by Will Jordan
The plane came down hard, the impact jarring them through their seats despite the landing gear’s hydraulic dampers. The pilot applied full brakes a moment later, the aircraft shuddering and bumping its way across the rough tarmac before slowing to a more manageable speed.
After sixteen hours of flying, they were at last back on solid ground.
Drake turned sideways to glance at Frost, vaguely aware that he’d been holding his breath. ‘Look on the bright side. We’re still alive.’
She gave him a faint smile. ‘The night is young.’
Chapter 5
The Globemaster bumped to a halt, and a few moments later the engines began to cycle down. Walcott, grinning like a lunatic – which he quite possibly was – unstrapped himself and strode over to a control box to activate the rear cargo ramp.
‘Welcome to paradise.’
With a harsh buzz and a faint hydraulic hiss, the rear ramp opened up like the jaws of some immense beast, allowing them to finally glimpse the world outside.
Their first impression was of light; blindingly intense sunlight. Next to the dingy interior of the plane, looking at the world beyond the cargo doors was like staring into a camera flash, colours and details burned and bleached away. All they could see was cracked grey concrete at the foot of the ramp and further away, the hazy shapes of other aircraft in the distance.
Their second impression was of burning, stifling heat. The very air around them was scorching hot. Dry gritty sand, kicked up by the wind, blew unobstructed across the concrete runway and into the open cargo bay.
‘Jesus,’ Frost gasped, daunted by what she was seeing and feeling.
‘Come on, let’s go,’ Drake said, shouldering his backpack. Every second they wasted here was a second lost for Mitchell.
As he descended the ramp, he couldn’t help but remember the first time he’d stepped off a similar plane as a young SAS trooper, eager to be in the action after months of training and preparation. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
Sweat droplets began to form on their skin within moments as they moved away from the shadow of the aircraft, each donning sunglasses, and surveyed their surroundings.
Bagram Air Base was a serious facility, home not only to the entire 82nd Airborne Division and its support elements, but also to Marine and Air Force companies, and even contingents of the British and German armies. The base also served as the headquarters of ISAF’s Regional Command East, making it a vital element of the Coalition’s presence in the country.
It had been laid down by the Soviets back in the 1980s, and had been a fiercely contested prize in the bitter civil war following their withdrawal. Now it had new owners and was a hive of activity once more. With cavernous hangars, refuelling depots, administrative buildings and workshops laid out all along the aircraft dispersal area, Bagram was a veritable city in its own right.
Glancing up at the distinctive thump of rotor blades, the small group of weary travellers watched as a Chinook came in to land, nose flaring upward to slow its forward momentum before touching down a few hundred yards away.
Frost and Keegan were still taking it all in when Drake spotted a vehicle heading their way – a big sleek Ford Explorer with darkened windows, its once black and gleaming paintwork faded by wind-blown sand and dust.
The vehicle came to a halt in a small cloud of dust, its massive 4.6-litre V8 engine rumbling away. The sun glinting off the windshield made it hard to see the driver or even to tell how many were aboard, but Drake didn’t think there were many bodies inside judging by the way the vehicle was riding on its axles.
Shutting down the engine, the driver threw the door open and stepped out.
He barely recognised Samantha McKnight from her file photo. Her once pale skin had darkened, her hair lightened by constant exposure to the harsh sunlight. The slightly girlish face had changed as well; ageing, maturing, hardening. Her lean physique only added to the impression that Afghanistan had toughened her up.
Like them, she was wearing aviator sunglasses, though she removed them to survey the small group standing before her.
‘I’m looking for Ryan Drake.’
She made it seem like a question, but Drake felt her gaze linger on him a little longer than the others. She knew who he was.
‘You’ve found him,’ he confirmed. ‘You’re Samantha McKnight, I assume.’
She nodded, offering a smile that was both friendly and disarming, and only then did he see a hint of the woman in that photograph. Smiling came easily to her, it seemed.
‘And you’re late,’ she added, shaking his hand. Her grip was firm, her hand warm.
