Pandora's grave

the dig.”

Harry’s face didn’t change, though inside he was chuckling. The Israeli had lost none of his wiles. “How would I know that?” he inquired innocently, casting a sideways glance toward the entrance of the resort. The Jeep was still there. The driver still inside.

“As you said earlier, Harry, let’s cut the bull,” Gideon replied, his voice level. “You know I’m right.”

“I know you’re fishing,” came the reply. Harry held up his hand as the Israeli started to continue. “I know this is a sensitive question, but-”

“Since when has that stopped you?”

“First off, you didn’t tell me that you would have surveillance teams in place, shadowing my every movement.”

Gideon laughed. “I would have considered it an insult to your professionalism to have done so. You know the score.”

“That I do,” Harry replied evenly, gesturing with a quick jerk of his head. “Tell me, the guy in the Jeep, is he one of yours?”

Laner looked toward the entrance of the Crowne Park Plaza resort, his eyes narrowing as they focused in on the parked vehicle. “No. Been there for awhile?”

“Long enough to make me uncomfortable,” Harry replied.

The two men exchanged glances, an almost telepathic communication. “Sarah,” Gideon began, turning his head toward her, “be a love and get Yossi on the phone.”

Sarah nodded and reached over to where her cover-up lay on the chair, extracting a satellite phone from a pocket of the robe.

“Everything going all right?” Yossi asked, motioning for Chaim to take the gun. “We got worried when your comm unit went off-line.”

“The American spotted the wire,” Sarah replied, irritation in her voice. “We may have a problem-I need you to scope out the entrance. See the Jeep there about fifty feet from the entrance?”

Sarah listened for a couple moments, then turned off the phone. “The driver is a young Arab, probably late teens, early twenties. Yossi says he keeps looking down, as though he’s checking his watch.”

“Fits the profile,” Harry said finally.

“Yossi says they can take him out if you give the word,” the young woman added. “Chaim’s got a clean shot.”

Gideon shook his head. “We need more than that. Send Nathan over to check it out. Why don’t you go along to provide back-up,” he amended, after a moment’s thought.

Sarah nodded, pulling on the robe over her swimsuit. Harry cleared his throat, an odd grin spreading across his face. “Why don’t you take your handbag? Might not hurt to have that Glock.”

She opened her mouth to speak, then apparently thought better of it, shooting Harry a dirty look.

12:11 A.M.

Sweat was streaming in rivulets down his face, the sun heating the interior of the closed-up Grand Cherokee to an almost unbearable temperature. He tapped the steering wheel nervously, endeavoring to bring the verses of the Quran to remembrance. They would give him strength.

The cell phone lay silent in his pocket. Call! his mind screamed, desperate for the call to come before he lost his courage. Lost the nerve to sacrifice his own life for the jihad.

He could see the meeting place from where he sat, could see his targets. So close. And yet the phone remained silent.

“I’m moving.” Nathan Gur stepped through the pedestrian entrance of the resort, his hand slipped deep inside the pocket of his photographer’s vest, fingers wrapped around the butt of his Beretta 92.

The Jeep Wagoner was about fifty meters ahead of him, engine running and windows tightly closed. The young Israeli agent took a deep breath and began to move through the crowd. Toward his target.

About forty feet behind Gur, Sarah Halevy emerged from the resort, her handbag slung across her chest, the Glock easily accessible. How the American had seen it, she didn’t know. Gideon had told her Nichols was good, but his perception still took her off-guard. It was almost uncanny.

She banished the thoughts from her mind, focusing on the task at hand. The distance between her and Nathan was increasing-his bulk making it easier for him to elbow his way through the crowd. Where?

There he was-she caught sight of him again, working his way diagonally toward the parked Jeep. Sarah quickened her pace and began to close the gap…

Something was happening. Tex knew that much. The bat leveyha had left abruptly, making her way to the entrance of the resort before he lost sight of her in the crowd. Harry’s attitude had changed, tension pervading his body language.

Tex was laying on his stomach on the thick carpet of the hotel room, about five feet back from the opened balcony door. With the bipod-mounted FN-FAL, he could easily cover the courtyard from there.

“Kill them wherever you find them,” the young man whispered, reciting the sura under his breath, “and drive them out from whence they drove you out.”

He opened his eyes, calmed by the sacred words, and began scanning the crowd once more. A mindless sea of licentious Western tourists, careless of their danger. Invaders in the house of Islam…

And then he saw him. A big man, dressed in shorts and a tank top, a photographer’s vest over the upper half of his body, pushing his way through the crowd. Moving with purpose.

His calm evaporated like the morning dew. “Ya, Allah,” he gasped. Oh, God. He reached in his pocket for the cellphone, his fingers shaking uncontrollably.

There was no time. The realization smote him with the cold certainty of death. The Jew would be next to the vehicle in a few moments.

His trembling hand moved forward, fingers closing around the detonator…

“Something’s wrong,” Yossi observed, his binoculars aimed at the young Arab in the Jeep.

“This is MARKSMAN ONE, requesting permission to terminate.”

There was a moment’s silence, then Gideon’s voice came over the headset. “Execute.”

Almost in the same instant, the Jeep vanished in a fireball, the explosion’s concussive force spreading across the lagoon.

She was thirty-five meters from the Jeep when it blew up, the explosion knocking her to the ground. “Nathan!” Sarah screamed, her eyes watering as she stared through a spreading cloud of thick, oily smoke, into the explosion’s epicenter. There was no way anyone had survived.

Harry threw himself flat against the concrete of the courtyard as the explosion went off, flames and smoke arising from the entrance of the resort. He looked over to see Gideon still standing there, as though frozen in place.

Then the shooting started. First a single shot, barely audible over the screams of agony and fear arising from the resort, then the chatter of assault rifles on full-automatic.

“Move!” Harry yelled, scrambling to his feet and drawing his.45 in a single smooth motion. His voice seemed to jar Gideon into action and the Israeli grabbed up a suitcase from beside the overturned pool chair, extracting a Uzi submachine gun from its depths.

“Go! Go! Go!”