Pandora's Grave by Stephen England Page B

his body. He had to move. Get away.
    A shadow fell over him, blocking out the sun. Quasim raised his eyes. A man in the clothing of a street Arab stood over him. A friend. “ Please ,” he whispered, forcing the words out past bleeding lips. “Help me, brother…”
    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.