Pandora's Grave (2 page)

The crowd began to scatter like a covey of quail, panic spreading through them, a primal impulse for safety. The second bodyguard went for the Sig-Sauer on his hip, but he was dead before it could clear the holster.

Three corpses on the pavement.

The assassin turned, tucking the Colt into his waistband and adjusting the loose sports shirt he wore so as to cover it. Then he walked calmly back through the crowd, listening to the screams of people shouting for the police.

His steps quickened as he moved away from the immediate area of the nightclub. A car bearing the lettering
Policia
passed him as he jogged along the sidewalk, lights flashing and siren wailing. A quiet smile of amusement crossed his face at the sight.

All that bother for nothing. He reached up, switching on his earbud microphone with a motion that seemed as innocent as scratching his ear. “Chameleon to Raven. Operation BOXWOOD is completed. Conducting E & E.”

“Roger that, Chameleon. Come on home.”

12:32 P.M. Eastern Time, September 19th

CIA Headquarters

Langley, Virginia

Silence reigned on the seventh floor of the CIA Headquarters, silence unbroken but for the noise of a small fly buzzing near the ceiling.

A lull before the storm, Harry Nichols thought as he sat outside the office of CIA Director David Lay. It was the reason he was here.

For the thirty-eight-year-old field officer to be invited up to the seventh floor, the inner sanctum of the Agency’s top officials, meant trouble.

He could count on one hand the number of times it had happened before in his time at the CIA. And every time it had been a prelude to a mission. And not just any mission. Something special. In his line of work, special meant dangerous.

He got up from his seat on the couch and crossed over to the window, gazing out over the city, over the Potomac to Washington, D.C. His nation’s capital.

The capital of the land he had sworn to defend. No matter what the cost.

Over the fifteen years he had worked for the CIA, he had learned the cost. All too well. The cost of missions gone wrong, the price of failure. The bittersweet taste of victory when it had been achieved with the blood of his friends, his comrades.

To look at him, one would have never suspected who he was, what his job entailed. He stood about six-foot three, his frame deceptively lean. The build of a runner, not a weightlifter, though he did both. There was little about his physique to hint of the tightly controlled violence he was so capable of unleashing.

Clear blue eyes smiled disarmingly from a smooth-shaven face that had been long weathered by the elements, the smile so often nothing more than a facade to conceal the man that lay beneath. A cover, like so much of the rest of his life. He had sacrificed much to serve his country.

His hair was black and wavy, parted neatly to one side. To look at him, dressed as he was in a blue suit jacket, matching pants and a white shirt, one would have guessed him to be nothing more than a business executive, or perhaps one of Langley’s many analysts. Nothing could have been farther from the truth.

A Colt 1911 .45 automatic was beneath the jacket, carried fully loaded in a paddle holster on his hip, even here on the seventh floor of the CIA. He rarely went without it.

The door opened behind him. A woman’s voice. “The director will see you now.”

He turned, a smile passing across his face. “Thank you, Margaret.”

“Go on in.”

Director Lay glanced up from his computer as Harry entered. In his early sixties, Lay was a big man, carrying the weight of someone who had spent most of their career behind a desk. Which he had, but no one would have called the desk of DCIA easy or stress-free. His graying hair was testimony to that fact.

“Have a seat,” he instructed. “I’m glad you could get here so quickly. I understand you’ve been trying to catch up on sleep since your arrival from Mexico City last night.”

Harry shrugged, taking a chair in front of the desk. “Kinda had to catch the red-eye back. Understood something hot was on tap.”

“There is. Good work with Calderon, Nichols,” the director said abruptly. That was all he said about the three dangerous months that had led up to the assassination of the drug lord. That was all that would ever be said. Silence was golden. “I trust you’ve had lunch?”

“I grabbed a quick bite in the Operations Center cafeteria.”

“Good. This will take a while.”

“What’s going on?”

Lay handed him a thin folder. “Recognize this man?”

Harry flipped the folder open and briefly studied the 8x10 photo inside. “Moshe Tal,” he announced calmly, his voice betraying none of his inner confusion. “Israel’s foremost archaeologist.”

