Easy Day for the Dead

by Howard E. Wasdin

  Alex enjoyed the soup. It was masterfully made, but also just being with Cat had elevated Alex’s sensations. On the downside, he felt as if he were softening as an operator. “You ruined me,” he said.

  “What? When did I do that?”

  “As an operator. You ruined me in Switzerland.”

  “You kissed me first.”

  “It wasn’t part of the mission.”

  “You make me feel alive,” she said.

  “You make me forget things.”

  “That doesn’t sound so good.”

  “Things that don’t matter.”

  “You know we could walk away from this mission, if we wanted to.”

  “This mission still matters.”

  “We could.” She slid her finger around the rim of her glass.

  “Don’t say that, please. Don’t push me away tonight.”

  Cat let it go.

  For the main course, Alex enjoyed beef Stroganoff. Cat tried the steamed Kamchatka crab Romanov-style with champagne sauce and salmon caviar. Although it didn’t sound good to Alex, she fed him a bite with her fork, and he liked it. From his fork, Cat sampled the Stroganoff.

  For dessert, Cat ordered the Composition of Russian delights: Russian mille-feuille, baklava, berry kissel, and lemon vodka sorbet. Alex ate Pavlova cake with berries—meringue cloud with Chantilly cream and berries. They ate more of each other’s dessert than they ate of their own.

  Alex paid the check. “What would you like to do tonight?”

  “You know what I like?” Cat asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “Your eyes.”

  He took her hand in his and didn’t let go. Even when they returned to their room, turned the lights on, and gazed into each other’s eyes, he didn’t let go. Alex took her other hand. She kissed him.

  He pulled away so he could stare into her eyes.

  “I wish . . .” she said.

  “You wish?”

  “You’re easy on the eyes.”

  “That’s not what you were going to say.”

  She let it go and kissed him again.

  Alex stopped kissing her and kicked off a shoe. Giggling, Cat kicked hers off, and the shoe hit the far wall. Laughing, they kicked off their remaining shoes together, hitting the far wall. He led her to the bed, and they stood next to it. Snow continued to float down from the sky outside their window. They kissed. He finally released her hands to unbutton her blouse. She stripped him down to his silk shorts, and he stripped her down to her bra and panties.

  Cat giggled.

  “What’s so funny?” Alex asked.

  “You still have your socks on.”

  He smiled. “So do you.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No.”

  Alex stripped off her bra and panties, and Cat removed his silk shorts. They kept their socks on and lay in bed embracing each other. At some point during the heat of passion, they lost their socks. Afterward, they showered together and made love under the hot water spray. When they returned to bed, they made love once more. Morning came quickly, and Alex ordered breakfast in bed. Shortly after Alex put the empty dishes in the hall, he and Cat made love again. Finally, they fell asleep in each other’s arms.

  When Alex awoke, it was Friday evening. Cat’s side of the bed was empty, and he heard the shower running. After she finished in the bathroom, Alex showered, too. Then they left their room to eat dinner in the hotel at L’Europe. The spacious hall featured high illuminated arches above balconies that filled the length of the hall. An enormous stained-glass window, Apollo riding in his chariot, covered the end of the hall. On a stage below the window, two musicians played Tchaikovsky, one on harp and the other on a baby grand piano. More stained-glass windows served as skylights that ran the length of the ceiling. Potted plants added color to the restaurant. Alex and Cat ate the gourmet menu for two: truffle-flavored scrambled egg inside an egg topped with salmon caviar, American prime beef tenderloin, and cake layered with milk chocolate and berries. In spite of the exquisite surroundings and delicious meal, it was merely foreplay. Alex and Cat hurried back to their room and made love again.

  Sunday, the weather warmed above freezing, and since Alex and Cat needed pictures and souvenirs to strengthen their identities as tourists, they ventured out and took a walk through the Winter Palace Square before touring churches under onion-shaped domes. In one of the churches, Alex and Cat sat on a pew. He closed his eyes and said a silent prayer. I’m sorry I was angry at You for all these years. After he said amen, a burden seemed to lift from his shoulders, and he felt lighter.