‘We were delayed at Andrews.’ They had been due to arrive here four hours ago, but slow loading of their plane had lost them their departure slot and forced an unwelcome delay. ‘Anyway, it’s good to meet you, Specialist McKnight.’
‘Call me Sam. If we’re going to be working together out here, I’d prefer not to have to address everyone by their job titles.’
Drake wasn’t about to argue with that. He’d never been one for formalities.
‘Fair enough, Sam.’ He gestured to his companions. ‘This is my team. Keira Frost and John Keegan.’
Shepherd teams weren’t spies, so anonymity amongst their own people wasn’t necessary. Anyway, McKnight had already been briefed on the team’s arrival. She knew who they were, and what they had come to do.
‘Good to meet you all. Now I guess you’ll want to get out of this heat,’ she remarked, her hazel eyes flashing with a hint of humour. She could see the sweat beading on their foreheads already. ‘You want to grab your gear and follow me?’
With that, she turned on her heel and started walking towards the Explorer.
Frost hurried to catch up with her. ‘Is it always this goddamn hot?’
‘Of course not,’ McKnight replied over her shoulder. ‘You should have been here last month. We were averaging ninety degrees in the shade then. Takes a few weeks to get acclimatised, then you’re good to go. You’ll want to drink plenty of water until then, otherwise you’ll start to dehydrate after a couple of hours. But don’t let the daytime heat fool you – it can get cold as hell at night.’
Drake said nothing to this. He’d experienced his share of Afghan nights up in the mountains, and hadn’t come away with pleasant memories.
‘By the way, the local time is 09:20,’ McKnight added as she pulled open the Explorer’s trunk. ‘Time difference is a bitch, huh?’
‘Roger that,’ Keegan said, grinning.
After dumping their gear in the back, McKnight fired up the engine once more and eased them away. There was a strict speed limit in the aircraft dispersal areas that even the Agency wasn’t allowed to break.
They hadn’t gone far before they encountered a security checkpoint at the perimeter of the airfield. A quick flash of McKnight’s ID card, along with an official document signed by the office of Bagram’s commanding officer, was enough to get them through.
Leaning back in her seat with the air conditioners blasting cold air in her face, McKnight drove with the casual ease born from familiarity through the bustling military base.
Around them, soldiers, engineers, civilian contractors and technicians hurried back and forth, all with places to go and things to do. The roads were busy with vehicles of all kinds, from big M35 military cargo trucks down to Chevrolet Tahoes and other civilian 4x4s.
Beyond the airfield’s maintenance facilities and admin buildings lay a vast swathe of wooden huts the size of a small town. Known as B-huts, they served as accommodation for more than 7,000 military and civilian personnel living and working on base.
Their guide pointed to a large steel-and-concrete air-raid shelter half buried in the ground as they cruised past. A layer of dirt had been piled on top to add to the protection. ‘Keep those shelters in mind. If the air-raid warnings go off, you drop whatever you’re doing and double-time it to the nearest one. No exceptions.’
That didn’t inspire confide
nce. ‘What’s the security situation here?’ Keegan asked, echoing all their thoughts.
‘They hit us with rockets once or twice a month, usually at night.’ She pointed to the nearby mountains. ‘That’s where most of them come from – only takes a couple of minutes to set up, fire their birds and bug out before we can target them. The Taliban have started bribing the locals to launch rockets and mortars on their behalf. Most of them are so dirt poor they’ll do anything to make a few bucks.’
‘What about outside the base?’ Frost chipped in.
‘Not so good,’ she admitted. ‘We’ve established green zones around strategic towns and along most of the major highways, but anything outside that is fair game. Taliban, al-Qaeda, Iranians, Uzbeks, anti-Coalition militias – you name it. They cross over from Pakistan, set up an ambush and plant trip mines in ditches and culverts. Our guys get blasted apart when they try to take cover. Then they bounce back across the border before we can nail them.’
