Pandora's Legion s-1 Read online

  Steven Lee was a former army major with a two-inch-thick personnel file and two ex-wives. Other than Catterly, he was the only man in the room wearing glasses, which he described as “tactical eyewear.” Lee lived for action, forsaking his father’s computer fortune in San Francisco in favor of more exotic climes. He had operated in Afghanistan and spoke some Pashto. Leopole considered him the finest raid planner he had ever met.

  Daniel Foyte was another divorced veteran. With two college-age daughters, he was originally drawn to SSI from the Marine Corps but soon found that he enjoyed working for Mike Derringer. His dossier showed seven years with Marine Force Recon, including four years as an instructor. Gunnery Sergeant Foyte and Lieutenant Colonel Leopole were closer than any other SSI operators. They had hunted, fished, hiked, and fought together. Every November 10th they observed their corps’ anniversary with quantities of adult beverages. SOP was to take a cab to their favorite bistro, tear a fifty-dollar bill in half, and give Ulysses S. Grant’s left half to the cabbie. He collected the president’s right half at the stroke of midnight.

  Foyte waved a hand. “Colonel, who do we work with over there?”

  Leopole almost smiled. In the presence of others, the former noncom was scrupulously formal when addressing former officers. In private, whether hunting in Nebraska or hiking the Blue Ridge, Leopole was “Frank” or “Hey maggot.”

  “Coming to that, Dan. The admiral and Dr. Mohammed have contacts with our embassy and the Pakistani security force.” Intentional groans met that bit of intelligence. Nobody in the room had any faith in the United States State Department, and Islamabad’s ISI was known to sympathize with the mujahadin. “Pipe down, you guys. Our, ah, colleagues, are with the Paki army, not their intelligence service. Security is crucial if we’re going to catch these bastards, and nobody knows exactly what we’re after. But the admiral thinks we need the embassy for greasing the skids, and we might need the Pakis to get us out of Dodge. You’ll meet our friends on the other end.”

  Leopole continued down his list. “Enemy forces: unknown. Our Pakistani doctor may or may not have a security detail. We’ll likely outnumber them but we can’t count on it. Anyway, the usual cautions apply. Take all the ammo you can carry and extra water. Local sources are always suspect.”

  Steve Lee raised his pen. “How do we get to Pakistan? SS Air?”

  Soft laughter tittered through the room.

  “Affirm. We’ll use the company 727 and we’ll lease another bird, half the operators on each plane.” Nobody had to ask about the division of labor when SSI’s “Jurassic jet” could easily handle the full team with room left over. Too much was at stake for the Pandora Project to lose all its personnel in one plane crash.

  “Now, obviously we need more information but time is crucial so we’re planning on wheels in the well day after tomorrow. Once the team is assembled in-country we’ll have updates from Mr. Wolf and his domestic ops staff. In fact, they’re in California right now, talking to the carrier’s family.” He surveyed the room. “Any other questions?”

  Trying to redeem himself, Bosco asked, “Colonel, what about the medical aspects? I mean, if we’re dealing with some really bad shit, how do we handle it if we find these guys?”

  Leopole sighed, almost audibly. What he was about to impart was a sore point. “The government won’t allow active-duty personnel on this job so our Pentagon liaison tried to find a Guard or Reserve member who’s knowledgeable about the disease and able to keep up with you guys. We ran out of time, so Dr. Catterly contacted the British immunologist who notified him. Apparently Dr.”—he checked his notes—”Dr. Padgett-Smith is a skier and mountain climber and she’s willing to go along.”

  A low buzz flitted through the room. Bosco leaned over to Breezy. “Did he say she?”

  * * *

  When the meeting broke up, some of the operators gathered around the coffee pot, thumbing through a U.S. Army manual from the Monterey language school. A former cop named Phil Green was the self-appointed linguist of the SSI door kickers; he could say “don’t shoot” in twenty-two languages. “Lessee,” he murmured.” ‘Hands up’ is laasuna portakra. ‘Stop’ is wodariga, and ‘Don’t move’ is harakat makawa.” He shrugged, then deadpanned, “That seems simple enough.”

  Nearby, Mohammed overheard Bosco’s partner, Breezy Brezyinski. “Seventy-two virgins? Man, I thought it was twelve.”

