'Wait. Is that ...' She pressed her face close to the monitor and tried to make out another form heaped in the roadway. 'A camel?'

'Uh ... yeah.' Flaherty paused. 'But that's a story for another day. Annie, let's get in closer.'

Annie tightened the zoom using the monitor's touch-screen controls.

'Anyway,' Flaherty continued, 'some of the militants escaped ... went up this slope.' Using the pen, he traced the approximate path. 'Our guys pinned them down behind some rocks ... here and here.' He pointed to a structure that still stood, then to a blackened crater. He went on to explain how Jason had called in an air strike and that one missile had obliterated one of the rock piles, while a second had inadvertently blasted away the steel door that concealed the cave entrance. Then he told her that five of the militants had ducked into the cave opening. He wasn't yet prepared to tell her that Fahim Al-Zahrani was among the survivors.

'Wow,' Brooke said, staring at the mini war zone. 'It's hard to imagine that this area was once a lush paradise.'

'Really?' Annie said.

'Back in 4000 BC there was a huge village here,' Brooke explained to her. With her finger she indicated the wide open plain to the west of the foothills. 'A trading outpost inhabited by industrious, vibrant people. The major trade routes for ancient Persia ran through the mountain pa.s.ses.' She indicated the deep valleys connecting Iran and Iraq in the screen's extreme upper right. 'That's how they brought in stone, timber and copper.'

'Just terrorists moving through there now,' Flaherty mumbled sarcastically.

'So what happened to the people that lived there?' Annie asked Brooke, genuinely intrigued.

'Well, the simple explanation points to climate shift. Ma.s.sive floods silted the soil, destroyed practically everything ... made northern Mesopotamia unsuitable for crops. The survivors were forced to migrate east and west across Eurasia, and to the south as far as Egypt. In fact, starting around 4000 BC, the archaeological remains of human occupation completely disappear for nearly a thousand years in this entire region. It's often referred to as the Dark Millennium.'

'So how do you explain that the cave seems to have been occupied during that time?' Flaherty asked.

'According to the inscriptions on the cave wall, the floods were just beginning. Floods of epic proportion.'

'You're saying the world was flooded for forty days?' Flaherty jested.

'Not the whole world. But certainly the world these Mesopotamians knew. The oral tradition would have been pa.s.sed on from generation to generation for over a thousand years before any written account was created. And like any fish story ...' She shrugged.

'The minnow becomes a whale,' Flaherty said.

'Exactly.'

'Flaherty!' a stern female voice called from somewhere beyond the cubicles.

Instantly, Flaherty's expression soured. He rolled his eyes.

'Show time,' Annie said, trying not to laugh. She patted his shoulder. 'Time to talk to Mama.'

'Fabulous,' he groaned. 'Just fabulous.' Tonight's Celtics game was slipping further and further from the realm of possibility.

The voice called for him again at the same time as his cell phone rang. The caller ID came up blank. He flipped open his phone. 'Flaherty here.'

'Tommy, it's Jason.'

'Hey. Hang on a just a sec.'

'Flaherty! I see you!' said the faraway voice.

Flaherty turned and spotted his boss, Operations Chief Lillian Chen. The pet.i.te 45-year-old Korean, dressed in a severe pants suit, threw up both her hands and made a summoning gesture.

'Be right there,' Flaherty said, holding up his hand, then pointing to his phone. Clearly short on patience, Chen shook her head, executed a crisp about-face, and disappeared around a wall.

'Looks like someone's in trouble,' Annie said. Brooke grinned.

'Sorry, Jason,' Flaherty said into the phone. 'What's up?'

Flaherty listened intently as Jason got right to the point and told him about encrypted calls Colonel Crawford had been exchanging with someone inside an evangelical church in Las Vegas. The background check Mack had run through the NSA database indicated that the church's leader, Randall Stokes, was a former Force Recon Special Ops commando who'd served time with Crawford in Beirut, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Jason said, 'I'm guessing he's somehow involved in what's happening over here in Iraq. Stokes might even have something to do with the hit order on Brooke Thompson. I already spoke to Lillian, explained the situation.'

