by Will Jordan
‘Shit,’ he said under his breath, the pieces falling together in his mind.
‘You know him?’
‘Russo brokered the meeting Anya was supposed to go to eight years ago,’ Drake explained. ‘She never made it.’
‘You think he sold her out?’
‘She obviously does.’
Drake shook his head, realising the magnitude of the decision Anya had just made. By taking out Russo, she had effectively broadcasted her presence to Cain and the Agency. They would have to know she was still alive now.
And if they knew Anya was alive, they knew he was too. The anonymity he’d enjoyed over the past couple of months had just vanished.
‘I have to go,’ he said, his mind racing. ‘If they know I’m still alive, they’ll come for Jess…’
North Wales, UK
Jessica was in a buoyant mood as she made her way downstairs, moving with the kind of spring in her step that she hadn’t enjoyed in a long time. The long cold and darkness of winter were receding at last, the days growing noticeably longer as the world around her returned to life.
Making her way through to the small, comfortable workspace that served as her home office, she switched on her computer, intending to tackle the steadily growing list of emails. For obvious reasons, she had kept a low profile over the past few years, both professionally and personally, but that too was changing.
With Drake officially considered dead, the shadow that had loomed over her for the past few years had receded. Already she had begun making plans to end her self-imposed isolation and return to the real world – re-establishing contact with former business associates, feeling them out for job opportunities, speaking with estate agents and lawyers, looking at places to relocate.
She felt as if her life was starting afresh, and it was a good feeling. She was planning to tell her brother the next time he came to check in on her, and had even bought a bottle of his favourite whisky to celebrate.
She was just about to get started on her work when the doorbell rang.
Jessica glanced up. She didn’t get many visitors. But there was always the possibility of a lost delivery driver or hiking party that had strayed off course in the twisting valleys.
Rising from the desk, she opened a drawer and fished out a little metal cylinder that she always kept there, popping it in the back pocket of her jeans out of habit.
The doorbell rang again as she strode through the hallway, unlatched the door and allowed it to open a few inches on its security chain.
The man facing her was about forty years old, short and stocky, the thinning remains of his hair closely cropped. He was wearing the dark blue coveralls and work boots of an engineer. Parked in the driveway behind him was a utility van.
‘Morning,’ he said cheerfully, glancing down at the tablet PC he was carrying. ‘Mrs… Drake, is it?’
‘Ms Drake,’ Jessica corrected him. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Actually, yes. My name’s Gareth Thomas,’ he said, holding up an ID card. ‘We’ve had some complaints about power outages in the area. Have you had any issues with your supply?’
‘Not really.’
‘Ah, good,’ he said, clearly relieved. ‘Well, not good, but it’s a start. Would you mind if I check your mains box, just to get a reading?’
Jessica thought about it for a moment, her natural wariness vying with her desire to get it over with so she could resume her work. She was about to speak when her cell phone started ringing in the kitchen, distracting her. One of the few people who had her number was Ryan.
‘Ms Drake, I really would like to get this done so I can move on,’ the engineer said. He was smiling at her, but it didn’t seem quite so cheerful now. There was a harder, more impatient undertone in his voice that immediately set her on edge.
‘Actually, do you mind if I take this call first?’ she said, pushing the door shut.
But quick as a flash, he jammed his heavy work boot in the gap, preventing her from closing it. Her eyes flashed up to his, meeting a steely, ruthless gaze.
‘I insist,’ he snarled as he brought up a pair of bolt cutters and snipped the security chain like a gardener pruning stray branches. With nothing to impede the door, a single hard shove with his considerable weight sent Jessica reeling backwards into the wall opposite with bruising force.
The world seemed to go into slow motion as he advanced through the doorway, the dark glint of a weapon in his hand, the long barrel of a silencer swinging up towards her. The amiable, apologetic face was gone now, transformed into a look of cold, calculating aggression.
There had been a time, several years earlier, when a situation not unlike this had befallen Jessica. When armed men had quickly and easily subdued her before bundling her into a waiting van. She’d barely even tried to fight back as shock and fear took over, like some animal caught in the headlights, unable to move, unable to think.
But that had been a different time, and she’d been a different person; naïve and unprepared. Not today.
Jessica went straight for him, closing the gap as fast as her legs would carry her. A mixture of self-defence training, instinct and sudden, raw fury had taken over. She didn’t know who this man was, what he wanted from her or why, but it didn’t matter.
The self-defence instructors she’d trained with had taught her some very valuable lessons about taking on an armed opponent. De-escalate if possible, retreat if necessary, and fight if essential. But if you’re going to fight, go at it with everything you have. Hold nothing back.
Reaching into her back pocket, she whipped out the miniature can of pepper spray she’d put there, took aim and fired it straight into his face. She saw a momentary flicker of surprise before his eyes suddenly squeezed shut and his face contorted in agony. Jessica could feel the potent fumes stinging her eyes.
There was a sudden flash, and she heard a muted thump that reverberated off the walls, followed by the crash of splintering wood as a stray round punched through a nearby door. He was firing blind, but there was a good chance he might score a hit anyway.
