Pandora's Legion

16

“Okay Doctor. What did you find?” Lee was more relaxed after the entry team was en route to the safe house. But long habit told him it was too early to ease up. The unmarked van still could be stopped for any reason, legitimate or otherwise.

In the rear seat Padgett-Smith held up a biohazard box; she might have raised a trophy trout. “Mr. Fox found it, actually.” She pronounced it “efe-chually.” “He noticed the plastic container behind some specimen bottles in the second refrigerator. It seemed unusual so we decided to treat it as a possible hazard.”

“Why’s that?”

Padgett-Smith nodded to Carter Fox, a thirty-something lab tech who seemed to relish the clandestine arts. “Plastic is used for potentially dangerous samples because it won’t break like glass. And there was no label identifying the contents,” he said in his Boston accent. “The only notation is in Urdu and Arabic. Basically it says ‘handle with caution.’”

Lee shrugged while his driver negotiated the last turn to the sanctuary. “Well, I don’t know a bug from a germ, but ‘handle with care’ sounds pretty innocuous.”

CPS gave an exaggerated smile. “It certainly does.”

The American nodded briefly. “Oh. Gotcha.”

Buster Hardesty was waiting when the SSI team arrived at its destination. He had an official of the Pakistani Ministry of Health with another unmarked vehicle and a small security detail from the embassy. All the men wore civilian clothes, but Lee noted that most carried concealed weapons. “Imprinting” was the word in firearms circles — the telltale bulge or outline of a weapon beneath a shirt or coat. However, it was obvious that the guards were unconcerned about being detected.

“Well done, Major.” The attaché shook hands with Lee and nodded his appreciation to the other operators. He motioned to Lee and Padgett-Smith; they walked several yards away to speak privately.

“My Pakistani friend is, ah, well placed. For obvious reasons, he doesn’t need to know your names and you don’t need to know his. But he’ll take your sample to a military lab for evaluation. The scientists will never know of our involvement. If the sample is benign, we may try to replace it, but I’m told that tests could take a couple of days. If it’s hot, the security services will start looking for our suspect while you continue your own searches.

“Which reminds me.” Hardesty pulled a scribbled note from a pocket and handed it to Lee. “Khan called on the discreet line this evening. He thinks he’s on to something. Frank Leopole is organizing an op in the border region. He says he’ll go with the people he still has in Quetta, but you folks might want to hustle back there.”

Omar Mohammed found Padgett-Smith in the hangar. She was exercising when she heard his footsteps on the cement behind her. “We just heard from General Hardesty,” he said. “He wants you to call him right away.”

She straightened up, arching her back and stretching her arms over her head. Though a Muslim and happily married, Mohammed noted the muscular upper arms and slender torso. CPS had taken to exercising in the main hangar more often: she could dispense with bulky clothes and avoid unwanted attention. She caught his glance, knew its meaning, and accepted the tacit compliment.

“Roger that,” she quipped.

Mohammed rolled his eyes in exaggerated fashion. “Oh no. Not you tool” He grinned in appreciation of the humor.

“Well, I spend all day with Type A commandos. Apparently that’s the only kind there is. What should one expect?”

“I suppose it would be a welcome change if you had one or two ladies to talk to.”

She picked up her towel and headed toward the office. “It would be perfectly delicious, Omar. But I knew the lay of the land when I signed on.”

He paced beside her. “You know, the Soviet Spetsnaz were rumored to have twenty-five percent women. Many of them were Olympic athletes.”

CPS absorbed that information, processing it behind those violet eyes. “It makes a certain amount of sense. Undoubtedly there were covert missions that required disarming guile rather than force.” Brains over brawn, she thought. She turned to face him. “What does the general need?”

“Oh. I didn’t talk to him. He just left a message asking you to call as soon as possible.”

“Maybe he has a report on the sample we took. It’s been a couple of days, and that’s probably long enough to have run the tests.”

Rustam Khan’s presentation was concise and professional. Leopole expected no less, but thought that the Pakistani probably felt some pressure to make a good impression on the Americans. Leopole already had addressed the usual waypoints along the well-traveled route of a mission briefing: objective, intelligence, communications, and support, plus command and control.

In his clipped accent, Khan ticked off the known or suspected hostile forces and their capabilities. “I should emphasize that my sources are varied and do not always agree in details. That is to be expected. Additionally, some of the information is at least a few days old. But there is enough similarity on locale and previous sightings to justify launching an operation against this cave complex.” He circled an area on the map, a five-kilometer area on the Afghan border.

Lee raised a hand in the front row. “How many caves are we looking at?”

Khan arched an eyebrow. “In that area, there could be dozens. But relatively few would be suitable for the terrorists’ purposes. I shall accompany you to evaluate each site. I am familiar with such things and I can save some time. Unless we encounter an unexpected situation, the search should take little more than a day.”

Mohammed opened the door at the rear of the room and got Leopole’s attention. The team leader waved him in.

“Excuse the intrusion,” Mohammed began. “But Dr. Padgett-Smith just talked with General Hardesty in Islamabad. The laboratory confirmed that the sample you found is in fact a filovirus. As yet it has not been identified, but the doctor believes we need look no further. Saeed Sharif is the man we want.”

“Well, where is he?” Foyte asked.

Leopole stood up. “Let’s hope he’s in one of those caves. Ruck up, gentlemen. We launch at 0430 tomorrow. Blue Team’s up front, White in reserve.”

After the briefing, Lee essayed a literary comparison for the benefit of those who read something besides Soldier of Fortune. “The terrorists we’re after frequently hide in caves. The area is full of them, and some are huge. It’s a lot like the Morlocks in H.G. Wells’ novel…”

Delmore interjected. “Morlocks? You mean, like, the underground gooners in The Time Machine?”

“Oh, yeah,” Breezy exclaimed. “The ‘60s flick with that really cute blonde babe. Yvette whatshername.”

“Yvette Mimieux?” Bosco asked.

“I guess so. Little bitty gal.”

Lee gave an exaggerated sigh. “As I was saying… there’s a similarity between the terrorists and the Morlocks in the H.G. Wells novel.” He nodded toward Breezy. “From which the movie was made.”

“Uh_; yessir.”

“The comparison is, the Morlocks lived underground where they mutated into semi-human form. They came to the surface to prey on the people up there. Er, well, up here…” He felt growing frustration at trying to educate some of his knuckle-dragging door kickers in the finer points of literary-cinematic comparisons with the current world situation.

Bosco, a science-fiction devotee, turned to his partner. “Major Lee is saying that the terrorists are like the Morlocks; they can’t stand the light of day so they dwell underground, like where we’re gonna look for ‘em in caves. They can’t win a stand-up fight so they seek helpless victims like the Eloi, who were unable to defend themselves. The difference, of course, is that H.G. Wells’ novel was set in a post-industrial world whereas we’re merely in the post-Cold War world.” He turned toward Lee, keeping a deadpan expression. He knew that he had just astonished the bejabbers out of the former Army officer.

“Boscombe, sometimes you freaking amaze me.”

“Yes, sir. Sometimes I amaze myself.”