Pandora's Grave (Shadow Warriors)

by Stephen England

  “Agent Sarami, you said earlier that you had lost your team radio. Could you elaborate more for us on the manner in which you lost it?”

  She saw a look of surprise flicker across the young man’s face. It was an old interrogation trick. Move past a topic as though it was unimportant, and then return to it unexpectedly. And despite what everyone might wish, debriefing was very much like an interrogation.

  “I don’t really know. I remember having it as I descended into the canyon toward the helicopter to rescue Colonel Tancretti, but that’s all I remember. Both of us were knocked to the ground by the explosion of the helo’s fuel tanks and the headset was gone when I regained consciousness.”

  “So you believe that you lost it sometime either during your rescue of Colonel Tancretti or the subsequent explosion?”

  “That is correct.”

  The snare was set. Now to coax the quarry within. Rebecca lifted her gaze to look coolly into the young agent’s eyes. “According to Agent Nichols, he attempted to contact you while you were in transit to the crash site, prior to the explosion, and you did not answer. Is that an accurate statement?”

  Once again the look of surprise, this time not unmingled with hurt. “I don’t understand how I could have missed a transmission—although I suppose it is possible—perhaps I had already lost the radio by that time.”

  At that moment, the rabbit was well within the snare. “Perhaps,” Petras began hesitantly, springing her trap, “you would give us your assessment of Agent Nichols’ performance on this mission?”

  Director Kranemeyer sighed wearily as Petras escorted the Iranian-American agent from the room in which the debriefing had taken place and turned to face the camera once again. He reached for the cup of coffee on his desk and made a face. It was cold.

  “I could have told you it was pointless to try that tack,” he spoke into the mike, addressing Petras.

  Her head came up from her monitor. “I would beg to differ, Director. Someone betrayed this mission, either deliberately or through an inadvertent breach of protocol—either way, it is imperative that we find the person responsible.”

  “It is also imperative that we don’t waste time attempting to crucify the man responsible for salvaging the mission from disaster,” Kranemeyer replied heatedly. “I’ve read your dossier, Petras. I know you and Nichols have a history back to Basra, but now is neither the time or place to be satisfying personal grudges.”

  There was not a flicker of reaction in her eyes as she stared back into the camera. “My report will be filed with the DD(I) in the morning.”

  “When will the hostages be debriefed?” This time it was Director Lay asking the question.

  “Sir,” Rebecca Petras responded, “it is currently well past four in the morning here—and no one has had any sleep. The hostages have been taken into protective custody by Colonel Foreaker’s Marines and I hope to interview them tomorrow—later today,” she corrected herself.

  “Thank you, Ms. Petras. Please forward the tapes to my office when you complete the interviews. And make sure you contact your counterpart at the Australian consulate to notify them of Rachel Eliot’s rescue.”

  “Of course, sir. Petras out.”

  Early morning

  The camp

  Thomas rolled onto his side, his eyes adjusting to the darkness of his cell as he came awake. What time it was, he had no idea, but he felt rested, so it must be near dawn.

  He swung his legs off the cot and sat up, his bare feet brushing against the cool earth of the floor.

  Something had gone wrong—that was about the only thing of which he was sure. Perhaps the man who had met him was not even the CIA’s contact. Perhaps they had been compromised. Perhaps—the questions were endless.

  Could he have imagined himself here fifteen years ago? Hardly, he thought, a sardonic grin crossing his boyish face. A desert cell, rugged tribesemen?

  No, back then the Middle East’s only importance to him had been what it did to the oil futures. He had been the manager of a Wall Street investment firm in those days, a true wunderkind in the eyes of some. Certainly no one could have denied that he had a knack for the market and his pioneering market trading website had raked in subscribers by the thousands in the late ‘90s.

  By the age of twenty-two, he had been a multimillionaire, a fortune built on a shrewd grasp of both the market and information technology. Shrewd enough to survive the bursting of the Dot-com bubble when so many of his competitors had gone under. A young man of unbelievable potential, with a bright future ahead of him.

