Deception Game (26 page)

His first thought, stupid as it might have been, was that he’d collided with something in mid-air, some unseen obstruction across his path, perhaps even a flock of birds.

Looking down, he felt a fleeting sense of disbelief at the sight of blood pumping from the entrance wound in his chest. Even as shock started to cloud his judgement, he simply couldn’t understand how this had come to be.

He didn’t even register the next shot as it whizzed in through the shattered canopy, striking him in the head.

On the ground, Drake, Mason and Frost watched in horrified fascination as the aircraft suddenly yawed sideways, the port wing dipping low towards the ground as the nose angled downwards. With no one at the stick to correct the terminal dive, the airspeed increased rapidly as gravity took hold.

The twin-engine plane impacted the ground at about 140 knots, the port wing crumpling immediately under the impact and digging into the dirt landing strip, causing the fuselage to swing around in a violent arc. The port engine, still turning under half power, disintegrated in a deadly hail of flying wreckage as its highly stressed machinery tore itself apart.

The nose hit next, the entire forward section crumpling under the impact, as if it were made of cardboard. Even if Chandra had still been alive, no one could have survived such a crash.

Propelled by its considerable momentum, the remainder of the plane cartwheeled across the runway, scattering dirt and debris in its wake, and destroying the starboard wing and propeller in the process.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Frost gasped, horrified by what she was witnessing.

Drake’s shock was no less. He was watching a good friend die right in front of his eyes, his aircraft consumed in a storm of dirt and smoke and flying metal. But even in the terrible moment of loss, he still had the presence of mind to realize the danger they were in.

‘Cover!’ he yelled, grabbing Sowan and pulling him to the ground as flying debris began to rain down around them, one piece passing dangerously close, to shatter one of the car’s side windows.

Mason tackled Sowan’s wife, partially shielding her with his own body, while Frost threw herself behind their car to escape the shower of wreckage. Fortunately they were far enough away that only the lighter pieces of debris reached them, most of it too small to cause serious injury.

A sudden flare of orange light told them the fuel tanks had finally ruptured and ignited, their burning contents spraying across the open ground. Even from a hundred yards away, they could feel the heat of the blaze.

Letting out a breath as the sounds of the crash faded, Drake slowly picked himself up, surveying what was left of Chandra’s plane in shocked, uncomprehending silence, his eyes already starting to water as oily black smoke from the burning aviation fuel drifted towards them. There was little in the field of burning wreckage that resembled a plane now, and certainly no chance of survival for the pilot.

He was gone, as was their means of escape.

‘What were you saying about getting out of the country?’ Sowan asked, still lying where Drake had tackled him to the ground.

But Drake wasn’t thinking about such things. Another, even more terrible thought had occurred to him as he took in the scene of devastation laid out before him. The plane had come down right where Samantha had been standing.

Heart pounding, he reached up and pressed his radio transmitter. ‘Monarch to Envoy. Come in.’

His request was met with nothing but the pop and crackle of static.

Each second that passed was like a knife driven deeper into his heart. ‘Envoy. Respond.’

‘What the fuck happened?’ Mason asked, coughing as the acrid smoke stung his throat. ‘What happened to our plane?’

Drake had no answer for him. Indeed, even if he had, he wouldn’t have had time to voice it. ‘Stay here,’ he ordered, drawing his weapon. ‘I’m going after Sam.’

Drake was turning away when Mason rushed to catch up, grabbing his arm and spinning him around. ‘Are you out of your mind, Ryan? It’s suicide to go out there.’

‘Get the fuck off me!’ Drake snarled, yanking his arm free. ‘She could be hurt. I have to find her.’

Before Mason could utter a reply, someone else spoke up for him. Someone Drake had hoped never to see again.

‘Ryan, you disappoint me. Letting emotion cloud your judgement.’

Whirling around, Drake was just in time to see Faulkner emerging like a demon from the drifting smoke, lit crimson by the red glow of the nearby flames.

He was smiling that same knowing, mocking smile Drake had come to fear. The smile of a man who knows exactly what his opponents will do long before they do it. The smile of a winner.

‘Good to see you again, old boy.’

