Easy Day for the Dead (11 page)

“Just keep driving straight,” Pancho calmly advised Leila.

A voice spoke out of a police car's speaker.

“He is telling us to stop,” Leila translated.

Pancho laughed.

One police car pulled up next to Alex's team. The SEALs readied their AKMS rifles. Over the loudspeaker came a voice again, followed by the driver waving his pistol.
Enough is enough. Somebody is going to get hurt, and I don't want it to be me.
“Pancho and John, tell him in Spanish and French that you don't understand Farsi, then shoot out his tires,” Alex said.

Pancho and John rolled down their windows and spoke Spanish and French. The policeman looked at them strangely. Pancho and John opened fire. The loud noise in the small area of their car's interior made Alex's ears ring. A hot shell from one of the weapons bounced off Alex's arm, making him wince. Terror flashed on the policeman's face and his tires on the SEALs' side blew out. The police officer had difficulty maintaining a straight line as he skidded to a stop. The other police car stopped beside the one with the blown-out tires. They probably didn't get paid enough for fighting SEALs.

When Alex was sure no one else was following, he told Leila to turn east and head for Afghanistan. She did.

Soft sand and barren desert had given way to hard sand and occasional trees and plants. Alex and Pancho drank constantly, replenishing their depleted cells. Leila avoided small Iranian villages by driving around them. Alex and Pancho continued to drink until their cells were saturated, but they were running low on water again. Hours of driving fatigued Leila, so she stopped and switched places with Pancho.

Pancho drove them east out of Iran and across the border into southern Afghanistan. Soon they reached a lake, so Pancho stopped and they replenished their water supply. The SEALs popped in iodine tablets to disinfect the water. After thirty minutes, they drank some. It tasted like iodine, but they didn't care.

Night fell before they neared the small Afghanistan town of Bandare Wasate. The four abandoned their vehicle several kilometers outside the village and walked into town, where they stayed the night.

In the morning, they found an Afghani local to drive them nearly five hundred kilometers to Kandahar. Alex loosened the laces on his left boot—since they finished their death march through the desert, the swelling and pain had gone down, but after sitting in the car for a couple of hours, the swelling and pain returned. He remembered his nightmare. Alex was relieved that Pancho and John were okay.

A
week after the biological weapons lab was destroyed, Major Khan stood outside General Tehrani's office. He studied the lobby for signs of an ambush. The destruction of the lab wasn't his fault, but he was the ranking officer at the Russian roulette game where Captain Rapviz decorated his game room with his brains. The penalty for such lapses in judgment often meant death. Of course Major Khan didn't fear death itself, but he did fear dying on someone else's terms, and he would fight to die on his own terms, even if it meant killing the general.

The general's assistant asked, “Are you carrying any weapons?”

Major Khan was armed, but he wasn't about to disarm himself. He stared through the assistant.

“Please remove any weapons before entering the general's office.”

Major Khan stood still.

The assistant seemed uncomfortable but persisted. “Are you carrying any weapons, sir?”

“Do you see any?” Khan asked.

“No, sir.”

Major Khan cracked his knuckles with impatience.

“General Tehrani will see you now,” the assistant said.

Major Khan entered the general's office.

General Tehrani finished up a call on his black cell phone before putting it away. “Sit down,” Tehrani said to Major Khan.

Seated to the right of the general was Lieutenant First Class Saeed Saeedi, Major Khan's friend—the hothead who started the Russian roulette game in the first place. The irony that Lieutenant Saeedi was sitting next to the general instead of standing in front of him wasn't lost on Major Khan.

To General Tehrani's left sat the other friend who was present at the Russian roulette game, Pistachio. When the general wanted to get rid of a commando, he used the commando's closest friends to snuff him. Both of Major Khan's best friends were here now. Major Khan knew he could take Pistachio and Lieutenant Saeedi separately, but he didn't think he could beat both at the same time.

“What's wrong, Major Khan?” Lieutenant Saeedi said with his chest puffed out. “The general offered you a seat.”

