Pandora's Grave (17 page)

Russian-made, the helicopter was weathered and beaten by long years of service in the Iranian military. It looked scarcely serviceable. Thomas kept his head down, peering through the rocks as it circled the base camp once, then twice, finally settling down on the edge of camp. A man in the full uniform of an Iranian army colonel exited, accompanied by two other soldiers. Thomas focused his binoculars in on the tight group, studying each face in turn and wishing desperately for his SV-98…

“Major Hossein! Sir!” Hossein turned, wiping a soot-covered mouth against the torn sleeve of his uniform. He had been battling for hours against the blaze that threatened to engulf his camp, his final fuel tanker, his remaining soldiers. The explosives used to wreck his diesel supply had fed an inferno that had spread onto two of the laboratory trailers, which had gone up in their turn, Dr. Ansari’s stockpile of chemicals only adding to the misery. One of his men had died, screaming, in the flames.

“What is it?” he demanded angrily, handing his end of the tow rope off to a young soldier.

The corporal slid up to him, never saluting. It went unnoticed in the chaos. “Sir, we’ve got company.”

Hossein’s hand went instinctively to the Makarov on his hip. The corporal shook his head, still too breathless to speak. “A helicopter–from Tehran. A colonel to see you, sir.”

“This chaos?” Hossein asked rhetorically, waving a hand at the towering pyre. “This chaos, and they send someone to take over. What in Allah’s name can they be thinking?”

“He wants to see you, sir,” the young man repeated, anxious. Hossein shot him a baleful glance and shook his head. “If we don’t get this tanker moved away from the flames, we’ll all see the devil first. Lend a hand…”

Thomas watched until the colonel and his escort disappeared into the interfering haze of oily smoke. Then he tucked the binoculars back down the front of his shirt and began the trek upward. Toward LZ RUMRUNNER. Day had come. Time was running out. He could only hope to get there before the team was extracted…

9:25 A.M. Tehran Time

A laboratory

In a tunnel network north of Tehran

“The rat showed weakness within the first thirty minutes,” Dr. Ansari noted carefully, typing the observation into the computer in front of him.

His assistant looked up from their charts. “Vomiting of blood followed three hours later–veins bloated and blackened within eleven hours of exposure.”

“Eleven hours, seven minutes,” Ansari corrected, glancing over at the young man. “Precision is a requirement in such matters.” He turned back to the screen. “The rat was dead thirty-one hours, five minutes and twelve seconds from the time of exposure.”

“Weaponizing the bacteria should not be difficult–this seems to be an especially virulent strain.”

Ansari nodded, repressing his internal shudder. “The plague that swept Europe killed far more slowly, which was their damnation, for people could travel long distances before dying, spreading the disease to others in their path. No matter–in these days a man can travel far in thirty-one hours. Once the archaeologists arrive from the base camp, we will be able to conduct further tests.”

“No you won’t.”

The voice came from behind them and both men turned, startled from their calculations. A man in the uniform of an Iranian Army captain stood in the doorway of the laboratory.

“The base camp was raided early this morning by an unidentified group of foreign commandos. They succeeded in freeing the archaeologists. They are gone.”

“They made it out of the country?” Ansari demanded, startled by the revelation.

The captain shook his head. “As yet unknown.”

Sighing, the doctor turned back to his computer. “Well, that’s the end of that.”

Sharp footsteps resounded across the sterile tile of the floor. Ansari turned to find the military man at his shoulder. “Yes?”

“The bacteria is to be weaponized and deployable within the next two weeks.”

“According to whom?”

“The highest authority…”

10:03 A.M.

The mountains

It was the third one he had seen, Thomas thought, pressing himself flat against the canyon wall as a helicopter roared by overhead, rotor wash stirring pebbles and dust into a tornadic frenzy. It hadn’t taken Tehran long to mobilize. That alone bothered him. The thought that it had taken him three hours to get less than a third of the way to LZ RUMRUNNER only added to his problems. He listened for a moment, hearing the rotors fade away in the distance, then picked up his rifle and continued on his journey. The Iranian search would only intensify. That much he knew.