“You know him?”

“By reputation only. A modern-day Indiana Jones, so they say.”

“Whoever ‘they’ are, they’re right. He’s a cowboy.”

“So I’ve heard. Not too much regard for the conventions of the business. Where’s he fit into this picture?”

The CIA director snorted. “He
is
the picture. Six months ago he obtained permission from the Iranian government to conduct an archaeological dig in the Alborz Mountains, apparently in the ruins of a medieval Persian city.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Harry interrupted. “They allowed an
Israeli
archaeologist inside their borders?”

“It’s already sounding rather strange, isn’t it?”

“You’d better believe it. How large of a team does Dr. Tal have with him?”

“The team was very small. That’s another one of his trademarks. Fifteen in all including Dr. Tal, thirteen Americans and an Australian woman named Rachel Eliot.”

“No other Israelis?”

A grim smile creased the director’s face. “They obeyed their government’s injunction to stay out of Iran.”

“Our citizens didn’t? Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

“Because they usually don’t.”

“Wait a minute, director,” Harry said, suddenly holding up his hand. “You said the team
was
very small. What’s happened?”

Director Lay opened his desk drawer and took out another folder, handing it across. “That’s why you’re here. They’ve disappeared.”

Harry’s only reaction was raised eyebrows. “Indeed.”

“They disappeared five days ago,” the director nodded. “The whole team. Every last one of them. It’s all in the folder there. Every blessed thing we know about it.”

Harry opened the folder, taking out a couple of glossy photographs, clearly enhanced from a satellite.

“The first one is from the 13th. Because of the number of Americans in the team, we were doing a daily satellite overpass of the camp. Just to make sure nothing happened to them.”

“But something did.”

Lay nodded. “Correct. The first photograph, digitally enhanced from the KH-13 overpass, shows a bustling camp,” he noted, referencing the Key Hole spy satellite. “Almost everyone is present in the photo. One of the Americans, Joel Mullins, is missing, but on thermal scan, we picked up a heat signature from inside one of the tents.”

“So, he was probably inside.”

“Likely. Now take a look at the second photo, taken on the 14th. What do you see?”

“Nothing,” Harry said slowly. “No people, no tents, nothing. It’s all gone.” He looked up. “It’s been five days now. Anything?”

“Yes.” The DCIA pulled a third photograph from his desk and handed it over. “Take a look at this.”

Harry did as he was told. His eyes opened wide. “What on earth are
they
doing there?”

“That’s what I need you to find out.”

1:05 P.M.

A beach

Atlantic City, New Jersey

“Cut that out!” Thomas Parker spluttered, waking up abruptly from his nap as water splashed over him.

The thirty-six-year-old New York native looked up at the young woman standing over him, at the now empty bucket in her hands, water dripping suspiciously from its rim. Mischief glinted in her dark eyes. She made a quick motion as though to toss it at him, giggling uncontrollably as he rolled off the blanket into the sand.

“I said, cut it out, Julie!” he protested, the sand sticking to his wet chest.

“Are you going to make me?” she laughed, dancing away from him as he grabbed for her ankle.

He leaned back, slicking his wet brown hair back from his forehead, gazing up at his girlfriend. “No, probably not. But sooner or later—” he shook his finger at her. “You’ll see.”

“I’ll see what?”

At that moment, his cellphone rang and whatever his reply might have been was forever lost as he reached for it. Words were blinking on-screen: SECURE CONNECTION. It had to be Kranemeyer. And that didn’t bode well for his plans for the evening. He stood and glanced over at Julie.

“This is private,” he warned her, rapidly tapping in the code sequence for the encrypted line.

“What is it, another girlfriend?” she demanded, watching his face closely.

He shook his head, grinning back at her.

“No, it’s my boss.” He stepped another few feet away from the sun umbrella he had been lying under. “Thomas speaking.”

“Where the devil are you, Parker? I tried your home phone, but I couldn’t reach you there.”

“I’m on vacation, sir. Why
would
I be at home? I’m in Atlantic City, taking in the surf and sand.”

