Pandora's Grave (60 page)

“That was not the plan,” Abdul Ali protested, setting the canisters down by the door.

“The plan,” Harry retorted, “has gone out the window. We’ve got a rogue agent in the masjid and two canisters still in play. Tex, I need you to stay here and disarm the second container. Abdul Ali, you’re coming with me.”

“My orders,” the bodyguard replied stoutly, “are to keep you out of the masjid.”

“And my orders are to prevent your people from dying by the thousands.” Harry picked up the UMP-45 and slung it around his neck, buttoning his leather jacket over it. “I’ll leave you to reconcile the two.”

As the Jordanian stood in the door, undecided, Hossein spoke up. “Give me a gun and I’ll join you.”

Harry considered the request for a moment, then motioned to Tex. “Give him your back-up.”

Without a word, Texan pulled a .357 Magnum Ruger LCR from his ankle holster and handed it to the Iranian major, butt-first, along with a pair of speedloaders. Hossein spun the cylinder with a smile of satisfaction, shoving the gun into a trousers pocket.

Ali seemed still to be considering his decision and Harry moved toward the doorway, his face hard as a flint, his hand on his holstered pistol. In the chaos left by Hamid’s betrayal, he saw his mission clear.

For a moment, the two men stood face-to-face, staring into each other’s eyes. Then the Jordanian stepped aside with a sigh. “I have a duty to the Mufti, whom I have sworn before Allah to obey. And I have a duty to my own conscience. I will go with you.”

Ali picked up the two-way at his belt and issued an order in Arabic. “The public is to be denied access to the lower levels of al-Aqsa and the Masjid al-Marwani. Effective immediately.”

Harry’s hand fell away from the butt of his Colt and he nodded, without a trace of a smile.

“Let’s roll then.”

11:26 A.M.

The bell tower

“I think the bleeding has stopped,” Thomas said, stepping back to assess his work. He had torn his t-shirt into pieces to bandage the young woman’s shoulder. “But the bullet is still in your shoulder. A doctor will have to remove it.”

She shook her head. “Why didn’t you kill me?”

“I don’t know,” Thomas replied with a shrug. “Didn’t seem much point in it, after all was said and done. What about you?”

The woman looked at him strangely, and in that moment he realized that she was quite young—maybe nineteen or twenty. “About me? What do you mean?”

He knelt beside the sniper rifle and looked back to where she sat, her hands tied in front of her. “How come you tried to kill me?”

It seemed like a long time before she responded, and when she did there were tears in her eyes. “I was caught in my boyfriend’s bed.”

“So?” Thomas asked with a shrug.

“The penalty for fornication is death, but the imam said my sin would be forgiven if I gave my life in jihad. I was to carry out a bombing in the Christian Quarter this evening.”

Thomas considered her reply. “That’s a deuce of an atonement. Somehow I don’t see how having sex fits in the balance sheet of blowing yourself up.”

The next moment, his headset crackled. “EAGLE SIX to LONGBOW, be advised this network is compromised.”

Harry’s voice sounded distant, strained. “I am issuing an SOS on Hamid Zakiri.”

Shoot on Sight. “I didn’t get that, EAGLE SIX,” Thomas replied, sure he had heard wrong. It couldn’t be. “Repeat.”

“If you see Hamid, don’t hesitate. Shoot to kill.”

“What’s going on?”

11:28 A.M.

The Masjid al-Aqsa

Chaos. Confusion. Judging by the voices on the radio network, he had caused all of that and more. Hamid pushed it away from his mind and focused, kneeling by the third canister.

He had found it exactly where he had expected, based on the map Farouk had sent. As the other two canisters had been, but that cursed Davood had located them both. This one was well placed, but it wouldn’t do near the damage that the others had been meant to do. Somehow, he had to get it back up to the assembly hall of the masjid, where the worshipers were now gathering.

With a small tug, he separated the wires connecting the canister with the Semtex charge designed to interfere with tampering. The bacteria had been placed in a five-foot-square area of dead space, but it wasn’t safe to move into view of the security cameras. Not yet.