'I can see that.'

'She told me you wrecked your car and caused quite a commotion on the Ma.s.s Pike. That right?'

Flaherty sighed. 'Affirmative. It was bit messy. I did manage to lose the a.s.sa.s.sin, though - permanently.'

'Nice work,' Jason said, impressed. 'One other thing ... I asked Lillian to check out that USAMRIID lead. She's got people at Fort Detrick sifting the archives for anything sent in from Iraq back in 2003. If any biological tests were performed, we should have confirmation within a couple hours. In the meantime, I need you to talk to Stokes ... in person. Lillian's already made arrangements to get you to Vegas.'

No wonder the Chief was anxious to chat. A wrecked car, a major pile-up on the interstate, a thwarted a.s.sa.s.sination attempt and and a last-minute jaunt to Vegas? That was a lot to take in one day. 'Vegas? When?' a last-minute jaunt to Vegas? That was a lot to take in one day. 'Vegas? When?'

Brooke's ears perked up. 'Vegas?' she muttered.

'You'll be leaving immediately. Lillian's preparing a file for you with everything we know about Stokes. Plenty of juicy reading. So get to Logan ASAP and you can study up on him on your way out there. I don't think I need to tell you that there's a lot riding on this, Tommy.'

'You can count on me.'

'I knew I could. I'll be in touch,' Jason said, then ended the call.

34.

IRAQ.

'For Christ's sake, I could have invaded North Korea by now,' Crawford said, glowering. 'Are you ready yet?' His eyes traced the fibre-optic cable from the PackBot's rear to a large spool, which in turn patched into a suitcase-sized remote command unit, painted in desert camouflage. The unit's unhinged hardsh.e.l.l cover was inset with a seventeen-inch LCD viewing screen; its base hosted a computer hard drive, keyboard and toggle controls. This s.p.a.ce-age gadgetry was lost on Crawford. Results were the only thing he controlled. And it was high time to see some progress.

'Almost there, sir,' replied the bot's technician - an attractive 28-year-old female with the sharp edges of a pageboy haircut sticking out below her helmet. Being a combat engineer, she was an expert with explosives, and was accustomed to using the bot to disarm or detonate roadside bombs and mines. But this was the first time she'd employed the gas-canister-firing apparatus, and she didn't like the fact that Crawford was rushing things. 'Just running the final diagnostics on the software utilities ...' She worked the keyboard and controls until the display synched with the bot's...o...b..ard cameras. The live images panelled onscreen. She held her breath as the interface for the rotary firing mechanism came online. When no errors came back, she exhaled.

Below the mountain, Crawford surveyed the tight perimeter his marines had formed around the encampment. Everyone was on high alert after Sergeant Yaeger purported to spot an Arab watcher lurking in the high ground. Inside the MRAP, he had a pair of marines monitoring the surrounding hillsides and mountains with infrared scanners. For good measure, the airwaves were also being closely monitored for enemy chatter. An ambush could turn this whole operation into an even bigger quagmire, thought Crawford. Plus, if there were an enemy in wait, the darkness would prove a huge tactical advantage for them.

Crawford's gaze shifted to Yaeger and his motley unit members, who were huddled around the bot's technician watching the viewing screen. Cleverly dressed like nomadic desert dwellers, they had certainly fooled the enemy. But the fact that they had no affinity to a 'uniform' was deeply unsettling for Crawford. d.a.m.n chameleons, he swore inwardly.

Crawford's appraising eyes settled for a long moment on the Kurd. Yaeger had yet to fully disclose what his sidekick had discovered during his earlier fact-finding mission. But the copilot who'd escorted the Kurd had plenty to say. He'd told Crawford about the brief visit to a restaurant in As Sulaymaniyah, which led to a second excursion to a mountaintop monastery near Iraq's northeastern border. This confirmed for Crawford that Yaeger knew much more than he was letting on. And the implications were highly unnerving.

