Pandora's Grave (Shadow Warriors)

by Stephen England

  He had found it exactly where he had expected, based on the map Farouk had sent. As the other two canisters had been, but that cursed Davood had located them both. This one was well placed, but it wouldn’t do near the damage that the others had been meant to do. Somehow, he had to get it back up to the assembly hall of the masjid, where the worshipers were now gathering.

  With a small tug, he separated the wires connecting the canister with the Semtex charge designed to interfere with tampering. The bacteria had been placed in a five-foot-square area of dead space, but it wasn’t safe to move into view of the security cameras. Not yet.

  He pulled the TACSAT from his pocket and consulted the screen. Thirty-five seconds…

  Hamid had been lying. It had been a set-up. If anything, this canister was simpler to disarm than the first. Almost there. Just one more wire. Tex looked up from his work with the bomb as every screen in the surveillance center went black, then lit up with a blinking error message in Arabic, “SYSTEMS OFF-LINE”.

  He went to the control console, urgently typing in a command. At first nothing happened, then the system seemed to freeze. Tex shook his head.

  A worm was working its way through the system—and the codes that should have shut down its progress only seemed to open new gateways into the network.

  He opened his TACSAT and punched speed-dial as he continued to work on the console. “I think we have a problem, boss.”

  Hamid smiled in satisfaction and sprung from his hiding place, covering the canister in his jacket as he moved back toward the stairs…

  11:33 A.M.

  They found Davood where he had fallen in the library, lying in a pool of blood by a bookcase. His face was horribly disfigured, blood oozing from a bullet hole in his jaw.

  As Hossein and Ali stood watch, Harry knelt by the side of his fallen agent, his fingers moving up Davood’s neck, searching for the pulse of life. Remorse filled him as he thought back of their suspicions, of their misdirected anger. He had planned to do this himself—but all that was gone now.

  There it was—a faint but still present spark and Davood’s eyes flickered briefly open in response to his touch. “Hold on tight, man,” Harry whispered, clasping the young man’s hand in both of his own. “We’re going to get you out of here.”

  Davood groaned, murmuring something out past his broken jaw. “There’s no time…”

  “That’s not your concern,” Harry responded with a forced smile. “I’m in command here, remember. And you’re gonna make it out of here, soldier.”

  The young agent’s right hand fell away from his torso, disclosing a ragged bullet hole in his abdomen. He’d been gut shot, was losing blood rapidly. Harry could only imagine what the hollowpoint bullet had done internally. “No use. I’m sorry…”

  The worst part of it was that he was right. Harry felt a white-hot flash of anger course through his body as he bent over the dying man. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” he whispered fiercely. “Forgive me for ever doubting your loyalty.”

  There was no response. When Harry looked up, the young man’s eyes were staring unforgivingly at the ceiling.

  Harry folded Davood’s hands together across his chest and gently closed those sightless eyes, his movements slow and reverential. When he rose, a cold, hard mask had formed over his face. There was a time for everything under the sun and there would be a time for grief. It wasn’t now.

  Now was the time for vengeance…

  Leaving the library, they moved down a long corridor, weapons drawn. Harry took point, the folding stock of the H&K pressed tight against his shoulder. With the cameras off-line, they had no way of knowing where Hamid was. It was back to low-tech, old-fashioned methods, and they were running short on time…

  The cameras showed the three men moving down the corridor toward him, blocking his exit. There were other ways to his destination, moving through the subterranean levels of the masjid, but the detour would take too much time. Hamid bared his teeth in a grin and scrolled through the frames on his TACSAT’s screen. There was only one way out—through the enemy.

  He laid the canister down and covered it with his jacket, leaving his arms free for movement. Shouldering the MP-5SD, he moved to the corner, waiting.

  The men on-screen drew yet closer and he noted their position with a careful, practiced eye. Now!

