The Leveling

From his backpack, Mark pulled out a glass liter bottle filled with gas and screwed off the cap. He took a rag, twisted it into the narrow mouth of the bottle, held the bottle upside down for a moment to saturate the rag with gas, lit the whole contraption with a lighter, and threw it.

The Molotov cocktail arced over the edge of the roof, leaving little airborne droplets of fire in its wake. It crashed into a walled courtyard that abutted the side of the mansion opposite his exit route.

Cries rang out from inside the mansion. When the guard by the gate ran off to investigate, Mark took off across the roof, running as silently as he could on the tiles. He crawled down spiderlike from the ridge and, without pausing, swung his body over the edge. His feet found the gutter downspout, and he slid down quickly, so quickly that he lost his grip halfway down.

He landed on a bush, dazed but still able to move, then pulled himself to his feet and sprinted across the lawn, making no effort now to avoid detection. Halfway across, he heard barking and glanced to his right. A lone German shepherd was coming at him at top speed, snapping its jaws. Mark tried to sprint faster, but his legs wouldn’t respond—it was as if he were running through water. The fence was only a few strides away.

He turned and threw his forearm up just as the German shepherd lunged. The dog took his forearm in its jaws and bit down with an intense pressure that sent spikes of pain shooting up his arm even through his makeshift armor—five metal school rulers lashed together with surgical tape under a leather jacket. He was knocked to the ground. The dog growled and shook its head, trying to grind its teeth in deeper.

Pepper spray was illegal in Iran, but wasp spray was a decent substitute. With his free hand, Mark grabbed a small can from his jacket pocket, aimed, and shot a stream of pesticide into the dog’s eyes. The dog held on to his forearm for a moment, but then let go, confused and snapping its jaws as best it could, as though unsure where this new enemy was.

“Sorry, buddy.”

A guard sprinted out from the corner of the mansion.

Mark dropped the wasp spray and ran. As he was pushing himself over the points at the top of the fence, he heard gunshots. He fell to the ground on the opposite side and stumbled toward the road, where Daria was waiting for him in yet another stolen Paykan. The passenger side door opened and he fell into the car.





60


Washington, DC



THE PRESIDENT OFTEN ate a light dinner at his desk, but tonight he found the veneer of normalcy—a glass of whole milk, a chicken salad sandwich on whole wheat bread, and a bowl of baby carrots—to be strangely unsettling.

Get outside, take a walk. You’ll think better.

He looked out the window to the white blossoms on the crabapple trees in the Rose Garden. The tulips were in full bloom, and there were hundreds of them, brilliant yellows and reds. Spring was his favorite time of year in Washington, he thought.

The pressure was getting to him. He could feel it in his chest and in the way he felt weak in his joints. Perhaps his critics were right, perhaps he was too old to be president.

His chief of staff appeared at the door, clipboard in hand.

“Hello, Patty.”

“Mr. President.”

“How you holding up?”

“I’m holding. I’ve cleared your original schedule as much as possible so that you can chair the NSC planning meetings, but you’re going to need to meet with the president of Ghana at one tomorrow or people are going to get suspicious that something’s up.”

“Fine.”

The chief of staff handed the president a revised schedule for the next twenty-four hours. He was relieved to see that four hours had been blocked off for him to sleep.

“We’ll also need to carve out time to work on your address to the nation. Simmons will have a draft ready by three.”

“Schedule the meeting with Simmons for eleven tonight and push back the call to Jouanneau,” he said, referring to the president of France. “Have you gotten final clearance for the timing of the address from CENTCOM?”

“It was my wakeup call this morning. We’re good for three tomorrow afternoon.”





61


Tehran, Iran



DARIA MADE A few quick turns, rocketed down a long hill, made another turn, and then parked right behind yet another Paykan, which she and Mark transferred into.

“One of the dogs found me,” Mark said, struggling to catch his breath as Daria sped down a narrow alley, brushing within inches of parked cars.

“I saw.”

“I had to spray him.”

The dog was just another victim, thought Mark. It was stupid to feel that kind of sympathy, he knew, but he liked dogs, and he was sick of watching innocent bystanders, be they dogs or people, being hurt by events they didn’t understand and couldn’t control.