The Pandora Deception--A Novel

by David Bruns

  It was full dark by the time they pulled up to the underground garage and the door rattled open. Kasim drove in and shut off the engine. The dome light came on as he opened the driver’s-side door.

  “Zula will be joining us downstairs, Kasim.”

  Kasim shrugged. “Whatever you say, boss.”

  “We’re not staying long, Kasim. I’ll need you to be ready to travel with two men you can trust.”

  As she followed JP into the elevator, Rachel hoped to hell that Noam had this location by now and had a team on the way.

  When the elevator door opened again, Rachel stepped into a room that looked like a common room at a college dormitory. Comfortable chairs and sofas, a big-screen TV with a stack of DVDs and a few video-game controllers piled to one side.

  On the far side of the room was a kitchen area with five people seated around a dining table. Rachel scanned the faces. Two men, three women. One of the men was Chinese and older, the other a younger, bearded Arab. Two of the women were white and the third was a pretty Indian woman with long dark hair.

  The conversation around the table ceased abruptly. The diners all stared at the visitors with intense curiosity. JP led the way and Kasim hustled Rachel past the table in a way that made it clear she was not to interact with the staff.

  At the end of a long hallway, JP knocked on a closed door.

  The door was opened by the woman Rachel had seen in the garage on her last visit. She remembered the woman’s bright blue eyes, but the head scarf had hidden the rest of her features. Long auburn hair framed the delicate lines of her face. Her skin was a warm, creamy brown made even more exotic by her arresting eyes.

  She threw herself into JP’s arms. “It worked! Pandora worked!” She kissed him with a frantic passion that caused a little surge of jealousy to bloom in Rachel’s gut.

  JP broke the embrace and turned to Rachel. “Zula, this is Dr. Talia Tahir.”

  His face was completely open, trusting. If she hadn’t been in bed with him twelve hours earlier she would never have suspected anything.

  Talia held out her hand. “I’m glad JP has you to rely on for his safety.” Her voice was low and husky, matching the sexual aura that she exuded.

  She took JP’s arm. “Now, perhaps you can fill me in on what is so urgent.”

  JP ushered everyone into the bedroom and closed the door. “We need to shut it down, Talia.”

  “Shut what down?”

  “Everything,” JP said. “All of this. I met with Saleh and Zarecki in Alexandria this morning. The Americans know about us. We’ve been compromised.”

  Talia’s face hardened. “Compromised? How?” She turned on Zula with a force that made Rachel take an involuntary step back. “By her?”

  JP inserted himself between the two women. “No, the website. They broke the code. They can track us here.”

  Talia paced the room. “That’s impossible. Zarecki said the code was unbreakable.”

  JP moved to intercept her. “I’m sorry, my love, but we don’t have much time. We need to leave tonight.”

  “What about them?” Talia wriggled out of his arms, gestured toward the kitchen.

  “We let them go. They don’t know anything. They can’t hurt us—”

  “But Pandora! It works, it works so well, just like we planned it. It was beautiful.” Talia bit her lip.

  JP captured her hands. She tried to pull away but he held her fast. “The genetic component doesn’t work yet. It’s not ready, Talia. We need to get you away from here.”

  “You promised me, JP.” Talia wrested her hands free and backed away. She hugged herself. “You promised me.”

  “We have to go,” he said softly. “Now.”

  Talia took a shaky breath. “If that’s what you think is best, dear.” She went to the door and called into the hall. “Lakshmi, can you come here, please?”

  Rachel used Talia’s movement to sneak a look at Kasim. The security guard leaned against the wall, arms folded. He smiled at Rachel when he caught her looking, and she felt a shiver race up her spine.

  The Indian woman showed up at the door. Talia placed her hand on the woman’s arm. “Can you finish entering the data set from today’s research? I need to go over it with JP later.”

  Lakshmi seemed surprised by the request. Her bright smile dimmed, but she nodded. “Yes, of course. I’ll do it right away.”

  Talia turned to Kasim. “We’ll deal with her later. Get everyone downstairs to Lab One, please, Kasim.”