He pulled the TACSAT from his pocket and consulted the screen. Thirty-five seconds…

Hamid had been lying. It had been a set-up. If anything, this canister was simpler to disarm than the first. Almost there. Just one more wire. Tex looked up from his work with the bomb as every screen in the surveillance center went black, then lit up with a blinking error message in Arabic, “SYSTEMS OFF-LINE”.

He went to the control console, urgently typing in a command. At first nothing happened, then the system seemed to freeze. Tex shook his head.

A worm was working its way through the system—and the codes that should have shut down its progress only seemed to open new gateways into the network.

He opened his TACSAT and punched speed-dial as he continued to work on the console. “I think we have a problem, boss.”

Hamid smiled in satisfaction and sprung from his hiding place, covering the canister in his jacket as he moved back toward the stairs…

11:33 A.M.

They found Davood where he had fallen in the library, lying in a pool of blood by a bookcase. His face was horribly disfigured, blood oozing from a bullet hole in his jaw.

As Hossein and Ali stood watch, Harry knelt by the side of his fallen agent, his fingers moving up Davood’s neck, searching for the pulse of life. Remorse filled him as he thought back of their suspicions, of their misdirected anger. He had planned to do this himself—but all that was gone now.

There it was—a faint but still present spark and Davood’s eyes flickered briefly open in response to his touch. “Hold on tight, man,” Harry whispered, clasping the young man’s hand in both of his own. “We’re going to get you out of here.”

Davood groaned, murmuring something out past his broken jaw. “There’s no time…”

“That’s not your concern,” Harry responded with a forced smile. “I’m in command here, remember. And you’re gonna make it out of here, soldier.”

The young agent’s right hand fell away from his torso, disclosing a ragged bullet hole in his abdomen. He’d been gut shot, was losing blood rapidly. Harry could only imagine what the hollowpoint bullet had done internally. “No use. I’m sorry…”

The worst part of it was that he was right. Harry felt a white-hot flash of anger course through his body as he bent over the dying man. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” he whispered fiercely. “Forgive me for ever doubting your loyalty.”

There was no response. When Harry looked up, the young man’s eyes were staring unforgivingly at the ceiling.

Harry folded Davood’s hands together across his chest and gently closed those sightless eyes, his movements slow and reverential. When he rose, a cold, hard mask had formed over his face. There was a time for everything under the sun and there would be a time for grief. It wasn’t now.

Now was the time for vengeance…

Leaving the library, they moved down a long corridor, weapons drawn. Harry took point, the folding stock of the H&K pressed tight against his shoulder. With the cameras off-line, they had no way of knowing where Hamid was. It was back to low-tech, old-fashioned methods, and they were running short on time…

The cameras showed the three men moving down the corridor toward him, blocking his exit. There were other ways to his destination, moving through the subterranean levels of the masjid, but the detour would take too much time. Hamid bared his teeth in a grin and scrolled through the frames on his TACSAT’s screen. There was only one way out—
through
the enemy.

He laid the canister down and covered it with his jacket, leaving his arms free for movement. Shouldering the MP-5SD, he moved to the corner, waiting.

The men on-screen drew yet closer and he noted their position with a careful, practiced eye.
Now!

The figure appeared in an alcove near the end of the corridor without warning and Harry had just enough time to recognize Hamid’s face before bullets began coming his way, erupting from the barrel of the double agent’s silenced MP-5.

He threw himself sideways, his palms scraping against the flagstones as he hit the floor, rolling onto his stomach. Another moment and he was behind cover, his submachine gun aimed at the corner, but the hail of fire had stopped as abruptly as it had begun. “Anyone hurt?” Harry demanded, glancing over at his companions.

Ali shook his head in the negative. Hossein was laying a foot away from Harry, examining a gouge in his shoulder. “Ricochet,” he explained, wincing.

The absurdity of it all. To be trading fire with his best friend—it was surreal.

Those bullet gouges in the wall proved otherwise. So had Davood’s dead body. Harry closed his eyes, hatred mixing with sorrow. He knew what had to be done.

“Hamid!” he called out, his voice echoing off the stone. “Lay down your weapons and come out. We need to talk.”

