Pandora's Grave (11 page)

He was shooting a little low, but there wasn’t time to correct that. He would just have to compensate for it.

The figures running for cover glowed pale green in his night-vision scope. A sharp
click
, the bolt-action sliding crisply into place as he racked another round into the chamber of the SV-98.

Another shot, another kill, another body collapsing into the dust. It was like a shooting gallery…

2:29 A.M.

The drop zone

“Lieutenant, the perimeter is clear. No hostiles. Copy?”

Gideon cupped his hand to his ear, listening to Chaim’s report. “Affirmative. I copy.”

He turned back to the FAV, spreading out a small cloth map on the hood of the vehicle. “We have thirty-two kilometers to go in the next half-hour. Yossi, I want you to take the lead vehicle to an overlook position—here,” he indicated, drawing a circle on the map with his index finger. “Chaim will go with you and prepare to snipe down into the camp. Nathan and I will take the second vehicle and go in the back way.”

He paused and looked around at his team members, their faces shadowed in the glow of his flashlight. “Intelligence indicates our target is inside this building here. We’ve got to hit that building fast, secure it, then escort SCHLIEMANN to the extraction zone. I’ll be sending him with you, Yossi. Understand?”

The small sergeant nodded briefly. “Right, chief.”

“What about the other archaeologists?”

It was Nathan Gur. Gideon glanced at him in the darkness, saw the look on the young man’s face. “We do not have room in the vehicles,” he replied brusquely. “They will be left behind.”

He folded up the map and replaced it in an inner pocket. “Let’s move out.”

2:33 A.M. Tehran Time

The crash site

Davood came back into the realm of the conscious feeling a hand touch his shoulder, a voice whispering to him, “Are you okay, my brother?”

It was Hamid.

Davood rolled over on his back, biting his lip as pain shot through his veins. Tancretti was nowhere to be seen. The explosion must have flung them apart, he thought numbly, the sound still ringing in his ears. He wondered how long he had been unconscious.

“BIRDMASTER?” he whispered, gazing up into Hamid’s face as the tall man bent over him. “Where is he?”

Hamid stood to his feet, glancing around them. Finally he spotted a figure stretched out in the sand about six feet away.

“There,” he said solemnly.

Davood raised himself up on his elbows, testing himself carefully. Nothing seemed to be broken. Just cut—and bruised. Hamid was looking at him again, his face looking strangely misshapen with the night-vision goggles covering his eyes. A giant bug-like creature from one of the American alien movies Davood had watched as a child.

“Do you need help?” he asked.

“No. I have to check the colonel,” was his reply, carefully rising to his feet.

“Very good,” Hamid retorted shortly, “I will report our situation to EAGLE SIX.” He paused. “Where is your radio?”

Davood’s hand went to his belt, searching for the small transmitter. He shook his head, a rueful smile crossing his face. “Must have lost it in the explosion.”

A curt nod. “EAGLE SIX, this is FULLBACK. Sitrep?”

12:36 A.M. Local Time

The personal residence of Avi ben Shoham

Overlooking Lake Galilee

Counting sheep had never worked for the Mossad chief. Neither had counting terrorists, for that matter. He knew them by heart, every last man who had struck Israel and was still living to boast about it. They didn’t help him sleep. He went back to his nightstand and closed the dossier on Ibrahim Quasim.

Case closed. Another body in a Palestinian morgue. Another terrorist dead.

His eyes flickered to the portrait of his wife hanging over the bed. It had been a long-time wish of hers. Painted when he had worked in the Israeli Embassy in Paris, it was the way he wanted to remember her. A beautiful woman in the prime of her life.

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.”