  The security man marched into the common room where the scientists were finishing dinner. “We’re having a security drill. I need everyone downstairs immediately.” He clapped his huge hands together. “Now!”

  The people in the room sighed as if they were used to this sort of thing. They trooped to the far side of the room and down a stairwell. Kasim looked at Rachel. “You, too.”

  Rachel shot a look at JP, who nodded. He had his arm around Talia as he guided her to the stairs.

  The stairwell connecting the upper living quarters to the lower labs showed markings that indicated the building had been prefabricated as modules. The name of a European construction company was stenciled on the wall.

  At the bottom of the steps, a heavy steel door stood open. Inside was an open foyer area and a thick glass wall labeled LAB ONE in block letters. Through the glass Rachel could see an impressive open lab space, with workstations and microscopes surrounding the perimeter. The scientists were all inside except for the Chinese man, who waited by the door. His arms were folded, his jaw thrust out.

  “Inside, Xianshan,” Talia said. “You know the drill.”

  “Are you coming in, too?”

  Talia’s smile was brittle. “It’s not that kind of drill.”

  “What is going on?” the Chinese man demanded. “There’s something going on.”

  JP stepped forward. “Get inside, Xianshan. Please.”

  The man relented. JP shut the door and locked it. The readout next to the door glowed green with the message: POSITIVE SEAL.

  The Chinese man pushed a button on the wall. “What is going on, JP?” he said through the intercom.

  “Unfortunately, we have to terminate Project Deliverance early. Your services are no longer required.” The faces of the people on the other side of the glass went slack with shock. “This is only a temporary inconvenience. Kasim will let you out in the morning.”

  At the back of the lab, Rachel saw a thin line of what looked like steam rising toward the ceiling. She touched JP’s arm and pointed to it. He stopped speaking and turned toward Talia.

  “What have you done?” His voice was hoarse.

  Talia did not flinch. Her tone was light, businesslike. “I’m doing what needs to be done, dear. Did you think I didn’t see this coming? We cannot afford to have witnesses.”

  The implications of Talia’s words hit Rachel just before Kasim’s fist did. Her reflexes saved her. She ducked her head just enough for the punch to be a glancing blow, but even that was enough for her to see stars.

  She dropped her body to the floor, kicking out as she fell. Her toe connected with Kasim’s kneecap and she felt a satisfying pop. The big man let out a suppressed scream, but the injury did not stop him from drawing his weapon.

  The muzzle of his Beretta looked huge as it swung toward her head. Rachel twisted and kicked at the gun, knocking off his aim. The muzzle flash blinded her, the floor next to her cheek shattered under the impact of the bullet, and the room went silent in her deadened hearing.

  She lashed out again with her foot, sweeping his feet out from under him. Kasim went down with a feral howl.

  The gun spun away. No matter. He was going to kill Rachel with his bare hands.

  Rachel scrambled to her feet. She reached behind her back for the thin blade she had hidden in her belt. It flashed silver in the fluorescent lights.

  Kasim got to his feet favoring his right leg, his face flushed with fury.

  Rachel attacked. Kasim wa
s a huge man with a long reach. She needed to get close and make the blade count. She feinted right, then drove in from the left, forcing him to put weight on his injured knee. She drove the blade up, toward his midsection. He blocked it with his forearm, the razor-sharp blade leaving a huge gash from his wrist to his elbow.

  His fist came from the right, connecting with the side of her head. The force of the blow drove her back into the wall, delivering a second wave of pain. She lashed out with the knife, but it was too late. One of Kasim’s meaty paws wrapped around her wrist. Two blows against the wall and the blade fell from her numb fingers.

  He gripped the front of her blouse and slammed her body into the wall. Breath left her lungs in a rush. She scratched at his eyes with her free hand and he roared back like a wild animal, but he did not let go.

  She drove her knee into his crotch, felt the connection with soft flesh, and saw a fresh wave of pain cross Kasim’s face.

  But his hands were on her neck now, crushing her airway. Her vision tunneled. Strength fled her limbs.

