There was no doctor's office, and there was no veterinarian's, and damned if she was going to roll up into a hospital with her last breath and surrender her liberty for her life. Her vision was swimming, graying at the edges, threatening to wash white, then clearing briefly as she sucked weakly, quickly, trying to bring air into her body from her nose and mouth. Lights along the street flashed past her at inconstant intervals, patches of darkness, headlights, then street lamps, white and bright, faint and ghostly, cycling, and Chace didn't know what she was looking for, the same way she was no longer aware that she was driving the Nasim, everything now reduced to instinct and a desperate, hungry need to survive.
There was only that, and the absurd, pathetic sound of her wheezing, as each breath became more painful even as it became more and more pointless. She caught the sign out of the corner of her eye, to her left, just after she'd crossed the bridge into central Chalus, a flickering green glow that registered deep, and she spun the wheel hard about, and the pain it caused in her chest made her expel precious air in a weak scream, enough to shock herself back to her senses, if only for the moment. The Nasim squealed, tires breaking from pavement, and Chace ground gears, found the green light again, the glowing sign, and there were cars parked on the street here, in front of the pharmacy, but there was a gap, and she pointed the nose of the car towards it and floored the accelerator. The engine growled feebly, popped over the curb onto the pavement, and then shattered its way through the storefront. Shelves, boxes, bottles flew and crashed, and Chace was fumbling open the door before the car had stalled, toppling out of the vehicle, dragging the submachine gun behind her with a free hand, a sick toddler pulling along its favorite toy.
Her voice was gone now, she could hear herself squeaking like a rusted chain between gasps. The headlights on the Nasim were still on, enough light to see what lay ahead, and Chace heaved herself upright using the front of the car, swaying amidst the debris, looking about desperately, and there, top shelf, still standing, she saw the boxes, printed in Farsi, the line drawings of syringes in various shapes and sizes. She lurched forward, stumbled again, crashing into the display and bringing the whole thing down around her, boxes of gauze and cold remedies and herbal extracts and sanitary napkins. She abandoned the gun, both hands searching, hands and knees, saw blood dropping from her mouth in the glare of the headlights, spattering on white packaging, and she found the syringes again, the wrong size, and she shoved the box aside, blinking, shaking her head, knowing that she was wasting oxygen, that she didn't have any to spare. She saw the label, printed in Farsi, the numbers Roman, grabbed at the box, the right gauge, the right size to save her life.
Her fingers weren't working properly anymore. She dragged at the flap twice, before using her teeth on the package, ripping the box apart and scattering its contents. Plastic-wrapped syringes flew away from her, out of the light, out of sight, and she whimpered, reaching out, found one again, and, this time forcing herself to slow down, brought it to her teeth once more. She peeled the plastic wrapping back, took the fat tube in her right hand, and, again with her teeth, ripped at the cap covering the large-gauge needle. The cap dropped out of her mouth, and she turned the syringe, bit at the base of the plunger, wrenching it likewise free and letting it fall.
She worked herself upright, onto her knees, steadying herself with her left hand, then tore at the top of the manteau. Buttons popped free, spun away, clattered on linoleum out of sight. She ran her fingers down from her neck, over her left breast, pressing down, counting ribs, searching for the space between the second and third intercostals. Marking with her left hand, Chace brought the needle to her body with her right, and through the pain, the dizziness, felt the bite of the point against her skin. Her left hand moved, joined the right, and if she'd had the air to spare she'd have taken a breath then, steeled herself for what would come next, but she didn't, and so instead drove the needle into her chest as hard as she possibly could. The last of her breath exploded out of her, a pitiful sound of pain and misery, the lance of steel sinking into her body, slowing imperceptibly before finally popping through membrane into her chest.
Air hissed past her hands, spilling from the syringe, and Chace gasped, and then, discovering she could breathe once more, gasped again, falling back, needle still held in her body with both hands. Another breath, and another, and the pain was exquisite, but her vision was clearing, the roar fading in her ears, and she knew she had to move again, quickly, but for the moment all she wanted was to just lie there. Just to lie there, amidst the debris of the ruined pharmacy, on boxes of knockoff over-the-counter medications, of sticky plasters and cough syrups and disposable diapers and deodorants.
Lucidity returned, self-diagnosis, understanding of what she'd known but hadn't realized. She'd been clipped when Falcon had gone down, maybe on the way to the car, maybe at the car itself, but it couldn't have been from the submachine guns, because if it had been, she was certain she'd be dead. A handgun, then, a small-caliber round, but whatever it was, it had punctured the chest cavity in such a way that air had invaded with it, had torn her left lung from the pleural wall, collapsing it, but the wound must've sealed itself, sparing her the misery of a sucking chest wound in exchange for a… pneumothorax, that was the term. The air pressure in her chest cavity had collapsed her lung to the size of a golf ball, and that same trapped air had begun pressing on the right, making it harder and harder to inflate. The needle had allowed the trapped air to escape, the pressure to equalize, and the lung had reinflated. She could breathe once more.
