Easy Day for the Dead

1

Navy SEAL Alexander Brandenburg rode north in an old Toyota truck, speeding toward Kahar, Iraq. He checked his watch again, reflexively shielding the dial as he pressed the light button — 02h14. He looked up from his watch to his tobacco-chewing sniper mentor, Chief Petty Officer Jack “Jabberwocky” Lee. “You’re gonna slay ’em, kid,” Jabberwocky whispered in Alex’s ear, referring to the Shiite terrorists in Kahar. “You know why?”

Alex shook his head and smiled, then realized Jabberwocky couldn’t see him in the dark. “No. Why?”

Jabberwocky spit a stream of tobacco juice out the window of the truck before answering. “Because you were taught by the best.”

Silence ruled as they entered Kahar. The Toyota rolled quietly through the deserted streets. Inside of a minute they reached the upper-class neighborhood. Alex slung his sniper rifle over his left shoulder before pulling his sound-suppressed SIG Sauer P-226 Navy 9mm pistol out of its holster and clicking the safety off. Nodding at Jabberwocky in the dark, he opened his door. The interior cabin light did not come on, since Jabberwocky had made sure it was switched off before they left. “Details, young Jedi, details.”

The truck slowed to five miles per hour. Alex took a breath and slipped out into the night as the truck picked up speed and continued on. He quickly jogged to the edge of the nearest wall, where he slid into the shadows. Had anyone seen him? He waited fifteen minutes, prepared to shoot anything that moved, but Kahar showed no signs of being aware of his arrival. Alex flipped down the night-vision goggles on his helmet and the world took on a greenish hue. He scanned the area. Spotting nothing untoward, he stepped into an alley off the road and followed it as it ran behind the houses. Most of the lights were out and he couldn’t make out any talking over the sound of his own breathing. He crouched down in a pile of rubbish, his camouflage clothing and painted skin helping him blend in. He adjusted the sling on his sniper rifle, realizing it was like carrying a death sentence on his back. The enemy hated snipers. If he were captured he would likely face torture, and then execution—the only good sniper is the one on your side.

Alex flipped up his night-vision goggles and surveyed the area, staring straight ahead and focusing on his peripheral vision to catch any movement. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the goggles, but he knew there could be a time when he wouldn’t have them, and even when he did they might not work. A sniper had to be effective with just his eyes and rifle.

He caught the sound of the truck’s engine growing fainter as it navigated the deserted streets. Any moment now it would be dropping off Jabberwocky at the north end of town before heading west and out of the village.

Alex remained motionless in the alley for fifteen minutes. Patience wasn’t just a virtue for a sniper; it was everything. With no signs of activity, Alex eased himself into a standing position and began stalking through a series of crooked and winding alleys. Thirty minutes later he reached his destination: a wall with a line painted on it — the perimeter wall to a safe house. He was told that the top of the wall was cemented with broken glass to discourage people from climbing over it. He followed the wall around to the front and stopped at the front gate. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a set of keys that were tightly connected like the blades of a pocketknife so the keys wouldn’t jingle. He unlocked the gate. After closing it behind him, he pulled on the gate and made sure it was locked. He quickly moved across the small courtyard to the front door of the house and waited. He remembered how impatient he had been in training when instructors had drilled caution and patience. He was finally understanding why. Hearing nothing, he unlocked the front door, walked in, and then locked the door behind him—details.

He moved away from the door and crouched down, his pistol held ready in the firing position. It was darker inside the house than it was in the alley, but he could see the outline of some furniture and make out walls and doorways. He looked, he listened, and he waited. He was a big cat on an African plain. He would stalk, and he would kill.

Once he was satisfied he was alone, Alex holstered his pistol and laid a claymore mine with an infrared triggering mechanism facing the door he’d just entered. If intruders came through the door, the movement would trigger the mine and welcome them with a hearty bang.

Alex drew his SIG back out of the holster and scanned through its contrast sights. He moved through the first floor, closets and all, making sure the house was clear. He inspected a narrow stairway as he climbed up. Then he checked the second floor. Clear. He placed another infrared-triggered claymore facing the top step of the stairs on the second floor.

Here another narrow stairway led to the roof. Alex climbed up and onto the roof, which featured a parapet on all four sides. Clearing the roof, he holstered his pistol and devoted all of his attention to his main weapon.

He crawled toward the front parapet and took up a prone position facing the target house across the street. He stayed back from the edge to make it more difficult to be seen from the outside. Movies too often showed snipers leaning out of windows or bell towers, which was a dead giveaway. You stayed as far back from the edge as you could — at least, you did if you wanted to live.

Alex steadied his customized Remington 700 sniper rifle. Known as the Win Mag, the rifle fired a specially made .300 Winchester Magnum bullet. Alex called his personal rifle Betty, after the Betty Boop cartoon character.

He ran his hands over Betty, checking by feel that everything was tight and in place. Above the Leupold scope he’d mounted a Medium Thermal Weapon Sight (MTWS). Alex pressed his eye against the rubber cup around the MTWS eyepiece, activating the sight’s cool-down. He held his eye there for two minutes as the sight’s temperature lowered enough for him to see everything cold in black and everything hot in white. There were no colors. His field of vision was 15 degrees, and everything appeared five times larger.

The target for tonight’s mission was Raad Nalo, an Iraqi citizen who recruited for Iran, financed and trained terrorists, and targeted Iraqi police, military, and government personnel in order to destabilize the country. Intel was that he didn’t talk much and walked with a limp. The SEALs had nicknamed him Verbal, after Roger “Verbal” Kint (aka Keyser Söze) in the movie The Usual Suspects.

Alex’s SEAL Team Two platoon had recently lost a SEAL sniper pair to an enemy countersniper team. It was a bitter loss, all the more so because the enemy sniper had gotten away. Without time to bring in a new team, Alex and Jabberwocky volunteered to split up and operate solo for this mission. It was breaking rules, but Alex had quickly found out that in a war zone you learned to do what you could within the rules and then what you had to without them.

“Magic Dragon, this is Ambassador. I am in the haystack, over,” Alex whispered, radioing the tactical operation center that he was in position.

“Ambassador, this is Magic Dragon. Copy you in the haystack, over.”

One minute later, Jabberwocky radioed in on the same frequency that he was in position. Intel was certain, well, as certain as they could ever be, that more of the Shiite fighters were located to the north. If Verbal escaped the kill zone, he’d probably run in that direction to find friends. If he did, Jabberwocky would be the fortunate one to take him out. Alex could see Jabberwocky through his scope, but only because he knew where he would be, and Jabberwocky, like Alex, hadn’t created an elaborate hide. This was a quick mission — in and out. Alex went back to scanning the target area, comforted that Jabberwocky was there, even if he was on the other side of the village.

Between the condominium and the street on its west side sat two burned metal drums. Two more metal drums were positioned between the building and the street running along its south side. The burned metal drums clashed with their affluent surroundings, but the drums weren’t there for decoration. In the past, the terrorists had learned to set trash in the drums and tires on fire to conceal them in smoke, but Alex had a surprise for them: not only did the thermal sight allow him to see through the night under low light levels, but it also allowed him to see through smoke.

Shortly before dawn, the rest of the SEAL platoon would take down the target building — a two-story condominium that housed Shiites loyal to Iran. Alex heard two Black Hawk helicopters in the distance. He checked his watch — right on schedule. As the helos neared, men armed with AK-47 assault rifles emerged from the target building and moved toward the drums. Alex’s personal rules of engagement were simple: kill them all.

Alex trained his scope on one of the metal drums to the south. A man-shaped image in white moved quickly through the black space in his scope toward the drums. Alex centered his sights on the man’s head. At seventy-five yards it was an easy shot, but Alex didn’t take it for granted. He controlled his breathing, resat the butt of his rifle against his shoulder, gave himself a silent “send” command, and squeezed the trigger. Flecks of white erupted from the figure as it tumbled to the ground five yards short of the drums.

A second man tried to light the same metal drum, actually stepping over the body of the first Shiite fighter to do so. Alex shot him center of mass, just left of the sternum. The man fell directly in front of the first one, creating a long white blob that reminded Alex of a fat night crawler.

A flare of white in his scope meant other terrorists had succeeded in lighting fires in the other drums. Smoke blanketed the area. While it didn’t affect Alex’s vision through the scope, it did irritate his nose and throat. He kept his sights on the unlit drums and sure enough, a third terrorist moved toward them. The man paused when he came to the two bodies of his comrades. Alex fired, his bullet ripping through the man’s rib cage from right to left. The blood spray looked like a burst fire hydrant through his scope.

With no more terrorists moving toward the drums, Alex moved his sight to a window on the first floor of the three-story target building. The shape of a terrorist, hot white head and cold black AK, hung out the window aiming at the sky toward the incoming choppers. Alex aimed for the nasal cavity and fired. The head disappeared back inside the house while the AK-47 tumbled down to the ground below.

The sound of the helos became louder. Alex’s left eye wasn’t looking through the scope, but it remained half open. He marveled as the Black Hawk blades whipped the smoke into a frenzy.

One Black Hawk hovered above the target building with its skids almost touching the roof. White shapes jumped out onto the roof — SEALs. They quickly blew a hole through the roof and entered the top floor of the building from above. If intel was correct, they’d land in the hallway. If intel was wrong, they could take a flight down the stairwell.

A second Black Hawk landed in the street, kicking up dust and trash, which did obscure Alex’s vision. More SEALs hopped off. Four SEALs ran to the four corners outside the building to seal it off while the rest stacked up at the main door. A loud bang and brilliant burst of light marked the detonation of a flash-bang grenade. The SEALs burst through the front door a moment later.

Alex scanned the middle smoky area through his thermal sight — no threats. He panned to the right and up to the top of a building, where he spotted a white silhouette, but instead of holding an AK-47, the terrorist held a much larger, black object.

Damn! It was a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). Alex’s heart jumped. He placed his crosshairs on the terrorist’s neck to compensate for the distance and squeezed the trigger. The shot hit the terrorist in the gut, folding him in half like a lawn chair.

In Alex’s earphone, he heard the SEALs continue their assault. He scanned back to the target building and saw a figure drop out of a second-story window. The figure stood up and limped away from the building, heading through the smoke toward Alex. Is he limping from the fall, or is he Verbal? Is he a SEAL?

“Rover Team, Rover Team, this is Ambassador,” Alex said. “One unidentified just jumped from a second-story window, south side. He’s moving south across the street and limping, over.”

“This is Rover Five, south corner. I don’t see him. Is he in the smoke?”

“Affirmative,” Alex said. “He’s limping through the smoke toward my position.”

For several agonizing seconds the radio remained silent.

“He’s not one of ours, Ambassador. I repeat, he is not one of ours. You are free to engage, over,” the SEAL said.

Alex was tempted to take the shot then and there, but there was no way the other SEAL could be 100 percent sure, could he?

When the limping figure exited the smoke, Alex still couldn’t recognize his face through the thermal sight. Alex took his eye off the thermal scope and looked through the Leupold scope. The world and all its color came into view, but he lost the man with the limp.

Alex laid Betty down on the deck, so it wouldn’t slow him down. He leaned over on his left side and drew his pistol just as a bullet cracked the sound barrier where his head had been. Countersniper! He crawled to the steps and down them. On the second floor, he rushed to the next set of stairs. Without thinking, he almost ran down them, but the sight of the claymore reminded him he needed to disarm the mine. He did.

Boom!

Did the claymore blow up in my face? No, it’s still in one piece. Was I shot? I don’t feel any pain.

Alex remembered the front door. He walked down the steps and looked at the front door. The claymore there had detonated and the door was shredded. The person who had picked the lock was shredded, too. Blood had splashed all over the ground and into the street. When Alex stepped outside, he slipped on the blood and almost fell. He examined the face and upper row of teeth, but they weren’t gold: this wasn’t Verbal. Who was it?

Alex went back in the house and set up his claymore on the first stair landing before returning to the roof. He carefully retrieved his rifle without exposing himself. Then he descended to the second floor. Staying far back from the window, he scanned the area through his sniper scope, but he couldn’t spot the countersniper. He checked Jabberwocky’s position — he was gone, too. He’d probably returned to the helo. I better move my ass, or I’ll miss my ride, and I do not want to walk through booger-eater territory in broad daylight.

Alex disarmed his claymore, grabbed what was left of the mysterious lock picker on the first floor, and dragged him to the helo. Alex looked inside the helo for his sniper mentor, but he wasn’t there. “Where’s Jabberwocky?” Alex asked.

“You didn’t hear?” a SEAL with a bushy beard asked.

“Hear what?” Alex asked.

The SEAL shook his head. Minutes later, two SEALs loaded Jabberwocky’s body onto the helo. Blood covered his face, which was swollen from a bullet wound. His trousers were torn and wet like he’d been shot in the crotch several times. The helo lifted up, but Alex felt a part of him had been left on the ground.

MAJOR GHOLAM KHAN STOOD at the doorway of the American safe house, looking down at the blood-splattered ground. The infidels had taken Abubakar Sawalah’s body. Khan knew Abubakar was dead. There was no way he could have survived the blast. The amount of blood and bits of brain matter on the ground made that clear. Khan crouched down, placing himself where he imagined Abubakar had been the moment he was killed.

It was his fault Abubakar was dead. Khan had told him to work his way toward the house across the street where the second American sniper was hiding. The boy, just twenty-one years old, was always eager to please. With a quick mind and sharp eye he was easily Khan’s best student. He had all the potential to be a shooter as good as Khan himself, maybe even better. But his youthfulness made him reckless. Khan knew that, but in the middle of the fight there had been no time to caution the young man. Khan stood up. He would have gone through a window, maybe even climbing the wall to the second story. It would have taken time, but it would have been unexpected.

A Shiite fighter ran up to him out of breath. “Sir, I am sorry, but we must leave. American patrols are coming.”

Khan waved the man away, but he did turn and follow after him. There was nothing more to see here. He had the satisfaction of killing one of the snipers, of that he was sure, but the other had lived. It was, what was the saying … a draw. He spit on the ground.

He didn’t play for draws.

2

Major Gholam Khan didn’t give much thought to who he was ordered to kill. He’d done the deed many times before, and he thought tonight’s assignment would be one of his easier tasks. Now he was in a highly secret and secure Iranian biological weapons lab. As a member of the elite Quds Force within Iran’s Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution — the Revolutionary Guard — Major Khan moved about the country with ease. It was widely known, if not spoken about in public, that the Quds’ mission was to export Iran’s vision of Islam abroad by financing, training, equipping, and organizing foreign revolutionary units. Moreover, the Quds reported directly to the Supreme Leader of Iran, the Ayatollah himself. That made Major Khan all but untouchable, at least in his country. After almost being captured in Iraq several years ago, however, Major Khan had been ordered home. Greeted as a hero, he nonetheless felt cheated. He’d groomed several Shiite countersniper teams in Iraq, many of whom were killed after he left.