  The figure appeared in an alcove near the end of the corridor without warning and Harry had just enough time to recognize Hamid’s face before bullets began coming his way, erupting from the barrel of the double agent’s silenced MP-5.

  He threw himself sideways, his palms scraping against the flagstones as he hit the floor, rolling onto his stomach. Another moment and he was behind cover, his submachine gun aimed at the corner, but the hail of fire had stopped as abruptly as it had begun. “Anyone hurt?” Harry demanded, glancing over at his companions.

  Ali shook his head in the negative. Hossein was laying a foot away from Harry, examining a gouge in his shoulder. “Ricochet,” he explained, wincing.

  The absurdity of it all. To be trading fire with his best friend—it was surreal.

  Those bullet gouges in the wall proved otherwise. So had Davood’s dead body. Harry closed his eyes, hatred mixing with sorrow. He knew what had to be done.

  “Hamid!” he called out, his voice echoing off the stone. “Lay down your weapons and come out. We need to talk.”

  The only response was the echo, bouncing and diminishing with every repetition. “It’s your only hope of leaving here. We can cut a deal, just give us the bacteria.”

  “I’ve heard that before, Harry,” came the reply. “Remember, we took the class together—how to deal with a barricaded subject?”

  They had, Harry realized with chagrin. He remembered the two of them joking about the class instructor, a rather pretty brunette. She could talk anybody into putting their gun down…

  Hamid had taken her to dinner, if memory served. In better days.

  He shook his head to drive away the remorse at what he was being forced to do. He couldn’t think about that now. Later. Not now.

  A great gulf fixed…

  At that moment, Ali’s two-way crackled with static. As he lay there on the stone steps, he responded, speaking rapidly in Arabic.

  “My technicians say that the feed is still on-line,” he said finally, glancing over at Harry. “The error messages are apparently themselves erroneous.”

  “Then why can’t we access it?” Harry asked softly, never taking his eyes off the iron sights of the UMP-45.

  “The video feed has been pirated by someone with a satellite phone.”

  “Hamid,” Harry breathed, the pieces clicking in place. “He’s using the system to track us. Isn’t there a way you can shut him out?”

  The Jordanian shook his head. “We have only had the cameras in place for five months. We’re still going through the manuals on how to use them, much less figure out how to stop a hacker.”

  There was an answer. There had to be. “Just give me the bacteria,” Harry shouted once more down the corridor. Lying in an effort to make Hamid show himself. If only for a moment. Just enough time to snap off a quick burst. “Give me the bacteria and I’ll let you go free. No one need know of the deal we make.”

  A harsh laugh echoed off the limestone. “The West has never understood us, Harry, and they will die because of it. But you, you disappoint me. You should understand. My whole life has been given for this moment. I could no more walk away from this mission than you could let me—after I killed Davood.”

  He was right. There was no way he could let him go. The answer came to Harry in a sudden burst of clarity and he rose to his knees, making his way down the stairs behind him.

  His brow furrowed in puzzlement, Hamid watched him go on the camera screen. Watched Harry walk about ten yards back and pull the TACSAT from the pocket of his jacket…

  3:38 A.M. Eastern Time

  NCS Operations Center

  Langley,
Virginia

  “What do you need me to do?” Carol asked, still absorbing the news of Hamid’s betrayal. It seemed like a bad dream. That the Service could have been infiltrated…

  “It is possible to remotely deactivate an Agency TACSAT, isn’t it?”

  She nodded reflexively. “Yes—yes it is. It’s just a matter of accessing the servers and restricting user—”

  “Just do it,” Harry interrupted, his voice flat, eerily emotionless. “As soon as you can. Let me know when it’s accomplished.”

  The phone clicked without warning, the connection broken. Carol rose from her workstation, her mind swirling. This had to go to the DCS…

  11:41 A.M. Local Time

  The Masjid al-Aqsa

  Jerusalem

  The first inkling he had of danger was when bullets whined past his covert, impacting and glancing off the centuries-old limestone walls. Hamid’s fingers tightened around the grip of his MP-5 as fluorescent bulbs exploded and shattered down the length of the hall, glass tinkling against the stone. In seconds, the corridor was plunged into subterranean darkness.

