Easy Day for the Dead

by Howard E. Wasdin

  Two hours later, Alex awoke as they passed through the town of El Tigre and its large pumps extracting oil from the ground. In Venezuela, gas was literally cheaper than water. The vegetation had thinned out and much of the surrounding area looked barren in comparison to the stretches of jungle to the north. The Outcasts had traveled more than a quarter of the distance to their target area. Alex pulled out a tube of energy gel and emptied it into his mouth—breakfast.

  John slept soundly. Cat put her head on Alex’s shoulder, and he slept in a light combat sleep, resting his body and mind but able to flip to full auto at the click of a selector switch. After two more hours, Alex woke up. They crossed the Angostura Bridge, which extended a kilometer over the Orinoco River. “What’s that?” Cat asked, pointing to the river below. “Something big and white swimming in the water.”

  “Maybe they’re boto—Amazon river dolphins,” Miguel said.

  “I’ve never seen white dolphins,” Cat said.

  “Or river dolphins,” Alex added.

  “Scientists say they’ve lived here for more than fifteen million years,” Miguel explained. “Legend says the boto live in utopia, but they want the pleasures and pain that humans experience. They love music and parties, and sometimes at night they change into handsome and beautiful men and women. The boto wear a hat to hide their blowhole. They also like to seduce humans and have sex with them, sometimes producing illegitimate children.”

  Alex and Cat exchanged quizzical looks.

  As the bridge reached land, it crossed over jungle treetops before returning to ground level. Farms and ranches appeared on both sides of them until they reached the city of Ciudad Bolivar on their left. Ciudad Bolivar was past the halfway point in the distance to their target area.

  “We’ll check into a hotel here, grab something to eat, and rest until it’s time to launch tonight,” Miguel said.

  “Aren’t there other cities between here and the target?”

  “There are, but they’re so small, you won’t find any real hotels or food there. A lot of tourists come here, so you’ll blend in easier and soon be forgotten.”

  Miguel drove into Ciudad Bolivar and stopped at a hotel called the Posada La Casita. He left the Outcasts in the Explorer while he checked in. Miguel paid in advance so they could leave immediately. He helped the Outcasts move their gear into a small bungalow, a simple building with a high thatched roof and plain interior. After the Outcasts settled in, Miguel went out, gassed up the Explorer, and brought back lunch: cold water; mango juice; chicken salad (ensalada de pollo); warm pastries stuffed with beef, chicken, and cheese (empanada); Venezuelan lasagna (pasticho); and Sicilian pastries (cannoli). Without Pancho around, the food went further, but Alex missed Pancho’s company.

  After lunch, Miguel took a long siesta before reviewing his individual mission responsibilities with the Outcasts. Later, the four ate dinner and did some final preparations. At 2100, the Outcasts wore their jungle cammies, inflatable life vests, face paint, and gear. Alex handed Miguel a life vest. At first, Miguel said he didn’t need it, but Alex insisted.

  After everyone kitted up, Miguel drove them out of Ciudad Bolivar. As they headed south in the darkness, towns became smaller and more scarce, and the Amazon jungle became bigger and fuller. Three hours later, Highway Sixteen ended at the small village of La Paragua, pressed against the Paragua River to the southwest. Miguel cut the lights and took them through a labyrinth of dirt roads, passing a few strongly built houses but mostly small leaning and sagging shacks made of old wood and corrugated tin. Although some of the vehicles parked in front of the houses were newer, most were old trucks. Miguel continued to the western edge of the village. Ideally, Miguel would slow down to five miles per hour and drop them off, but Alex needed Miguel’s gun in the fight, so Miguel parked the SUV off the side of the road.

  Miguel showed the Outcasts where he put a spare key in a magnetic key holder behind the bottom of the bumper.

  “You’ll be driving us out of here, so we won’t be needing that,” Alex whispered.

  John walked the point, followed by Cat, then Alex. Miguel brought up the rear. They were far enough away from the lab compound that the enemy couldn’t hear them. The noisy wildlife helped hide the sound of their movement through the jungle. The Outcasts avoided unnecessary chatter—they knew from experience to expect unexpected visitors.