  That bright future had choked in the dark clouds of ash rising from the Trade Center Towers. In Asia on a business trip at the time of the terrorist attacks, Thomas had returned to New York to find many of his colleagues dead, the Fortune 500 company he had built his life upon in shambles.

  And he had thrown himself into the fray, working feverishly to reestablish the company and hire new people to fill the shoes of the dead. Yet the Street had lost its lure—the game no longer satisfied in the way it once had.

  Nine months later, turning over the revived company to new management, he left Wall Street for good, a man adrift.

  Thomas sighed, stretching in the darkness. Remembering. He had left Wall Street with no idea where he was going or what he wanted to do when he got there. All that had once satisfied him was empty, no longer fulfilling. Restoring the company had been one thing—he had owed that to his investors. Continuing on the Street was a different proposition entirely.

  And then he met Bernard Kranemeyer at a Heritage Foundation dinner one snowy evening in Philadelphia.

  He grinned at the memory. Kranemeyer had been anything but eager for Thomas to join the reorganizing Directorate of Operations. The Agency, he had found, had reservations about recruiting someone motivated largely by bitterness. And Thomas had fought serious doubts of his own. Before heading to the Farm that spring he had never fired a gun in his life. How fast that had changed…

  The sound of a key in the door jarred Thomas back to the present, a bright glare nearly blinding his eyes as the light came on.

  “Good morning, Mr. Patterson.” It was Sirvan, a plate of food in one hand and a 9mm in the other.

  “I trust you slept well?”

  Thomas shot him a look of disbelief, then accepted the plate and utensils. All plastic, he noted, not a one of them serviceable as a weapon. “Decently, thank you.”

  “My grandfather wanted me to offer his sincere apologies for the way we have been forced to treat you.”

  “Forced?” Thomas asked, his voice rich with irony. “I didn’t see anyone forcing you. Or perhaps I didn’t look hard enough.”

  To his surprise, the young Kurd looked embarrassed by his retort. “The CIA director agreed to deliver a shipment of weapons to us in exchange for your safe return. My grandfather is a cautious man and believes we should keep you here until we have the proofs of your government’s good faith.”

  “I see. So you’re not going to sell me out to the Iranians?”

  “We discussed it,” Sirvan responded with an alarming frankness. “However, it is difficult to see what might be gained. To parley with them would be like juggling with scorpions, Mr. Patterson. No matter how carefully done, you will be stung in the end.”

  Thomas chuckled. “I’m glad to hear that. Am I to stay here, then, until the weapons arrive?”

  “No. Once you have finished your meal I will be happy to escort you around the camp. We have no objections so long as you do not stray beyond the perimeter. In which case, you will be shot.”

  “Really?” Thomas’s eyebrows shot up. “And what would happen to your precious weapons in that case?”

  “We would undoubtedly lose them, of course. But those are my grandfather’s orders, and they will be followed. Make no mistake of that.”

  “Of course,” Thomas replied, shoveling the food into his mouth with the fork that had been provided him. “That is quite understandable…”

>   7:00 P.M. Baghdad Time

  Q-West Airfield

  Northern Iraq

  The knock came at the door just as Harry had taken a razor to the week-old beard enshrouding his face.

  “A message for Harold Nichols, sir.” It was a young woman, one of the orderlies he had seen with Petras the previous evening.

  “That would be me.”

  “I’ll need you to sign for it, sir,” the brunette replied, extending the clipboard to him.

  Harry took it, briefly scrawling his name across the cover sheet before reading the message beneath. When he had finished, he handed it back to her with a smile. “Give Ms. Petras my regards.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Harry closed the door behind her and strode across the room to an adjoining door. He rapped hard on the wooden paneling.

  “Yes?” came Hamid’s voice.

  “Get everybody up and moving. We’ve got a plane to catch.”