Major Khan opened the door to a classroom within the facility and stepped in. A podium with a chair on either side of it stood at the front of the classroom. Behind the podium and chairs a large Iranian flag covered the whiteboard. In front of the podium were tables and chairs for fifty people. Major Khan had arrived early. It was the sniper in him. To his surprise he saw he wasn’t the first. Scientists, assistants, and workers were already filling the seats. It occurred to him that their early arrival had more to do with fear of being late. A few, perhaps, were actually eager to see the star of the show, General Behrouz Tehrani, one of Iran’s greatest leaders from the Iran-Iraq War and a celebrated hero. Major Khan took a seat next to the podium and waited for the general’s arrival.

Captain Rapviz Shokoufandeh entered the room. Khan and Rapviz had been friends for years, a rare instance of comradeship for Khan. Rapviz nodded at Khan and walked to stand behind the podium. He coughed and then spoke into the microphone: “When General Tehrani enters the room, please stand until he says to be seated.”

The crowd stirred.

Five minutes later, General Tehrani entered, putting his black cell phone in his pocket as he did so. It was a subtle but powerful gesture. He was a busy man, an important man. He wore shiny black boots, an olive drab uniform, and four golden stars on his epaulettes. He was a thin man with a white beard that gave him a distinguished appearance.

The crowd stood.

His voice roared, “Take seats.”

The scientists and others sat down. Some watched him nervously. Others watched him with anticipation.

General Tehrani stood behind the podium studying them for a moment.

The audience waited for him to speak.

“People, the so-called Arab Spring in Iran is bullshit,” General Tehrani began. Those who’d never heard him unedited were clearly shocked by his speaking style, especially the Arab-Iranian scientist sitting near the front. “We are not Arabs. We are Iranians. True Iranians love their Ayatollah and their government. True Iranians love their families. True Iranians love themselves. We don’t give a damn about any Arab Spring in Iran. It isn’t going to happen. Ever. You are here because you worked harder than everyone else and because you’re smarter than everyone else. True Iranians are hard workers and intelligent.” He paused and scanned the audience.

“Now I am told,” he continued, “that we’re maintaining production levels of MBD21. I don’t want to maintain shit. Maintaining is what Americans do. We’re going to increase production until we have enough bacterium to obliterate half the American population.”

Some in the crowd let out their enthusiasm: “Yes!”

“We are true Iranians, and true Iranians don’t wait for Americans to kill Iranian families. True Iranians protect their families by killing Americans first. You are the brightest people with the best equipment in the world. We can’t fail now. We’ve come too far. We must never give up. We must never let the infidels win. I know it hasn’t been easy, but don’t let this moment fall into mediocrity. We must work harder than ever. Show the infidels what we can do. Become mean, insanely aggressive. Cut the infidels’ hearts out. We must want this more than life itself. This moment will be the greatest for Iran. We must defend our families and country. In the same way I use bullets and bombs, you use science. Will you fight for your families and country with me?”

The scientists applauded: “Yes!” The Arab-Iranian scientist’s response was weaker than that of the others. In contrast, the scientist with a crooked nose who sat next to him applauded louder than everyone else.

“Will you fight for your families?”

“Yes!” the crowd cheered. The Arab-Iranian scientist continued to respond weakly. Major Khan recognized him as a brilliant scientist who placed little value on politics and speeches.

“Your honor?”

“Yes!”

“That’s the spirit. Let’s do this! Maybe Iran will fall into mediocrity someday. But not today.”

Major Khan stood and then walked over to the weakly responding scientist. All of the scientists were smart, but not all were wise. From beneath his jacket, Major Khan swung out his shoulder holster containing a sound-suppressed MPT-9KPDW, the Iranian copy of the German MP5K-PDW short submachine gun. The weapon remained attached to his shoulder holster and the folding stock remained folded, allowing him to fire quickly with the submachine gun still in its holster.

The Arab-Iranian scientist leaned back in his chair and put his hands out in front of his face. “No! Please, no!”

The crowd became silent.

Major Khan stood in front of the scientist, taking an angle that wouldn’t injure others. Not that Major Khan cared about their lives — he cared only about the mission, and this mission needed scientists. Major Khan pivoted, and pointed his gun at the scientist with the crooked nose, the one who had applauded louder than the others. He waited for the man’s eyes to register what was happening and then squeezed the trigger, firing a short burst. A single shot to the head would have sufficed, but the general had wanted something loud and exceptionally violent.

General Tehrani cleared his voice and patiently waited for the assembled scientists to direct their attention back to him. “Applauding loudly when I’m around is one thing, but slackening effort when I’m not around is another. It sets a bad example — it’s bad for morale.”

One of the scientists began applauding loudly. No one followed his example — they were too much in shock to move.

3

Alex Brandenburg wandered the aisles of the supermarket without noticing the food. His mind was on a mission. More specifically, the fact that he and the Outcasts’ SEAL Team didn’t have one. As the very sharp edge of Operation Bitter Ash, the black ops program that grew out of Operation Phoenix and the targeted killings of North Vietnamese communists during that war, Alex expected the missions would come fast. There was no end to terrorists looking to do America and her allies harm. Administering a lead aspirin at high velocity seemed just the ticket to cure what ailed these sick bastards, but so far the phone hadn’t rung. Instead, just like when he was on the regular Teams, downtime stretched to seeming eternity while he waited for another chance to suit up.

Realizing he’d wandered into the cat food section, he decided to focus on the mission at hand — buying groceries. The food quality at the Navy Exchange and local supermarkets was okay, but Alex preferred the quality of foods available at Whole Foods. Until recently, the nearest one was located just outside Richmond, nearly a two-hour drive from his home in Virginia Beach, where he was stationed at SEAL Team Six. Of course, Alex could put the cold foods in a cooler to keep them fresh for the drive home from Richmond, but he was on standby, and if Team Six called, he had only one hour to get his ass on the plane and be ready for the brief — and driving over one hundred miles an hour down Interstate 64 didn’t seem like a wise option. Thus, Alex eagerly attended the newly opened Whole Foods store in Virginia Beach.

Customers crowded the brightly lit store. Alex pushed his partly filled cart out of the cat food section and down an aisle that looked far more likely to have salsa. As he did he spotted an attractive blonde walking toward him. She was wearing a white silk blouse and black skirt under a red knee-length cashmere jacket. What made her attractive wasn’t so much the shape of her face, the size of her breasts, or the calm, quiet way her hips swayed — there was a feeling about her. As she passed him in the aisle, she blew through him like an Indian summer, stopping his breath. As a frogman, he prided himself on breath control, but in that moment she’d taken that control from him. Alex placed the salsa in his cart and contemplated turning around to take another look at her, but he didn’t. Maybe it would make her feel uncomfortable, or maybe he was too proud. It took him a moment to remember the other reason — Cat.

Alex headed to the dairy section. Once again, the woman in red appeared. Alex couldn’t resist smiling. She smiled back. They both stopped in front of the milk. Some women didn’t like the military, some did, and others didn’t care one way or the other — he wondered which type she was.

Not that she’d recognize he was in the military. Alex wore his hair longer than regulation and paid conscious attention to walk rather than march to where he was going. If she asked what he did for a living, his cover was a manager for a company contracted to develop and test military equipment. After the attention from the killing of Osama bin Laden, Alex and his Teammates changed their covers again. When his fellow SEALs applied for car loans or credit cards, if asked for more details, they couldn’t very well say that they worked for SEAL Team Six, so the Team provided them with cover jobs. A full-time secretary working for Team Six devoted her time to answering the phone in an off-base office that supported the cover.

Alex thought about what to say to her, but none of what came to mind seemed appropriate. He decided not to make an analysis out of it. “Hi,” he said.

Her eyes smiled as well as her lips. “Hi.”

Before Alex could say any more, his cell phone vibrated. Normally, he didn’t wait to look at it, but this time he waited — until her eyes broke the gaze and looked at his phone.

That feeling of anxiousness crept through him: is this another training test, or is this the real deal? He looked down at the text message: T-R-I-D-E-N-T-9-9-9. Real deal or not, the clock was ticking and now he had less than an hour to get on the plane.

Alex forgot about the milk, but he remembered to say something to the woman in red: “Nice meeting you.”

“Did we?” Her eyes continued to smile.

The cell phone had inconvenienced Alex before, but he’d never truly regretted it — until this moment. He turned and headed for a checkout counter. Alex stopped and turned to take one last look at her: now she was focused on getting a carton of milk. After putting the milk in her cart, she looked up to notice Alex staring. For a second, Alex thought about ignoring the cell phone — thought about telling SEAL Team Six goodbye.

The woman seemed puzzled. Alex turned around and headed to the cash registers. Long lines of people with full carts waited — Murphy’s law: “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” He tried to judge which line was the shortest, searching for single men with near-empty carts, but the lines seemed filled mostly with women shopping for large families. He entered the nearest line, only to discover that a cashier was having problems with a customer’s item.

It was as if something were trying to stop Alex from answering the call on his cell phone, but Alex chose to ignore the “signs,” pushed his shopping cart to the side, and left it. Signs or not, he still had a job to do, and he still loved his job. A lot of SEALs he knew liked hunting terrorists but claimed they didn’t like killing them. Alex liked killing terrorists. It wasn’t a long-lasting joy, but it was still a joy.

He walked out the front door without any groceries and didn’t turn back. When his warm breath hit the cold air, it created a puff of fog. He didn’t yet know where today’s mission would be, but it was probably somewhere that he wouldn’t need salsa and milk.

Walking through the parking lot, Alex subconsciously scanned the area for trouble, but his spidey sense wasn’t tingled. He opened his SUV, hopped inside, and sped away.

After leaving the parking lot, Alex drove along Laskin Road before turning right on First Colonial Road, which became South Oceana Boulevard. Snow covered the ground beside the roads. Five minutes after leaving the supermarket, he arrived at the Tomcat Boulevard base gate. The number “999” was the code in his text message that told him which gate to enter. Alex showed his contractor ID to the gate guard. The guard waved him through. On the base, Alex drove to the terminal and parked his SUV at the lot near the tarmac.

After locking his SUV, he hurriedly walked toward the plane. Even though Alex still had plenty of time, he walked hurriedly out of habit. Approaching a specially blacked-out C-130, he looked for Jet Assisted Takeoff (JATO) bottles on the plane, used for extra thrust on takeoff, especially useful when bad guys were shooting at Alex and his Teammates. There were no JATO bottles. Maybe this was just a training mission.

Alex wondered who’d be joining him. As a member of Red Team, Alex could be joined by Red Team SEALs. Alex also served on Black Team, the sniper team. Maybe this would be a sniper mission. Or possibly he’d be shooting solo.

On the plane, the white lights were on, running off an outside auxiliary power unit instead of the plane’s valuable fuel. Alex didn’t recognize the flight crew, but sitting near the cockpit was a bald Army lieutenant colonel. In conversation and informal writing, lieutenant colonel was shortened to colonel. The Colonel was from the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC, pronounced JAY-sock). JSOC was headquartered at Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base in North Carolina. After the 1980 failed attempt to rescue fifty-three American hostages at the American Embassy in Iran, it became clear that the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines couldn’t work together effectively on Special Operations missions. In 1987 the Department of Defense grafted all the military branches’ Special Operations onto one tree — including Tier 1 units like SEAL Team Six and Delta. SEALs, Rangers, and Green Berets were special, but JSOC took only the best for the top tier: Team Six and Delta. JSOC was Team Six’s boss, and the SEALs were careful not to bite the hand that fed them. The JSOC Colonel already had his portable projector screen and laptop hooked up.

Alex almost didn’t notice John Landry sitting to the side quietly checking his gear. John was a handsome black man from New Orleans who spoke French and Creole. A former member of SEAL Team One, John was a devout believer in God, but John shot like the devil.

“Hi, John,” Alex said.

John gave a quiet grunt — which was more than his usual response. Progress. As a regular Team Six member of Blue Team, John’s presence suggested that this was an Outcasts mission. There were four Outcasts: Alex, John, Pancho, and Cat. Catherine Fares wasn’t a SEAL, but she acted as a sister, girlfriend, or wife for the SEALs to aid their cover and help get them into countries where they didn’t want to look like a bunch of military guys on a mission. She also spoke Arabic. The four of them had previously been in trouble with the Navy and been formed into a new unit: the Outcasts. Now their superiors could run the blackest of black missions — if the Outcasts were discovered, they’d take the fall. Alex had led their first mission, and the Outcasts succeeded in killing seven al Qaeda cadre vying to fill the leadership gap left by bin Laden’s demise. He had fretted briefly about the mission’s one loose end. Mohammed — the radicalized teenaged son of one of their targets — had managed to elude the Outcasts during a shootout in the streets of New York City. Alex would have liked to have had another shot at the blond terrorist.

Support personnel from Team Six had already loaded the gear belonging to Alex and the others on the mission. He checked his to make sure everything was okay.

“Where’s your better half?” John asked.

Alex shrugged. During the last mission, Alex and Cat had developed feelings for each other that broke regulations. “She’s on another assignment.”

“Is she still one of us — the Outcasts?” John asked.

“I don’t know.”

John’s right eyebrow shot up. “You waiting until she comes back, or are you seeing other women?”

Alex let out a breath. “Why so many questions?”

John paused. “I just like having her around.”

Me, too. “No telling how long this separation will be. We agreed that it’s okay to see other people while we’re apart.”

“Is that what you think?” John asked.

Alex didn’t want to think about it. “Where’s your better half?”

John frowned. “Has Pancho ever been early?”

Alex smiled.

A new guy Alex had never seen before stepped on board. He wore a military haircut and a nonmilitary goatee. “Uh, hi, guys. I’m Danny.” He sounded friendly enough. “Danny Pieratti. From the Activity.” The Activity was short for Intelligence Support Activity (ISA). The Activity gathered intelligence — especially for SEAL Team Six and Delta missions.

The bald Colonel fidgeted with his watch and strained his neck to look outside the plane. Suddenly, the Colonel stopped fidgeting and straining his neck.

Alex peeked outside.

Pancho strolled across the tarmac as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Alex checked his Rolex Submariner watch: less than five minutes before drop-dead time. Even if the whole world was on fire, Pancho wouldn’t care — the world would just have to wait.

“Pancho” was Francisco Rodriguez’s nickname. A Mexican-American giant from Houston, he liked to wear shit-kickers and a big-ass rodeo belt buckle. Pancho was chewing on something, probably Red Man tobacco. He spit. That’s disgusting.

Pancho had served with John on SEAL Team One before they both came to Team Six’s Blue Team — also known as the Pirates. Although Pancho and John were friends, they were complete opposites. Pancho disliked religion and the heat. Although they generally avoided discussions with each other about religion, if there was a thermostat nearby, Pancho and John were always changing it. Pancho had seniority over John, but Pancho was the less mature of the two.

Pancho entered the plane and his eyes fixed on Alex. A big smile spread across his face. “Hey, Alex,” he greeted. “You in charge of this rodeo again?”