Major Khan didn't like the disrespectful tone of Lieutenant Saeedi's voice. Sitting would give them more of an advantage if this was an ambush, but they were all seated, and maybe General Tehrani was simply being polite.

“Maybe you're afraid we're here to, oh, how do the Americans say it—terminate your command?” Pistachio said with a chuckle.

Major Khan remained standing. Pistachio's probe for a weakness—fear—irritated Major Khan even more, and he thought he would like to kill Pistachio first.

Lieutenant Saeedi chuckled. “That's a good one. Terminate his command.”

“Please, sit down,” General Tehrani said. “We're all family here. No one, save perhaps me, is in danger of losing his command.”

Major Khan felt like he didn't have a choice. He sat down, but he didn't let his guard down.

“Major Khan, you owe me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you tell me why?”

“I was the ranking officer when the Russian roulette game took place, and I was responsible for the senseless death of Captain Rapviz.” Major Khan's gaze shifted to Lieutenant Saeedi. Lieutenant Saeedi lowered his head and stared at his shoe tips.

“Do you realize how much money goes into training a man like Captain Rapviz?” General Tehrani asked.

“More than a billion rial.”

“Yes. Now I am going to tell you how you're going to repay me,” the general said. “Someone destroyed our secondary biological weapons lab, and I want you to obliterate the bastards who did it. They think they can act with impunity against us, but they are wrong. The Supreme Leader wants this. I hope you understand how important that is. So I want you to find them and cut them into little pieces so we can feed them to their mothers. I have called in your two best friends here so we can get to the cutting soon. I know you three have had successes together in the past, and this will be your next success.”

Major Khan took it as an insult:
The general is telling me that I don't have what it takes to finish the job by myself
.
What would the general say if I rejected his plan? Maybe Pistachio and Lieutenant Saeedi will try to kill me right here and now. I'd like to see them try.

“With all due respect, sir, I think I can handle this alone,” Major Khan said.

Pistachio and Lieutenant Saeedi shifted uneasily in their seats.

“Are you questioning me, son?” General Tehrani asked.

Pistachio tried to mediate. “I think Major Khan understands what a great addition we would be to the Team, sir.”

“Shut up!” General Tehrani shouted.

The four men sat in silence for a moment.

“Was it the Zionists?” Major Khan asked.

“Them, or their American Satanist overlords,” the general said. “In the village of Abadi Abad, three basiji were found murdered just
before the biological weapons plant was destroyed. You will hopefully find some answers there.”

“Is a helicopter available, sir?”

“I can have a helicopter fly you to Abadi Abad right now.”

“Then, if it pleases the general, I'll take Pistachio and Lieutenant Saeedi to Abadi Abad and we'll find whoever bombed our biological weapons plant, sir. Then we will cut them into little pieces.”

“You're damn right,” General Tehrani said. “The Supreme Leader and I are counting on your success.”

Major Khan exited the room as quickly as he could. He wasn't afraid, he was angry, and it took every bit of his willpower to not kill Pistachio and Saeedi. Instead, the three men boarded the waiting helicopter and flew to Abadi Abad. The helo landed just outside the village, where a fat police chief met them. The police chief escorted them to his police car and drove. Pistachio held a plastic cup in one hand and with his other put pistachios in his mouth.

“Do you need something to eat?” the police chief asked.

“I don't think he needs anything to eat,” Lieutenant Saeedi said, utterly tickled with himself.

“Were you talking to me?” the police chief asked.

“No,” Major Khan said. “We've already eaten.”

Pistachio spit pistachio shells into a plastic cup.

The police chief explained about the three murdered basiji. Next, he told them about the stolen black Mercedes law enforcement SUV and the shots fired at a police officer's vehicle.

“Didn't anyone try to follow them?” Khan asked.

“At the time, we thought they were government agents, so we let them go.”

“You pursued them because they were government agents. They shot at you. Then you stopped pursuing them because they were government agents. Is that what you're telling me?”

“We tried to follow the tracks, but by then the wind had blown them away,” the chief said.

