Betrayal

by Will Jordan

  He was just bringing the weapon to bear when suddenly pain exploded from the back of his head and he fell to his knees, his arms and legs no longer obeying commands from his brain. Vaguely he was aware of the gun falling from his grip before he pitched forwards, landing hard on the rough floor with stars and flashes of light filling his vision.

  He could feel the warm wetness of blood on his scalp. Something had struck him at the base of the skull; most likely the butt of a gun. Whatever it was, it had been more than enough to knock him out of the fight.

  He felt a boot pressed against his shoulder, rolling him over on to his back. There was a blur of movement, and then he found himself staring up at the roof. He could do nothing but watch as a dark figure in body armour loomed over him, then frowned in confusion as Anya’s face swam into bleary focus.

  For a moment he couldn’t understand what he was seeing, couldn’t reconcile this woman’s face with the sudden attack on the safe house. However, his confusion vanished when she shook her head, visibly angry with him.

  ‘I told you what would happen if you stayed, Ryan,’ he heard her say over the ringing in his ears and the pounding of his own heart. Her tone carried a mixture of frustration, grief and regret.

  Behind her, Drake could just make out one of the assault team wrestling with Miranova, forcing his knee between her shoulder blades while he yanked her arms behind her back. She cried out in pain as the tendons in her shoulders strained to their limit.

  He saw a brief flicker of sadness in her eyes, as if she were trying to apologise for failing him. No doubt she too had fallen victim to Anya’s expertise in close combat.

  He tried to get up, tried to reach out to her, but Anya planted a boot firmly on his chest, preventing him from moving.

  Glancing away, she gave a single curt nod, then backed off as a second man moved in. Drake felt the coarse fabric of a sack being pulled over his head, and a moment later the world went dark.

  As Drake and Miranova were hauled to their feet and dragged away to the waiting vehicles outside, Anya turned her attention to the workstations that had been set up in the centre of the room. With a secure satellite uplink to the FSB’s central mainframe in Moscow, each terminal represented a doorway to one of the most secure networks in the world.

  And she had three of them right in front of her. The assault team had been under strict instructions to take no action that would put the computer terminals at risk. Their users were expendable, but the machines themselves were vital.

  Selecting the nearest one, she reached into her pocket, withdrew a USB memory stick and inserted it into one of several ports on the laptop’s side. The contents of the USB stick were designed to auto-run the moment they were plugged in, and sure enough a dialog box appeared, confirming that the program was being uploaded.

  Anya stood by in silence as she waited for the upload to complete. The noise of the assault would surely attract attention, and it wouldn’t take long for the FSB to arrive here in force. That was one battle she had no interest in fighting.

  Finally the laptop pinged and a dialog box appeared notifying her that full system access had been granted. Reaching for the cellphone in her pocket, she selected a text message she had composed prior to the attack: the agreed code phrase to signify that the Trojan had been uploaded and that the FSB’s network was now ripe for the taking.

  Our table is booked. See you soon.

  There was only one recipient – Atayev. Without hesitation she hit the send button, then turned her attention back to the terminal. She had fulfilled her end of the agreement, but she had one other task to complete here.

  She needed one small scrap of information from the vast repository now available to her. One little piece, and all of this would be worth it.

  Forcing calm into her mind, Anya inputted her search criteria and waited while the program went to work.

  Chapter 54

  Poklonnaya Hill, Moscow

  ‘Boris to Gregory. Respond,’ Kamarov growled into his radio. ‘I repeat, respond.’

  Gregory, the call sign for their base of operations at the disused foundry, had dropped off the radio net a couple of minutes earlier. They weren’t transmitting, and they apparently weren’t receiving either.

  ‘Boris to all units. Anyone have comms with Gregory?’

  ‘Nothing from Olga,’ the spotter team replied.

  ‘Anna has nothing.’

  Swearing under his breath, Kamarov removed his radio earpiece and reached for the cellphone in his jacket pocket, quickly dialling Miranova’s number. The seconds stretched out, with no response.

