by Will Jordan
Dragging himself to his feet once more, he used his good arm to brace his left elbow against the tree trunk, holding it at right angles from his body and doing his best to line up the head of the bone with the joint. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to summon up the will to do what he had to.
For a moment he saw Anya standing over him as he lay injured on the ground, drenched by the rain but undaunted by his efforts to subdue her. He saw the pity and contempt in her eyes, felt her disappointment at the pathetic fight he’d put up, and instantly a flame of defiance leapt up inside him.
Don’t think about it, a voice in his head warned him. Just get it done.
Opening his eyes and clenching his jaw, Drake leaned back a little, paused just a moment, then drove his elbow into the tree trunk. In a sickening moment the force of the impact travelled like a shockwave up his arm, displacing the bone back towards his body.
There was a moment of straining, tightening resistance as the head of his humerus struggled to find its way back into the glenohumeral joint, the bone seeming to flex under the pressure. Then, with a grinding pop and an explosion of pain, it finally slipped back in.
Falling to his knees on the muddy ground, Drake closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and let out a low, almost animalistic growl, fighting to keep from crying out as wave after wave of pain radiated out from the newly realigned joint.
After what seemed like a lifetime, the pain receded to a more tolerable level. He looked down at his hand, clenched and unclenched it a few times, then tested the strength of his grip. He tried moving his arm at the shoulder, and though he was left wincing in pain, he nonetheless found that the limb moved freely. It worked, and right now that was all that mattered.
Trying to get his breathing under control, he reached into his webbing for his cellphone. Anya had destroyed the tactical radio linking him with Miranova and the other agents, forcing him to improvise.
He did his best to shield the phone from the rain as he dialled with frozen fingers. The shivering was really kicking in now, further hampering his efforts.
Miranova would likely have silenced her own cell to prevent it going off during the assault, but with luck she would have kept it switched on. It rang out for a good ten seconds before a connection was finally made.
‘Ryan?’ she said, her voice broken and distorted by the poor signal.
Drake grimaced as he shifted position and his shoulder protested against the effort. ‘Yeah.’
‘Where are you? You were not answering your radio.’ The anger and concern in her voice were obvious.
‘I lost my radio. I’m at the … base of the slope near the river,’ he managed to say through chattering teeth.
‘Are you all right?’
That was a matter of perspective. ‘Yeah.’
‘What about the hostile?’
Drake glanced over to where Anya’s vehicle had been parked. She was long gone by now. ‘I lost them.’
His report was met with a moment of silence. ‘Stay there. We will come for you.’
Drake shook his head. ‘Forget it. I’m coming back up.’
With no one to extinguish the flames, the wooden farmhouse had become a raging inferno that was still burning a good half hour after the disastrous attempt to breach it. Even from 100 yards away on the edge of the clearing Drake could feel the heat of the flames, though in this case he was glad of it.
He had been exhausted, soaked through and chilled to the bone by the time he’d clawed his way back up the slope. Shivering, bleeding and gasping for breath, he had practically stumbled into Miranova and Mason, who had been attempting to follow his confused and zigzagging trail by flashlight.
‘Christ, you look like you got into a fight with a fucking lawnmower,’ Mason decided, surveying him properly for the first time in the crimson light of the flames. Wet, bedraggled, cut, grazed and bruised, his clothes shredded and stained with mud and blood, Drake was a sorry-looking sight indeed.
He gave Mason a sharp look. He was in no mood for playful banter after his confrontation with Anya.
‘How do you feel?’ Miranova asked, standing a few paces away with her arms folded. The look in her dark eyes was enough to make the others keep their distance. The tension in the air around her was almost palpable.
Drake glanced up at her. ‘Like shit.’
‘Good.’
He snorted with grim amusement. ‘Thanks for the sympathy.’
‘What do you expect?’ Taking a step forwards, she jabbed a finger at him. ‘You were the one who went charging off into the woods alone when I told you to wait!’
