EXCERPT Chapter 1
Under cover of darkness, six unmarked and highly camouflaged Marine CH-46
Sea Knight cargo helicopters, manned by personnel from the elite Air Force
Special Operations Command, came in low, hugging the ground, from the Alborz
Mountain Range on the outskirts of Tehran.
To an observer, they might seem like giant, sinister insects moving
toward some hapless prey as their whirling propeller blades produced a muffled
sound similar to the wings of a predatory nightmarish dragonfly.
The Iranian personnel manning the radar and video monitors were busy
drinking strong black coffee and smoking dark foul-smelling Turkish cigarettes
as they discussed the superiority of chubby Iranian girls over the skinny French
runway models that they had seen on television, although none of them would ever
get closer to a Parisian model than in their wet dreams.
They were an uneducated and scruffy lot, wearing soiled and wrinkled kaki
uniforms, who were in the military because it was the only job they could find
in a country with a depressed economy. It afforded them a chance to receive a
meager paycheck, and, if they got lucky, to force themselves onto unfortunate
female civilians and also to wheedle some bribes from time to time.
A sliver moon cast faint light through the patchy clouds that were moving
swiftly across the sky, propelled by a brisk wind coming down off the mountains.
Milad Tower was barely visible as its silhouette towered over Iran's sleeping
capital of over seven million people. In between ribald conversations, the
security men napped, shaking themselves awake long enough to record their hourly
reports.
The flying machines separated and headed off around the outskirts of the
city to deposit their loads as closely as possible to various plants where
things like electronic equipment, military weaponry, chemicals, and the oil
refineries on the south of the city were located. One ship discharged its cargo
near a site that intelligence had said was the probable location of the nation's
nuclear-development lab.
At each location, a whirly-machine would touch lightly onto the ground as
it's bewildered cargo was put out the door onto the desert sands, and then
pushed, chattering and whimpering, toward the dim lights in the distance. The
doors were slammed shut, and the choppers rose and returned to regroup and head
back toward the Alborz, leaving their bewildered charges behind.
The ape-like figures, clad in body armor and with packages of
high-powered plastic explosives strapped around them, were attracted to the
lights in the distance, and began to knuckle-walk toward what they hoped would
be sympathetic humans. They were grunting and jabbering with fright; this was
the first time any of them had been released into the outdoors, and their simian
hearts were pounding with fear and excitement.
Half an hour later, the first of many explosions occurred. The C-4 was
detonated by timing devices encased within the explosives, and the night sky was
lighted up by the explosion of Tehran's main chemical plant. A tremendous ball
of fire rose, rivaling the sun at noon. The sound of the explosions reached
across the city, startling people awake.
All around the outskirts of the city more explosions followed, damaging
or destroying many of Tehran's most important manufacturing facilities,
including the one devoted to the production of military weaponry. The nuclear-
testing lab escaped harm, though.
Heartbreakingly, several of the pitiful explosive-bearing creatures
wandered further into the city seeking food and human care and were blown to
bits as the charges they carried went off. One entire block in a slum area was
leveled with the loss of hundreds of lives.
C-4 is an equal-opportunity killer striking young and old
indiscriminately and leaving the dead and mutilated in its wake. Among the
civilians who were killed were dozens of others who were maimed, blinded, and
crippled. Some small children achieved instant orphan status as they stood
bleeding and crying beside the remains of their dead parents. The odds of them
finding a loving home were less than leaving a roulette table in Vegas as a
winner.
Further into the city a market area was destroyed, and the decaying
apartment buildings that looked down on it were severely damaged. Hundreds of
people were spared certain death or maiming because the fruit and vegetable
vendors and the crowds of shoppers had not yet arrived.
Tehran awakened to bedlam. Fire trucks, ambulances, police, and military
vehicles and personnel were racing around everywhere. Collective screams arose
as frantic relatives searched for and inquired about missing loved ones.
The military went on high alert as tanks and troops were activated and
air force jets were scrambled.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was awakened with the news that Tehran was
under attack, and he jumped out of bed from between the two women with whom he
had been sleeping. This looked like it was going to be the biggest crisis he
had faced since being elected the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran in
August of 2005.
He threw on his rumpled gray suit, sans necktie, and rushed to confer
with his advisors and top military men. His face carried two days of stubble,
and he smelled of sweat and female companionship. His head was throbbing with a
king-sized hangover.
But no further explosions and no invading forces followed the first
series of explosions, and, as the sun begin to rise, officials went around
assessing the damages, and crews were dispatched to begin cleanup operations.
Many of the city's important industries were crippled or destroyed, and
countless families were minus loved ones. The cost in terms of human hardship
and suffering would be felt for a long time.