The only response was the echo, bouncing and diminishing with every repetition. “It’s your only hope of leaving here. We can cut a deal, just give us the bacteria.”

“I’ve heard that before, Harry,” came the reply. “Remember, we took the class together—how to deal with a barricaded subject?”

They had, Harry realized with chagrin. He remembered the two of them joking about the class instructor, a rather pretty brunette.
She could talk anybody into putting their gun down
…

Hamid had taken her to dinner, if memory served. In better days.

He shook his head to drive away the remorse at what he was being forced to do. He couldn’t think about that now. Later. Not now.

A great gulf fixed…

At that moment, Ali’s two-way crackled with static. As he lay there on the stone steps, he responded, speaking rapidly in Arabic.

“My technicians say that the feed is still on-line,” he said finally, glancing over at Harry. “The error messages are apparently themselves erroneous.”

“Then why can’t we access it?” Harry asked softly, never taking his eyes off the iron sights of the UMP-45.

“The video feed has been pirated by someone with a satellite phone.”

“Hamid,” Harry breathed, the pieces clicking in place. “He’s using the system to track
us
. Isn’t there a way you can shut him out?”

The Jordanian shook his head. “We have only had the cameras in place for five months. We’re still going through the manuals on how to use them, much less figure out how to stop a hacker.”

There was an answer. There had to be. “Just give me the bacteria,” Harry shouted once more down the corridor. Lying in an effort to make Hamid show himself. If only for a moment. Just enough time to snap off a quick burst. “Give me the bacteria and I’ll let you go free. No one need know of the deal we make.”

A harsh laugh echoed off the limestone. “The West has never understood us, Harry, and they will die because of it. But you, you disappoint me. You should understand. My whole life has been given for this moment. I could no more walk away from this mission than you could let me—after I killed Davood.”

He was right. There was no way he could let him go. The answer came to Harry in a sudden burst of clarity and he rose to his knees, making his way down the stairs behind him.

His brow furrowed in puzzlement, Hamid watched him go on the camera screen. Watched Harry walk about ten yards back and pull the TACSAT from the pocket of his jacket…

3:38 A.M. Eastern Time

NCS Operations Center

Langley, Virginia

“What do you need me to do?” Carol asked, still absorbing the news of Hamid’s betrayal. It seemed like a bad dream. That the Service could have been infiltrated…

“It is possible to remotely deactivate an Agency TACSAT, isn’t it?”

She nodded reflexively. “Yes—yes it is. It’s just a matter of accessing the servers and restricting user—”

“Just do it,” Harry interrupted, his voice flat, eerily emotionless. “As soon as you can. Let me know when it’s accomplished.”

The phone
clicked
without warning, the connection broken. Carol rose from her workstation, her mind swirling. This had to go to the DCS…

11:41 A.M. Local Time

The Masjid al-Aqsa

Jerusalem

The first inkling he had of danger was when bullets whined past his covert, impacting and glancing off the centuries-old limestone walls. Hamid’s fingers tightened around the grip of his MP-5 as fluorescent bulbs exploded and shattered down the length of the hall, glass tinkling against the stone. In seconds, the corridor was plunged into subterranean darkness.

He smiled grimly. The opening move, yet despite his danger he felt more alive than he had for years.

All deception past, it felt as though a weight had fallen from his shoulders. All those years, the times he had belittled his own faith to maintain his cover. Little deaths of the soul.

Gone now, at long last.
Allahu akbar
.

Truly, God
was
great.

A glance at his TACSAT’s luminescent screen confirmed his antagonists were still in their places. As though they were waiting for something.

The canister still lay by his side, nineteen minutes remaining on the invisible clock. He couldn’t wait forever. But neither could they.

A whining
beep
drew his attention back to his phone, a message scrolling across the screen. DEACTIVATION SEQUENCE INITIATING. 15…14…13…

Hamid swore angrily, tossing the phone away from him. He had worked long enough with Harry—he should have known. Never underestimate the man.

Harry slammed a fresh 25-round magazine of .45 ACP into the mag well of the UMP-45, pulling back the charging handle. Fourteen minutes left.