Pandora's Temple

by Jon Land

  “We’re running out of room, boss!”

  “Least of our problems, Sal!” McCracken shouted back, his hearing fading in and out.

  “You won’t do it,” Sebastian Roy said, not sounding sure or confident at all with his daughter pressing the pistol so tight against her temple that her hand was quivering. They could hear the nonstop gunfire pounding beyond, but at that point it seemed inconsequential to both of them.

  “Why not? I won’t feel anything; I haven’t felt anything in a long, long time.”

  Roy raised a hand as if to make a point, then lowered it, his expression fighting for calm. “Think, Alexandra, think what you could do!”

  “That’s exactly what I’m thinking,” she said, starting to squeeze the trigger, welcoming what was to come.

  “NOOOOOOOOOO!”

  How much pleasure she took in her father’s desperate plea, the fact that he was seeing his own inevitable demise magnified by witnessing hers. It was so wonderful to feel something, anything . . .

  Until a heavy pounding on the chamber door lifted her from the trance she’d slipped into.

  Katie jammed the pistol McCracken provided into her belt and moved to the heavy steel door, working the latch. But it wouldn’t budge, the locking mechanism having been tripped. Requiring a code to open now from either the inside or the out.

  “The code!” she screamed to her father.

  He remained against the wall, still flinching from the sounds of fire from outside.

  “The code!” she yelled again, coming toward him with McCracken’s pistol raised.

  Roy remained motionless. “It’s just us now, Alexandra. You had your chance. Now you’re not going anywhere.”

  “The code,” she said, meeting her father’s gaze. “Give me the—”

  She stopped when she saw his eyes, because she knew. Somehow she knew!

  Back at the heavy door she entered three two-digit numbers into the keypad.

  Click.

  “Christian’s birth date,” Katie told him, her eyes bulging in fear as the door opened all the way.

  •

  They ran out of space at the same time they came down to the last of their ammo. McCracken’s hearing was almost all the way back, his ears burned anew by the constant din of gunfire blazing from the end of the hall that accessed Sebastian Roy’s hyperbaric chamber. The bullets seemed to own the air, almost visible in his imagination as sizzling specks fired from an endless array of barrels. The narrow spacing of the remaining Japanese commandos created the effect of a wind tunnel, increasing the sensory overload to an unfathomable degree, even for McCracken.

  Still firing toward the onslaught raining on them from the other end of the hall, McCracken, Wareagle, and Belamo continued their retreat, just one flight to go before reaching Roy’s chamber.

  With the last of their bullets draining fast, McCracken entered the same key code he’d watched Pierce press out. The only thing saving him, Wareagle, and Belamo from an all-out rush from the final grouping of commandos was the narrowness of the hall, reducing any attack the enemy force might launch to single file. That negated their advantage in number, firepower, and even positioning. But once McCracken and friends’ ammo was exhausted, all that would be rendered moot.

  Still, Roy’s chamber would offer them protection and defensive positioning Aum Shinrikyo could never breach without sacrificing the remainder of their dwindling numbers.

  It was over, Pandora’s jar certain to be kept from the doomsday cult’s hands now.

  McCracken watched as the door eased open before him, revealing a grinning Shinzo Asahara standing next to another Japanese man holding a gun to Katie DeMarco’s head.

  CHAPTER 91

  Pyrenees Mountains, Spain

  “Drop your weapons,” Asahara ordered.

  McCracken, Wareagle, and Belamo all shed their guns to the floor, noting the presence of two more armed Japanese commandos holding their guns on Sebastian Roy.

  “Now I want the jar,” Asahara demanded between heavy breaths. “Give me Pandora’s jar!”

  “No,” said McCracken.

  “Then the woman dies.”

  “The jar’s not here.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here,” Asahara said surely, the other Japanese man maintaining his hold on Katie and positioned in such a way there was no chance McCracken could reach him before he killed her.

  “Why should I give you the jar if it means we all die?”