Ahmadinejad went on public television and vowed that swift revenge would
be exacted, once the perpetrators of these outrages were identified. Secretly,
he hoped it would not turn out to be the United States because Iran had not yet
completed development of a thermo-nuclear device. He returned to his quarters,
poured himself a stiff drink, and ordered the anonymous call girls to get out.
* * * * *
The six Sea Knights made it safely back to the U.S. military base in
Baghdad, and the pilots with their crews strode into the base bar and spent the
next few hours drinking and swapping stories of their exploits which they had
just accomplished in the name of democracy.
One pilot slapped his partner on the back and declared drunkenly that,
"That'll teach them to monkey with us!" His fellows broke up with laughter, and
one of the pilots began to jump up and down and utter chimp-like sounds as he
scratched himself under his arms. Several of these heroes would later be given
letters of commendation along with promotions.
In a secret location, somewhere in the United States, a clandestine
meeting was taking place, and it was agreed that a new tool had been found in
the nation's continuing war on terror.
Chapter 2
The alarm from the digital clock on his night stand went off at 5:00 A.M.,
and Wayne Wilson groped blindly for the off-button as he rolled over and groaned
awake. He felt like taking the device and throwing it against the wall.
Right on schedule, Scamp, his and Francine's mixed-breed little mutt,
leaped on the bed and then crept onto his chest, snorting and wagging excitedly.
This was a Monday through Friday ritual that rarely varied. Wayne pushed her
down a bit so he would not have to breath her doggie breathe and lay patting
the dog, and then he yelled for Francine who slept in another room and
invariably responded after three or four calls with a groggy, "What?"
"The alarm went off."
"Okay." Silence.
Several minutes passed, and then, "You awake?"
"Yeah, just tryin' to wake up," Francine yelled back, and creaking sounds
signaled that she was indeed awake and starting the laborious task of sitting up
on the side of the bed. It seemed that every part of her body was stiff and
ached...getting older was not her idea of a good time. Once she was up, she
would gulp down a couple of Tylenols, and that usually took the edge off of her
discomfort.
Wayne and Francine slept in separate rooms due to their snoring problems.
When Wayne tried to sleep, Francine would begin snoring; when Francine tried to
sleep Wayne snored. Separate rooms and beds had proven to be the solution, and
conjugal visits occurred whenever the urge struck them which was happening less
and less frequently. Francine had grown bored with Wayne, and the feeling was
mutual.
Wayne lay half asleep until he heard his wife padding into the bathroom.
The door was shut, and he could hear the bathroom ceiling fan start. He lay
back and dozed, and then Scamp dragged a drippy tongue across his cheek. Damned
dog.
"That's a good girl," he mumbled, scratching her behind her ears as her
tail flopped on his groin; he rolled over on his side, and Scamp moved to the
side of the bed. They had purchased her from an ad in the paper by a private
breeder who represented her as a pure breed. Only later did they realize that
they had bought the runt of the litter and, through inbreeding, she was somewhat
retarded, and, like many human females, was given to severe mood swings.
I wish she'd hurry up, he thought. I really need to go pee.
Just when things were reaching a critical point, the bathroom door
opened, and Francine came in and stood by the side of the bed.
"You ready to go out?" she asked, and Scamp moved over closer to Wayne
and hunched up to his side; she was waiting for her morning treat of being
carried, like a baby, out to the backyard.
"What a spoiled brat!" Francine declared as she grabbed Scamp's hind legs
and dragged her across the bed and picked her up. She stood with the dog
cradled in her arms as if she were an infant.
"I'll take her out back to pee," Francine said as she exited the room and
started to close the door behind her. Huh, that friggin' dog get's better
treatment than I do, Wayne thought.
"Just leave it," Wayne answered. "I'm gettin' up; I can't lay here any
longer." Actually, he could have laid there a lot longer, but he desperately
needed to go to the bathroom.
He got up slowly, nursing his stiff back, and hobbled into the bathroom.
After relieving himself, he looked at his reflection in the mirror, grimaced,
and then ran water over his face, trying to wake up.
He wet his thinning hair and rubbed some styling gel into it and then
slicked it back with a comb. If there was one thing Wayne Wilson could not
stand, it was to feel that he had lost control of what little hair he had. He
was unaware of the plastered-down look the gel created after it dried. He
brushed his teeth using paste from a tube he had picked up the week before at
the dollar store in the Largo Mall. He had shaved the night before; doing so in
the morning was just too much of a drag.
Wayne walked back into the bedroom; he could hear Francine puttering
around in the kitchen. Then he heard her turn on the TV to channel 9 for some
morning news. They no longer subscribed to a daily newspaper now that the St.
Petersburg Times had raised the price.
The paper was about half its previous size and twice as expensive. A
quick glance at how few advertisers they now had answered the question as to why
the cost had gone up, but the paper's problems were none of Wayne's and
Francine's concern. They were on a tight budget and simply could no longer
afford it, especially considering the miserable wages they were being paid at
the lab.