“About to find out,” Alex replied. “Good to have you back.”

“Great to be here.” Then Pancho greeted John but received no response. Pancho grinned.

The plane door closed and the crew switched from auxiliary power to the plane’s own power. The interior lights switched from white to red. Cat wouldn’t be on this mission.

The guys took their seats and buckled up for takeoff. Takeoffs and landings were the most dangerous parts of a flight. John opened a pocket-sized Bible and began reading it.

The C-130 taxied down the runway before lifting off.

“I heard that Hammerhead is banging Cat,” Pancho said. “Guess that relationship didn’t work out too well for you.”

John looked up from his Bible and frowned at Pancho.

Although Hammerhead was a SEAL, Alex could never figure out how he’d managed to get into Team Six — he was a tactical moron and a shitty shot. “He isn’t her type.”

“Hammerhead said that you and Cat have some kind of agreement that it’s okay to date other people while you’re apart.”

“Where’d he hear that?” Alex asked.

“From her, I guess,” Pancho said.

“He lies a lot.”

Alex noticed Danny listening in on their conversation. When Danny realized Alex noticed, Danny turned away.

Alex peered out a window. As the shapes of the buildings and roads on the ground became less distinct, Alex felt sad Cat wasn’t going to be on this mission with them. He tried to rationalize: maybe it’d be safer for her not to be with them.

The plane ascended to a safe level. The guys took off their seat belts and walked toward the open area before the cockpit and sat down for the Colonel’s brief.

Pancho turned to Alex and asked, “You’re coming up on reenlistment in a little bit, aren’t you?”

They were supposed to keep quiet and listen to the brief, so Alex, reluctant to speak, simply nodded.

“Who you going to invite?”

Now the Colonel was giving Pancho the dirty eye.

Pancho kept talking. “You got to have strippers. A good reenlistment ceremony needs strippers.”

Alex hadn’t heard of strippers at a reenlistment ceremony, but he hadn’t attended Pancho’s reenlistment celebration.

The Colonel’s face was already red under the red lights, but now it was redder.

“Never know when to put a muzzle on it, Pancho, do you?” John muttered.

Pancho chuckled. “Muzzle on my mouth or muzzle on my—”

“Hey!” the Colonel shouted. “Am I interrupting something?!”

Pancho became silent.

“Because if I am,” the Colonel continued, “I’ll stop interrupting!”

The three Outcasts sat silent. “Please, we’re ready for the brief,” Alex said.

“Good!” The Colonel switched his projector and notebook computer from standby to run, then began his PowerPoint presentation. “Gentlemen, this is the real deal. The Iranian government is continuing its work on building nukes. STUXNET, the cyberattack that shut off the electricity to their centrifuges, slowed them down, but it didn’t stop them.”

The world knew about STUXNET now. A bunch of computer geeks in the United States and Israel created an electronic worm that actually sped up the Iranian centrifuges under the very noses of the Iranian scientists. While speed was often a good thing, in this case it served to destroy the centrifuges. Once the Iranians caught on they developed countermeasures and repaired the damage. What happened next wasn’t known worldwide.

“Delta have gone in more than once and blown up power lines, disrupting their enrichment process and mangling more centrifuges,” the Colonel said. “Due to certain political factors that I won’t get into here, a government not ours has taken a more direct approach and assassinated several of Iran’s nuclear scientists.”

Alex looked around the group and saw knowing smiles.

“The success of these efforts has given the Iranians pause. We have intel that they are seriously concerned their nuclear enrichment program, also known as ‘weapons,’ won’t pan out. And so they’ve created a backup plan.”

The smiles vanished. This was something new.

“An asset code-named Leila has told us that the Iranians have been recruiting bioweapons experts from the former Soviet Union, North Korea, and other countries and set up a lab deep in the Lut Desert. One of the NSA’s satellites picked up radio conversations confirming the lab. The NGA used their satellite to photograph a site that is two hundred klicks northwest of a small town called Abadi Abad. The lab appears to be well guarded.” The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency photographed a site that was 124 miles northwest of Abadi Abad. When Alex first joined the Navy, the military mixing of metric measurements with U.S. measurements seemed confusing, but the military used metrics to standardize operations with NATO countries, especially ground distance. Other measurements, such as altitude, remained unchanged. Now that he was a veteran, the metric mixing seemed natural.

The Colonel continued. “We aren’t sharing this with our allies in the region at this time.”

Pancho raised his hand. “Sir? Why not? The Israelis would have no trouble airing out a few biologists,” Pancho said.

The Colonel shook his head. “Should an unnamed government get wind of this site there is a high probability that they would launch a strike against Iran just like they did when they hit Iraq’s nuclear plant in 1981.”

“Operation Opera,” Alex said, remembering the details. “A bunch of F-16s and F-15s flew in and bombed the Osirak reactor just before it went online. Pretty much a success. One of the pilots even went on to become an astronaut.”

“This isn’t a game show,” the Colonel said, huffing. “But yes, that strike was successful, most of all because it didn’t set off a massive war in the Middle East. If a certain country were to try that again, however, the chances of the Middle East going up in flames are a lot more likely. And that, gentlemen, is something we’re trying very hard to avoid, which is where you come in.”

The Colonel clicked to the next screen, which revealed a map of Afghanistan.

“We’re flying to Afghanistan, where you’ll do a night HAHO from twenty-six thousand feet, then fly sixty miles to land in Iran.” HAHO meant “high altitude, high opening.” Alex and his men would jump out of the plane at high altitude, then quickly open their parachutes, so they could glide across the border to their landing point. They’d be too small to show up on radar, and Iran would never see or hear them coming.

The Colonel used a red penlight to indicate the drop point on the aerial image on the projector screen. “You’ll land here, then hump ten klicks to rendezvous with Leila at her house.” Ten kilometers didn’t sound like much of a hike, but depending on the terrain and concentration of enemy in the area, it could be. An image of Leila appeared on the screen.

“She ain’t ugly,” Pancho said.

“Would you shut it,” John said, elbowing Pancho in the ribs.

Alex agreed with Pancho: Leila was hot. She looked like the actress in the TV series JAG, all smoldering eyes and jet-black hair. When Alex had free time, which was rare, he sometimes watched education channels on his cable TV, but one day when flipping channels, he watched part of JAG. She captured his interest more than the show did.

The Colonel ignored Pancho and John and looked at the Activity guy: “Danny has been in and out of Iran a number of times and has been in direct contact with Leila. He’ll take you to her house and knock on her rear window twice. She’ll respond by knocking twice. Then he’ll knock four times. The next evening Danny and Leila will insert your team near the target, you’ll destroy it, Danny and Leila will help you extract, then you’ll return to her house. From there, you’ll proceed to Kandahar, where we will debrief you.” The bald Colonel looked at Danny and asked, “Do you have anything to add?”

“Leila is solid,” Danny said. “She’s the most solid agent I’ve met. She’s a triathlete and scuba dives, so she shouldn’t slow us down too much.”

The Colonel thanked Danny before continuing: “We can’t support you while you’re in Iran, but once you cross the border to Afghanistan, we can. Of course if your team is compromised, you’re on your own. No one will avow responsibility for this mission.”

The Colonel went on to brief them about enemy forces and the lack of friendly forces in the immediate target area. The nearest friendlies would be in Afghanistan, too far away to bail the Outcasts out even if the friendlies were allowed to. Because of the different time zones, the SEALs would lose seven and a half hours between Virginia Beach and Iran. As for the weather, there wasn’t any place hotter — the Lut Desert was literally the hottest place on the planet. “Although the days are usually cool this time of year, right now the Lut is experiencing a record-breaking heat wave, with daytime temperatures exceeding one hundred ten degrees Fahrenheit,” the Colonel warned. Locals passed on a legend that a load of wheat was left in the desert for a couple of days; the sun turned it into toasted wheat. Lut Desert was about to become even hotter.

The Colonel gave them maps and photos of the area, and a photo of Leila. Pancho nearly drooled on his photo of her.

John picked at his trousers as if there were lint when there was actually nothing — he did that when he felt troubled or annoyed.

“Why us for this mission?” Alex asked.

“Because you do the missions that are dirty,” the Colonel said. “The missions that no one will take public responsibility for. And because you’re expendable.”

“I don’t understand what’s so special about this mission. Why no one wants to take responsibility for it.”

The Colonel pulled out an olive drab case the size of a briefcase and set it between his feet and the Outcasts. He handled it like it was heavy. “You’ll use this for the demolition: the Mark-2 SADM.” SADM stood for Special Atomic Demolition Munition, sometimes called the “backpack bomb.” The Mark-54 SADM was developed in the 1960s, but the one in front of the Colonel looked smaller and lighter. Congress banned the development of backpack bombs in 1994 but then removed the ban ten years later. “This weighs fifty pounds and packs a yield of one kiloton of TNT,” the Colonel said. “You can imagine how upset people will be if they find out we nuked Iran.”

Pancho’s low whistle spoke for all of them. A nuke!

“I assume there’s a good reason we won’t be using conventional explosives for this,” Alex said.

“There is,” the Colonel explained. “We’re not sure as to the extent of underground structures and how reinforced they are, and we’re unclear as to how we’d disable the whole plant with conventional explosives or other methods, such as hacking their computers or cutting critical power lines. Also, all the scientists and their support live in the compound — we want you to destroy all the scientists.”

“Who’s the poor bastard who has to jump out of the plane carrying that?” Pancho asked.

The Colonel’s eyes scanned the Outcasts before stopping at John. “John. You’ve been to SADM school for this very purpose.”

“This just keeps getting better and better,” John grumbled.

Pancho smiled. John’s unhappiness made Pancho happy.

“I have a question,” John said.

“Go ahead,” the Colonel replied.

“I heard you got out of the military. You don’t work for JSOC anymore, do you?”

“Good question,” the Colonel said, avoiding an answer.

“If you don’t work for JSOC,” Pancho said, “who do you work for? The Agency?”

The Colonel gave away nothing.

“Bitter Ash?” Alex asked, looking for a reaction.

The Colonel shifted his weight.

Alex interpreted the shift to mean yes. The Phoenix Program of capturing and assassinating high-value personnel didn’t truly end when the Vietnam War ended. Rather, it transformed into Bitter Ash. The Outcasts’ previous mission to eliminate al Qaeda leaders fell under the command of Bitter Ash. Once again, it looked like Alex, Pancho, and John would be operating in the darkest shadows of blackness.

4

The inside of the C-130 remained darkened except for the red lights illuminating the interior as Alex, Pancho, and John took off their civilian clothes. Alex wore silk boxer shorts, and he wasn’t the least bit ashamed. John, however, had on black Speedo swim jammers — formfitting nylon and Lycra spandex that extended from mid-waist down to mid-thigh, similar to triathlon shorts. Alex felt John should have been ashamed, and in the real world he would have, but then there was Pancho. Pancho, always the fashionista of their group, wore only his birthday suit. On this matter, Alex and John thought alike — if they ever got in too much trouble, they could always strip off everything except their shorts and make a swim for it, then walk onto a crowded beach and fit in like the other beachgoers. Pancho hoped he ended up on a nude beach — if not, oh well — can’t blame a guy for hoping.

The SEALs put on polypropylene tops and bottoms in order to wick moisture away from their bodies. It wasn’t simply a comfort thing. They’d be jumping from a high altitude in subzero temperatures and sweat would freeze.

Despite all the advances in material for extreme weather, they all wore wool socks. Scientists still hadn’t managed to beat sheep when it came to putting something on your feet that would wick away moisture and keep them warm.

On his belt he carried a Swiss Army knife and a holstered Iranian Zoaf 9mm pistol, a knockoff of the SIG Sauer. The Zoaf was inferior to the SIG, but SEAL Team Six’s expert armorers had customized this Zoaf with increased accuracy, phosphate corrosion-resistant finish on the internal parts, contrast sights, and a threaded barrel for mounting a silencer and the ability to hold fifteen rounds.

His main weapon would be an AKMS, similar to the AK-47 except this modern version had a side-folding buttstock, which gave Alex the option of making the weapon more compact for ease in parachuting and working in tight areas such as indoors. As with the Zoaf, SEAL Team Six’s armorers customized this AKMS with improved sling attachment points, a Picatinny rail with low-profile holographic and laser sights attached, and an enhanced fire selector switch for easier use and more accurate firing. When in Rome, look like the Romans, but carry a bigger stick.

John carefully put the backpack nuke in his backpack. Of course, the United States could launch a missile with a nuclear warhead at the facility, but it would be difficult to disguise the source of the missile.

Danny is probably trustworthy, but shit happens, Alex thought. He double-checked the route to Leila’s house and encouraged the others to do the same.

Pancho sat nibbling on Keebler cookies. “Can you name them?” Pancho asked.

Alex rolled his eyes.

“Name what?” John asked.

“The Keebler elves. All eighteen of them.”

John corrected him. “All nineteen.”

“Name them.”

“Okay. J. J. Keebler, Ernie Keebler, Fryer Tuck, Zoot, Ma Keebler, Elmer Keebler, Buckets, Fast Eddie, Roger …” John started to slow down.

“That’s nine,” Pancho said. “Don’t forget Doc, Zack, Flo, Leonardo, and Elwood.”

“Professor, Edison, Larry, and Art.”

“See, that’s only eighteen,” Pancho said, grinning.

“There’s one more. I just forgot his name.”

Alex couldn’t believe that two grown men were arguing about cookies and elves. After Alex made sure he was ready to go, he lay down on the cold deck, closed his eyes, and got some rest — he had no idea when he’d get a chance to rest again, so he didn’t waste the opportunity. His adrenaline threatened to keep him awake, but he fought it and caught some sleep — only to be awakened by hunger, so he ate a Meal, Ready to Eat (MRE), also known as Meal, Refusing to Exit because the MREs had been known to cause constipation. More than the food, Alex made sure he drank a lot of water, saturating his cells with it.

They flew nine hours to Germany, stopped to refuel, then continued eight more hours to Afghanistan.

During a stretch of Alex’s sleep, John woke him and said, “We’re nearing ten thousand feet.”

Alex put his helmet and mask on — special molds had been made so that each member’s helmet and mask fit exactly. He connected the hose on his mask to an inline tube on the plane’s wall (bulkhead) and started breathing pure oxygen to purge nitrogen from his bloodstream and avoid decompression sickness. Alex was also saturating himself with oxygen, so if he got low, he wouldn’t black out as fast.

He had been through training that simulated a poor mask seal on his face, depriving him of oxygen — it made him feel euphoric. It was like being Superman. He really thought he could fly. If one guy broke seal, everyone had to restart the pre-breathing process, a process that could last thirty minutes to an hour and a half. Alex had seen a SEAL with a new mask that didn’t fit properly. Fortunately it was a training op, and the guy passed out before he jumped. The commanding officer had to make a decision whether to abort the mission or carry on without him. They carried on the mission without him. And he’d heard from John about a training op where a West Coast SEAL had jumped, then gone unconscious. An Emergency Deployment Device (EDD) should have automatically deployed his parachute for him; however, the EDD failed, and he bounced off the ground before he ever woke. Immediately the guys radioed about their dead Teammate. Pancho had been on that op. While waiting nearly an hour for someone to come and help them take the body out, Pancho reached into the rubble of the dead SEAL’s Playmate cooler, took his lunch, and ate it.

