Pandora's grave

Another shot, another kill, another body collapsing into the dust. It was like a shooting gallery…

2:29 A.M.

The drop zone

“Lieutenant, the perimeter is clear. No hostiles. Copy?”

Gideon cupped his hand to his ear, listening to Chaim’s report. “Affirmative. I copy.”

He turned back to the FAV, spreading out a small cloth map on the hood of the vehicle. “We have thirty-two kilometers to go in the next half-hour. Yossi, I want you to take the lead vehicle to an overlook position-here,” he indicated, drawing a circle on the map with his index finger. “Chaim will go with you and prepare to snipe down into the camp. Nathan and I will take the second vehicle and go in the back way.”

He paused and looked around at his team members, their faces shadowed in the glow of his flashlight. “Intelligence indicates our target is inside this building here. We’ve got to hit that building fast, secure it, then escort SCHLIEMANN to the extraction zone. I’ll be sending him with you, Yossi. Understand?”

The small sergeant nodded briefly. “Right, chief.”

“What about the other archaeologists?”

It was Nathan Gur. Gideon glanced at him in the darkness, saw the look on the young man’s face. “We do not have room in the vehicles,” he replied brusquely. “They will be left behind.”

He folded up the map and replaced it in an inner pocket. “Let’s move out.”

2:33 A.M. Tehran Time

The crash site

Davood came back into the realm of the conscious feeling a hand touch his shoulder, a voice whispering to him, “Are you okay, my brother?”

It was Hamid.

Davood rolled over on his back, biting his lip as pain shot through his veins. Tancretti was nowhere to be seen. The explosion must have flung them apart, he thought numbly, the sound still ringing in his ears. He wondered how long he had been unconscious.

“BIRDMASTER?” he whispered, gazing up into Hamid’s face as the tall man bent over him. “Where is he?”

Hamid stood to his feet, glancing around them. Finally he spotted a figure stretched out in the sand about six feet away.

“There,” he said solemnly.

Davood raised himself up on his elbows, testing himself carefully. Nothing seemed to be broken. Just cut-and bruised. Hamid was looking at him again, his face looking strangely misshapen with the night-vision goggles covering his eyes. A giant bug-like creature from one of the American alien movies Davood had watched as a child.

“Do you need help?” he asked.

“No. I have to check the colonel,” was his reply, carefully rising to his feet.

“Very good,” Hamid retorted shortly, “I will report our situation to EAGLE SIX.” He paused. “Where is your radio?”

Davood’s hand went to his belt, searching for the small transmitter. He shook his head, a rueful smile crossing his face. “Must have lost it in the explosion.”

A curt nod. “EAGLE SIX, this is FULLBACK. Sitrep?”

12:36 A.M. Local Time

The personal residence of Avi ben Shoham

Overlooking Lake Galilee

Counting sheep had never worked for the Mossad chief. Neither had counting terrorists, for that matter. He knew them by heart, every last man who had struck Israel and was still living to boast about it. They didn’t help him sleep. He went back to his nightstand and closed the dossier on Ibrahim Quasim.

Case closed. Another body in a Palestinian morgue. Another terrorist dead.

His eyes flickered to the portrait of his wife hanging over the bed. It had been a long-time wish of hers. Painted when he had worked in the Israeli Embassy in Paris, it was the way he wanted to remember her. A beautiful woman in the prime of her life.

Not the way they had parted. Not the way she had died, bleeding to death in an ambush on the West Bank, her legs blown off by a roadside bomb, small-arms fire chattering noisily over their heads as he covered her with his body, as his protective detail fought back.

Tears coursing down his face, her blood on his hands, cursing in impotent rage at the utter futility of it all.

Ibrahim Quasim had died as he lived. In an explosion as fiery as the one with which he had killed Rachel Shoham.

It was justice. The general closed his eyes, willing the memories to go away as he tore the photograph of the dead terrorist leader into shreds, pieces fluttering to the floor like the snow that blanketed Mount Hermon.

The satellite phone beside the bed rang noisily, a jarring intrusion into the privacy of his thoughts. He came alert, reaching for it.

“Shoham here.”

“General, we are on scrambler.” It was the watch officer at Mossad Headquarters. Which wasn’t good. Something had happened.

“Copy scrambler. What’s going on?”

“We have PHOTINT indicating a military presence approximately twenty-five kilometers north-northeast of RAHAB’s last reported position. There’s a firefight going on.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive. We have muzzle flashes, looks like the Iranians are there in platoon strength or greater.”