Stephen England - Pandora's grave

A pistol materialized in the man’s hand as he leaned down, pressing it against Quasim’s forehead. “Good-bye,” the young man whispered, a smile crossing his face. A smile as cold and dark as his eyes.

Fire erupted from the gun’s muzzle. Fire and blackness…

Lieutenant Gideon Laner rose from beside the corpse, replacing the Glock in the folds of his garments. “Subject is down, repeat, subject is down,” he stated into his lip mike. “Mission complete.”

“Right,” the voice replied over his radio. “Your pick-up is arriving in the area. Proceed to the extraction zone.”

“Roger.” He walked quickly over to the bodies of the two militants, toeing each one with his boot. They were dead. There was nothing more for him. Not here.

Gideon broke into a trot, down the street. With any luck-a small dirt-brown Toyota appeared from a side street, slowing to a stop beside him.

“Get in,” the man behind the wheel ordered curtly. He too was dressed like a Palestinian, like Gideon. The lieutenant opened the door and slid into the passenger seat.

“How did it go?”

“Quasim is dead, Yossi,” Laner replied. “Drive.”

“Are you sure?”

Gideon glanced over at his companion, irritation flickering in his dark eyes. “I put a pistol between his eyes and blew his brains out, Yossi. Of course I’m sure.”

“Good.”

10:49 A.M. Baghdad Time

Q-West Airfield

Northern Iraq

There were no tracks. Whatever imprints had been left in the soft sand had been wiped away by the night breeze. It told him nothing. It was here that he had fallen, rolled onto his side to avoid his attacker’s second blow. A slight impression was all that remained.

Harry stood to his feet, glancing carefully around him. Off in the distance, he could hear jet engines warming up, their shrill whine oddly discordant in the desert air. He walked slowly across the sand, to the place where he had attacked Davood. Something didn’t ring true. Someone had betrayed them. Someone wasn’t on their side. And he didn’t know who.

He had worked with Tex, Thomas, and Hamid many times before. In combat, they were a finely-honed team, anticipating each other’s actions, working together like parts of a single machine. They were like brothers. What had happened last night couldn’t have been their doing. Their loyalty was beyond reproach.

Of course, a little voice reminded him, the same thing could have been said of that old FBI turncoat, Robert Hanssen. And his friends had been wrong.

Perhaps the director had been right. Perhaps his initial suspicions were focused on Davood simply because of who he was, what he was. And he couldn’t afford to operate on that basis. But Kranemeyer wasn’t on site, and something felt wrong about this. All of it.

A voice behind him got his attention. It was Davood. “The colonel sent me for you. He says the Huey is repaired.”

Harry turned, his eyes betraying none of his suspicion. “Thanks. Tell him I’ll be right there.”

1:21 P.M. Tehran Time

The base camp

Major Hossein glanced at his watch. They were late. Perhaps there was a logical explanation for that. Then again, perhaps Tehran’s intelligence had been in error.

Perhaps the strike force had arrived early. Maybe the convoy had been intercepted.

He rubbed sweaty hands on his pants, checking the magazine of his Makarov semiautomatic pistol for the twentieth time in the last three hours. It was loaded. A loaded AK-74 stood by the door of the trailer he had taken over as a headquarters. His men were thrown out in a defensive perimeter extending three kilometers out from the laboratory trailers.

Once again they had justified his choice of picking them. Experienced fighters, veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq, they knew the country. They were taking advantage of every bit of high ground, every rocky crag from behind which they could fire without exposing themselves.

The radio at his side crackled loudly with static and he leaned over, grasping up the microphone. “Convoy to Base Camp, we are three kilometers out. Request instructions.”

Praise Allah! Hossein thought in a rare moment of pious thanks. He spoke rapidly into the microphone, ordering them to the rocky outcropping he had picked out seven hours before. When he had received the message from Tehran.

Yes, praise be to Allah. Now he only needed another half-hour for the missile battery to arrive and position themselves. Then they would be ready. Ready for the Americans.

11:58 P.M. Local Time

Sayeret Matkal Headquarters

Israel

Gideon Laner turned the faucet all the way to hot, cupping the water in his hands and splashing it over his face. It was refreshing to be clean once again, after the tedious strain of being undercover for the past two months. He reached into the drawer underneath the sink and pulled out a Gillette razor. He hadn’t shaved in that time either. But he had succeeded. Ibrahim Quasim was dead. Now Sayeret Matkal, the Israeli special-ops unit, would just have to see who Hamas replaced him with.

For there would be a replacement, that was granted, but the new man would not be as experienced as the man whose body now lay back in the dust of a Gaza street. Not as skillful. And they would kill him too.

Gideon pulled off his shirt, glancing in the mirror as he did so. A tired, worn face lined with worry stared back at him. The face of a man old before his time. He sighed and reached for the razor.

At that moment a knock came at the door, startling him. “One moment,” he answered, pulling his shirt back over his head.

He yanked open the bathroom door. “What’s going on?” he demanded, irritated at the interruption. A female corporal from Communications was standing before him.

“I’m sorry,” he began, embarrassed by his outburst.

She didn’t seem to notice, handing him a clipboard. “This arrived over the wire, lieutenant. You have to sign for it.”

He took it from her, noticing the Mossad crest at the top of the cover sheet. What did they want?

8:03 A.M. Eastern Time

CIA Headquarters

Langley, Virginia

“I understand, Scott, I do understand. But tell Sorenson I want that satellite coverage ASAP-as Kranemeyer requested. Keep on him. Goodbye.” Director Lay hung up the phone, sighing heavily as he did so. The NRO still wasn’t providing the real-time sat coverage that had been requested. Their regional KH-13 was apparently tied up covering one of the interminable uprisings in Indonesia.

Lay slammed his fist against the solid oak of his desk. To blazes with Indonesia! His teams weren’t there, weren’t headed into harms’ way in that godforsaken part of the globe. They were going to Iran. And something was giving him a bad feeling about all this. There was something wrong.

He had become DCIA six years before with a clear mission from Hancock’s predecessor. Transform the Agency. And, as much as was possible, he had done so. He had successfully lobbied the Hill to increase the budget for human intelligence and special operations by over fifty percent, started running operations the like of which hadn’t been done for forty years. And there were people in this town that didn’t like that. They didn’t like it one bit. Which was why he had to be careful.

He rose from his chair, going over to the window, his hands in his pockets as he gazed out over the city. From his office he could see the Washington monument, the tall granite obelisk that towered over the city, stone glistening in the autumn sun.

They couldn’t understand, it seemed no one could anymore. The price of freedom. The sacrifices necessary to obtain it. Sacrifice. The politicos that inhabited the swamp inside the Beltway defined sacrifice as the necessity of leaving their Washington lifestyle and heading back to their home districts every few years to campaign.