Stephen England - Pandora's grave

He hesitated. The world seemed to close in, his vision narrowing to a singular focus. His target. Off to his left, Hossein fired another shot, the bullet going wild, the report seeming as distant as a faraway storm. His friend’s face stared back at him through those deathly iron posts, seemingly frozen in time. Disbelief overwhelmed him, the sour taste of bile rising in the back of his throat.

He couldn’t pull the trigger. Moments passed-it could have been hours for all he knew. He saw Hamid, his left arm dangling useless at his side, move backward, toward the sheltering pillars, firing another shot to cover his retreat. Disappearing into the darkness.

Numbly, Harry heard Hossein’s voice, and the mist seemed to clear away. He’d had the shot…

His gaze flickered from Abdul Ali’s lifeless body crumpled on the floor to the canister laying a few feet away. “Disarm the bomb,” he ordered, his throat dry. “I’ll go after him.”

For a moment, Hossein didn’t move and Harry turned on him. “Can you do the job?”

The major’s gaze was unwavering. “Of course. Can you ?”

Hesitation. It was the killer. Those moments when you paused when you should have kept moving, when you had the shot and failed to take it. It was those moments that killed. And he knew it. Alone now, moving deeper into the passages beneath al-Aqsa, Harry felt his eyes adjust to the darkness. Whether Hamid would lead him to the fourth canister, he knew not. It was like following a wounded tiger into his lair.

The corridor opened out into a large hall, arched pillars extending off as far as Harry could see. He moved slowly, cautiously, listening every few paces.

Sunlight streamed into the center of the room from a window high in the wall, on the southern wall of al-Aqsa if he remembered correctly.

A bullet smacked into the stone beside his head and Harry ducked low, his eyes searching the semi-darkness. A shape, about fifteen yards off, moving behind the pillars.

He knelt down behind a wooden railing partitioning off the worship space, the muzzle of his UMP-45 resting across the carved wood. Waiting, every sense alert, listening for any movement, any sign of his antagonist.

Patience-it had always been one of Hamid’s virtues. One of the things that had made him so valuable to the team. The team that had been torn apart by his treachery. Harry’s lips compressed into a thin line, forcing himself to remember the sight of Davood’s body. There was only one way this could end.

Movement there in the darkness, movement hesitant and uncertain. Harry saw the outline of a gun in the shadows and fired, the suppressed burst sounding like a trio of handclaps in the darkened hall. Applause for a requiem.

11:48 A.M.

The security center

“One more code,” Carol’s voice instructed. Tex cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder, his fingers poised over the keyboard of the security console.

“ Z as in Zulu-Bravo-India-five-three-Hotel. Enter.”

“Roger that.”

“You should now be in control of the feed. I’m in the network as well, synchronizing our facial-recognition software with the cameras. They’re still using Windows Seven-there’s a couple backdoors in that OS. I used to date a programmer from Redmond.”

The screens around him lit up, the system coming on-line once more-revealing the crowd now gathered outside the mosque. Word from Hossein had confirmed the disarming of the third canister, but they still had one to find, and thousands of people flooding into the area around the masjid. “How soon will we have facial-recognition capabilities?” he asked.

“Five minutes, tops. Why?”

“We’ve got a lot of people to scan.”

11:49 A.M.

Masjid al-Marwani

A moan followed the burst of gunfire, then dead silence. After waiting for a minute, then two, Harry rose and vaulted over the railing, landing noiselessly on the carpet below.

He crouched and moved across the open area, hurrying toward the opposite side of the room.

Still nothing. No suppressed gunshots welcomed his approach, no bullets flew out of the shadows. Submachine gun held at the ready, he rounded one of the pillars and nearly tripped, his eyes fixed ahead of him.

He looked down into the face of his friend, pale and drawn in the semi-darkness.

Hamid lay there on the carpet of the masjid, on his back, his fingers groping toward the butt of the Glock which had fallen from his grasp. There was no sign of his MP-5, presumably discarded after the wound to his arm.

Harry’s final burst had stitched him across the abdomen and pelvis, breaking the pelvic bone. He wasn’t running any further.

Without a word, Harry reached out a foot and kicked the Glock away. Hamid watched the gun spin permanently out of reach, a look of defeat on his face.

Harry looked down upon the crippled body of his friend, remorse and sorrow roiling within him, remembering the good times.

How had it happened? Theirs had been a brotherhood of steel, forged in the fires of battle. Shattered in the space of a moment.

“We need to talk,” Harry said finally, forcing the emotion from his voice as he lowered the H amp;K, letting the weapon hang from its sling. “Where’s the fourth canister?”

Hamid coughed, blood flecking his cheek. “It was fated to end like this, Harry. There is no escaping the will of Allah.”

“Fate is what we make of it,” Harry responded coldly, drawing the Colt.45 from its holster on his hip. “That’s not answering the question. Where’s the missing canister?”

“I don’t know and there’s nothing you can do about it now. You were ordered to take me alive, weren’t you? I’m sure the Dark Lord is wondering-how did the ayatollahs penetrate his top strike team, how many missions were compromised because of me?”

“How many?”

A smile played on Hamid’s lips. “Azerbaijan will do for an example. It took the Service almost two years to replace the men they lost that winter.”

Taking in the look of anger and surprise on Harry’s face, he went on, wiping away blood from the corner from his mouth. “That’s the way Davood looked.”

“Shut up.” Harry closed his eyes, unable to escape the images burning themselves into his mind, an indelible brand. His own failure had led to this-this unspeakable betrayal.

The Colt trembled angrily in his outstretched hand, a round in the chamber, hammer back. End this…

“He screamed when I shot him, Harry,” the sleeper continued with a laugh. “It was a good sound-I shot him five times, enjoying myself. Just like I’d wanted to do for so long. He died like an unbelieving pig should, wallowing in a mire of his own blood.”

Harry’s face hardened into a cold, pitiless mask. The time for mercy had passed, all chance of redemption gone in that moment.

“Burn,” he whispered bitterly, his finger tightening around the trigger. Judge and jury were gone, leaving only the last of the offices for him to perform.

Executioner…

The hammer came down, the pistol recoiling into Harry’s hand as the mighty roar of the Colt reverberated through the stone galleries.

Hamid’s head snapped back at the impact of the round, the sneer on his face forever wiped away.

Harry stood there for a moment, the gun still leveled, looking down at the broken body of his friend, the blood staining the carpet. And it all came back, the emotion surging over him in a flood tide.

That it would have ended like this. He leaned against the pillar, his stomach convulsed in dry heaves, trying to vomit. Nothing could wash away the vile taste in his mouth. The blood on his hands.

A voice penetrated his consciousness, echoing in the dark chambers of his mind. He turned to see Hossein standing there about ten feet away.