Frost raised an eyebrow. ‘Sounds like the goddamn Wild West.’
‘You get used to it.’ She turned to Drake, a flicker of amusement in her eyes. ‘So what’s the plan, sheriff?’
‘Is Mitchell’s office near here?’
‘He’d have been based at the Agency’s HQ,’ she judged, pointing off to the right. ‘It’s about half a klick that way. It looks like a fortress – you can’t miss it.’
‘Good.’ Drake twisted around in his seat to speak to Frost. ‘Keira, double-time it over there. I want you to find Mitchell’s office and go through everything he was working on. Computer files, documents, Post-it notes … whatever.’
‘What am I looking for?’
‘Anything out of the ordinary,’ Drake replied. ‘Any sign that he was involved in something he shouldn’t have been.’
It was a pretty broad remit, but in situations like this he trusted her judgement implicitly. Frost was nothing if not thorough in her work.
The young woman made a face. Such a task was likely to be both difficult and laborious, and certainly wasn’t something she relished after a sixteen-hour flight.
Drake, however, was in no mood to discuss it. ‘No arguments. Just get it done,’ he said, cutting her off before she could protest. ‘Oh, and find us somewhere to work from. An office or a briefing room. I don’t care.’
‘Anything else? Want a masseuse on standby?’
Drake gave her the thousand-yard stare.
‘Okay, okay. I’ll get it done,’ she conceded unhappily, pulling her door open. ‘What about you? Where the hell are you going?’
‘The crash site.’ There was no question in his mind. He wanted to understand what had happened out there. ‘I want to see it for myself.’
Rounding the vehicle, Frost retrieved her bag from the back. ‘Sure. Leave me with the shitty job.’
‘That’s what you get paid for,’ he reminded her. ‘Call us if you find anything.’
Giving him the finger, the young woman turned and strode off down the road.
‘She’s … colourful,’ McKnight remarked.
‘You have no idea,’ Drake assured her, checking his watch. They still had most of the day ahead of them, and he intended to use it. ‘We need to get to that crash site now.’
She flashed a grin and threw the big 4x4 into gear. ‘I was hoping you’d say that.’
Chapter 6
Drake fired up his cellphone as soon as they were clear of the airfield. He was greeted by two messages: one from Etisalat Communications welcoming him to Afghanistan, and another from Breckenridge back at Langley advising him to check in as soon as he’d landed.
One advantage of working with the Agency was that they were actually allowed their own cellphones out here. Regular soldiers had to leave them at their embarkation area back home. Of course, the door swung both ways. The obvious downside to always being in touch with one’s superiors was dealing with constant requests for updates and information.
Steeling himself, Drake dialled Breckenridge’s number. Afghanistan was about nine and a half hours ahead of Langley, making it just after midnight on that side of the world.
It rang only once before it was answered. The man must have been hovering over the damn thing. Drake was beginning to wonder if he ever slept.
‘Talk to me, Drake,’ was the curt greeting.
Drake’s reply was equally brief. ‘We’re on the ground. We’re en route to the crash site now.’
‘Good. Keep me updated. I want a written summary of your findings by the end of the day.’
Drake frowned. ‘I’ll update you when I can.’
It wasn’t as if he was going to be sitting in an air-conditioned office while he was out here. Finding Mitchell was the priority. Writing up reports could come later.
‘No, you’ll update me when I say so,’ Breckenridge corrected him. ‘I have to report in just like you, and I can’t do that if I’m in the dark. Is this in any way unclear?’
Drake’s grip on the phone tightened. ‘No, George. As always you’ve made yourself very clear.’
His tone was lost on the older man. ‘Good. I’ll expect to hear from you after you’ve surveyed the crash site. Out.’
Shutting down the phone, Drake shook his head. ‘Prick.’
‘Christ, and I thought Dietrich was hard to work with,’ Keegan remarked. ‘This guy makes being an asshole a full-time job.’
