Pandora's Grave (Shadow Warriors)

by Stephen England

  Harry pushed open the door of the trailer cautiously, following his gun barrel into the room. Hamid was on guard outside.

  A strong smell of antiseptic was the first thing that struck his nose, followed by another, equally recognizable. The smell of death.

  His eyes swept the room, taking in the scene. The inside of the trailer was like a hospital room. His mind flitted back to the schematics they had been shown back at Langley. The computer simulations the photoanalysts had made of the Russian bio-war trailers.

  He was standing inside one. For once the spooks had gotten it right.

  A body was hermetically sealed inside a container on the far side of the room. Harry stepped closer, peering into the— casket. It was the only word he could think of.

  At first he thought the night vision goggles were distorting his sight, but then he looked closer. The man was naked, lying on his back a few inches beneath the clear, air-tight plastic. White, Caucasian. Probably one of the archaeologists he had come to rescue.

  He was no longer recognizable, every vein of his body puffed out and outlined in black. Harry had never seen anything like it. In his fifteen years of service for the Agency, he had seen bodies in every stage of death and decomposition, but never anything like this.

  Harry reached down and unstrapped the TACSAT from his ankle. Phone home…

  CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  “Kranemeyer here. Speak.”

  “Director, this is Nichols. I’ve found another one of the archaeologists.”

  “Who?”

  Irritation showed through in the voice that responded. “I don’t have the time to run around identifying corpses, sir. I’ll leave that to the desk jockeys.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “Yes, and his body’s in worse shape than anything I’ve ever seen.” Kranemeyer exchanged a sharp glance with Ron Carter. Coming from the man on the other end of the line, that meant something.

  But Harry was still talking. “I’ve taken a photo with the TACSAT’s camera. Uploading to the Agency intranet as we speak. See if you can get an ID on what killed him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’ve got a full-on bio-war lab set up here, just like Ron figured. I’m guessing this guy was one of the test subjects—or something, I’m not sure what.”

  “Can you tell what biological agent is in use?”

  They heard a shout from the distance and Harry came back on hurriedly. “I’ll let you figure that out, sir. We just ran out of time.”

  “What’s going on out there, Nichols?” Lay demanded. Only silence answered his question. The comm link was dead.

  4:04 A.M.

  The base camp

  Dragging himself up over the rocky ground, Harry cast an anxious look back over his shoulder, then upwards toward the rest of his team and the archaeologists they had freed. Three, he thought, his mind instinctively supplying the digit. Four …

  “Hit it!”

  Ahead, Tex threw himself prone, the detonator in his right hand. The distance was right. The former Force Recon demolitions expert checked one more time to see that the rest of the team had gone to ground. Mullins, the young student, had his head up and Tex shouted an angry warning in his direction. His thumb depressed the button…

  The ground shuddered, earth rippling beneath the prostrate men. Harry averted his eyes, sheltering them against the blast. The next moment, heat washed over them like a tidal wave, expanding outward from the center of the explosion. Devastation…

  Watching from the mountain road two kilometers to the south, Major Hossein saw the whole thing. He knew the layout of the base camp well enough to know what had just exploded. His fuel supplies.

  With one blow the Americans had destroyed his chances of overtaking them. They had two more hours till daybreak. With their advantages in night-vision technology, they could lose themselves in the mountains in that time.

  His eyes narrowed as he looked down upon the camp, his gaze sweeping toward the south end of the motor pool. For a moment he thought he was seeing things, his night vision destroyed by the glare of the flames. He rubbed his eyes and took another look.

  A smile crept slowly across his face. He turned and called to one of his men. “Bring the radio. I need a secure uplink with Tehran.”

  Harry lifted his eyes from the rocky soil, sensing almost instinctively that something was wrong. That feeling was only reinforced by the muffled curse he heard break from Hamid’s lips a few feet up the slope.

  He turned, looking back at the base camp, into the oily clouds of black smoke curling up into the sky, angry red tongues of flame shooting from the midst of the inferno like daggers.

  It took him a moment to place what was wrong, his eyes adjusting to their new surroundings. Then it hit him with the force of a thunderbolt. The lower end of the motor pool. One of the tankers was still intact.

  Tex appeared at his shoulder, the detonator still clutched in his big hand. “Wires must’ve got crossed down there, boss,” he stated tersely, thumbing the button once again as if to assure his own mind of the grim truth.

  “Who set the charges for that tanker?” Harry asked, turning to look his old teammate in the eyes, assured of the truth of the answer.

  “Davood,” the Texan replied, his gaze never wavering.

  A flicker of movement entering the circle of light caught Harry’s eye and he turned. Men were crossing the ridge to their south, men with rifles in their hands. IRGC soldiers, flooding back toward their base camp.

  The young Iranian-American agent came up to them at that moment, worry lining his face. Tex turned on him.

  “What went wrong?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know. It was dark—maybe the wires got crossed, I don’t know. The one blew properly,” the Iranian finished defensively.

  “One’s not good enough,” Tex exclaimed, the words escaping from clenched teeth. “You were taught to set explosives blindfolded, for heaven’s sake! Now they still have fuel.”