  It was over.

  In her dimming vision, light flashed over Kasim’s shoulder and a knife appeared in his neck. Her knife. Blood fountained out of the wound.

  She stared at it. Had she done that?

  Kasim’s fingers loosened. Air flowed into her lungs again and Kasim collapsed. Only the cold slick metal of the wall kept Rachel upright.

  JP stood in front of her, blood on his hand where he had plunged her knife into Kasim’s neck. He caught her when she started to fall forward.

  A banging sound made Rachel look up. The scientists were using a stool to try to break through the thick glass.

  “Fools.” Talia stood with her arms folded, watching the scene. “That’s one-inch Plexiglas. They’re wasting their time—and they don’t have much of it.”

  As she laughed at her own joke, Talia turned. Her brilliant blue eyes blazed like glass, and her face might have been cut from stone.

  “No more waiting, JP. This is our moment. Pandora is ready. I need you with me.”

  “It’s not ready,” JP pleaded. “We need the genetic component in place. If you release it, we won’t be able to stop it. We could kill millions of people.”

  “I need you with me, JP. Kill the woman and we leave together. Right now.”

  JP put himself between Rachel and Talia. “Don’t do this, Talia.”

  A gun appeared in Talia’s hand. Kasim’s gun.

  “We had a plan,” JP said.

  The weapon was steady, her voice dead calm. “I will not be stopped.”

  Part of JP’s skull disappeared in a bloody spray.

  Rachel reacted. As JP’s body fell back toward her, she gripped his jacket and drove him forward using the man’s flesh like a shield, slamming Talia back into the Plexiglas wall. On the other side of the glass, the Chinese man yelled at her soundlessly.

  The gun went off again. A lance of burning pain stabbed her in the side. Rachel seized Talia’s gun hand and sank her teeth into her wrist.

  Blood rushed into her mouth, the gun went off again, but Talia released the weapon.

  Rachel got her finger around the trigger and rolled over. The heavy steel door clanged shut.

  She was alone.

  Minutes passed. Rachel got to her hands and knees.

  “Are you okay?” The voice was coming from the intercom.

  Her hand left a bloody print on the Plexiglas wall as she got to her feet. She stabbed at the intercom button.

  “I’ll live, I think.” She attempted a smile and failed. “How do I open this door?” She tapped the muzzle of the handgun on the airtight door of Lab One.

  “Don’t,” said the blond woman on the other side of the glass. “We don’t know what’s in here. If you open that door the whole facility could be contaminated.”

  Rachel winced, pressing her hand against her side. “How about a first-aid kit?”

  The woman pointed to a wall cabinet on the other side of the room. Inside Rachel found a well-stocked kit. She put wads of gauze on the entry and exit wounds and wrapped another roll of gauze around her waist to hold them in place. She felt herself swaying. She took two bottles of water and went back to the intercom.

  “Help is on the way,” she said to the blond woman. “Someone will be here by morning.”

  “You need to tell them to contact the Blue Team,” the woman replied.

  “Blue Team?”

  “It’s the other half of the project. We’re the Red Team, we make the viruses. The Blue Team makes vaccines.” Behind her the Chinese man began to cough.

  Rachel nodded. “Blue Team. I’ll tell them. I need to sit down now.”

  “I’m Greta,” the woman said. “What’s your name?”

  “Rachel.” It was an effort to move her mouth, and her speech sounded slurred. “My name is Rachel.”

  She sank to the floor. JP’s body lay next to her, half his face missing, blood and brain matter pooled next to the open wound. She set the gun on the ground.

  Her eyelids drooped. She’d lost a lot of blood. She hoped Noam would hurry.

  Levi’s face swam in her vision. For the first time in a long time, she felt very close to her dead husband.

  CHAPTER 42

  Red Sea, twelve miles off the coast of Sudan

  Lieutenant Colonel Bill West stormed out of the back of the MV-22B Osprey and paced the deserted flight deck of the USS Makin Island. He held a satellite phone tightly, as if the strength of his grip would force the phone to ring.