  The crickets chattered louder and more often than any other creature in the jungle. A variety of birds called. One sounded like the same low note on a flute in a pattern of one note, two notes, one note—repeated again and again. Another bird cawed like a crow. Still another bird called once and waited for its listener to call back twice. Then the calling bird called once and the listener called twice—they continued communicating back and forth. Suddenly a bird shrieked maniacally. The crickets continued to chirp for a moment, but all the birds became quiet, and a doglike cackle sounded—it sent chills up Alex’s spine. Next, different birdcalls filled the night. A loud groan emitted, then stopped. The groan came again—like the voice of a human. The foliage was so dense that it was difficult to see where all the different noises were coming from. Alex imagined vampire bats, poisonous dart frogs, snakes, black crocodiles, and jaguars, but he began to scare himself, so he stopped imagining and focused on the mission.

  The biological weapons compound was located ten kilometers west, and the building housing the MBD21 and rat fleas stood on the western edge of the compound. John took them in a clockwise circle from the east and around the perimeter of the compound. After forty-five minutes of humping through the jungle, light from the direction of the compound broke between the trunks of 150-foot-tall trees. When the Outcasts and Miguel reached south of the compound, John dropped. Cat and Alex followed his example and embraced the damp ground. Alex looked back through the weeds and saw that Miguel did the same. There was too much vegetation and darkness to see much more. Alex hoped that if there were enemies in the area, they’d have just as much trouble seeing the Outcasts. He was forced to rely on his hearing. Although his heart beat loudly, someone’s footsteps coming from the south were louder. The noise became louder and louder, so that Alex expected to be stepped on or shot any moment.

  Alex’s palms grew sweaty, and the grip of his hand on his AKMS felt loose, so he tightened his grip. To his right, a set of eyes appeared so close he could reach out and touch them. It took discipline not to shoot until he determined the extent of the threat. The eyes were too narrow for a human. The skin was green with black spots and scaly—it was a snake. Its body was thirteen feet long. What kind of snake? It stared at Alex, who dared not blink.

  The footsteps became quieter, fading northward. After about ten minutes, John and Cat crawled forward, but Alex didn’t dare crawl or signal he was having trouble for fear of being bitten. Then Miguel used the barrel of his rifle to push the snake away. “Anaconda,” Miguel whispered in Alex’s ear. “No venom—it’s a constrictor.” The snake slowly slithered away.

  John started crawling toward the perimeter wall of the compound, but he stopped again. A Guard sat on top of the biological weapons lab. John pulled out his sound-suppressed pistol and took him out with one shot to the head.

  Alex keyed his radio two times, signaling the USS Jason Dunham that they were about to enter the compound. The Dunham responded by breaking squelch twice.

  John continued until he reached the wall. It was made of crumbling brick. He scaled it, but as he reached the top, the section of brick beneath him caved in. John came crashing down, wall and all. If this had been a training mission, it would have been hilarious. Alex hoped the enemy hadn’t heard it. John stayed on the ground and crawled around to the side where the door to the MBD21 lab was. Cat crawled through the space where the wall had been and covered John as he worked on opening the door. Alex helped Cat cover the area. The door was locked, so John began picking it, but the lock wasn’t opening. A Guard appeared to investigate and when he saw John, he started shouting in Farsi. So
much for stealth. Cat plugged the guard with three rounds from her sound-suppressed AKMS. John put his lock-pick set away and kicked the door near the doorknob. The door flew open.

  John quickly entered the building and peeled left—his rifle fired: pop-pop-pop-pop. Cat followed inside, peeling right: pop, pop, pop. Alex entered next to discover the mudroom—just as Dr. Khamenei had described. Three guards lay bleeding on the floor. One was still twitching—he appeared dead, but his nerves were still sending signals to his body. Alex conserved his bullets. He didn’t have time to look back at Miguel—Alex just trusted that Miguel was right behind him covering their rear and setting a customized Chilean claymore mine with an infrared trigger for rear security. The interior of the lab was air-conditioned, keeping it cool.

  Alex knew that the room to their right was the mechanical and electric room. The Outcasts didn’t have time to clear every room, so they passed the mechanical-electrical room and the janitor room on their right and headed straight for the objective. An Asian man stepped out of the restroom to the right. He was unarmed—probably the North Korean scientist. Alex blasted twice into the scientist’s chest, blowing him back through the doorway and onto the toilet. His biological weapons days were over. The Outcasts proceeded through a door and on the right was an eye wash and emergency shower station. The Outcasts continued straight into a large, rectangular lab area with three sinks, shelves full of chemicals, test tubes, Bunsen burners, centrifuges, various lab devices, and thousands of rat fleas in two large glass boxes.

