The Big Blue Sky: Thirty-seven

Tehran. Eight-Thirty p.m. Amir and Sayed Armanjani were patriots. They believed in another Iran, one less adversarial to the West. But patriotism, at its core, is blinding. It is a volatile mix of personal narcissism, national egotism, manufactured sentimentality and emotionalism. The Armanjani bothers raged with their own desires for freedom, an exalted wish for Iran’s proper place in the world, fantasies of grand Persian heritage and the demands for justice against the regimes outrages against its own citizens.

Amir was the smallest of the pair. A studious sort, he was a bit on the overweight side, with a scruffy dark beard, thick curly hair and soft green Oriental eyes. He was a genius with computers, at least as much s the kid from a working class family could be, quite unlike the older Sayed, who was clean cut, self-confident, mechanically gifted and good with girls. Sayed looked after his excitable younger brother as best he could. It was that deep and unwavering relationship that bonded them so fully to the movement, and carried them unquestioning and unwavering to their mission.

They were from a good family. Their father taught economics at Azad University, dabbling a bit in politics as he neared retirement. He’d run on the reformist ticket for a parliamentary seat, losing to a more conservative candidate, who exploited his son’s “extremist” activities. Despite his own progressive views, he and the boys would erupt in blistering arguments over politics, religion and the regime. Their mother, a well-respected Gynecologist, was far more tolerant, always managing to diffuse each fight in favor of the fact that they were a family, which was the most important thing. It was less the substance of her words than the love and pleading in her pretty face that broke the hearts of all three men, and led them to understand they were carrying it all too far. That was how it was until the June riots, when everything changed. They moved out of the house, considering themselves more than protesters, but rather combatants in a war.

The brothers had given everything to the opposition, and were prepared to sacrifice everything, if necessary. Amir was on the street on that steamy June day in 2009 when an Iranian police bullet found a pretty young woman, Neda Agha-Soltan. As she bled to death before the world, her stormy and pleading eyes finding a nearby camera man, there could be no doubt this was absolute murder. He vowed at that moment, to fight the regime with his last breath. Sayed would not betray his brother, and vowed to remain at his side even at the cost of his own life.

Night climbed like a demon from the city, pulling itself from the umber shadows where it coward by day to meet the lavender sunset. Tehran’s ambient pollution, the burden of eight million souls and Mehrabad Airport all but shrouded the Alborz Mountains, rising behind the city, from view. Even here in Zafaraniya, among the wealthy homes, stylish boutiques and thoughtful parks, the city’s pollution was unrelenting. To the east, rush hour traffic along the Medarres Highway was only just beginning to abate. The opposing lines of pale headlights and scarlet tail lights appeared as through a dingy gray fog. It came as a cacophony of light and sound that blurred together, like shapes and colors blurred of form a reality upon an Impressionist’s canvas. There was a chill to the air, and a scattering of the brightest stars overhead.

There was a danger within that scene. The Iranian authorities hunted opposition activists relentlessly, calling them a fifth column working in concert with Western governments to weaken the Republic. The Iranian government shut down the internet when it suited them, blocked and interrupted networking sites, monitored cell phones and created false links to trap or harass the opposition. All of this to little effect until two US helicopters crashed in the desert and the specter of immediate war all but eradicated the opposition in favor of paranoiac nationalism. But overt State censorship is by its very nature self-defeating, and fully at odds with individual human nature, that is unless an individual can be tricked or cajoled or pressured into self-censorship. Freedom is best suppressed when suppressed by one’s own heart and mind.

The message had come only a short time before. ”Inshallah,” God Willing, was all the text message said, from their unknown contact. It came to Amir’s phone as he was buying bread at a neighborhood market. He looked at it oddly for a long fluid moment before hurrying down the street to the third floor one-room apartment he and Sayed had rented since being approached for this mission almost a year before, while the government’s crackdown was still uncoordinated and chaotic. An acquaintance from the University approached them with a promise that they would play a historic part in bringing down the regime and bringing true democracy to Iran. The bothers accepted immediately despite the dangers and within a month had begun training at a safe house very near the spot Neda was killed.

The brothers only knew their part of the plan. They had no clue to the broader scheme. Not that it would have mattered. Not that it would have mattered that their action would bring the country to the brink of war, and perhaps beyond. The costs in blood and lives was inconsequential, as once they resigned their own lives to fate everyone else’s life was negotiable as well.

Amir hurried down the street, and had just reached the flat when two Mercedes police vans rounded the corner. He dove inside and sprinted up the stairs as they screeched to a halt in front of the flat. The rear doors of the vans burst open, disgorging a dozen heavily armed VEVAK commandoes in full battle armor. They stormed into the building, charging up the stairs, tipped by an anonymous source that two would-be terrorists were plotting an attack.