Until it happened again.
She had to move.
With a tug, Chace pulled the syringe from her chest and tossed it aside, and the pain was no less awful, but now she had the air to fight it. She gave it a second, pressing a finger to the puncture site, assuring herself that the skin had closed, sealing her chest once more. She stumbled back to her feet, found the submachine gun again, then scanned the shelves and the floor, quickly pulling packages down, checking them in the light from the Nasim, discarding what she didn't need. Three of the prewrapped, large-gauge syringes were visible on the ground, and she took them, stuffing them into the pockets of the torn manteau, along with two crumpled boxes of gauze and a roll of tape, as well as a package of something she thought might be amoxicillin, and another that she hoped was a pain reliever of some sort.
Chace straightened, the act itself making her back ache, then turned her attention to the Nasim. There was no way in the world she would manage to get it running and out of the pharmacy. She picked her way out of the wreckage, stepping carefully over broken glass that shattered further beneath her boots, and the flashing lights cut into her periphery as she emerged onto the street, the police car slewing as it took the corner, its headlights falling full upon her as it skidded to a stop.
There were two policemen, their doors opening immediately, each shouting at her in Farsi as they began to emerge. Maybe they had seen the submachine gun in her hand, maybe they had been warned, knew who she was; maybe they were simply responding to the crash. It didn't matter, there was no choice for Chace to make.
She brought her weapon up to her shoulder, settling it into place with the same instinct and practice that had driven her flight thus far. She felt her cheek against the stock, lined up her shot, squeezed the trigger once. She shifted, repeated, squeezing the trigger again, and the submachine gun went dry during the second burst, but not before its work was done.
Chace ran awkwardly towards the police car, dropping the empty gun, a fresh bloom of pain wrapping around her torso as she moved. The driver was dead already, his partner dying, and she searched them quickly, taking their wallets, tossing them into the still-idling police car. Each carried a pistol, a Sig-Sauer knockoff, and spare magazines, and she took those, as well. The partner coughed blood up at her, eyes unfocused and vision fading, and for a moment, Chace thought about sparing him, thought that he was her only a few hundred seconds earlier, that his life could be saved.
But she was hunted and he was hunter and she had already left too much behind.
"Sorry, mate," she murmured.
She shot him with his own pistol, once, between the eyes. Three and a half miles along the road, heading northwest, before curving to follow the shore of the Caspian westward, Chace pulled in to the lot of a large manufacturing facility. Sodium lights and steam wafted distantly in the air, mixing with light fog, but the lot itself was dark enough, and she killed the engine and exited the vehicle. Outside, she could hear the machinery churning, and beyond and above, the sound of a helicopter as it circled back towards the center of Chalus. There was a vague smell of fish in the air.
There were several cars to choose from, more of the same makes and models she had seen at the airport what seemed like a lifetime ago, and this time she went with another Samand, simply because its door was unlocked. She threw the pistols, wallets, and spare magazines onto the passenger seat. Back at the police car, she popped the trunk, where she found a first-aid kit and a large wool blanket. She took both, moved them to the Samand, then stopped and made another survey of the immediate area. There was no one to be seen, no voices to be heard, only the constant grind from the plant. Even the helicopter had faded.
Chace checked her pockets, found the folding knife and snapped it open. The car immediately beside the Samand was another Peugeot. She dropped to her knees behind it, experienced another sharp surge of pain from her back as she did so, a warning that seemed to both climb and fall at once. Her breathing was, at least for the moment, steady and sure, but each inhale, each exhale, came with a constant discomfort.
As quickly as she dared, she unscrewed the bolts holding the license plate to the Peugeot. Then she moved to the next car in the line, a Sarir, and removed its rear plate. She did the same to a Suzuki Vitara, and to a Miniator, and a Mercedes-Benz, and finally to a Citroen Xantia, all parked in a row. She closed the knife, took her collection of plates back to the Samand, and set them on the floor of the passenger's seat before cracking into the ignition and hot-wiring the car.
The original exfil plan had been to the west, via Tabriz, and it made good sense; good enough sense, in fact, that Chace was certain anyone searching for her would see it, as well. From Tabriz, one could run to Iraq, to Turkey, to Azerbaijan, to Armenia, and every single one of those borders would be monitored, watched, guarded. With the ruined pharmacy, the dead policemen, the abandoned cars, and now with the license plates, her trail would only confirm the suspicion: she was running to the west.
So not west. But a run east was out of the question, too far and too long and ultimately ending in western Afghanistan, where the Republican Guards had made strong inroads with the local populace. Given the state she was in, the pain still cruelly riding her, taking to the Caspian wasn't any more viable; the RHIB was gone, and even if she could secure another vessel, even if she could somehow avoid the airplanes and boats that would surely be patrolling the coast, there was still the threat of the weather. "Drowning" was just another word for asphyxiation.
Which left south, back to Tehran.
Chace put the Samand into gear, and feeling her chest twinge, pulled out of the lot, turning east, then south.
Back into the heart of enemy territory.