  John gunned down an unarmed Iranian scientist before turning left. The Outcasts skipped the first and second doors to their left. To their right was a storage cabinet with a flammables symbol on it. Alex gently tipped the cabinet over on its side and dragged it with him. Finally, John reached a large metal door on the left. He opened it and walked in. The others followed.

  Inside was a long walk-in freezer. Shelves surrounded the Outcasts and Miguel except for one bare wall. On the shelves were stacked columns and columns of petri dishes containing MBD21. Alex dropped the flammable cabinet in the middle of the floor and opened the door.

  “If this job doesn’t work out, you’ve got a future as a pest exterminator,” Cat said.

  “Yep,” Alex replied.

  John, Cat, and Miguel cleared out of the room.

  From the direction of the front of the building came a claymore explosion followed by a scream. Fourteen hundred steel balls blasted whoever opened the door—most likely Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

  Alex dumped the contents of the flammables cabinet in the middle of the floor and pushed the cabinet against the empty wall. He took off his backpack, reached inside, and pulled out two thermate bombs. Each bomb consisted of three nondescript thermate canisters bound together with their fuses connected to a timer and detonator—courtesy of Team Six’s Explosives Ordnance Disposal (EOD) operators. The thermate bomb contained 68.7 percent thermite (aluminum powder and metal oxide), 29 percent barium nitrate, 2 percent sulfur, and .3 percent polybutadiene acrylonitrile (PBAN). The PBAN glued the chemicals together to keep a uniform consistency throughout the bomb. The aluminum and metal oxide would create a chemical reaction, causing a fire that burned at approximately 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,200 degrees Celsius). The sulfur and barium nitrate would increase the thermal effect, making the bomb hotter than thermite alone. Alex set the timers for ten minutes and marked the time on his watch. “Ten minutes,” Alex announced over the radio. He placed the two thermate bombs on the flammables in the center of the freezer. That should thaw things out quickly. He exited the freezer and propped the door open to let all the cold air out. Alex heard a firefight near the lab’s entrance: John, Cat, and Miguel were engaging the enemy.

  John and the others were supposed to have cleared the adjacent room, but Alex slid open the slide door and entered, ready to stitch up any bogeymen who might have slipped through the cracks. Two Iranian scientists lay still on the floor in puddles of blood. The majority of the scientists worked during the day, and these were the unlucky bastards who worked the night shift.

  Three Class III biosafety cabinets (BSC) were connected to each other. The gas-tight BSCs protected the scientists and their environment while the scientists experimented with the MBD21 bacteria. The BSCs also protected MBD21 from outside influences that might weaken it. Scientists could put their hands through a pair of stainless-steel circular openings and into the attached gloves and manipulate the bacteria without coming into direct contact with it. Alex pulled out three formaldehyde bombs. With his left hand, he opened an outer door on one of the BSCs, reached in, and opened the inner door. With his right hand, he triggered the bomb and it started spraying a fog of formaldehyde. Alex placed it on the dunk tank and closed the inner door. Then he closed the outer door. Finally, he triggered the dunk tank, dropping the formaldehyde bomb into the container of MBD21. Alex repeated the process for the other two BSCs. By the time the fire from the freezer crossed into this room, the bacteria would already be covered in formaldehyde. Alex finished, left the room, and glanced at his watch. “Five minutes,” he called over the radio to his crew. The Dunham would hear his transmission, too.

  31

  * * *

  “We can’t break out the front door,” Miguel said over the radio with irritation in his voice. “Too many of them.”

  Alex pulled two Raid Flea Killer Plus Fogger canisters out of his backpack. He pressed the button on one. Then he lifted the lid on one of the glass containers full of fleas and dropped the canister inside before closing the lid. He did the same for the other glass container of fleas. “Fall back on me,” Alex said. “I’m blowing an exit through the south wall.”

  A swoosh followed by an explosion rocked the air: John giving the Guards a parting taste of a disposable antitank rocket for close spaces (AT-4 CS). Salt water absorbed much of the back blast, so John could fire the AT-4 CS in close quarters without melting Cat and Miguel. The Guards quieted down.