  That was enough to decide him.

  ‘All units, switch to alternate encryption now,’ he ordered, quickly switching channels on his own radio before barking out further orders. ‘The meeting was a diversion. Gregory may be compromised. Anna and Boris teams converge on that location. Go now!’

  Pain.

  Noise and jolting movement.

  The smell of petrol and old leather and cigarette smoke. The feeling of rough, cold metal against his cheek. The pressure of handcuffs biting into the flesh of his wrists.

  With his mind lingering on the edge of consciousness, Drake struggled to process any information beyond simple physical sensations. He opened his eyes with great effort and looked around, only to be rewarded with darkness.

  Of course. A hood had been placed over him back at the foundry. He could feel the fabric clinging to his face every time he inhaled, hot and clammy and smothering.

  Unable to see, he concentrated instead on his other senses, using touch and sound and smell to glean what he could about his surroundings.

  He was lying on his side in the cargo compartment of some kind of commercial vehicle. That much was obvious from the movement and sounds. The floor beneath him was bare metal, corrugated for extra grip, and interspersed with small holes for latching straps to stop cargo rolling around.

  They were taking him somewhere. That single revelation was enough to kindle a fire of hope within him. They could have killed him at the foundry, but instead they had opted to take him with them.

  They wanted him alive, for now at least.

  Another hard jolt, this one violent enough to slam his head on to the metal floor with painful force. Where was he? More importantly, where was he going?

  He raised his head up to look around, and was promptly rewarded with a kick to the shoulder that drove him down against the floor again.

  ‘Stay down,’ a gruff voice warned.

  Another man mumbled something under his breath in Russian, followed by an amused chuckle. So there were at least two of them in the van. He had no idea if Anya was amongst them.

  He heard the faint hiss of an indrawn breath, and then a moment later a spent cigarette was flicked from somewhere behind him to land on the metal floor, still smoking. The acrid smell stung his nostrils.

  With a final shuddering lurch, the van halted, the engine still ticking over.

  More urgent voices talking in Russian, and suddenly he felt strong hands grip his right arm, one at his elbow and the other at his wrist. Instinctively he began to struggle, trying to break out of the hold, but a sharp blow to the back of the head was enough to put paid to that idea.

  ‘Don’t move. You’ve been implanted with a tracking device,’ Anya hissed in his ear. So she was here after all. ‘You know what I have to do. Don’t move or I will sever an artery.’

  A moment later Drake felt something sharp pressed into his forearm, the pressure increasing until with a tear and a warm trickle of blood, the skin parted and the blade made entry.

  Strangely, it didn’t hurt as much as he’d expected. He was aware of the bleeding, but the sensation was more akin to a shaving cut. Perhaps his senses were still dulled by the injuries he’d taken earlier, he thought with a pang of hope.

  No such luck. The moment he felt the metal tweezers inserted into the newly opened wound, the pain hit him hard. He gritted his teeth, letting out an agon
ised groan as Anya pressed the tweezers in deeper, searching for the little tracking module nestled within the muscle tissue.

  At least she was familiar with procedures like this. He’d seen her perform one on herself during their escape from DC last year.

  That wasn’t much comfort to him as a fresh lightning bolt of pain shot down his arm. He couldn’t tell if she’d touched a nerve during her probing; all he knew was that he felt as if his entire arm had been submerged in boiling oil.

  Unable to restrain himself, he let out a cry of pain as the tweezers closed around the module and, with a single hard yank, pulled it free.

  ‘That’s good, Ryan,’ he heard Anya whisper, her voice barely registering as he lay there on the dirty floor of the van, breathing hard, blood trickling from the wound at his arm. ‘Just breathe. It is done.’

  Several orders were exchanged in Russian, then with a roar from the engine, the van lurched forwards once more.

  ‘Someone hit them hard and fast,’ Agent Pushkin concluded as he grimly surveyed the scene of carnage within the foundry. ‘They took out the two agents outside, breached the door and came in with stun grenades and automatic weapons. The technicians here didn’t stand a chance.’