‘Wait?’ Drake repeated, rising to his feet as simmering frustration got the better of him. ‘Wait for what? Wait for them to get away? Wait for you to get your arses in gear?’
‘So instead you tried to track an armed opponent alone?’ she challenged him, bristling with anger. ‘You were lucky you didn’t get yourself killed. How you have survived this long with such stupidity, I have no idea.’
‘Okay, knock it off,’ Mason said, leaping to Drake’s defence. ‘Both of you. While you’re sat here bitching at each other, our assassin is getting away.’
Miranova looked at him for a long moment, though not with the casual dismissal she normally displayed. For once she actually seemed to be heeding his words.
Letting out a sigh, she turned away for a moment and pushed a lock of soaking black hair out of her face, doing her best to regain her composure.
‘Then let us start with what we know,’ she said at last, turning her attention back to Drake. ‘Tell me what happened out there.’
Drake sniffed and rolled his shoulder, wincing in pain as he did so. ‘I went after him, lost my footing on a slope and, well, guess what happened.’
Miranova frowned, unconvinced. ‘So you did not see Glazov’s killer?’
He shook his head. ‘It was dark. He was too fast.’
Which led her to one conclusion. ‘Then we have nothing.’
‘We know we were right about our targets being in Chechnya,’ Drake reminded her. ‘And it wasn’t coincidence they got here just before us. They sent someone to take out Glazov before he could talk, which means someone warned them.’
At this, she gave him a sharp look. ‘You are suggesting someone tipped them off?’
‘Just telling it like I see it. They seem very good at staying one step ahead of us. If you can think of a better explanation, I’m all ears.’
For this, Miranova had no answer.
‘We can drive ourselves crazy playing spy games like this,’ Mason interrupted. ‘The question is, now that Glazov’s out of the picture, what are our friends going to do next?’
‘We will learn nothing more here. We will return to Grozny and report our findings. And we can get you to a hospital,’ she added, surveying him with a look that might have been grudging sympathy.
Drake shook his head. ‘I’m fine.’
‘You don’t look fine.’
He stared her hard in the eye. ‘What was it you said to me in DC? We’re expected to keep going until we can’t. Well, I still can, so back off and let me do my job.’
‘As you say.’ She moved closer to Drake and lowered her voice. ‘Tell me, Ryan, what happened to your sidearm?’ she asked, gesturing to the empty holster at his hip. She was watching his reactions closely.
Drake shrugged, trying to appear dismissive. At the same time, however, his heartbeat felt as though it had doubled. ‘Must have lost it when I fell.’
Miranova nodded thoughtfully. ‘Interesting that you lost your radio and your weapon. It must have been quite a fall.’
She held his gaze a few seconds longer, the tension between them growing with every passing moment. She was hoping that Drake would feel compelled to speak up, to challenge her suspicions, to do something to break the silence.
Then, after what seemed like hours, Miranova finally backed off a little.
‘But then, I suppose these things can happen to
the best of us,’ she remarked, laying a hand on his shoulder. It was meant to be a conciliatory gesture, but Drake knew why she’d done it. He managed to keep his face impassive as she squeezed a little.
‘I hope this will not slow you down, Ryan,’ she added, letting go.
Drake watched as she walked away to rejoin the others, though it was some time before his heart rate returned to normal.
Chapter 39
Grozny, Chechnya
Corporal Vadim Yerzov rolled his shoulders, trying to relieve the dull ache as the straps of his combat webbing bit into his flesh. Standing guard duty was an unpleasant job at the best of times, and it wasn’t helped by the chill wind that gusted across the open space in front of the checkpoint, each blast carrying with it a thousand tiny pellets of dry snow that stung his exposed flesh.
The temperature had fallen with the onset of night, and the driving rain of the day had given way to icy snow flurries.
The tearing roar of jet engines in the airfield behind prompted him to turn his eyes skywards, and he watched enviously as a commercial airliner ascended into the darkened sky, soon swallowed up by the low clouds so that only the flash of its recognition lights was visible.
