Blood Oath Read Online Free PDF Page B

Dylan, for instance. She should have known her place. “Whores,” Khaled typed. “The world has turned all women into whores.”
    The world was screwed up. Anyone could see that. But Khaled actually seemed to know why. He explained to Dylan how all of his problems were a result of the forces aligned against men like them. The war in Iraq was a ploy by international bankers. Just like 9/11, the government rigged the whole thing.
    Which was also why Dylan couldn’t get a recording contract—the music business was completely controlled by the same people. And of course his father was hoarding his trust fund. The bankers wanted to keep it, to suck it dry.
    It all fell into place. It really wasn’t Dylan’s fault. He wasn’t quite sure how it all added up, but he liked the bottom line: he deserved better, and someone had conspired to take it from him. There had to be some reason a guy like him was stocking candy and Coke machines for a living.
    Some people were meant for better things than menial labor, Khaled said. He had a plan, and Dylan could be part of it.
    Khaled’s father had multiple businesses contracting with the U.S. Army. In Kuwait, Khaled promised, Dylan could be making as much as a hundred grand a year, just for driving a truck like he did now. Everyone else was profiting from the war, Khaled said. Why shouldn’t Dylan get a little of the action?
    Dylan knew it was time for a life change. His once toned gym muscles were going soft, and his hair was getting thin. His band had broken up. His boss had knocked his hours back, and he tried to buy a girl a drink in a bar in Newport Beach a week ago, only to find he didn’t have enough in his wallet for her fourteen-dollar appletini.
    What the hell, he thought. There was nothing tying him down. The closest thing he had to a relationship was a favorite stripper at Spearmint Rhino. Khaled sent him a plane ticket and an advance on the first month’s paycheck.
    His great adventure in Kuwait didn’t start at all like he planned.
    He wandered around the Kuwait City airport, jet-lagged and clueless, surrounded by men and women wearing long robes. One of the locals spotted him, broke away from a pack of his friends, and approached.
    Dylan was nervous. This was just after those contractors in Baghdad were kidnapped, and he had a frightening vision of his own head rolling on the floor in some Jihadi terrorist’s garage.
    Then he recognized the guy behind the beard.
    Khaled was wrapped in traditional robes, covered in hair. If he hadn’t smiled and said Dylan’s name, Dylan never would have put it together.
    He embraced Dylan warmly, even though his friends all scowled. He escorted Dylan to a new apartment, which came with the job. Khaled couldn’t stay and talk—he was running his father’s shipping concerns in Kuwait—but he promised they’d catch up later.
    After a month, Dylan was considering chucking the whole thing and heading home.
    First off, he was getting a lot less than a hundred grand a year. The big money was for the people willing to work in Baghdad and risk getting blown into stew meat. His paycheck worked out to about what he was making back in the States.
    But instead of loading up candy machines, he had the worst job on the base—mortuary support. Which was a fancy name for undertaker. Dead bodies would show up all day and all night at Camp Wolf. He was responsible for taking the coffins—sorry, “transfer cases,” the army called them—and stacking them, then driving them over to the airfield, where they’d be shipped back home.
    Dylan realized he was in Hell. Roasting in the heat, then freezing in cold storage, surrounded by corpses every day.
    When Khaled finally got back in touch, Dylan was pissed off and ready to go back to the States.
    Khaled tried to soothe him. Dylan didn’t want to listen. He invited Dylan to his apartment. Dylan was hesitant, until Khaled mentioned beer.
    Khaled sent his Bentley for Dylan. At his massive, luxury