Easy Day for the Dead (7 page)

“That is why you do this job—to escape poverty?”

“I guess you could say that's part of it. My high school biology class took a trip to Corpus Christi, where I saw a sailor driving a red sports car with a pretty senorita sitting next to him. Later, I found out the Navy fed its sailors as much as they could eat and their ships didn't leak—I immediately signed on the dotted line. I loved being in the Navy, but I missed my brothers. When some SEALs deployed on my ship, I noticed the close bond between them, and I wanted the brotherhood they had.”

“I wish I had a brother,” she said.

“You do now,” Pancho said. “You're part of our family now.”

Alex drifted to sleep. He lost track of time until John's voice whispered, “Lunchtime.”

Alex sat up, soaked in sweat. Somebody had turned on a fan, but it didn't seem to help. The house had heated up like an oven. It was hard to imagine, but the outside was probably hotter. Alex rose to his feet and walked over to the table, where he sat with the others to eat a thick stew served over rice.

After lunch, the guys helped Leila clear the table and do dishes. Then they sat down in the living room and Alex gave a final brief. Although JSOC hailed Leila as an excellent agent, Alex told her only what she needed to know: tonight she would drive them to a group of dunes southeast of the lab and wait there to extract the SEALs. Alex didn't tell her that they planned to take out the lab tonight, and he didn't tell her they'd be using a nuclear backpack.

A
fter the “interrogation session,” Major Khan showered. He washed the boy's blood off him, but he didn't feel clean. He donned his sheep's clothing, but he still felt like a monster. He arrived home to find his son waiting with his soccer ball. Major Khan took him outside to play. Major Khan had never shown his son or anyone else in his family his monster—and he never would. He was always careful. Later, they ate dinner as a family. At the end of dinner, his wife asked, “Aren't you going to spend some time with your friends? Aren't they playing cards tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Why don't you go. We love having you home, but maybe you should have some time with your friends. They can't play Shelem without you.” Shelem was an Iranian card game similar to Spades with a point system like Rook. It was a four-player game with two partners playing against each other.

The children grumbled, wanting to play with their father, but their mother furrowed her eyebrows at them.

“Are you sure?” Major Khan asked.

His wife nodded.

Her kindness made him feel disconnected from the world. The monster in him despised her, but tonight he despised the monster.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I'm fine.”

“It's okay,” Daria whispered. “I know.”

Major Khan felt his stomach drop. He stared at her in disbelief.

“It's okay.”

“You know?” he asked.

“I know you play Shelem for money.” Gambling was illegal because it led men to believe in chance more than Allah. “Be careful.”

He kissed her and the kids before he left.

Major Khan drove half an hour to Captain Rapviz's house. Inside, Rapviz greeted Major Khan before escorting him to the “guys' room,” where Lieutenant First Class Saeed Saeedi was already seated. Saeedi was the most junior of the men and the most hotheaded.

Next to Lieutenant Saeedi sat a thin man, Captain Nasser Fat'hi. He was a strange one. He ate only one meal a day, but snacked incessantly on pistachios. Although many women adored Pistachio, he could take them or leave them. He wasn't married and never talked about his parents or siblings, if there were any—the Quds Force was his family, and he'd do almost anything for it. He wasn't a particularly violent man, but in the right environment, he could be—and hanging around Lieutenant Saeedi was often the right environment.

It looked like Pistachio and Lieutenant Saeedi would be partners in this game, so Major Khan sat across from Rapviz.

In the middle of the table sat a
galyan,
an Iranian hookah. Four mouthpieces decorated with sapphires connected to four hoses adorned with silk that led to a colorful pottery jar filled with water. A crystal pipe, held in place by a lid on the jar, rose from the water up to a bowl of sweetened tobacco. Above the tobacco sat a container of charcoal. Rapviz lit the charcoal. Because Major Khan was senior, Rapviz motioned for him to take the first drag.