Pancho, John, and Danny joined Alex in pre-breathing.

After thirty minutes, the C-130 rose above ten thousand feet over Afghanistan. For each one thousand feet the plane ascended, the temperature dropped 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Alex put on overgloves, which covered his tactical gloves so his hands wouldn’t freeze off.

As they reached eighteen thousand feet, a physiology technician monitored the SEALs and aircrew for signs of altitude sickness.

The plane rose higher and higher. Soon the loadmaster called out, “Thirty minutes!”

Alex’s bladder had stretched tight from all the water he’d been drinking, so he relieved himself in a piss tube in the bulkhead.

“Ten minutes!” They were approaching the point of no return. Once they took that step off the plane, there’d be no getting back on.

“Five minutes!” The C-130’s ramp lowered. Although there was no moon, there was still more light outside the plane than inside. The light entered the plane. The guys disconnected their breathing lines from the C-130’s large oxygen tanks and connected the lines to their small individual tanks. Each SEAL checked and double-checked his oxygen bottle pressure and connections. They had duct-taped their masks onto their helmets so when they jumped, the wind wouldn’t blast the masks off their faces. Alex also made a quick check of Pancho, John, and Danny. The PT watched them for signs of hypoxia. Burdened with his green oxygen tank on his left, rifle on his right, and more than a hundred pounds of gear in his backpack, Alex waddled behind the others, who also waddled to the ramp.

“Three minutes!” With all the wind blasting into the plane, Alex couldn’t hear the loadmaster call out the time interval, but Alex recognized the man’s three-finger sign and relayed it to his Teammates in case they hadn’t seen it. Alex dropped to his stomach and slithered onto the ramp. He peeked over the edge and all he could see were clouds. He hoped the ground matched the aerial images the Colonel had shown them.

“One minute!” Alex slithered back away from the ramp and stood. He hoped the pilot and crew were on target.

“Thirty seconds!”

The light on the ramp switched from red to green. Pancho and John looked to Alex for the “okay.” Alex pointed off the ramp: go. John was the lightest and would take the longest to reach the ground, so he jumped first. Danny went next. Pancho was heavier than Alex, but Alex had to make sure everyone got off the plane okay before he jumped. The three SEALs had distributed their gear so Alex carried more weight.

Alex brought up the rear, and stepped off the plane at twenty-six thousand feet above Afghanistan. It was the Superman feeling, mixed with fear and ecstasy. He longed to just fall through space, but the whole point to a high-altitude, high-opening jump was to deploy your chute right after jumping. Even more crucial, if he waited too long to pull his chute, he’d blast through Pancho’s canopy below him and they’d both die.

A mere four seconds after stepping off the plane, Alex pulled his rip cord. He tensed up, even though he had done this hundreds of times before. Would the chute deploy? It was amazing to realize that your life literally hung from a bunch of string.

After what seemed an eternity, the chute opened at twenty-six thousand feet. The force was so abrupt and violent that Alex was certain he cracked a vertebra. Tensing really didn’t help. He looked up and did a 360-degree check of his high glide ratio canopy to make sure it hadn’t folded over itself like a giant brassiere. So far, so good—it had deployed properly and everything checked out fine. He suddenly wondered if, like so much else sold in the United States these days, the chutes had been made by a bunch of kids in a Chinese factory. They could take out a battalion of paratroopers just by skipping a few stitches.

“Damn it!” The temperature was 45 degrees below zero. He really didn’t like HAHO jumps. You froze your damn ass off long before anyone got a chance to shoot it off.

He double-checked the canopy. Satisfied it was in full working order, he loosened the straps on his ruck hanging from his chest and let the ruck drop to the top of his boots to distribute the weight more evenly.

Floating while freezing, he began searching for the other jumpers in the night sky. With shaking hands he pulled down his night optical device (NOD) so that it rested in front of his eyes. Infrared (IR) chemlights glowed on the back of each man’s helmet. Although invisible to the naked eye, the IR chemlights could be seen through the NODs. The Outcasts stacked up. John glided at the bottom and a large blob that was clearly Pancho was just below Alex. The large black space between them should have been Danny, but he wasn’t there. Where’s his chemlight?

Shit, shit, shit!

Alex looked harder at the empty space between John and Pancho. Shit! Danny drifted between them, his chute partially deployed and flapping in the wind! He was already too far away for Alex to tell if he was unconscious or not.

John spun his body and looked up to check his chute. Alex willed John to lunge after Danny and grab him, but he had already fallen past and was picking up speed. Alex did a quick calculation and tore at the release tab of his main chute. It detached and he was suddenly flying again, straight down. He angled his body into a high dive and blew past Pancho and John.

A cloud base at fifteen thousand feet rushed up to meet him. If he didn’t get to Danny before then, he’d lose him. Alex was having a hard time maintaining the angle of his dive and realized his ruck was causing the problem. There was no way to cut it loose now. He strained and kept his dive. The wind ripped at his mask, trying to pry it off his face. The distance between him and Danny closed.

Five hundred feet. He started working out what he would do when he caught up to Danny. He’d try to get the unconscious man in a leg lock and bear hug. Then he’d pull his reserve and hope like hell.

Three hundred seventy-five feet. Danny must be unconscious. He was on his back, his arms flailing about in the wind. Grabbing him wasn’t going to be easy.

Two hundred twenty feet. The top of the cloud base was looming close. This was going to be tight. Alex turned his focus back on Danny.

One hundred feet.

Forty-five feet. Alex reached out his gloved hands. He’d grab Danny first, pull him in tight, then wrap his legs around him.

Twenty feet. A piece of canopy from Danny’s chute ripped loose and flew up into Alex’s face. He desperately clawed at the cloth with his left hand while still reaching out with his right. He pulled the cloth away and was in the clouds.

Danny was gone!

Alex looked around, but he couldn’t see anything. He had no choice. He pulled the D-ring for his reserve chute and a moment later felt the reassuring jerk as the harness straps bit into his body. No point looking up; he wouldn’t be able to see a damn thing.

He tried to calculate how far off course he’d be when he landed. He was still ten thousand feet up, so he should be able to steer close to their original drop zone. If John and Pancho saw his chemlight they’d fly toward him. Alex said a silent goodbye to Danny. Murphy’s law was a bastard.

Most of the buddies Alex lost, like Jabberwocky, he knew better than Danny. Some Alex didn’t know as well. Experiencing so much death rubbed calluses onto his soul, but it didn’t stop him from feeling — seeing a widow and fatherless children at a funeral always hurt him to the core, but now, Alex didn’t have the luxury of mourning, feeling, or belly-button gazing. He had a mission to accomplish — a mission that could potentially save many lives. Now Alex was responsible for keeping Pancho and John alive.

Alex broke through the cloud layer and his vision cleared. It was nautical twilight, his favorite time to make magical mayhem. He saw shapes on the ground, the horizon, and stars in the sky to the east, where the cloud cover was broken up. Alex looked down at the tritium sighted glow-in-the-dark Silva Ranger compass mounted on his chest strap. He was off course. No kidding. Alex’s shivering hands reached up to his parachute toggles and corrected course. Quickly he stuffed his hands under his armpits to protect them from the cold. The cold made his brain slow down. Thinking became difficult.

He spent the next thirty-seven minutes gliding and checking the sky above him for signs of Pancho and John. When he thought his head would fall off his neck from all the twisting he spotted a black shape a thousand yards above him. Pancho! He looked around and was amazed to see a chemlight just seventy-five yards below him, off to his left. John! They’d found him. The sense of relief was incredible. He wouldn’t tell them, but a tear came to his eye. He checked his GPS and saw they’d traveled forty-nine miles from initial jump to their current altitude and position; 2,220 feet and forty-nine miles. Alex couldn’t feel his hands or feet. He was ready to land in a volcano if it would warm him up.

John landed first — fortunately, his atomic backpack didn’t explode into a giant mushroom cloud and take all of them with it. John was the fastest gun, but even he looked like his frozen body was moving in slow motion. Gradually he brought about his AKMS assault rifle and crouched into a covering position as Alex and Pancho came in to land.

Alex hit hard, the soles of his feet stinging as if they’d just slammed against an iceberg. He pitched forward awkwardly, ramming one knee into the dirt then the other as he did his best to roll and absorb the landing. He lay flat on the ground for several seconds, gulping for breath.

A loud thump a few yards away told him Pancho was on the ground. Alex picked himself up and without a word went about policing up their landing site, burying their parachutes and oxygen tanks and readying their gear. No one said a word about Danny. Alex hoped the enemy didn’t hit them now because his fingers were so numb, he didn’t think he could pull the trigger. Minutes later, they were ready, and Alex signaled Pancho to lead them out.

Pancho patrolled at the point, watching 180 degrees in front of them. His position was the most exhausting — trying to sense everything before it sensed them. Alex followed in the middle, wiping the frozen tears off his face, then alternating between covering the left and the right with his eyes and AKMS. John secured the rear by stopping occasionally to turn and check the 180 degrees behind them.

The desert evening was cold. During the day, the heat caused water to evaporate into the atmosphere, creating a barrier that trapped long-wave infrared radiation near the ground. As a result, the area became dry and clouds scarce. At night, when the sun disappeared, there was nothing to block the heat from escaping earth. After the heat fled, the desert became cold.

It felt good to be moving on patrol. Gradually, sensation returned to Alex’s legs and arms. After three kilometers, the cold pain in his hands wore off, and he felt he had a fighting chance at being able to shoot someone. Two kilometers later, the patrol weaved around the bases of sandy dunes and rock formations. They came across a goat path and followed it toward the village.

After two kilometers on the goat path, Alex noticed something to his left. He couldn’t tell if it was a bush or a human. As his eyes strained to see better, he almost ran into Pancho, who had stopped and crouched down. Alex stopped and crouched down, too. John did the same. Pancho pointed ahead to his left. Alex saw movement and aimed his AKMS in the direction of the movement. Pancho and John were aiming in the same direction. Whoever it was, they crouched low as they walked. The figure came closer until Alex recognized it — a goat.

Alex had to keep from laughing out loud. He was sure Pancho and John wanted to laugh, too. Keeping their silence, they resumed their patrol to the village. As they passed around a berm, the indistinct outline of the village came into view.

Continuing forward, they reached another berm — this one was just one hundred yards east of the village. Alex signaled for Pancho and John to stay behind while he went in to rendezvous with Leila. He left his cumbersome backpack with them so he could move more freely.

Alex kept low until he neared the edge of the village and dropped to a low crawl, which he continued until he reached Leila’s house. A neighborhood dog barked. It was times like this that Alex hated dogs. Alex peered through Leila’s back window — the curtain was closed and he couldn’t see inside. He gave the coded knock: two knocks. No answer. Is she asleep? Is she even here? Is this a trap? He gave the coded knock again. Two knocks came back. He knocked four times. Now the window opened, and he recognized her. Leila looked even better than her picture.

He crawled through the window. Inside, he began searching the house.

“There is no one else here,” Leila said quietly.

Alex continued with the search. He didn’t know her well enough to take her word for it. It was a small, modestly furnished two-bedroom house. After clearing the house, rather than make noise by speaking, he broke squelch on his radio once, notifying Pancho and John that it was clear for them to come in. Alex stood guard, watching both the inside and outside of the house.

“Where is Danny?” she asked.

Alex hesitated. “He couldn’t make it.”

“But he said he was coming.”

“He wanted to,” Alex said.

“Something terrible happened?”

Alex wasn’t sure what to say. He hadn’t seen Danny die, but he knew he was dead. Alex didn’t know how close Leila was to Danny. The only words that came out were “I’m sorry.”

She turned her head away.

Pancho and John arrived. Alex let them in through the front door. With the three large men in the small house, the place became even smaller. Alex looked at his watch — it was already morning. Leila took them into a vacant room. “You can keep your things here and sleep today,” she said quietly. “There is not enough dark left for me to take you to the chemical weapons lab now, but when evening comes again, I will take you.”

The three SEALs stashed their gear in the room, then played rock, paper, scissors to see who’d stay awake for the first watch. John lost. Alex was tempted to volunteer to take the watch anyway because he was still too keyed up, but he knew John wouldn’t go for it, so he stayed silent. Pancho collapsed and was snoring inside of a minute.

John went into the kitchen with Leila while Alex made himself comfortable on the floor. He could see the kitchen clearly through the open door. He half closed his eyes and focused on his breathing.

“Would you like a drink?” Leila asked.

“Water, please,” John said. Alex thought he wouldn’t mind a martini, but he didn’t need it dulling his senses now. And alcohol would just make him piss, which would dehydrate him before the mission.

Leila removed a pitcher of water from the refrigerator and filled two cups. She sat down to drink with him. “I am sorry my English is not good.”

“Your English is great,” John said. “How come you speak so fluently?”

She smiled. “It is not great. My mother liked English and she taught me. When I was a high school student, I studied in the United States as an exchange student for a year.”

“Where?”

“Sacramento.”

“That’s great for just one year.”

“Later, I majored in English at California State University.”

“Wow,” John said.

Alex rolled his eyes. No wonder John was single.

“It took me six years to graduate.” She laughed.

“Maybe that’s why your English is so good.”

“I am embarrassed. It should be better.”

“Two rooms but you live alone,” John said. “Is that common here?”

“No.”

Alex wanted John to ask why, but John apparently decided to let it drop.

After nearly a minute of silence, Leila explained: “The local newspaper wrote a false article about my husband — saying he wanted to overthrow the government. One day when he picked my son up from high school, some agents abducted them. I tried everything I could and asked the few people I knew for help. The authorities released my son, but he had received such serious head injuries that later he died. My husband remained in prison, and they tortured him to death.”

“I’m sorry,” John said. His voice was quiet and Alex had to strain to hear.

“It is okay,” Leila said.

“Did you ever find out why the newspaper wrote the false article?”

“It was a basiji.”

Alex understood. In 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini established a militia called Basij. Its members, basiji, were infamous for enforcing morals and obedience to the government.

“Reserve members do not get paid. Full members are paid. The special members are paid to be part of the Basij and Revolutionary Guard. He is a reserve member. His name is Emamali Naqdi.”

Alex started to get up, but stopped. John was leaning across the table. He held Leila’s hand in his.

“Why’d he target your family?” John asked.

“When my husband and I went out, the basiji man stared at me — he made me feel so uncomfortable, but my husband told me not to worry about it, so I did not worry. He looked at my husband with an evil eye, but my husband ignored him, too. The basiji disappeared for a couple of weeks. I thought it was finished. Then my husband was taken away. After my husband died, the basiji reappeared, watching my house late at night. Sometimes he just stood outside; other times he sat in his red Chinese SUV — he’d watch my house for hours. I reported it to the police, but they said that because I was living alone, he was protecting me, and they told me I should be careful not to irritate authorities.”

