Easy Day for the Dead (15 page)

Major Khan appreciated Lieutenant Saeedi taking the lead. The major followed, staying just far enough back in case the shit hit the fan. Major Khan glanced back to see Pistachio limping behind him.

“You hear that, you bastards?!” Lieutenant Saeedi called into the smoke. “I'm coming for you!” He ran into the smoke. “Come on,” Lieutenant Saeedi shouted, “they're getting away!”

Major Khan entered the smoke, and when he exited the other side, he saw Lieutenant Saeedi but no Alex. He caught up with Lieutenant Saeedi, and they picked up speed.

A
lex and John, with their weapons concealed in their white coats, frantically searched the first floor for Pancho, Leila, and Dr. Khamenei. In the lounge corner of the lobby, Alex and John found them. The first floor in the wing was crowded, but there were no Revolutionary Guards, and, for the most part, Alex and his crew were able to blend in. “We're going to have a hard time returning to our vehicle,” John said quietly.

“Follow me,” Alex whispered while continuing forward. He had no idea where he was going, but he knew he didn't want to be in that lobby—especially when Major Khan and his gang came looking for them. At the first corridor, Alex turned left. He looked back to make sure his team was with him—they were. Up ahead, people flowed into the hospital from what looked like an emergency entrance—it gave him an idea. He dodged people like a race car as he hurried forward. Then he exited the emergency entrance. In the parking lot, he saw what he'd hoped for: ambulances. The ambulances had the word for “ambulance” written in reverse on their fronts. They had orange stripes along the side and Farsi writing.

“Contact rear!” John shouted.

Alex turned. Two more Guards came running out of the hospital. Shots whistled past his head and drilled into the nearest ambulance.

John fired off two short bursts and the Guards tumbled to the pavement, where they lay still. The clatter of their AKs hitting the ground made a terrible noise.

Alex ran to the ambulances and frantically looked inside. On the third try he found one with keys in the ignition.

Alex opened the driver's side and looked at Leila. She nodded and stepped into the driver's seat. Pancho rode shotgun. “Get us out of here now!” Alex told Leila and Pancho. Alex, John, and Dr. Khamenei loaded into the back. Alex covered Dr. Khamenei's eyes with a black hood—she didn't need to see their safe house. Alex found some bandages in the ambulance and used them to dress Dr. Khamenei's stitches. John kept a lookout to their rear.

Leila stomped on the gas and drove them out of the hospital area. Pancho turned on the lights and siren, and Leila picked up speed. The downside of the lights and siren was that they drew attention. On the upside, Alex's crew could quickly put more distance between them and the bad guys. Also, if the bad guys ran surveillance on the SEALs, they could spot the surveillance team driving faster than the vehicles around them.

Leila drove out onto the expressway. Minutes later, John said, “We got company.”

A black sedan followed behind, speeding faster than the vehicles around it but staying behind the ambulance. Alex and John prepared their AKMs without showing them through the back window. The two SEALs waited for the man in the black sedan to make his move. Maybe he was just using the ambulance to drive through traffic faster.

Without using her turn signal, Leila made a quick exit off the expressway. The sedan didn't follow. Pancho cut off the lights and siren. Without the noise of their own siren, Alex heard sirens screeching throughout Tehran.

Pancho told Leila to take three consecutive right turns, to make sure they weren't being followed. No one came. They were clean.

Leila pulled into the condo parking lot, stopped, and turned off the ignition. Alex pulled the condo key off his key ring and handed it to Pancho. Pancho took the key, pulled down his surgeon's mask, and left behind his AKM as he hurried with Leila into the condo lobby.

Alex laid his AKM on the ambulance bed, grabbed Pancho's AKM from the front, and laid it down next to his AKM. Then he motioned for John to hand over his.

“You're not getting rid of these, are you?” John asked.

“Just need to conceal them so we can move them to the van,” Alex replied.

John looked longingly at his AKM and then handed it over.

Alex wrapped it with the other two AKMs in the bedsheet. “You bring the doctor.”

John nodded. “You're bleeding.”

“Where?”

“Your ear is bleeding.”

Alex touched his ear, then looked at his finger—it was bloody.

“Looks like a round sliced your earlobe.”

