Pandora's Grave (Shadow Warriors)

by Stephen England

  He abruptly disconnected the call and began dialing a new number. “Margaret, I need to speak to Director Lay.”

  7:25 P.M. Tehran Time

  The Alborz Mountains

  “I’ll make an incision here with my combat knife,” Thomas stated, drawing an imaginary “Y” on his own chest. “Then we will need to saw off the sternum and lift the heart from the chest cavity.”

  Sirvan winced. “This is necessary?”

  Thomas nodded. “We’ve got to drain blood from the aorta in order to obtain the samples I need. That’s the whole purpose of going down there.” He looked into the young Kurd’s face and went on. “I can do this myself if you’d rather not.”

  Azad Badir leaned forward, a resolute look on his weathered face. “You misunderstand my grandson, Thomas. A Kurd has not been born that fears the shedding of blood. It is just that—what you suggest, in our culture, implies the desecration of the dead.”

  “I understand,” Thomas replied, choosing his words with care. “But you must understand how important this is. If the Iranians are not stopped, they could use this bacteria anywhere. Against your people again, against mine—or any other. This is our chance.”

  The shepherd seemed to consider this statement for a long moment, as though struggling within himself. At length he raised his eyes to look Thomas in the face.

  “You are a brave man, Mr. Patterson. I have seen many such, and never have I let bravery go unrewarded. Go, and may Allah guide your feet.”

  Thomas stood, picking up the AK from where it lay at his side. “I thank you,” he responded, reaching forward to clasp the shepherd’s hand.

  Sirvan rose to his feet, advancing toward him. “It is not right that you should go alone,” he announced grimly. “You have proven yourself as one of the peshmerga. You have killed in our defense. You are blood of our blood and flesh of our flesh. I have given my word and I will not go back.”

  Thomas turned, looking into those dark, enigmatic eyes, reading the friendship written there. “Welcome.”

  All at once, a sharp buzzing broke the silence among the three men and Azad Badir reached for the satellite phone on his hip.

  “Yes? Thomas, it is for you.”

  10:34 A.M. Eastern Time

  NCS Operations Center

  Langley, Virginia

  “We’ve had a development here, Thomas,” Director Kranemeyer announced, his eyes running down the screen before him in the nerve center of the Clandestine Service.

  “Yes?”

  “I want you to hold off on your operation in the valley. Carter just located an Army bio-weapons outfit in Mosul. We’ve contacted CENTCOM and are drawing up requisition orders for the bio-suit you’ll need.”

  “Make that two, if at all possible,” Thomas interjected. “I have a volunteer. What is your means of delivery?”

  “A GPS-guided High Altitude Low Opening HALO drop. We’ll run it out of Q-West again. Should be able to rig up everything you’ll need to properly secure the samples.”

  “What is my timeframe?”

  “Yet to be determined. I’d say early morning, your time. Any questions?”

  “No. I think we’re good.”

  11:23 A.M.

  A park

  Fairfax, Virginia

  Perhaps it was a reflection upon his failures as a father that his wife had expressed surprise at his desire to take the children out to the public park. Thinking back, Michael Shapiro couldn’t remember the last time he had done so.

  It was a beautiful day, after all. And the twins wouldn’t be harmed by missing mass this once.

  He watched them at play, a sad smile curving his lips as he remembered the day they had come home from the hospital. His precious baby boy and girl. The American dream.

  They were growing up without him. Perhaps, in the end, that was just as well.

  Reaching inside his shirt pocket, Shapiro fingered the small computer flash drive reposing there. He knew what he had to do.

  He took a deep breath as though to compose himself, and walked over to a nearby bench, sitting beside a pretty young mother in her twenties as he tied his shoes.

  The flash drive wound up stuck to the underside of the bench.

  Twenty minutes later, when a swarthy, distinguished-looking man in a tracksuit came jogging by, accompanied by two men that acted suspiciously like bodyguards, the CIA’s Deputy Director never saw them.

  Never saw the man sit down and catch his breath, surreptitiously removing the drive as he did so.

  He had his back turned to them, pushing his little daughter on the swings. Her high-pitched giggle filled the air as she swung high and a lump grew in Shapiro’s throat.

  The American dream…

  8:34 P.M. Local Time

  Al ‘Aqabah, Jordan

  Al ‘Aqabah was friendly territory for Fayood Hamza al-Farouk, but his movements through the bazaar were circumspect, nonetheless. Less than fifteen kilometers from the border with the Zionist state, it was widely suspected that Mossad agents frequented the small town. And the Hezbollah commander was taking no chances. His body bore the scars of past carelessness.

  The prepaid cellphone in his pocket buzzed and he pulled it out to look at the screen. It had been two days since activation and only three people had the number.

  “Yes?”

  “My brother,” a familiar voice announced. “I have a job for you.”

  Farouk listened carefully as the man continued to speak. “Eilat, you say? I think you understand the difficulty of getting my men into the city. No, I did not say it was impossible, simply that it would be difficult. What time does the meeting take place?”

  “A few minutes before noon tomorrow,” the voice answered. “At the Eilat marina—the Americans must be killed at the outset of the meeting if at all possible.”