“Didn’t you have family or friends who could help you?”

“We had just moved here for my husband’s work — we had only a few people. Two helped me free my son, but they were afraid to help my husband.”

“And you hold your government responsible for what happened to your husband and son?”

“Yes. I love Iran, but I hate the government. It is not just what happened to me; it is what happened to so many other Iranians.” She paused.

Alex understood her motivation, but he wondered if he could ever turn on his own government like that. Maybe if it was killing his family and friends and a theocracy, but luckily, the United States was still just a regular, messed-up democracy.

“Why do you do what you do?” she asked John.

“It’s a long story,” John said.

“We have time.”

Alex tuned John out, thinking about his own reasons. It went back to when he was in high school. There was a man who had a hard time holding a job or connecting to society. He blamed the government for all his own shortcomings. One day, he blew up a post office. Both his grandfather and sister Sarah were killed in the explosion. It was an act of terrorism. Didn’t matter what color the man’s skin was or what god he believed in, he’d committed an act of terror. From that day on, Alex vowed to take people like that out.

“Not all Iranians are terrorists,” Leila said, bringing Alex back to their conversation. “Very few.”

“I know,” John said. “It’s the few we came for.”

Leila excused herself and retired to her room to get some sleep. He heard her chair scrape across the floor and then the soft padding of her feet. A moment later there was a light thump on the table and the muffled sound of metal on metal. Alex smiled. John was field-stripping his AKMS. It wasn’t a cold shower, but it worked.

The sun was just warming the house as the occupants began to stir. Alex stretched, sitting up in the kitchen chair after having taken the last watch. An early morning vehicle drove by outside. Alex thought about the red SUV Leila mentioned, but the vehicle was gone before he could peek out the window.

Leila walked into the kitchen and smiled at him. “I will make you breakfast,” she said.

“You don’t have to make anything for us,” Alex said. “We brought some food.”

“It is okay,” she said. “I already bought extra groceries, and they will spoil if we do not eat. It has been a while since I have cooked for more than myself.”

Alex didn’t argue. It would be better than sucking on warm energy gel.

As Leila began preparing breakfast, over village loudspeakers came what Alex hoped was the call to morning prayer — not a call to kill the Americans.

5

Early Thursday morning, Major Khan returned home to Tehran for leave and donned his sheep’s clothing. Sometimes he believed he was a sheep, but deep down inside, he knew he was a monster. Knowing what people do to monsters, he maintained an upstanding image in order to survive. At dawn, he said the Fajr prayer, the first of five that Muslims say each day.

Major Khan had breakfast with his wife, Daria; Mohammed, their eleven-year-old son; and Jasmeen, their nine-year-old daughter. His wife and children were excited that he was home. They ate nan flatbread with jam and feta cheese. After breakfast, they stayed at the table and talked.

“Where were you last week, Daddy?” Jasmeen asked.

“Working,” Major Khan said. It was true.

“Working where?” she persisted.

“Somewhere special — doing special work for Allah,” he said. Questions irritated him, but he’d learned the camouflage of patience.

Jasmeen soon lost interest in asking about his work and talked to her brother. Someday his daughter would learn like her brother and mother not to ask too many questions.

Major Khan’s wife was a pious woman who didn’t like violence, but she accepted his profession because of its necessity for Islam and Iran. She knew that much of her husband’s work for the Quds Force was secret, but she didn’t know he kept secrets within secrets. If she saw the full monster that I am, she’d surely want to leave me.

Major Khan’s cell phone rumbled. He answered it then listened for a moment before saying, “I’ll be right there.” Then he hung up.

“Do you have to go to work today?” Mohammed asked.

“I just have a few things to take care of.”

The boy frowned. “How can they call it leave when you still have a few things to take care of?”

“I got to eat breakfast with my family. And I’ll finish work early and be home for lunch.”

“Your father is an important man,” Daria said, defending him. “That’s why he’s so busy.”

“Will you play soccer with me after school?” Mohammed asked.

“Yes, I promise.” Major Khan kissed his children and wife before heading out the door. They truly seemed to love him, but his love for them was pretense. It had occurred to him that maybe their love was pretense, too.

He left his family and drove fifteen minutes to the Revolutionary Guard base and parked his car outside the Intelligence Division Detention Center. Inside, he checked in.

“The prisoner has been readied for you, sir,” the Guard said.

“Yes, I came as soon as I could.” Major Khan entered the interrogation room, where a young man with a swollen jaw sat on a chair with his hands tied and eyes blindfolded. In front of him was a small table with a baton on it.

“Good morning,” Major Khan said.

The boy said nothing, turning in the direction of his interrogator’s voice.

“I am told you’re a member of the so-called Arab Spring movement.”

“No,” the boy said. “I told everyone no, but they don’t listen.”

“I’m listening. People tell me I’m a good listener. Not like the barbarians who brought you here,” Khan said.

“Thank you.”

“Are you thirsty?” Khan asked.

“Yes.”

“Just a moment.” Major Khan stepped out of the room and returned with a cup of water. He placed it to the boy’s lips and poured slowly.

The boy drank until the cup was empty. “Thank you.”

“What is it that you’d like me to know?”

“Pardon?”

“You said that no one listens to you. I’m here for you — to listen.”

“I’m just a university student, and I don’t have anything to do with the Arab Spring. Three men burst through my door at night, sprayed tear gas in my face, bound me, blindfolded me, punched me, kicked me, and brought me here. They kept asking me about the Arab Spring, but I told them I don’t know anything. Then they hit me with a baton. I told them I don’t know anything, but they don’t believe me.”

“I believe you,” Khan said.

“You do?”

“Yes.”

The boy became silent for a moment. “Can I go?”

“Yes, just as soon as we finish.”

“Thank you.”

“I know how you feel,” Khan said, easing himself against the wall. “When I was your age, there was fierce competition in my neighborhood between religious sects. I was invited to convert from my sect to another — when I didn’t, someone told the authorities that I was a spy, and intelligence agents captured me and interrogated me.”

“How’d you get free?”

“My family had connections and eventually cleared my name. So you see, I do know how you feel.” Major Khan walked behind the boy and removed the boy’s shirt until it hung down from around his bound hands.

“What are you doing?” the boy asked.

“I’m making you more comfortable.”

“You don’t have to. I’m comfortable enough.”

“Oh, I listened to what you said, but you didn’t listen to what I said.”

“I was listening,” the teen said.

“Then you heard me say, ‘I know how you feel.’ I know you’re not comfortable.”

“But you’re not making me more comfortable.”

“But I am. You just don’t understand. I’m going to teach you how to feel comfortable.” With the boy’s shirt removed, Major Khan began removing the boy’s pants.

“No, please don’t.”

Now that the boy was nude, Major Khan picked him up out of his chair and leaned him over the table.

“You said you would let me go,” the boy said.

“I listened to you, but you weren’t listening to me. I said I’d let you go as soon as we finish. I haven’t finished teaching you what my interrogator taught me.” Major Khan unzipped his trousers.

“Oh, no. Please don’t. Why are you doing this?”

“I’m teaching you a tradition so you can pass it down to the next generation.” Major Khan dropped his undershorts. He didn’t care whether the boy was a member of the Arab Spring or not. Major Khan cared only about liberating his own monster.

The boy screamed.

6

Thursday morning, after Alex’s watch, the guys woke and ate breakfast together with Leila. Following breakfast, John showed his Bible to Leila and asked, “Do you mind if I read this?”

“Do you believe in God?”

“Yes. Do you?”

“I did. Before my son and husband were murdered.”

“I know someone like that.”

“Would that be Alex?” she asked.

John looked at Alex.

“If you all don’t mind, I’m going to take a nap,” Alex said. He retreated to the bedroom and lay down on the floor next to his kit. The walls were thin because he could still hear Leila.

“How about you?” Leila said.

“Me?” Pancho asked. “I’ll believe Him when I see Him. Or, if that’s too much, He could make me a believer by rescuing the poor.”

“You lose someone, too?” Leila asked.

“No,” Pancho said.

“If you do not do this for someone you lost and you don’t do this for God, who do you do this job for?”

“John and Alex,” Pancho said. “They’re my brothers.”

“They’re not real brothers, are they?”

Pancho chuckled, causing the wall to vibrate. “No, not hardly. I grew up with six brothers, but not these guys.”

“Seven boys. It must have been hard for your parents.”

“I never knew my father. Rarely saw my mother. Grandma raised us boys in a shack that leaked. She fed us just enough to keep us hungry — did the best she could, and we loved her for it.”

“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.

7

After 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.

8

At 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.”

“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.

Since that time, Alex had cried out the sadness. In the empty space that remained came rage, something he didn’t share with the world — he reserved that for the terrorists. Alex couldn’t do anything about the domestic terrorist who’d killed Sarah before committing suicide, but Alex could do something about other terrorists — killing them before they shed innocent blood. The hunt had consumed his life.

“She isn’t here,” Pancho said.

“Where is she?” John asked. He’d followed them to the car.

“Damn good question,” Alex said.

9

Alex searched the surrounding area, but there was no sign of her. “Leila,” he called, but no answer came. He wasn’t being stealthy, and he didn’t care. Part of him hoped the Revolutionary Guard would come, so he could unleash his rage. “Leila!” he shouted.

“Alex?”

He looked in the direction of the voice.

From beneath a pile of sand on the side of a dune Leila scrambled to her feet. The dirt poured off her, and she stumbled toward them.

“Are you okay?” John asked.

“I am fine,” Leila said.

“What made you hide in the dunes?”

“I heard engines and voices, and I saw how well your bags were hidden. Then I looked at how poorly I was hidden.”

“What did the Guards do when they found your vehicle empty?”

“They threw some firebombs on it before they even checked if anyone was inside.”

“Thank you for not leaving us.”

“Thank you for not leaving me.”

The SEALs retrieved their backpacks buried in the side of the dune. Nothing in Leila’s vehicle seemed salvageable. Alex hated losing their backup supply of water. If their truck broke down, they could all dehydrate.

They piled into the truck, its engine still running.

As Pancho drove them south, a small Revolutionary Guard jeep came around the dunes and headed straight at them, flashing its lights and honking.

“What does he want?” Alex asked.

“Probably selling something,” Pancho replied.

“Not interested,” John said.

Pancho picked up speed, heading straight for the jeep.

“What is this called?” Leila asked excitedly. “In English what do you call it? Chicken. Yes, this is a game of chicken.”

“This is a different game,” Pancho said. “It’s called Rules of the Road. The biggest truck rules the road.”

John laughed, sucking air through his nose.

Pancho’s joke wasn’t funny, but John’s laugh was. “Buckle up,” Alex warned Leila as he fastened his seat belt.

She did.

Pancho plowed head-on into the jeep. The jeep’s passenger, who looked like a high-ranking officer, flipped out of his seat and landed on the jeep’s hood, and the driver’s head smacked the steering wheel, knocking him out. The front of the jeep folded like an accordion.

Pancho stomped the accelerator. The truck pushed the little jeep forward. The officer fell off the crumpled hood before the jeep veered backward out of Pancho’s way. Then Pancho zigzagged through the desert to throw off anyone who might try to follow their tracks later. They had cleared the danger zone of the nuke, but they still had to travel several more klicks before they were safe from radiation.

As Pancho drove through the darkness, Alex undid his seat belt so he could turn around more easily and watch their rear. The desert air was cold. Leila took off her seat belt, then moved closer to John. Alex did his best not to smile. Good for them. She put her head on John’s shoulder. Maybe she’s tired. Maybe she’s lonely. She was attractive, and John was a good man. Alex thought about pulling John aside when he had a chance to remind him they still had a mission to accomplish, but he doubted John had forgotten.

After about ten klicks, the truck stopped. The rear wheels spun in the soft sand, but the truck went nowhere. “I liked Leila’s driving better,” John said.

Alex couldn’t see Pancho’s face, but he imagined he was giving John a dirty look.

Leila woke. “What is wrong?”

“We’re stuck.”

She crawled into the back and rummaged around until she found a shovel. Then she got out and dug sand out from in front of a rear wheel. The SEALs got out. Pancho grabbed the shovel and took over the digging.

“Could someone get the sand mats?” she asked.

Alex went into the truck and looked in the back, where he found two wide strips of metal with holes in them. He brought them out and laid them next to the vehicle.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I need two ropes.”

John went into the truck and came back with twenty-five feet of rope. “If this is long enough, I can cut it in two,” he said.

“Yes, two of those would be perfect,” she said.

John cut the rope in two.

Pancho had finished digging the sand out from in front of both rear wheels.

Leila laid one of the sand mats down in front of one rear wheel, and Alex laid the other sand mat down in front of the other wheel. Then she tied one end of a rope through one of the holes in a sand mat and the other end of the rope to the truck’s rear bumper. Next, John did the same to the other mat. “Okay, we are ready to go,” she said.

Pancho put away the shovel and the four of them returned to their seats in the truck. Pancho drove over the sand mats and beyond. Behind the bumper trailed the two sand mats tied to the bumper, skiing over the dirt. “When you a hit hard stretch of land, you stop, and I will get the sand mats and rope,” Leila said.

The truck stopped. “This sand is too soft,” Leila said.

“I didn’t mean to stop,” Pancho said.

“You have to pick up speed to third gear, but not too fast.”

“I was trying.”

John laughed, sucking air through his nose.

Leila started to get out of the vehicle, but Alex told her, “I got this.” He grabbed the shovel, dug out the rear wheels, then put the sand mats in front of the rear wheels. Alex returned inside the truck and gave his best Donald Trump impersonation: “Pancho, you’re fired.” He turned to Leila. “Leila, drive us out of here.”

John laughed again.

“Shut up,” Pancho said.

John laughed more.

Leila drove until she hit a hard stretch of land and stopped. Alex pulled in the sand mats and Leila resumed the drive to Abadi Abad.

They had traveled sixty klicks from the lab when the black sky became dark gray and the air felt slightly warmer. The truck stopped. “What’re we stopping for?” Alex asked.

“We are out of gas,” Leila said. “This truck must have a leak.”

“I was looking forward to a hundred-forty-klick walk through the hottest desert on earth,” Pancho said.

“I wasn’t,” John said.

Pancho smiled.

“Can you fix the leak, Pancho?” Alex asked.

“Probably,” Pancho said. “Then what? You hiding a spare tank of gas up your ass?”

Although the hike sounded impossible, Alex was happy to be out of the danger zone of the nuke.

Boom! The earth shook. Alex thought it was an earthquake, but he looked at his watch: 0503 hours. “Whoa,” he said.

The four hurried out of the truck and looked toward the sound of the explosion. A mushroom cloud rose in the air above the biological weapons lab. It was a beautiful and terrible sight.

