Pandora's Grave (Shadow Warriors)

by Stephen England

“EAGLE SIX to LONGBOW, do you copy? What is your sitrep?”

  Thomas forced himself to ignore the voice in his ear, swinging around as the first assailant rose to his knees, his elbow arcing into the man’s jaw…

  10:44 A.M.

  The security center

  “EAGLE SIX to LONGBOW, I need a sitrep.” Harry closed his eyes, forcing calm. Something had gone wrong. Seven minutes now.

  At that moment, his headset crackled, a voice coming on the network. “FULLBACK to EAGLE SIX, we have a package.”

  Harry sprang to the surveillance screens, his heart in his throat. There, on one of the screens, he saw the three men kneeling by a doorway, their bodies almost obscuring a stainless steel canister.

  “Where are you, FULLBACK?”

  “A corridor just off the main hall, to the east of the Mihrab. The canister was tucked beside a bookshelf—it’s shaped like somebody’s oxygen tank. A curtain was draped nearby, shielding it from the cameras. GUNHAND, are you there? We’ve got to disarm this thing.”

  “I’m here,” Tex replied, moving to the screens beside Harry. With a couple of keystrokes, he zoomed in the camera, focusing on the canister. “Stand back so I can take a look. There should be an anti-tamper device somewhere—you’ll need to disarm that first.”

  “Already done,” Hamid replied. “A five-ounce packet of C-4 on the backside of the canister.”

  “Make sure it’s the only one. Then turn the canister over—I’ll need to see the wiring.”

  10:46 A.M.

  The bell tower

  The intruder was laying across two of the rough-hewn steps about twenty feet down, his eyes staring sightlessly upward through the holes in the ski mask. The fall had broken his back. The man possessed no wallet or identification, but Thomas took a cellphone from the pocket of his jacket. A couple steps down, he picked up the dead man’s semiautomatic, a Russian-made 9mm Grach, and shoved it in his waistband, making his way back up to the belfry. He let the man lie where he fell.

  “EAGLE SIX to LONGBOW. Come in, LONGBOW.”

  “Yeah, EAGLE SIX, I’m here,” Thomas replied breathlessly, kneeling beside the unconscious man on the balcony.

  “What’s going on, man? Your sitrep was five minutes ago.”

  “I had company,” Thomas retorted. “A pair of tangos who somehow figured out my location.”

  “And?”

  “One unconscious, one KIA. I’ll see what I can get.”

  “Keep me posted. The first package has been located—we’re in the process of disarming it.”

  “Don’t let me keep you,” was Thomas’s ironic reply as he turned back to the prone form of his assailant. With a quick motion, he jerked the balaclava from the intruder’s head and a gasp of surprise escaped his lips. The fabric pulled away to reveal the smooth face of a woman…

  10:52 A.M.

  Masjid al-Aqsa

  Despite the slight chill in the October air, Hamid was sweating as he worked over the device, the voice in his ear guiding him on.

  “We’re almost done, I think. This looks like a Czech set-up—there should be a black wire to the right—there.”

  “Snip it?” Hamid asked, wiping his palms against his jeans. This wasn’t Hollywood–there was no digital panel ticking away the seconds, but he could feel them nonetheless. Sixty-four minutes, give or take a few.

  “No,” Tex replied, his voice maddeningly calm. “You’ll need to detach it from the detonator without cutting it.”

  “Suggestions?”

  “Use the pliers as tweezers. It should come loose.”

  Hamid took a deep breath, his fingers trembling as he inched the pliers toward the wire, metal touching against insulated wire, closing around it.

  A gentle tug. The black wire came free, falling harmlessly away from the detonator and Hamid could hear a collective sigh of relief escape the men behind him.

  One canister down. Three to go…

  10:57 A.M.

  The bell tower

  At the first impact of the water, the young woman moaned, her eyes blinking. Thomas paused for a moment and then emptied most of the rest of his canteen across her face.

  She roused, shaking her head and groaning in pain as she leaned against the wall. Her eyes flickered open, idly resting on his face. Then, suddenly, recognition flooded across her countenance and she tried to lunge for him, only to realize her hands and feet were securely bound with zip ties.

