Free Easy Day for the Dead by Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin Page B

okay.
    Then a third soldier came running out of the same building as the first two, heading in their direction. Again Alex imagined being concrete, but Pancho was a bigger piece of concrete than Alex, and the soldier tripped over him. The soldier picked himself up to see what he’d tripped over, and looked directly at Pancho. The soldiercoughed nervously and raised his weapon in Pancho’s direction. Alex, Pancho, and John fired at the soldier, and bullets from their sound-suppressed rifles drilled him back into the ground.
    With the noise of the sirens, Alex hoped their shots hadn’t been heard. Alex spotted a wooden walkway raised off the ground and dragged the soldier’s body toward it while Pancho and John covered him. As Alex stuffed the body under the walkway, it occurred to him that if Leila was still alive, she might have abandoned them. Then it occurred to him: Two hundred klicks is a long walk to Abadi Abad .
    The SEALs continued until they reached the center of the compound, where Alex noticed a cylindrical metal container standing two stories tall, mounted on a platform several feet off the ground. The two-story tank looked to be twelve feet in diameter. Alex looked at John, who smiled. Alex smiled, too. The space between the ground and the tank was ample for the atomic backpack bomb. While John set the bomb under the tank, Alex and Pancho covered the surrounding area. The same two Iranian soldiers from before exited their building and ran past the Outcasts. More soldiers poured out of the buildings. From the northwest part of the compound, more soldiers drove out in military jeeps and trucks. The soldiers on foot and soldiers in the vehicles spread out into the desert.
    John stopped working on planting the nuke and turned around. “We’ve got three hours before we all end up in a four-mile-high mushroom cloud.”
    â€œAnd if the Revolutionary Guard tamper with the bomb before then?” Pancho asked.
    â€œBoom,” John said.
    Alex looked at his Rolex watch: 0203 hours. It was time to get the hell out before getting vaporized—literally. The initial fireball would cover much of the lab compound. If Alex and his buddies were still around, they’d become particles of fallout along with everything else.
    The Revolutionary Guard swarmed the surrounding desert likeangry ants. Even if the Outcasts succeeded in creeping past all of them, creeping would take hours. Alex and his men could use the uniform of the soldier they killed, but it was too small and that wouldn’t disguise all three of them. Alex looked around for other options. His eyes stopped at the northwest, where vehicles had driven out of, probably their motor pool. Alex pointed, and then made a walking gesture toward it.
    Pancho led them through shadows and behind walls until they reached the wall surrounding the motor pool. Alex and John stood guard while Pancho jumped up, grabbed the top of the wall, and pulled himself over it, taking a chunk from the top of the wall with him— maybe it would’ve been faster if Pancho had walked through the wall . Alex climbed over next. On the other side, Pancho stood guard as Alex came down. The motor pool sat empty except for a dark olive drab truck. Alex helped stand guard until John joined them. Then the three crept to the truck.
    Alex and John stood guard while Pancho tried the door handle on the driver’s side to see if it was unlocked. The door came open. Pancho slipped in. Alex checked the passenger side. It was unlocked, too. Alex hopped in and climbed into the back. John rode shotgun.
    Because there was no key in the ignition and none hidden nearby, Pancho pulled out his Mission MPF1-Ti knife and flicked open the four-inch titanium blade. He inserted the tip of the blade into the ignition key hole, then used his herculean strength to ram the blade down deep. Then he twisted the handle. Something inside the ignition snapped, and the engine started. The