“Orgasmic,” Pancho said. He high-fived Alex, then high-fived John.

Alex smiled at John, who smiled back. Out of the corner of his eye, Alex noticed Leila standing there, staring at the mushroom cloud. She wasn’t smiling. “Was that a bomb?” she asked.

Alex thought before answering. “Yes.”

“Is the lab destroyed?”

“Yes.”

“What about the people?”

“The people, too. There’s nothing left.”

She seemed to be pondering what she’d just participated in. She’d probably never given anyone a death sentence before, and now she’d helped wipe out a whole biological weapons compound and all its personnel.

“Will there be survivors? I mean, will anyone suffer?”

Alex didn’t see the point in sugarcoating it. “No survivors, no suffering.”

“No one should have to suffer like I suffered. Not even my enemies,” Leila said.

“Well, now we don’t have to worry about them coming to look for us,” Pancho said.

“I’m thinking we should rest today and do our traveling at night,” Alex said.

John nodded.

“Sounds like a plan,” Pancho said.

Alex looked around. They were in a sea of sand with occasional dips and swells that the wind had blown ripples into like waves — their vessel dead in the water. “This truck sticks out.”

“Like a turd in a bowl of cereal,” Pancho said.

“Don’t see much in the way of shelter from the heat,” John said. “The truck sticks out, but right now I’m more concerned about the heat than the Revolutionary Guard.”

“I agree,” Alex said. “We’ll lose water trying to stay hydrated if we lose the shade of the truck.”

The SEALs took turns standing watch and sleeping. It was common for them to sleep during the day and work at night. They were living the vampire lifestyle long before vampires became popular.

The sun crawled up the desert sky, raising the temperature. Sweat covered Alex. He couldn’t survive long without water. Before becoming thirsty, he drank. If he waited until he was thirsty, his body would already be dehydrating. Thirst was a late warning signal. The heat continued to increase.

Alex imagined he was in a sauna at a country club — he was actually enjoying it. Ironically, Leila seemed to have the most trouble with the heat, but she didn’t complain. From her backpack, she pulled out a civilized breakfast of nan with jam. In contrast, Alex sucked energy gel from a tube.

The Lut Desert was too hot for plants or other living organisms. In the summer, scientists had left uncovered sterilized milk out and it stayed sterile — the desert was too hot even for bacteria.

The sun shone directly above them, taking away the shade from the side of the truck and threatening to kill the four of them. Alex dug out a trench under the truck. He lay down in the trench — it was cool. Soon the others dug trenches and joined him.

Later, as the sun set and air cooled, Alex and his team prepped themselves for the first leg of their 140-kilometer trek. The easy thing about leading SEALs was that a leader didn’t have to tell them everything to do. The difficult thing about leading SEALs was that they ate weak leaders for breakfast.

“We good to go?” Alex asked.

They nodded.

“John, you okay to watch out for Leila?” Alex asked. “Leila, you follow Pancho, and I’ll be right behind you.” With those words, Pancho and John understood that if she did something to betray them, John would be the one to put a bullet through her skull. Leila wouldn’t know unless she betrayed them, and then it would be too late.

“She’s fine,” John said. He didn’t sound happy.

“I’ll keep an eye out for her,” Alex said.

“I am fully capable of taking care of myself,” Leila said.

John sighed. “We know, but I’ll keep an eye on you all the same.”

“Let’s go,” Alex said. They moved out in patrol formation with John bringing up the rear.

The air became cool — then cold. Alex started to shiver. Pancho picked up the pace, and he warmed up. They continued a couple of hours until Leila slowed down significantly. She was their slowest member and the SEALs could move only as fast as she could. Although Alex didn’t want to, he stopped for Leila to take a break, drink some water, and make sure her feet were okay. Not only did they lose time and momentum, but Alex started shivering again. John and Leila shivered, too, but Pancho seemed fine. Leila repeatedly apologized for slowing them down, but the SEALs were patient with her — anything else but patience would wear her down and slow them even more. They could leave her in the desert, but that would be inhumane.

Leila stood up, ready to move again. The four continued through the evening, hours of walking, with short breaks in between. When they walked, Alex was happy; when they took breaks, Alex exercised patience. In the morning, Alex checked his GPS. They’d covered forty kilometers and had one hundred more to go. It was discouraging to think they hadn’t even covered one-third of the distance, so Alex stopped thinking about it.

Pancho gave Leila a pep talk. Meanwhile, Alex and John talked alone.

“What do you think the odds are that we’ll make it out of this?” John asked.

“What do you think the odds are?”

“Not good. What do you think the odds are that Leila will make it?”

Alex shook his head.

10

On the third day, the silhouettes of soldiers faced Alex and his crew. The SEALs readied their weapons, but as they neared the soldiers, they realized it was just a sandy rock formation. The SEALs and Leila were dirty, ragged, and broken down. They dug their trenches in the shadows of the sand soldiers. As the four lay in their trenches, sweat permeated their skin, soaking their clothes. Wind blew across their bodies and evaporated their sweat. More sweat leaked through their pores to cool their dry, burning skin. Then the wind removed the sweat again. Alex’s team drank more water to stay hydrated. The vicious cycle continued, robbing them of precious fluids.

In the afternoon, Alex’s head hurt. It was a burden to stand up and walk away from the group to take a piss, but he did. His piss had decreased in volume and was dark. He was dehydrating. Alex drank the last of his water before returning to his trench to rest.

Leila was quiet but seemed okay.

“Pancho, if you hadn’t rammed that jeep head-on, we’d be in Abadi Abad by now,” John complained.

Pancho laughed. “You seemed to think it was a good idea at the time.”

“Now do you think it was a good idea?”

“Are you upset?”

“Of course I’m upset,” John said. “We’re walking across a desert.”

“I thought Jesus did that,” Pancho said.

“You’re thinking of Moses,” John said, “and that’s only because he was leading the Jews out of Egypt. If he’d had a perfectly good truck he wouldn’t have rammed into one of the pharaoh’s chariots.”

Pancho laughed.

Alex didn’t have the energy to break them up, but for now their bickering wasn’t straying into anything that would lead to a brawl. The more they dealt with dehydration, however, the more that could change.

In the evening, Alex’s shivering came more quickly and violently, and he was having difficulty thinking. John shivered the most violently. It was a burden to talk, so Alex just stared at Pancho. Pancho got the message and they moved out. All four of them moved in slow motion, but the cold was killing John, who had the least body fat. When John stumbled the first time, Alex stopped the patrol and took a look at him. John’s face had become pale and his lips were blue.

Pancho tried to offer John his jacket, but John refused.

“Don’t stop,” John pleaded. His teeth chattered. “Gotta stay warm.”

“We won’t stop,” Alex promised. True to his promise, Alex continued without stopping. Leila would just have to suck it up — and she did. Alex had to be careful to look back at John and slow down for him occasionally so they didn’t leave him bumbling around in the desert night alone. In spite of traveling nonstop, their pace had slowed, and they traveled only thirty kilometers — thirty more to go.

On the fourth day, at noon, Alex knew he should leave his trench to take a leak, but no piss was left in him. Just the small walk to relieve his bladder would wind him, so he was happy not to have to move. Alex felt his heart race. His mouth was dry and his tongue had swollen. He wanted to puke, but he couldn’t afford to lose the body liquids. Alex also wanted a drink, but he had no more water, and he didn’t want to take valuable water from the others — who were probably worse off than he was. He had known the desert was more deadly than the Revolutionary Guard, but it occurred to him now that the desert might succeed in killing him.

Out of the corner of Alex’s eye, he noticed Pancho stand up, then fall down. Pancho stood up again. Alex caught a glimpse of Pancho’s eyes, which seemed far away. Pancho stumbled away from the group like he was going to take a leak. Then Pancho yelled. Alex first thought that a snake had bitten him, but nothing lived in the desert. Leila stood and walked over to Pancho. Before she reached him, he fell. “Pancho, are you okay?” she asked.

Pancho was silent for a moment. Suddenly he broke out laughing, but not the earth-rumbling Pancho laughter — this laughter was feeble. He was delirious. He had the most meat on his bones, so he heated up the fastest and the dehydration affected him the worst.

Leila encouraged Pancho to stand up. Then she helped him return to his trench. She gave him a drink of her water. Alex thought Leila must be part camel not to have drunk all her water yet, but he was grateful to her for helping out Pancho. Alex felt embarrassed about feeling so weak and sorry for himself that he hadn’t been the one to help Pancho.

Alex looked out across the desert and spotted water. Then he realized it was only a mirage. The heat reflecting off the surrounding sand seared his eyes, so Alex reached into his backpack and pulled out an Iranian shirt. Then he sank back into his trench, closed his eyes, and covered his face with the shirt.

Later the sun disappeared, giving everyone relief. Alex and his team were slow in getting up, but John started shivering, so Alex and the others hastened to move out. Even though they hurried, they moved like turtles.

The cool air, their weakened condition, and uneven terrain all worked against Alex — his left ankle twisted and a horrible pain shot through his body. Alex didn’t think he’d broken it, and he hoped he hadn’t torn ligaments — maybe he’d only strained them. He limped.

“You okay, chief?” John whispered.

Alex’s swollen tongue and deteriorating physical condition turned talking into torture. Alex saved his breath by ignoring John. Hot pain throbbed up Alex’s leg.

They pressed forward into the night.

Pancho stumbled, Leila slowed, and Alex continued to feel the pain in his ankle. Alex looked back and saw John shivering more violently — hypothermia. Shit. At this rate, we’re all going to die.

On the fifth day, the sun had risen and Alex was lying on his back in a trench. I don’t even remember digging this — my grave. He looked forward to seeing Sarah but realized his anger at God might prevent him from doing so. It was time to make peace, so he said a short prayer in his heart. God, I’m sorry for being angry at You all these years. I still don’t understand why Sarah had to die. I still don’t understand Your ways, but I want to be patient. If I survive this, please help me be patient with the things I can’t understand. If I don’t survive this, please help me see her again. Amen.

When evening came, somebody said they had ten more kilometers to go. Alex wasn’t sure because his GPS was fried and he didn’t have the energy to ask Pancho or John, who also had GPSs — and he was too tired to count his paces and record them with knots on parachute cord. The four of them marched through the dark like zombies. At first, Alex’s left ankle hurt and he shivered, but after a couple of hours, the pain and the shivering stopped. Alex blacked out, and when he came to, he was walking alone through the desert. The others stopped him.

He couldn’t go any farther, and he was sure no one had the strength to carry him.

“Just another kilometer,” Leila said.

Alex hadn’t realized they were so close. He could walk another kilometer, so he pressed on. As time went on, he complained, but he could manage only a whisper: “We’ve been walking more than a kilometer.”

“Just half a kilometer,” Leila said.

Alex figured he could last five hundred yards more, so he forced one foot in front of the other. After a while, he was sure they’d walked more than half a klick.

“Just a little bit farther,” Leila said.

Alex realized she was tricking him into pushing forward just a little more. Because he’d persisted this far, he figured he could persist farther. He might not make it all the way to Leila’s house, but he wasn’t going to give up until he passed out or died — whichever came first.

The sun had begun to brighten the sky, and Alex saw the squat cluster of buildings — Abadi Abad. Maybe he was dreaming it. He continued forward until he reached the village. Pancho led them along the outskirts until they reached Leila’s house. After Alex entered her house, he collapsed on the floor. Leila held his head up and gave him water. Alex’s mouth and throat were so dried up that he felt like the water was tearing up his insides. Being severely dehydrated, the water gave him cramps, cinching his gut so tight that he passed out. He’d been so focused on his own survival that he’d forgotten about his men — he didn’t even know if Pancho and John had survived.

In his unconscious state, Alex’s mind began to work overtime. Alex abruptly sat up. “Where are Pancho and John?” he asked.

Leila turned from the kitchen sink and walked to him.

“Where are Pancho and John?” Alex repeated.

Sadness filled her voice: “I’m sorry. Pancho didn’t make it.”

Alex’s soul sank. Maybe Pancho was still alive. “Where’s his body?”

“In the back room. I’m sorry.”

Alex heard a vehicle stop in front of Leila’s house, car doors slam, and voices. “You expecting visitors?”

“No,” Leila said.

Alex looked down at his hands — no weapon. “Where’s my weapon?” he whispered.

“Behind you.”

Alex turned around and grabbed it.

“Is the door locked?”

“Yes.”

The front door flew open with a bang. Four Iranian men dressed in plainclothes poured in, wielding pistols.

“Contact front!” Alex yelled. He fired two rounds into the chest of the first man. Beside him, another aimed in Alex’s direction, and Alex gunned him down. Meanwhile, the two others fired. Rounds hit the floor next to Alex’s face — too many enemy too close firing too fast. Alex picked one off just before a round tore through his right hand. Shit! The remaining agent aimed carefully at Alex’s head. The agent looked like he was smiling until two bullets struck him above the nose.

Alex turned to see where the bullets had come from. John stood in the hallway. “Thanks, brother,” Alex said.

John looked troubled.

“What’s wrong?” Alex asked. He followed John’s eyes to Leila, who had fallen to the floor. “Leila.”

She didn’t respond. Blood spread across her blouse like a blooming rose.

With his left hand, Alex felt the carotid artery in her neck for a pulse. There was none. Leila was dead. Alex didn’t have time to mourn. He pulled gauze out of the blowout kit in his thigh pocket and bandaged his bleeding hand. The blood soaked through almost immediately. He stood, walked to the sink, grabbed a thin towel, and wrapped it around his wound.

Alex turned back to John.

“We need to get out of here,” John said. Suddenly a loud crash sounded from behind John and his forehead exploded. John fell dead on his face.

No! Alex could feel the words, but he couldn’t say them. Instead of making his escape out the front door, Alex wanted payback, so he rushed to the guest room. Inside, one Iranian agent stood in the room while another crawled through the window. Holding his AKMS in his left hand, Alex gunned them both down. Alex looked outside for more, but there were none.

The pain in Alex’s hand shot through him like bolts of electricity. He donned his backpack and dragged John’s and Pancho’s bodies out the front door, hoping to find a vehicle nearby. Alex discovered a black Mercedes sedan idling, then loaded Pancho and John into the vehicle before jumping in and speeding off.

Iranian police lights lit up Alex’s rear. He stomped on the accelerator. Gunshots blasted through his rear window. Alex wanted to return fire, just to get them off his back, but his right hand was useless, and he needed his left hand to steer. He raised his left knee to steer and grabbed his AKMS with his left hand. Before he could return fire, a bullet struck him in the back of his head. His upper body hunched over the steering wheel and his eyes closed.

Alex opened his eyes and sat up. He was in Leila’s living room on the floor and Leila was doing something in the kitchen.

“Where are Pancho and John?” he asked.

“They went out to find a vehicle.”

Alex closed his eyes briefly, reflecting on how real the dream was and how close to delirium he must have been. He felt a weight lifted from him, knowing that they were all still alive, but his ankle still hurt when he walked.

