Easy Day for the Dead Page 5

  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.”