Stephen England - Pandora's grave

“Right away, boss.” He took the cigarette from between his lips and tossed it away, grinding it into the concrete pad.

Gideon turned to look at the rest of his men. There was Chaim Berkowitz, twenty-four years of age, their sniper. A tall, lean boy, his name meant ‘life’.

It couldn’t have been more inappropriate. Angel of death would have been more fitting. But he did his job. That was why Gideon had picked him.

The third team member was leaning over the FAV, already helping Yossi unscrew the launchers from their fastenings. His name was Nathan Gur. The youngest man on the team, he had gone into the Bekaa with Gideon the previous year, as part of a joint American-Israeli op.

None of his men were rattled by the short notice they had been given. They were accustomed to it, to the strain of laying on a mission in a hurry. Often they only had hours before a terrorist would change locations. The mood this time was actually relaxed.

All that would change soon enough…

8:32 P.M. Baghdad Time

Q-West Airfield

Northern Iraq

Thomas Parker glanced at his watch. Five hours. He laid down his cleaning brush and picked up the scattered parts of his 7.62mm SV-98 sniper rifle, starting to reassemble the gun. It wasn’t his favorite weapon, but it would do the job. Anything of American manufacture was out of the question.

He re-mounted the scope, brushing a fine layer of dust off the lens. Sand seemed to permeate everything.

The scope wasn’t standard-issue, it had come from an American lens manufacturer whose name had been carefully ground off the side. It gave him magnification up to 10x and night-vision capability. More than he needed, but with it, he had placed bulls-eyes at fifteen hundred yards.

It was the rifle he had carried into Azerbaijan. That was another reason he didn’t like using it.

Rising, he left the reassembled SV-98 on the bunk, and walked over to the window. Out on the runway, they were readying a fighter jet for take-off.

Thomas stood there for a moment, staring out into the desert, his eyes shadowed. Azerbaijan. Failure. He didn’t like to be reminded of failure. Of the men that had been left behind. Of the men he had let down. He could never let it happen again.

He returned to the bunk, picked up the sniper rifle, cradling it in his arms. It was a personal way of killing. You looked down the scope, you looked into the eyes of the man you were about to destroy. If he was the first man to die in an area, you saw him as he was, cheerful, determined, going about his life.

If others had gone before him, you saw the raw, naked fear in his eyes, the pallor of his face as he heard your rifle-shot ring out in the distance, speeding death his way. Messenger of destruction…

11:57 P.M.

Q-West Airfield

Northern Iraq

“Request permission for takeoff. Ident two-seven-one Lima.”

“Permission granted, two-seven-one Lima. You have go-mission clearance.” A brief pause and then Tower added, “We’ll leave the light on for you.”

“Thanks, Motel Six,” Tancretti acknowledged sarcastically, turning back to his work. He had a chopper to fly.

The strike team sat in the back, arranged in the order in which they would exit the plane. Tex was closest to the door. On the ground, he would take point. Hamid sat right beside him. Harry sat across from the two of them, followed by Davood. Thomas sat in the far back, the sniper rifle slung over his shoulder. He would provide rear security. They were dressed in desert camouflage, their faces painted a sandy brown.

Nothing on their clothes identified them as American, nothing about their weapons. They were clean, deniable.

Harry glanced out into the darkness as the chopper slowly began to lift off from Q-West, feeling adrenaline surge through his body. They were going. This was it. They were committed. The moment of truth, the writers called it. Perhaps.

He looked around at his team members. Their expressions were unreadable in the darkness, the face paint masking their eyes. Davood stirred at his side.

His dossier had said he’d never been deployed operationally before. Perhaps that accounted for his nervousness.

Or maybe not.

Truth? Another writer had said it was the first casualty of war. Harry was more inclined to the second opinion. But they were past the point of no return. They were going in…

Fifteen minutes later, a C-130 Hercules transport aircraft rose from a small military airfield north of Tel Aviv, heading west, across Syrian airspace, across northern Iraq, flying low to avoid detection by the American military radars. Destination: Iran…

1:32 A.M. Tehran Time, September 24th

The base camp

Iran

Major Farshid Hossein glanced at his watch, shading its luminous dial with his hand. It was time. They would come-now, when a man’s bodily functions were at their lowest ebb. They would be warriors of the night, the elite of their nation, highly-trained and motivated.

Their training would do them no good. They would be dead before they could even reach the ground. He and his men would kill any that survived.

The night air chilled him and he wrapped his uniform jacket tight around his body. All around him, mountains towered toward Paradise, some of them already capped with snow. Beyond them, to the northeast, the shores of the Caspian.

The pack of Marlboros was tucked securely in his shirt pocket. He wanted one, but didn’t dare. He knew from experience how far away the glowing ember of a cigarette could be seen, how it robbed a man of his night vision. He would need all of his faculties in the next few hours. He walked back to the TOR-M1. Its crew members were silhouetted in the pale glow of the late September moon.

“Anything?” he asked.

“ Nah ,” the technician shook his head. Nothing.

Hossein clapped the man on the shoulder, moving on. “Keep watching.”

1:37 A.M.

The Huey

Iran

“You have the bird, Jeff.”

“Roger that, colonel. Taking over.” The co-pilot smiled, taking the controls into his hands.

Tancretti removed the night-vision goggles and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. Using the goggles was like looking down a pair of toilet-paper tubes covered with green foil. It shot his depth-perception to blazes, something not to be underestimated at the altitudes at which the Huey was flying. One wrong twitch of the control levers, and they would hit the ground. And yes, he had volunteered for this assignment.

“How far away is the LZ?” a voice behind them asked. Tancretti looked up to see the CIA team leader-Henderson, Nichols, whatever his name really was, standing over them.

“Forty klicks,” Luke replied, his words clipped and curt. “Your target is eight beyond that.”

The CIA man nodded quietly. “Thanks.”

4:43 P.M. Eastern Time, September 23rd

CIA Headquarters

Langley, Virginia

Bernard Kranemeyer had just checked his watch when the phone in his shirt pocket rang, its shrill buzz disturbing his thoughts. The strike team should be well on their way. The mission had been launched.

“Kranemeyer speaking.”

“Director, this is Daniel Lasker.” The twenty-eight-year-old Lasker was head of ClandOps tactical communications. “Sir, we’re getting the first real-time imaging from the NRO down here in the op-center.”

His habit of referring to Kranemeyer as “sir” was a perpetual source of annoyance. The DCS, who was proud of his five-year career as a Delta Force sergeant major, associated “sir” with the officer class. He’d worked for a living, thank you very much.