He changed into his Iranian clothes. Somebody had already filled Alex’s CamelBak with water. As he grabbed a jug full of water, he heard a vehicle drive up near the front door.

Alex checked the door to make sure it was locked and readied his weapon. The door unlocked and a figure stepped inside. Alex aimed. It was Pancho. “Great to see you, too, amigo,” Pancho said.

Pancho and John entered the house wearing their Iranian clothes.

“We brought you a Christmas present,” John said.

“A car,” Alex guessed.

Pancho closed the door. “Ah, you peeked.”

“You both got water?” Alex asked.

“We’re all filled up,” John replied.

“Then let’s roll,” Alex said.

The SEALs and Leila grabbed their things and exited her house. Outside, an unmarked black Mercedes SUV sat idling. On the roof above the driver’s seat sat a single blue police light that appeared removable.

“Leila, I need you to drive,” Alex said. Pancho might look less conspicuous as a driver, but if asked questions in Farsi, he wouldn’t be able to answer. Besides, Alex was anticipating having to shoot his way out of Abadi Abad, and he wanted both of Pancho’s hands on his gun, not on the wheel.

Leila nodded.

The SEALs and Leila loaded their kit into the SUV, then climbed inside with Leila in the driver’s seat, Pancho sitting next to her, and Alex and John in the back.

Leila had been driving east for only a minute when a white and green police car turned the corner and followed them. The car didn’t flash its lights but continued following.

“We’ve got a police car behind us,” John said.

“Stay calm and turn right at the next intersection,” Alex said.

Leila calmly turned right at the next intersection. The police car followed. Fifty yards ahead was what appeared to be a police car parked in the middle of the road.

“No side streets, and we’re heading straight for another cop,” Pancho said.

“Turn on the police lights and siren,” Alex said.

“What does siren mean?” Leila asked.

Forty yards.

Pancho looked at the center console, where a line of four small red switches rested. Pancho tried one, but nothing happened. “I can’t read which is which; it’s all in Iranian.”

Thirty yards.

Leila reached over and flicked all the switches but still nothing happened.

Twenty yards.

Above the line of small red switches was a big red switch. “The big red switch,” Alex said.

Ten yards.

Pancho flipped the big red switch and the SUV came alive with siren blaring and blue light, front lights, and rear lights flashing. “Don’t slow down,” Alex said, hoping that in the world of Iranian law enforcement, an unmarked black Mercedes SUV reigned over white and green police sedans.

Five yards.

Leila drove around the police car. Even though the road had stopped, Leila drove off-road, heading south. Both police cars’ lights and sirens came on, and the police followed her. They turned off their lights and sirens. Alex didn’t want to kill law enforcement officers, but if he had to defend himself and his team, he would.

“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.

11

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.”

12

On 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.”

The four SEALs sat down. Alex summarized the bald lieutenant colonel’s brief, losing Danny during the HAHO, rendezvousing with Leila, taking out the lab, the deadly hike through the desert, stealing an Iranian police SUV, and escaping from Iran.

“The loss of Danny was tragic,” the skipper said. “We have a team out searching for his remains. You did the right thing by proceeding with the mission. Congratulations on blowing up the lab. The Iranian government is furious. They claim that someone bombed a pharmaceutical plant, but the world’s media outlets are reporting that Iran’s secret nuclear weapon facility blew up. Because of all the radioactivity, the Iranian government is having a hard time going in to analyze exactly what happened. Abadi Abad is the closest village to the explosion, and they haven’t seen any significant increase in radioactivity, but they suspect a secret nuclear facility blew up. Well done, gentlemen. There’s only one piece you left unfinished.”

Alex, Pancho, and John looked at each other.

“What didn’t we finish, sir?” Alex asked.

“One of the scientists, Dr. Sheema Khamenei, had appendicitis and was medevac’d out of there by helo. That was probably the helo you observed as you neared the biological weapons lab to plant your nuke. NSA intercepted email communication saying Dr. Khamenei is in a hospital in Tehran. She is one of the senior scientists there. Trained in Russia. With her alive, their bioweapons program remains alive. I need you to go in and finish the job by killing Dr. Khamenei.”

“Yes, sir,” the SEALs replied.

“We’ve given Leila an Army uniform to help her blend in while she’s on base. We asked her to help us out on this one, too. Go ahead and clean your kit, eat some chow, then meet me back here in two hours for the brief.”

“Yes, sir,” they said.

The skipper left.

The three SEALs went to the armory and cleaned their weapons. Alex made sure his AKMS was unloaded and on safe before removing its bolt carrier group. Sand grains spilled out onto the wooden table in front of him.

As Pancho cleaned his AKMS, he turned to Alex and said, “I heard the BUD/S XO asked you to become an instructor there.” Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) Training was what began the transformation from sailor to SEAL. The executive officer (XO) was second in command, under the CO.

“Where do you hear all this stuff?” Alex asked.

“People talk,” Pancho said.

“When do people have so much time to talk?”

“Is it true?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to do it?”

Alex thought for a moment.

“You have to think about it,” Pancho said.

“We have to eliminate Dr. Khamenei.” It was officially a capture-or-kill mission, but Alex rarely captured anyone, and his superiors already knew that.

“We’re brothers, man. You can’t break up the family.”

John stopped cleaning his rifle. “Alex is a big boy. He can do what he wants.”

Alex didn’t know whether to thank John for defending him or complain that John was trying to get rid of him.

They finished cleaning their gear, then went to the chow hall. Alex almost didn’t recognize Leila wearing an Army uniform and sitting by herself eating dinner. The trio joined her.

After the four finished dinner, Leila went to take a rest in the VIP lounge while the SEALs returned to the soundproofed room where the skipper briefed them for their next mission: “You’ll assume new identities and take separate military flights from here to Germany, Azerbaijan, and France.” Alex spoke German fluently, and he often used the cover of German businessman, so he guessed he’d be going to Germany. John spoke fluent French, so France seemed the natural choice for him. Pancho spoke Spanish, but the Spanish airlines didn’t fly to all the countries that German and French airlines did — besides, it would be easiest to send the bulk of their gear via military aircraft.

The skipper continued: “Alex, after taking a military flight from here to Frankfurt, you’ll go undercover as a German businessman with your assistant Leila and fly via Lufthansa to Azerbaijan. Pancho will take most of your mission gear and hop on a military flight from here to Azerbaijan. John, you’ll fly from here to Paris, then, posing as a French-Canadian minister, fly from Paris on Air France to Azerbaijan. In Azerbaijan, the four of you will link up with the Azerbaijan Navy’s Tiger unit, made up of its top members from the 641st Special Warfare Unit. The Tigers will take you via fastboat across the Caspian Sea and insert you just north of the Iranian coast, where you’ll swim to the beach. From there you’ll rendezvous with our agent, who will escort you to a safe house in Tehran and update you on Dr. Khamenei’s current location. Then you will capture or kill Dr. Khamenei. Finally, the Tigers will extract you by sea.”

“I’m assuming there’s a good reason for us using a similar insert-and-extract method, sir,” Alex said.

“Yes,” the skipper said. “Right now the Iranian government isn’t too popular at home or abroad, so they’re executing people just for sneezing — as frogmen, the water is your best chance for getting in and out. Intelligence has found a number of weaknesses along the Iranian coast, and you’re going to take advantage of those weaknesses.”

After the briefing, Alex cleaned up and helped Leila prepare for her role. Early Saturday morning, they wore dark blue Armani suits and carried dark brown leather satchels. Disguised as a German businessman and his assistant, they boarded a military flight to Frankfurt.

While sitting in the airport lounge, Alex’s eyes followed Leila’s long black hair from the top of her head to below her shoulders. His eyes followed down her skirt, tracing her dark blue curves. His eyes continued past her hemline. She had firm thighs, and her calf muscles were athletic, yet feminine. She reminded him of Cat. Alex needed someone to trust — someone he could ask whether he should stay in the Outcasts and Team Six or take the XO’s offer to become a BUD/S instructor. Cat was someone he could trust and ask about such things, but work in the Teams had divided their paths, and she wasn’t here. Through the years before he met Cat, there’d been other women, but again, they gave up trying to compete with the Teams. Even if Alex got to know Leila, she would give up, too. Alex didn’t blame them. He was the one who chose the Teams over them.

Being a BUD/S instructor would demand a lot of time, but it wouldn’t demand as much time as operating in the SEAL Teams. In the Teams, for months he trained individually at Professional Development/Schools (PRODEV) before returning to his troop for months of Unit Level Training (ULT). Then Alex and his Teammates would fly to one of the hot spots around the globe and fight bad guys for six months or more. After that, he’d return to the States and begin the cycle again with PRODEV. In contrast, as a BUD/S instructor, Alex would be able to return home almost every night. If he met a woman he liked, he would have time to share with her. Alex had enjoyed his work with Team Six and the Outcasts, but now he wanted something more.

Leila saw Alex looking at her, and she smiled.

He remembered the smile of the woman in red in the supermarket and how she blew through him like an Indian summer.

If Alex asked Leila, she would probably tell him to take the BUD/S instructor position. Cat would tell him the same. So would his sister Sarah. In that moment sitting in the Frankfurt airport, Alex decided: After killing Dr. Khamenei in Tehran, I’ll go to Coronado to become a BUD/S instructor.

Soon Alex and Leila boarded their Lufthansa flight and flew to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan was strategically located, with Iran to the south, the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, and Armenia to the west. Although predominantly Muslim, Azerbaijan led other Muslim countries in its openness to other cultures. In 1920 the Soviet Union invaded Azerbaijan, and in 1991 Azerbaijan took back its independence. Its people spoke Azerbaijani, similar to Turkish, and held a close relationship with Turkey. Azerbaijan also held a strong relationship with the United States and had supported America and its allies fighting in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In addition, they worked closely with the U.S. Navy on security issues related to the Caspian Sea.

Early in the afternoon, an Azerbaijani wearing a civilian gray wool beret met Alex and Leila at the airport. “Welcome to Azerbaijan.”

“Good to be here,” Alex said. Their exchange seemed natural, making it ideal as a coded exchange to verify identities.

“The car is waiting.”

“Great.”

The man in the gray beret drove Alex and Leila in a civilian sedan twenty kilometers southwest toward Baku, where the Azerbaijan Navy base was located, but instead of stopping at the base, the driver continued south.

“I thought we were stopping at the naval base,” Alex said.

“No, this way better,” the driver said in broken English.

“Where are we going?”

“Neftcala.”

“Do the others know this is where we’re going?”

“Your SEAL friends go same place. No one else need know.”

The change in plans made Alex uneasy, but the skipper was no dope, so Alex trusted that the skipper had put him in the proper hands. He tried not to worry about it.

They traveled south more than 150 kilometers before arriving at the port of Neftcala. The driver pulled into a parking lot on the pier and stopped. The other vehicles in the parking lot were civilian — no sign of military anywhere. Alex stopped trying to be calm — now he was nervous. He looked around for weapons of opportunity and paths of escape.

The driver escorted Alex and Leila into a warehouse. Secluded, it would be a good place to torture them or kill them. Being on the wharf, it would be easy to hose off blood and other body fluids, removing any evidence of what had happened.

Inside the warehouse, Pancho and John sat on a couple of crates next to their duffel bags. John read something, probably reviewing his cheat sheet about the mission or rereading his Bible. Next to Pancho were bags of the SEALs’ gear. Pancho laughed it up with one of the Tigers. The Tigers were dressed in civilian clothes, and on the deck around them rested stuffed civilian duffel bags and backpacks.

The inside of the warehouse wasn’t really a warehouse; it was a covered slip with a fastboat sitting in the water. Day or night, the fastboat could be docked ready to go, yet remain undetectable by satellite or prying eyes.

Alex breathed more easily. When the Tigers noticed Alex, they stood up. Alex appreciated the respect, but he felt embarrassed by it. Normally such a courtesy was only for a commanding officer in a formal setting — Alex was far down the totem pole from commanding officer, and this was a real-world operation, not a formal dog-and-pony show. “Please, relax,” Alex said.

The Tiger who appeared to be the leader approached Alex and said, “We ready when you ready. I am Lieutenant Zadeh.” Lieutenant Zadeh had long, black curly hair and a handsome face, like a rock star. His men looked more like pirates.

“You can call me Alex.”

“I know.”

“Let’s do this,” Alex said.

13

At night, the SEALs, Leila, and the Tigers changed into dry suits. With the Caspian Sea’s temperature in the fifties on the Fahrenheit scale, and considering the possibility that Alex’s team might have to spend much time in the water, the dry suits would keep them warmer than wet suits. Alex showed Leila how she would need to hold on to her mask with one hand while somersaulting out of the back of the fastboat while it was still moving.

The SEALs traveled light, carrying small waterproof backpacks and their customized Iranian Zoaf 9mm pistols. Leila carried no weapon. “Does she need a weapon?” Lieutenant Zadeh offered his firearm.

“Never used one before,” she said, “and I don’t know how.”

“She’ll be fine,” Alex said.

Each Tiger carried an Israeli TAR-21, a bullpup assault rifle that fires 5.56mm NATO rounds. The bullpup design imbedded the weapon’s action in the buttstock, conserving space. Although the TAR-21 was small like a carbine, it fired with the velocity of a rifle.

SEALs and Tigers loaded into the boat. The Tigers cast off the fastboat’s lines and the coxswain started the engine. The coxswain eased the throttle forward a bit and the fastboat floated out from underneath the covered slip. Then the coxswain pressed the throttle forward. The boat responded by leaping forward, spitting a rooster tail of water behind it. Light dotted the land, water, and sky. Alex and the others lay on the floor of the boat, keeping a low profile. Not only did the fastboat’s bulkheads hide them from sight, but they also protected Alex’s crew from the cold wind that tried to bite their faces. They sped south.

After four hours of being knocked around on the deck of the fastboat, Pancho peered over the bulkhead to see where they were. They must have approached within three kilometers of the Iranian shore, because Pancho looked at Alex and the others. Alex nodded. Pancho somersaulted off the back, plunging through the rooster tail into the Caspian Sea. Alex motioned for Leila to jump; she executed a perfect somersault. Alex was next. John would be right behind him. Alex tumbled through the speedboat’s wake and held his face mask to keep the water from ripping it off his face. He didn’t know which way was up until the water settled and he floated to the surface. Alex recognized the outline of the Iranian shore from the photos in the skipper’s brief. Between the shore and Alex, an Iranian patrol boat headed straight for him. The bow might crack his head open before the propellers chewed him up. Alex dove underwater. The buoyancy of the dry suit made it more difficult to dive, and Alex didn’t want to kick his feet and splash a signal to the Iranians. He furiously breast-stroked with his arms until his fins submerged — then he kicked as hard and as fast as he could. The Iranian patrol boat passed, and he tasted its motor oil.

