The woman’s expression hardened as a plan took shape in her mind. ‘Then listen to me, and listen well. Forget the CIA, forget the Russians and the Iraqis.
Your life
hangs in the balance now. If you want to stay alive, you will come with us and do exactly as we tell you.’
The young man stared at her wide-eyed. ‘You will honour our deal?’
She nodded again. ‘It might not happen the way we planned, but I will see to it that you get a new life and all the money you need. But only if you deliver your proof.’
He paled visibly at her threat, but raised his chin and did his best to meet her baleful gaze. ‘I will not let you down.’
Drake gripped the woman’s arm. ‘What are you planning, Anya?’
The look in her eyes reminded him of that moment in Khatyrgan when she had stood over the corpse of the guard she’d killed, drenched in blood and smiling with vicious glee, only it was colder, more controlled now. And somehow, he knew that was far more dangerous.
‘Retribution.’ She looked at Zebari again. ‘Come on. We don’t have much time.’
‘What do you mean we’ve been denied?’ Dietrich raged. ‘We’re on the ready line, for Christ sake. We can end this thing right now.’
‘This came straight from Cain,’ Franklin said, hating every word. ‘He’s ordered us to stand down.’
‘And what do
you
say, Dan?’
Franklin looked down, still clutching the phone to his ear. Dietrich was asking him to disobey direct orders from the director of the entire division.
‘It’s not my call. I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah. Me too.’ The derision and scorn in his voice was obvious even on a bad line from the other side of the world.
Saying nothing further, Franklin shut down the call and laid his cellphone on the desk, staring at it for a long moment as the anger and resentment boiled away inside him.
‘Fuck!’ he snarled, slamming his fist down on the polished surface.
His thoughts were interrupted when his desk phone started ringing. Gritting his teeth, he snatched it up.
‘What?’ he demanded.
‘I-I’m sorry to disturb you, sir,’ a voice stammered, unnerved by his harsh tone. ‘It’s Sinclair in the ops room. We’ve got a problem here.’
Who doesn’t? ‘What is it?’
‘We just lost the satellite feeds from the target area. We’re blind.’
He frowned. ‘Are they out of range?’
‘No, sir. I called the National Reconnaissance Office and the bird is still overhead. The feeds have been rerouted internally. Someone shut us down.’
In that moment, the truth dawned on him. It was Cain. He didn’t want them to see what he was about to do.
‘I …’ He trailed off, his gaze resting on the picture taken of himself and Drake when they were serving together in Afghanistan. Both young, both grinning like idiots, both convinced of their own invincibility.
‘Come up to my office right away, Sinclair. Hurry.’
What he was about to say had no place on an internal phone.
Emerging into the blinding light of early evening, they stood blinking for a few moments as their eyes adjusted. The Hilux lay where they had left it, perhaps 50 yards further down the slope.
‘We will cross the border back into Saudi Arabia tonight,’ Anya decided, starting towards the vehicle. ‘Then we will contact as many news agencies as we can find and give them Zebari’s evidence.’
‘You know this could bring down the entire Agency,’ Drake warned her, matching her stride. ‘When news of this gets out, it won’t stop.’
Already he could envision the chain reaction of scandals, investigations, resignations and disgraces, each
compounded
by the ones that had come before, each bringing the entire US intelligence machine closer to disaster. Personal grudges would resurface, old wounds would be reopened, mistrust and paranoia would spread like wildfire, until at last the entire thing collapsed like a house of cards.
Her eyes flashed like steel. ‘I have no loyalty to them now.’
I will show no mercy. I will never hesitate. I will never surrender
.
Drake could see the determined set of her shoulders, the purpose in her stride, the tension in her back. She was committed to this cause; she would see it through to the end, or die trying.
‘Haven’t you forgotten something?’
She stopped for a moment and turned to face him.
‘Munro. He’s the reason we’re here. He might have the same goal.’
She thought about it for a moment. ‘Maybe,’ she conceded. ‘But I can’t trust him. Munro would see me dead long before he moves against the Agency – I have no doubt about that.’
She turned to walk away.
‘And what about my sister?’
That stopped her in her tracks.
‘She’s innocent. She doesn’t deserve to be caught up in this. Those were your words. Or have you forgotten?’
