Hesitating a moment, he looked at himself in the mirror above the sink, taking in his gaunt and haggard appearance, his pale clammy skin and dishevelled hair.
That’s the reason you fucked up last night, part of him knew. You didn’t search that guard properly or you would have found his radio. You almost got everyone killed when you couldn’t find the right key. You were shot because you weren’t thinking straight. You deserved to lose the entire leg.
You stupid bastard. You could have gotten everyone killed!
He looked down at the syringe again, seeing it as if in a new light. It wasn’t the solution he so often believed it to be. It was the reason his life had gone to shit.
Last night had been a revelation, a sobering reminder of how much of a mess he’d made of himself, about the countless other missions that had come so close to failure.
Because of that innocuous little syringe.
He didn’t even pause to think about what he did next. If he had, he might well have reconsidered. In a moment of sudden anger, he dropped it on the floor and stamped on it, crushing the delicate instrument beneath his boot, then looked back up at his pale, drawn reflection.
No more.
Never again.
Chapter 28
‘RYAN, GOOD TO
see you again.’ Cain smiled in greeting as Drake entered the modest conference room that served as his makeshift office. He was in casual mode now, or as close as he came to it, having removed his suit jacket, rolled up his shirtsleeves and loosened his tie.
‘First of all, I just want to say that you did a hell of a job—’
Drake cut him off with a raised hand.
‘With all due respect, I don’t need to be congratulated. I’m here because I was ordered to come. But if you want me to debrief Maras, I want to know who exactly she is and why we risked our lives to save her, and I want to know right now.’
Cain said nothing for several seconds. There was no angry retort, no exclamation of anger or censure like Drake expected. Cain just stood there looking at him, taking the measure of the man.
The silence grew oppressive in those few moments, and Drake’s own surge of resentment and indignation paled in the face of such cool, controlled menace.
He felt colour rise to his face. The whisky he’d drunk earlier had made him surly and belligerent, yet now he perceived his actions for what they were. He was acting like a moody teenager faced with some unhappy chore, and shit like that didn’t play too well with men like Cain.
Then, to his surprise, Cain smiled. ‘Are you finished?’
Drake said nothing, and the older man was perceptive enough to take his silence for what it was. ‘Good, because as it happens, I had a feeling you’d say something like that. Take a seat, Ryan,’ he said, gesturing to an empty chair.
Drake did as he was asked, and Cain settled himself opposite, positioning himself behind the room’s one and only desk. It was a cheap affair – metal frame with a wooden veneer top – but somehow his mere presence invested it with a sense of significance and authority.
The director of Special Activities Division studied Drake for several seconds. In other men, it might have seemed as if he was composing his thoughts, marshalling the information he wished to convey, but Drake knew better. Cain was the sort who always knew exactly what he wanted to say long before he said it.
He was keeping Drake waiting, because he could.
Then, at last, he started talking. ‘Her real name is Anya – at least, that’s what she answers to. You’ll have guessed by now that she isn’t a US citizen. She was born in Lithuania when it was still part of the Soviet Union, but she defected to our side when she was eighteen years old.’
Drake raised an eyebrow. ‘Why?’
‘It’s a long story. Suffice to say, she wasn’t happy with life behind the Iron Curtain, and knowing what I know, I don’t blame her. She crossed over the Baltic to Sweden in eighty-three, and from there she made her way Stateside. She came to our attention about a year later,’ Cain went on. ‘She was young, resourceful, intelligent and eager to sign up. The military wasn’t interested in her, so we put her to work.’ He sighed, looking almost wistful. ‘She exceeded our expectations in every way
possible
. Eventually she was even given her own paramilitary unit to command. No matter what we asked of her, she always came through. We ended up using her more and more.’
‘So what happened?’ Drake pressed.
‘Same thing that happens to most people when they’re pushed too hard, I guess.’ Cain smiled, but it was more of a painful grimace. ‘She snapped. Four years ago she went dark during a mission in Afghanistan, severed all contact with us. The last we heard, she was heading to Iraq. We tried to intercept her, but the Russian FSB found her first. You might say they had unfinished business.’