10:30 A.M.

The base camp

“We’ve searched these three quadrants. So far, no sign of them. But we will.”

“What makes you so sure?” Hossein asked wearily, adding the perfunctory “sir” at the end of his question.

Colonel Harun Larijani gestured to the map with his finger, ignoring the three bulletholes which pockmarked the wall it hung from. “Well, it stands to reason, major. You cannot honestly expect that they can escape the cordon we’ve thrown out.”

Hossein kept a straight face, looking hard into the eyes of the young man in front of him. Straight out of military school most likely, green beyond doubt. His only redeeming feature was that he seemed to hold Hossein’s service record in awe, an awe measurably diminished by the report of the previous night.

And the only answer he could give was the impossible one. So he held up the radio instead. “This was given me last night. By one of the commandos.”

Larijani’s eyes narrowed into sharp, glittering points. “One of the commandos? How is this?”

“Tehran did not tell you of this?” The major asked, enjoying for a moment the advantage he held over the junior officer. “BEHDIN. Do you know what that means?”

The young man looked puzzled. “Of good rite, of good religion, a man pure of heart.”

“Wrong,” Hossein stated flatly. “It is the codename for one of the Republic’s most trusted sleepers. The man who gave me this radio. He works for the American CIA.”

“The Central Intelligence Agency?” Harun asked in astonishment.

The major replied with a short nod. “The same.”

“Then why can’t you triangulate their position from monitoring their radio network? This could have saved us hours this morning. We could have had them by now. We could have gotten to the bottom of this. Why didn’t—”

Hossein held up a hand to stop the flow of words. “Very simple. While complex, these radios are also limited. In this case, to a eight-kilometer range in which the signal can be detected. And if they’re demonstrating anywhere near the level of professionalism they showed in their strike on this camp, they’ll be keeping their transmissions brief, almost impossible to pick up.”

“Then what do we do?”

Hossein smiled, eyeing his companion’s crisp, spotless dress uniform. Rising, he laid a greasy, oil-soaked hand on the young man’s shoulder. “You’re in command now. Do whatever Allah wills you to do. I’m going to go see if the showers still work around here.”

11:00 A.M.

The hides overlooking LZ OSCAR

“FULLBACK, check in.”

“All quiet, EAGLE SIX. Nothing’s moving.”

“Roger,” Harry replied quietly, ending the transmission. “Let’s pray it stays that way,” he added, almost to himself.

The next moment his ears pricked up, catching a noise, off to the south. Past Tex’s position, way past it. Coming closer.

A helicopter. “EAGLE SIX to all, keep your heads down. This ain’t the cavalry.”

He lowered his binoculars from the slit of the hide, reverting to the naked eye. Nothing that could be picked up, no glint to be detected from the air. The young woman rose up from the bottom of the hide and came to stand beside him. “What is it?”

She hadn’t heard the chopper. No matter. He wouldn’t have either save for the fact that he was listening for it.

“Lie down in the hide,” he ordered crisply. “Stay as low as possible. We have an enemy helicopter coming in for a look-see.”

Harry glanced at his watch. Just past eleven hundred hours. They had another nine hours before it would be dark enough for the Pave Low to cross the border and pick them up. By that time, the hills would be swarming with soldiers. But there was no other option—no clever way to throw them off trail, to distract their attention elsewhere. This wasn’t the movies.

And in it came, an Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunship sweeping low over the ridge, the chin turret swiveling menacingly. Its pair of 23mm cannon could rip the hides to shreds if they were detected. They possessed nothing capable of taking it down. Which meant one thing.

They would not survive detection…

3:29 A.M. Eastern Time

A residence

The suburbs of Washington, D.C.

Vibration jarred Michael Shapiro awake. He slipped his hand carefully to his pillow and retrieved his cellphone from under it. Flipping it open, the screen lit up with a number he knew all too well.