Despite his shock at the plane crash and Faulkner’s sudden arrival, Drake’s training and instincts as a field operative were still with him. Operating on instinct, he dropped to one knee beside the pile of equipment packs and levelled his weapon at his opponent. Frost and Mason reacted in kind, taking up positions on either side of him, with Mason keeping Sowan and his wife covered.

Far from being unnerved by the weapons pointed his way, Faulkner merely shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t, if I were you. Be a shame if things got out of hand.’

‘Got targets left and right,’ Mason hissed. ‘They’re flanking us.’

Sure enough, several of Faulkner’s men were moving to outflank them, all armed with MP5 submachine guns. Formidable weapons that were devastating in close-range engagements like this, and more than capable of wiping out Drake and his team in a hail of 9 mm automatic fire.

Drake counted five of them, plus Faulkner himself. Six against three. Submachine guns against pistols. Bad odds by anyone’s standards.

‘That’s far enough, Faulkner!’ he warned, making sure he had the man’s head in his sights. ‘Or you’ll be the first to go.’

‘I think we’ve made our point, lads,’ Faulkner said, signalling for his men to halt where they were. ‘No sense in aggravating things. Not when we can resolve this like adults.’

‘What do you want?’ Drake demanded.

‘You’re smart enough. I think you can guess,’ Faulkner replied, nodding to Sowan. ‘He’s standing about five yards from you.’

‘We already agreed to bring him to you.’

The British operative chuckled. ‘Ryan, please, don’t take me for a fool. I knew the moment I handed you this job that you had no intention of honouring our deal. Predictable as always, and just as easy to control.’

Only now did Drake see how Faulkner had manipulated him, getting them to do his dirty work, to recover the man he himself wanted to get his hands on. He’d played them, and Drake, blinded by grief and his thirst for revenge, had walked right into it.

Faulkner let out a breath, focussing on Sowan once more. ‘I’ll make this simple. You put your gun down and give me Sowan, and we each go our separate ways with a minimum of aggravation.’

‘Bullshit. The minute we lower our guns, he’ll kill us all,’ Frost countered.

‘Your young friend is mistaken. I mean what I say.’

Drake’s eyes narrowed. ‘Give me one reason to believe that.’

Faulkner shrugged. ‘It’s a matter of priorities, Ryan. My priority is to recover Tarek here, preferably without losing men in the process. Your priority is to get out of Libya alive. At least, it should be. So I ask you now, which means more to you? The mission, or your...friends?’

‘Ryan, what are we doing?’ Frost whispered, unable to hide the fear in her voice. They were surrounded by a group with superior firepower. It didn’t take a genius to recognize that their position was untenable.

Faulkner glanced at his watch, impatient with the delay. ‘I’m sure that crash will have been reported by now. Libyan police and army units are probably on their way as we speak. I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer to be gone by the time they arrive, so I’m going to make this very simple. I’ll count to three, then my men start shooting. One...’

‘Go to hell,’ Mason snarled, eyes blazing with impotent anger.

‘You’re outnumbered and surrounded, Ryan. If you don’t see sense, this is only going to end one way.’ His lips were parted in a malicious smile. ‘Two...’

‘I have a shot,’ Frost whispered. ‘I can take him.’

It was a valiant sentiment, but even if they took down Faulkner, the rest of his group would hose them down with automatic fire before they could get a second shot off. As Faulkner himself had observed, they were outnumbered and surrounded. To fight would be suicidal.

‘Three...’

Around them, Faulkner’s men were tensing up, gripping their weapons tighter and preparing for the inevitable recoil when they opened up on full automatic.

It was at that moment that Drake acted. A wild gamble, driven by desperation and gut instinct. Swinging his weapon around, he took his sights off Faulkner and brought it to bear on Sowan.

‘Wait!’ Faulkner called out, raising his hand. Around them, his men held their positions, weapons trained on Drake. ‘What do you think you’re doing, Ryan?’

He was trying to convey the impression of amusement at Drake’s sudden change of tactics, but Drake could see beneath the confident, arrogant facade. He’d rattled his adversary by threatening the one thing that was truly important to him. That told him what he needed to know.

‘Lower the guns or he dies right now,’ Drake warned.