  Later, they took a boat ride on one of the city’s canals. In the evening, they attended a ballet in the Bolshoi Zia, the main hall of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, where Tchaikovsky had conducted.

  Monday, the temperature dropped to its lowest point and snow fell constantly. Alex and Cat kept warm inside the Hermitage Museum, created by Catherine the Great. Currently her museum held more paintings than any other museum in the world.

  Although Alex and Cat took more than enough tourist pictures and purchased enough souvenirs, they needed weapons. Tuesday morning, Alex and Cat woke up at 0500 and before 0700 entered a nearby hotel. The lobby was crowded with people checking out and departing for the day. Alex carried a newspaper under his left arm as part of his identification and rolled his black Samsonite suitcase with his right hand. From inside the hotel, Alex spotted a man outside who was rolling an identical black Samsonite suitcase with his left hand and squeezing a gray raincoat under his right arm. The man entered through the front lobby door and walked toward Alex and Cat. Likewise, Alex and Cat walked toward him. Alex and the man bumped into each other.

  “I’m sorry,” the contact apologized. Alex knew he worked for the U.S. government, but Alex didn’t know which of its alphabet soup agencies.

  “It’s okay,” Alex said. It seemed like an innocent exchange, but they were exchanging bona fides.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  The contact reached down with his right hand and grabbed Alex’s suitcase handle before he shifted his jacket to his left hand. Alex reached down with his left hand, grabbed the contact’s suitcase handle, then shifted his newspaper to his right hand. They walked past each other as if nothing happened, and nobody seemed the wiser. Now Alex had weapons, ammo, grenades, flash-bangs, the divining rod, and the rest of their mission equipment.

  “You’ve got that look again,” Cat whispered.

  “What look is that?” Alex asked.

  “That scary look—like you’re about to kill someone.”

  “Day after tomorrow—Thursday.”

  36

  * * *

  Wednesday afternoon, Major Khan stood with General Tehrani outside on the oil tanker as it sailed at full speed—sixteen knots an hour—for St. Petersburg. The general appeared about to puke as the tanker pitched and rolled in the sea. General Tehrani tightened his jacket to protect himself from the stinging cold as he spoke on his cell phone to his superior in Tehran. “I contacted the Ground Forces of the Russian Federation, but they won’t send anyone to meet us tomorrow in St. Petersburg—not one person. It’s an outrage, sir!”

  General Tehrani listened. His face looked green, and he belched.

  “I know we’ve had some tense times with Russia,” General Tehrani said, “but I looked the other way when they persecuted our brothers in Georgia. After the fall of the USSR, I established better relations with Russia—even purchased weapons from them. I agreed with their opposition to Turkey’s regional influence, and I sided with Russia and China to oppose U.S. influence in Central Asia. And this is how the communists repay me? America is the devil, not me!”

  General Tehrani shook his head as he listened to his superior on the phone. He burped again and swallowed hard.

  “I was hoping you might be more successful than me in reminding Russia that they owe me,” General Tehrani said.

  General Tehr
ani listened, but something was wrong.

  “Hello?” General Tehrani said. “Come in. Hello?!” He frantically fidgeted with his phone. “Damnit—I lost them! Damn!” He staggered to the side of the ship and vomited over the side.

  37

  * * *

  Before sunrise on Thursday morning, the snow fell as if a giant dump truck had unloaded its bed on St. Petersburg. Alex and Cat parked their Mercedes near the docks. As they walked to the ships it looked to Alex like a scene out of World War II. A large warehouse had obviously burned down within the last few weeks and those adjacent to it had been severely damaged. Steel girders leaned at extreme angles and piles of charred rubble took on the appearance of white pyramids. It looked like a war zone.

  They surreptitiously boarded an oil tanker tied to the pier. The crew had unloaded the vessel days ago; now it was empty. Unlike other ships, where the bridge was located near the bow, the oil tanker’s bridge was located at the stern. Alex and Cat broke into the bridge and closed the door on the freezing weather behind them. Inside the ship, the bridge was still cold, but not as cold as outside in the wind. Windows spanned the 180 degrees in front of the bridge, giving Alex and Cat a panoramic view of ship’s lights on Neva Bay in the Gulf of Finland, leading out to the Baltic Sea.

