Pandora's grave

A single.45-caliber hollow-pointed slug smashed into Calderon’s right temple, killing him before the cry on his lips could even be uttered. One of the girls nearby screamed at the sight. Alerted, his bodyguards turned on heel, their eyes wide with shock at the sight of their employer lying on the asphalt, blood trickling from his skull. Then one of them fell, pierced through the heart.

The crowd began to scatter like a covey of quail, panic spreading through them, a primal impulse for safety. The second bodyguard went for the Sig-Sauer on his hip, but he was dead before it could clear the holster.

Three corpses on the pavement.

The assassin turned, tucking the Colt into his waistband and adjusting the loose sports shirt he wore so as to cover it. Then he walked calmly back through the crowd, listening to the screams of people shouting for the police.

His steps quickened as he moved away from the immediate area of the nightclub. A car bearing the lettering Policia passed him as he jogged along the sidewalk, lights flashing and siren wailing. A quiet smile of amusement crossed his face at the sight.

All that bother for nothing. He reached up, switching on his earbud microphone with a motion that seemed as innocent as scratching his ear. “Chameleon to Raven. Operation BOXWOOD is completed. Conducting E amp; E.”

“Roger that, Chameleon. Come on home.”

Chapter One

12:32 P.M. Eastern Time, September 19th

CIA Headquarters

Langley, Virginia

Silence reigned on the seventh floor of the CIA Headquarters, silence unbroken but for the noise of a small fly buzzing near the ceiling.

A lull before the storm, Harry Nichols thought as he sat outside the office of CIA Director David Lay. It was the reason he was here.

For the thirty-eight-year-old field officer to be invited up to the seventh floor, the inner sanctum of the Agency’s top officials, meant trouble.

He could count on one hand the number of times it had happened before in his time at the CIA. And every time it had been a prelude to a mission. And not just any mission. Something special. In his line of work, special meant dangerous.

He got up from his seat on the couch and crossed over to the window, gazing out over the city, over the Potomac to Washington, D.C. His nation’s capital.

The capital of the land he had sworn to defend. No matter what the cost.

Over the fifteen years he had worked for the CIA, he had learned the cost. All too well. The cost of missions gone wrong, the price of failure. The bittersweet taste of victory when it had been achieved with the blood of his friends, his comrades.

To look at him, one would have never suspected who he was, what his job entailed. He stood about six-foot three, his frame deceptively lean. The build of a runner, not a weightlifter, though he did both. There was little about his physique to hint of the tightly controlled violence he was so capable of unleashing.

Clear blue eyes smiled disarmingly from a smooth-shaven face that had been long weathered by the elements, the smile so often nothing more than a facade to conceal the man that lay beneath. A cover, like so much of the rest of his life. He had sacrificed much to serve his country.

His hair was black and wavy, parted neatly to one side. To look at him, dressed as he was in a blue suit jacket, matching pants and a white shirt, one would have guessed him to be nothing more than a business executive, or perhaps one of Langley’s many analysts. Nothing could have been farther from the truth.

A Colt 1911.45 automatic was beneath the jacket, carried fully loaded in a paddle holster on his hip, even here on the seventh floor of the CIA. He rarely went without it.

The door opened behind him. A woman’s voice. “The director will see you now.”

He turned, a smile passing across his face. “Thank you, Margaret.”

“Go on in.”

Director Lay glanced up from his computer as Harry entered. In his early sixties, Lay was a big man, carrying the weight of someone who had spent most of their career behind a desk. Which he had, but no one would have called the desk of DCIA easy or stress-free. His graying hair was testimony to that fact.

“Have a seat,” he instructed. “I’m glad you could get here so quickly. I understand you’ve been trying to catch up on sleep since your arrival from Mexico City last night.”

Harry shrugged, taking a chair in front of the desk. “Kinda had to catch the red-eye back. Understood something hot was on tap.”

“There is. Good work with Calderon, Nichols,” the director said abruptly. That was all he said about the three dangerous months that had led up to the assassination of the drug lord. That was all that would ever be said. Silence was golden. “I trust you’ve had lunch?”

“I grabbed a quick bite in the Operations Center cafeteria.”

“Good. This will take a while.”

“What’s going on?”

Lay handed him a thin folder. “Recognize this man?”