Easy Day for the Dead (8 page)

“What should I do?”

“Just keep driving normal. Ignore him.”

Leila did.

Alex glanced behind. The vehicle's lights came closer. Then the driver honked the horn and flashed the lights.
Not good.
As the vehicle neared, Alex could see it was a red SUV. The SUV pulled up beside them on the left, still honking and flashing its lights. The driver leaned out and shouted something in Farsi.

“It is him. He wants us to stop,” Leila translated.

“Stop, but don't turn your car engine off.”

She slowed to a stop. Leila kept the engine running. She seemed to be keeping her cool.

The basiji stalker stopped his vehicle, too, turned off the engine, stepped out, and approached Leila. Two other occupants remained in the vehicle. The basiji stalker was a handsome man. His eyes squinted at the SEALs, then at Leila.

Alex readied his AKMS rifle. He knew his Teammates were doing the same. A great SEAL op often didn't involve shooting. Usually a perfect op was one where the SEALs crept in, accomplished their mission, and sneaked out without anyone knowing. If this guy sucked them into a firefight before accomplishing their mission, the SEALs might not have enough ammo to reach the target, let alone enough ammo for going home.
This is looking less and less like a perfect op.

Although Leila remained calm, the basiji stalker became louder and louder. He shook his fist. The calmer Leila remained, the more infuriated he became. The stalker moved over to Alex's window and started shouting at him and waving his AK-47.
I don't have time for this.

The basiji stalker pulled on Alex's door handle, opening it.

“Leila, keep the engine running,” Alex said. “John, come with me.”

The basiji stalker's jaw dropped at the sound of Alex speaking English.

Alex fired a single shot up through the basiji stalker's jaw that burst out the top of his head.

The basiji stalker collapsed in the sand, and Alex fired a second shot in the stalker's head before walking toward the other vehicle. Alex had no idea who was in the red SUV, but they shouldn't have been out so late, and they shouldn't have been hanging out with the basiji stalker.
If you mix with crimson, you become crimson.

The basiji stalker probably had the vehicle keys with him, and his friends couldn't drive away. Both were in the backseat. They could've stepped out of the vehicle and tried to make a run for it, but they didn't. If the one closest to Alex and John were armed, he could've shot at them through the window, but he began rolling it down.

Alex and John walked forward, shooting through the window at the silhouettes in the SUV. Alex fired so fast, it sounded as if he were shooting two-round bursts, but he controlled each shot. Although Alex fired fast, John fired faster. Alex pinpointed the bodies, but John pinpointed the pinpoints. The basiji's friends hip-hopped on the backseat like street dancers on cocaine. When the two SEALs reached the vehicle, the bodies were still twitching. Alex and John administered the coup de grace, each putting one final bullet in a head. The basiji's friends still held their AK-47s in their hands. Instead of shooting through the window, they'd tried to save it by rolling it down; but in the end, they lost the window and their lives.

Alex and John returned to Leila's vehicle. As soon as Alex and John were seated, Leila didn't wait for them to shut the doors; she sped away. Alex and John closed their doors.

“Take us back to the village, then exit from the southwest,” Alex said. “That might confuse whoever tries to figure out who did this.”

Pancho navigated with his GPS, giving Leila directional headings. Leila returned to Abadi Abad, then drove southwest out of the village. No one followed. When they passed beyond sight of the village, she headed off-road, west for a few kilometers, before driving completely off-road to their true course to the northwest. Leila drove carefully over spots of soft sand and around dunes, ravines, and other obstacles. She kept a steady speed for most of three hours until they arrived at their insertion site—five klicks away from their target. Leila parked in front of a group of dunes. Over time the wind had blown sand into piles that stood more than two stories tall, blocking the sight and sound of the Outcasts from the chemical lab compound. The SEALs stepped out and covered Leila inside her vehicle with a camouflage net. For a moment, Alex felt as if he were wrapping her in a death shroud. Now wasn't the time for feelings. He put his feelings in a box and closed it. Now was the time for killing.

The SEALs shed their Iranian garb—underneath they wore their cammies. They put the Iranian garb in their backpacks. John kept his backpack nuke and buried his main backpack in the side of a dune. Alex and Pancho buried their backpacks, too. They would need to move fast, and they didn't need the extra weight and bulk hindering their movements. They patrolled around the dunes and saw the lab, a complex of five multistoried buildings. Hunched over to make their profiles small, the SEALs patrolled toward the lab. Pancho signaled everyone to stop. They did. Then Pancho lay on the ground. Alex and John did, too. The sound of helicopter blades beat the air—probably coming from a helo pad inside the compound. Alex took out a pair of compact binoculars and scanned the area. He couldn't see the helo, but a guard stood inside one of the buildings facing Abadi Abad. Alex wanted to get near the complex's center to plant the bomb—he didn't want any reinforced underground floors surviving because they planted the bomb too far out. Alex put his binoculars away and signaled for Pancho to take them from the southwest corner to the southern edge.

