Pandora's Grave (Shadow Warriors) Read online

  Harry replaced the phone in its holster and strode back to the small group, his Kalishnikov held loosely in one hand. Hamid was keeping an eye on the rescued hostages and looked up at his approach.

  “Let’s pack it up and move it out,” Harry ordered, his tones clipped, his face a mask. The Iraqi looked at him, his eyes shadowed by worry.

  “What’s the matter, boss?”

  “We’re too exposed here,” Harry stated flatly, feeling everyone’s eyes on him. “We need to get atop that ridge,” he continued, his index finger indicating an elevation perhaps another ninety feet higher than where they were standing and a quarter-mile off. “It’s better for defense. Tex, how’s your shoulder?”

  “It went back in place,” the big man replied, massaging the muscle with his free hand. “I can use it.”

  Harry acknowledged him with a nod. “Good. I want you to take up overlook on the southern bluff. Take binoculars and your rifle. Dig a hide and keep me advised of anything that happens. Hamid, Davood, you and the archaeologists are coming with me to the ridge. We’ll dig another hide there, wait this out.”

  “The chopper’s not coming.” This from Tex, his usual economy of words showing itself in the statement.

  Harry nodded. “Not ‘til evening. Let’s move them out.”

  5:03 A.M. Local Time

  Mossad Headquarters

  Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel

  “Did he say why?” General Shoham asked, a cool wind fluttering at the corners of his jacket as he stood atop the roof of the headquarters building. The rain had stopped and now a raw breeze blew in off the Mediterranean, raising the hair on the back of the old veteran’s neck.

  His bodyguard replied with a shake of the head, his tall form burrowed into the folds of a poncho. “ETA is three minutes. We should know soon.”

  Shoham nodded, pulling the jacket closer to him. Dawn was still a good hour away. The night was cold, made colder still by the news he had just received.

  In heaven’s name, what was wrong with Dr. Tal? The general’s mind flickered back to the early days of their relationship. He had recruited Tal personally, their joint interest in archaeology drawing them together, their joint patriotism keeping them there.

  When the Iran mission had come up, Tal had been the first to volunteer, his liaison with the Ayatollah Isfahani forming the basis of their success.

  And now all that was gone. The commandos of Sayeret Matkal had risked their lives to rescue him and he was refusing to help them in return. Somehow–some way, the Iranians had turned him. And Shoham didn’t know how.

  The twisting, rhythmic thwap-thwap of approaching rotors caught his attention and he swiveled toward the sound, his eyes straining to pierce the enveloping darkness. Another few moments and the helicopter appeared, invisible until it was almost on top of the two men, its downwash tearing at their clothes.

  It settled down upon the helipad and the side door flew open almost the minute the wheels touched down. Lieutenant Gideon Laner emerged first, his face tired and dirty in the harsh glare of the helipad lights. A Galil assault rifle was cradled loosely in the crook of his arm.

  Shoham could feel his bodyguard stiffen, the man’s body instantly at attention at the sight of the weapon. Another occasion and it would have been a cause for humor. But the night was far too grim.

  The rest of the Sayeret Matkal team exited the chopper behind him, and the general could recognize Dr. Tal flanked by Sergeant Eiland and Corporal Gur. Each of them had a purchase on one of his arms. It was price he paid for not cooperating. They had to be prepared for anything now.

  “Moshe,” Shoham greeted familiarly, striding onto the platform and sticking out a hand from the folds of his poncho. The soldiers released their captive, leaving him standing in front of the Mossad chief.

  “It’s good to have you home again, my dear friend,” Avi ben Shoham said, painfully aware of the reproachful look in Tal’s eyes. His hand hung there awkwardly, unaccepted. “We can take you in and start the debrief, if you so desire.”

  There was no response, the only sound the helicopter’s engine shutting down, a dull roar in the background. Shoham could barely hear it as he focused in on his old friend’s face, the world shrinking to the two of them. Everything faded away as he searched for the man he had once known. He was gone, leaving a stranger standing before him.

  “I am sorry, Moshe. We should have never used you. Others would have been more expendable.”

  “Like those you abandoned tonight!” the archaeologist flared, anger flashing in his eyes before he fell silent once more. Smoldering.

  Bewildered, Shoham turned toward Lieutenant Laner as though expecting an explanation. Dr. Tal provided it without him even asking, his cold glare piercing to the soul. “I will tell you nothing—you abandoned my people. You left them to die…”

  6:32 A.M. Tehran Time

  The ridge overlooking LZ Oscar

  Sun had not yet dawned when the hides were finished. They had dug not one, but three, about twenty meters apart, laid out with interlocking fields of fire. Each one was just large enough for two people, overlooking the landing zone below. A gently sloping, grassy plateau, there was hardly an inch of cover anywhere within range of their rifles. Harry laid his entrenching tool to the side and stretched. “Digging doesn’t agree with my constitution, I’m afraid.”