“Well, your vacation’s over. I need you back at Langley right away. Something’s come up.”

“Right away?” Thomas with palpable reluctance, glancing back at Julie. He was going to have fun explaining this one.

“Listen, Parker, I want you back on base as fast as possible. We’re deploying. Do you have any further questions?”

“No.” The tone in Director Bernard Kranemeyer’s voice made it clear that none were desired. And Thomas hadn’t survived nine years in the National Clandestine Service by pushing his boss to the edge. “I’ll see you in a couple hours.”

“Good,” was the curt reply as Kranemeyer hung up. Thomas stared at the phone for a couple seconds before putting it away.

“What was that all about?” he heard Julie ask.

He picked her jeans up from the back of a beach chair and tossed them at her. “Get dressed,” he instructed tersely. “We’re leaving.”

“Why?” she asked, still holding the pants in her arms.

“I’ve got to go back to work,” he shot back. “Now let’s get moving!”

2:03 P.M.

CIA Headquarters

Langley, Virginia

“Parker is on his way back from Atlantic City. Zakiri was out in Seattle visiting his family, got back in this morning on United. Richards is coming up from the Farm.” Bernard Kranemeyer reported, referring to the CIA’s training center in Quantico, Virginia. “I think that about has it, right?”

“
Wrong
,” Harry stated, folding his arms across his chest. Light flashed from his eyes. “I’d like to know why you’re sending my team in to do what a diplomatic envoy should be able to accomplish? Not to mention how you ever got an anti-war president to authorize this incursion.”

“Two reasons,” Lay replied evenly. “In the first place, the election is less than two months away, and the last thing the President wants is a hostage crisis overshadowing his bid for reelection.
Now that
his
administration is threatened—well, this is D.C., Harry—

you know the shelf life of morals and values in this town. Bottom line, he wants action, not dialogue. As for the second reason—do you want to tell him, Barney, or shall I?”

Kranemeyer shook his head, reaching for the button on Lay’s desk. “May I, sir?”

The DCIA nodded.

Harry looked from one man to another. There was something going on here that he was unaware of. Another factor. As there typically was when his boss was involved. A former operator himself, Kranemeyer wasn’t called the “Dark Lord” for nothing.

He didn’t know the whole truth. Perhaps he never would. Truth was an elusive quality in the business he was engaged in. But he was about to understand another component.

A moment later, the door from the outer office opened and a short, thin black man entered, holding a laptop computer under his arm.

“Harry,” Director Lay began, “Carter’s going to bring us up to speed on the trailers. Do you have the data with you, Ron?”

“The trailers at the site of the abandoned camp?” Harry asked, reaching out to shake Carter’s hand. The African-American analyst acknowledged him with a curt nod and set his computer down on the director’s desk, clearly consumed by his own thoughts. Harry smiled. He and Ron Carter went a long way back, and he had learned to never underestimate the man’s abilities. Despite his occasional penchant for anti-social behavior, Carter was the best photo-analyst the Agency had, possessing as well a knack for managing field-ops that had caused Kranemeyer to draft him from the Intelligence Directorate two years before.

Carter nodded, setting the laptop on Lay’s desk and swiveling the screen so that all could see. A picture of one of the trailers filled the screen. “I started running the photos through our database the minute we picked them up. It took a while to get a match, but here it is.”

“What were they?”

“They are almost identical to the biological-warfare trailers used by Saddam Hussein in the ‘90s,” Carter stated, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “But these aren’t them.”

“Where did they get them?”

“If you’ll remember, Harry, three years ago a CIA spec-ops team was parachuted into Azerbaijan to interdict a shipment of arms from Russia to Iran.”

Harry closed his eyes and nodded. He remembered all too well. For he had led that mission. He remembered the HAHO—High Altitude, High Opening insertion from the C-130, descending slowly into the wintry Azeri night. Into the darkness below them. He and nine others, two full strike teams, Alpha and Charlie. They had believed the Russians were selling nuclear weapons. And they’d been ordered to stop the convoy at all costs. At all costs, indeed.