Wayne usually picked up the Sunday edition at the Hess station when he
gassed up their car on Sunday morning. CNN had reported that many of the major
newspapers around the country, the San Francisco Examiner, the Chicago Tribune,
the Boston Globe, and others, were on the verge of going bankrupt, victims of
television and the Internet and the weak economy. As one hip commentator had
put it, "Newspapers are so yesterday."
Wayne listened to the bad news coming from the TV as he dressed. Holdups,
drug busts, traffic accidents, pedophile arrests, rising prices,
unemployment...shit...maybe the weather report would be good. Nope, a
potential hurricane was brewing out over the Gulf.
But, as a recent sarcastic Bob Dylan sang stated, "It's all good."
He pulled on a clean pair of shorts and grabbed his black pants and
almost fell over when his left leg missed going into the trouser leg. He sat
down with a thud on the bed and pulled them up. Then he got up and retrieved
his pair of black Reeboks from the closet.
When he and Fran had started at the Benevolent Pharmaceutical Research
Center they had tried to dress well. But, it wasn't long until their dress and
grooming grew just as sloppy as that of the other employees. The fact was that
if one dressed well they were looked on with suspicion by their fellow employees
who were, for the most part, uncouth redneck Floridians.
Shortly after they had started, a year or so ago, Fran had overhead an
obese woman in a pair of ripped jeans and dirty tennis shoes remark to another
woman, "Huh! I wonder who they think they is comin' in here all dressed up like
some kinda exekertives, ur somethin'." After that, Fran and Wayne tried to
dress down and dumb down in their speech. Like, When in Rome...
Wayne padded into the living room and saw that Francine already had her
breakfast prepared and was sitting at the kitchen table eating and reading a
craft magazine. The meager fare on her plate reflected the latest diet she was
following. Fad diets came and went, but Francine's weight problems were a
constant.
Wayne plopped down on the couch and peeked out of the drapes as Scamp
jumped up and nuzzled his side. "Looks like a pretty day outside in spite of
the weather report, but I sure hate to go into that house of horrors. Thank God
the week will soon be over, and we can forget about it for a couple of days."
"Yeah, if jobs weren't so scarce we'd get out of there quick," Fran
answered. "Even so, I don't know how much longer I can stand to see those poor
animals mistreated."
"Yup, and those assholes have the nerve to say that they're doing that
stuff to help people. Who the fuck are they kidding? We all know it's only
about making money," Wayne answered.
"Yeah, just like the Bible says, 'the love of money is the root of all
evil'," Fran replied.
"Well, I don't love the stuff, maybe I do, but we sure could use some of
that evil to pay our electric bill," Wayne groused.
He pushed Scamp aside and got up and walked into the kitchen and put a
cup with a green tea bag into the microwave and stuck two slices of whole wheat
bread into the toaster. He was feeling really pissy this morning as he thought
about what they faced when they got to their job.
While his food was heating, he walked in and turned off the TV. "I can't
stand any more of this shit," he declared.
Fran didn't look up, she just kept eating her scrambled eggs and studying
her magazine. It was the same old routine every morning.
They drove down Ulmerton Road to Highway 19 and headed north. The volume
of traffic rivaled that in Los Angeles except that here in Florida most of the
drivers didn't observe the most fundamental rules of the road.
Yellow caution lights were invariably run as uptight drivers chattered on
cell phones and text messaged and swerved from lane to lane cutting off anyone
who got in their way. Although the use of turn signals was required by Florida
law, one never knew for sure what another driver was going to do. Often a car
would signal to turn and then would drive straight through an intersection, or
no signal would be given and then the car would swerve in front of oncoming
traffic. Horns would blow and obscene gestures would be exchanged. People
seemed enjoy venting their frustrations behind the wheel.
It was unnerving when a huge pickup truck with behemoth-sized tires
tailgated your car as the image of a bearded, baseball cap wearing driver
glared at you from your rearview mirror. It was a foolish driver, indeed, who
flipped off one of these modern-day barbarians; people had been rear ended or
shot for less than that. Sometimes though, one of these monsters would be
driven by a petite-looking young woman, and they could be more dangerous than
the men.
Aggression behind the wheel was practiced by all segments of the
population, all the way from unlicensed puberty-fueled teenagers to muddled
octogenarians trying to get to a supermarket. It was like something triggered a
psychological change when they got behind the wheel; maybe a sense of power that
was lacking once they were out of the cab and back in the middle of their
miserable lives.
Fatal accidents were a daily occurrence, and home-made memorials were
stuck in the ground beside many roads by grieving friends and relatives to
commemorate someone who had not survived the vehicular gauntlet.