  Asahara grinned, McCracken noticing the black mitten covering his left hand for the first time. “Because men like you always believe you can conquer all. Because given the opportunity, you’re convinced you won’t fail whatever the odds. And maybe you’re right. And even if you’re not, you’ll always take that chance.”

  “What can I say? Something works for me, I stick with it.”

  “Then perhaps we should change the equation.”

  With that Asahara signaled his other two commandos to move away from Roy. McCracken watched them train their submachine guns on Johnny Wareagle and Sal Belamo instead.

  “Your two associates will die first. Then the woman, then you. Your sacrifice will have accomplished nothing.”

  McCracken met Katie’s eyes. “Guess we’ll see about that, won’t we?”

  And in that instant she jerked her face downward and bit hard and deep into her captor’s hand. Kuroda flinched in pain long enough for her to twist his pistol away from her, as Johnny Wareagle seized the very same moment to barrel into the two commandos, jerking their weapons upward where they stitched two jagged patches of fire through the drop ceiling. A hissing sound erupted, the oxygen feed lines for the chamber ruptured, as Wareagle drove the men backward, one clutched in either hand, into the nearest wall and slammed their skulls against it over and over again.

  By that time, McCracken had already engaged the Japanese man who’d been holding Katie. The man surprised him initially by totally abandoning her to focus on him. His gun coming around was just a decoy for the blow from his other hand McCracken proved ready for. Kuroda’s eyes told McCracken the rest he needed to know about him, a worthy opponent as well as a deadly one.

  He was vaguely conscious of Belamo struggling with Shinzo Asahara, who seemed able to use only his right hand in the fight. McCracken’s next move was to use Kuroda’s possession of the gun against him, wrenching it up against his frame to make the man focus his efforts on freeing it. McCracken thought this would open up his face and neck for a strike. But Kuroda managed to deflect it and tie him up with a hand looped around his arm at the bicep, driving McCracken sideways.

  The result of the stalemate was an ugly pirouette that twirled them across the room, past Katie DeMarco who was standing stiffly over the form of her father slumped against the wall in terror. McCracken lashed out with a blow that Kuroda effortlessly blocked, just as McCracken deflected his counter in similar fashion. The men continued to parry, McCracken feeling himself gain control of the pistol when . . .

  BOOM!

  The chamber door burst open ahead of Asahara’s remaining commandos charging inside, leveled guns searching for targets when Johnny Wareagle spun around with the floppy frames of the two men still in his grasp.

  Along with their submachine guns.

  Wareagle found both triggers at once, opening up twin streams of fire at the final commandos and downing them as their shots flew wildly through the chamber sparking flame bursts against the ceiling where the oxygen supply had been freed.

  One of the errant shots grazed McCracken in the shoulder, turning his arm numb and useless. The advantage all his now, Kuroda hammered him hard in the jaw and wrenched the pistol from his grasp. McCracken met the Japanese man’s eyes, saw his own end in them.

  Until Katie DeMarco sprang from the wall, catching Kuroda by surprise as she brought her gun in close. The advantage was hers until Kuroda lashed a hand upward and knocked it as
ide.

  But not far enough.

  The bullet she’d managed to fire entered under his chin, obliterating his face en route to exiting his skull and rupturing the already damaged oxygen tank directly above.

  McCracken, meanwhile, reeled backward, shocked by what he’d just watched Katie do. Their eyes met through what looked like a ripple in the air in the moment before the blast. The flames cascaded downward from the ceiling, swallowing Katie in their grasp and just brushing against McCracken before the airburst slammed him against the wall.

  That final moment found Katie feeling warm, cushiony, her last conscious thought one of comfort because she could feel. Sad, terrified, and elated all at the same time, reminding her what it felt like to be alive even as the flames claimed her.