The SEALs patrolled around to the southern edge and dropped down again. Alex looked through his binoculars. He couldn't see any guards in their direction. He motioned for Pancho to take them forward. They stood and crept forward.

Abruptly, a helo lifted from the lab complex and flew toward them with its floodlight brightening the ground below it. The Outcasts dropped to the ground and froze. The helo flew over them before turning and flying northwest. It continued northwest until it disappeared.

Alex tapped Pancho on the shoulder. He rose to his feet with Alex, followed by John. They resumed their trek and continued until reaching an earthen wall surrounding the compound. The three men climbed over it. Inside, they dropped to the ground and crawled on all fours. The compound floor was made of concrete. They low-crawled, slithering across the concrete like snakes.

All of the buildings were lit on the outside, but some were lit more brightly than others; and there were gaps in the light between buildings, creating shadows for Alex's team to use for cover. They crept in the shadows toward the center.

Suddenly, a siren blared and red lights flashed.
Was Leila captured? Did we trip an alarm? Are they watching us now?
Two armed Revolutionary Guard soldiers ran out of a building toward them. The SEALs stopped, lying flat on the concrete. Alex emptied his mind and imagined himself as concrete, hoping to defeat any sixth sense the soldiers might have. The two soldiers kept running, but they didn't aim their weapons in the SEALs' direction. One of the soldiers almost stepped on Alex's head as he ran past, but they continued on and entered another building.
Maybe we're okay.

Then a third soldier came running out of the same building as the first two, heading in their direction. Again Alex imagined being concrete, but Pancho was a bigger piece of concrete than Alex, and the soldier tripped over him. The soldier picked himself up to see what he'd tripped over, and looked directly at Pancho. The soldier
coughed nervously and raised his weapon in Pancho's direction. Alex, Pancho, and John fired at the soldier, and bullets from their sound-suppressed rifles drilled him back into the ground.

With the noise of the sirens, Alex hoped their shots hadn't been heard. Alex spotted a wooden walkway raised off the ground and dragged the soldier's body toward it while Pancho and John covered him. As Alex stuffed the body under the walkway, it occurred to him that if Leila was still alive, she might have abandoned them. Then it occurred to him:
Two hundred klicks is a long walk to Abadi Abad
.

The SEALs continued until they reached the center of the compound, where Alex noticed a cylindrical metal container standing two stories tall, mounted on a platform several feet off the ground. The two-story tank looked to be twelve feet in diameter. Alex looked at John, who smiled. Alex smiled, too. The space between the ground and the tank was ample for the atomic backpack bomb. While John set the bomb under the tank, Alex and Pancho covered the surrounding area. The same two Iranian soldiers from before exited their building and ran past the Outcasts. More soldiers poured out of the buildings. From the northwest part of the compound, more soldiers drove out in military jeeps and trucks. The soldiers on foot and soldiers in the vehicles spread out into the desert.

John stopped working on planting the nuke and turned around. “We've got three hours before we all end up in a four-mile-high mushroom cloud.”

“And if the Revolutionary Guard tamper with the bomb before then?” Pancho asked.

“Boom,” John said.

Alex looked at his Rolex watch: 0203 hours. It was time to get the hell out before getting vaporized—literally. The initial fireball would cover much of the lab compound. If Alex and his buddies were still around, they'd become particles of fallout along with everything else.

The Revolutionary Guard swarmed the surrounding desert like
angry ants. Even if the Outcasts succeeded in creeping past all of them, creeping would take hours. Alex and his men could use the uniform of the soldier they killed, but it was too small and that wouldn't disguise all three of them. Alex looked around for other options. His eyes stopped at the northwest, where vehicles had driven out of, probably their motor pool. Alex pointed, and then made a walking gesture toward it.

Pancho led them through shadows and behind walls until they reached the wall surrounding the motor pool. Alex and John stood guard while Pancho jumped up, grabbed the top of the wall, and pulled himself over it, taking a chunk from the top of the wall with him—
maybe it would've been faster if Pancho had walked through the wall
. Alex climbed over next. On the other side, Pancho stood guard as Alex came down. The motor pool sat empty except for a dark olive drab truck. Alex helped stand guard until John joined them. Then the three crept to the truck.