  8:25 A.M. Tehran Time

  The base camp

  Devastation. That was the only word Hossein could find to describe it. Even now, forty-eight hours after the commando strike, his soldiers were still repairing the damage.

  And despite his confident words to Larijani the previous night, he was far from sure that Tehran would smile upon his part in it. More than likely, he would be relieved of command. And then…

  He didn’t like to dwell upon it.

  “Major! Major Hossein!” He turned to find a sergeant running across the plateau toward him, a satellite phone in his hand.

  “Who is it?” Hossein asked, reaching out his hand.

  The soldier’s eyes were wide as he handed the phone over. “It–it is the Supreme Leader himself…”

  The major stiffened, his mouth suddenly dry. “Give it here,” he whispered. The Ayatollah Isfahani was the last person he had wanted to hear from this morning.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Is it?” the elderly voice on the other end of the phone asked skeptically. “Major Hossein, I need you to come to Qom immediately.”

  Hossein paused, but only for a moment. Despite the rise to power of the IRGC and Mahmoud Shirazi, the Ayatollah was still a man to be feared. And obeyed. “Of course.”

  “There is a Colonel Harun Larijani there at your base. I am authorizing you to requisition his helicopter for you to fly here.”

  “Where do I meet you?”

  “Fly directly to my home. You are to go dark, major. I want you to discuss this call with no one, is that understood? As far as anyone knows, you are flying to your execution.”

  “Sir?”

  “The Americans have escaped, major. The President will be looking for a scapegoat, and believe me when I say his gaze will not settle upon the incompetence of his nephew.”

  “You mean—Larijani?”

  The voice that replied was heavily laced with sarcasm. “Surely, major, you did not believe that he earned his rank through his skills as a tactician? Now, we must hurry—I will expect you at my residence by noon. Any questions?”

  There were many, but none that Hossein believed diplomatic or safe to ask. “No.”

  “Good. And remember, major, not a word to anyone. You’re a condemned man. Act the part.”

  Hossein thumbed the “end” button on the phone and shook his head. Very little of what he had just been told made any sense. Or perhaps it did, in the twisted corridors of power that the Ayatollah inhabited. He would be there soon enough…

  7:35 A.M. Local Time

  Along the beach

  Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel

  The salt breeze rippled through Avi’s hair as he jogged along the nearly deserted beach. It was a morning ritual for the Mossad chief, an iron refusal to bow to the increasing demands of his aging body.

  “So, what is the latest after-action report from RAHAB?” he asked of the aide panting at his side. Shoham suppressed a quiet smile as the young man struggled to catch his breath sufficiently to reply. He might be getting older, but he could still set a pace that would put young men to the test.

  Some young men, he reflected, casting a critical eye on the bodyguard flanking him on his right, matching his stride effortlessly. There were a full score of Mossad agents spread along the narrow beach, deployed to ensure his safety.

  “We–we’re getting the first daytime sat shots now,” the aide gasped out. “It would appear that the Iranians are still cleaning up the damage.”

  “We knew that—any indication as to who caused it?”

  “No. Another of our satellites picked up abnormal activity at the American base at Q-West late last night.”

  “Such as?”

  “An MH-53J took off from the airfield at approx twenty hundred hours local time last night, flying north, then turning west before disappearing off the edge of our sat coverage. It returned at a little over two hours later.”

  Avi kept jogging, slowly turning over the information in his mind. The MH-53J was a Special Forces helicopter—but the Americans had a large Special Forces presence in Iraq, so that by itself was indicative of nothing.

  “Did it show up elsewhere?” The aide ducked his head, gulping in air, then gasped a “no”.

  “Th–there is one other thing, sir. SIGINT assets reported a spike in activity at the helicopter base south of the Iranian base camp at 2200 Tehran time, followed by more activity at the airfield in Tabriz.”

  “What type of activity?” Shoham asked. SIGINT, which stood for SIGnals INTelligence, monitored Iranian communications.

