Zendegi

A new sound intruded on the relentless drone of the helicopters. Martin turned to see a white Paykan tearing down the road beside the park, both front doors propped wide open. The car shot past him, heading for the prison; he raised his phone and framed it just as the driver – wearing a motorcycle helmet, a leather jacket and thick swathes of cloth wrapped around his knees and elbows – jumped from the car and rolled across the ground. The gunner in the helicopter opened fire, but Martin couldn’t tell whether he was aiming for the car or the separated driver. In any case, the car kept moving straight ahead, struck one of the upside-down benches with its right wheel, veered sideways, and crashed into the prison gates.

Martin waited, tensed, half-expecting a fireball, but there was nothing; the car hadn’t been packed with explosives, and any damage it had done had been from momentum alone. Bollards protected the gates from being rammed head-on, but the impromptu ramp had allowed a long run-up followed by a sudden sharp swerve. The driver had taken cover in the bushes on the side of the road opposite the prison; he’d probably not got off unscathed, but unless he’d caught a bullet, he was probably not fatally injured either. Before the sound of the impact had stopped ringing in Martin’s ears, he heard a second car approaching. The helicopter left its post and flew rapidly towards the park; he grabbed Behrouz and pushed him flat against the ground, face-down in a mulch of decaying leaves, then stretched his arm out in what he hoped was the right direction and tilted his phone up.

He heard gunfire, then the roar of the car’s engine shifting pitch abruptly as it passed. The second crash was far louder than the first. Martin was shaking; the helicopter was hovering very close to their tree – he could feel the downdraft, and a gentle rain of dislodged leaves. After a few seconds he drew his right arm in towards his body and thumbed the controls on the phone to play back the footage it had captured. He’d caught the second car slamming into the first and travelling four or five metres down the road as the two of them gouged an opening in the prison gates.

Martin still had his left arm across Behrouz’s shoulder and he felt him move as if preparing to stand.

‘Don’t,’ he insisted, ‘it’s right on top of us.’

‘So what’s the plan?’ Behrouz asked.

Having failed to defend the prison from damage, the gunner was probably suffering from a strong urge to compensate by firing at anything that moved. It was possible that the two of them were already visible through gaps in the branches above, but until someone screamed through a loud-hailer that they should get to their feet with their hands in the air, playing possum seemed by far the best strategy.

‘We wait for it to move,’ Martin said.

‘Wait how long?’

‘I don’t know. It can’t stay there forever.’ Martin pictured the helicopter hovering above the tree, the gunner sitting in the open bay. He’d be wearing night-vision goggles, but with any luck he’d be scanning the park and the road for approaching threats, not looking straight down.

A branch above them creaked perilously. Martin wondered if the downdraft could dislodge something heavier than leaves; apparently Behrouz had the same idea. He pushed Martin’s restraining arm aside and rolled onto his back to see what was happening. When he failed to volunteer a report, Martin took a look for himself.

A man was standing in the tree, slowly edging his way out along one of the branches. He was steadying himself with one hand, carrying something in the other. Martin couldn’t actually see any part of the helicopter chassis through the branches and foliage, but the downdraft and the spill from the spotlight gave him a good idea of its location: it was only a few metres from the top of the tree, and their arboreal companion was moving closer to it.

Behrouz said, ‘If the chopper pilot sees him, which way will it move?’

‘Back towards the prison, so the gunner can get a better aim at him.’

‘But if we run in the opposite direction, into the park, we’re going to be right in the line of fire, aren’t we?’

‘Yes,’ Martin agreed. ‘Good point.’

‘So we should run… sideways?’

‘I think so.’

Behrouz shifted into a squatting position, ready to move, and Martin did the same. He was still mesmerised by the man in the tree. He could now see that the object in his hand was one of the shovels they’d brought in to dig the latrines. Maybe he’d been hiding up there since nightfall, waiting to swing it into the face of the next Basiji saboteur who crept in to mess with the waste disposal arrangements.

The man brought one shoulder back, stood poised for a second or two, then flung the shovel like a javelin; Martin couldn’t see his target, but there was a thwack followed by a deranged mechanical clatter. Behrouz ran one way, Martin the other, but the javelin thrower chose this moment to jump from the tree, landing on top of Martin and knocking him flat.