Dietrich had been a specialist drafted into their team for the ill-fated prison break operation last year. Though he had ultimately proven his worth in the tumultuous events that followed, he had been a nightmare for Drake during the planning stage, clashing constantly with him over important decisions.
Still, Drake would rather have dealt with a dozen Dietrichs over one Breckenridge at that moment.
‘Well, he’s halfway around the planet,’ he reasoned. ‘Be grateful for that.’
‘Not far enough for me, buddy. I can’t believe Franklin picked a dumb REMF like him to run the Shepherd teams. I guess shit rolls downhill, huh?’
‘Dan’s not a bad guy.’
‘He makes deals with bad people,’ Keegan reminded him. ‘Same thing in my book.’
At this, McKnight frowned and glanced over at Drake. ‘Something I should know about?’
‘Long story with a not particularly happy ending,’ he evaded.
This prompted an amused smile. ‘We’ve all been there.’
McKnight turned off the main road shortly after clearing the base’s outer security perimeter, and wasted no time putting her foot down. Soon they were careening at breakneck speed down a dusty, cracked, barely paved road that snaked through the network of small villages clustered around Bagram.
The woman drove like a lunatic, churning through the gears, keeping the engine revs high and flooring it around corners, leaving clouds of dust and burned rubber in their wake.
Leaning forward, Keegan tapped her on the shoulder.
‘You got yourself a death wish, Sam?’ he asked, having to brace himself against the seat as they bounced through a pothole. The suspension groaned under the strain.
‘Standard precaution,’ McKnight called over her shoulder. ‘We move fast so the Taliban don’t have time to set up IEDs on the road ahead.’
IED stood for Improvised Explosive Device – basically anything the insurgents could slap together that would go boom and put chunks of metal in Coalition soldiers. They could be anything from coffee cans filled with plastic explosive and nuts and bolts, to 105mm artillery shells buried underground.
‘That’s them, over there,’ she added, nodding casually towards a group of men standing on the second-floor balcony of a dilapidated-looking house off to their left, perhaps 50 yards distant. There were three or four of them, all sporting long beards and civilian clothes, just standing there watching the vehicle speed by.
‘That’s who?’
‘The Taliban,’ McKnight explained, perfectly nonchalant.
‘You’re fucking kidding me.’
&
nbsp; She shrugged. ‘They’re spotters, reporting our movements. One of their buddies in the back is probably calling his superiors right now. We know they’re Taliban, and they know that we know, but they also know we won’t detain them without evidence,’ she said, giving Drake a significant look. ‘So, we watch them, and they watch us, and most of the time that’s all that happens. It’s just the way things are out here.’
As if on cue, they passed a couple of burned-out vehicles abandoned by the side of the road, their blackened chassis so twisted and warped by the extreme heat that it was impossible to tell what they had once been.
Keegan leaned back in his seat and stared at them, saying nothing.
Unknown to the three occupants of the Explorer, another pair of eyes was watching them through a high-powered telescopic lens. The single observer was protected from the intense sun, and any aircraft that might be circling overhead, by camouflage netting strung over the low depression in which he was crouched. Flies buzzed around him, and the oppressive heat caused droplets of sweat to form at his brow, but he didn’t care. He was used to such things.
Situated on a low hill about half a mile north of the road, the man who had become known as Kourash Anwari watched as the big vehicle bounced and jolted across the uneven surface. Even through the haze of dust, he was able to make out the driver and passengers.
Two men and a woman, all dressed in civilian clothes. He didn’t recognise the other two, but the man in the passenger seat up front was very familiar to him. His was a face that Kourash would never forget as long as he lived. After all, how could one forget the man who had cost him everything he’d ever cared about?
Ryan Drake.
It had taken no small amount of time and effort to learn what had become of the man who ruined his life, who took everything from him in a single day. But patience was a virtue he had learned a long time ago.
Half a world had separated the two men until yesterday. And now here they were, barely 300 yards apart. Drake had arrived just as Kourash had known he would, ignorant of the work and planning and calculations that had brought him here.