She didn’t look at him, but he saw her head tilt down, saw the look of grim determination on her face. ‘I haven’t forgotten.’
‘If we don’t hand Zebari over, she’s dead. He’ll execute her.’
Anya said nothing.
‘Who is this Munro?’ Zebari asked, nervously watching
the
confrontation brewing between his two would-be saviours.
‘Stay out of this,’ Drake hissed, in no mood to explain the situation. ‘You know what I said was true, Anya. Can you live with that?’
‘I have lived with a lot of things, Drake,’ she assured him. ‘If I must, I can live with one more.’
She started walking away again, keeping her back to him.
‘Well, I can’t,’ he said, reaching for the AK slung over his shoulder. No way was he letting her walk with the one man who could save his sister’s life. If need be, he would take Zebari himself.
She was way ahead of him. Spinning around, she charged, summoning a terrifying burst of speed, her eyes burning with cold fire. Even as he brought the rifle to bear, she closed the distance between them, swept her hand up and seized the barrel, twisting it aside.
Before he could yank the weapon clear, she delivered a stinging right cross that snapped his head back, leaving stars dancing across his vision. His grip slackened, and an instant later he felt the rifle torn from his hand.
‘Don’t try to stop me, Drake,’ she warned, tossing the weapon aside like a toy. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’
Focused on each other as they were, neither of them heard the sharp, vicious hiss of an inbound missile travelling at close to the speed of sound. Neither of them thought to look up, to watch for the telltale white streak of exhaust gases.
But what happened next was more than enough to get their attention.
Their first impression was of a blinding white flash, followed almost immediately by a horrific orange glow that lit the ground around them. The next moment, the
concussive
blast wave hit like a physical blow, knocking them both to the ground. A deafening roar filled the air, tearing through them as if to split them apart from the inside.
Chapter 66
‘THERE’S NOTHING I
can do, Frost,’ Dietrich said irritably as he lit up another cigarette. ‘Franklin says to stand down, we stand down.’
‘Fuck Franklin, and fuck his orders! Are you just going to abandon Drake? Is that right?’ she demanded. She was bristling with anger, oblivious to the fact that he was almost a foot taller than her. ‘You know, for a minute there I was actually starting to think you weren’t a complete asshole. Shows how fucking wrong I was.’
Suddenly he rounded on her. ‘What do you expect me to do?’
‘What’s right,’ she replied simply.
Dietrich turned away in disgust.
Going against orders would spell the end of whatever career he had left, destroy any future he had a hope of building. She was asking the impossible.
He wasn’t going to do that. Not now. Not for Drake.
‘Drake could have left you behind in that prison,’ Frost reminded him. ‘Instead he risked his life to save yours. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?’
Dietrich closed his eyes, willing himself not to listen. He was going to lose everything. With one stupid, emotional decision, he would lose everything he’d fought to regain.
‘I guess I was right about you all along, Dietrich,’ Frost
concluded
, turning to walk away. ‘You’re a coward. You always were.’
Dietrich said nothing as he took a deep pull on his cigarette.
It took Sinclair all of three minutes to climb two flights of stairs and sprint down 50 yards of corridor to Franklin’s office. He was red faced and out of breath by the time he entered.
Franklin rose from his desk and walked over to join him, keeping his voice low. ‘Sinclair, I want you to listen very carefully to what I’m about to say. Whatever else is going on here, Director Cain is pursuing his own agenda.’
‘Y-yes, sir,’ the young technician replied hesitantly.
‘He’s the one who shut down our satellite coverage.’
Sinclair’s eyes lit up.
‘Something’s about to happen that he doesn’t want us to see.’ Franklin leaned forward and eyed him hard. ‘I want two things from you. First I want you to monitor all incoming and outgoing communications from Cain’s office.’
You just crossed the line, a voice in his head told him. There will be no coming back from this.
Sinclair swallowed, daunted at the prospect of hacking the divisional director’s computer. ‘If I get caught …’
‘If you get caught, you’ll tell them that I specifically ordered you to do it. I’ll take full responsibility for everything.’ He gripped the man by the shoulders. ‘Now, can it be done?’