  “I understand.”

  “I repeat, you must kill both of them.”

  “It will be done,” Farouk replied, disconnecting the call. A strange thrill of excitement coursed through his veins as he left the bazaar. He hadn’t operated in Israel in months…

  9:02 P.M.

  A hotel

  Eilat, Israel

  Richards reattached the scope mount to the receiver of the FN-FAL, his fingers moving quickly along the rifle.

  He was on the fifth floor of the hotel, two hundred and fifty yards from the meeting site, according to the laser range-finder that he had brought with him. He could have made that shot over iron sights, but the scope gave him an added measure of security. The Texan was nothing if not cautious.

  Finishing his work, he laid the rifle on the bed and slapped a loaded magazine into the mag well of the gun. Ready to go.

  A quick check of his watch and he reached for the phone. Time to order dinner–he wasn’t leaving the room until after the meeting went down.

  Fifteen hours…

  2:57 P.M. Eastern Time

  Cypress, Virginia

  There was nothing covert about this operation. At least his side of it. That in and of itself bothered Harry. He was naturally a very private individual, and preferred that the circle of information on matters concerning himself be kept very small.

  After a moment’s thought, he opened the diplomatic case and threw in an extra set of identification papers, under a Belgian passport. It had served him well in the past and it never hurt to plan ahead.

  The case also contained his Colt .45, two loaded magazines, and a box of Federal Hydra-Shok hollowpoints. Being able to carry the gun through security was one of the benefits of his diplomatic immunity. If he was forced to use it…well, that was another story.

  The TACSAT vibrated on his hip and he flipped it open. “Davood? What’s going on?”

  “I’m not sure,” the agent responded, glancing out the window of his car. “I’m here down the street from Richards’ house. There’s a black Suburban parked in front of it.”

  “Any signs of life?”

  “That’s a negative. I just called La
ngley to run the tags. They’ve got a team on the way.”

  “All right, here’s what I want you to do,” Harry instructed. “Sit tight and wait until your back-up arrives. I’ve got a plane to catch, but call me if anything changes.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Take care of yourself.”

  Davood replaced the phone in his pocket and looked down the street at Tex’s house, eyeing the privacy fence that ran around the back two-thirds of the property.

  After a moment’s reflection, he pushed open his car door and ran toward the fence, drawing his service Glock as he did so…

  Chapter Eleven

  12:07 A.M. Tehran Time, September 30th

  The Alborz Mountains

  The temperature fell quickly in the mountains after the setting of the sun. Harun Larijani rubbed his hands together vigorously before scanning the valley again through a pair of night-vision binoculars.

  Waiting. The young colonel did not count patience among his virtues. His men were tense, as well, the battalion of Revolutionary Guards at his command. The Kurds should have walked into the trap by now.

  That they had not indicated things were not going according to plan. The thought made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. Maybe they were watching him…

  Harun dismissed the thought angrily, turning his focus back to the task at hand. Fear had no more place in his future than mercy did.

  A cold chill seemed to seize hold of him as he remembered his uncle’s words of the previous morning.

  “…no true Muslim will stand by and let the desecration go unavenged. The slaughter of peaceful worshipers will bring the condemnation of the world down upon the head of Israel. No one will stand by her side when war comes.”

  “And what of us?” he had asked. “What judgment must befall us for the sacrilege?”

  He would never forget the light in Shirazi’s eyes as he crossed the room to lay a hand on his shoulder. “Sacrilege?” his uncle asked. “There is no sacrilege in destroying the infidel. Remember the words of the hadith—paradise is found ‘neath the shade of swords.”

  So it was, in very truth. Harun stamped his feet in an attempt to restore circulation to his freezing toes, steeling himself against the doubts that plagued his soul.

  This was the will of Allah…

  3:57 P.M. Eastern Time

  Dulles International Airport

  Virginia

  The call came just as Harry had checked his bags. “Afternoon, Danny. What’s the good word?”

  “Not good,” Daniel Lasker replied. “Our back-up team arrived on-site at Richards’ apartment in Falls Church to find Agent Sarami lying near the back of the apartment, knocked unconscious. His gun and satellite phone were both stolen, along with his wallet. We’re doing an inventory on the apartment as we speak, but nothing seems to have been disturbed.”

  “Blast it!” Harry exclaimed in frustration, startling the woman in line ahead of him. “I told him to stay put. Any luck running the tags on that Suburban?”

  “That’s where it get’s interesting, Harry. We ran it through the Homeland Security intranet, but the Bureau has put a Level-1 Priority block on the tag. Our best guess is that they’re running a big investigation and—”

  “Don’t want other agencies stepping on their toes,” Harry finished for him, thinking aloud. If anyone had thought that the bureaucratic infighting would be cleared up by the reorganization following the 9/11 attacks, they should have known better. If anything, things had only gotten worse.

  “Does Kranemeyer want me to come back to Langley? I’ve not boarded yet.”

  “No. Everything is still go-mission. Contact information for Richards will be uploaded to your TACSAT when you land in Israel. He’s in position.”

  “Copy that.”