County employees who operated the computers that controlled the timing of
the traffic lights throughout Pinellas County faced a daunting challenge as they
tried to figure out how to set the timing of the lights to minimize the wrecks
and carnage. No matter how carefully they tried, the wrecks kept piling up.
"I don't think some of those yo-yo's were properly breast fed when they
were infants," one of the computer operators remarked and immediately regretted
his comment as the woman sitting next to him shot him a dirty look. Remarks
like that could get a man written up or even terminated if his boss was a woman
with a chip on her shoulder or who was a lesbian who had a girl friend that took
offense.
"God, I hate this traffic," Wayne said as he swerved to avoid being side
swiped by a red Corvette convertible driven by a scantily-clad, big-breasted,
Ray-Ban-wearing blonde who was sucking on a mentholated Virginia Slims cigarette
while Bruce Springsteen was ramped up to ear-splitting levels. Obviously, she'd
come a long way, baby, and was born in the U.S.A. and felt that she was born to
run.
Wayne breathed a sign of relief as he turned west onto 580 headed for
Oldsmar. Fran visibly relaxed a bit, too. The traffic was still heavy, but at
least it was not as nightmarish as what they had just left on Highway 19.
"Looks like maybe we've survived another morning," Wayne said.
"Don't talk too soon; we haven't gotten there yet," Fran shot back as a
pickup truck towing a trailer filled with lawn-care equipment roared around
them.
* * * * *
They reached Oldsmar and drove down Tampa road for a couple of miles past
the big Oldsmar Swap Meet, and Wayne turned off onto a non-descript road that
led into an industrial park that was filled with galvanized metal-sided
warehouses. There were no cars or people evident at any of the unmarked
warehouses, and it was eerily quiet.
At the back of the complex, a road continued toward a large building in
the distance. Wayne drove down this road and past a sign on a post that read,
"Private Property ~ Authorized vehicles only."
The building was surrounded by a high cyclone fence that was topped with
razor wire, and Wayne stopped at the guard shack so he and Francine could show
their employee badges to the tough-looking uniformed guard who waved them
through.
An imposing gray cement-block building stood before them. It was immense
and stretched back covering several acres. It had few windows and they were at
about a six-foot level, and the glass was covered with dark plastic film. Black
iron bars covered them. A bronze plaque was affixed to the wall on the left side
of the heavy-oak front doors and read:
BENEVOLENT PHARMACEUTICAL RESEARCH CENTER
A black Mercedes sedan and two Lexus automobiles, one gold and one
silver, were parked in front. Wayne drove their eight-year old battered Buick
around to the side of the building to the employee parking area which was almost
filled with mostly old-looking vehicles. Here and there was a newer model
driven by a worker unfortunate enough to have been approved for financing by a
rapacious bank or credit union.
Their car was dirty and some small leaves were stuck around the
windshield wipers and trunk area, but Wayne kept putting off washing it thinking
that it might rain and wash the worst of the dust off, as well as providing some
much-needed water for their dried-out front lawn at home. Car washing and lawn
watering were not his forte. He parked, and he and Francine got out and said
hello to Tamara, a large black woman, who was also arriving.
"Hi, Tamara, how are ya this morning?" Francine called.
"I ain't doin' so good, ma back's a hurtin' und I sho don't look forerd
ta goin' inta this here dump fer the day, but jobs is scarcer then eggs after a
fox done bin in the hen house. I gots two kids at home whats gots ta eat und
the county done turned me down fer any mo food stamps; bastards sayed they don't
gots no more budge it, and since Clarence done run off wid that ho from down da
street, I gots ta keep werkin'. My po old mammy she stuck takin' care a ma
kids, but she cain't hold no job anyways 'cause she 'bout blind."
Well, this is certainly more information than I wanted, and it really
sets a positive tone for the day. Francine thought. She felt her mood darkening
even further. Sometimes she felt like she was in a dark room trying to find a
glimmer of light.
"I'm sorry, Tamara; I hope things get better for you," she replied.
"Thanks, ya all has yerselves a good day," Tamara said and lumbered off
toward the employee entrance in her baggy purple Goodwill dress as her
astonishingly large bottom undulated under the fabric. It looked like a couple
of gyrating watermelons supported by two moving railroad ties.
Wayne and Francine looked at each other and sighed. Another day in
paradise was starting. Wayne dropped his cigarette butt onto the blacktop and
stepped on it. Then he remembered that this entire facility was under video
surveillance, so he reached down and picked it up and dropped it into his
pocket. The last thing he needed this morning was an ass chewing by Bruno
Cardini, the brute in charge of maintenance and the terror of every wage slave
in the facility.
They stalled a couple of minutes to allow Tamara time to enter the
building and then walked to the door and swiped their employee badges through
the security reader. The door clicked and they went inside. Wayne's intestines
were rumbling; he needed to go to the bathroom.
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