  The stream of curses that escaped her lips was sufficient to surprise even Thomas, whose command of Arabic could only pick out the most prominent obscenities.

  Unperturbed, he listened for a moment, then lifted his hand without warning and backhanded her across the face.

  “Listen to me,” he instructed in Arabic, ignoring the glare of defiance on her face. He knelt in front of her, placing the cellphone he had taken from the dead man between them. “This is your partner’s phone. Sorry to say, it survived the fall considerably better than he did.”

  She spat in his direction. “You are a lying pig!”

  “Possibly. You were supposed to call in and inform al-Farouk of my death, right?” Taking in her look of shock, he pressed his advantage. “Yeah, I know your boss’s name, among other things. I want you to make the call, just like you were supposed to.”

  “No.”

  “Sure about that?” Thomas took her by the shoulders and pulled her to her feet, forcing her to the edge of the stairwell. She cried out in pain and he pressed down harder on the shoulderblade broken by his 9mm slug. “In that case, I’ll shove you over right here and now—leave you as a warning for the next people he sends after me. You get lucky, your partner’s body might even cushion your fall.”

  As if on cue, the phone vibrated in his hand. He glanced at the number, then handed the phone to her, nodding as he did so.

  She met his gaze, tears rolling down her cheeks. Their eyes locked and Thomas cleared his throat. “Better start deciding how much you really want to die today.”

  Another painful moment of indecision came and went, then she flipped open the phone with a sudden gesture, speaking quickly. “The target has been eliminated…”

  “Why are you answering Rashid’s phone?” Farouk asked after listening to her report.

  A tinge of sadness colored the young woman’s voice as she responded. “Rashid is dead. As they fought he and the American fell from the belfry onto the stairs below.”

  Farouk considered that for a moment. “Very well. You have been trained in the use of a rifle. I will be counting on you.”

  11:08 A.M.

  The Masjid al-Aqsa

  “There should be a red wire beneath the black, running in a diagonal from left to right.”

  “And there isn’t.” Hamid wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, rocking back on his haunches. The second canister had been secreted in the opposite hall, in a three-foot dead space—same set-up as the first, only five feet from an electric fan pointed toward the assembly hall.

  Apparently the intention had been to use the ventilation fans to blow a billowing cloud of bacteria into the crowd of worshipers.

  “Okay,” Tex responded. “Then we’re looking for a yellow-coated wire. Have one?”

  “Negative, GUNHAND. Any other bright ideas?”

  “No,” the Texan replied with a weary sigh. “Hold tight.”

  “You’re coming here?”

  “No other choice. This sounds like a new one.”

  Hamid looked over at the Jordanian bodyguard to see him shaking his head vigorously. “Al-Husayni was very clear. There are to be no unbelievers in the mosque.”

  “No dice, GUNHAND, they’re not going to let you in.”

  There was a long pause, then Harry came on the network. “We don’t have time to mess with this. Send Abdul back with both canisters. We’ll disarm the second one here. FULLBACK and SWITCHBLADE, continue with your search.”

  “Roger that, EAGLE SIX.”

  3:16 A.M. Eastern Time

>   NCS Operations Center

  Langley, Virginia

  Making coffee was typically not Bernard Kranemeyer’s job. But with the op-center staff running on fumes, he was pitching in with whatever he could. His personal espresso machine was now sitting on the desk of an abandoned workstation and the DCS was sorting diligently through the containers of gourmet coffee he had brought from his office.

  That was where he was when Carter found him. “We’ve received a sitrep from Nichols.”

  “And?”

  “The search is going well—they’ve located two of the four canisters. One of them’s disarmed and they’re working on the other one.”

  “Thank God,” Kranemeyer breathed, closing his eyes for a moment. As good as the news was, it came with a chilling reality.

  There were less than forty minutes left…

  11:19 A.M. Local Time

  The Masjid al-Aqsa

  It had been days since they had been alone, Hamid mused as he and Davood moved down the stairs to the lower level of al-Aqsa. And the time had not been right.

  His face darkened as he thought of the young agent’s treachery. He had sold out his faith for the hope of reward, an unforgivable sin.

