by Cole Alpaugh
“It’s asleep,” Beth said quietly in Thai, putting her hands to the side of her head to mime sleep.
As a backup plan, Chase slipped the bat into the crook of the wood pallet the freezer was resting on. Just as he was about to recheck his watch, two soldiers burst into the room carrying more boxes filled with explosives. The four squeezed between humming freezers, Chase’s shoulders painfully pinched. One soldier threw open a door without noticing it was already ajar or the small rocks that fell to his feet.
The soldier barked an order just as Mali emerged from the hole. Beth reached down and grabbed the bat Chase had stowed and hurled it across the room as a diversion. It tumbled through the air just over the heads of the soldiers, who instinctively ducked, probably from months of casually dodging low flying bats in these caves. Beth grabbed Mali and pulled her down between the freezers with them. The bat bounded off the far wall without exploding and came to a rest a few feet from the soldiers.
The men looked at each other then scanned the room with wide eyes. They stepped over to the fallen bat, one prodding it with the toe of his combat boot. Both used the same phrase in Arabic, which sounded like it would translate loosely into English as “Holy fuck!”
From the deep shadows, Chase could see them look at each other, then down at the armed bat, as if trying to figure out what to do next. One finally took charge and gave an order, which might have been “Pick it up and put it back.”
The other soldier vigorously shook his head, stepping away from the crumpled bat. Cursing, the soldier in charge shoved the other away and plucked the bat with fingertips. He jerked open a freezer door and tossed the bat bomb inside.
They grabbed their boxes of explosives and hurried back into the corridor, seemingly perfectly happy to forget what had almost happened.
The five un-squeezed their way back out from between the freezers and Mali excitedly told Beth she’d killed the machine. The other girls screeched in delight, which brought a simultaneous “Shhhhh!” from Beth and Chase.
“Let’s go.” Chase led them back down the corridor toward the latrine, which was mercifully empty. Beth stood at the door as the three girls watched Chase pry the wood seat loose and lean it against the wall.
He pointed down the hole and said, “Go!”
To which the three girls replied, “No!”
Beth turned and came into the room and dropped to the floor, dangling her legs into the open hole. She said “I love you” to the girls in Thai, crossed herself, and slid into the darkness. The girls looked at each other, unconvinced, until the first explosion nearly knocked them off their feet. Bits of dust and small pieces of limestone rained down, and the lights danced off and on.
“Come!” Chase shouted to Kama, reaching for her tiny body. He snatched her up and dropped her over the edge of the hole, where she too disappeared out of sight, a blood-curdling scream trailing behind.
Then the fireworks really went off, explosion after explosion, along with the sound of wings beating against air and against the walls in the corridors, as more and more bats poured out of the freezers. It went black after the next explosion brought down a huge chunk of ceiling and there were shouts and orders from running soldiers. As the entire mountain began to shake and sway, Chase found one of the older girls on the ground and dragged her to the edge of the hole, where she managed to fall inside.
Another detonation slammed down the hallway tunnel, the blast lighting the room in a yellow flash. Chase saw Mali sitting with her back against the far wall, pinned against the fifty-gallon drum of water, shielding her face.
“Mali!” he shouted into the blackness and thick dust, as more bats began to beat their way into the room, squealing and confused. He took a few steps toward the cringing girl as another bright blast just outside the room blew out the wall and a ton of debris slammed down on them in small chunks. Again in darkness, his face cut and burning, Chase reached blindly for the brave little girl.
“Mali!” He found her desperate hand in a pile of jagged stone. Two more blasts from farther down the hall rocked the floor and sent him sprawling over the girl, but he was able to push piles of limestone rocks off and dragged her back to where the hole must be.
Another blast and then another, and a deep rumbling began that Chase knew would never stop. It was the roll of thunder, the approach of a freight train, which began to shift the entire room to a new angle. He crawled over what had been the ceiling and found the still unblocked hole. Chase stuffed the limp Mali into the opening and she slid away as he gagged and choked on the dust that had replaced the last of the air. One more monstrous explosion and the rest of the latrine ceiling collapsed, just as Chase dove into the crapper.
