by Will Jordan
McKnight pointed to a blasted-out section of metal plating around the rotor shaft. ‘Check this out. The explosion travelled down through the shaft and ruptured the bulkhead here. We think one of the passengers was in front of the bulkhead when it gave way. There were bits of him all over the cabin.’
The bodies, or what was left of them, had of course been removed for repatriation back to the States, but for a moment Drake fancied he could smell something beneath the burned plastic and charred metal – the sickening stench of scorched human flesh.
McKnight pointed to a couple of areas where the deck had warped and deformed from the extreme heat. ‘Look. It was hot enough to soften the airframe.’
‘So the fuel tanks ruptured at some point after the chopper crash-landed,’ Drake reasoned. ‘It couldn’t have happened too quickly, otherwise they never would have had time to kidnap Mitchell.’
‘It wasn’t aviation fuel that did this,’ McKnight said, deep in thought as she looked around. ‘The burning is too localised. You can see it.’ She pointed to the areas of warped decking. ‘There were two or three ignition points.’
Struck by an idea, she hurried back outside to the metal briefcase that served as her portable forensics lab. Selecting a chemical swab held inside a clear plastic tube, she ducked back inside the chopper, knelt down beside one of the areas of melted decking and carefully drew the swab across it.
Replacing it in the tube, she watched it intently. It took only a few moments for the swab to turn bright purple.
‘Interesting,’ she said quietly.
Drake leaned closer, intrigued by what she’d found. ‘Care to explain?’
Her vivid hazel eyes focused on him. ‘Barium nitrate. The cabin’s coated with it.’
‘Okay,’ he agreed, sounding vague. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Barium nitrate is one of the key elements of incendiary grenades. Combine it with thermite and it produces a hotter flame that burns longer and has a lower ignition point. It’s our standard anti-materiel weapon.’
Incendiary grenades had been in use by most armies since the Second World War. They had even been employed to disable German coastal artillery during the Normandy landings, their intense heat fusing the breech mechanism into a solid mass of metal.
But why would insurgents have used it? Thermite grenades were specialised pieces of equipment, and not easy to come by. Anyway, destroying an aircraft that had already been rendered immobile was nonsensical – it was no threat. It would have made more sense to strip it of valuable equipment and weapons.
The answer was as obvious as it was baffling. ‘They were trying to cover their tracks,’ he said. ‘They didn’t want us to know what they were doing.’
Glancing around, he spotted something on the forward bulkhead. He had seen it not long after entering, but hadn’t consciously acknowledged it amidst the chaos of the chopper wreck. Only now did he examine it more closely.
It was a small circular hole about half an inch in diameter. Reaching out, he touched it gently with his gloved hand. The metal had deformed inwards, giving way beneath the impact of a high-speed projectile.
‘Small arms fire,’ he said. ‘They were shooting in here.’
McKnight was by his side within moments, leaning forward to examine the damage. Her arm brushed against his, and instinctively he moved aside to allow her better access. His body remembered the brief contact though.
‘Looks like a 7.62mm round to me,’ she said after running her finger around it. ‘Fired from a high angle judging by the entry point.’
Drake’s mind assembled the facts and reached its inevitable conclusion. ‘An execution. One round, right between the eyes. Which means at least some of the crew survived the crash, but our friends executed them.’
‘And yet they kept Mitchell alive,’ she added. ‘That makes no sense. More hostages would have meant more leverage.’
Drake shook his head. Too many aspects of this attack weren’t adding up, and his instincts told him there was more going on here than he was seeing.
‘There’s more to this than just a random attack,’ he decided. ‘If the people who did this had access to guided missiles, they could have taken out one of the military transports coming in to land at Bagram. Instead they chose this specific chopper. They shot it down, killed everyone on board and took one man hostage. One man.’ He glanced up at his female companion. ‘They knew Mitchell was aboard. They did this all to get their hands on him.’
She stared back at him, both puzzled and intrigued. ‘Why? What’s so valuable about Mitchell?’
‘Good question. I’d say it’s time we found out.’
Rising up from the deck, Drake ducked out of the chopper, relieved to be away from that charred, claustrophobic space where men had died.
Keegan, who had been surveying the area around the crash site, came jogging over as they emerged. ‘I swept the area for tracks.’ He shook his head, confirming what they already suspected. ‘Between the army search-and-rescue team, the forensics guys and our buddies from Horizon, there must be close to fifty different trails. It’s a dead end – pardon the choice of words.’ He gestured to the chopper wreck. ‘Find anything?’
‘Nothing good,’ Drake replied, peeling off the filthy surgical gloves. ‘This wasn’t some random attack. Mitchell was their target. They wanted him, and him alone.’
‘Why?’
‘Good question. But we won’t find the answer here. I’m going back to Bagram, check in on Frost. Maybe she can tell us more.’
‘I want to stay here and look around a little more,’ McKnight decided.
Drake glanced at her. ‘For what?’
‘Well, it’s certainly not for the charming company,’ she assured him, nodding towards the Horizon team. ‘I want to find the launch site. It might give me a better idea of what kind of missile they used.’ She pointed to a low ridge about 400 yards away, covered with tangled scrub and wind-scoured boulders. ‘That’s where I would have been. Plenty of cover, and right on the chopper’s flight line.’