  Two hours ago, when he had been given the order to load his raid force onto the ten Ospreys and four CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters, the flight deck had been alive with feverish activity.

  The Ospreys, their spinning tilt rotors in the vertical position, had been ready to rise into the humid night sky over the Red Sea. The F-35 fighter escort was already airborne, circling the massive Wasp-class amphibious assault ship, accompanied by a pair of KC-130J refueling tankers launched out of Lemonnier to support the raid.

  The moonless night was perfect for an assault. It was all going so well.

  But that was two hours ago, before word came down from Colonel O’Malley of the hold.

  Now, all around him was silent.

  West dialed the phone and pressed it against his ear. It was answered on the second ring.

  “Colonel, what’s the holdup, sir?” West said. “I’ve got a hundred fifty Marines sitting on their thumbs. If we delay much longer, we might as well start serving breakfast.”

  “Keep your pants on, Bill,” O’Malley’s measured voice boomed in West’s ear. “The whole damn Egyptian army is crossing the border into Sudan. As you might imagine, that complicates the picture. If we launch a raid force, someone’s liable to get the wrong idea and start shooting at you. The State Department is on it, they just need a few more minutes.”

  West tried to picture in his mind exactly how a diplomat explained to a foreign government that the United States had determined that a site manufacturing weapons of mass destruction existed on their sovereign soil and the US military was about to launch a full-scale assault on the facility to address that deficiency. Stay clear or suffer the consequences.

  “I understand, sir,” West said. “But the longer we delay, the harder it will be to contain the site.”

  West had been briefed on the HUMINT source, a Mossad agent, who had managed to send the site location through undisclosed means. But the agent had gone silent, a possible sign the raid had been compromised.

  Their intel on the site was skimpy as well. A warehouse in the middle of the desert east of Khartoum, Sudan, heavily defended by up to three dozen armed soldiers guarding an underground research lab, possibly manufacturing biological weapons.

  Bioweapons. The thought made his stomach queasy. Of all the possible scenarios, that was the one that worried him the most. With nukes, if shit went sideways, it would be over so fast you’d never even know it happened. Chemical weapons were bad, but his men c
arried chem suits to deal with that threat.

  But bio, that was something else entirely. If just one man got infected …

  Thankfully, someone in his chain of command had the good sense to split the mission: His Marines would secure the topside area. There was a team of specially trained spec ops SEALs to penetrate the research lab.

  “I hear you, Bill,” O’Malley was saying. “AFRICOM is on the phone with Washington right now. As soon as I know, you’ll know.”

  “Aye, sir.” West hung up and stalked back to the open ramp of the idle Osprey. The gentle hum of conversation among the Marines facing each other in jump seats ceased.

  “As you were,” West said, as he passed down the aisle between twenty-four combat-loaded men.

  The waiting was not good for morale. Marines were a kinetic weapon—aim and fire. Whether it was one Marine or a whole battalion, they were not trained to reflect on their lot in life.

  These were men trained to take action. Patience was not a virtue in their line of work.

  Second Battalion, Fourth Marines—better known as the Magnificent Bastards—had a proud lineage that dated back to World War I. Tonight, Bill West planned to add another chapter to their storied history—and history was not written by sitting on your ass in an idle aircraft floating in the middle of the goddamn ocean on the deck of a navy amphibious assault ship.

  “Sir,” said his enlisted man handling comms for the command element. “It’s Colonel O’Malley.”

  West took the handset. “Yes, sir?”

  “Bill, the operation is a go. Release the Bastards.”

  * * *

  It took just under half an hour to get their entire assault team airborne. Ten Ospreys and four Super Stallions loaded with twenty-four Marines each, six F-35s as fighter escort and ground assault, and two KC-130J tankers for in-flight refueling. There was also a squadron of Marine Corps F/A-18s out of Djibouti that would arrive as the raid force entered Sudanese airspace to fly high cover just in case Sudan or Egypt decided they wanted to intervene.

  “Feet dry,” the pilot reported as they entered Eritrean airspace.