Alex and John stood guard while Pancho tried the door handle on the driver's side to see if it was unlocked. The door came open. Pancho slipped in. Alex checked the passenger side. It was unlocked, too. Alex hopped in and climbed into the back. John rode shotgun.

Because there was no key in the ignition and none hidden nearby, Pancho pulled out his Mission MPF1-Ti knife and flicked open the four-inch titanium blade. He inserted the tip of the blade into the ignition key hole, then used his herculean strength to ram the blade down deep. Then he twisted the handle. Something inside the ignition snapped, and the engine started. The technique was uniquely Pancho's, and Alex doubted he could repeat it.

Fifty yards ahead of their vehicle a barrel-chested man carrying a large wrench walked in front of the gate and faced them. He shouted at the Outcasts but the noise of the engine and the sirens drowned out his voice. Pancho put the vehicle in gear and rolled toward him. The man with the wrench became more animated. Pancho picked up speed. The man with the wrench stood his ground. Gaining
more speed, Pancho ran over him. Alex heard only the clang of the wrench hitting the concrete.

Pancho drove out of the lab compound and north into the desert. He stopped, shifted into four-wheel drive, then proceeded. Alex hoped they reached Leila before the Revolutionary Guard. A squad of soldiers on foot walked in Pancho's way, but they must have heard the engine, because they scattered. Pancho drove a wide circle around to the southwest. Alex looked out the back to make sure their tail was clear.

Alex felt anxious about putting the first five hundred yards between them and the nuke. Within that first five hundred yards, the explosion would fry them with second- to third-degree burns and blast them with a hurricane of sand and other debris. The Outcasts passed the first five hundred yards. Now he worried about first-degree burns. They'd have to go another five hundred yards to get out of the danger zone—if his estimates were right.

“Oh, no,” Pancho said.

Alex continued watching the rear. “What is it?”

Pancho didn't say anything.

Alex turned. In the distance, near the group of dunes where they had left Leila, a vehicle smoldered, its smoke rising high into the cold night air. Alex felt his heart sink, but he still had to watch their tail, which he did. After Leila lost her son and husband—then Danny's death—it didn't seem fair that she should die, too.
Life isn't fair.
Maybe now she could find peace.

Alex remembered when he and his sister Sarah were kids at his family's home in Annapolis, Maryland. They played in the infinity pool, where the water looked like it extended into the waterfront. Alex and Sarah dove in the pool for coins, shot a polo ball into a float ring, and raced each other the length of the pool. Alex beat her in the crawl and breaststroke, but Sarah, even though she was younger, always swam the butterfly faster. She'd practiced more and although Alex had more power,
smooth is fast
.

Pancho stopped the truck. The guys dismounted. Alex didn't want to see Leila's burned body, but he didn't want to put John through it. It was obvious John and Leila had connected on some level.

“I can do this,” Pancho said.

John said nothing, just stared out into the desert.

“I'm coming with you,” Alex said, fighting back the images of the day that had changed his life forever.

Alex thought back to when he was a high school senior listening to classical music, Grieg's “The Death of Ase,” while sitting in his red Mercedes, an older model handed down to him from his parents. His car idled in the post office's west parking lot while he waited for his grandfather and Sarah to drop off a package. Then the explosion sounded. He couldn't understand what had happened until he saw the smoke. Suddenly it struck him—an explosion. Alex threw open his car door and raced to what was left of the post office building. The smoke was thick. It made his throat gag and his eyes burn. The whole face of the post office had blown out across the north parking lot, past the road, and into an empty lot. Bricks and debris blanketed the ground. Alex saw a severed arm but no body nearby. He forgot about Grandpa. All he could think about was finding Sarah. He searched the bodies—pregnant woman, baby, and others: bruised, broken, and bloodied. Somebody cried for help, but it wasn't Sarah. A female postal worker with blackened face and torn, blackened clothes limped out from what was left of the building. A man beside Alex was helping survivors. Alex found Sarah lying on rubble with her arm pinned under a section of the fallen roof. Alex tried to pull the roof off, but it was too heavy. He tried to pull her out from under it but couldn't. “Sarah, I'm going to get you out of here. Just hang on, okay?” But Sarah didn't respond. “Sarah, can you hear me? You're going to be okay.” No answer. He pulled at the ceiling again, but it didn't budge. He'd never felt so helpless in his life.
Where are the firefighters? Where are the police?
“Somebody help me!” he called.