  He smiled grimly. The opening move, yet despite his danger he felt more alive than he had for years.

  All deception past, it felt as though a weight had fallen from his shoulders. All those years, the times he had belittled his own faith to maintain his cover. Little deaths of the soul.

  Gone now, at long last. Allahu akbar.

  Truly, God was great.

  A glance at his TACSAT’s luminescent screen confirmed his antagonists were still in their places. As though they were waiting for something.

  The canister still lay by his side, nineteen minutes remaining on the invisible clock. He couldn’t wait forever. But neither could they.

  A whining beep drew his attention back to his phone, a message scrolling across the screen. DEACTIVATION SEQUENCE INITIATING. 15…14…13…

  Hamid swore angrily, tossing the phone away from him. He had worked long enough with Harry—he should have known. Never underestimate the man.

  Harry slammed a fresh 25-round magazine of .45 ACP into the mag well of the UMP-45, pulling back the charging handle. Fourteen minutes left.

  At that moment, the phone in his pocket vibrated and he flipped it open, expecting to hear Carol’s voice.

  “Harry, Zakiri’s TACSAT is off-line,” Kranemeyer announced gruffly. “Carol is working to restore the camera network to administrator control.”

  “Tell her thanks,” Harry replied. “Is there anything else?”

  “One more thing, Harry. This has been an unprecedented breach of security. Understanding how this was accomplished is of primary importance. If at all possible, we need Hamid Zakiri alive. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Harry replied, gazing ahead into the darkness, understanding all too well. He had seen it all before. “Now, if you’ll excuse me. I have a canister to recover.”

  Rising to his feet, he motioned to his companions, his stride steady as he moved down the corridor, the muzzle of his submachine gun sweeping from side to side. On point. In days past, that had been Hamid’s role.

  The traitor. Why?

  Harry knew the answer, knew and it angered him that he had never seen the signs. Hamid, the genial king of the office NFL pool—Hamid, the guy who had given up his pilgrimage to Mecca to watch the Ravens win the Super Bowl—yeah, that Hamid had been a jihadist. The man he had recruited. Hamid had killed to cover his trail, for Harry knew now exactly how Harun Larijani had died.

  There would be no deals at the end of this road, no pay-offs, no trading freedom for information.

  The brotherhood had been betrayed, and this road ended in the grave. The oldest law of mankind. Lex talionis. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

  He reached the corner and hesitated before going on, nervously checking the sling of his H&K once more. Everything was silent, a silence as cold as the grave.

  Abdul Ali and Hossein fanned out behind him, pistols drawn, and Harry rounded the corner wide, the cold, suppressed muzzle of the UMP-45 tracking left to right.

  Hamid was gone, the discarded TACSAT lying broken half-way across the adjoining corridor the only proof that he had ever been there. Harry motioned for a halt, his ears straining to pick up the slightest sound.

  “Where does the corridor go from here?” he asked quietly, glancing back at Ali.

  “To the left, on into the Masjid al-Musalla al-Marwani, the prayer hall of the Stables of Solomon,” the Jordanian replied. “To the right, it continues for about five yards, ending in a dead-end and a platform surmounted by displayed copies of the Quran.”

  “Take left, I’ll take right,” Harry instructed. “He may be laying an ambush.”

  It’s what they both would have done. Back in the day. In better times, odd as that seemed now.

  At Harry’s signal, the three men moved out, Hossein and Ali going left, Harry going right into the dead-ended corridor as they rounded the corner. Empty.

  The emptiness struck him with the force of a blow, his mind screaming danger as he started to turn. Knowing it was too late even as he did so.

  In the narrow limestone corridors, the cough of Hamid’s silenced Glock resounded like thunder, the sound of the slide cycling. One, two shots.