  Kamarov said nothing as he picked his way through the spent shell casings and bloodstains, taking in the grisly results of the attack. It was easy to see why they had lost comms so suddenly. The three technicians in charge of the radio net were lying sprawled on the floor in pools of blood. Burn marks on the ground indicated the spots where flash-bang grenades had detonated.

  He almost felt a moment of respect for his adversary. Anya had left a trail for them to follow after the attack in Grozny, had lured them out here with the promise of an easy take-down so she could hit them where they were vulnerable. It was a bold and audacious move, and he had fallen for it.

  ‘What about Drake and Miranova?’ he asked, glancing up at the younger man.

  Pushkin’s expression darkened further. ‘We swept the building. There’s no sign.’

  Wasting no more time here, Kamarov turned away, reached for his cellphone and dialled a number in Moscow. Director Surovsky had seen to it that any calls from his phone were given highest priority.

  ‘Access code, please,’ came the crisp greeting of an FSB signals technician a few moments later.

  ‘This is Alexei Kamarov, access number 501129,’ he began, his tone clipped and efficient. ‘I need a priority track on a previous subject – Drake, Ryan.’

  Disguised as an antibiotic shot to prevent infection, a tiny RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) device no larger than a grain of rice had instead been implanted in the muscle layer in Drake’s arm without his knowledge. A team of technicians and analysts had been tracking Drake’s every move from the moment the device was implanted, and was still doing so even now.

  At that time Kamarov had seen it as a wise precaution in case Drake turned against them, but now he sensed a far more useful purpose.

  ‘Copy that, sir. The tracking module is active. He’s moving north-east, about eight miles from you. Too fast to be on foot – looks like he’s in a vehicle.’

  Just as he’d thought, Anya had risked exposing herself in order to snatch Drake from the FSB’s custody, but she hadn’t reckoned on the hidden device. They were now able to follow her movements just as easily as if she was broadcasting them herself.

  Kamarov clenched his fist. Anya had been one step ahead of them so far, but no longer. Now he had the edge.

  ‘Good. Keep us updated. We’re moving to intercept now.’

  Chapter 55

  Drake grimaced as the burlap sack was pulled off his head, allowing harsh electric light to flood his eyes, blinding in its intensity next to the claustrophobic darkness he’d endured for the last twenty minutes or so.

  He couldn’t move. He was seated on a cheap, uncomfortable wooden chair, his hands cuffed firmly behind his back and secured to the chair with either a rope or a plastic cable tie. Whatever it was, it was beyond his ability to break.

  His head throbbed as if his brain was steadily expanding beyond the limits of his skull; a testament to the single powerful blow that had dropped him like a sack of rice. It was hard to know how bad the injury was. Certainly he’d experienced the pain and nausea that went hand in hand with a concussion, and just looking into the light was enough to make him want to throw up. Still, at least his hearing was returning to normal. The high-pitched whine that had plagued him earlier had receded to a faint ringing.

  The congealed blood and throbbing pain in his right arm reminded him of the device recently removed by Anya with such brutal efficiency. He wondered if the woman had derived a grim sense of satisfaction from that act, perhaps feeling that she had repaid the favour after enduring a similar experience last year.

  One person who hadn’t been there, however, was Miranova. He would have heard or felt her in the back of the van with him, which meant either that she’d been hauled off in a second vehicle, or …

  He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw shut, refusing to let his thoughts stray down that path. Not now. Not until he knew more.

  Just focus on the things you can do something about, he told himself.

  He looked around, taking in as much of his surroundings as possible. It was hard to see with the light in his eyes, but he guessed he was seated in the centre of a room about 20 feet square. The walls were bare brick, the floor rough and uneven.

  The place was in serious disrepair, with mortar starting to come away from the bricks and patches of mould inching their way up the walls. The floor was covered with damp cardboard boxes, lumps of broken concrete, cigarette ends and other pieces of discarded rubbish. If there was a door, it had to be behind him because he could see no other access points.

