The shadow moved, and Grant could see that it was Kowalsky  moving into position.  Waiting until he was settled into the corner of the old sandstone building, Grant beckoned the rest of his team forward.  He felt the pack heavy on his back and rolled his shoulders to ease its weight.  Only a few more minutes, and their task would be completed.

The door was in sight now, and for the past half hour there had been no sign of a guard or night watchman.  In the aftermath of the war, it was obviously not felt necessary to guard the old bunker.  Their main concern was to avoid contact with the locals, who might raise a hue and cry.  Secrecy was all-important this night.

'That cloud will cover the moon in a minute or two,' he whispered to the rest of the team.  'We'll move then.'  He was rewarded by a couple of nods.

This particular bunker had been chosen as the target of the covert operation, because of a reliable intelligence report received by HQ that there was a concealed door leading to a secret inner chamber.

The cloud covered the moon, and with no further word, Grant and his men moved forward, leaving Kowalsky on guard.

Johnson moved into the lead position and, reaching the door, inserted the first of his special keys into the lock.  After a couple of false attempts, the third key turned easily, and the four men passed inside.  Hardman closed the door behind them, and they switched on their torches.

'Over there.'  Grant pointed to their right, to an arched opening in the wall.   Following the directions provided by their informant, the team moved through the opening into a narrow corridor that led into a large windowless room with three doors leading off.  'That way.'

Grant led the way through the left hand door to find a staircase descending into the darkness.  Swinging his torch around, he located a light switch on the wall and pressed it.  Instantly the place was flooded with light, and their progress speeded up as they hurried down into a large cellar, filled with an accumulation of junk.

Hardman spotted it first.  'There it is!' he exclaimed, pointing at a battered old wardrobe against the opposite wall, its doors hanging loose.  As one, the men moved a few pieces of old furniture out of the way, then grasped the wardrobe, and slid it a few feet to the right.  As expected, a faint line in the rock wall before them betrayed the presence of an opening.

Grant fumbled at the bottom of the wall, found the tiny knob and pressed it twice.   A rumbling sound heralded the opening of the wall as a slab of rock turned, allowing them access into a dark chamber beyond.  In the light that filtered in through the opening, they could see the gleaming shelves and cabinets of a modern laboratory.  Hurrying across to a small metal cabinet, Grant swung the backpack from his shoulders, and the others followed suit.  Fumbling with the straps they carefully removed the small strong boxes inside and placed them carefully on the tiled floor. 

Johnson used his set of keys to open the locked cabinet, and they picked up the boxes one by one and began loading them onto the shelves of the cabinet.  Grant could not read the Arabic writing on the sides of the boxes, but he knew they bore the legends, anthrax, smallpox, Ebola, botulinus and cholera.  When they had loaded the last of their deadly cargo onto the shelves, Johnson relocked the cabinet. 

Retreating into the cellar through the opening, Grant pressed the concealed knob to close the rock slab.  Hurriedly they replaced the broken furniture where they had found it, and made their way out of the building.  Hardman gave the hoot of an owl, which was rewarded by the cry of a nightjar from Kowalski.  Dialling a number on his mobile phone, Grant spoke the one code word 'Sunshine', then the team melted into the dark streets of the outer suburb of Baghdad.

On the other end of the phone call, the man with the white hair grinned at his colleagues, and crowed in triumph.  'They did it!'  As the men around him congratulated the deputy head of the Iraqi division of the CIA on the success of the mission, he gave the nod to his assistant French to instigate part two of the operation.

French left the group and, using his mobile phone, sent the text message that would release the secret intelligence report about the bunker to the UN inspection teams due to return to Baghdad the following day.

At last President Bush would have his proof that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, justifying to the world his invasion of Iraq.  Operation Whitewash would ensure Bush another term as President of the USA.

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Note:  All names, except for that of President Bush, are strictly fictional, and (hopefully) bear no resemblance to anybody, alive or dead.