Drake paused, considering her suggestion. It was a good idea, but he felt apprehensive about leaving her out here.
Vermaak might have been less than cooperative, but he’d been right about one thing – this was a dangerous neck of the woods, and they were a long way from support if they got caught in an ambush.
Stop this, he thought, giving himself a mental slap. McKnight was quite capable of looking after herself, and she had two heavy support vehicles and at least half a dozen armed men to watch her back.
‘Fine,’ he agreed at last. ‘Do what you have to, but don’t take any chances.’
‘I’ll stay and watch your back,’ Keegan added. ‘If the launch site isn’t too messed up, I might even find a trail or two.’
Drake wasn’t about to argue. Keegan was a good man to have around in a tight situation, and might well prove useful out here.
‘Mind if I borrow your jeep?’ Drake asked, feeling self-conscious about having to ask McKnight for a ride.
‘Only if you hand it back the way you found it.’ McKnight tossed him the keys. ‘We’ll hitch a ride back with the Horizon team when they pull out.’
‘Nice one. I’ll meet you back at Bagram.’ With that, he turned and hurried towards the Explorer. ‘Call in if you find anything.’
‘Okay, Ryan.’
‘If there are any question marks on safety, you pull out,’ he called back over his shoulder. ‘Understood?’
‘Would you go, already?’ she said impatiently.
Drake could feel his face colouring from more than just the heat.
‘You’re on my team which makes you my responsibility. You die, I have to fill out the paperwork,’ he said, trying to sound nonchalant. He unlocked the big 4x4 and pulled the door open. ‘And I hate paperwork.’
With that, he pulled himself up into the driver’s seat and cranked it back to fit his height. As he did so, he couldn’t help looking at his reflection in the m
irror.
‘Arsehole,’ he mumbled.
Throwing it into gear, he stamped on the accelerator a little too hard, prompting the big vehicle to lurch forward, kicking up dust and stones.
Chapter 9
‘What do you have to report?’ Kourash asked, holding the encrypted cellphone tight against his ear as he strode down the crowded city street, walking with a slight limp that he had laboriously taught himself to disguise over the years.
Another thing he had to thank Ryan Drake for.
His fake beard, webbing and combat fatigues were gone now, replaced by a slightly worn grey business suit and open shirt that hung loose on his spare frame.
The days of hiding in mountain caves where US reconnaissance drones could track them down were long gone. True concealment came from anonymity, and here he was about as anonymous as it was possible to be.
With his greying hair cut short and neat, his face clean-shaven and his wallet filled with fake identity papers, he looked little different from the thousands of other men out walking the streets of central Kabul. Just some businessman on his way to a meeting or his favourite restaurant. Nothing worth remembering.
The only thing that marked him out as different was his eyes. Or rather, what lay behind them. They were the eyes of a man who had seen death and suffering, who had caused both by his own hand, who had discarded concepts like mercy and compassion long ago.
Walking the streets of Kabul was an exercise in self-control for him. Always he had to fight the anger and contempt that welled up inside him. These people wandering past him, so oblivious to his true nature, were the same people who had blindly allowed the Taliban to take over the country. They were the same people who allowed the Americans to rule over them, like a flock of mindless sheep.
The Americans who had used men like Kourash to fight their dirty war against the Soviets and then turned their back when the fighting was done.
He hated what Afghanistan had become. And he hated the weak and selfish men who had allowed it to happen.
‘Drake just left the site, heading back towards Bagram,’ reported Mehrak, the spotter that Kourash had stationed to observe the activity at the Black Hawk crash site. He was an expert at scouting and concealment, and Kourash had every faith in his ability to stay hidden while he went about his task.
‘What about the others?’ Kourash asked. There had been two other people in that jeep alongside Drake.
‘The rest of his team are still here, surveying the area. They seem to be looking for something.’
That gave him pause for thought. These people were trained investigators who were accustomed to looking beyond the obvious. If they were to find something they shouldn’t, it could be damaging; not just for Kourash but also for the man he worked with.
The man to whom he owed his freedom, and indeed his life.
‘They can’t be allowed to find anything,’ Kourash interrupted, by now acutely aware of how delicate his situation was. He had taken a calculated risk to make all of this happen; a risk which he had not informed his associates of.
His statement was met by a moment of silence. ‘What are your orders?’
Kourash hesitated, weighing up his decision. Drake was the only one he wanted to see dead; he had no particular enmity for those who worked with him. Still, if they were a threat then they had to be eliminated.
And losing one’s comrades was a heavy burden for a man to bear, he knew.
‘Take them out.’
For Mehrak, that was all he needed to hear. ‘It will be done.’
With that, the line went dead.
After a bumpy cross-country drive, Drake soon picked up the road that McKnight had turned off to reach the crash site. Potholed and winding it might have been, but it was a road and that was good enough for him.
With her earlier advice about IEDs still fresh in his mind, he turned right at the next junction, taking a different route from the outward leg.
