Pandora's grave

At Harry’s signal, the three men moved out, Hossein and Ali going left, Harry going right into the dead-ended corridor as they rounded the corner. Empty.

The emptiness struck him with the force of a blow, his mind screaming danger as he started to turn. Knowing it was too late even as he did so.

In the narrow limestone corridors, the cough of Hamid’s silenced Glock resounded like thunder, the sound of the slide cycling. One, two shots.

The classic double-tap. Out of the corner of his eye, as if in slow motion, Harry saw Abdul Ali reel backward, blood spraying from a wound in his throat, the pistol falling from his hands.

He turned on heel, hearing the sharp report of the revolver in Hossein’s hands, the ring of steel against stone as Hamid staggered, dropping the canister. The UMP-45 came up to level, Hamid’s face coming into perspective through iron sights.

It was the kill shot. A single press of the trigger would have sent three 230-grain hollowpointed cartridges on their deadly way.

He hesitated. The world seemed to close in, his vision narrowing to a singular focus. His target. Off to his left, Hossein fired another shot, the bullet going wild, the report seeming as distant as a faraway storm. His friend’s face stared back at him through those deathly iron posts, seemingly frozen in time. Disbelief overwhelmed him, the sour taste of bile rising in the back of his throat.

He couldn’t pull the trigger. Moments passed-it could have been hours for all he knew. He saw Hamid, his left arm dangling useless at his side, move backward, toward the sheltering pillars, firing another shot to cover his retreat. Disappearing into the darkness.

Numbly, Harry heard Hossein’s voice, and the mist seemed to clear away. He’d had the shot…

His gaze flickered from Abdul Ali’s lifeless body crumpled on the floor to the canister laying a few feet away. “Disarm the bomb,” he ordered, his throat dry. “I’ll go after him.”

For a moment, Hossein didn’t move and Harry turned on him. “Can you do the job?”

The major’s gaze was unwavering. “Of course. Can you?”

Hesitation. It was the killer. Those moments when you paused when you should have kept moving, when you had the shot and failed to take it. It was those moments that killed. And he knew it. Alone now, moving deeper into the passages beneath al-Aqsa, Harry felt his eyes adjust to the darkness. Whether Hamid would lead him to the fourth canister, he knew not. It was like following a wounded tiger into his lair.

The corridor opened out into a large hall, arched pillars extending off as far as Harry could see. He moved slowly, cautiously, listening every few paces.

Sunlight streamed into the center of the room from a window high in the wall, on the southern wall of al-Aqsa if he remembered correctly.

A bullet smacked into the stone beside his head and Harry ducked low, his eyes searching the semi-darkness. A shape, about fifteen yards off, moving behind the pillars.

He knelt down behind a wooden railing partitioning off the worship space, the muzzle of his UMP-45 resting across the carved wood. Waiting, every sense alert, listening for any movement, any sign of his antagonist.

Patience-it had always been one of Hamid’s virtues. One of the things that had made him so valuable to the team. The team that had been torn apart by his treachery. Harry’s lips compressed into a thin line, forcing himself to remember the sight of Davood’s body. There was only one way this could end.

Movement there in the darkness, movement hesitant and uncertain. Harry saw the outline of a gun in the shadows and fired, the suppressed burst sounding like a trio of handclaps in the darkened hall. Applause for a requiem.

11:48 A.M.

The security center

“One more code,” Carol’s voice instructed. Tex cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder, his fingers poised over the keyboard of the security console.

“Z as in Zulu-Bravo-India-five-three-Hotel. Enter.”

“Roger that.”

“You should now be in control of the feed. I’m in the network as well, synchronizing our facial-recognition software with the cameras. They’re still using Windows Seven-there’s a couple backdoors in that OS. I used to date a programmer from Redmond.”

The screens around him lit up, the system coming on-line once more-revealing the crowd now gathered outside the mosque. Word from Hossein had confirmed the disarming of the third canister, but they still had one to find, and thousands of people flooding into the area around the masjid. “How soon will we have facial-recognition capabilities?” he asked.

“Five minutes, tops. Why?”

“We’ve got a lot of people to scan.”

11:49 A.M.

Masjid al-Marwani

A moan followed the burst of gunfire, then dead silence. After waiting for a minute, then two, Harry rose and vaulted over the railing, landing noiselessly on the carpet below.

He crouched and moved across the open area, hurrying toward the opposite side of the room.