  Hamid grinned, his white teeth visible in the darkness. “Running around the mountains all night doesn’t agree with mine, either.”

  Davood and the archaeologists just stood there looking on, as though not knowing what to make of the old friends’ jest. Harry cast another look at the horizon and all traces of good humor vanished without a trace.

  “Let’s get under cover,” he said tersely. “Davood, take Professor Peterson. Hamid, Mullins. You’ll come with me, Miss Eliot.”

  He could feel his friend grinning at him through the darkness, but he ignored it. It was quite simply the most logical arrangement.

  He motioned for the girl to walk ahead of him, the twenty meters back to the southern hide. Arriving, he eased himself cautiously into the pit, then extended a hand to help her down. She took it wordlessly, watching as he reached back upward to camouflage the hide. When he was done, they were completely covered, a carefully camouflaged slit in the front providing their only view of the outside world. He propped his Kalishnikov against the front of the hide and aimed his binoculars down-range. Daylight would be coming soon.

  He could feel her eyes on him, as though she was trying to assess him in the darkness. She hadn’t spoken since they had plucked her from the Iranian cell. Shock. Fear. He had seen it before.

  No matter. His first priority was getting through the next twenty-four hours so that he could deliver her back to civilization in one piece. She could visit a shrink later.

  “You speak English,” she announced, as though stating the most obvious fact she knew about him.

  He nodded without hesitation. “Arabic, if you’d prefer. Half a dozen or so others. My hobby.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Colonel Smith, US Army Rangers,” he lied glibly. “Joshua Smith.”

  “You were sent to rescue us, colonel?” she asked, her voice trembling, surprise not unmixed with relief.

  He turned, laying a gentle hand on her shoulder. “My friends call me Josh. I would count it an honor if you’d do the same. And, yes,” he continued in the same soothing voice, “I was sent to rescue you.”

  “Then who were the others?” she asked, her tone still uncertain.

  Harry shook his head. “I don’t know. What did their uniforms look like?”

  “I couldn’t see much. They looked the same as your Rangers. And they took Dr. Tal,” she concluded, obviously bewildered. Harry could hardly count that against her. He was hard-pressed to figure it out himself.

  “So I was told.” He turned back away from her and picked up the binoculars again. “Another day dawns,” he observed reflectively. “Miss Eliot, I will
need you to do everything I tell you for the next twenty-four hours. Follow my orders to the letter.”

  “Why?” she asked, the obvious question. “Why should I trust you?”

  He looked back at her, only a foot or so separating them in the narrow hide, his eyes locking with hers. “You shouldn’t. But without me, there’s no way you’ll leave these mountains alive. So do as you’re told…”

  7:13 A.M. Tehran Time

  A mountain overlooking the base camp

  Devastation. Sheer, unadulterated destruction. On his approach, Thomas had seen the sun rising in the east, but he couldn’t have told the difference now, clouds of oily black smoke rising from the still-burning tankers below him. The stench of diesel fuel set aflame filling his nostrils.

  He hunkered against the side of the slope, watching the smoke ascend, completely blocking out the light of the sun. He still had one of AKs he had stolen from the Iranian soldiers. The other one had been emptied and discarded in the running gun battle of the other night. Yet he had accomplished his purpose.

  As his team had theirs.

  It was only a supposition, yet the burning tankers below him were stark evidence of one thing, as clear as a neon sign across the mountainside. Nichols & Co. had been there.

  And if they had been there, they hadn’t left without accomplishing their objective.

  Thomas adjusted the binoculars as a team of men emerged from the smoke, laboring at ropes to pull an undamaged tanker farther from the blaze. His eyes narrowed at the sight. One had escaped.

  Why?

  He shook his head. No sense worrying about it. He was in no position to effect a change in the situation. One had survived, and that was all there was to it. It was time to rejoin the team, back at the primary extraction zone.

  Rising to his feet, Thomas grabbed up the AK-47 and began the long climb back up the ridgeline. Toward safety. Homeward bound…

  The whirr of rotors warned him of danger and he threw himself to the ground, flattening himself between the boulders as a Mi-8 “Hip” transport helo flew directly overhead, rotor wash blasting pebbles against his exposed face.

  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…

  Chapter Seven

  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 juni
or 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.