Pandora's Grave (Shadow Warriors)

by Stephen England

  “No other Israelis?”

  A grim smile creased the director’s face. “They obeyed their government’s injunction to stay out of Iran.”

  “Our citizens didn’t? Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “Because they usually don’t.”

  “Wait a minute, director,” Harry said, suddenly holding up his hand. “You said the team was very small. What’s happened?”

  Director Lay opened his desk drawer and took out another folder, handing it across. “That’s why you’re here. They’ve disappeared.”

  Harry’s only reaction was raised eyebrows. “Indeed.”

  “They disappeared five days ago,” the director nodded. “The whole team. Every last one of them. It’s all in the folder there. Every blessed thing we know about it.”

  Harry opened the folder, taking out a couple of glossy photographs, clearly enhanced from a satellite.

  “The first one is from the 13th. Because of the number of Americans in the team, we were doing a daily satellite overpass of the camp. Just to make sure nothing happened to them.”

  “But something did.”

  Lay nodded. “Correct. The first photograph, digitally enhanced from the KH-13 overpass, shows a bustling camp,” he noted, referencing the Key Hole spy satellite. “Almost everyone is present in the photo. One of the Americans, Joel Mullins, is missing, but on thermal scan, we picked up a heat signature from inside one of the tents.”

  “So, he was probably inside.”

  “Likely. Now take a look at the second photo, taken on the 14th. What do you see?”

  “Nothing,” Harry said slowly. “No people, no tents, nothing. It’s all gone.” He looked up. “It’s been five days now. Anything?”

  “Yes.” The DCIA pulled a third photograph from his desk and handed it over. “Take a look at this.”

  Harry did as he was told. His eyes opened wide. “What on earth are they doing there?”

  “That’s what I need you to find out.”

  1:05 P.M.

  A beach

  Atlantic City, New Jersey

  “Cut that out!” Thomas Parker spluttered, waking up abruptly from his nap as water splashed over him.

  The thirty-six-year-old New York native looked up at the young woman standing over him, at the now empty bucket in her hands, water dripping suspiciously from its rim. Mischief glinted in her dark eyes. She made a quick motion as though to toss it at him, giggling uncontrollably as he rolled off the blanket into the sand.

  “I said, cut it out, Julie!” he protested, the sand sticking to his wet chest.

  “Are you going to make me?” she laughed, dancing away from him as he grabbed for her ankle.

  He leaned back, slicking his wet brown hair back from his forehead, gazing up at his girlfriend. “No, probably not. But sooner or later—” he shook his finger at her. “You’ll see.”

  “I’ll see what?”

  At that moment, his cellphone rang and whatever his reply might have been was forever lost as he reached for it. Words were blinking on-screen: SECURE CONNECTION. It had to be Kranemeyer. And that didn’t bode well for his plans for the evening. He stood and glanced over at Julie.

  “This is private,” he warned her, rapidly tapping in the code sequence for the encrypted line.

  “What is it, another girlfriend?” she demanded, watching his face closely.

  He shook his head, grinning back at her.

  “No, it’s my boss.” He stepped another few feet away from the sun umbrella he had been lying under. “Thomas speaking.”

  “Where the devil are you, Parker? I tried your home phone, but I couldn’t reach you there.”

  “I’m on vacation, sir. Why would I be at home? I’m in Atlantic City, taking in the surf and sand.”

  “Well, your vacation’s over. I need you back at Langley right away. Something’s come up.”

  “Right away?” Thomas with palpable reluctance, glancing back at Julie. He was going to have fun explaining this one.

  “Listen, Parker, I want you back on base as fast as possible. We’re deploying. Do you have any further questions?”

  “No.” The tone in Director Bernard Kranemeyer’s voice made it clear that none were desired. And Thomas hadn’t survived nine years in the National Clandestine Service by pushing his boss to the edge. “I’ll see you in a couple hours.”