“Geronimo!” he yelled, knowing Stoney would be proud.
Chapter 15
An old macaque monkey had the perfect view of the commotion in the valley. He was far enough away that the exploding bird-things didn’t feel threatening. He’d brought two handfuls of sweet berries to his favorite spot on the knoll and was enjoying the warmth of the sun on his fur and munching away when the shit-covered humans were spit from a hole at the bottom of the mountain. It was an odd surprise added to the other ruckus and he wanted to hoot and cheer, but his back had been aching, so he stayed still and sniffed the wind. The nasty smell reached him on the breeze that blew harder when the big metal things with spinning wings caught fire. The monkey put the berries down in a little pile, careful that none rolled away. Maybe later, he thought.
The monkey liked most humans. They left food cans outside their homes for his family to rummage through in the morning sun. Some yelled and threw sticks, but were slow and didn’t bite. Humans were mostly harmless.
The exploding bird-things were something the monkey had never seen. They had flown into the belly of the giant metal creatures then bounced around all crazy and upset, trying to get back out. Then, boom, boom! The noise was exciting and there was a time when the monkey would have jumped up and down and yelled boom right back. But not now. He watched and his mind wandered.
The monkey picked a beetle from the back of his pink ear and chewed. He thought maybe the bird-things might be food makers inside the mountain. They acted the same as the big swarm he’d found inside a tree a long time ago. He’d followed the sweetest scent ever up the rotten wood, stuck his hand inside the hole with all the flying bugs. He’d pulled out a sticky treat that tasted like ripe bananas and warm flowers. But then the bugs began biting. First one and then a dozen had hurt him, tormented him with their angry buzzing and chased him to the ground. They’d come from every direction, biting at his ass, shoulders, and even his tail. He had run screaming for his family.
These exploding bird-things brought the memories of the awful bugs flooding back. It had hurt to lie in his nest, to sleep, to be scratched. He’d been miserable for days. Watching the hubbub continue to unfold, he scratched at the small lump on his right butt cheek, a spot the biting bugs had made bleed, that had become hot and throbbing even as he had crouched in the river. He leaned over and snatched a small stone to keep next to the berry pile, just in case.
Orange flames seemed to eat the big metal creatures, made them fall over dead and hollow. That the bird-things didn’t seem to want to hurt the humans was very curious and gave the monkey an idea. Could it be because the humans knew to rub shit over themselves? Was the secret to stealing sweet treats from biting bugs and exploding bird-things as simple as making yourself smelly?
Once the booming died down and the pretty fires had turned to ugly black smoke, the monkey began to lose interest. It was about lunchtime, anyway. No use trying to beg a candy bar or piece of sandwich from these humans. They were coated in nasty human stink and seemed in a hurry to get somewhere else; they were already halfway to where the river began. The monkey took a last look, picked a beetle from his crotch and rubbed his belly. He scooped his berries, turned and headed back into the forest, where his family had been napping in the shade. Maybe he’d find some poop and s
ee if the human trick really worked.
***
Two months after escaping the bat cave—and the unsettling glare of a solitary monkey on an adjacent knoll, absently masturbating with one hand and scratching his Buddha-belly with the other—Chase dipped another ranch-flavored Doritos chip in a jar of onion dip, sprinkling a few more crumbs between couch cushions.
Chase’s one-bedroom New Jersey apartment was near the Delaware River, just north of the capital, Trenton. The magically appearing envelopes had been replaced by emails on a laptop left on the counter while he was grocery shopping. A checking account debit card with a three thousand dollar balance had arrived in the mail. The key to a leased Ford Taurus parked out front had been slipped under his door.
His email instructions were to keep an eye on a group of Iranians who’d rented a house in Trenton. Chase was to log their evening activities, which turned out to be drunken videogames in their living room and trips to one of two dance clubs frequented by local college kids.