As Major Khan inhaled through a sapphire-covered mouthpiece,
he dragged air from the charcoal through the tobacco, vaporizing it. The smoke descended the crystal pipe into the water, which bubbled, cooling the smoke before releasing it into the space between the water and the water jar lid. The smoke continued through the hose to Major Khan's mouthpiece, then into his lungs. Even though he hadn't inhaled a second time, smoke pulled from the tobacco, via the water, to his lips again. Normally a smoke relieved him, but the burden of his monster weighed too heavily. He invited the others to join him. They smoked through their individual mouthpieces.

Rapviz dealt the cards and they played Shelem while smoking. The four joked around while betting their money. Pistachio cracked pistachios in his mouth and spit the shells in a plastic cup. At first Pistachio and Lieutenant Saeedi were winning. Lieutenant Saeedi bubbled like a giddy schoolboy. His emotions were easy to read, which made him easy to be around when things were going well. However, as the evening progressed, Pistachio and Lieutenant Saeedi began to lose. Lieutenant Saeedi didn't care much about money, but he did care about how he looked to others, and he hated looking like a loser.

Lieutenant Saeedi threw his cards down on the table. “This game sucks.”

Pistachio complained. “Hey, what're you doing? We were having a good game of cards.”

“It isn't a good game.”

“Then what is a good game?” Major Khan asked.

Lieutenant Saeedi looked frustrated. Now he was losing even more face by not answering. “Russian roulette,” he blurted.

“That's not a good game,” Pistachio said.

Major Khan and Rapviz said nothing.

“Rapviz, what do you think?” Lieutenant Saeedi asked.

“Whatever you guys want to do,” Rapviz said.

Lieutenant Saeedi mocked Rapviz: “Whatever you guys want to do. You're always so yellow-bellied, you never have a thought of
your own.” Although many Quds Force commandos were more concerned with skill than rank, Lieutenant Saeedi took the ethos to the extreme. While running death squads in Iraq, he butted heads with an incompetent superior officer. The next day, the officer was found dead—the official report said the superior officer was killed in action, but most people believed Lieutenant Saeedi killed him. Saeedi never confirmed or denied the rumor. Because he was the son of a powerful general, officers were hesitant to investigate. If Saeedi had kept his nose clean, he would've been promoted to captain like Rapviz and Pistachio—a constant source of irritation for Lieutenant Saeedi, but even Lieutenant Saeedi's powerful father couldn't help his son get promoted.

Pistachio put his hand on Lieutenant Saeedi's shoulder. “Relax. Have a smoke and relax.”

“I want to play Russian roulette. Are you going to play with me or not, Rapviz?”

“Whatever you want,” Rapviz said.

“I want to play Russian roulette.”

“This is crazy,” Pistachio said. “Don't.”

“Hey, I'm not talking to you,” Lieutenant Saeedi snapped at Pistachio. “Rapviz is a grown man. He can speak for himself. Go get that revolver of yours, Rapviz.”

Pistachio shook his head. “Don't get your gun, Rapviz.”

Rapviz left the room.

Lieutenant Saeedi turned to Major Khan and said, “You going to play Russian roulette with us, sir?”

Major Khan didn't like the way he said “sir,” filled with envy and hate. They were friends, but now Lieutenant Saeedi was using Major Khan's rank as a way to manipulate him into proving his friendship over rank, but it didn't matter what Lieutenant Saeedi felt or said because Major Khan always did what he wanted to do anyway. Major Khan hated his own monster, hated himself, and in a rare moment of clarity, wanted to die. He verbally threw Saeedi's rank back in his
face: “That's the smartest thing you've said all evening, Lieutenant. Of course I'd like to play Russian roulette.”

“That's what I like about you,” Lieutenant Saeedi said nervously. “You always say what you think.” He said the words like he only half believed them. Of course, Major Khan knew the words were nonsense. Lieutenant Saeedi liked to hear only the things he agreed with, and Major Khan told him only a fraction of what was on his mind.

Rapviz returned with the revolver—and a bullet.

“Okay, let's get this game started,” Lieutenant Saeedi said.

Major Khan saw a slight tremble in the corner of Lieutenant Saeedi's lips and smelled falseness in Saeedi's bravado.

“Okay, you're all badasses,” Pistachio said. “Now put the gun away and let's play Shelem.”

“I'll go first,” Rapviz said. “Major Khan will go second. Lieutenant Saeedi will go last. Then we'll start again with me.”

