Stephen England - Pandora's grave

Glossary

AFSOC-Air Force Special Operations Command

CENTCOM-Central Command, United States Military, encompassing the Middle East

ClandOps-Clandestine Operations

Comm-Communications

DCIA-Director of the Central Intelligence Agency

DCS-Director of the National Clandestine Service

DD(I)-Deputy Director(Intelligence)-Central Intelligence Agency

DD(ST)Deputy Director(Science amp; Technology)-Central Intelligence Agency

DNI-Director of National Intelligence

DZ-Drop Zone

E amp;E-Escape and Evade

ETA-Estimated Time of Arrival

Exfil-Exfiltrate, the reverse of infiltrate

FAV-Fast Attack Vehicle

IDF-Israeli Defense Forces

IRGC–Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps

JSOC-Joint Special Operations Command

KIA-Killed In Action

Klick-kilometer

LOS-Line of Sight

LZ-Landing Zone

Masjid-Arabic for mosque

NCS-National Clandestine Service, operations wing of the CIA

NRO-National Reconaissance Office

NSA-National Security Agency

NVGs-Night Vision Goggles

PJAK-Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, militant Kurdish group

PHOTINT-Photographic Intelligence

SAM-Surface to Air Missile

Sitrep-Situation Report

Spec-ops-Special Operations

TACSAT-Tactical Satellite phone

VISDENT-Visual Identification

A.D. 1329, Persia

Silence. Unearthly silence. Silence unbroken except for the shrill cries of the carrion birds, the vultures circling in the sky. Circling lazily over a city that had once been the home of thousands, the pride of the East. Rhodaspes.

The old man sighed. Rhodaspes. She was renowned through history as a city of trade, a city of great kings. The unconquerable. In the days of his forefathers, she had stood against Alexander, the Romans, finally the hordes of Mohammed that had overrun the lands to the south. She had withstood them all, stood tall and proud.

In his own time, the city had defied the onslaught of the barbaric horsemen from the Far East, watched as they swept around the city like waters round a rock, passing them by. They had not fallen. They had remained, a bastion of pride, a bastion of faith. For the old faith of Zoroaster had not yet died in these mountains. His own name, Adar, meant “fire.” It was a tribute to the gods.

The last fire temple remained within their walls, the only one that the Mohammedans had been unable to destroy. Yes, they had withstood many onslaughts in their history. And they had always been triumphant in the end.

Until now.

He pushed open the door of his house, gazing out into the deserted streets, the streets that had once rung with shouts of laughter, the bustle of merchants. The streets where he had once played as a child, so many years ago.

He was the last. The last of Rhodaspes. The last of his people. It was a strange feeling. He hoisted the small sack on his shoulder and went around to the side street, where his horse stood waiting. In days past, his servants would have saddled it for him, but those days were past. They were all dead, now. Just like everyone else. The stench of death filled his nostrils as he mounted his horse, kicking it into a slow trot as he rode toward the city gates.

Dead. It had all started only a few months before, three to be exact. It seemed impossible that such devastation could have been accomplished in so short a time, but it had .

And it had all been because of one man. A stranger. An angel of death. They should have slain him immediately, thrown his fevered body outside the gates. Anything would have been better than what followed.

He had died. And then the family that took him in. Then their neighbors. Then their friends. The whole city. Smitten of the gods.

Cursed for an act of what they thought was mercy. Too late they had realized that they had been interfering with judgment.

He had thought to stop it. They had visited the temple of fire daily, beseeching Ahura Mazda for his protection, for his mercy. The heavens had been silent. There had been no answer.

The city gates were swung open, the mighty double gates that had defended Rhodaspes for centuries, their wood coated with brass that glistened like fire in the morning sun and protected them from being burnt down. They were useless now. There was nothing left to defend. He was the only one left.

The citizens had started burying their dead in the earth, in huge, open graves. From that moment on, Adar had known there would be no mercy. For burial-it was an abomination. For centuries, nay, for millennia, his people had placed their dead in “Towers of Silence,” where their spirits could be received direct into the sky, while their flesh was consumed by the vultures, the vultures that now circled above him, robbed of their sustenance.

He passed through the gates, kicking his horse into a gallop. He was an old man, and now he was fleeing. Fleeing something he knew he could not escape. The wrath of the gods…

September 13th, Present-day

An archaeological dig

The Alborz Mountains of Iran

He had felt the evil of the place from the moment they had arrived. Something palpable, something he could sense in the very air.

And now it had manifested itself in the dead body of the young man at his feet. Young man? Little more than a boy, really. One of the college students that had followed him to this godforsaken land, chasing the opportunity of a lifetime. Opportunity…

The Israeli straightened, rising to his feet, looking around at the few that were left. “He’s dead,” he announced flatly, stating the obvious.

“What-I mean, what happened?”

He looked up into the light green eyes of the young woman in front of him, eyes now filled with tears. She was on the verge of breaking. As were they all. Somehow he had to keep them together. Somehow…

“I have no idea, Rachel,” he replied, his voice little more than a whisper. “How about you, Grant?”

The fifty-eight-year-old history professor from Princeton shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” He paused. “Where are the others, Dr. Tal?”

Moshe Tal didn’t answer for a moment, his mind absorbed with what had led to this point. The years of toil in Israel, working on other projects-Hazor, Masada, Baalbek. Mere footnotes along his life, along the path that led here. Nothing compared to this.

Rhodaspes. Its very name lured him like a siren song-a Persian trade city poised on the trade route between the blue waters of the Caspian and the snow-capped peaks of the Elbrus.

Rhodaspes, the queen of the east-a city that had controlled vast wealth from her mountain fastnesses, a Persian Petra.

Rhodaspes, the unconquerable, though besieged briefly by no less than Alexander the Great on his way to India.

Rhodaspes, a city that had been abandoned in the middle of the fourteenth-century, suddenly, mysteriously as though God himself had scattered its inhabitants to the winds. The native Farsi still spoke of the place as accursed. Now he knew why. It was…

“I said, Dr. Tal, where are the others?”

Grant Peterson’s voice brought him back to reality. The present darkness.

Moshe pointed wordlessly, down the mountain path to the mass grave, the place that had started it all. One could see a few bodies sprawled stiffly by its edge. The bodies of the remaining archaeologists.

He should have known the moment they had unearthed the grave. Should have taken it as an omen of the evil to come.

For the inhabitants of Rhodaspes had never buried their dead. They were Zoroastrians, and the practice was an abomination to them. Never mind a mass grave.