‘Not going to happen, I’m afraid.’

Drake’s vivid green eyes glimmered in the crimson glow of the flames. ‘You want him alive. You engineered this whole thing, came all the way to Libya to get him alive, which means you can’t afford to go home without him. Now lower your fucking guns, or I put a bullet through his head right now.’

Faulkner flashed a thin, cold smile, but nonetheless glanced at his companions and gave a curt nod. With that, they lowered their guns a little, fingers relaxing on triggers. They could still bring their weapons to bear at a moment’s notice, but they no longer had the drop on Drake and the others.

‘So what are we to do now?’ Faulkner asked. ‘Keep this little stand-off going until the Libyans arrive to arrest us?’

‘Everything comes at a price. That’s what you told me.’

The British intelligence officer cocked his head curiously. ‘And what might that price be?’

Drake exhaled, knowing this was the last card he had left to play. ‘Let my friends go. Once they’re out of here, I’ll give you Sowan. Not before.’

‘Ryan, what the fuck?’ Frost hissed. ‘We’re not leaving you here.’ She had no more wish to die than he did, but if it came down to it she’d rather go down fighting than watch her friend sacrifice his own life for them.

‘It’s all right, Keira,’ Drake promised her, wishing there was more he could say. This might well be the last time they spoke. ‘I’ve got this. You and Cole get out of here.’

No way was he letting Faulkner get his hands on Sowan alive. As soon as they were clear of the area, Drake fully intended to execute his hostage. It would likely be his final act, but if so, it wasn’t a bad way to go.

‘Still playing the hero, Ryan,’ Faulkner said mockingly. ‘I think you underestimated yourself the night we spoke.’

That was when heard it. A noise, distinct against the background of burning wreckage and the shifting night breeze that stirred up loose sand across the open space. A faint metallic ping that Drake well recognized from his years of training and military experience, that his keen analytical mind was able to categorize and insert into a possible chain of events which instantly set his heart racing.

‘No,’ he said, staring at his adversary through the drifting smoke as he readied himself to act. ‘You’re the one who underestimated me.’

It was at this moment that Faulkner began to react. Either he’d heard or seen something that had tipped him off, or he’d sensed from Drake’s expression and body language that something was about to happen. Whatever the reason, he opened his mouth to shout out something – a warning, a command to fire, Drake couldn’t tell.

Nor did he care.

At the same instant he saw something fly through the air towards them, hurled into their midst from an unseen source. Something small, cylindrical in shape, its metal surface glinting briefly in the firelight.

Something that confirmed Drake’s wild, fervent hope that she was still alive.

In the half-second before he closed his eyes and turned away, he saw Faulkner likewise change direction and throw himself aside, seeking to shield himself from the detonation.

The flashbang grenade exploded before it had even hit the ground, igniting in mid-air about fifteen feet away from Drake. Even with his eyes closed, Drake saw the lightning-like flash that seemed to burn right through the thin skin of his eyelids, trying to sear its indelible mark on his retinas.

He might have been partially protected from the flash, but the thunderous boom almost knocked him off his feet. As it was, he dropped to his knees to steady himself. He felt like an artillery piece had just gone off right by his head, and desperately tried to fight back the sudden sense of vertigo that threatened to overwhelm him. The effects of the grenade could damage the inner ear, disturbing a victim’s sense of balance and orientation.

But if he was so afflicted, the others would be too. And they hadn’t been expecting it. He’d bought himself an opening. A small opening, perhaps, but a crucial one. What happened in the next few seconds would likely determine whether they all lived or died.

As he brought his weapon up, he could barely hear his own voice screaming out a warning to his friends. ‘Keira, Cole! Get down!’

Opening his eyes, Drake took a rough aim at Faulkner and opened fire. The disorientation caused by the blast had similarly affected his ability to aim, and the first shot went wide, as did the second, allowing his adversary to disappear behind one of the corrugated steel sheds they had encountered on arrival.

Realizing he’d missed his chance, Drake shifted his aim to the nearest member of Faulkner’s strike team. The man had been caught off guard by the blast, and had dropped to one knee to present a smaller target while he frantically tried to clear his vision.