Sayed was at the window, smoking a cigarette, his thoughts lost somewhere among the hazy lights of the city, when Amir burst through the door. The stark and nearly empty room, lit by a single bare light, made him appear forlorn and tragic somehow. He turned, startled at the sound, framed by the window and the city. Amir was holding the phone, fighting for breath, fighting for a clear thought. Sayed knew immediately and leapt to his feet. Amir was already scooping up the laptop from the kitchen counter.

“The Police,” he managed somehow, to his dumbstruck and frozen brother. Amir already had the laptop open and had pressed the power button. There was a connection cable on the counter. Amir pushed the flat end into the USB port on the side of the computer and looked again to Sayed, still staring at him.

“They’re coming,” Amir snapped. “Get the fucking gun!”

There was a grenade in the cupboard. Amir stuffed it in his pocket and followed Sayed into the hall. Two commandoes appeared at the end of the hall. Sayed chased them back with two poorly aimed shots and followed Amir up to the roof.

“Send the signal!” Sayed cried. Amir was already in the farthest corner of the roof, on his knees behind a metal vent. His handsome young face was awash in the pale blue-white glow of the laptop’s thin screen. His fingers weren’t working properly. Fear and excitement made them do dumb things that be instead blamed on the computer.

“Not taking my fucking password!”

Near the door Sayed could hear the VEVAK commandoes on the landing below. Chambering a round in the Iranian-made Zoaf pistol, he threw open the door and emptied the clip into the stairwell, turning his head away as he fired. With the last round he shoved the door closed and dropped to his belly as the anticipated storm of AK round chopped through the wooden door. Showered with splinters and bits of wood, Sayed dropped the empty clip and immediately shoved his last full clip into the handle. There was no chance for escape, and no illusion of it any longer. The brothers would die upon that roof. No it was simply a matter of revenge for Sayed and Amir.

“Sayed!”

“Hold them back!”

Amir took a breath and tapped in the eight letter password one last time, this time getting it right. A single small box appeared that said simply:

LAUNCH PROGRAM
YES. NO. CANCEL

Without hesitation Amir slid the cursor over and clicked YES. Behind him the VEVAK fire tore the door from its hinges and hammered it to one side. It was all Sayed could do to roll clear. He came up a few feet away, already aiming the pistol at the door. He looked to his brother, who gave a thumbs up without looking, his interest fully into the task at hand.

Amir thought he might scream at how slow the upload was. Time was almost at an end, at least for him and Sayed. That much he was certain of. He could only pray that this would begin the end of the regime as well, and heralding the start of a new and democratic Iran. The gunfire was deafening and close now, as his brother exchanged point blank fire with the VEVAK.

DOWNLOAD COMPLETE

The screen read, with a single command box.

EXECUTE

Amir clicked the box and looked to Sayed. He drew a grenade from his pocket and slid a finger through the firing pin. Sayed, down to his final bullets, realized there was little need to fight any longer. He stood and took aim with his final shots. They went high as a commando stepped into the open and fired a burst from the shoulder. Hot AK rounds stitched a line from Sayed’s hip, shattering his pelvis, across his body, eviscerating him in a spray of blood and gore. Amir spun around, independent of his legs, his final vision of the lights of Tehran and the mountains beyond.

The commandoes were through the door now and already firing at Amir. He screamed as Sayed was cut down. His cry carried a mixture of anguish and bottomless hate. He was still crying as he pulled the pin on the grenade and held it in his lap. Suddenly one of the VEVAK commandoes was over him, leveling a weapon. The man’s eyes went wide with terror seeing the grenade in Amir’s hand. It was the last thing he would see as it went off an instant later.

The American President feared another Sarajevo 1914, in which a peasant boy stepped from a crowd, a seemingly random act. But there was nothing random on that June day and nothing random about the death of the two brothers on that Tehran rooftop.

The Big Blue Sky: Thirty-six

The wind had come up with a vengeance. It howled off the lake, driven beneath deepening clouds, whipping leaves and branches against the two men crouched in the brush opposite the small house on Grand Island. Their MP-4 Assault rifles covered the small white house, ready as the third man returned from reconnoitering the seemingly deserted place. He dipped back into the brush beside his comrades and gave a satisfied grin. The men wore tan canvas clothing, camouflage hunting pants, black gloves and dark ski caps, nothing that would distinguish them from the weekend hunters that flocked to the area each autumn, except these men were not hunting deer.

They relied fully upon the good government training of their former military careers. There was, however, a fundamental difference. There was a vast philosophical difference between the military and the business of war. Not that the former could not be perverted, if wielded imprudently, but among the ranks of paid for soldiers, in which finance not freedom was paramount, military discipline became blunted. Camaraderie was not expressed beneath a flag and history and shared community, but through something that needed to be invented and manufactured, and which at its very core was corrupted by money and greed.

“He’s inside,” said the third man, in hushed tones. “He’s waiting in the front room, set up on the floor in the north east corner. He’s prone behind a leather chair with a blanket over him. Looks like he’s got a twelve gauge with a pretty narrow kill zone. I’ll breach the back door and throw a flash bang. You two enter the front door and take him out. Clear?”