  The sun that leaked through the clouds and snow warmed up the bridge, but it didn’t warm up the cold tubes of energy gel Alex and Cat ate for lunch. A ship neared the pier, but it wasn’t General Tehrani’s. Again and again, Alex and Cat became anxious at a ship’s arrival, only to find out it wasn’t the general’s oil tanker. Although General Tehrani’s ship was supposed to arrive at noon, it was late.

  As the sky became darker, another ship approached the pier and stopped in the bay while a tugboat brought it the rest of the distance to the pier. Cat handed Alex the binoculars. Finally! The vessel was the Iranian oil tanker, General Tehrani’s ship. A dockworker helped tie the ship to the pier, and the ship’s deckhands lowered the gangway from the stern. Soon the Venezuelan crew scurried off the ship—they wouldn’t be offloading oil tonight. Alex worried that one of the crew might be General Tehrani in disguise, but with the divining rod attached to Alex’s combat vest, he picked up the first beep in his earphone. “General Tehrani is on board,” Alex said.

  Alex and Cat put on their black balaclavas and readied their sound-suppressed AKMS assault rifles. “There’s a guard standing just outside the bridge,” Cat said. “He’s got an AK.”

  Alex slipped out of the bridge on the side away from the Guard. He rested his rifle on a metal lip protruding from the ship and took aim through his scope at the upper torso of the man. Alex exhaled, and in the natural pause before he inhaled, he pulled the trigger slowly until he heard the shot and felt the recoil. The Guard fell, but he stood up again, and Alex shot him in the upper body again. This time, the Guard didn’t stand up.

  Another Guard stood inside a passageway near the gangway. Alex moved to a different location to enable a clearer shot. This time, Alex aimed higher, and after the shot, the Guard went down.

  Alex motioned to Cat, Let’s go. She exited the bridge behind him, and they descended the stairs to the main deck, where they surveyed the general’s ship once more. There seemed to be no more shooters outside waiting for them, so Alex and Cat jogged across the gangway of their ship, hurried onto the pier, and ran across the general’s gangway and onto his ship. The divining rod beeped more frequently. They were nearing the general.

  Alex took the point position and Cat covered his six. Alex put a bullet through the head of the fallen Guard in the passageway. The head wobbled, but the rest of the man’s body remained still. Better safe than sorry. Alex stepped over his body and into the ship’s interior. To Alex’s right was a metal bulkhead, and in front was the passageway that led to the port side of the ship. Alex turned left, pulled on a metal bar, and opened the hatch before he proceeded aft through its passageway. To his left was the starboard bulkhead, and to his right was an open door leading to the living spaces for the crew—it looked empty. Alex didn’t have enough shooters to clear each room, so he just passed the open door—following the beeps on his divining rod. The beeps sounded in staccato as if Alex were right on top of the general, but he was nowhere in sight. To Alex’s right was a closed door leading to the crew spaces. Alex expected General Tehrani to be on the deck above, where the ship’s officers berthed, but he had learned to expect the unexpected. He quietly turned the doorknob and opened the door. Creeping inside, he searched the berthing area with its racks standing three high, like bunk beds. The deeper Alex and Cat searched into the crew’s quarters, the less frequently the divining rod beeped. General Tehrani must have been directly above or below them.

  Alex took Cat out of the berthing and moved aft. At the ladder, Alex went up. As he reached the top of the ladder, he heard shots below. Cat was shooting it out with someone. Alex looked down and saw someone near the ladder below the crew’s deck, but he couldn’t see if the person was armed. Alex was now near the galley and mess on the officers’ deck. From inside the galley on Alex’s deck someone fired shots, missing. Alex fired back, missing the shooter. Shots rang out from the man near the ladder below the crew’s deck, and when the rounds hit the ladder next to Alex, they sparked. Alex ducked into the galley to avoid the man in the ladderway and waited for the man in the galley to poke his head out again. Meanwhile, he was cut off from Cat on the deck below him.