  “Units were being scrambled and sent airborne—gunships, fighters—our photoanalysts are trying to determine whether they may have even scrambled their F-14s.”

  Avi chuckled in disbelief. Given to the Shah in the ‘70s by the American government, the once state-of-the-art F-14 “Tomcat” fighter planes were barely flyable now, shoddy maintenance and lack of replacement parts taking an inevitable toll. His mind returned to the matter at hand.

  “They were reacting to a penetration of their airspace,” he observed coolly, slowing as he made the turn of the beach to head back to their SUV.

  “The Americans?”

  “Perhaps,” Shoham whispered, his mind occupied with other thoughts. If it had been the Americans, then perhaps they had rescued the remainder of the archaeological team. There was no certainty, but then again, there never was. The odds were good enough to bet on.

  “We getting anything actionable from SCHLIEMANN?”

  The aide shook his head. “No. Nothing at all.”

  “I see,” was the Mossad chief’s only reply. Roll the dice…

  9:47 A.M. Tehran Time

  The PJAK camp

  Northwestern Iran

  Thomas blinked as the morning sun struck him full in the face. Sirvan stepped aside, leading him out of the mouth of what Thomas slowly realized had been a cave.

  The PJAK camp was nestled in a valley of one sort or another, perhaps a mile in breadth at the widest point, clumps of trees and scrub brush breaking the monotony of the arid terrain. Steep, craggy mountains of sheer-faced rock towered on both sides of the valley, shielding them from effective aerial assault. At the foot of the cliff, off to his right, a small herd of six or seven donkeys were tethered to a leafy bush that they were in the process of devouring.

  The smell of smoke reached his nostrils and Thomas turned to see a cooking fire not ten meters away.

  “Good morning, Mr. Patterson.” It was Azad Badir, kneeling by the fire, a half-eaten plate of rice in his hands. He scooped the last few bites into his mouth and rose. “We march in fifteen minutes,” he announced, addressing Thomas. “Make sure you’re ready.”

  A grin tugged at the corner of Thomas’s mouth. “I’m not sure I can do that, boss. Your men have left me with so much to pack.”

  Azad Badir threw back his head and laughed, clapping Thomas on the shoulder. “A man with a sense of humor. I like you, Mr. Patterson—life leaves us with little to laugh at here in Kurdistan.”
>
  Thomas’s eyebrows went up. “But I take it my likeability would not spare me should I choose to part company with your people at this point?”

  Badir smiled. “That is correct. I will not demean you by binding your hands, but I must assure you that if you stray from the line of march, you will be shot out of hand. My people rarely miss.”

  “A comforting thought.” Thomas’s gaze shifted, caught by an object resting beside a nearby fire. It was a British-made Parker-Hale M-85 sniper rifle. He hurried over to it before either man could stop him.

  “Where did you get one of these?” he asked, picking up the rifle and looking back toward them. Neither one was smiling.

  It seemed as though every eye in the camp was suddenly focused on him, the Kurds frozen in place, waiting for an order from their leader.

  Finally, at a nod from Badir, Sirvan advanced to take the rifle from Thomas’s hands. “We have our friends in Europe, Mr. Patterson.”

  “It’s a good weapon,” Thomas observed objectively. “I used one of them in Latin America a few years back. Who’s your sniper?”

  “I am,” a voice announced before either man could respond. Thomas’s head swivelled to the left to see Estere standing there, tucking her long black hair beneath the camouflage ball cap she wore.

  “Then may I compliment you on having such a fine weapon,” Thomas replied, adroitly concealing his surprise.

  “You may,” she retorted, crossing the camp to take the rifle from Sirvan’s hands, “so long as you leave it alone. You might break it.”

  Cradling the M-85 in her arms like one might a child, she turned her back on the men and went back to kneel beside her bedroll.

  Thomas turned to find Azad Badir regarding him with an amused smile. “We march in ten minutes, Mr. Patterson. Don’t wander off.”