If the Iranians were planning to blow up the New Jersey Capital, they were taking their time and doing absolutely nothing suspicious. They weren’t buying fertilizer by the ton or sneaking gallons of chemicals into a basement lab. And they’d fallen into a clockwork routine of visiting food joints every night, then clubbing at City Gardens on Fridays and a place up across the river in New Hope every Saturday.
The young, six member cell had undergone a rapid Americanization. They’d started with Miami Vice-era sport coats and sneakers, and evolved to black jeans, collared shirts, and Doc Martens. The only item they hadn’t given up were ZZ Top sunglasses, despite how often they bumped into things in dark clubs. They were living in what was once one of the higher priced neighborhoods along the river, now a mixture of middle class families and crack houses. Chase thought that anyone doing morning or afternoon surveillance better have a good book. None of the group ever woke before lunch, as far as he could tell.
City Gardens, resembling an old high school gym on the outside, was split into two sections on the inside. Quiet smaller bar area to the left; main bar, stage and dance floor to the right. The walls were painted flat black under a high ceiling. There was a giant mirror ball, single video screen showing black and white cartoons, and various colored strobes for lighting. Posters of past shows by Nirvana and The Ramones lined the hallway entrance.
The Iranians became drunker and more obnoxious as the weeks passed. They seemed to be less and less a terrorist risk than a danger to the club kids and even themselves. It was a Friday night that the six men surrounded a girl on the dance floor. Chase, nursing a vodka tonic in a plastic cup, leaned against a wall near the stage. It was still early and the girl was dancing alone when she was accosted, trapped in a circle. They were hooting, drunk and macho, beer bottles waving over their heads. The four bouncers, huge black guys from the neighborhood, stepped out of the shadows, and Chase watched them looking at each other, deciding if it was time to pounce.
The Iranian men danced by, throwing out their hips and making little hops that rained down foamy beer. The circle tightened and it took them a while to realize the girl had somehow escaped, slipping through their gyrating gauntlet.
“I’m Mitra.” She was next to Chase, a drink in her hand.
“Chase.”
“I don’t like the early music, anyway,” she said, and Chase watched her lean against the wall, arms folded in front, eyeing the Iranians. She was tiny, with dark hair and pale skin. “But it’s nice to have your own space, you know?”
The Iranians spotted her and Chase could see the cheated looks.
The song changed, was faster and louder. “Hey Man, Nice Shot” began to play as the group of drunk, pissed-off Iranians came for the girl who’d gotten away.
“I love this song,” Mitra shouted, not budging.
“They look mad.”
“Can you believe one grabbed my ass?”
“It looked like all six were grabbing your ass,” Chase said over the thumping music that had enough bass to vibrate the air. The men stopped their march a few feet from where Chase and the girl stood. “Maybe they came to apologize for being born complete douche bags.”
Mitra had shimmied closer, her right arm and thigh brushing up against him. She smelled like heaven. Chase took a long sip as one of the men shouted what was probably a terrific insult in Farsi. They were huffing, out of breath, slicked hair all messed and pointed spikes. The tallest came to Chase’s chin.
“Sorry, I can’t hear you,” Chase answered, shrugging his shoulders, pointing at one ear. The group hadn’t noticed the gargantuan bouncers who’d come up behind them.
“I think he asked you to dance,” Mitra said, laughing, her head touching Chase’s shoulder when she leaned sideways.
“Bastard!” one of the Iranians shouted. He lunged at Chase but was immediately plucked backward as if on a bungee cord. His accomplices turned to see what had happened and they too suffered the same, neck jarring event. The entire Iranian cell was carted to the exit by the bouncers, leaving nothing behind but a few beer bottles spinning on the floor.
“You’re a total troublemaker, aren’t you?” Chase looked down at her almond eyes, breathed her in. For the first time in two months he didn’t care where the idiots from Iran were. Let them kidnap the governor and set fire to the gold-domed State House. She had tiny freckles and soft lips. There was a new song and she took the cup from his hand and emptied it in one long swallow.