He was in uncharted territory now, with only the vehicle’s dash-mounted GPS to guide him back to Bagram. Around him lay an open landscape of dusty scrubland interspersed with mud-walled farm compounds, fields and irrigation ditches. This was the rural, backwater world of Afghanistan, where the concept of mechanised farming was as far removed from daily life as shopping malls and Internet access.
Still, even here the reminders of wars past and present were impossible to escape. Drake slowed a little as he passed the rusting hulks of two ancient heavy battle tanks, their gun barrels still elevated as if to engage a long-forgotten enemy.
They were Soviet T-55s. Relics of another time and another war, now serving as a makeshift climbing frame for a dozen or so local kids. Pausing in their game, they stood in silence, staring at the Explorer as it rumbled past.
Drake watched the ancient war machines in his rear-view mirror as they faded away into the distance; silent reminders of a forgotten conflict from another age. But he caught himself wondering if future generations driving this road would pass the rusting hulls of M1 Abrams tanks.
With that cheerful thought fresh in his mind, he dug out his cellphone and put a call in to Frost. As usual, her greeting was direct and to the point. ‘Yeah?’
‘It’s me. I just left the crash site.’
‘Great. I hope you’ve been having fun out there while I’ve been stuck in this shit stain of an office.’
Frost might have been a technician by trade, but she was a field operative through and through. She hated being left out of things.
‘Well, you were right about one thing. Mitchell was deliberately targeted,’ Drake said, hoping his admission would brighten her outlook. ‘Kourash was willing to go to a lot of effort to get his hands on him, and I need to know why. Tell me you’ve got something.’
Reaching into the centre console, he pulled out a bottle of water and popped the lid. Already he was parched and he’d only been outside a matter of minutes.
‘Well, I could but I’d be lying,’ she admitted. ‘I turned over his office. Nothing. His filing cabinets were empty – damn things have probably never been used.’
Drake could feel his heart sinking as he gulped down some water. ‘Anything on his computer?’
‘Nothing so far. I’ll need more time to trawl through the drive, but according to his email history he sends off a progress report to Langley once a week. It seems he was setting up a bunch of safe houses across the country – the kind of places where they could stage operations or meet with informants. The rest of it is just internal admin stuff, nothing important. In fact, there’s not much email traffic at all. If I didn’t know better – and I don’t – I’d say he’s been slacking off lately.’
He frowned, taking another mouthful. ‘So we’ve got an office that’s hardly used, and a computer he only does the bare minimum of work on. His job was nothing special, and yet Kourash was willing to shoot down a chopper to get to him. What does that tell you, Keira?’
It didn’t take her long to put the pieces together. ‘Mitchell was working on something else. Something that made him a threat.’
‘The question is, what?’
The GPS was telling him to take a left. Braking sharply, he turned onto another nondescript road that wound its way through the dusty landscape.
‘Stay on it,’ he instructed. ‘I’m on my way back now. Drake out.’
Swerving to avoid a deep pothole that looked as if it would make mincemeat out of his tyres, Drake glanced at his watch. It was 11:57. Halfway through their first day, and he had far more questions than answers.
‘If I’m right, it should be around here somewhere,’ McKnight said as she picked her way carefully through the dry bushes and loose rocks scattered across the hillside. Her eyes were glued to the ground, searching for any sign of recent human activity.
It was just past noon and scorching hot, the dry dusty air stinging her lungs with each breath. A fine sheen of sweat coated her brow. She wiped it away with her forearm, staying focused on her task. She
had served two tours with the army in Iraq, plus six months in and around Afghanistan with the Agency. She knew all about working in hot, uncomfortable conditions.
Only when she saw movement in her peripheral vision did she stop to glance around. One of their Horizon minders was moving along the ridge to take up a lookout position further ahead. He was armed with a Barrett M107 sniper rifle. Known as the ‘light fifty’, it was a massive .50-calibre weapon originally designed for taking out armoured vehicles.
‘Please tell your man to stay back,’ she called out, directing her request to Vermaak. The South African was perched on a low sloping boulder a short distance away, smoking a cigarette. Behind him sat the imposing bulk of one of the armoured jeeps, the long muzzle of its automatic cannon tracking back and forth.
Vermaak’s head swung slowly in her direction, his eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses. For several seconds he said nothing, as if deciding whether she was worthy of his time.
‘He’s there for your protection,’ he replied at last.
‘He’s also contaminating the site. If he walks all across this ridge, I’ll have no idea if I’ve found his footprints or someone else’s. Understand?’
Another long pause. She saw a muscle in his jaw clench, saw his powerful shoulders tighten. He held the cigarette to his lips and took another draw, long and thoughtful.
The man with the Barrett .50-calibre had stopped in his tracks and was looking expectantly towards his commander, awaiting orders.
‘All right. Come back to the truck, Hale,’ Vermaak ordered, beckoning him to return. His voice was practically dripping with disgust. ‘Leave the lady to do her job.’
‘Thank you,’ McKnight said, hoping to pacify him.
Vermaak didn’t bother to look at her when he replied. ‘Just so you know, Ms McKnight, we’re totally exposed out here. Every second we stay increases the danger to my men, and to you. Understand?’
