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FELT HIS body lurch upward. His head banged against something with a dull thunk. He opened his eyelids slightly; waves of pain radiated across his head and pulsed behind his eyes. He squeezed them shut again, took several deep breaths, until finally the pain eased. What had happened?
Ambush . . . Balaclava Man
.
    The floor beneath Jack was shuddering, emitting a crinkling sound. Jack’s brain started assembling pieces: He was moving. Inside a vehicle. He opened his eyes again and scanned his surroundings. A small panel van, white walls, tool racks holding spools of wire and hand tools. An electrician’s van.
Remember that,
Jack thought.
    He was lying on a plastic tarp, feet toward the front seats, his head resting on the driver’s-side wheel well. His jacket was gone, leaving him in only a polo shirt. Jack rocked slightly onto his butt and could feel his back pocket was empty.
    They’d taken his wallet, which contained his Virginia driver’s license, personal credit cards, hotel room key card, and his hybrid satellite cell phone. None of these would lead his kidnappers anywhere of value. As did all of The Campus’s operations officers, Jack practiced good digital tradecraft: In addition to having his phone AES-256 password-protected, Jack religiously cleared his call history, discussed nothing over instant messaging or e-mail that was confidential or extraordinary, kept nothing but innocuous contacts in his address book, and aside from Hendley’s main line, there were no numbers on his speed dial; the rest he’d committed to memory. In short, his phone was as gray as could be—as was his room at the Parsian Hotel Azadi. Still, if they realized he was Jack Ryan, Jr. . . . Like it or not, Jack knew he was a high-value target.
    The tarp he lay on was a bad sign. It suggested they were going to start working on him here. It wouldn’t do to have the van’s interior bloody. His hands were bound before him with a thick zip-tie, but not his ankles. Better news.
    From the front seat a voice said, “Check on him.” Jack recognized the voice: Balaclava.
    Jack shut his eyes. Through his lids he sensed a flashlight beam pass over his face. The beam went dark.
    “Still out,” came the reply.
    This voice Jack didn’t recognize, but the accent was American, a rough New York one. Jack felt certain he’d broken the nose of his assailant in Seth’s bolt-hole, but he heard no trace of it in this man’s voice and his head was covered in a dark wool beanie, which could be covering any scalp laceration. In Seth’s apartment Balaclava had seemed both interested and disinterested in the man Jack had taken out. His kidnappers were American, and Wellesley and Spellman had warned him not to get involved. Was this their response?
    “How far?” Balaclava said.
    “Two miles. Take a left on this road up here. There are headlights behind us.”
    “The ones from the Shomal?”
    “I don’t know. Can’t tell. Shit, maybe—”
    “Relax. It’s probably nothing.”
    After a few moments, Jack heard the soft tick-tock of the van’s turn signal, then felt the vehicle turning. He opened his eyes and craned his head backward. Upside down, through the van’s rear window, he caught a glimpse of the moon; as the van finished the turn, it slid from view. The tires began crunching slightly. They’d turned onto a gravel road. Were they outside Tehran? This, too, was a bad sign: dark, isolated road, hands bound, lying on a tarp-covered van floor.
    Shomal,
Jack thought. The name sounded familiar, and Balaclava’s use of
the
suggested a highway or freeway. Jack tried to recall his mental map of Tehran, but he drew a blank.
    Doesn’t
matter,
he thought. One thing mattered: He had to get out, make a break. If they reached their destination with him inside this van, he was finished. How far would he get, though? The hell with it. Better to die running than lying down.
    “Did they make the turn?” asked the American.
    “No, it kept going.