Sinclair thought it over for several seconds, his mind racing. ‘There’s a back door in the firewall I can exploit,’
he
finally admitted. ‘Nobody else knows about it. It won’t be pretty, but it should work.’
‘Good. Get on it.’
‘And the second thing, sir?’ Sinclair prompted.
Franklin chewed his lip. ‘I need that satellite link back.’
‘Sir, are you sure you want to do this? If Director Cain finds out …’
Franklin sighed, took a step back and glanced over at the framed picture again. ‘You see that photograph? Five years ago my Humvee hit a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. When I came to, the vehicle was upside down and on fire. I couldn’t move my legs, couldn’t get out. I knew then I was going to burn to death. But one man came back to pull me out. Only one.’ He turned to look at the young man again. ‘Drake risked his life to save mine. I owe him.’
Sinclair stared at him, shocked by what he’d heard. But at last he nodded. ‘I understand.’
‘Good. Then get to work.’
Drake was in a fog. A world without dimension, with only the pounding of his own heartbeat to interrupt the dull ringing in his ears. With great effort he forced his eyes open, finding himself lying face down on hard stony ground. Anya was a few yards away, her face obscured by a tangle of blonde hair.
What the hell had happened?
Groaning in pain, he managed to get an arm beneath himself and sat up, his back cracking as he did so. He could feel blood on his arms and face where sharp rocks and debris had cut him, but he didn’t seem to be seriously hurt. Everything still worked.
The Hilux was another story. Almost nothing
remained
of the vehicle, save for a few smoking, twisted scraps of metal embedded in the 5-metre-wide crater where it had sat. It had been obliterated by high explosives, but from where? And by whom?
Hearing movement at his side, he turned to see Anya pulling herself upright, wincing in pain. A growing red patch stained her shirt just above her left hip, perhaps a piece of shrapnel from the destroyed vehicle. He couldn’t tell how bad the injury was.
She looked at him, her expression a mixture of uncomprehending shock and pain.
Then suddenly her eyes flicked over his shoulder, and he saw her tense up. She had seen something. Her hand went for the assault rifle lying beside her.
‘Don’t move!’ a voice cried out. It was male. American.
Twisting around, Drake found himself staring at a man in black fatigues and full combat gear. He was covering them with an M4 carbine, the US military’s standard assault rifle.
Another man rose from behind a boulder next to him, armed and dressed in similar fashion. Within moments, they were surrounded by six operatives, all carrying automatic weapons.
Anya remained frozen where she was, her hand poised in the midst of reaching for the AK.
‘Lie the fuck down right now!’ the man commanded. ‘Lie down with your hands behind your heads. Do it, or we open fire.’
To resist would be futile. As fast and dangerous as she was, even Anya couldn’t defend herself against six men who had the drop on her.
Withdrawing her arm, she eased herself down onto her stomach and placed her hands behind her head. Drake did likewise, staring into his erstwhile
companion
’s eyes as footsteps crunched on the stony ground towards them.
He saw no fear there.
Nearby, Zebari was whimpering in pain as his hands were bound and he was hauled roughly to his feet.
One of their captors, perhaps the leader, keyed his radio transmitter. ‘Targets secure. We’re coming in.’
Chapter 67
THE OPERATIONS ROOM
was almost empty, save for Franklin and Sinclair. He had ordered all other personnel to leave, explaining that their part in the operation was over, just as Cain had instructed.
‘We’re in,’ Sinclair said, speaking low and urgent as if afraid someone might overhear. His fingers danced across the keyboard, a blur of frantic movement. ‘I’m through the firewall. Access server routing grid, redirect incoming feed, and …’
The viewing window in his laptop sprang into life, showing an overhead video feed from the site in Iraq where Drake’s vehicle had parked up.
‘Bingo.’
Franklin leaned in close, ignoring the aching pain in his back as he studied the screen.
‘Oh, shit.’
Drake’s vehicle was gone, replaced by a smoking, wreckage-strewn crater. It must have been hit by some kind of high-powered explosive ordinance, because almost nothing remained of it.
But there were other vehicles nearby; two of them. 4x4s of some kind, though he couldn’t identify them from the air. Black-clad figures were sweeping the area, escorting three prisoners towards the nearest vehicle. Two men and a woman.