  “Leave it!” Harry ordered, laying a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “We don’t have time for this.” His index finger stabbed downhill at the soldiers fanning out, moving in on the base camp.

  “We need to extract before they realize we’re gone.”

  After another sharp glance in Davood’s direction, the big man nodded. Harry turned away, gesturing to Hamid. “You take point. Lead us to LZ OSCAR.”

  A grim smile flashed across the Iraqi’s face. “Roger that, boss. Alpha Team, move it out.”

  “Tex, you take responsibility for the old man and Eliot,” Harry continued, giving his marching orders. “Keep them at your side. Davood, take Mullins.”

  “Wait a minute!” the college student cried out, jerking away as Davood put a hand on his arm. “How do you know our names?”

  Harry ignored the question and dropped to the back of the line, his eyes flickering to the rear as he edged up the side of the mountain. It wouldn’t be long. The men below would be coming after them. And now their pursuers had fuel…

  4:22 A.M.

  The base camp

  Major Hossein stood in the ruins of his camp, smiling ruefully. The Americans had been thorough. Or at least they had tried to be. Only one of his fleet of fuel tankers was left, standing all alone, its paint scorched by the heat of the flames that had fanned across it. He knelt down by the back of the truck, noted how the det cord was looped uselessly around the tank. Uselessly, because of one oversight. One of the wires attaching cord and detonator had never been connected…

  Oversight? Rather a gift from one of Allah’s faithful. And the major smiled once again, his dark countenance lit by the still-flickering fires. BEHDIN had come through for him…

  6:23 P.M. Central Time

  Joint Special Operations Command(JSOC)

  Fort Bragg, North Carolina

  “A call for you, commander. It’s the DCIA over at Langley.”

  General Charles Benet turned, his eyebr
ows going up. “David Lay? What does that old sonuvagun want with me?”

  The aide shrugged, handing the mobile phone to the JSOC commander. “Joint Special Operations Command, General Benet speaking.”

  “General, this is David Lay.”

  “So my aide tells me. Good thing you caught me, director. I was just leaving for the night.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to put that on hold, general. We’ve all got a long night ahead of us.”

  “What’s going on?” Benet asked, a distinct note of hostility in his voice. He didn’t like the CIA director, and didn’t pretend to.

  “You mean no one’s briefed you?”

  “Stop circling the field, director. What’s going on?”

  “Operation TALON went down the tubes two and a half hours ago. Our team was ambushed at insertion, the Huey blown out of the sky. We have four survivors on the ground, in need of extraction. You have a Pave Low squadron on temporary deployment at Q-West in northern Iraq.”

  “So I take it you want me to send a helo in after your boys?”

  “Precisely. Before daybreak, if possible.”

  General Benet glanced quickly at his watch, pushing back the sleeve of his uniform utilities. “Can’t be done.”

  “General, the SA-15 Gauntlet that destroyed the Huey has been taken off-line by my team. It poses no further risk.”

  “Director Lay, I don’t ask you to assure me that my boys will be safe,” Benet replied, heat in his voice. “If I needed that assurance, my crews would be sitting on their thumbs in the barracks all day. However, there is not enough time for the orders to go through. My men would be caught in Iranian airspace in broad daylight. Classic recipe for a war. Perhaps that shouldn’t bother me, though. Sounds like you’ve already started one.”

  “Then I’ll have to find another way.”

  “Do that, director. If your men are still in Iran by tomorrow night, I’ll send in a Pave Low. Not until then. Good-bye.”

  7:27 P.M. Eastern Time

  CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  David Lay hung up the phone, sighing heavily. He had held out hope until the last moment. Now Harry’s team was stranded, on their way to an extraction zone, to wait for help that wasn’t coming anytime soon. LZ Oscar hadn’t been selected with defense in mind. He reached over and picked up the phone.

  “Any progress on the photo, Carter?”

  The analyst sounded tired. As well he might be. He was going on hour thirteen. “I’m kinda working on overload here, boss. I shot the photo over to Monique Devonne. She’s been the head of photoanalysis ever since I transferred to ClandOps, so that’s her territory.”

  “I thought I had Kranemeyer tell you to keep this operation under wraps.”

  “I understand, director. She doesn’t need to know where the photo came from, so I didn’t tell her. And she can get you your answer.”

  Lay shook his head. “Let’s pray to God you’re right. By the looks of that photo, if the Iranians start spreading that around, we’re all in a world of pain.”

  “Right.” The analyst was no longer listening to him. “I’ve got a couple of vehicles moving down the mountain road into the base camp. Looks like a Chinese make, probably some of the trucks Iran imported last year.”

  “Chinese trucks?”

  “Part payment for oil, boss. It’s the way they’re playing the game.”

  “Understood. Let me know when you have any more intelligence.”

  “Sorenson’s breathing down my neck to release that satellite. I told him to give us a few more hours, I want it there when the helo extracts our field team.”

  “There’ll be no helo,” Lay stated flatly.

  “What?”

  “JSOC says there’s not enough time before daylight.”

  “You’re going to let Nichols keep moving toward the LZ?”

  Lay glanced at the computer in front of him, at the satellite image of the destroyed Iranian base camp. “You have any better ideas?”