  The classic double-tap. Out of the corner of his eye, as if in slow motion, Harry saw Abdul Ali reel backward, blood spraying from a wound in his throat, the pistol falling from his hands.

  He turned on heel, hearing the sharp report of the revolver in Hossein’s hands, the ring of steel against stone as Hamid staggered, dropping the canister. The UMP-45 came up to level, Hamid’s face coming into perspective through iron sights.

  It was the kill shot. A single press of the trigger would have sent three 230-grain hollowpointed cartridges on their deadly way.

  He hesitated. The world seemed to close in, his vision narrowing to a singular focus. His target. Off to his left, Hossein fired another shot, the bullet going wild, the report seeming as distant as a faraway storm. His friend’s face stared back at him through those deathly iron posts, seemingly frozen in time. Disbelief overwhelmed him, the sour taste of bile rising in the back of his throat.

  He couldn’t pull the trigger. Moments passed—it could have been hours for all he knew. He saw Hamid, his left arm dangling useless at his side, move backward, toward the sheltering pillars, firing another shot to cover his retreat. Disappearing into the darkness.

  Numbly, Harry heard Hossein’s voice, and the mist seemed to clear away. He’d had the shot…

  His gaze flickered from Abdul Ali’s lifeless body crumpled on the floor to the canister laying a few feet away. “Disarm the bomb,” he ordered, his throat dry. “I’ll go after him.”

  For a moment, Hossein didn’t move and Harry turned on him. “Can you do the job?”

  The major’s gaze was unwavering. “Of course. Can you?”

  Hesitation. It was the killer. Those moments when you paused when you should have kept moving, when you had the shot and failed to take it. It was those moments that killed. And he knew it. Alone now, moving deeper into the passages beneath al-Aqsa, Harry felt his eyes adjust to the darkness. Whether Hamid would lead him to the fourth canister, he knew not. It was like following a wounded tiger into his lair.

  The corridor opened out into a large hall, arched pillars extending off as far as Harry could see. He moved slowly, cautiously, listening every few paces.

  Sunlight streamed into the center of the room from a window high in the wall, on the southern wall of al-Aqsa if he remembered correctly.

  A bullet smacked into the stone beside his head and Harry ducked low, his eyes searching the semi-darkness. A shape, about fifteen yards off, moving behind the pillars.

  He knelt down behind a wooden railing partitioning off the worship space, the muzzle of his UMP-45 resting across the carved wood. Waiting, every sense alert, listening for any movement, any sign of his antagonist.

  Patience—it had alw
ays been one of Hamid’s virtues. One of the things that had made him so valuable to the team. The team that had been torn apart by his treachery. Harry’s lips compressed into a thin line, forcing himself to remember the sight of Davood’s body. There was only one way this could end.

  Movement there in the darkness, movement hesitant and uncertain. Harry saw the outline of a gun in the shadows and fired, the suppressed burst sounding like a trio of handclaps in the darkened hall. Applause for a requiem.

  11:48 A.M.

  The security center

  “One more code,” Carol’s voice instructed. Tex cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder, his fingers poised over the keyboard of the security console.

  “Z as in Zulu-Bravo-India-five-three-Hotel. Enter.”

  “Roger that.”

  “You should now be in control of the feed. I’m in the network as well, synchronizing our facial-recognition software with the cameras. They’re still using Windows Seven—there’s a couple backdoors in that OS. I used to date a programmer from Redmond.”

  The screens around him lit up, the system coming on-line once more—revealing the crowd now gathered outside the mosque. Word from Hossein had confirmed the disarming of the third canister, but they still had one to find, and thousands of people flooding into the area around the masjid. “How soon will we have facial-recognition capabilities?” he asked.

  “Five minutes, tops. Why?”

  “We’ve got a lot of people to scan.”

  11:49 A.M.

  Masjid al-Marwani