Pandora's grave

“Looked like it, maybe more than one I heard a gunshot-looks like he got off a shot before they killed him.”

Harry went silent for a moment. If the Iranian soldiers were circling around them, their options were rapidly diminishing. They would have to extract quickly. “Can you rejoin our position, FULLBACK?”

“Roger. I can make it to you, Allah willing.”

“Leave Allah out of it,” Harry snapped, surprised at his own impatience with his old friend. “Can you E amp;E?”

“Affirmative.”

“Good. LONGBOW, I need you to stay behind and cover our retreat. You will extract at my signal. Copy?”

“I read you,” Thomas replied. “Horatius is my middle name.”

“Right now I’d settle for a decent imitation of Carlos Hathcock. EAGLE SIX to Alpha Team, break contact!”

Chapter Five

2:54 A.M.

Project RAHAB

Gideon glanced down at his watch, shielding its luminous dial with his hand. The gunfire which had rippled over the Iranian mountainside was quiet now, the echoes slowly fading away. He had no clue what he was running into, but hesitation was suicidal. One thing he knew for certain. Minutes were ticking away toward daybreak, minutes he could ill afford to lose. He turned and tapped Nathan Gur on the shoulder.

“Let’s get moving, corporal. We’ve got ground to cover.”

2:55 A.M.

The crash site

The silence didn’t bother Major Hossein half as much. To him, it served as proof that none of his men were exposing themselves to enemy fire. A good sign.

He looked down at the American radio clipped to his combat vest, and thought for a moment about calling the base camp, ordering the evacuation of the archaeologists. They were surely the commandos’ objective.

It was a hard choice. Should the Americans be able to slip around him and raid the base camp, Tehran would surely sack him, and probably execution would follow. And yet-he dared not jeopardize the experiment by ordering it moved. He could almost picture the interrogation.

“Major Farshid Hossein?”

“Yes?”

“You ordered the experiment to be moved-was this because you believed it was beyond your power to defend it?”

“No, sir. I only wished to take every precaution that security of the experiment was not in danger.”

“As it would not have been if you had followed your orders. Major Farshid Hossein, you have disgraced the revolution…”

Hossein shuddered involuntarily. It was a risk he couldn’t take. He had witnessed that scene too many times, from the other side of the bright lights. There was only one option left to him.

Wipe out the commandos.

He reached over and tapped his sergeant on the shoulder. “Take your men and work your way up to that knoll. We’ll flank the sniper.”

They undoubtedly thought they were being clever. The figures glowed bright green in his nightscope as they wound their way around the rocks, keeping low.

It wouldn’t do them any good. Thomas aimed carefully, centering the cross-hairs on the chest of the foremost soldier, a tall bare-headed man with a Kalishnikov in his hands.

The rifle cracked out through the night, its echoes spelling death. The tall man pitched forward, his gun rattling against the stones.

His comrades dove for cover, the darkness exploding as they returned fire at anything that looked like a target…

Thomas worked the bolt, his hands steady as he took aim once again.

His first indication that something had gone wrong was when a bullet whistled past his head, ricocheting off the rocks that sheltered him.

They had flanked him. His location was compromised…

Harry paused for a moment at the top of the bluff. It was far enough. Bound and overwatch. Time to tell Thomas to come on home while they could still provide covering fire.

His headset came alive suddenly. Thomas’s voice. “EAGLE SIX, this is LONGBOW. I am pinned down at the overlook position. Hostiles have a fix on my location. Need help. Need help now.”

“LONGBOW, can you extract?”

“Negative, EAGLE SIX. Egress is closed off.”

Harry glanced back across the canyon, to where his old friend was fighting a last desperate battle. His heart wanted to go to the rescue, to throw his team back into the maelstrom of combat. But he couldn’t.

“Harry?” Hamid was speaking to him. “We going back?”

“No,” Harry replied slowly. “We have a mission Langley expects us to accomplish. We’re moving on.”

Another rattle of gunfire interrupted Hamid’s protest as the tiny group of men gazed out into the darkness, toward their comrade…

Bullets splattered into the rocks beside Thomas’s head and he ducked instinctively. It was a basic tactic, one taught for decades. Fire and maneuver. One section keep their heads down. The other section move in.