‘Lucky bastards,’ he mumbled, thinking about the passengers sitting in their comfortable seats, heating vents blasting hot air all around them as they watched Grozny recede into the distance.
He could only try to imagine how it must feel. His tour of duty in Chechnya would be over in another month or so, and then at last he would be out of this shithole for some well-deserved leave. It couldn’t come soon enough. He was sick of this bleak war-torn place; sick of the cold, sick of the weather, sick of the people and the ruined buildings and the squalor and the misery.
‘Wonder where they’re going,’ Private Georgy Banin remarked from the other side of the main gate, watching the same aircraft like a starving child surveying a banquet.
‘Who the fuck cares?’ Yerzov replied. ‘Anywhere’s better than here.’
‘I hear you.’ Banin shivered as another icy blast buffeted them. ‘Maybe those FSB pricks should spend some time out here freezing their asses off.’
Not likely, Yerzov thought. The FSB personnel in the secure compound behind them were more than content to remain in their comfortable offices, allowing the Russian army to guard them day and night. Taking all the risks for none of the rewards.
Unsurprisingly, the men burdened with such a thankless task had started thinking up all kinds of colourful acronyms for their charges. Fucking Safe Bastards was this month’s most popular.
Yerzov looked up as a vehicle, painted in standard olive-drab military colours, turned off the main drag and headed down the muddy potholed road towards them. It was a UAZ-469, one of the old-fashioned but very sturdy little 4x4s that had been in use by the Russian military since the 1970s. Their reliability was legendary, as was their willingness to cross virtually any terrain – two factors that made them ideal for a country like Chechnya.
Trucks like this came and went all the time around these parts, so neither man was particularly concerned as it approached. Nonetheless, Yerzov gripped his AK-47 a little tighter as the mud-splattered vehicle slowed to a halt beside him.
The driver was a woman he realised as he approached the cab. And an attractive one at that he thought with an approving glance at her tanned skin and blonde hair. Clearly she hadn’t been in Chechnya for long, or she would have been just as pale and pasty as Yerzov and his comrades.
She was dressed in olive-drab military fatigues like himself, though he saw no rank, name or unit insignia anywhere on her uniform. A sure sign that she was FSB. But judging by the mud splattered across it and the various rips and tears in the camouflage pattern, she’d had a far more eventful day than him.
Apparently she wasn’t one of the pen-pushers he was assigned to guard. She was a field agent.
‘Identification?’ he said, a little more wary now. Being around FSB agents always put him on edge, as though he was being assessed or tested in some way.
‘Of course,’ she replied, handing over her ID documents.
His suspicions were confirmed immediately. Anya Sherkova, an operative with the FSB’s counter-terrorism bureau. Retreating to the gatehouse for a few moments, he swiped her card through the magnetic reader, which promptly verified she was who she claimed to be.
He hadn’t seen her before, but that was more the rule than the exception in a major intelligence hub like this. New personnel came and went so often that it sometimes felt like standing guard at the gates of the Kremlin.
Returning outside, he surveyed the jeep that now sat idling, exhausts venting steam that was quickly carried away by the chill wind. ‘Just you in this vehicle?’
She nodded.
‘And your business here?’
She looked him in the eye then. Her gaze was enough to send a shiver through him that had nothing to do with the cold weather. ‘My business is none of yours.’
‘As you say,’ he conceded, not wishing to press the point. ‘If you’d please shut down the engine, we’ll search your vehicle and process you through.’
The woman glanced away for a moment as if struggling to hold in check her rising temper. He heard a slow exhalation of breath as she calmed herself. ‘Corporal, I’ve been travelling for the best part of two days without sleep to get here. I didn’t do it so I could have a pair of grunts rifling through my underwear. Unless you want to make an issue of this, I suggest you open the gate. Now.’
