Pandora's grave

A chill autumn breeze fanned the fire, sending sparks dancing into the night sky high above their heads. Thomas’s gaze shifted across the burning embers, to where Estere knelt, cleaning her weapon by the firelight. Her fingers moved nimbly as she reassembled the sniper rifle with a speed no sergeant could have faulted.

His mind flickered back, remembering the look in her eyes when she had executed that wounded Iranian earlier in the day. A glance devoid of pity, empty of emotion. She had been a fighter in that instant, focused on one thing and one thing only. The extermination of her people’s enemy.

She glanced up from her work to find him looking at her and a small, secret smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

He grinned. A fighter, yes, but no less a woman…

10:58 A.M. Eastern Time

NCS Operations Center

Langley, Virginia

“One of the boys over at Intel just pulled this off the Iranian subnet,” Bernard Kranemeyer announced, aiming his remote at a screen on the far side of the room.

The screen came alive as a video began to play-raw, low-definition footage, but the meaning was abundantly clear. They were watching a firing squad.

Harry leaned forward in his chair, puzzled by the direction their debrief had taken. The video only ran for forty-five seconds. The last forty-five seconds of a man’s life.

He watched dispassionately as the DCS hit PLAY again, slow-motion this time as the rifle volley crashed out, leaving the man crumpled like a broken doll against the stone of a courtyard.

“Who was he?” he asked as Kranemeyer turned back toward them, a sheaf of papers in his hand.

“Farshid Hossein, according to the accompanying files,” was the reply. “A major in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.”

“Do we know him?”

“He was a commander in the Quds Force commandos in Iraq. Personally responsible for the torture and beheading of Sergeant Major Juan Delgado back in ‘06.”

The words struck Harry like a blow. The memories began to flow unbidden through his mind. Delgado. Basra. Operation TURTLEDOVE.

Delgado had been Harry’s #2 on the operation, a Ranger with almost twenty years in the Army. He had run point for the military wing of TURTLEDOVE, an operation designed to drive a wedge between the Quds Force and their Shia base of support in Basra. A big, easy-going man, he and Harry had hit it off well from the beginning.

And then Delgado had been captured. The counter-insurgency operation quickly turned into a search-and-rescue, but it had been fruitless. The NCO had been beheaded within twenty-four hours of his abduction.

“Why don’t I know this name?” Harry asked

“He was known as Abu al-Mawt in Iraq,” came the answer. Harry looked away, his eyes closing, as the scenes came flashing back through the mists of the past. The Father of Death. The masked figure standing behind Delgado as the sword came down.

Well, he had gone to his reward…

9:35 P.M. Tehran Time

The Presidential Palace

Tehran

To be this close. It was almost heady, to be able to smell victory. President Mahmoud F’Azel Shirazi sighed, leaning back into his chair. At the age of 58, Shirazi was a small man, standing about 5' 6", with no discernible paunch. His face was classically Persian, partly hidden behind the greying scruff of a carefully-trimmed beard. He walked with a slight limp, the result of a leg wound suffered during the Iran-Iraq War of the ‘80s.

He had been a young man then, but he was young no longer. The years had taken a toll upon his body.

It would be enough. As it had been revealed unto him in a dream, he would live to see the destruction of the Satan. What more could a man desire?

“Harun,” he said at long last, lifting his gaze to the man standing before him. “It is good to see you.”

Colonel Harun Larijani bowed from the waist, his eyes still fixed on the floor. “Thank you, sir.”

Shirazi smiled, rising from his chair and circling around the desk. “Let us dispense with these formalities, nephew,” he remonstrated, embracing the younger man and gently kissing him on both cheeks in the traditional Middle Eastern greeting. “Your father is well?”

“Yes, my uncle. He is well.”

“He will be proud of you,” Shirazi stated, disengaging from the embrace and returning to his chair. “Sit.”

“Thank you.”

“I assume you’ve seen this?” the Iranian president asked, turning the screen of his laptop around so that his nephew could view it.

“The execution of Major Farshid Hossein? Yes.”

“Your thoughts?”

“I am puzzled by the motivation of Isfahani in this action,” came the ever so cautious reply.

Shirazi nodded. “The Ayatollah is still a very powerful man, and bears watching. He was one of my advisors when we moved Hossein’s Guard detachment in on the Jew and it does not necessarily surprise me that he would seek to take independent action in the wake of this setback. Something like this-very damaging to a man’s pride. Your opinion of Hossein?”