Drake could guess why. The FSB was the post-Communism incarnation of the old KGB – the ruthless and formidable Soviet intelligence agency that had terrorised the West for decades. He imagined they hadn’t forgotten a woman like Anya, especially since she used to be one of their citizens.
‘Anyway, however it happened, we’d lost her,’ Cain concluded. ‘Most of us thought she’d been executed. Hell of a way for someone like her to end up, but shit happens as they say – and it happens in this job more than most.’ He raised an eyebrow, his eyes reflecting memories of countless other such stories. ‘But as it turned out, we were wrong.’
Apparently so, Drake concluded. ‘So why the sudden rush to bring her home?’
‘This is where the waters get muddied.’ The director sighed, reached into his shirt pocket and put his glasses on, then started tapping away at his laptop. ‘You know what a Predator drone is, I assume?’
‘Of course. It’s an unmanned recon aircraft. We’ve got dozens of them flying over Iraq and Afghanistan.’
More than once he’d been on the receiving end of the vital intelligence provided by Predators. They were invaluable guardian angels circling overhead, all-seeing and all-knowing. They allowed troops on the ground to track enemy movements, spot ambushes, vector in air or artillery strikes, plan counter-attacks. He could scarcely imagine how many lives had been saved by the deceptively unassuming aircraft.
‘Right. At least, we did.’
Drake looked at him curiously. ‘What do you mean?’
‘They’re grounded. All of them. Our entire inventory.’
For an instant, Drake thought he was joking. Such a suggestion was so preposterous that it could only be made in jest. But one look at Cain’s expression was enough to convince him otherwise.
‘Why?’
‘Three days ago we lost contact with one of our Predators in northern Iraq. Then, when it came back online, we saw this …’ He turned the laptop around for Drake to see.
The image on the screen displayed a devastated urban street. One entire side of a big three-storey building had been demolished, rubble and twisted wreckage lying scattered across the surrounding streets.
The image was instantly familiar to Drake, though it took him a few moments to place it.
‘I saw this. On CNN the other day,’ he said. ‘A Predator did this?’
Cain nodded grimly. ‘All three of its Hellfire missiles deployed straight into a crowded city street. It’s a goddamn nightmare.’
Drake wasn’t about to argue. And yet, he wasn’t seeing the connection between the two explanations Cain had just given. ‘So how does Mar … Anya fit into this?’
Cain turned the laptop around to resume his work.
‘Our working theory was that someone seized control of the drone remotely, found a way to bypass its encrypted firewall.’ He paused for a moment, clicking the mouse a couple of times to access a new file. ‘Then we received this.’
Once more he turned the laptop around, allowing Drake to see the video file that was starting up.
Staring out from the screen was a Caucasian man, perhaps in his late thirties or early forties. His skin was tanned, his hair dark and unruly, his jaw darkened by several days’ growth of beard. Drake supposed he could have been called handsome in a rugged kind of way, though there was something about his eyes that wasn’t quite right.
His left was pale blue-grey, focused and intense, while the right was a little off colour, and appeared oddly glazed and inexpressive. It took Drake a moment to realise it was a prosthetic.
The camera was focused in tight on his face, showing very little else except that he was standing against an olive green background.
‘You know who I am.’ He spoke with an American accent, his voice low pitched and gravelly. ‘And by now you know what I can do. The explosion in Mosul was no accident, and believe me, it can happen again. I have the ability to take control of any Predator drone anywhere on earth, at any time. If you don’t want this to happen again, you’ll do exactly as I say.’
He exhaled slowly before going on. ‘A former operative of yours is being held in Khatyrgan Prison in Russia. You knew her by the code name Maras. You will find her and bring her back to US soil, alive and unharmed within five days, after which you’ll be given further instructions. This deadline is not negotiable, and I will
not
discuss terms with you. If you fail to comply with this demand, I will leak detailed information on how to hack the Predator’s control program to every major terrorist group in the world. I will cripple your battlefield surveillance capability for years. Time’s ticking, so I suggest you don’t waste it.’
As the file came to a stop, Cain sighed and leaned back in his chair, appearing suddenly old and weary. ‘Now maybe you’ll understand our sense of urgency.’
