Pandora's grave

“No.” The tone in Director Bernard Kranemeyer’s voice made it clear that none were desired. And Thomas hadn’t survived nine years in the National Clandestine Service by pushing his boss to the edge. “I’ll see you in a couple hours.”

“Good,” was the curt reply as Kranemeyer hung up. Thomas stared at the phone for a couple seconds before putting it away.

“What was that all about?” he heard Julie ask.

He picked her jeans up from the back of a beach chair and tossed them at her. “Get dressed,” he instructed tersely. “We’re leaving.”

“Why?” she asked, still holding the pants in her arms.

“I’ve got to go back to work,” he shot back. “Now let’s get moving!”

2:03 P.M.

CIA Headquarters

Langley, Virginia

“Parker is on his way back from Atlantic City. Zakiri was out in Seattle visiting his family, got back in this morning on United. Richards is coming up from the Farm.” Bernard Kranemeyer reported, referring to the CIA’s training center in Quantico, Virginia. “I think that about has it, right?”

“ Wrong,” Harry stated, folding his arms across his chest. Light flashed from his eyes. “I’d like to know why you’re sending my team in to do what a diplomatic envoy should be able to accomplish? Not to mention how you ever got an anti-war president to authorize this incursion.”

“Two reasons,” Lay replied evenly. “In the first place, the election is less than two months away, and the last thing the President wants is a hostage crisis overshadowing his bid for reelection.Now that his administration is threatened-well, this is D.C., Harry-

you know the shelf life of morals and values in this town. Bottom line, he wants action, not dialogue. As for the second reason-do you want to tell him, Barney, or shall I?”

Kranemeyer shook his head, reaching for the button on Lay’s desk. “May I, sir?”

The DCIA nodded.

Harry looked from one man to another. There was something going on here that he was unaware of. Another factor. As there typically was when his boss was involved. A former operator himself, Kranemeyer wasn’t called the “Dark Lord” for nothing.

He didn’t know the whole truth. Perhaps he never would. Truth was an elusive quality in the business he was engaged in. But he was about to understand another component.

A moment later, the door from the outer office opened and a short, thin black man entered, holding a laptop computer under his arm.

“Harry,” Director Lay began, “Carter’s going to bring us up to speed on the trailers. Do you have the data with you, Ron?”

“The trailers at the site of the abandoned camp?” Harry asked, reaching out to shake Carter’s hand. The African-American analyst acknowledged him with a curt nod and set his computer down on the director’s desk, clearly consumed by his own thoughts. Harry smiled. He and Ron Carter went a long way back, and he had learned to never underestimate the man’s abilities. Despite his occasional penchant for anti-social behavior, Carter was the best photo-analyst the Agency had, possessing as well a knack for managing field-ops that had caused Kranemeyer to draft him from the Intelligence Directorate two years before.

Carter nodded, setting the laptop on Lay’s desk and swiveling the screen so that all could see. A picture of one of the trailers filled the screen. “I started running the photos through our database the minute we picked them up. It took a while to get a match, but here it is.”

“What were they?”

“They are almost identical to the biological-warfare trailers used by Saddam Hussein in the ‘90s,” Carter stated, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “But these aren’t them.”

“Where did they get them?”

“If you’ll remember, Harry, three years ago a CIA spec-ops team was parachuted into Azerbaijan to interdict a shipment of arms from Russia to Iran.”

Harry closed his eyes and nodded. He remembered all too well. For he had led that mission. He remembered the HAHO-High Altitude, High Opening insertion from the C-130, descending slowly into the wintry Azeri night. Into the darkness below them. He and nine others, two full strike teams, Alpha and Charlie. They had believed the Russians were selling nuclear weapons. And they’d been ordered to stop the convoy at all costs. At all costs, indeed.

Two of the men had been killed on landing, one of them apparently dragged over a cliff by the wind. The rest had been scattered-scattered to the winds. Three of them were never heard from again. He and the four survivors managed to regroup and head for the bridge where they were to intercept the convoy. By the time they got there, the convoy was long gone, only tire tracks in the snow indicating its passage. They had been too late. And then the Azeri military had started looking for them.

The journey to the extraction zone was a memory he wanted to forget. The harsh winter winds tearing into them. The snows. The caves he and the others took shelter in to hide from the helicopters searching for them.