Where did Yaeger's true allegiances lie? Crawford wondered. Undeniably, Global Security Corporation, Yaeger's employer, was a huge ally for US counter-terrorism forces. The face of war was changing too quickly for federal defence agencies to adapt. Increasingly, outside firms were needed to fill the huge deficiency gaps in manpower and technology. GSC was nimble, amenable to risk, and heavily capitalized by the world's wealthiest investors and industrialized economies (both of whom had the most to lose if terrorism ran amuck). Ironically, even Saudi and Kuwaiti oil money fed its coffers. As with any outside contractor, however, accountability was an issue, particularly when profit was the driving force.

Was Jason Yaeger an opportunist? If it came down to it, could he be bought? Or would his stubborn moral code simply get in the way and require Crawford to apply a more potent remedy to temper his growing disobedience?

Huffing impatiently, Crawford bent at the waist to inspect the bot's rotary firing a.s.sembly loaded with miniature gas canister projectiles that contained a mixture of eye irritant and sedative. He always thought that fanciful talk of warfare without soldiers was hogwash - on a par with paperless offices, everlasting gobstoppers and wives who didn't nag. Yet this thirty-pound motorized robot was about to perform a most perilous task that not long ago would have resulted in multiple human casualties. With remote drones patrolling the skies and unmanned fighter planes already in production, a new age of warfare was dawning.

All this technology, thought Crawford.

Yet as long as weak-minded politicians controlled the 'utilities' of the war machine, the terrorists would still thrive in the long run. Just like c.o.c.kroaches, thought Crawford. The fact remained that war was never meant to be civil. Since the first humans attacked one another with stones, the goal of conflict had not changed. Survival Survival was the objective. And history proved time and time again that diplomacy served only to blur the lines between the 'victors' and the 'vanquished'. was the objective. And history proved time and time again that diplomacy served only to blur the lines between the 'victors' and the 'vanquished'.

The bot came online with a sudden jerk of its articulating arm, and Crawford gave a start.

'Okay. We're good to go,' the combat engineer reported.

Crawford stepped back from the bot and stood next to Jason. 'All right, Yaeger. It's show time.'

Crawford and Jason knelt to either side of the combat engineer, intently watching the live transmissions coming back from the bot. On the command unit's viewing screen, the tunnel branched off in both directions at a near perfect T.

'Right or left?' the engineer asked, bringing the bot to a stop at the end of the cave's entry pa.s.sage.

'Go right,' Crawford immediately blurted, before Jason could give it a thought.

Jason's muscles went rigid, but he managed to hold back his tongue. He exchanged glances with Camel and Jam, who stood close by to feed fibre-optic cable from the spool. Camel's jaw was grinding tobacco and his eyes were locked to Crawford's skull. Jam was silently mouthing a string of obscenities. Hazo shared the sentiment, but chose to smile and shrug. And Meat was clenching and unclenching his fists, like a guy ready to brawl.

'We don't have time to take a vote,' Crawford barked at the engineer.

Jason rolled his eyes and nodded to the engineer.

'Okay,' she replied hesistantly, sensing the tension. Pressing forward on the joystick control, she advanced the bot forward into the junction. Then she toggled right and the onscreen image rotated until the camera was directed down the tunnel branch. It was evident that this winding, craggy pa.s.sage, approximately two metres wide according to the laser measurements coming back from the bot, had not been altered from its natural state. 'Here we go.'

As the bot advanced beyond the dimly lit entry pa.s.sage, rising and falling over the undulating ground, the light quickly melted away and the camera's night vision automatically compensated for the darkness. On the command unit's viewing screen, the live feeds transformed to green-tinted monochrome. The glowing airborne dust swirling in the camera made it seem like the bot was trapped inside a snow globe.