  3:05 A.M. Tehran Time

  The Alborz Mountains

  Iran

  It was cold on the valley floor, the type of cold that makes up in bitterness what it lacks in actual temperature. The two men waited in the shadow of the cliff, out of the sight of any watchers.

  “Thanks for coming,” Thomas said after a long moment.

  “My sister told me to bring you back alive,” was the reply, Sirvan’s tone filled with amusement.

  Thomas flushed, thankful for the darkness to hide his face. He could still see the look in Estere’s eyes as the two of them had left camp—the look of a proud young woman holding her emotions fiercely in check.

  The young Kurd cleared his throat. “Time?”

  “Five minutes to drop,” Thomas replied, cupping a hand round the luminous dial of his dive watch.

  The silence was well-nigh unbearable, just a faint breeze there below the cliff. Thomas found himself holding his breath, waiting senselessly for the sound of airplane engines. They would be flying too high, he knew that. Coming in with their transponder disguised as that of an airliner.

  The laser designator was there, fifty meters ahead of them, hidden in the scrub brush of the valley floor.

  Waiting.

  It came like a ghost out of the night, the parachute a faint shadow in the pale light of the crescent moon.

  The two men exchanged a tight-lipped smile before leaving their cover. So far, so good…

  4:21 P.M. Eastern Time

  Cypress, Virginia

  “They’re not leaving,” the man announced grimly, eyeing the old antebellum mansion with binoculars aimed through the tinted windshield of the Suburban.

  “You read the audio transcripts, Vic,” his companion retorted. “A security detachment was dispatched twenty minutes after you took out Sarami.”

  The man called “Vic” sighed. “Call the rest of the team and tell them to rendevous with us in Falls Church. Time for Plan B.”

  “Plan B?”

  “Sit tight and wait,” came the terse reply.

  3:25 A.M.

  The village

  Iran

  They drifted into the village from the north, a pair of strange, misshapen figures shuffling awkwardly forward.

  The thick biosuits made communication difficult, so the two men communicated largely by hand signals, punctuated by an occasional hissed instruction.

  Death hung over the village like a cloud as they moved forward, picking their way through the detritus of human life. Mutants in the land of the dead.

  A girl of perhaps five years of age lay across the threshold of her home, her face still distorted in the agony of death, her body bloated from a day in the sun. Thomas looked down for a moment in pity, then passed on. He could hear Sirvan whispering a prayer behind him.

  They both stopped beside the body of a middle-aged Kurdish man, lying on his belly in the dust of the street. His arm was splayed out from his side, the flesh ridged with black veins of blood.

  Thomas looked over at Sirvan and saw the Kurd nod through the helmet of his biosuit. The two men knelt by the body and Thomas drew his combat knife, laying it beside him as he moved to roll the body over.

  Suddenly, Sirvan’s hand descended on his arm with a grasp of iron as a gasp broke from the Kurd’s lips.

  “Stop!” he hissed, never slackening his grip.

  “What?” Thomas demanded in surprise.

  Sirvan’s index finger shot out, pointing below the dead man’s armpit. There, stretching from beneath the bloated body, barely visible in the shadow, was a thin wire.

  The corpse was booby-trapped.

  “A pressure trigger,” Sirvan whispered, struggling to make himself understood. “If we roll the body from off the mine…”

  He didn’t need to finish. Thomas knew all too well what he was talking about. A bouncing betty. Once the pressure came off the trigger, the mine would bounce two or three feet into the air and detonate, spraying shrapnel in every direction.

  His skin crawled at the thought. They wouldn’t have stood a chance.

  “Why the wire?” he asked at length, unsure as to whether it was simply a back-up mechanism, or something more sinist
er.

  Having apparently wondered the same thing himself, Sirvan’s fingers were already tracing their way along the wire, careful not to touch the thin strand separating them from death.

  “More explosives,” he hissed a moment later, pointing to the house on the other side of the street, pantomiming an explosion from its walls. “A trip-wire,” Sirvan announced, coming back to Thomas’s side. “Tension-sensitive.”

  Thomas nodded, understanding what he meant perfectly. Trip wires were often activated by pressure against them, essentially pulling a trigger. This was a dead man switch at its most basic. Whether tension was applied or relieved, the end result was the same.

  Annihilation.

  “Can it be disarmed?” Thomas asked. He already knew the answer, so it didn’t surprise him when Sirvan shook his head “no”.

  “We do not have the time,” the Kurd replied. “Given daylight, I could try. Now—no. I was ordered to bring you back in one piece, remember?”

  Thomas laughed, the tension broken for a bare moment in time. “Then, we move on?”

  Sirvan looked ahead, his eyes probing the dust of the street. “No. Look there—and there. Claymores.”

  Something was wrong. Very wrong. Thomas could feel his skin crawl, and his eyes searched the darkness for an unseen enemy. This had been prepared—for them, for someone…

  He picked up his knife and thrust it back into its ankle sheath. “Then that leaves us with the child,” he said slowly.

  Sirvan nodded with equal reluctance.

  The two men moved cautiously back to where the little girl lay, their eyes on the ground now, watching ever so carefully for the telltale signs of disturbed earth.