Pandora's Grave (6 page)

“I’ve issued the finding, director,” Hancock replied, shooting a glance across the room at Cahill. “See that it’s done.”

The chief of staff looked at him as he hung up. “What was that all about?”

The President smiled. “Ian, you can rest easy. I think I’ve just won the election…”

11:03 P.M. Baghdad Time

Q-West Airfield

Northern Iraq

Harry slipped on his jacket as he left their sleeping quarters, shivering slightly as the cold night air of the desert washed over his body. The rest of the team was sleeping soundly, which was exactly what he should be doing. But he couldn’t. He never could before a mission. It was just a nervous habit he had acquired over the years. A bad habit.

There were just too many things to consider, too many contingencies to prepare for. And he had the weight of this mission resting on
his
shoulders. Everything was up to him.

He moved down the runway, his hands in his pockets, looking up into the September night sky. What moon they had was largely obscured by clouds, which was exactly the way he wanted it. Flying nap-of-the-earth should keep them out of the Iranian radar network, but it did nothing to protect them from the oldest detection system ever used by man: eyesight. The darkness should help.

A young sentry in a U.S. Army uniform loomed out of the night ahead of him, an M-4 clutched in his bare hands. “Who goes there?” he demanded, nervousness in his voice as it rang out a challenge as old as time itself.

“Colonel Henderson,” Harry replied. The soldier stepped closer, shining a flashlight full in his face.

“ID?” Harry handed it to him. He was little more than a kid, eighteen or nineteen at most. The year before he’d probably been in high school, his principal worry whom he was going to escort to the prom. Now he had a gun his hands.

“Very good, sir. I’m sorry I bothered you,” the kid replied, giving it back.

“No trouble, soldier. You’re just doing your job. Carry on.”

Harry smiled to himself as he moved past him, toward the hangars at one end of the airstrip. The soldier had been careless. If he had really been an intruder, he could have taken out the sentry with no trouble. He had been given plenty of opportunity.

A sudden noise arrested Harry’s progress. Something, more like a squeak than anything else. From one of the hangars. Like metal rubbing against metal. It came again, over the night breeze.

Someone was
in
one of the hangars.

Harry’s hand flashed to his hip, unclasping his holster. He moved carefully toward the hangar entrance, the Colt clutched in his outstretched hands. Another noise.

The big door of the hangar was open, as they all were. Apparently the Q-West commandant thought his perimeter security was good enough. Right.

A couple more steps to the door. Another noise, the flash of something, maybe a penlight. Harry rounded the corner, his eyes probing the darkness in front of him.

A shape was huddled at the front of a helicopter—at the front of the Huey, Harry noticed with a sudden jolt of alarm. The man had a penlight and was bent over, working on something.

Harry took another step forward. There was no sense in announcing himself. Not yet. Just a few more feet.

All at once, his foot caught a metal can and sent it rattling loudly across the concrete floor. That did it.

A muffled curse broke from the intruder’s lips and he jumped up, startled.

“Get your hands up!” Harry screamed, his voice echoing like thunder in the narrow confines of the hangar. “
Now!
”

The figure hesitated for a moment, then he turned and darted towards the back of the hangar, toward the door there.

Harry darted forward, ducking around the Huey, afraid to fire for fear of damaging the helicopter. He couldn’t get a clear shot.

The man reached the back door and darted out into the night as Harry chased after him, feet pounding against the hard concrete.

Harry paused at the door, listening, uncertain which way to go. He couldn’t see anyone now. Everything was still, so silent he could
feel
it. He took a careful step forward, the Colt extended in front of him. Somewhere…

A wrench smashed into his arm, sending the Colt spinning out of reach. Harry whirled, gasping in pain, throwing his other arm up to deflect the attacker’s second blow.

His right hand slipped to his ankle, searching for the combat knife strapped there, but the man bowled him over before he could reach it. The wrench descended toward his head.

Harry rolled right, grabbing a fistful of sand and dirt, heaving it up and out, into the face of his attacker. Rubbing his eyes, the man reeled backward, barely keeping his feet.