  A table had been pushed up against the wall opposite, on which was resting the powerful work light that was the room’s only source of illumination. That told him pretty much everything he needed to know.

  Drake had been in enough interrogation rooms to recognise the set-up here. This was a basic job; the sort of thing Agency field teams would cobble together to do an impromptu ‘debriefing’ of a high-value target. But like most things in life, simplicity was the key.

  ‘Ryan Drake,’ a voice said from behind. A man’s voice, Russian accented, neither high- nor low-pitched. It was smooth and clear, suggesting he was neither a smoker nor a big drinker.

  Drake heard footsteps on the concrete floor, and glanced left as his captor walked into view, revealing himself for the first time.

  Drake had encountered all kinds of men in his profession, from terrorist leaders to covert operatives, informants, soldiers, insurgents, criminals of every kind, even rogue Agency personnel. He knew the sort of people who moved in such circles, and this man wasn’t one of them.

  Short, stoop-shouldered and overweight, he carried himself with the unprepossessing stature of one used to being ignored and overlooked. Wire-framed glasses sat on the bridge of his long nose, while his fleshy, amiable face was crowned by a receding patch of dark hair. He was dressed in a cheap, poorly fitting brown suit that somehow reminded Drake of a middle-aged taxi driver.

  All in all, he was about as far from Drake’s expectation of the ruthless leader of this terrorist group as it was possible to be. To think that this man had somehow bent Anya to his will was even more inconceivable. Yet here they were, Drake handcuffed to a chair and his enigmatic captor circling around in front of him.

  ‘My name is Buran Atayev,’ he said, leaning back so that his hands were braced on the edge of the table. His frame was partially blocking the work light, allowing Drake to see a little better. ‘I have been looking forward to meeting you.’

  ‘What do you want with me?’ Drake asked, still struggling to believe that this was the mastermind behind the deaths of two of the FSB’s top men.

  He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw a faint smile. ‘To thank you, of course. You were a worthy opponent – smart enou
gh to see the trail I left, and predictable enough to follow it here.’

  Drake had already suspected as much by now, but to have it confirmed in such an offhand manner only served to underline his own failure.

  ‘When you realised Kalyuyev was the next target, you chose to use him as bait rather than protecting him.’ He raised a finger and wagged it from side to side as if to chide Drake for his error. ‘A risky strategy.’

  ‘He’s safe,’ Drake reminded him.

  Again that flicker of a smile. ‘For now. You, however, are not.’

  Drake could see the way this conversation was heading, and knew he had to do something now if he didn’t want to end up like Demochev and Masalsky. He had to give the man a reason not to kill him.

  ‘I know why you’re doing this.’

  That seemed to intrigue Atayev. ‘Do you?’

  ‘You said yourself that I’d made the connection between your targets. It’s Beslan. Demochev, Masalsky and Kalyuyev – all three men were involved that day. They all fucked up, they all failed to stop it from happening. That’s what they’re guilty of, isn’t it?’

  At this, Atayev shook his head, letting out a chuckle of grim amusement. ‘Like I said, you are smart enough to see the obvious, but the deeper meaning is lost on you. None of those men “fucked up” as you put it. They all played their parts to perfection.’

  Drake frowned, failing to understand. ‘What do you mean?’

  Atayev settled down on the edge of the table, making himself a little more comfortable. ‘Let me tell you a story, Mr Drake,’ he said with the exaggerated enthusiasm of a teacher addressing a reluctant classroom. ‘It begins twenty years ago, with an ambitious young KGB agent who made a name for himself during the Afghan War. He was, as you would put it, a firefighter – a man sent where the need was greatest, to deal with threats that others could not. His ambition was matched only by his complete disregard for human life, and he soon became one of the most feared KGB operatives in the country. But time was against him, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union he found himself cast adrift. Just another relic of the Cold War in a world that no longer needed him.’