Discarding the canister of pepper spray, Jessica swept her left arm up and drove it into his wrist. The impact painfully jarred the bones in her own arm, the vibrations shivering all the way up to her shoulder, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was wrapping her other hand over the top of the weapon and pushing downward with all the force she could command.
The bones of the human wrist are not designed to cope with that kind of lateral pressure, and suddenly he was presented with a very clear choice: release the weapon, or watch as his radius and ulna bones snapped like twigs. He went for the former option, allowing her to wrench it from his grasp.
Jessica stayed right on him, delivering a savage kick to the groin that dropped him to his knees. Realising the danger he was in, he swung his fists left and right, before Jessica swung the butt of the gun against the side of his head. A dull, fleshy thump rang out as steel met skull.
It took two hard strikes to drop him, and she’d scarcely delivered the second one before she heard shouting outside. Glancing out the open door, she saw that the van doors had flown open and two more men were rushing towards the house, both armed.
Heart pounding with a mixture of anger, adrenaline and primal fear, Jessica tore down the hallway to the kitchen. She’d barely slammed the door shut behind her and wedged a chair against the handle when she heard footsteps and shouts in the hallway.
With great effort, Jessica forced back the mounting panic as she looked around the room, trying to stay logical and clear-headed. She was facing a larger force of armed professionals. She had been lucky and caught the first man off guard, but fighting his companions wasn’t an option.
She needed another way out.
Her attention snapped to the alarm unit mounted on the wall nearby. She’d had one installed in every room, so she could trigger it from any part of the house. Leaping forward, she hit the panic button, and straight away the loud electronic wail of th
e exterior alarm began to blare out.
This done, she turned her attention to the weapon in her right hand. It was a Heckler & Koch automatic, its solid frame rendered even heavier by the bulky suppressor attached to the barrel. She didn’t know the calibre, and nor did she care at that moment. It was loaded, and the safety was off.
Taking aim at the door, she squeezed the trigger three times, firing blind into the hallway beyond. The recoil was more powerful than she’d expected, and the thud of the subsonic rounds seemed to resonate up her arm. Nonetheless, the wood splintered and shattered as the rounds punched straight through, and over the sound of the alarm she heard a warning shout from the hallway.
‘Contact! Contact!’
On the other side of the door, two operatives in tactical body armour had flattened themselves against the walls to avoid the random gunfire. Their Kevlar vests would protect them from direct hits, but there was always a chance that a lucky shot would strike an unprotected limb.
Already, one of their number was lying sprawled on the floor, groaning in pain. One untrained civilian should have been an easy snatch and grab. Now they were quickly becoming embroiled in a full-scale house assault against a target that they needed to capture alive. Worse, the deafening noise of the alarm rendered verbal and radio communication impossible.
Still, they had the advantage of training, firepower and numbers – three factors they were ready and eager to make use of.
The operative on the right unhooked a flashbang grenade from his webbing, pulled the pin and advanced on the door while his companion covered him. Exchanging a brief glance with his comrade, he silently counted down.
Three, two, one…
Allowing the fly-off handle to detach, he kicked the kitchen door open, shattering the chair wedged against it, and tossed the weapon inside. A second later, the house trembled with a concussive boom as the stun grenade detonated.
Both men were through the door in moments, their weapons sweeping the room, expecting to find their target blinded and incapacitated. Easy pickings.
The room was deserted.
‘Clear!’
‘Clear! Where is she?’
The back door was still locked and secured. Anyway, that entrance was covered by a third man outside. If she’d tried to make a break for it, he would have spotted her.
It was only when one of them glanced down at the floor that he noticed a rug had been moved, as if hastily thrown aside. And there, set flush into the floorboards, was a small wooden trapdoor.
Rushing forward, his comrade grasped the handle and yanked the door upward. What he failed to notice was the thin, barely visible tripwire attached to the door, or the sawn-off shotgun fixed to the wall in the shadows beneath it, its twin barrels pointing upward.
He certainly did notice it, however, when the weapon discharged two shells of buckshot directly into his chest with an almighty crack, the impact knocking him backwards so that he landed in a sprawl several feet away. His vest had barely saved him from what would otherwise have been a lethal hail of close-range projectiles, but the force of the gunshot had bruised his ribs and knocked the air from his lungs.
‘Shit!’ the other operative hissed, reaching for his radio as his comrade struggled to get up. ‘All units, be advised we have a hidden exit in the kitchen floor. Target may be outside the perimeter. Get me eyes on, now!’
He’d barely issued his terse command before the sound of an engine firing up drew his attention outside. The noise was high-pitched and rough, not a car engine but something smaller and lighter. He rushed over to the broken kitchen windows just in time to see a dirt bike go rocketing out of a stone outbuilding nearby, with his target bent low over the handlebars.
Taking hasty aim, he opened fire through the broken glass, spraying a burst of submachine gun rounds at the fast-moving vehicle, hoping to puncture a tyre or disable the engine. But the shots just churned up clods of wet earth several feet behind his target.
And then, in a flash, she had disappeared beyond his line of sight.
‘Be advised, target is on the move,’ he snapped into his radio, throwing open the back door and rushing outside. ‘Heading north-east towards the woods. All units, move to intercept!’