  Alex reached into his bag of magic tricks and pulled out a thin plastic rope containing compressed powdered explosive (pentaerythritol tetranitrate)—det cord. He taped it in a small door shape on an empty spot on the south wall. Then he attached the blasting cap, fuse, and detonator. Alex stepped out of the blast area and detonated the cord, blasting a small, crudely shaped doorway through the wall.

  John arrived with Cat and Miguel.

  Alex glanced at his stopwatch. “Three minutes. Follow me out.”

  John hung back and secured the door to the rectangular room with glass cases full of rat fleas. Probably leaving an explosive surprise for the Guards, too.

  Alex led Cat and Miguel through the crude doorway and out into the compound, where he felt the jungle humidity again. Alex arrived next to the compound’s generator. Alex couldn’t see power lines to cut, and he didn’t have time to search for an off switch, which would only be temporary until somebody turned the generator back on. He placed a single-canister thermate grenade on it, pulled the pin, and backed away. The thermate grenade had no timer. “Thermate out!” Alex called. No more than two seconds after he pulled the pin, the thermate grenade burned white hot, spewing thick smoke up in the air.

  John appeared from the crude doorway in the wall. The lights in the lab behind him went out. The generator had died, and more important, the walk-in freezer full of MBD21 in petri dishes was dead. Alex heard Guards rushing into the lab and breaking down the door, triggering another claymore explosion followed by a screech.

  From inside the lab building, an angry platoon of Guards’ voices shouted. One of the Guards poked his head through the crude doorway. Alex brought his AKMS up to shoot him in the head but fired too soon and shot him in the base of his neck. The Guard stood in shock in the crude doorway, blocking the others from exiting.

  Alex glanced at his watch. The thermate bombs in the freezer were already burning. With flammables in the freezer, flammable formaldehyde in the room next door, and flammable fog in the flea cases, Ale
x didn’t want to stick around and become more fuel for the fire. Neither did John.

  They sprinted for the south wall. “Alex and John coming up on your rear,” Alex called so someone wouldn’t mistake them for the enemy, but Cat and Miguel were nowhere in sight.

  As they sprinted, out of the corner of Alex’s eyes, ten yards to the left, a pair of dead Guards lay on the ground. If Alex heard the shots, his mind hadn’t registered it. More Guards appeared to the left, but these were alive. They shot at the SEALs. Alex and John ran faster. They hit the wall at full speed, jumped, grabbed the top, and pulled themselves over.

  On the other side, Cat and Miguel were waiting.

  “John, take us out,” Alex said.

  John assumed the point and led them south at a fast walk. Behind him patrolled Cat, followed by Alex, with Miguel acting as rear security. Soon they’d need to go east, in order to return to their vehicle, but loud thrashing noises came from that direction—the Guards were cutting off their escape route. The Outcasts couldn’t return to the hornet’s nest they stirred up in the lab compound to the north, and heading west would take them only deeper into the Amazon rain forest. If the Outcasts stopped where they were, the Guards could outflank them and cut off the south, too, leaving them with nowhere to go.

  John seemed to understand the situation because he continued leading them south. It was a difficult balance to patrol quietly enough not to be discovered, but quickly enough to escape the Guards.

  Alex spotted a fallen tree to John’s left, perfect for the four of them to take cover behind. The thrashing became louder and louder. Birds and other wildlife became silent. Contact was inevitable. Surprise, speed, and violence were the keys to winning a firefight. If the Outcasts didn’t set up a hasty ambush now, they’d end up in a firefight anyway—minus the element of surprise and the tree for cover. It sounded like the Guards outnumbered the Outcasts four-to-one. Those are good frogman odds. When Cat turned around to look at Alex, he held his right arm out at a 90-degree angle with a closed-fist signal: halt. She stopped walking and passed the signal up to John, who also stopped. Alex signaled for everyone to get down behind the fallen tree. Then he pumped his fist in the direction of the enemy, like he was punching them—hasty ambush. When Alex passed the signals back to Miguel, Alex saw flames rise from the direction of the biological weapons lab—knowing they’d destroyed the lab left a good taste in Alex’s mouth, but he didn’t have time to savor the victory.