On the other side of the checkpoint, Private Banin looked expectantly at him as if waiting to see what he would do. To back down now would be a humiliation in the presence of his subordinate. Much as Yerzov was tempted to do it, he knew he’d never live it down.
The corporal raised his chin, summoning up whatever sense of authority he could before speaking again. ‘I’m sorry, but I have my orders. All vehicles passing through here must be searched, regardless of rank. You’re aware of the increased security after the attack in America?’
‘Why do you think I’m here?’ she asked with a sharp look. ‘Believe me, I’m all the security you need.’
Yerzov resisted the growing urge to swallow, knowing it would be taken for what it was – a sign of weakness. ‘The head of FSB operations in Chechnya is here, along with most of his senior staff. I’m afraid their safety takes priority over all other concerns.’
Sherkova wasted no more time on him. Instead she turned away, snatched up a cellphone from the passenger seat and dialled a number. It didn’t take long to be answered.
‘Director Masalsky? I’m sorry to disturb you, sir,’ she said, her voice now smooth and polite. ‘It’s Sherkova. I’m afraid there’s been a problem at the gate. The corporal on the checkpoint won’t allow me through.’ She glanced at the name tag on Yerzov’s body armour. ‘A Corporal Yerzov. Yes, sir, I explained why I’m here. Perhaps he might listen to you?’
She turned her attention back to Yerzov and held the phone out to him. ‘The director would like to speak with you, Corporal. Now.’
Yerzov’s eyes opened wide in fear. She was on the phone to Director Masalsky himself, the very man whose life he was here to safeguard. Yerzov could almost imagine the FSB regional director glaring down at the checkpoint from his office on the second floor, making a mental note of the dumb prick who was holding up one of his trusted employees.
That was more than enough to destroy the last of his wavering resolve. This was the kind of confrontation that could end careers, and he really didn’t need the hassle. Not with only a month left on his tour.
‘There’s no need for that,’ he said, handing back her ID documents. ‘Everything seems to be in order here.’
The woman smiled. ‘Everything’s fine, Director. Sorry to have troubled you,’ she said, shutting down the call.
She gave Yerzov a faint nod as the barrier was lifted, then gunned the engine and drove off into the compound beyond.
‘Real ball-brea
ker, eh?’ Private Banin remarked, giving Yerzov a sidelong grin as they watched the truck turn left and vanish behind a building.
Yerzov could feel a blush rising to his cheeks despite the cold. ‘Fuck off.’
With a canvas kitbag slung over one shoulder, Anya made her way down the corridor at a steady, unhurried pace, barely pausing to acknowledge the FSB agents she passed along the way. She was a travel-weary operative fresh in from the field, in search of nothing but a hot shower and a cup of coffee. Most of them knew better than to mess with someone like that.
The key to situations like this, as she had learned long ago, was confidence. If you looked and acted as though you belonged somewhere, then few people would have the nerve to challenge you. She had known covert operatives to bluff their way through military checkpoints without even showing identification – it just took a touch of panache and no small measure of courage.
The accommodation block in which she now found herself stood adjacent to the FSB’s main office complex; the two buildings linked by a covered walkway to protect against inclement weather. The office complex was the nerve centre of their operation in Chechnya, home to planning and intelligence-gathering teams, conference rooms, secure communications suites and, of course, the senior executive officers.
The sensitive nature of its contents meant that access was restricted to those with high-level security clearance. It certainly wasn’t the kind of place where front-line grunts found themselves, meaning she was going to have to alter her appearance if she expected to get inside.
Up ahead she spotted a sign for the women’s restroom and made straight for it. As she’d hoped, it wasn’t in use.
Fishing in her bag, she attached a Closed for Maintenance sign to the door, then retreated inside and used a piece of wood to wedge it shut.
Alone and with space to work, Anya dumped her equipment bag on the tiled floor and knelt down to unzip it. The first item out was a neatly pressed grey suit, blouse and shoes, all sealed within a watertight plastic bag.