  McCracken watched her vanish, disappear into the fire-wrought oblivion, as Wareagle hoisted him to his feet and dragged him for the door. Sal Belamo had Sebastian Roy in his grasp by then, and McCracken realized Shinzo Asahara was unaccounted for. At the door, as the ceiling and roof began to collapse inside the chamber, he glimpsed Asahara amid the spreading flames reaching for an object displayed in the alcove housing Sebastian Roy’s priceless collection.

  “It’s true,” he said, sounding crazed, even militant. “It’s all true!”

  Suddenly he was a boy again, running toward his father in a beautiful garden. But before he reached him, Shoho Asahara melted like a wax figure, the pristine setting disappearing as if it were a tapestry embroidered on the world. Shinzo looked down to see both his hands, the boy’s hands, normal again before he felt himself melting too.

  CHAPTER 92

  Pyrenees Mountains, Spain

  Only charred and skeletal remains burned to the bone could be found amid the steaming, smoldering pile of debris when McCracken and Wareagle returned to the chamber after sprinklers doused the flames with water. All the chamber’s furnishings had been reduced to molten char as well.

  But McCracken knew there’d be one item left whole amid the rubble. He found it in what had been a display of Sebastian Roy’s greatest treasures, not only whole but utterly and remarkably unscathed by the flames. Pandora’s jar was still standing where it had been before the blast had struck. It was dry as well amid the puddles around it, the sprinklers’ spray appearing to have somehow missed it altogether.

  McCracken lifted the jar, expecting it to be heavy, only to find it light and even comfortable to hold.

  “I’ve seen the symbols on the jar before, Blainey,” Wareagle noted from just behind him, regarding what Sebastian Roy had thought to be no more than an ancient Grecian artifact in the sporadic spill of the emergency lighting.

  “On the temple pedestal this jar had originally rested upon,” McCracken acknowledged.

  A picture of the jar, the largest and simplest in Roy’s esteemed collection, and its symbols had been included among those in the magazine article Blaine had flashed to Katie DeMarco on the plane ride, recognizing the very same symbols on that pedestal inside Pandora’s Temple. And now he was leaving with the jar it had been built to safeguard in his grasp.

  “Not a bad souvenir, eh, Indian?”

  EPILOGUE:

  LAID TO REST

  Washington, D.C.: One week later

  McCracken and Wareagle stood in the shadow of the Vietnam Memorial, eyeing the latest, and perhaps final, names that would ever be added. Present now were the fellow soldiers they’d served with in Operation Phoenix and other covert ops during the same era. Names that had been missing until now.

  Paul Basmajian was the last name added, a final gesture on the part of Hank Folsom as a token of Homeland Security’s appreciation for their efforts.

  “Not bad for a bureaucrat,” McCracken noted. “At least he’s a man of his word.”

  “A rare find these days, Blainey. Truly.”

  “He wanted to know if we wanted to come back on a more official basis.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That he knows where to find us.”

  “And does he?”

  “Unless we don’t want to be found.” McCracken turned from the wall to regard Wareagle closer. “I don’t know about you, Indian, but I can’t see myself retiring to a gated community and playing golf all day. Hell, I don’t even know how to hold a club.”

  “You grip it like a gun someone once told me.”

  “Yeah, gives a whole new meaning to the term even par. What we call survival.”

  Wareagle looked at him briefly before responding. “You didn’t tell Folsom about the jar, did you?”

  “Nope, and I don’t intend to. Man’s not ready for that kind of power, the good guys or the bad guys.”

  Wareagle stiffened. First McCracken thought he was atypically ill at ease; then he realized bitterness and angst had claimed Johnny’s expression. “It killed Baz, Blainey. It will kill far, far more unless something is done.”

  “And it will be, starting with the immediate suspension of all drilling below twenty thousand feet, if Hank Folsom is to be believed.”

  “Even if he is, is that enough?”

  “It’s a start.”

  “And Sebastian Roy?”

  “Our next stop, Indian.”

  Wareagle turned his attention back to the Wall, drifting to other places full of rotor wash, the stench of spoiled mud, exfoliated jungles, rice paddies, and endless death. For a moment, just a moment, McCracken thought he heard Hueys coming in for extraction, the worst time always being the very instant of climbing on board for the vulnerability it carried with it.