  “Good,” was the curt reply as Kranemeyer hung up. Thomas stared at the phone for a couple seconds before putting it away.

  “What was that all about?” he heard Julie ask.

  He picked her jeans up from the back of a beach chair and tossed them at her. “Get dressed,” he instructed tersely. “We’re leaving.”

  “Why?” she asked, still holding the pants in her arms.

  “I’ve got to go back to work,” he shot back. “Now let’s get moving!”

  2:03 P.M.

  CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  “Parker is on his way back from Atlantic City. Zakiri was out in Seattle visiting his family, got back in this morning on United. Richards is coming up from the Farm.” Bernard Kranemeyer reported, referring to the CIA’s training center in Quantico, Virginia. “I think that about has it, right?”

  “ Wrong,” Harry stated, folding his arms across his chest. Light flashed from his eyes. “I’d like to know why you’re sending my team in to do what a diplomatic envoy should be able to accomplish? Not to mention how you ever got an anti-war president to authorize this incursion.”

  “Two reasons,” Lay replied evenly. “In the first place, the election is less than two months away, and the last thing the President wants is a hostage crisis overshadowing his bid for reelection. Now that his administration is threatened—well, this is D.C., Harry—

  you know the shelf life of morals and values in this town. Bottom line, he wants action, not dialogue. As for the second reason—do you want to tell him, Barney, or shall I?”

  Kranemeyer shook his head, reaching for the button on Lay’s desk. “May I, sir?”

  The DCIA nodded.

  Harry looked from one man to another. There was something going on here that he was unaware of. Another factor. As there typically was when his boss was involved. A former operator himself, Kranemeyer wasn’t called the “Dark Lord” for nothing.

  He didn’t know the whole truth. Perhaps he never would. Truth was an elusive quality in the business he was engaged in. But he was about to understand another component.

  A moment later, the door from the outer office opened and a short, thin black man entered, holding a laptop computer under his arm.

  “Harry,” Director Lay began, “Carter’s going to bring us up to speed on the trailers. Do you have the data with you, Ron?”

  “The trailers at the site of the abandoned camp?” Harry asked, reaching out to shake Carter’s hand. The African-American analyst acknowledged him with a curt nod and set his computer down on the director’s desk, clearly consumed by his own thoughts. Harry smiled. He and Ron Carter went a long way back, and he had learned to never underestimate the man’s abilities. Despite his occasional penchant for anti-social behavior, Carter was the best photo-analyst the Agency had, possessing as well a knack for managing field-ops that had caused Kranemeyer to draft him from the Intelligence Directorate two years before.

  Carter nodded, setting the laptop on Lay’s desk and swiveling the screen so that all could see. A picture of one of the trailers filled the screen. “I started running the photos through our database the minute we picked them up. It took a while to get a match, but here it is.”

  “What were they?”

  “They are almost identical to the biological-warfare trailers used by Saddam Hussein in the ‘90s,” Carter stated, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “But these aren’t them.”

  “Where did they get them?”

  “If you’ll remember, Harry, three years ago a CIA spec-ops team was parachuted into Azerbaijan to interdict a shipment of arms
from Russia to Iran.”

  Harry closed his eyes and nodded. He remembered all too well. For he had led that mission. He remembered the HAHO—High Altitude, High Opening insertion from the C-130, descending slowly into the wintry Azeri night. Into the darkness below them. He and nine others, two full strike teams, Alpha and Charlie. They had believed the Russians were selling nuclear weapons. And they’d been ordered to stop the convoy at all costs. At all costs, indeed.

  Two of the men had been killed on landing, one of them apparently dragged over a cliff by the wind. The rest had been scattered—scattered to the winds. Three of them were never heard from again. He and the four survivors managed to regroup and head for the bridge where they were to intercept the convoy. By the time they got there, the convoy was long gone, only tire tracks in the snow indicating its passage. They had been too late. And then the Azeri military had started looking for them.