The CIA’s deputy director(intelligence) slipped from the bed, casting a glance back at his sleeping wife. A good woman. If only he had been as good a man.

“Here.”

“What news?”

“Are we secure?”

“You’re at home, aren’t you?”

“I was in bed with my wife till you called,” Shapiro retorted curtly.

“That’s nice,” the voice replied. “We’re secure. What do you have?”

“Nothing. I haven’t heard status on the team since several hours before I left work. They may be out by now.”

“They’re not. I need their position.”

“How do I get that?”

“You’re the head of the intelligence directorate, aren’t you? Everything crosses your desk.”

“I don’t know—” Shapiro hesitated, casting a glance backward at the partially-open bedroom door. “There’s something going on—I’m out of the loop, I don’t understand why.”

“What do you mean?”

“Lay’s running this one straight through Kranemeyer and the NCS. They’re working their own intelligence through several of their own analysts—they’re not talking to me.”

“Well, find a way to get it out of them. Get to work and find out,” the voice ordered, its tone brooking no argument.

“Right,” Shapiro acknowledged after a long silence. “Let me just get dressed here and I’ll get right in.”

“This has turned into a mess, and you understand the terms of our agreement. Get in there and make it spotless.”

The other end of the line went dead with an ominous
click
.

“What’s going on, dear?” The DD(I) turned to find his wife standing in the doorway of their bedroom, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

“I need to go in to work,” he replied, pushing past her and grabbing his pants off the closet door. He couldn’t bring himself to look her in the face.

“But it’s three o’clock in the morning!”

“I know what time it is…”

12:28 P.M. Local Time

An undisclosed location near Tel Aviv

Israel

“What did they want? Why did they attack your team? Why?” Gideon turned back to the archaeologist, his frustration slipping through the veneer of calm he had endeavored to compose.

Tal’s face was expressionless, a mask that revealed nothing and everything at the same time. “You left them to die,” he repeated, his voice no more than a whisper, his words the same ones he had repeated over and over again since the rescue.

“That doesn’t matter now, blast it!” Gideon exclaimed. “What matters is what the Iranians are planning to do now, not to your friends, but to your country. Your
country
! The reason you took your team into danger in the first place.”

Moshe’s gaze wavered and he looked down at his hands. “I never should have. Never…”

Gideon nodded, sensing a crack. A chink in the armor. He leaned forward in his chair, only two feet away from the archaeologist as they sat within the confines of a small holding cell, their surroundings illuminated by a single lightbulb hanging the ceiling by its cord.

“Perhaps not, but you did,” he reasoned. “And their sacrifice will be in vain unless you give us some idea what the Iranians are planning.”

It was the wrong thing to say, Gideon realized a second later. The gap closed, the armor sealing over again. And the man’s face was just as impassive as before. “I will tell you nothing. You left them to die…”

1:45 P.M. Tehran Time

The base camp

“Any progress?” Hossein asked as he strode back into the trailer he and the colonel were using as a makeshift tactical operations center. About the only good thing of the colonel’s arrival was the fact that he had brought more sophisticated comm equipment with him. The only good thing.

Harun shook his head. “Patrols reporting in as we speak.”

“How often do you have them checking back in?”

“Every thirty minutes.”

The major shook his head. “Not good enough. After this, every ten minutes. If one of them is taken out, we need to know as soon as possible. You’re giving them twenty-nine minutes to take out a patrol and make good their escape over the hills.”

Harun glanced up from his work. “Who did Tehran entrust with the command here,
major
? Report-back will stay as is.”

Hossein smiled, leaning back in his chair, his eyes on the mountains outside. The young man knew nothing of this terrain. Knew not that it was as merciless an enemy as the American commandos. And did not care to learn. But that was the colonel’s responsibility now, not his.

Footsteps. Thomas pressed himself flat against the rocks as they came closer to his hiding place. The Kalishnikov was slung over his shoulder, his Beretta clutched tightly in both hands. The long grey cylinder of a suppressor extended from the pistol’s barrel.