The two men nodded and waited for their comrade to cross to the side of the house. As he moved cautiously around to the back they slipped across the yard to the front step. Through a rip in a window shade they could see the figure on the floor. The head and shoulders were hidden from view behind the brown leather chair. The shotgun barrel extended out from the chair, the twin barrels propped upon a hand full of stacked books. The figure’s short legs extended along the floor in a pair of faded brown corduroy slacks, protruding from beneath a thin black and red checkered fleece throw, where they ending in a pair of big rubber galoshes.

Upon closer inspection something about the figure just wasn’t right. It took a moment to sink in for the two men. The galoshes on one foot were cocked at an unnatural angle. The toe of the other was bent under the rubber boot in such a way that the toes would have to have been broken completely. The arch of the figure’s back was far too severe. It was then they noticed the gas canisters near the fireplace, the nozzles opened completely.

“Smell gas?” one of the men breathed in deeply, catching just a whiff of the sickly sweet aroma of propane gas.

They shared a fatal glance and realized they were absolutely helpless. They had been led into a trap and had taken the bait fully. At that moment the man at the rear door slammed through the door, flinging a flash bang grenade into the house in the very same motion. It was barely out of his hand, momentum still carrying him across the small kitchen when he too smelled the gas. It was too late. The grenade exploded, and with it the house, disintegrating in a massive fireball. It thundered across the bay and turned heads five miles away.

The Big Blue Sky: Thirty-five

A mile and half to the Southeast, as the crow flies, lays the little town of Munising. Wrapped around the end of the bay, the town was hardly more than a smudge of pale color against the forested hills of the Hiawatha National Forest. State Road 28 cut a pathway along the coast from Marquette through the town, running east towards Mackinac and Saute St. Marie. Hundreds of miles of unrelenting wilderness separated the town from those destinations. Twenty-eight ran past the navigator restaurant, a pleasant little diner overlooking the bay and Grand Island beyond.

Molly Karaman and her partner had left Washington during the night, flying into Green Bay on a chartered American Airlines flight. It took the better part of four hours to reach Munising. As they found a table looking out across the bay neither agent took much note of the motor boat bumping and bouncing towards the island.

Molly’s partner was a rookie named Charlie Moon, a full blooded Chippewa native from Duluth. He was an energetic sort, tall and powerfully built, with short black hair and exotic green eyes. Moon had graduated from Annapolis, doing a tour in Iraq in 2002 before joining the FBI. Molly didn’t look upon him as rookie. She knew only too well from her time in the Mideast what he had gone through, and knew he was more experienced, and better prepared for a fight than half the more senior agents in the Bureau. He was competent and bright, and she was happy to have him along.

Molly opened her laptop and turned it as an old waitress limped over with pot of coffee and a pair of menus tucked under one arm. Her white orthopedic shoes squeaked slightly along the tiled floor, in an odd rhythm to her limp. A pen was tucked behind one ear, and half covered behind shoulder length gray hair, which was more akin to a dry tumbleweed than a hairstyle. But she had a warm sincere smile, and Molly was instantly endeared to, as if she was long lost relation.

“Get you kids some coffee?” she asked, already reaching for Charlie’s cup. It was turned upside down on the saucer. She turned it over and filled the cup with the strong steaming brown liquid. As she reached for Molly’s cup the waitress happened to notice the Federal badge on her belt.

“Say, how many of you folks they got up here?”

“Sorry?” said Molly, turning from the computer screen.

“Federal agents and such?” the waitress repeated.

“Why do you ask?” said Moon.

The old waitress shrugged, and laid the menus down on the table. “Half dozen fellas in here yesterday. Said they were up here to fish, but I watched ‘em leave. They were parked over there, just down the hill, with all this military type stuff in the back.”

“Lot’s of militia and survivalists up in these parts,” Charlie observed, while subtly pressing the issue a bit.

“Naw,” she said. “They were talking about that fella from Marquette. I heard some, but they shut up real quick when I came over to take their order.”

“Stood out that much, huh?” Molly asked.

The waitress laughed. “Get a lot of characters come in here, but not many that pay with a corporate credit card. Worst part is, they ate a ton and had me running for this and that, which don’t fly so good with this bad hip. And then, don’t ya know, they didn’t even tip!”

“Maybe you still have a copy of that receipt?” asked Molly.

“Think I just might.”

The waitress returned a minute later with a carbon copy of the receipt. As Molly and Charlie looked it over carefully the waitress explained she didn’t normally run carbon imprints of credit cards like folks used to once upon a time, but she didn’t much like those guys and thought it prudent to be on the safe side, just in case the card came up stolen. Molly held her blackberry over the receipt and snapped a couple of pictures before handing the receipt back. The company name at the top of the receipt was light and hard to read, still Molly could make out the letters well enough. It read: FIRSTTHRUST, INC.

“I was right, wasn’tI” said the waitress. “Something wasn’t right about those guys!”

“Molly smiled sympathetically. “For one, I waited tables in college, and I hate people who don’t tip.