  “I’m sorry about the young woman, Blainey.”

  “I am too. Maybe that’s the only way it could have ended for her. Maybe it’s what she’s been trying to do all along.”

  “Such words could just as easily be applied to yourself or me.”

  “Good thing they’re not, I guess, Indian.”

  “You couldn’t have saved her even if she had lived,” Wareagle told him.

  “I figured that much out for myself, Johnny. But I look at her and what do you think I see?”

  “Younger versions of the two of us.”

  “More reckless, making all the mistakes we always steered clear of, making things personal being foremost on the list. That can carry you for a while but it always leads to the same place: nowhere.”

  “She could have been your daughter. Or mine, Blainey.”

  “In more ways than one.”

  Wareagle moved his gaze from the Wall back to McCracken. “When do we head back to Greece?”

  “I never said we were, Indian.”

  “You didn’t have to,” Wareagle told him.

  “After we deal with Sebastian Roy.”

  Sebastian Roy faded in and out of consciousness, lost to the fog of sedatives as doctors in Madrid struggled to reduce his fever, stave off further infections, and stabilize his vital signs. He had no choice but to surrender to his dreams that came in fits and starts, often with what felt like interminable lags and other times following each other in rapid-fire fashion. There were snippets of Alexandra, both as a girl and as the vengeful, bitter woman who formed his final memory of her. There were memories of his family before the fire and nightmares about the burned form of his son rising from the ashes of the fossil fuel plant. There were brief glimpses of the bearded man, his black eyes like liquid pools trying to suck Roy in. And once, when he opened his eyes in the dream, the bearded man was standing by his bedside, looming over him like a ghost.

  “Time to go home, Mr. Roy,” he said, and Sebastian Roy realized with a terrible fear that this visit wasn’t the product of a dream at all.

  McCracken and Wareagle waited for Roy to come fully conscious, having set him in a lush chair in an even lusher library inside his compound atop the Pyrenees Mountains. The burnt odor hung in the air the same way smoke stains claimed the walls in patches. Few areas were untouched by the explosions and gunfire and water pooled in irregular splotches from ruptured pipes and portions of the sprinkl
er system that had been activated by the smoke alarms. The stench of must and mold permeated the air in stark contrast to rooms like this that remained pristine and elegant. The emergency generators maintained a measure of the compound’s lighting, though in flickering fashion.

  Roy awakened to the sight of both of them, instinctively trying to pull free even though he wasn’t bound. “What is this? Why have you brought me here?”

  “So you can be alone with your thoughts,” McCracken told him, the bitter scent he recalled from their last meeting seeming harsher and less antiseptic, like food in the first throes of spoilage. “Literally, once we leave. Everyone else is gone, and the Indian and I have made sure to disable all communications in and out. Should give you plenty of time to reflect on all your accomplishments and success, your hits . . .”

  McCracken stopped to gaze about melodramatically, running his eyes over the most expensive furnishings money could buy before returning his eyes to Roy.

  “. . . and misses.”

  “The jar,” Roy realized.

  “It was right here among all your other pieces, likely salvaged from the bottom of the Mediterranean God knows how long ago.”

  Roy’s skin felt dank and clammy. The fever that had racked him in the hospital seemed to be worsening, light-headedness starting to plague him.

  “No, that’s not true! It can’t be true!”

  “I recognized the symbols on a pedestal inside the temple from a picture of the jar in that architectural magazine,” McCracken told him. “Biggest jar in your collection and also the simplest. Ivory colored, except for those dark symbols.”

  Roy’s eyes bulged. He knew that particular jar all too well, so large he’d had to change the spacing of the shelves in his display to accommodate it. The very jar he’d offered to the green energy magnate Landsdale before he’d taken over the man’s companies.

  Roy’s lips quivered, his whole body shuddering. He leaned backward, the chair seeming to swallow him.