And he ran.

Pulling the combat knife from its ankle sheath, Harry regained his footing. There was no sense in trying to locate the Colt. The man would be long gone before he could hope to find it.

Harry dashed forward. The intruder was just disappearing around the side of one of the other hangars. There was still time to catch him, but Harry wasn’t going to let himself be fooled as easily this time.

By the time Harry reached the edge of the hangar, the man was gone. Disappeared. Vanished into the inky blackness of the night.

Inwardly, Harry prayed for a moon he would have cursed only ten minutes earlier. He had no idea which way to go.

He moved toward the hangar door, pushed it open. It squeaked noisily on its hinges and he paused. There was no way he would have missed that sound. The man hadn’t gone inside. He must have gone around.

He went around as well, moving slowly, listening, watching, the long knife still in his hand.

Listening for something,
anything
. He could call the airfield’s security patrols to help with the search, but that would take too long, and from what he had seen of their efficiency that night, he didn’t know that they would be much help.

A faint noise arrested his progress. He stopped stock-still, listening, his eyes trying to pierce the night. Without success.

There it was again. A shuffling noise, as though someone were running through the sand. Around the edge of the hangar…

Harry dropped into a crouch by the building as the noise came closer. A shape loomed above him and he rose, smashing the hilt of the knife into the man’s breastbone, knocking him off-balance.

The man grunted and toppled backward, Harry going down on top of him. He pressed the tip of the knife firmly against the intruder’s throat. “Surrender,” he hissed in Arabic. “
Now
.”

“Nichols,” the man gasped weakly, forcing his words out past the knife. “Is that you?”

Harry pulled the blade away quickly. “
Davood
! What are you doing out here?”

“I was coming from the latrines,” the Iranian-American agent whispered, rubbing his sore throat with his hand. “Saw somebody over by one of the hangars—let me up, will you!”

“Of course,” Harry responded, rolling to one side. “But what did you see?”

The agent pulled himself into a sitting position, still trying to regain his breath. “A man was sneaking around the hangars. I tried to follow him.”

“Which way did he go?”

Davood shook his head. “I don’t know. Lost him in the darkness. I was looking for him when I ran into you.”

“Same here,” Harry nodded. “Got your automatic?”

“I don’t need it to take a leak. I left it back in quarters.”

Harry rose to his feet, looking around him, trying to get his bearings. Once again, everything was silent. Too silent. He glanced down at the agent. “Run and get Colonel Tancretti,” he ordered tersely. “I’m going back to the hangar where the Huey is housed. Do you know where that is?”

“No,” Davood replied, rising to stand beside him.

“Tancretti’ll know. Tell him I want a squad of men around that Huey from now on. Scratch that,” Harry corrected, anger in his voice, “I want a whole
platoon
around the hangar. Get going.”

“Roger.”

11:57 P.M.

Q-West Airfield

Northern Iraq

“So, what did he do?” Harry demanded as Tancretti rose from his crouch by the Huey. The colonel’s face was unusually grim.

“He trashed one of the external stabilizers.”

“Can you fix it?” Thomas asked, holstering his automatic.

“Yes,” Tancretti replied. “But I would need parts from Mosul.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “We have an hour till go-mission.”

Harry nodded silently, weighing his options. None of them were good. Tancretti was speaking again.

“We could take the Pave Low.”

“No,” Harry retorted sharply, looking over at the colonel. “I believe I told you this afternoon. Washington wants plausible deniability on the operation. Using the Pave Low compromises that.” He shook his head. “I have my orders.”

His eyes locked with Tancretti’s. “How do you suppose he got inside?”

“I don’t know,” Tancretti replied, shrugging his shoulders. “We have twenty kilometers of perimeter fencing to patrol. My men are spread thin.”

“And those you’ve got aren’t doing their job well enough!” Harry snapped. “One of those kids let me get within five feet of him tonight before he issued a challenge. I could have put a knife between his shoulderblades and he would have been dead before he knew the difference.”

“They’re learning. But we’ve had saboteurs slip inside before. It’s part of the country,
Colonel
.”