Indeed he did. Drake never could have imagined there was so much at stake. ‘Who is he?’
The older man rubbed his eyes. ‘His name’s Munro. Dominic Munro. Ex-Green Beret. He used to be one of our operatives, but he left the Agency seven years ago.’
‘How does he know Anya?’
‘She’s the reason he left,’ Cain explained. ‘He was Anya’s protégé, her star pupil I guess you’d say. They served together in Task Force Black.’
Drake frowned. He’d never heard of such a group.
‘There are levels of secrecy even within the Agency, Drake,’ Cain explained, noting his confused look. ‘I can’t go into all the details, but I can tell you that Task Force Black was a paramilitary unit formed back in the mid-eighties. They did a lot of clandestine work for us, and did it well. So well in fact that by the end of the nineties they had their own intelligence networks, their own logistical base, even their own funding. They were practically an organisation within an organisation, and Munro and Anya were running it all.’
Drake had no idea. He’d been a young shit-head in the Parachute Regiment while all this had been happening. ‘So what happened?’
‘They “fell out”. I never did get the full story, but apparently Munro tried to have her assassinated.
Needless
to say, he failed.’ Cain adopted a pained expression. ‘Anya tracked him down and took his right eye as punishment.’
That explained the prosthetic, at least, Drake thought.
‘She was never the same after that. She handed Munro over to us, close to death, and made us promise to lock him away for ever. We threw him in a military prison for life. Then, about six months ago, he disappeared.’
Drake frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘He was being transported to Fort Leavenworth, but he never made it. They found the truck he was in – no sign of the guards or the driver, and no sign of Munro. Like I say, he just disappeared.’
Drake was stunned. ‘And you didn’t think that might be a problem?’
Cain fixed him with a hard glare. ‘Of course we did. But Munro was trained at escape and evasion – trained by Anya, as it happens. If men like him don’t want to be found, they won’t be.’
‘So he’s doing all this for revenge?’
The older man shrugged. ‘Who the hell knows what’s going on in his head? But right now, he’s got us by the balls, plain and simple. We’ve been forced to ground all Predator flights worldwide until we can resolve this, and you don’t need me to tell you what a dangerous position that puts us in. Our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting virtually blind.’
‘My God …’ Drake breathed, stunned by what he was hearing. It didn’t take a genius to see Cain’s plan. ‘So you need Anya’s help to find him.’
Cain removed his glasses and stared at Drake across the desk. ‘She trained him, taught him everything he knows. She’s our best and only shot at stopping him.
But
she’s angry, paranoid, and probably scared. Frankly, I don’t blame her, but someone has to talk her round.’
And so they’d come down to it. ‘Why me?’
‘I saw the video footage from the plane, Ryan.’ When Drake’s eyes lit up, he held up a hand to forestall any protests or explanations. ‘It’s a standard precaution on jobs like this. But I saw how she acted around you. She let you in, she let her guard drop, even if only for a moment. I think she might trust you, Ryan. And believe me, that’s a rare thing.’
Once again Drake recalled the look in her eyes when he tried to reach out to her. She hadn’t exactly bared her soul to him, but there had been something. A flicker of vulnerability, the tentative beginning of trust, of humanity in those cold blue eyes.
‘I won’t fuck her over,’ he decided straight away. ‘Whatever her history, she didn’t deserve to end up in that place.’
‘I agree,’ Cain said. ‘And nobody’s going to fuck her over. We’ve got a Presidential pardon signed, sealed and delivered. If she helps bring Munro in, she can walk away. We’ll keep tabs on her, of course, and she won’t be allowed to leave the country at first, but in all other respects she’ll be free.’ He looked at Drake frankly for a long moment. ‘As hard as this might be for you to believe, we’re not monsters here. We look after our own, even if they go astray.’
He looked down and swallowed, as if struggling with himself. To Drake’s surprise, there was genuine emotion in his voice when he spoke again. ‘However she ended up, there was a time when Anya was very special. I considered her a friend, and I don’t forget friends easily. I’ll make sure she gets what she needs, but first she has to help us.’ He looked up at Drake again. ‘So what do
you
say, Ryan? I’m all out of options here. You’re my last shot.’