“Is it still attached?”

“Yeah, but it's going to need a few stitches. Let me put something on it.” John grabbed rubbing alcohol, poured it on some gauze, and cleaned Alex's earlobe. Then he taped it with some gauze.

Alex had been so focused on fighting and jacked up on adrenaline that he didn't realize a shot had grazed him. “Thanks.” Alex looked through the window to see if anyone was watching. He didn't see anyone, so he pushed open the back doors and hopped out with the AKMs wrapped in a bedsheet. Alex opened the rear door of the van and loaded the weapons inside. He held the door open for John and shuttled her into the back of the van. Alex and John entered the van and sat.

Alex looked anxiously out the van window for Pancho and Leila. It seemed like it was taking them too long. Maybe they were in
trouble, but Alex didn't hear any shots. When he saw Pancho and Leila exit the building with their bags, he felt relieved.

After loading their bags in the back, Leila got behind the wheel of the van. Pancho drove the ambulance and Leila followed. Several blocks away from the condo, Pancho parked the ambulance on the side of the road and left the keys in the ignition with the door unlocked. Hopefully no one would connect the ambulance to the condo. If someone stole the ambulance and broke it down in a chop shop to sell the parts, that would be even better.

Pancho sat up front in the van next to Leila. She drove west and entered Expressway Two, then exited on Chalus Road, which took them north through the Alborz mountain range and all the way to the resort town of Chalus on the Caspian Sea. East of Chalus was a Revolutionary Guard base.

Alex took off Dr. Khamenei's black hood. She looked relieved. John checked the AKM magazines—one had less ammo than the others, so he redistributed the ammo in the magazines so each weapon had twenty rounds.

From Chalus, Leila turned west and followed the Caspian Sea for a little over thirty kilometers, passing the town of Abas Abad. To the left appeared a forest. Pancho directed Leila to drive off-road into the woods far enough so they couldn't be seen from the highway. There they waited for darkness.

“Dr. Khamenei, where is your husband being held hostage?” Alex asked.

“In Lebanon.”

Alex bit off a curse. Of course he wouldn't be held somewhere close.

“Who is holding him in Lebanon?”

“Hezbollah. My husband was teaching Farsi in Tripoli. At the beginning of last year, some of his students became swept up in the Arab Spring, and they encouraged him to join them. His students supported Lebanon and opposed Syria's interference in Lebanon's
government. Of course, Syria was not happy. Syria's close ally Iran was not happy, either. Both Syria and Iran continue to fund Hezbollah in order to take control of Lebanon. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards trained Hezbollah and continue to train them. Naturally, Syria and Iran have told Hezbollah to squash the Arab Spring. Hezbollah tortured my husband and many of his friends. Other friends of his were executed. I didn't want to do the work I do, but the Iranian government told me that if I did, they would make sure Hezbollah didn't torture my husband. They would make sure Hezbollah wouldn't kill him. My government said that when I completed my work, they'd get my husband released from prison. Hezbollah didn't kill my husband because Iranian leaders know that if my husband dies, I won't help them with their biological weapon. But I found out that Hezbollah still tortures him. I need you to free him as soon as possible.”

“Then you'll tell us the location of Iran's biological weapons lab?” Alex asked.

“Gladly.”

“Just what is it that they're researching at this top-secret lab?”

“They're researching a more deadly strain of the bubonic plague—Black Death. In the fourteenth century it started in China and killed thirty percent of their population—twenty-five million people. Rat fleas carried the plague and lived on rats that sneaked onto merchant ships that sailed to Europe, where it killed about half of Europe's population. In total, the Black Death killed four hundred fifty million people.

“Recently our scientists went to Madagascar to study a strain that resists streptomycin, tetracycline, and six other antibiotics. The scientists brought back the Madagascar Black Death bacterium and crossbred it with pneumonic plague, creating a hybrid that can be carried by fleas
and
infect the human respiratory system. Our scientists also treated the hybrid with small doses of other drugs so the bacterium would become resistant to all antibiotics. The scientists
completed the twenty-first strain. They called it Madagascar Black Death Twenty-One, or MBD21. Our government plans to infect rat fleas with the virus, so we are raising superior breeds of rat fleas that reproduce more fleas and live longer. Then the scientists will infect the rat fleas with MBD21 and infest the United States. Because the bacterium carries the characteristics of pneumonic plague, it can also be transmitted from human to human by coughing or sneezing. You can imagine, with all the advances in travel since the fourteenth century, how quickly the virus will spread today. The scientists calculate with ninety-nine percent reliability that MBD21 will destroy at least half the U.S. population.”