  “And I heard it was, like, twenty.” Slouching against the table, ex-SEAL Jeffrey Malten was suddenly attentive.

  Bosco shrugged. “Maybe it’s virgin inflation or somethin’.”

  Breezy had just taken a gulp of coffee, unfortunately timed with the sudden ingestion of air in response to Bosco’s irreverence. The result was a two-minute laughing-coughing fit.

  Bosco pounded Breezy on the back until the affliction passed. Then he noticed Dr. Mohammed. “Uh. Sir, what’s the Koran say about all those virgins, anyway?”

  Mohammed shook his head in bemusement tinged with disgust. “Not that it matters to any of you… gentlemen… but it’s not in the Koran. It is from a collection of traditional beliefs or sayings, the Hadith. It is similar to the Apocrypha for Christians, though there are different interpretations. The Prophet apparently referred to the righteous receiving eighty-thousand servants and seventy-two wives. But in French the passage reads des belles aux seins arrondis, or beautiful women with round breasts.”

  Regaining his breath, Breezy focused on the celestial plane. “Hey, I wonder if you could, like, switch the numbers, you know?”

  Malten, uncharacteristically sensitive for a SEAL, elbowed the erstwhile paratrooper. “Quiet down, you jerk. Doc Mohammed will hear you.”

  Breezy would not be deterred. “Wow, man. With eighty-thousand virgins you could have one a day for, like, three hundred years! Besides, seventy servants would be plenty for me.”

  Bosco did the math. “Uh… more like 220 years.” Whatever his social failings, former Sergeant Jason Boscombe predated outcome-based education. Friends knew that his penchant for numbers included baseball stats and Vegas odds.

  Straightening up for a change, Malten asked, “Doctor, no offense, but does that paradise stuff apply to converts like this American kid?”

  Mohammed almost welcomed the query as intellectual discourse. “Well, yes, I suppose so. You see, some believe that the surest way for a devout Muslim to enter paradise is to die in a jihad.” His dark eyes swept the audience. “Any takers, gentlemen?”

  ANNANDALE, VIRGINIA

  SSI did not own a shooting facility, but Frank Leopole had a friend who did. Lock, Stock & Barrel often rented its indoor range to corporations, but this evening Leopole requested access after hours. It would not be politic to have the public observe men in “space suits” wielding submachine guns.

  The door kickers tried on the Racal suits for Biosafety Level 4 protection. They had battery-powered oxygen systems with positive internal pressure to deter contaminated air from entering. The most obvious feature, apart from the bright orange color, was the futuristic plastic helmet. The “bubble” design permitted the user full range of head motion and all-round vision.

  It was not meant for riflemen.

  Dr. Phillip Catterly, who had hauled within three strokes of Admiral Derringer’s golf handicap, did not share his partner’s enthusiasm for firearms. But after explaining the workings of the Racals, he supervised each shooter’s initial fitting, offering practical advice as he went.

  Catterly held up a roll of duct tape. “Before you enter a potential hot zone, I recommend that you tear off a couple of strips and stick them where you can easily reach them. If you get… well, if you rip the suit, or something, you can slap on a temporary patch right away and probably be okay.”

  Leopole had complete trust in the other team leaders and allowed them to make their own assignments. Dan Foyte decided to remain with the perimeter guards to coordinate Blue Team operations while Steve Lee relished being first man through the door. He wou
ld lead White Team’s door kickers and began wedging himself into the Racal.

  Breezy was already suited up. He ambled around the room, impersonating Neil Armstrong on the Sea of Tranquility, though The Eagle had landed six years before Mark Casimir Brezyinski was born. Once accustomed to the fit of the Racal, he picked up an MP-5, cycled the bolt three times to ensure it was empty, and tried hefting it into firing position. As expected, the “space helmet” got in the way.

  “No cheek weld, man. Bummer.”

  Leopole had long since tried to expunge the hey-dude argot from SSI’s operators. Though most were in their thirties, some like Bosco and Breezy clung to the adolescent vocabulary of a bygone era.

  “It’s what I told you would happen,” the former marine exclaimed. “That’s why we’re putting lasers on every long gun we take. You can shoot from a mid-chest position with good accuracy. Or you can shoot normally with a pistol.”