Without hesitation, Drake pulled the trigger a third time. This time his shot found its mark, slamming into his target’s left shoulder and spinning him around with the force of the impact. Rising to his feet, Drake carried on firing even as the man went down, determined not to let him return the favour. There was no finesse, no strategy to what he was doing – there was no time for such things now. He simply had to put as many rounds on target as possible and hope that it was enough.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Frost open fire on another of Faulkner’s men, who instinctively squeezed off a burst from his own weapon in response, the thunder of automatic gunfire splitting the air around them. He had no idea if Frost was scoring any hits or if it was simply covering fire to keep their heads down, but he was glad of it all the same.

By the time he’d risen up on unsteady legs, the weapon in his hand was no longer firing, but his target was no longer moving either.

‘Ryan!’

His head snapped left, and through smoke and blurred vision he saw a figure emerge from the darkness, hurrying towards him with a weapon in hand. A woman.

‘Sam!’ he cried out, hardly believing what he was seeing.

She was coughing, her face smeared with dirt and soot, her eyes streaming in the oily smoke, but she was alive. Relief flooded through him at the sight of her, where only moments earlier he’d felt nothing but the sickening grief of her loss.

Gripping him by the straps on his webbing, she pulled him close and stared into his eyes. ‘We have to get out of here!’ she shouted, her voice sounding dull and distant in his ringing ears.

In that, he was in complete agreement. He had no idea how she’d survived the crash, how she’d understood that Faulkner had ambushed them and set up her own improvised rescue, but he knew there was no time to question her about it now. Survival was the priority, for all of them.

Nodding, he turned towards the vehicle that had brought them here. ‘Cole, Keira, get in the car! Move!’

Outgunned and surrounded, this was one fight they could never hope to win. The only option was to bail out, fast.

Stumbling across the dusty ground back to the SUV, Drake and McKnight almost collided with Mason, who was forcing their two captives back into the car at gunpoint.

‘Where’s Keira?’ he yelled, his eyes wet with tears that had left tracks down his soot-covered cheeks. Like the others, he’d been caught unprepared and temporarily blinded by the grenade blast.

‘She’s coming,’ Drake said, ejecting the spent magazine from his weapon. ‘Get them inside!’

McKnight went in first, taking up position in the rear seats. With no time to open the trunk, Mason simply shoved his two captives in behind her and slammed the door closed. It didn’t take her long to turn her weapon on both of them, in case they harboured any thoughts of escape.

Drake meanwhile had circled around to the driver’s door. He was about to clamber in when he spotted movement in his peripheral vision, and glanced up in time to see one of Faulkner’s men emerge from behind the steel shithouse. He saw the barrel of the MP5 come up towards him, saw the man lock eyes with him as he squeezed the trigger.

Drake’s reaction was one born from years of experience in firefights like this, and a practical understanding of the weapon he was up against. The MP5 was a compact little submachine gun, ideal for close-range combat because of its light weight and ability to spit out a high rate of fairly accurate fire. But the cost of its small size was its relative lack of stopping power. Its 9mm rounds struggled against even light body armour. If he was right about the level of paranoia of its owner, the Toyota came with more extras than just air conditioning.

Throwing himself to the ground, he allowed the SUV’s door to absorb the initial burst of automatic fire as he brought his own weapon to bear. The distinctive scream of projectiles whanging off the metal bodywork was complemented a moment later by the dull thump of Drake’s silenced weapon as he took aim at the man’s centre mass and opened fire.

His aim was improving as the grenade effects wore off, and the first two rounds found their target, slamming into his chest with enough kinetic energy to send him staggering backwards. His finger tightened reflexively on the trigger as he fell, sending another burst of automatic fire sputtering skywards.

Rather than collapsing in a heap however, he managed to regain his balance enough to throw himself behind the shed for cover. He was almost certainly wearing body armour, and while Drake’s shots were unlikely to do any lasting damage, they might have bought a few precious seconds to make their escape.

Scrambling to his feet, Drake paused just for a second to stare at the string of penny-sized holes that had been punched in the SUV’s door panel. It seemed that he’d been wrong about the car. Either Faulkner’s men were using armour-piercing rounds, or the vehicle wasn’t as well protected as he’d thought.