  When the man in the galley poked his head up, Alex didn’t miss. He snapped off two shots and saw that at least one tore through the top of the man’s head. Blood spurted high in the air as the man fell. Alex realized that the beeps had become less frequent. The general wasn’t above the crew’s deck; he was below. Alex returned to the stairwell as the man below the crew’s deck was climbing up. Alex wanted to shoot him—if Cat stuck her head out a little, Alex’s shot would miss her; if she stuck her head out a lot, he’d hit her. If he didn’t take the shot, the man climbing the ladder might take her down with a shot from behind while she was shooting it out with someone else. “Shooting down!” Alex called before firing. Alex’s round cracked the man through the top of his head. The man in the ladderway made a clanging sound as he and his weapon crashed to the deck below.

  No more shooting sounds came from Cat’s position. Either she’d popped the bad guys or they’d popped her. “Alex coming down!” Alex shouted before he descended the ladder to the crew’s deck. Cat appeared. Behind her a bullet-riddled man in a green uniform with an AK lay motionless.

  “You okay?” Cat asked.

  “Yeah. You good?”

  Cat nodded. “Take us to the general.”

  She sounded positive and Alex hoped she could remain upbeat—their situation would probably become worse before it got better. Although Alex was stationary, the general’s beeping became even less frequent. “The general is escaping.” Alex returned to the stairs and smoothly descended them until he stepped on the man with a bullet hole through his skull, lying next to a large storage compartment. General Tehrani’s signal beeped faster. Alex glided down another flight of steps, landing on the engine room deck. He paid attention to his earpiece to find out if he was heading in the correct direction. The beeping rate increased. Alex could hear that Cat was above him, engaged in a firefight with Guards on an upper deck.

  From the engine room, a Revolutionary Guard peeked around the side of a post covered with gauges, pipes, and control panels. He shot at Alex. Alex returned fire. Alex’s shot hit the post but missed the Guard. None of the Guard’s body showed to the left of the post, but he overcompensated by allowing his leg to stick out on the right side of the post. Alex drilled the Guard’s leg near the kneecap. The soldier yelped and fell to the deck, exposing himself from his leg to his gut. Alex tattooed him in the gut with three shots. The Guard grunted.

  From behind a labyrinth of pipes in the engine room flashed three AKs, their shots striking all around Alex—deck, bulkhead, and overhead. Alex took cover behind a
bulkhead and waited for a lull. He needed to fight through the Guards in order to advance to the general’s position. Alex switched to full auto, lay on the deck to vary his location, and when the three Guards’ shooting slowed, Alex looked around the corner and sprayed about ten rounds at the maze of pipes they had fired from. Water sprayed from bullet holes in pipes.

  In spite of Alex having delivered what he thought was an effective counterattack, three Guards answered Alex with a hurricane of lead. Alex hid behind the metal bulkhead, but the onslaught was so furious, he wanted to hide under the ship. When the firing eased up, Alex leaped to his feet, turned around the corner, and unleashed ten more rounds on full auto, emptying his magazine. More water sprayed, and the Guards stopped firing. Once again Alex took cover behind the bulkhead. “Changing mags,” Alex informed Cat, then reloaded.

  “Cat coming down.” Her footsteps on the metal steps echoed from the ladderway above.

  Before Alex could enter the engine room, another storm of lead punched the bulkhead and surrounding area. What the hell? Did I miss all of them? Are these reinforcements? Meanwhile, the beeps in his earpiece slowed. “General Tehrani is getting away.” Alex grabbed a grenade from his vest, pulled the pin, and let the spoon fly. “Frag out!” He cooked three seconds off the five-second fuse before giving it an underhand toss into the engine room. Boom! “Moving forward,” Alex said.

  “Moving forward,” Cat repeated.

  Alex shuffled forward into the engine room as efficiently as possible. If he went too fast and missed a shooter, he could die. Efficiency trumped speed. Smooth is fast.

  He searched behind the labyrinth of pipes and found three Guards lying on the deck. Two more writhed on the ground. Alex shot each of the writhing Guards in the head. A bloody Guard sat with his back against the wall and his AK rifle on his lap. He raised his hands in surrender, but Alex didn’t have time for prisoners—or tricks. Alex shot him in the forehead.