The man is a disgrace
. “And now you're insulting my intelligence.”

Like lightning, Lieutenant Saeedi punched the police chief in the side of the head and knocked him out. The chief fell over like a frozen block of ice. Lieutenant Saeedi kicked him on the ground. “Hey, fatso. Wake up. Wake up!” He kicked him again.

The police chief stirred on the ground.

“Don't insult Major Khan,” Lieutenant Saeedi warned.

“You said they were heading south?” Major Khan asked.

“Yes,” the police chief said, groaning as he regained consciousness.

Major Khan surveyed the area. “Whoever did this wasn't an amateur.”

“Who do you think it was?” Pistachio asked.

“The Israelis,” Major Khan said. “America wouldn't be so bold. This looks like the work of the Mossad.”

Pistachio cracked a pistachio shell with his teeth. “Where do you think they went?”

“No telling. Just because they drove south out of here doesn't mean they drove south all the way. There's nothing south of here unless they rendezvoused with an aircraft or went farther south and got picked up at sea. I don't think they'd find many friends in Pakistan, so they could've driven to Afghanistan.”

Lieutenant Saeedi became impatient. “We need to start searching south or toward Afghanistan before they get away.”

“We can search where they went and hope to catch up, or we can think about where they'll strike next,” Major Khan said.

“Where do you think they'll strike next?” Pistachio asked.

“One of the scientists got appendicitis and was flown out to a hospital in Tehran before the biological weapons compound exploded. If I were the Mossad, I'd go to Tehran.”

O
n Friday, a week after blowing up the lab, Alex, Pancho, John, and Leila had their driver drop them off at the Armani Hotel in Kandahar. It would have been easier for them to ask to be taken straight to the airport, but doing so would also make it easy for the enemy to follow them. The SEALs and Leila stepped into the hotel and sat down for a few minutes, then stepped out again and caught a taxi. Splitting up would be more discreet, but the Taliban were still active in Kandahar and the SEALs chose safety over discretion. Their cabbie drove them ten kilometers to the U.S. military base on Kandahar International Airport. Alex paid the driver, then he and his crew walked up to the gate. The gate guard looked suspiciously at them. Alex gave the cover name of a supply unit they worked for. After thirty minutes of waiting in a visitors' area, a geeky-looking sergeant drove them to a classified corner where JSOC was based. Inside the classified area, they left Leila with an escort at a VIP lounge while the SEALs crossed the street and entered a three-story building that looked like a porcupine because of all the antennas sticking up from the roof. On the third floor, the geeky sergeant spoke to a muscular sergeant standing guard outside one of the rooms. The muscular sergeant ran his ID through the card
reader lock and opened the door, letting them in. Inside, the walls appeared soundproofed.

Minutes later, their debriefer arrived. Alex was surprised to see Captain Kevin Eversmann, the commanding officer (CO) of SEAL Team Six—the skipper. Like half of the SEAL officers in the Teams, the skipper had been an enlisted man and risen up through the ranks to become an officer and now a CO. He knew about combat from experience. He and Alex were both six feet tall, but the skipper's salt-white hair was cut short in comparison to Alex's longer dark hair. The skipper was also a longtime member of Bitter Ash.

Alex, Pancho, and John stood at attention.

“At ease,” the skipper said.

The Outcasts stopped standing at attention, but Alex didn't relax. Although SEALs were fearless about most things, they feared getting kicked out of the Teams, and a skipper held the power to do the kicking.

“How are you, Skipper?” Pancho asked, his face beaming.

Alex wished Pancho would just keep his big mouth shut, and he was sure that John felt the same.

“Well, Pancho, I think I'll be fine if you can shut that blowhole of yours. You think you can handle that, son?”

“Yes, sir,” Pancho said, all evidence to the contrary.

“Great, I'll tell you when to open it. By the way, I came to Iraq and Afghanistan to visit our Teammates here, but the timing is no accident—I personally wanted to debrief you on your mission. Let's have a seat, gentlemen, and Chief Brandenburg, why don't you begin telling me how things went.”