  He patted the three-magazine pouch on his duty belt. “Ordinary web gear won’t fit very well with the pressure suit so we’ll have to gin up something else. Best thing that occurs to me is a couple of bags slung over the shoulders: one for reloads and the other for grenades and a pistol.”

  Then Leopole raised his MP-5 from its tactical sling, stepped to the firing line, and called over his shoulder. “Lights.”

  As the building’s lights dimmed, he inserted a magazine of 9mm frangible ammunition and called, “Going hot.”

  Leopole was already wearing pale blue Dillon hearing protectors. He glanced sideways at Breezy, who reflexively raised his hands to cover his ears. His palms collided with the plastic helmet.

  Extending the Heckler-Koch straight forward against the limits of its sling, Leopole leaned forward slightly, pressed the laser switch on the forestock, and tracked the bright red dot onto the fifteen-meter target. Breezy had just shouted “Wait!” when Leopole pressed the trigger.

  The MP-5 spat out three rounds on burst control. A cluster of hits appeared in the center of the cardboard target. Leopole then raised the aiming dot to the squared-off head and fired again. Two rounds punctured the nostril area.

  Bosco stepped to the line beside his partner. “Way cool. The noise isn’t so bad inside this helmet, ya know?” He held his weapon in his right hand, a loaded magazine in his left.

  “Fershure, dewd.” Breezy inserted a magazine in his HK and waited for the command from the rangemaster. In a few minutes their lasers were zeroed at twenty-five meters, and the rest of the team took its turn.

  A dozen shooters went through two cases of ammo before midnight. At the end of the session Breezy exclaimed, “Man, I’m set. Six mags and I’m stress-free all week.”

  4

  CREDENHILL, HEREFORDSHIRE

  Carolyn Padgett-Smith sat in Tony Williamson’s Austin while he chatted up the warrant officer in the armory. Fifteen minutes later he emerged with a soft rifle case and boxes of 9mm and 7.62x39 ammunition. He slid into the right-hand seat, put the car in gear, and drove off. “We’ve got about four hours,” he said.

  “What did you tell them?”

  Tony looked at the immunologist. “I took the course of last resort. I told the truth, love.”

  She laughed and punched his arm. Though lacking specifics, she had told the SAS veteran all he needed to know when she said, “I am not going to be defenseless among people who cut off the heads of hostages.”

  At a twenty-five-meter pistol range Tony set up two silhouette targets, one with a bull’s-eye and the other with the old “Charging Hun.” He placed Carolyn at ten meters from the bull and produced a Browning Hipower pistol.

  “Right. Safety first, love. There are all sorts of regulations, but you only need to keep two rules in mind.” He held up one finger. “First, keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target. Always. Forever and a day. In close quarters sometimes you can’t avoid sweeping someone…”

  “Sweeping?”

  “Covering them with the muzzle of your gun. But if you keep your finger off the trigger, you’ll be safe and so will they.”

  Carolyn nodded, regarding the Browning with ambivalence. She had never cared for guns, pro or con. Charles used to shoot grouse but that was ages ago.

  Tony held up a second finger. “Two. If you can help it, never point the weapon at anybody you’re unwilling to kill, including yourself. Common sense, I know, but cemeteries are filled with blokes who got careless.” He handed the pistol to her.

  “Right.” He pointed out the salient features. “Front sight, rear sight, trigger, hammer, frame, and slide. Forget everything you’ve seen in the movies, love. Pistols are shot at eye level with the front sight centered in the rear sight notch. This is a common pistol, one you’re likely to encounter… well, wherever. Most others work pretty much the same way. It holds a detachable magazine with thirteen nine-millimeter rounds but we’ll come to that in a bit. This one has some modifications.” He neglected to mention that it was his personal weapon, retained in violation of certain of Her Majesty’s draconian ordinances. He relied on his status as a onetime Territorial officer to cover that topic.

  Tony demonstrated the grip and stance, and walked Carolyn through a quarter hour of dry firing. Finally he demonstrated loading, safety activation, and firing. After donning eye and ear protection, he raised the Hipower with both hands, got a quick sight picture, and put three rounds in the six-inch bull in two seconds. “Now you. But take your time.”