  The journey to the extraction zone was a memory he wanted to forget. The harsh winter winds tearing into them. The snows. The caves he and the others took shelter in to hide from the helicopters searching for them.

  The hunger. The thirst only barely assuaged by eating the snow. The bitter cold. The brief firefight with an Azeri patrol as the Pave Low pulled them from a hot LZ. The names of the men who had perished. Oh, he remembered, all right.

  “Yes,” he replied, his tone cold. Emotionless.

  “These bio-war trailers were part of that shipment.”

  “I see.”

  2:19 P.M.

  A CIA helicopter

  Crossing the Potomac River

  “What’s it all about, sir?”

  “We’ll find out when we get there,” Jack Richards replied sharply, turning away from his companion and looking out the window, his signature Stetson pulled down low over coal-black eyes. His face was tanned and leathery, his swarthy complexion due in part to his maternal grandfather, a Mescalero Apache. He had grown up on his family’s ranch in Texas, part of the reason his friends called him “Tex.”

  A former Marine Force Recon demolitions specialist, the Texan had joined the Clandestine Service five years before, at the age of twenty-nine.

  Naturally silent, few people understood him, fewer still could be considered his friends—to say he was bad at making conversation would have been a polite understatement.

  He rarely opened his mouth unless he had something important to say, and when he did, people listened. Listened to his experience.

  But he was unusual, all the same. He even looked at buildings differently from others. Other men looked at them and admired their architectural beauty or the lack thereof, thought of the people inside, or ignored them entirely. Not Richards. He mentally calculated the pounds of high explosive needed to bring them down. It was good practice.

  He was currently teaching a course on demolitions to the new recruits at the Farm, which was why the call of a few hours earlier had surprised him. Deployment orders. Where, he knew not. Looking at the young man at his side, though, he had some idea.

  The agent was of Middle-Eastern descent. What country, he had never asked. He had never needed to know…

  Davood Sarami finally decided he wasn’t likely to get any more answers from the big Texan, so he copied the older man’s example by staring out the window of the helicopter, staring down at his adopted land.

  The nation he had taken an oath to protect. The son of Iranian-American immigrants, he and the rest of his community had received a rude awakening on the morning of September 11th, 2001. They and the rest of the world.

  He had sat in his father’s living room, watching as America’s might came toppling to the ground. Watching—and for the first time questioning the faith he had known all his life. Questioning how terrorists could cling to the same holy scriptures that he did, the sacred words of Allah.

  And he no longer knew what he believed…

  2:23 P.M.

  CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  “As you already know, if you’ve been following the news,” Lay began, picking up the briefing where Carter had left off, “the situation in Iran has changed dramatically over the last few years. With the rise to power of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps following the death of Khamenei two years ago we’ve seen Iran morph into a true praetorian state under the leadership of former Guards’ commander Mahmoud F’azel Shirazi. The clerical oligarchy of the mullahs is still intact, but exists largely at the good grace of the IRGC.”

  He passed a photo across the desk to Harry before continuing. “That’s Shirazi. We had initially hoped that this transition might curb some of the evangelical fervor that had characterized the leadership of Khamenei, but we were mistaken. If anything, Shirazi makes Khamenei’s disciple and successor, the Ayatollah Youssef Mohaymen Isfahani, almost look like a moderate.”

  Harry nodded. “That’s a significant statement.”

  “Under Shirazi’s leadership, Iran has reached an uneasy détente with the West, but most believe it to be the calm before the storm. They’ve expanded their influence over Iraq, with Iranian-backed Shiite candidates gaining a majority in parliament during the last elections. Much of the same thing is happening all across the Stans,” Lay added, referring to the small Muslim countries north and east of Iran, most of them former members of the Soviet bloc and whose names all ended in “stan”.

  “IRGC-owned companies now control between sixty and seventy percent of the Iranian economy, which is not to say they allow any real competition in the remaining percentage. The ranks of the Basij militia have swelled in the last year and it’s believed they have resumed covert negotiations with North Korea. Trouble is coming—it’s only a question of when and where.”