  5:38 A.M. Local Time

  The RAHAB helicopter

  “We’ll be in Israel in fifteen minutes,” Yossi announced, returning from the cockpit. He sat down beside Gideon. “Mossad wants us to start the debrief on the way in. The Prime Minister is after them for actionable intelligence and after pulling your dossier, they realized you had the experience.”

  Gideon nodded silently, worry in his eyes as he glanced over at the man they had recovered. This was hardly his first hostage rescue. He had conducted many of them with the Sayeret Matkal over the years. But Dr. Tal was not acting like any of the people he had rescued in that time. Their emotions tended to range from euphoria to disbelief, joy mingling with tears. Fear too was often a factor.

  There was nothing here. The helicopter was darkened, but in the glow of the red emergency lights, Gideon could see the archaeologist’s face. The expression there was sullen, resentful—angry was the word that came unbidden to his mind.

  He moved over and sat down directly across from Dr. Tal. “We’ll be back home in less than thirty minutes, doctor. Your control at Mossad ordered me to debrief you. They want to know as much about the Iranians’ plans as possible. As soon as possible.”

  “I will tell you nothing,” Moshe replied, avoiding eye contact with the lieutenant.

  “I understand your hesitancy to talk, doctor, but I can put you on the radio with Avi ben Shoham within minutes. I have his authorization to debrief you.”

  Gideon half-rose from his seat. “Do you want to speak with General Shoham?”

  “No.”

  “Then, let’s start the debrief. How did all this begin with the Iranians, Dr. Tal?”

  The archaeologist looked away. Gideon waited a moment, then repeated the question.

  “I will tell you nothing.”

  “Okay, I’ll call the general,” Gideon said finally, rising.

  “It will do you no good,” Tal said, his words arresting the lieutenant. “I will tell him nothing either.”

  Worry flickered through Gideon’s eyes. This man was a trained operative of the Mossad. He had only been in captivity a few days. Stockholm syndrome couldn’t have set in yet—could it have? He sat back down, determined to handle the situation as delicately as possible. “Why, Dr. Tal?”

  Moshe lifted his head slowly, looking the young lieutenant in the eye for the first time. “You abandoned my team…”

  5:56 A.M. Tehran Time

  LZ OSCAR

  It took the team just under an hour and a half to reach the secondary extraction zone, their progress slowed by the archaeologists. Harry had provided rear security for the entire trip, his AK trained on their backtrail. There was no one there, not yet. There would be. Soon enough.

  He knew the moment they reached OSCAR that something had gone wrong. They were behind schedule. The pick-up helo should have already arrived. It should have been waiting for them.

  Daylight was coming on fast, the faint glow of an unwelcome sun already appearing far to the east. For they have loved darkness, rather than light. It was a sentiment he concurred with.

  “Spread out, establish a security perimeter,” he ordered crisply. “Hamid, you guard the hostages. Tex and Davood, establish defensive positions. I’m contacting Langley.”

  He pulled the TACSAT from its holster, kneeling there against the mountain earth as he hit speed-dial. Harry’s eyes flickered north to the mountains overshadowing them. He didn’t like it. They weren’t in possession of the high ground. But that wouldn’t matter if they could extract before daylight.

  9:01 P.M. Eastern Time

  CIA Headquarters

  Langley, Virginia

  Kranemeyer glanced at the brightly lit screen of the phone he held in his hand. It was Nichols. It had been two hours since last contact. The call he had been secretly dreading.

  “Kranemeyer here.”

  “Director, this is Nichols. We’ve arrived at the alternate extraction zone with the rescued archaeologis
ts. Where’s the Pave Low?” The voice on the other end was clipped, abrupt. As though the instincts that had kept the officer alive through fifteen years of field operations were now warning him of impending trouble.

  The DCS took a deep breath, looking at the last sat coverage of the field team’s position. They were vulnerable. And he could do nothing about it.

  “I’m sorry, Nichols. JSOC can’t get a helo in and out before daylight. You’ll have to take up defensive positions, hold out until nightfall.”

  Dead silence filled the line for the space of forty seconds. “We’re sitting ducks here, boss. LZ OSCAR is not the high ground.”

  “I know it. The general refuses to move his assets into place. Sit tight until nightfall and we’ll get you out.”

  “Roger,” came the grudging reply. “Any contact with Parker?”

  “No, we’ve not heard a thing. You?”

  “Negative, sir.” Harry paused, then added, “Have the Pave Low bring out some body bags. We’ll need them by nightfall. Nichols out.”

  Kranemeyer started to respond, but the phone was dead in his hand. He shook his head wearily, leaning back in his chair. He had been there once himself, back in his Delta Force days, a small team running cross-border interdiction in the Hindu Kush. The chopper that had never come.

  He swore bitterly and stood, wincing as he did so. Pain was flickering through his right leg, phantom pain from a leg that was no longer there. Placing a hand on the desk for support, he reached down to rub his knee, biting his tongue as fingers slid over the flesh of the knee to the prosthesis below it. An IED had put a permanent end to his spec-ops career. Oh, yes, he’d been there. Done that…