Pandora's Grave (Shadow Warriors)

by Stephen England

  Not the way they had parted. Not the way she had died, bleeding to death in an ambush on the West Bank, her legs blown off by a roadside bomb, small-arms fire chattering noisily over their heads as he covered her with his body, as his protective detail fought back.

  Tears coursing down his face, her blood on his hands, cursing in impotent rage at the utter futility of it all.

  Ibrahim Quasim had died as he lived. In an explosion as fiery as the one with which he had killed Rachel Shoham.

  It was justice. The general closed his eyes, willing the memories to go away as he tore the photograph of the dead terrorist leader into shreds, pieces fluttering to the floor like the snow that blanketed Mount Hermon.

  The satellite phone beside the bed rang noisily, a jarring intrusion into the privacy of his thoughts. He came alert, reaching for it.

  “Shoham here.”

  “General, we are on scrambler.” It was the watch officer at Mossad Headquarters. Which wasn’t good. Something had happened.

  “Copy scrambler. What’s going on?”

  “We have PHOTINT indicating a military presence approximately twenty-five kilometers north-northeast of RAHAB’s last reported position. There’s a firefight going on.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. We have muzzle flashes, looks like the Iranians are there in platoon strength or greater.”

  “Dear God,” the general whispered. A military platoon against his four men. There might be a chance, but it was a slim one. “Any sign of the FAVs?”

  “Nothing. However it looks like a helicopter crashed in a nearby canyon, sir,” the watch officer stated after a moment.

  “A helicopter?” Shoham demanded in astonishment. “Where did that come from?”

  “I have no idea, sir. There’s not enough left of it to establish make. Request permission to contact RAHAB.”

  A long pause. “Permission granted. Find out what’s going on. And make it short.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  2:40 A.M. Tehran Time

  The crash site

  “Roger, FULLBACK. You stay and provide cover for BIRDMASTER. Tell SWITCHBLADE to join me. We will regroup on your position.”

  “Copy that, sir.”

  Major Hossein reached up and grasped the man beside him by the shoulder. “The Americans are moving. They will be spread out. We need to strike before they can regroup.”

  The soldier nodded. Hossein flicked the safety off the Kalishnikov assault rifle he carried. “Here’s what I want you to do.”

  “Harry wants you to join him,” Hamid stated calmly as Davood came up beside him. The young Iranian looked strange in the green glow of his night vision. “Immediately.”

  Davood looked back toward the cave where he had placed Tancretti, its mouth hidden in the shadows of night.

  “How is he?” Hamid asked.

  “Not good. He needs an IV, but,” Davood gestured helplessly toward the wreckage of the Huey, “we don’t have any med supplies left.” His shoulders slumped in discouragement.

  “Let Allah be your strength, my brother. Look to Him and place your faith in His power.” Hamid clapped his fellow agent on the back. “May He go with you. I will look after BIRDMASTER.”

  Davood nodded, unholstering the Beretta from his hip as he moved toward the cliff path. Hamid watched him go…

  5:43 P.M. Eastern Time

  NCS Operations Center

  Langley, Virginia

  “Change of course, Carol,” Ron Carter announced, coming around the edge of the cubicles with a sheaf of printouts in his hand. “I need you in the Tehran intranet, and I need you in there yesterday.”

  Carol Chambers looked up from her workstation, frowning at the head analyst. “Do you know the kind of time that will take?”

  “Of course I do,” Carter shot back, cheerfully sweeping a space clear on her desk to deposit the printouts. “That’s why you’ve got two hours instead of one.”

  Carol stared after him in disbelief as he disappeared. Two hours. Yeah, right.

  She turned back her terminal, reminding herself for the hundredth time that she should have joined the NSA. The world’s biggest signals intelligence gatherer would have had the manpower to pull off what Carter wanted. Not just the manpower, but the processing power, which was more important. The computers that the Clandestine Service had control over, the only ones she was permitted to access for TALON, just didn’t measure up to the huge Crays.

  Which once again begged the question. Why had she joined the CIA?

  Carol sighed and reached back, sweeping her hair into a tight ponytail. Time to get to work.

  Shoulder-length when worn down, her hair was a golden brown, dirty blond, as it was often called.

  A smile crept across her face. Dirty, maybe, but not dumb. She hadn’t graduated from MIT at the top of her class, but she’d been a long way from the bottom. Yeah, forget the CIA and NSA, with her grades and other skills, she could have made a fortune in the private sector. After all, the government wasn’t the only entity that utilized hackers and espionage.

  The familiar pulsing hum of the door scanner reached her ears and Carol looked up to see the figure of her father step onto the floor of the operations center.

  His presence in the nerve center of the Clandestine Service was rare enough to be the rough equivalent of a divine visitation, and to have it happen twice in one night…

  It had always been that way, ever since she’d been a little girl. Memories of those early days were few and distant, hazy shadows, a mirage to chase in one’s dreams. Nothing tangible. She only remembered the absence, the lack. A godlike father figure, distant, unapproachable. Someone whose very existence had to be accepted on faith. In many ways, God was the more approachable of the two.

