‘No sirens?’ ‘That’s what worries me.’ Sophia fell in step behind him. They took the elevator to the hotel’s first floor. The lobby was decorated with mosaic dolphins on the walls and a white spiral staircase that twisted up from the champagne marble floor. Serene piano played through tinny speakers and a concierge’s gaze lingered on her for a moment—had he heard the gunshot over the lobby music?—before attending to a new guest. Sophia and Damien walked calmly out of the lobby. Still no sirens. Jay, the other member of her team, was leaning on the fence by the swimming pool, sporting a pair of the most offensive fluorescent green sunglasses he could find. Beside him was a row of battered motorcycles. Three were theirs—second-hand Honda 125s. ‘Bit quiet, isn’t it?’ He tossed her the keys. They climbed on their bikes and disappeared. Jay drove into the coal-black night. Sophia had him behind the wheel of their civilian Land Cruiser, ferrying them across the Iranian desert with their motorcycles stowed in the back. Headlights off, interior lights off. Nothing but darkness and Jay’s thermogenic vision. Sophia sat up front, her fingers drumming the handbrake, while Damien sat in the back, his hands likely glued to his carbine. ‘Will you relax?’ Jay asked. ‘When we’re across the border,’ she said. They were dressed as civilians with a different cover story depending on who asked, but for this operation they were fitted very specifically with Takavaran-issued weapons. From the Austrian Steyr rifle she’d fired on the rooftop to the German HK53 carbines sitting between their legs, and down to the cloned pistols—a local variant of the SIG Sauer P226—jammed in concealed holsters inside their waistbands. They needed to cross the border without being seen by anyone—neither Iranian nor American. Jay switched the radio on, but was met only with static. Instead, he sang a song of his own. ‘Who’s the pineapple under the sea?’ Jay sang. ‘SpongeBob SquarePants!’ Damien answered. Sophia sighed. ‘No, it’s who lives in a pineapple—’ Jay’s singing drowned her out. ‘Who died in an oil spill because of BP?’ ‘SpongeBob SquarePants!’ Damien sang. ‘Stop,’ Sophia said. They fell silent. She did another sweep with her night vision monocular. Ahead, it was just flat, featureless desert and the distant lights of a town. ‘Watch that town,’ she said. ‘Go around.’ ‘Yeah, I got it,’ he said. But the light ahead wasn’t a nearby town at all. A Citroën sedan peeled from the night, heading straight for them. Its driver seemed oblivious to their presence. ‘Great,’ Jay said, taking a hard left. Sophia wasn’t sure that was enough to get them clear. Soon, the sedan’s headlights would splash over them. She peered once more through her monocular. ‘We can’t be seen. Not yet.’ ‘They’re looking for us,’ Damien said, his voice low. ‘They can’t look for something that don’t exist,’ Jay said. The sedan wasn’t close enough for Sophia to pick out the occupants’ features. Civilian? Military? One was bad news, the other was worse. ‘American?’ Damien asked, hopeful. She wound down her window. ‘No, we’re too far.’ Damien released his seatbelt and shuffled to the right side, lowering his window as well. ‘Ready.’ The approaching sedan’s windows were up, but she could hear exotic stringed instruments and the undulating pitch of a female vocalist. ‘Go left, go left,’ Jay muttered. ‘Not this way.’ She used her monocular again. First, to check the charging handle on her carbine to make sure she hadn’t knocked it out of battery, and then to peer through the Citroën’s fogged windshield. It wasn’t easy, but she recognized the uniforms from the street she’d fired on today. Rifles in hands. ‘Takavaran,’ she said, extending the buttstock on her weapon. ‘We’re not armored,’ Damien said. ‘In case you forgot, we’re not armored.’ ‘What’s the call, Soph?’ Jay asked. ‘Sophia, not Soph.’ She raised her carbine. ‘Line us up.’ ‘You got it.’ The sedan’s back wheels kicked dust into the air, accelerating fast. It was coming right for them.