When Alex emerged, he saw the patrol boat race northward after the fastboat, which seemed to run full throttle. Little by little, the gap widened between the Tigers’ speedboat and the Iranian patrol boat, but the patrol boat continued to give chase. Better them than me. Give ’em hell, Tigers.

Alex searched for his Teammates until he accounted for each one. Everyone seemed okay. Pancho and John led them south in a swim for the beach. Using only gestures, Alex helped Leila keep a low profile so she didn’t splash. Although the dry suit kept Alex dry, he still felt the cold. Swimming fast kept him warm, and Leila had little trouble keeping up.

After an hour of swimming hard, they stopped. Ahead churned the surf zone, where the waves broke and rolled to the shore. Pancho donned his NODs and held an infrared flashlight. He pressed the flashlight button, signaling shore. No one could see the light with their naked eye and they couldn’t see the response from shore. When Pancho began swimming through the surf zone, Alex followed. John swam next to Pancho and Alex and Leila followed. Inside the surf zone, small waves pushed them to shore, making the swim easier. They continued until their bellies hit bottom. Covered and concealed by water, they stuck only their heads out enough to breathe. Underwater, the SEALs took off their swim fins and hooked them to bungee cords strapped to their backs. Leila didn’t finish as quickly as the SEALs, so Alex helped her.

Pancho crouched low and moved inland to the tree line on the eastern edge of the Sisangan National Forest. Alex and Leila followed. After checking their rear, John joined them.

Alex squatted among the trees and shook hands with their contact, an Iranian-American named Reza, who was working for the Activity — his nickname was Razor. Razor led them across a highway paralleling the beach, then farther into the woods, where a big gray SUV, a Toyota Land Cruiser Prado, sat off the road. Everyone piled into the vehicle. Razor drove out onto the highway to the east. With the black Caspian Sea to their left, black forest to their right, and black sky, the world seemed black. Soon the forest ended and the land brightened up with a few lights shining from scattered houses, assorted buildings, and large farms. Alex and his crew changed into their Iranian clothes.

“It’s about one hundred and fifty klicks from here to Tehran,” Razor said.

I must be crazy, Alex thought. We just escaped from Iran, and now we’re going back in.

With the sea still on their left, the Toyota Land Cruiser passed several small towns on the right. Razor drove over a bridge before turning right at a larger town. They traveled southeast on Expressway 22 until it became Expressway 77 and took them around a city that looked about half the size of Virginia Beach.

“What city is this?” Alex asked.

“Amol,” Razor answered. “This city has been around since at least the third century. It was a capital city until the Mongols invaded. Today it mixes the past, present, and nature. A lot of people have summer homes just south of here.”

Leila put her head on Alex’s shoulder and closed her eyes. He thought about nudging her head off, but she looked so peaceful — and beautiful — that he did nothing. He looked to see if John was paying attention, but he was focused on the road.

Alex and his crew passed Amol and after riding ten kilometers south, their Land Cruiser climbed up the Alborz mountain range. The Land Cruiser groaned and Razor shifted into a lower gear, relieving stress on the engine. After a while, they descended the other side, and the engine raced. Razor shifted back up into drive, calming the engine. The Land Cruiser traveled around, up, and over smaller mountains. When they rounded the last mountain and headed west, Alex saw some scattered lights in front of them. Abruptly the lights became a sea of orange, yellow, and white — Tehran.

In the city, on top of a six-floor lobby that looked like a saucer, stood a tower that rose more than fourteen hundred feet in the air. At one thousand feet, a twelve-story pod looking like a giant Fabergé egg perched on the slender column of the tower. Above the pod, the tower was topped off by an antenna.

“That’s the Milad Tower,” Razor said. “The antenna is the Islamic Republic of Iran telecommunication antenna used for television and radio. Adjacent to the east of the tower is the Milad Hospital, where your target is located.”

Razor took an exit off the Expressway 77 and zigzagged through Tehran until he came to the parking lot of an upscale condo. He pulled into an empty space and stopped. When they had all exited, Razor pressed the key remote, locking the SUV’s doors. He handed the keys to Alex. “This is yours. The SUV has no connection to me or our friends. It’s clean, so you can do whatever you want with it. This other key on the key chain is for that green van.” Razor pointed to the van. “The smaller key is to your condo, which is also clean. The condo key also opens the gate to the stairs, but the gate is low, and you can jump over it, if needed — it isn’t burglar-proof, but it helps to keep unwanted visitors out.”

Alex and his team followed Razor into the lobby, where they walked across a granite floor. They stopped in front of a locked glass door to the elevator, where Razor typed “8888” into a number pad. The locked glass door opened. “I didn’t choose the combination,” Razor defended himself, “the building manager did. This isn’t the most secure condo in the world, but it’s one of the most secure in Tehran — and one of the nicest.”

The group rode up the elevator to the seventh floor, where Razor showed them to unit 701. Alex used the key Razor had given him and opened the door. Inside, he took a look around. The four-bedroom condo was well furnished. The refrigerator was packed with food. On a table was a notebook computer that probably had hidden software for secretly communicating with JSOC. Even the closet had local clothes and hospital uniforms for the SEALs and Leila. The glass balcony doors afforded a view of Milad Tower and Tehran. “You done good,” Alex told Razor.

“The view is to die for,” Razor quipped.

“What’s the phone number for room service?” Pancho joked.

Razor smiled. “If room service comes calling, you’ve worn out your welcome.”

Alex used the notebook to quickly report to JSOC that his team had arrived in Tehran. Meanwhile, the others grabbed food out of the refrigerator and made an early breakfast. Then everyone ate while Razor briefed them on their target’s location and relevant information. Finally, Razor departed. The SEALs and Leila decided they’d do a reconnaissance of the hospital the next afternoon, when there would be a lot of people and confusion — if the opportunity presented itself, they’d hit Dr. Khamenei. On this day, they took turns sleeping and standing watch.

As evening approached, everyone was awake. Leila started to make dinner, but the guys told her not to. “The koobideh is ready,” she argued. “We must eat it tonight.”

Alex had no clue what koobideh was and he could tell by the looks on Pancho’s and John’s faces that they didn’t, either. After she finished cooking, they all sat down for the meal. Leila served them plates of buttered Persian rice with grilled tomatoes on the side. Then she brought out two kebabs in her left hand. On one stick were skewered Persian-style barbecued lamb and onions. On the other was Iranian minced meat that she called koobideh, made from beef and mixed with parsley and chopped onions. In Leila’s right hand she held one piece of nan flatbread. She placed the kebabs on Alex’s rice and used the nan to hold the food in place as she pulled out the skewers. Then she did the same for Pancho and John. Alex waited for the guys and Leila to get their food before eating. In Alex’s mouth, the hot meats tasted of an exotic mixture of salt, black pepper, garlic, celery, olive oil, sumac, and saffron.

While everyone ate, Leila served drinks. As she gave Alex his drink, her breast brushed against his shoulder. He looked again at John, but either the frogman was oblivious or doing one hell of a dumb act. The drink was a deliciously sour mix of yogurt, carbonated water, salt, and dried mint—doogh.

While eating and drinking, Alex noticed Leila looking at him. When she realized he’d noticed, she looked down. Alex resumed eating, then he noticed her looking at him again. This time she stared longer before lowering her eyes. He watched her devour her food. This is nuts.

Finally, Leila served dessert: Persian ice cream flavored with frozen chunks of cream, rosewater, and saffron — sandwiched between thin crispy waffles. As she gave Alex his dessert her hand discreetly brushed against his. This time he was sure it was no accident. Alex felt lonely, but he didn’t want to risk the mission by getting romantically involved with her.

After dinner, the SEALs cleaned up while Leila took a shower. Although there were four bedrooms, there was only one shower. Alex showered next, followed by John and Pancho. Then Alex took a long look through the glass balcony doors at the nighttime view of the Milad Tower and the sea of lights that was Tehran — its beauty had caught him by surprise. In the reflection of the glass, he saw Leila — she was catching him by surprise, too. He went to his room, stripped down to his black silk undershorts, crawled into bed, and tried to sleep, but he was too anxious about the mission — and Leila. He lay in bed awake for a couple of hours. Then his door slowly opened.

Alex kept his pistol under his pillow, but he hadn’t heard anyone break into their house, so it had to be one of three people. Maybe it was Leila, but this seemed too bold for her. Or Pancho was about to play a practical joke on him.

Alex looked and saw Leila walk across his room toward him. She lifted his sheet and crawled into bed with him. How far is she going with this? After a few minutes, Leila moved closer to him and pressed her body against his. “I do not usually do this,” she whispered in his ear.

Leila’s thin T-shirt did little to cover the touch of her curves. Alex’s mind wanted to tell her no—he didn’t want to endanger the mission. If he spoke, he was worried Pancho and John might hear and know that she was in his room. He worried that he was eroding his leadership in his men’s eyes. Just because he could, didn’t mean he should. Alex knew that John was attracted to Leila, and he felt a momentary pang of guilt. In spite of the red lights, his body signaled green. He wrapped his arms around her. She felt firm, yet soft. Her nose nuzzled his face. Alex’s lips found her lips. Her lips parted slightly and he kissed her more deeply. Her lips parted more. Alex’s temperature rose. Leila’s hand caressed his cheek. Her hand continued down to his shoulders, then his chest, making him warm. Alex removed her T-shirt and explored her naked body with his hands — her skin was warmer than his. Leila felt his right bicep before returning to his shoulders and chest. It became so hot that Alex removed the bedsheets. He kissed her neck. Her hands descended to his abdomen. Alex and Leila’s bodies combusted, burning into the night.

14

In the morning, Leila, who had gone back to her own room, acted as if nothing had happened. Alex did his best, but he worried that Pancho and John could see through them. Alex checked his computer to see if there were any messages — there was one from Razor: “Today target is checking out of hospital at 1700.”

Alex updated Pancho, John, and Leila and told them to get ready to hit the target ASAP. Then Alex sent a secure email to JSOC to tell the Tigers that he needed the extract for his team tonight.

Leila put on a black skirt and gray blouse with a doctor’s white coat. She covered her hair and neck with a black scarf called a maghnaeh. Although the burqa and niqab were seen in Iran’s southern rural areas such as Abadi Abad, headscarves and maghnaeh were popular throughout the rest of Iran. Alex, Pancho, and John wore dark slacks, gray shirts, and doctors’ white coats — and Zoaf pistols. After breakfast, they went downstairs and loaded into the SUV.

Leila drove them to the hospital. From the hospital parking lot, they entered a side entrance to the main building and passed a handful of armed Revolutionary Guards milling among the crowd of patients and staff. The Revolutionary Guards stared at John, then Alex. The SEALs and Leila stepped into the elevator and the door closed. Pancho pressed the button to the tenth floor. The four of them put on their surgical masks. On the tenth floor, they stepped out and walked down the stairs to the eighth floor, where their target was. Riding the elevator up was easier than walking up stairs, and getting off on the wrong floor tricked anyone who might be watching.

They walked down the hallway. Outside their target’s door, two Revolutionary Guards stood with their AKMs, modern versions of the AK-47 rifle, slung on their shoulders. One Guard’s uniform was wrinkled and his hair was uncombed. The other Guard had an ironed uniform and his appearance was neat — they looked like the odd couple. When Alex’s crew neared the Guards, they became rigid and alert.

Alex led his posse into the room two doors before the target’s room and waited for the odd couple to relax a bit. Inside the room, a patient lay asleep, another sat reading a book, and another lay in bed staring at Alex. Alex pulled the curtain, so the patients couldn’t ogle him and his crew. Because their target would be checking out at 1700, doing the hit at night was no longer an option. They could wait for another day, but that day might never come. Alex led them out the door.

The four walked down the middle of the hallway. The odd couple was alert but not rigid as the two watched Alex and his team. Good. Alex took one step in front of the odd couple then turned sharply, walked between them, and proceeded into the target’s room. Alex reached into his right pocket, which had been cut out, and pulled his sound-suppressed Zoaf pistol from its holster. Behind him, the odd couple chattered loudly in Farsi. Alex trusted Pancho and John to protect him — if the odd couple went for their weapons, Pancho and John would dispatch them.

Inside the room, a sleepy Revolutionary Guard sat in his chair. His AKM leaned against the wall. The Guard reached over and grabbed his rifle. Alex aimed and shot him twice in the upper torso and once in the head. The Guard tumbled out of his chair and onto the floor. Alex continued forward into the room. Two of the three beds were empty. Alex recognized the middle-aged woman in the third bed as his target, Dr. Sheema Khamenei. Alex wheeled his pistol around in the scientist’s direction.

Eyes wide open, Dr. Khamenei babbled in Farsi. Alex didn’t understand it, but her lips slurred like she’d been drugged.

Alex aimed his pistol at Dr. Khamenei’s forehead and squeezed the trigger. Click. Alex’s pistol malfunctioned. Alex tapped the magazine on the bottom and racked the slide to fix the malfunction, but the slide didn’t return forward properly. Probably two rounds had tried to enter the firing chamber at the same time — a double feed. Damn!

Dr. Khamenei’s voice rose in pitch, volume, and speed.

Leila had followed Alex into the room. “She says there is another biological weapons lab,” Leila translated. “More secret than the one near Abadi Abad, but in another location, and close to launching an attack on the United States.”

Alex pressed his magazine ejection button and pulled out the magazine. He racked his slide again. Then again. The jammed bullet popped out and the weapon was clear.

Dr. Khamenei’s voice squealed louder and faster. She looked at the ceiling and cried out. Alex recognized only one word: Allah.

“Dr. Khamenei says a Russian, a North Korean, and Iranian scientists are at the top-secret lab,” Leila translated. “Dr. Khamenei didn’t want to do this job, but the Iranian government is holding her husband hostage. God save me.”

Alex reloaded his magazine, tapped the bottom of it with his hand, and racked the slide. He aimed at Dr. Khamenei’s forehead. “Where is the lab?”

“You must rescue my husband first,” Dr. Khamenei said in English. “Then I will tell you where it is. I will even take you there, if you want.”

“You’re not in a position to negotiate,” Alex growled.

“Let Allah’s will be done. I can’t continue living this hell while I know my husband is dying in prison. If it’s my time to die, I will die.”

“Shit!” Alex exclaimed. He turned to see what happened to Pancho, John, and the odd couple outside the room. Pancho and John had already dispatched the Guards and were putting them in two patient beds. There was a puddle of blood on the floor and blood spatter on the wall. Alex had been so focused on the Guard he shot, his weapon malfunction, and the target that he didn’t even hear Pancho and John fire their pistols. Pancho covered the bodies with bedsheets while John guarded the door. “Guys, we’re taking the doctor alive,” Alex said. “She’s going to lead us to another lab.”

Pancho took off his bloodstained white jacket, strapped on one of the Guards’ AKMs, and put on his jacket again. Then Pancho relieved John at the door. Alex and John armed themselves with the remaining AKMs and concealed their weapons with their white coats. Now Alex and his team had to get Dr. Khamenei out of the hospital. And out of Iran.