  Yet, deep down, she knew that he was the reason she was here and not a corporate firm. God had given her the strength to forgive the past and despite the awkwardness of their current relationship, she couldn’t have lived without it.

  A voice interrupted her thoughts and she looked up to see their object standing before her.

  “Good evening, Carol,” David Lay greeted softly, uncertainty in his tones. She looked into his eyes and saw the pain there. Whether grief for the unrecoverable past or the men he had lost this night, she had no way of knowing.

  “I need you and Carter in Conference Room #2. Five minutes.”

  And then he was gone as quick as he had arrived. As it always had been…

  2:45 A.M. Tehran Time

  The crash site

  Darkness surrounded him, enrobing him in its folds. Tancretti tried to move again, searing pain shooting through him. His legs were broken. He was helpless. Helpless .

  It wasn’t a familiar situation for the Air Force colonel. He had always been the one in charge, controlling his actions. Guiding his destiny.

  He nearly blacked out again, biting his lip hard to keep from crying out. The metallic taste of blood seeped into his mouth, oozing from a cut lip.

  From above him, around him, he could hear the sound of small-arms fire, the sound of men selling their lives as dearly as possible. He fumbled desperately for the service automatic at his belt, rolling over on one side to extract it from its holster. Fear seemed to rise in his throat, fear he had tried to suppress ever since the CIA agent had left. Ever since he had been alone.

  The Beretta was a comforting bulk in his hand, fifteen 9mm rounds making him just as effective as any man with both his legs under him. Just as effective.

  Suddenly, a figure loomed out of the darkness and Tancretti brought the pistol up in both hands, his voice trembling as he cried out a challenge.

  “Easy,” the figure replied. English.

  Relief washed over the colonel like a tidal wave. He couldn’t see the face in the darkness, but it must be one of the CIA men. He was saved.

  The figure shifted and in that movement, Tancretti could see the gleam of a knife blade. He screamed and tried to roll away, knowing his
legs could not move him. Knowing he was going to die. His fingers pressed the trigger reflexively, a single wild shot filling the cave with its echo.

  It was too late. It changed nothing. His target moved as he fired, fingers reaching down to grasp the wrist of his gun hand.

  The knife swung down in its long, curving arc, slicing across his throat. And it was over. All over…

  5:48 A.M. Eastern Time

  CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  The walls of the conference room were soundproofed to shut out the sounds of the bustling operations center outside, the windows coated with a thin sheath of Teflon to dampen the vibration of voices against the glass. Even here in the heart of the Agency, the possibility of someone using a laser mic to record conversations could not be ruled out.

  Lay looked up as the door opened and his daughter walked in. His may have been a prejudiced appraisal, but she was heart-achingly beautiful, her mother written there in every gesture, every smile, the light in those azure blue eyes. Trisha.

  He pushed the vision aside with an effort and forced himself to focus on the task at hand.

  “What is shared here,” he began, “stays here for reasons I’m sure I don’t need to explain to either of you. We are facing a crisis. As you both know, we are proceeding under the assumption that Alpha Team has been taken out. They were drawn into a carefully laid trap. Which means somehow, someway, the regime knew they were coming. While we will continue our efforts to reestablish contact with the team, we must move on to the next facet of the problem. How did they learn of our plans? Ron?”

  The analyst shook his head. “Nothing, boss. Absolutely nothing. If someone got in, they’re a lot better than I am.”

  “Probability?”

  Carter smiled sheepishly. “Our security programs are ironclad and I’ve been working with computers since the Commodore. It’s not an impossibility, but it’s sure not probable.”

  “Carol?”

  “I concur with Ron,” his daughter responded. “The last serious attempt to hack our servers was the Chicom strike in the fall of 2011. We detected them within minutes and were able to repel them before they could reach anything sensitive.”

  Lay considered the information for a moment, reviewing the options before him. None could be considered good.

  “Well, if we weren’t hacked…” The DCIA hesitated before voicing the other option. It seemed like bad ju-ju, but they already knew what he was going to say.

  “Then we’ve got a mole.”

  2:49 A.M.

  Project RAHAB

  Moving north-northeast

  Things had changed. The quick approach he had counted on no longer seemed viable. Everything was different.

  “Copy that,” Gideon Laner replied into the transmitter. “RAHAB out.”

  Nathan Gur looked up from his driving. “What’s going on, chief?”

  “See anything of Yossi?”

  The young man turned, his eyes scanning the desert as it flashed past under the wheels of their vehicle. “Affirmative. Ahead of us, hundred meters out.”

  “Catch him,” Gideon ordered. “Latest orders. Radio transmissions are to be kept to a minimum.”

  “Sir?”

  “I said, step on it!”

  2:50 A.M.

  The crash site

  “EAGLE SIX, this is FULLBACK.” It was Hamid’s voice over Harry’s headset, tense and out of breath. “We’ve got a problem.”

  “Shoot,” Harry ordered tersely.

  “Somebody nailed BIRDMASTER before I could get back to him. Slit his throat.” There was anger in the Iraqi’s voice. “He was helpless.”

  “A soldier?”

  “Looked like it, maybe more than one I heard a gunshot—looks like he got off a shot before they killed him.”

