Even so, from just outside the hangar, they watched to make certain no strike force, no disguised commandos, no bustling laborers—no one, really—intended to ambush. Mary spied the craft she was to fly, a Tupolev 154–100, the upgraded airliner, this one with blessedly familiar Western avionics. All she had to do was fly it fifty-four nautical miles, to Iraqi airspace. Iran would be unprepared to shoot down a commercial airliner. They wouldn’t scramble fighters in time. They wouldn’t get surface-to-air missiles in time. By the time they did, if they did, Will, Mary, Baz, and Hoseyn would be on Basra tarmac. Baz would slip across the border back to Iran later without them.

She checked maintenance-crew activity. After an hour, she concluded that one of the planes was still in the help shop. But the other two, they were good to go.

Will was setting up. Now she joined him. They checked weapons, decided on positions and access, alternative egress. Yet Mary couldn’t help gravitating to Baz, glancing at him, worrying. She could see him sobering, counting down the final minutes to the great adventure’s end. Will was missing Baz’s hurt.

When she got a moment, she knelt where he was leaning against a wall in his boy crouch. They were hiding behind what looked like a construction trailer, in a narrow space in front of a small one-story station of white concrete.

“You will return to your family,” she whispered

He nodded glumly.

“They will be proud of you.”

He didn’t smile.

“Your mother will celebrate. Your uncles. Everyone.”

“You will stay my mother,” he said.

At full dark, she saw for certain the sky was cloud-free. This was true boon. Her crash, so many months ago now, was the reverse of this night. As the men at the lake had disappeared, so would devils. So had, she saw, her cooler self. She wasn’t tender, but she felt, perhaps for the first time, the worth of kindness. Had Frank begun this warming and Baz finished it? There was so much when this thing was over that she wanted to talk about with Will.

Just then, a man appeared. She saw him about a hundred meters from the trailer where they were hiding. Baz didn’t see yet. She pushed away from him closer to the wall. Will was by her side, and he leaned in to the wall too.