Jessica was oblivious to the frantic orders being issued in her wake as she twisted the throttle hard, urging the bike down the grassy slope away from the house at dangerously high speed. Water splattered her face, soaking the long hair that streamed behind her in the rushing wind.
Swinging the handlebars hard right, she eased off the throttle and leaned her weight to one side while the bike sliced through the turn, before giving it full power again. The rear tyre spun and clawed at the wet ground, throwing up clumps of mud and torn grass, but somehow she managed to hold the fishtailing bike under control.
At any moment she expected more gunfire to erupt behind her, but no such thing happened. The house receded into the distance, alarm still blaring, though she didn’t ease up for a second or dare to look over her shoulder.
It would be easy to blockade the few roads in and out of this area, rendering escape by car impossible. Jessica had long been aware of this, hence her investment in a small, lightweight trail bike designed to cope with difficult terrain. Not exactly her style, but after considerable trial and error, she was confident enough to handle the temperamental machine.
More importantly, she knew this place like the back of her hand. She knew the hidden trails and half-forgotten tracks that wound through these mountains and valleys.
And how to exploit them.
A small river, swollen by spring rains and meltwater, wound its way down the valley, its progress mirrored by a narrow footpath. Used infrequently by hikers on their way to the nearby peaks, and only haphazardly maintained, it was hardly a smooth highway, but it was passable. The slopes around it were crowded with trees that had flourished in the sheltered ground, providing ample cover.
Forcing herself to ease off the throttle as she negotiated the steep slope, wildly dodging trees and bushes as she went, Jessica was forced to lean heavily on the brakes. But as soon as her wheels touched down on the hard-packed surface, she gave it everything she had. The 50cc engine growled as the lightweight vehicle shot down the path in a spray of mud and exhaust fumes.
This path ran for several miles more south-east, following the river until it emptied into a larger watercourse. There was also a small village at this confluence, built beside an ancient stone bridge that forded the fast-moving river. An obvious ambush point for her pursuers. Fortunately, Jessica knew of other points where the path branched off, allowing her to circumvent this bottleneck.
The automatic she’d stolen back at the house was a hard, solid shape digging painfully into her side, but she didn’t consider discarding it. It was her only usable weapon for the time being, and if push came to shove, she would use it to shove hard. No way was she going to meekly capitulate like she’d done before.
Reaching up, Jessica pushed back a lock of sodden hair from her eyes. Those men must have been looking for Ryan, but how did they know he’d been there? Why come now, after all this time?
One way or another she had to warn him.
Her phone was in her pocket, hastily snatched from the kitchen table. Rising out of the seat long enough to yank it free, she speed-dialled Ryan’s number.
Sure enough, it rang out only twice before Drake’s voice came on the line.
‘Jess, are you okay?’ he asked, his concern obvious. Had he already known she was in danger?
Holding the unstable bike steady with one hand and pressing the phone against her ear with the other, Jessica practically shouted into the device.
‘Ryan, listen to me. I—’
Before she could say another word, the bike was jerked to a sudden, violent halt, the momentum launching her right over the handlebars. For a sickening, terrifying moment, Jessica was airborne, the world spinning around her as she tumbled helplessly through the air.
She b
arely had the presence of mind to tuck her head in as the ground rushed up to meet her like a giant rocky fist. And suddenly she was skidding and rolling along the path, sharp stones tearing at her skin and jarring impacts bruising the flesh and muscles beneath.
When she finally rolled to a stop, battered and bleeding, her vision blurry, she was about 20 yards further down the path. She could hear the bike engine chugging away, still valiantly running despite the collision.
Through the fog of pain and confusion, a single question leapt into her mind: what the hell had just happened?
Wincing in pain, she struggled to sit up, managed to turn and look back at the scene of the crash. That was when she saw the length of cable strung between two sturdy trees, right across the path. Strong enough to stop a lightweight dirt bike in its tracks.
Instantly Jessica felt a surge of fear. Someone was waiting here for her.
‘Well, well,’ a female voice mocked her. ‘Gutsy move, lady. Guess you’re not as much of a pussy as your brother.’
Turning, Jessica watched as its owner emerged from cover. A woman, no more than thirty years old, with short blonde hair and a slender, almost delicate build. She was wearing body armour over civilian clothes, yet she appeared to be unarmed.
She smiled. A cold, malicious smile.
‘Why don’t you make this easy on us both and surrender, huh?’
Jessica had no intention of surrendering, peacefully or otherwise.
Something was still digging painfully into her side. It was the pistol, shoved into the belt of her jeans. Somehow it had stayed with her in the crash.
Without hesitation, Jessica went for it. The young woman saw her move and rushed straight at her with frightening speed as Jessica yanked the gun free and rose up to her knees, bringing the weapon to bear. She had never shot a person before, but she wouldn’t hesitate to do so now. It was kill or be killed.
Reaching up with an awkward, unpractised move, she flicked the safety catch off. It took less than a second, her forefinger already tightening on the trigger. But just as she did so, the young woman leapt in with a perfectly placed kick, knocking the gun clean out of her hand.
