by Jon Land
He’d had Pandora’s jar all along!
McCracken started to back off, drawing even with Johnny Wareagle. “I don’t know how long you’ll be able to survive outside your chamber before the infections worsen. The power’s on and the computers still work, if you want to try putting the whole story down. Just remember you killed your family, your whole family now. It might have been your daughter who set the bomb in Stuttgart, but you lit the fuse long before that.” McCracken stopped, then resumed just as quickly. “Oh, and one more thing about your story, sir.”
Roy looked at McCracken blankly.
“Now it has a happy ending.”
They returned to Pandora’s Temple with a professional crew on board a craft almost identical to their original Crab. Wareagle kept his eye peeled out the windows the whole stretch after they slipped through the same vent into the cavern below, as if expecting the giant squid to make an appearance again.
For his part, McCracken held Pandora’s jar in a carefully padded case. The simple ivory-colored jar itself weighed extraordinarily little. Prior to making the trip back to Greece with Pandora’s jar in their possession, McCracken had watched as Captain Seven put the jar through every conceivable test, determining ultimately it was composed of materials clearly not of this world. X-rays, thermal scans, and all manner of high-tech diagnostics and analysis had further revealed nothing contained within the jar—at least nothing bearing any weight, mass, or shape. In those moments, McCracken was never gladder for the fact that the seamless, lidless nature of Pandora’s jar made it impossible to open.
And now it never would be.
“The tsunami that sank the temple in 1650 B.C. must have dislodged Pandora’s jar and sent it drifting in the ocean,” McCracken said, even though he knew Wareagle was barely listening. “It settles on the bottom and, at some point, gets recovered by an archaeological or geophysical survey team. Ends up in Sebastian Roy’s private collection.”
Wareagle finally turned his way, shaking his head. “To have what he most wanted all along and not realize it . . .”
“Maybe that’s the whole point of the jar.”
“What?”
“Pathos Verdes built Pandora’s Temple to hide a weapon not fit for mortal man, capable of killing a god . . . and a planet. Could be the temple wasn’t needed at all. Could be the jar was capable of taking care of itself just fine.”
“Maybe the jar found us, Blainey.”
“Then let’s go treat it right.”
They used the craft’s single robotic arm and pincers to return Pandora’s jar to its pedestal, retracing their route out and climbing fast without encountering the giant squid again. After rising up through the vent, the underwater explosives experts McCracken had brought with him used those same pincers to lay powerful, shaped charges across the seafloor above the cavern housing Pandora’s Temple, concentrated in the areas around the vent.
McCracken personally triggered the blasts from closer to the surface to shield the craft from the shock wave and percussion. He felt only a rumble and watched as the underwater cameras they left behind revealed the sea itself seeming to cave inward in a rolling cloud of sand, silt, and sediment.
Then nothing at all.
When the cloud cleared on the screens before them, nothing remained but the darkness of an abyss that would keep the secrets of the sea safe.
And seal Pandora’s Temple forever.
Captain Seven stood onshore, unable to see anything so far at sea while still being struck by the odd feeling the deed was done at last. Something shifted to his right, and he turned to find the old wild-haired hippie he remembered from his last visit to Athens standing beside him. He was smiling serenely, his eyes looking larger now that they seemed to be showing more of the whites.
“Yo, Pat dude, what brings you out here?”
“Same thing that brought you.”
“You come bearing more of that primo weed?”
“No, my friend, but I have another gift for you.”
With that he produced an iron mason’s square, or “angle” to the Greeks from which it had descended, formed of two legs of unequal length set at an angle of ninety degrees. A crucial tool for builders from ancient times.
“A token of my appreciation,” the man continued.
Captain Seven took it, turning from the sun so he could see the square better; he was surprised by its heft and pristine condition. “But what did I do to—”
The captain stopped when he saw Pat walking away from him into the sun.
“Deserve it?” the man finished for him, turning. “You helped finally end this. And now it’s over, over at long last so I can finally rest.”