“We better shut these guys down, pronto,” Pancho said.

At 0145, Pancho and John slipped out of the woods and across the highway into the trees bordering a construction site. Next to the trees were houses, but the lights were out as if everyone had gone to sleep. Then at 0200, Pancho flashed an infrared signal into the Caspian Sea. Pancho was busy signaling and looking for a reply, and he couldn't pay attention to what was happening around him, so John watched their immediate surroundings, guarding Pancho.

Ten minutes later, Alex escorted Leila and Dr. Khamenei out of the woods, across the street, and into the trees next to the construction site. There they linked up with Pancho and John. Alex could see a few white lights on the sea—none of them would belong to the Tigers.

Minutes later, Alex noticed a dark shape approaching them from the sea—the Tigers quietly paddled to shore. As they came closer, Alex recognized Lieutenant Zadeh, the rock star. He brought two men with him. It was no small feat to paddle the big black rubber boat using only three men. Alex and his crew met the Tigers, who'd dismounted in the shallow water. They helped Leila and Dr. Khamenei into the middle of the boat.

Then the SEALs and Tigers, half on the starboard side and half on the port side, held on to the boat and walked it into deeper water.
The front two Tigers, one starboard and one port, jumped into the boat first, grabbed their paddles in the boat, and started paddling. Alex and Pancho continued to push the boat to sea until water came up to their knees. Alex jumped inside the boat on the starboard side and Pancho on the port side. Alex sat with his right knee resting on the outer rib and his left knee inside the boat on the deck. He grabbed his oar and paddled, as did Pancho. Similarly, John and Lieutenant Zadeh continued pushing the boat out to sea until the water rose too high up their legs for them to maneuver effectively. Then they hopped into the boat and started paddling. Lieutenant Zadeh also served as coxswain, steering them.

Silently the SEALs and Tigers paddled out to sea. Lights from one of the vessels headed toward them. The SEALs and Tigers couldn't paddle faster than the approaching vessel's engines. Lieutenant Zadeh tried to fire up their motor. It didn't start. He tried again—nothing. On the third try it started. The engine was a special stealth motor, quieter than most boat engines, but it wasn't as quiet as the oars. Lieutenant Zadeh twisted the throttle, and their black rubber boat jumped forward. The SEALs and Tigers stopped paddling and put their oars in the boat. When their boat hit waves, it caught air—which was thrilling for less than a second—then the boat came back down on the water hard, smashing Alex's left knee. Even though Leila and Dr. Khamenei were in the middle of the boat, Alex didn't know how they kept from getting bounced out. They were probably so scared that they were holding on for dear life. Soon their boat sailed out of the path of the approaching vessel. The vessel didn't follow.

Two more lights floated ahead of them: one to the west and the other to the east. Lieutenant Zadeh cut between them. Again, neither vessel followed.

“Someone coming at us from the rear,” John said.

Alex looked behind and saw a boat approaching them with what looked like a searchlight—it was too far away to be sure.

Lieutenant Zadeh glanced over his shoulder. “Iranian patrol boat.” That was what Alex didn't want to hear. The SEALs' and Tigers' little rubber boat with small weapons would be no match for a huge Iranian hunk of metal with big guns.

Up ahead to the north, in the middle of the sea, floated another vessel with its lights out. Lieutenant Zadeh steered east of it, passing the boat. The boat didn't follow, and the Iranian patrol boat steered straight for the vessel with its lights out.

Lieutenant Zadeh continued north. The Iranian patrol boat stopped near the vessel with its lights out. Lieutenant Zadeh made a sharp turn left and headed east. Gradually, the land appeared closer and closer. Their boat slowed down and motored into the covered slip that looked like a warehouse from on land. Five and a half hours after launching their boat off the coast of Iran, they arrived safely in Neftcala, Azerbaijan.