  At least Hamid had no intention of forgiving it. The Glock seemed to tremble beneath his coat as the pair hustled down the wide limestone steps, entering a vaulted corridor.

  “Any ideas on the canister?” Harry asked, watching the surveillance screens. On one, they could see Abdul Ali hurrying back through the main hall of the masjid—on another the forms of Davood and Hamid making their way down a corridor. Worshipers were beginning to flood into the building, in advance of zhurh, the noon prayer.

  Tex shook his head. “It sounds like a new design. Won’t know till I’ve had a better look.”

  Harry nodded, then motion on one of the screens attracted his eye. The two agents were stopped in a small room, a library, from the look of it. It also looked like they were alone.

  He selected the camera on the computer console and zoomed in the camera. Hamid was gesturing angrily at the younger man, who stood with his back to a bookshelf. Something was going on.

  “EAGLE SIX to FULLBACK, are we having a problem?”

  Without replying, Hamid swung toward the camera, the silenced Glock in his right hand coming into view. A single shot spat from the barrel, smashing into the lens of the camera.

  The screen went dark. For a moment, Harry stood there, frozen in shock, then he activated his earpiece once more. “Stand down, FULLBACK. I repeat, stand down! That is an order.”

  “Why?” Davood asked, his voice trembling as he stared into the muzzle of Hamid’s pistol.

  “You have betrayed our brethren,” Hamid responded, ignoring the voice in his ear. “You have betrayed the holy jihad. And the penalty for such a betrayal is death.”

  “I thought you were one of us.” The young agent shook his head.

  Hamid spat on the floor, reaching forward to rip the microphone from Davood’s earlobe, crushing it beneath his foot. “Never. I have not forgotten the words of the prophets, as you have. It is not without reason that I am called BEHDIN, a man of pure religion.”

  “EAGLE SIX to FULLBACK, I need you to put your gun down.”

  “I thought you would have had agents in place to prevent him from turning on you,” Farshid Hossein observed coolly from the corner where he had been watching events unfold.

  “Prevent what?” Harry demanded, turning on him in irritation.

  The major took in the look on Harry’s face and blanched. “You really didn’t know, did you?”

  Harry crossed the room in two strides, anger flashing in his eyes. “I don’t have time for riddles, blast you!”

  Hossein never blinked. “The man you call FULLBACK is our sleeper agent. The man who betrayed your team in the foothills of the Alborz.”

  “I never would have suspected,” Davood replied, stalling for time.

  Hamid glared, circling, the gun still extended in his hand as he talked. “You don’t understand what all this means, do you? You pray at the masjid on Fridays and you dare to call it faith. My whole life has been dedicated to this cause. Ever since my family moved from Isfahan to Basra when I was twelve. I saw the American soldiers shoot their way through my village, and I could not cry. I was forced to live in the country I hated, to establish my cover. I joined that same cursed military at nineteen, because it was the quickest way to achieve my objectives—and Allah forgive me, I killed my fellow believers in the mountains of Afghanistan. All for this time, this moment. This holy mission, to prepare the way of the Expected One.”

  Davood shook his head. “The Quran commands that ‘if they incline to peace, incline to it also’. This is not the way of Allah, my brother.”

  “I am not your brother!” In that moment, Davood realized he had pushed it too far. He started to turn, to face the older agent.

  The first bullet caught him in the side of the jawbone, fragmenting bone and pulverizing tissue…

  Harry shook his head. “No, you must be mistaken.”

  Yet even as he spoke, his words felt hollow, empty, lacking conviction. Could it be? That they had been wrong all along.

  “I’m not,” Hossein replied, utter sincerity in his voice. “I tried to tell your director this, but he refused to listen.”

  True enough. And then it all clicked into place—Thomas had been betrayed to the enemy, but Davood hadn’t known his location. Hamid had.

  Harry stood there, still frozen in indecision. How long had he and Hamid worked together? How many times had they saved each other’s lives? The blood debt.

  The door opened and Abdul Ali appeared, bearing both of the canisters. The Jordanian took a look around at the faces in the security center and asked, “What’s happened?”

  Harry ignored him, turning to Tex. “I’m going in.”

  “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.