“Fucking A!” Captain Seven shook his head in disbelief. “You’re not . . .”
“Yes, I am,” the man said, continuing on. “And my mission is finished at last.”
“Pathos Verdes,” Captain Seven muttered, looking down at the mason’s square that had helped construct the now entombed Pandora’s Temple.
He turned back toward the wild-haired man’s dwindling shape, holding a hand to shield the sun from his eyes as the builder vanished, disappeared, lost to the present just as he had been lost long ago to the past.
A Biography of Jon Land
Since his first book was published in 1983, Jon Land has written twenty-eight novels, seventeen of which have appeared on national bestseller lists. He began writing technothrillers before Tom Clancy put them in vogue, and his strong prose, easy characterization, and commitment to technical accuracy have made him a pillar of the genre.
Land spent his college years at Brown University, where he convinced the faculty to let him attempt writing a thriller as his senior honors thesis. Four years later, his first novel, The Doomsday Spiral, appeared in print. In the last years of the Cold War, he found a place writing chilling portrayals of threats to the United States, and of the men and women who operated undercover and outside the law to maintain U.S. security. His most successful of those novels were the nine starring Blaine McCracken, a rogue CIA agent and former Green Beret with the skills of James Bond but none of the Englishman’s tact.
In 1998 Land published the first novel in his Ben and Danielle series, comprised of fast-paced thrillers whose heroes, a Detroit cop and an Israeli detective, work together to protect the Holy Land, falling in love in the process. He has written seven of these so far. The most recent, The Last Prophecy, was released in 2004.
Recently, RT Book Reviews gave Jon a special prize for pioneering genre fiction, and his short story “Killing Time” was shortlisted for the 2010 Dagger Award for best short fiction and included in 2010’s The Best American Mystery Stories. Land is currently writing Blood Strong, his fourth novel to feature Texas Ranger Caitlin Strong—a female hero in a genre which, Land has said, has too few of them. The second book in the series, Strong Justice (2010), was named a Top Thriller of the Year by Library Journal and runner-up for Best Novel of the Year by the New England Book Festival. The third, Strong at the Break, will be released this year, and the fourth, Blood Strong, will follow in 2012. His first nonfiction book, Betrayal, written with Robert Fitzpatrick, tells the behind-the-scenes story of a deputy FBI chief attempting to bring down Boston crime lord Whitey Bulger, and will also be released in 2011.
Land currently lives in Providence, not far from his alma mater.
Land (left) interviewing then–teen idol Leif Garrett (center) in April of 1978 at the dawn of Land’s writing career.
Land (second from left) at Maine’s Ogunquit Beach during the summer of 1984, while he was a counselor at Camp Samoset II. He spent a total of twenty-six summers at the camp.
Land with street kids in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which he visited in 1987 as part of his research for The Omicron Legion (1991).
Land on the beach in Matunuck, Rhode Island, in 2003.
In front of the “process trailer” on the set of Dirty Deeds, the first movie that he scripted, which was released in 2005. The film st
arred Milo Ventimiglia and Lacey Chabert.
Land pictured in 2007 with Fabrizio Boccardi, the Italian investor and entrepreneur who was the inspiration for his book The Seven Sins, which was published in 2008.
Land emceeing the Brunch and Bullets Luncheon to benefit Reading Is Fundamental at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel in the spring of 2007.
Land and his classmates and fraternity brothers celebrating their thirtieth class reunion during Brown University’s Commencement Weekend in 2009. He was a member of the Delta Phi fraternity.
In the fall of 2010, Land attended the first ever Brown University night football game, which he coordinated in his position as Vice President of the Brown Football Association. Brown beat rival Harvard 29-14.
Land’s most recent publicity shot, taken in late 2010, when he was having, he says, a good hair day.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this book. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Jon Land
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
978-1-4532-2462-5
Published in 2012 by Open Road Integrated Media
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New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
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