  Tony called a break after thirty minutes. By then Carolyn was able to keep half of her rounds in the black at fifteen meters — better than he expected. “Too bad we don’t have more time, though it’d be hard to get this range again anytime soon.” He regarded her slyly. “Now, if you could get to America for a week you’d be safe as houses.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Well, those chaps can shoot almost anything they want, nearly anywhere. Especially schools like Gunsite and Thunder Ranch. Far different from here, you know.”

  She grinned at her former in-law. “Something about a difference of opinion regarding eighteenth-century Crown tax policy, I believe.”

  “Right. Here we go again. I’ve loaded some magazines with a few duds so you’ll have to clear malfunctions as I showed you. Also, I want you to start firing doubles at the heart followed by one to the head. It’s called the Mozambique Drill.”

  She shook her head. “Mozambique?”

  “It was popularized in Africa in the 1970s. ‘Two to the body and one to the head… every time… leaves ‘em dead.’ It’s what we call a failure drill. About half the time, two nine millimeters to the body don’t put the chap down. In that case there’s no point in shooting him in the body again, so the next round goes between the lights.”

  Carolyn learned the procedure and did moderately well. However, her trigger control needed work, as she frequently pulled the third shot low and left. Tony checked his watch and made a decision. “I want to familiarize you with the AK-47 but we’ll stick with this a bit longer. From now on, love, after you shoot, move. At least three steps diagonally backward, left or right. Preferably toward some cover like a building or rock.”

  After another rest, Tony produced the Kalashnikov. “This is the most common firearm on earth. You find it everywhere.” Carolyn had seen the Islamic icon on television, but had never been near one. It struck her as businesslike, devoid of elegance, wholly functional. “I’m going to show you how it works,” he explained, “and you’ll fire a couple of mags so you can use one if you need to.”

  He demonstrated the curved magazine and how it was inserted and removed. He had her chamber a round and activate the safety several times. “This is a selective fire weapon, meaning it’s both semi and fully automatic. There’s no point in you trying to shoot full auto — that takes training. If you have to use one, push the selector lever to the bottom position, after safe on top and auto in the middle. If it’s fully loaded, you have thirty rounds semi-auto. Sighting is the same as before: front sight al
igned with the rear.”

  Carolyn snugged the stock into her shoulder, using rearward pressure with her right hand on the pistol grip as Tony had explained. With her sights aligned on the bull’s-eye, she pressed the trigger. The rifle barked and she issued a slight yelp. Tony’s hand steadied her from behind. “That’s an object lesson, love. Remember to lean into it a bit. This is not a heavy recoiling rifle, but it’s much more than the pistol.”

  At the end of the session, Dr. Padgett-Smith was putting two rounds within five inches of each other at twenty-five meters, offhand.

  Over drinks at a nearby pub, she asked, “So tell me, Tony. How’d I do?”

  “For a complete novice, unusually well. But then you’re more motivated than most. I could increase your speed with a couple more sessions, but that’s tough. I owe the colonel a big one just for today.”

  She leaned close. “You know, it’s sort of… fun.”

  Tony Williamson leaned back, regarding his beautiful sister-in-law. “I tried to convince Lydia of that, you know. Not much luck there, and my career was in the regiment.”

  “So… are you seeing each other again?”

  He drained the last of his ale. “You know damned well we are!”

  “Well…” She arched her eyebrows.

  Tony set his empty glass down on the table with a forceful thud. “Well, as I was saying, pistol shooting is a highly perishable skill. If you get any chance at all, be sure to have your chums get you another session.”

  SSI OFFICES

  “How’s the voyage shaping up, Magellan?” Leopole seldom missed a chance to toss a jibe at his ex-navy counterpart.

  Keegan glanced up from his aeronautical charts. He tried to appear nonchalant, but the ten-thousand-mile trip had him more interested than any recent event. “Pretty routine, actually, Frank. We’ll be lightly loaded so we can use the 727’s long-range tanks. Depending on the winds, we should make Dulles to Goose Bay no sweat, then Reykjavik to London. I guess we’ll be there for a day or so to pick up the Brit babe.”