Harry took another step toward him, his face dark as the night. “I couldn’t care less what is a part of this country, Tancretti. What I want to know is why one of these ordinary run-of-the-mill, routine saboteurs would choose the oldest aircraft on base to sabotage it! It doesn’t make sense. You’ve got millions of dollars of hardware on this airfield and this man penetrates all the way to the middle to disable the one aircraft that is of no use to anyone—except us. This mission. The mission that was supposed to go down one hour from now.”

He glanced around, searching the faces of his fellow team members, of the Air Force personnel clustered behind Tancretti. “Someone knew…”

4:08 P.M. Eastern Time

NCS Operations Center

Langley, Virginia

One hour. Actually, less than an hour. Fifty-one minutes, twenty-five seconds to be precise, Bernard Kranemeyer thought as he carefully synchronized his watch to Baghdad Time. And then Operation TALON would begin.

A computer had randomly picked the code name for the operation, but the selection had brought a grin to the faces of both Kranemeyer and the DCIA. Eagle Claw had been the codename of the last US hostage rescue mission into Iran. And an eagle’s claw was a talon.

For a moment, both men had thought about changing it, to avoid someone else noticing the comparison. But in the end, they had left it in place. Perhaps it was an omen.

A light on his phone flashed bright red. An incoming call. He picked up the receiver, waiting in silence for the encryption sequence to engage.

“Kranemeyer.”

“Boss, this is Nichols. TALON has been scrubbed.”

The statement nearly brought the DCS out of his seat. “
What
?”

“We had an infiltrator thirty minutes ago. He disabled the helo we were using for TALON.”

“How did he get in?”

“We don’t know,” Harry replied, glancing around him. “Colonel Tancretti says he can repair the helicopter if we give him another twelve hours. I propose to postpone TALON until tomorrow night, oh-one hundred hours.”

“You won’t have the weather in your favor if you wait,” Kranemeyer observed grimly.

“I know. But I don’t have another choice.” Harry walked away from the group, pushed open the hangar door, stepped into the darkness. “I’ve got a problem, boss.”

“What is it?”

“Someone on this base is taking it both ways. Whether it’s one of the Air Force guys or one of the strike team, I don’t know.”

“Why?”

“The saboteur came all the way into the center of the base to strike the oldest airframe there. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”

“Yeah. It does. You think someone knew that you were planning to use the Huey.” It wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

“I do.”

“You can forget about the strike team,” Kranemeyer stated firmly. “They’ve all been thoroughly vetted. We know everything there is to know about each and every one of them—and that includes you. And you know your team as well as anyone.”

“I’m not worried about them,” Harry retorted, steel in his tones, his meaning clear as crystal.

“You’re wondering about your Iranian, eh?”

The inference was there. Loud and clear. And it irritated him.“It wouldn’t matter to me if he was a card-carrying
WASP
! I’ve never worked with him before. So of course I’m wondering.”

“He’s clean, Harry. Forget it.”

“What about his parents? What do we know about them?”

“His parents escaped the Revolution in ‘79. They live in Dayton. We had the Bureau put them under surveillance for six months prior to accepting his application. His uncle is the local imam, but none of them have ever been linked with anything remotely troubling.” The DCS paused. “I’d start looking among Tancretti’s flyboys if I were you.”

“I will.”

“Twenty-four hours, Harry. If anything further happens, let me know.”

Kranemeyer punched a button on his phone, waiting briefly for the line to clear. Something was going wrong. That much was clear. And he didn’t like it.

“Nicole,” he said, “put me through to the DDST.”

“Right away, sir.” A moment later, the Deputy Director of the CIA’s Science & Technology branch came on the line.

“Good afternoon, Scott,” Kranemeyer said calmly, his voice betraying none of the tension welling up inside of him.

“It’s good to hear from you, Barney,” Scott Hadley replied, clearly surprised at the call. “What can I do for you?”

“I need you to coordinate twenty-four hour satellite coverage with Sorenson over at the NRO. I want an area covered in real-time, live streaming feed right to the NCS op-center.”