'It's quiet in there,' the engineer said. She adjusted the volume slide control upwards. The only sounds coming over the audio feed were the bot's low-humming gears and the crunching of gravel beneath its rotary tracks.

'Too quiet,' Crawford added.

'G.o.d, that looks creepy,' Jam muttered, craning his head to get a better view.

While Crawford was preoccupied with the screen, Jason glanced down at the cell phone clipped to the colonel's belt. Why was he talking with Randall Stokes? For moral support and spiritual guidance? Highly unlikely, thought Jason. Maybe Crawford was soliciting tactical advice. Whatever the case, he was anxious for Flaherty to report back on Stokes's shady involvement.

'The air quality in there is surprisingly good,' the engineer reported, after glancing at the data readings coming back from the bot's...o...b..ard sensors. 'Plenty of oxygen for-'

'Wait,' Jason interrupted. 'Back it up a bit.'

The engineer did.

Eyes narrowed to slits, Jason attempted to discern something in the image. 'Can you shine some light in there?'

'Hey, hey,' Crawford protested, throwing up his hands. 'What about the element of surprise, Yaeger? If they see the light-'

'It's important, Colonel,' Jason insisted firmly.

Crawford's jaw jutted out. Circling his eyes at those a.s.sembled around him, he realized that his opinion was vastly outnumbered. He relented by throwing up a hand. 'Fine. Give it some light.'

The engineer pressed a b.u.t.ton that shut off the infrared. The screen went black for a split second before the bot's floodlight snapped on. The refreshed image showed crisply the tunnel's raw features.

'There,' Jason said, pointing to an unnatural form partially hidden along the ceiling. 'Can you get a better shot of that?'

'Sure.' The engineer worked the controls to angle the camera up and zoomed in on the compact object fitting snugly into a hole in the rocky ceiling. It had an angular body and a circular eye.

There was no doubt as to what they were now looking at. 'A camera?' Jason gasped. 'What the h.e.l.l is that doing in there?'

Staring dumbfounded at the image, Crawford was speechless.

'What ... like a surveillance camera?' Meat said, coming over for a better look.

'Yeah,' Jason said.

Meat stated the obvious: 'That's not good.'

Clearing his throat, Crawford finally spoke up. 'First the metal door. Now this? It has to be a bunker.'

'Could be.' Jason studied him. For the first time, Crawford's unwavering confidence showed signs of cracking. Oddly, Crawford seemed to be feigning surprise. Why?

'Let's kill the light and keep moving,' Crawford suggested.

Jason concurred.

The engineer adjusted the camera and flipped back to night vision. Before she got the bot moving again, she warned, 'We're about thirty-five metres in, and we only have a fifty-metre cable.'

For another five minutes, they all watched in silence as the robot wound through the mountain's stark bowels. Twice, the engineer needed to swivel the camera sideways to study openings in the wall. But both times, the floodlight revealed dead ends. Along the way, they'd spotted two more surveillance cameras.

Deeper the bot went, until the fibre-optic cable spool nearly emptied.

Then the pa.s.sage's repet.i.tive structure changed abruptly. The jagged walls, glowing emerald in night vision, widened before falling away. Only the ground was discernible at the bottom of the screen.

'What do we have here?' Jason said, squaring his shoulders.

'Looks like ... a cave?' The engineer paused the bot and its audio feed went eerily silent. Pushing another b.u.t.ton, she said, 'Let's try sonar.'

Crawford was locked in constipated silence.

A small panel popped up in the monitor's lower right corner. Within seconds, the sonar data-capture was complete and a three-dimensional image representing the interior s.p.a.ce flashed on the screen.

'Wow. It's pretty big,' the engineer said, interpreting the data.

To Jason, the sonar image resembled a translucent blob. 'How big?'

It took her a second to put it to scale. 'Like the inside of a movie theatre.' She studied the sonar image five seconds longer. 'It's not picking up any exit tunnels. Looks like a dead end. Nothing throwing off a heat signature in there either.'

'So no one's in there?'