Major Khan calmly nodded.

Lieutenant Saeedi paused before nodding.

“There are no winners in Russian roulette,” Pistachio said, trying to reason with them, but the boulder had already been pushed off the cliff and it was about to hit the ground.

Rapviz slid the bullet into one of the six chambers and spun the cylinder. Then he pressed the barrel to the side of his head, turning his head so that if the bullet fired it wouldn't exit the other side of his head and hit one of the guys or someone elsewhere in the house. He squeezed the trigger, causing the hammer to cock back until it slammed forward.
Bang!
His brains splattered across the floor, and he slumped in his chair.

“Allahu akbar!” Pistachio exclaimed. “Look what you did, Saeedi!”

“Me?!” Lieutenant Saeedi defended himself. “Rapviz spun the cylinder! Why'd he have to stop the cylinder on the bullet chamber?!”

“It was random! I'm not going to clean up Rapviz's brains!”

“I'll clean up his brains!” Lieutenant Saeedi snapped. “Give me a rag!”

Major Khan stared coldly.
I deserved to die more than anyone. Why couldn't it be me? It should've been me. Allah wants to torture me by making me stay in this world.

A
t 2200 hours, Alex and Pancho stood in the main room of Leila's house wearing Iranian men's clothing. John and Leila each wore a black burqa, the Islamic women's garment, disguising them from head to toe.

Leila smiled at John. “Why are you wearing a burqa?”

John ignored her.

“There are not many blacks in Iran, but your skin is not so dark, and it's difficult to see at night.”

“My father was African-American and Cajun, and my mother was French,” John said. “And I'm not gay. I just think it's the best disguise.”

“You are an interesting person,” she said. “I asked you the other night why you do what you do, and you told me about the world as it is. But you didn't tell me what made you join.”

John said nothing. He was a private person, especially with people he hardly knew.

“Should I tell her, or do you want to?” Pancho said.

John glared at Pancho, then turned to Leila. “I was reading poetry to a friend when her boyfriend showed up,” he explained. “He was a control freak with a temper. The guy wigged out, went to his truck, and came back with a gun. He fired at us, so I picked up a
chair and threw it at him, stunning him. Then I picked up another chair and killed him in self-defense. After that, I couldn't live in that town anymore, so I joined the Navy. At boot camp, our company commander made us take the SEAL physical screen test—I was the only one who passed. So I figured maybe my destiny was to become some sort of modern-day Paladin.”

“What happened to your friend?” Leila asked.

“One of the bullets from her boyfriend's gun killed her.”

“I am sorry.” She put her hand on his shoulder.

John covered his face with the veil (
niqab
). Leila did, too.

Carrying their kit and an extra tank of water to keep in the vehicle, the SEALs and Leila left the house, walked through the darkness, and loaded into her car. It looked like a Peugeot with wide off-road tires and heightened suspension. Leila sat in the driver's seat and Pancho rode shotgun. Alex sat behind Leila with John next to him. The guys secured their doors, but Alex's wouldn't lock. “How do you lock this?” he asked.

“Lock is broken,” Leila said. She started the engine—it purred.
Great, we're riding in a pussycat with a broken door.
When she stepped on the accelerator, the vehicle sucked Alex back into his seat.
I'm beginning to like this cat.
In spite of its power, the vehicle ran quietly.

Alex reminded Leila to exit Abadi Abad from the southeast so if anyone followed them, the followers wouldn't immediately know the Outcasts' true direction. Pancho kept a lookout ahead, Alex watched their left and right flanks, and John kept an eye on the rear.

Pancho asked, “What kind of car is this?”

“Samand,” Leila said. “It is an Iranian car.
Samand
is a fast horse.”

“This doesn't look like an average sedan,” Pancho said.

“Danny customized it.”

Just after the Outcasts left the village, John said, “We've got company.”

Leila looked in her rearview mirror. “It is him.”

“Him?” Alex asked.

She repeatedly glanced in the rearview mirror. “It is the basiji.”

“Are you sure?” Alex asked.

“Yes. I think.”

“You think. So it might be someone else.”