“I bring out the worst in people,” she said and left him to dance alone, before the mob of college kids began to descend.
He let her go for now.
Chapter 16
Chase fell in love with the little dancer. He fell fast and hard and did everything possible to convince her to feel the same way. It was a take-no-prisoners approach, with scenic small plane rides out of the Princeton Airport, slaved-over candle-lit dinners, and lovemaking matched to the music.
It took two weeks for things to even out. Under the ugly glow of yellow streetlights outside the club, she said she loved him back and kissed him in a different way.
“You’re beautiful,” she had whispered later, swaying to the gentle music coming from the speakers next to the bed. She had sung the lyrics of some New Age lullaby in his ear and it seemed different, too. “You are the light, the dark, the fire, and all the rain.” She repeated these same lyrics as her wedding vows a few months later, eloping in a living room ceremony at the home of the local mayor. Their witness was the mayor’s niece. Chase couldn’t call Stoney, and Mitra’s plan was to break the news to her father after the fact, when it was too late.
Mitra had no idea of his real work. There was no spy manual to use for reference, but Chase had been warned away from close friendships. He was a journalist and had the news clippings as proof. What a great story it would have been to tell, the coincidence of a group of half-assed Iranian terrorists bringing them together. He imagined her father would have laughed heartily, pounded the table and complained how typical it was of the men charged with securing his nation, his former homeland. But Chase kept his secret for now, maybe forever.
According to what had always been a cloudy recounting of her recent family history, Mitra’s father had fled the politics that had overrun any ability to teach at the University of Tehran. He had arrived in America on Thanksgiving Day, 1979, just a few weeks after a group of Islamic revolutionaries stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took hostages.
Doctor Bamdad Hami, who repeated this story each time Mitra had taken Chase for visits, could tolerate just so many interruptions in and around his classroom. There had been smoke everywhere and the constant stench of gasoline being sloshed around in jars to be used as propellants. His classroom stank like an auto repair garage, and by the end of his lectures his students were in an oxygen deprived buzz. There had been smoke from burning American flags and Jimmy Carter effigies. Then there had been smoke from the clothes of the protesters who caught themselves on fire while ligh
ting the effigies. It was all more than the doctor could tolerate.
“I can tolerate this no further!” Doctor Bam, as he preferred to be addressed, claimed to have shouted at his cowering secretary. “Pack my dugong, I’m out of here.”
Doctor Bam’s secretary had a lot of work ahead of her if she was going to pack the dugong all by herself. Even though it was dead and therefore not moving, it was nearly three meters long and over three-hundred kilograms. Plus, there would be all that ice to keep it from rotting and stinking like only a blubbery dugong could rot and stink.
“I’ll bring you over to the college and you can have a picture taken with the famous dugong,” Mitra had told Chase, teasing her father.
The death of the dugong had been something of a tragedy, a victim of scientific exploration mixed with alcohol. Dugongs had been having a tough time trying to peacefully subsist on Persian Gulf sea grass since humans were constantly spilling oil, Doctor Bam had explained in his story. These great mammals were a nearly extinct version of sea cow, with paddle-like forelimbs and fluked, dolphin-like tails. Furthermore, they liked to hang out and play just under the surface of the water, a practice that put them in constant danger of getting struck by boats.
Doctor Bam admitted to nudging along the extinction process by accidentally killing this particular dugong with a thirty-foot outboard motorboat. He’d struck the poor creature while, ironically, helping a coworker gather data on the critically endangered hawksbill turtle. Truth be told, the pair of professors had been doing more drinking than data gathering just prior to the accident, but they blamed that mostly on the stress from all the burning effigies everywhere they looked.
“The young people in my country burn everything,” he’d said, shaking his head wistfully.
The two Iranian doctors of education would take kabob koobideh and bottles of Russian vodka, then motor around the Persian Gulf oil tankers while blasting Aerosmith from a Chinese-made boom box.