  A knock came at that moment. “Come in,” Director Lay called as his secretary entered the room.

  “Mr. Richards’ helicopter is landing, sir.”

  The CIA director smiled briefly. “Thank you, Margaret.” She disappeared and he turned his attention back to the men in front of him. “Why don’t we go down to the Operations Center and meet up with Richards?”

  Kranemeyer took a folder from under his arm and handed it to Harry. “A recruit from the Farm is coming in with Jack. He’s of Iranian descent and speaks fluent Farsi. As of right now, he’s assigned to your team. Things go well on this op, we may make the transfer permanent. This will tell you what you need to know.”

  “Right, sir.”

  Speed-reading had always been one of Harry’s talents, and he’d read the folders before the elevator reached the level of the Operations Center. By that time he knew just about as much as the Agency was willing to tell him about Davood Sarami, a second-generation immigrant in his mid-twenties. He would know more once he had been able to observe him personally. As to how he would perform—he wouldn’t know about that until they were in the field, past the point of no return. Committed. He hated that.

  He preferred to work with men he knew—with men whose abilities were a known quantity to him. Men he could rely upon to do their job.

  Men like Thomas, Tex, and Hamid Zakiri, themselves survivors of the Azeri mission as well as many other missions in the years before and since. He knew them all and trusted them. Counted them his friends. But only Hamid, an Iraqi-American Shiite, spoke Farsi.

  Harry did, but they needed another who could pass more easily as a native. Hopefully this man would fit the bill…

  “So, gentlemen, that is the situation as we have it.” Director Lay looked up from his briefing papers. “Any questions?”

  Harry hadn’t been listening. He had heard it all before, all of it explained to him back on the seventh floor. So, he had spent his time watching.

  Watching the young Iranian, watching his reaction to the briefing. Trying to read his thoughts. Trying to assess them. After a moment, Sarami’s hand went up.

  “How many Iranian troops are at the campsite?”

  It was a good question. One you should have asked, a little voice reminded Harry.
So far, so good.

  Lay glanced over to Ron Carter for the answer.

  “Initially, our satellite overpasses were only able to catch a few men, perhaps twelve or thirteen soldiers,” Carter replied, stepping forward, his laptop in hand. “However, the last scan, made twelve hours ago, showed at least platoon strength, approximately fifty men, all heavily armed. There are also an undeterminate number of scientists. I believe we can assume that some of them have military training.”

  “Triple-A?”

  “Negative—satellite shows no formal anti-aircraft capability. Small arms fire could be intense, though, so a direct air assault is inadvisable. We’ll have to set you down a few klicks out.”

  “Do we have any idea why the Iranian military decided to set up a bio-war facility there of all places?”

  David Lay shook his head. “None of this makes sense. That’s why we’re sending you in. To figure out exactly what they’re doing.”

  “Alpha Team is being reconstituted?” Hamid Zakiri asked, speaking up for the first time. Heads swiveled to where the Iraqi agent stood a few feet away, calmly sipping a Pepsi. At five-nine, Zakiri was far from the tallest team member, but he was light and fast. Back in his Army days, he’d set records on the Ranger’s “Q Course”.

  “Yes,” Harry replied, in answer to his old friend’s question. Alpha Team as a whole hadn’t officially been mission-ready in over a year, with one or another of its members deployed separately. His own mission south of the border had only been the latest in a string.

  “Almost like old times,” Hamid smiled, white teeth showing against his deeply tanned skin. “All that’s left to do is get Sammy back.”

  Harry nodded. The departure of Samuel Han after the Azeri mission had left a hole in the teams, a hole they hadn’t permanently filled even these years later. No one could fault him, though. After the losses that winter, he quite simply hadn’t been able to take it anymore. Leaving the Agency forever behind him, he had retreated into the mountains of West Virginia. Rumor had it that he’d become something of a hermit. The stresses of combat did that to people. The loss of friends…