  Harry went silent for a moment. If the Iranian soldiers were circling around them, their options were rapidly diminishing. They would have to extract quickly. “Can you rejoin our position, FULLBACK?”

  “Roger. I can make it to you, Allah willing.”

  “Leave Allah out of it,” Harry snapped, surprised at his own impatience with his old friend. “Can you E&E?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Good. LONGBOW, I need you to stay behind and cover our retreat. You will extract at my signal. Copy?”

  “I read you,” Thomas replied. “Horatius is my middle name.”

  “Right now I’d settle for a decent imitation of Carlos Hathcock. EAGLE SIX to Alpha Team, break contact!”

  Chapter Five

  2:54 A.M.

  Project RAHAB

  Gideon glanced down at his watch, shielding its luminous dial with his hand. The gunfire which had rippled over the Iranian mountainside was quiet now, the echoes slowly fading away. He had no clue what he was running into, but hesitation was suicidal. One thing he knew for certain. Minutes were ticking away toward daybreak, minutes he could ill afford to lose. He turned and tapped Nathan Gur on the shoulder.

  “Let’s get moving, corporal. We’ve got ground to cover.”

  2:55 A.M.

  The crash site

  The silence didn’t bother Major Hossein half as much. To him, it served as proof that none of his men were exposing themselves to enemy fire. A good sign.

  He looked down at the American radio clipped to his combat vest, and thought for a moment about calling the base camp, ordering the evacuation of the archaeologists. They were surely the commandos’ objective.

  It was a hard choice. Should the Americans be able to slip around him and raid the base camp, Tehran would surely sack him, and probably execution would follow. And yet—he dared not jeopardize the experiment by ordering it moved. He could almost picture the interrogation.

  “Major Farshid Hossein?”

  “Yes?”

  “You ordered the experiment to be moved—was this because you believed it was beyond your power to defend it?”

  “No, sir. I only wished to take every precaution that security of the experiment was not in danger.”

  “As it would not have been if you had followed your orders. Major Farshid Hossein, you have disgraced the revolution…”

  Hossein shuddered involuntarily. It was a risk he couldn’t take. He had witnessed that scene too many times, from the other side of the bright lights. There was only one option left to him.

  Wipe out the commandos.

  He reached over and tapped his sergeant on the shoulder. “Take your men and work your way up to that knoll. We’ll flank the sniper.”

  They undoubtedly thought they were being clever. The figures glowed bright green in his nightscope as they wound their way around the rocks, keeping low.

  It wouldn’t do them any good. Thomas aimed carefully, centering the cross-hairs on the chest of the foremost soldier, a tall bare-headed man with a Kalishnikov in his hands.

  The rifle cracked out through the night, its echoes spelling death. The tall man pitched forward, his gun rattling against the stones.

  His comrades dove for cover, the darkness exploding as they returned fire at anything that looked like a target…

  Thomas worked the bolt, his hands steady as he took aim once again.

  His first indication that something had gone wrong was when a bullet whistled past his head, ricocheting off the rocks that sheltered him.

  They had flanked him. His location was compromised…

  Harry paused for a moment at the top of the bluff. It was far enough. Bound and overwatch. Time to tell Thomas to come on home while they could still provide covering fire.

  His headset came alive suddenly. Thomas’s voice. “EAGLE SIX, this is LONGBOW. I am pinned down at the overlook position. Hostiles have a fix on my location. Need help. Need help now.”

  “LONGBOW, can you extract?”

  “Negative, EAGLE SIX. Egress is closed off.”

  Harry glanced back across the canyon, to where his old friend was fighting a last desperate battle. His heart wanted to go to t
he rescue, to throw his team back into the maelstrom of combat. But he couldn’t.

  “Harry?” Hamid was speaking to him. “We going back?”

  “No,” Harry replied slowly. “We have a mission Langley expects us to accomplish. We’re moving on.”

  Another rattle of gunfire interrupted Hamid’s protest as the tiny group of men gazed out into the darkness, toward their comrade…

  Bullets splattered into the rocks beside Thomas’s head and he ducked instinctively. It was a basic tactic, one taught for decades. Fire and maneuver. One section keep their heads down. The other section move in.

  It was still taught because it was so simple—and yet so effective. And he could do very little to counter it. He looked up into the shadowy light of the moon, cursing its brightness. A footstep nearby jarred loose a rock, sending it bounding down the hillside.

  They were closing in.

  The sniper rifle was of little good now and he laid it beside him, drawing the Beretta from its holster. Close-quarters combat.

  Another footstep…

  A single shot rang out, followed by another, and another, then the sound of a Kalishnikov on full-automatic. And then silence, unearthly silence falling over the rocky hillside.

  Hamid glanced over at Harry, balancing his weight on his good leg, a bloody strip of cloth encircling his damaged right thigh. “Let me go back, sir. I can help him to the extraction zone.”

  “No. We’ve already lost Tancretti. Thomas may be dead. I need every man here to complete the mission.”

  “But we can’t just leave him out here to die!” Davood’s dark eyes flashed angrily, first at Harry, then at Tex. “I didn’t know we did stuff like that.”