Sacrifice

by Will Jordan

  The knowledge had, fortunately, stayed with her over the years.

  ‘You have a choice now,’ she explained, speaking slowly and patiently.

  Some interrogators chose to scream and yell at their subjects, but not her. She was always cold, logical, controlled. As she had learned a long time ago, that was far more frightening.

  ‘I am going to ask you questions, and every time you refuse to answer, I will hurt you. The longer you make me wait, the more I will make it hurt. If you lie to me, I will know, and I will treat it as refusal to answer. It is that simple.’ She leaned in a little closer. ‘Now, why did you try to attack me?’

  He was weighing up his chances of holding out against her. She could see it in his eyes – the calculation, the indecision, the fear. She stared right back at him, unafraid, a soldier without conscience or remorse.

  ‘I was ordered to do it,’ he said at last, practically spitting the words out.

  ‘Ordered by who?’

  ‘By Kourash.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He … wanted to know who you were. He saw you meet with the CIA man. He ordered us to … bring you in.’

  That revelation did nothing to improve her mood. She had thought her meeting with Drake had been secure. Now she knew otherwise. Drake was a marked man, not only by the Agency but apparently also by Kourash.

  She was beginning to question her wisdom in making contact with him again. Had she left him alone, she might have remained safe in anonymity. But now Kourash knew of her existence.

  She had been a potential threat already. But after killing two of his men, she had undoubtedly become an enemy.

  ‘Why is Kourash interested in this man?’

  He glared at her, his eyes burning like coals. ‘He will find you,’ he hissed. ‘He will find you just like he finds everyone. Any harm you do to me, he will revisit on you ten times over. You will beg for death before he is finished.’

  The empty threats of a cornered man, she knew. They were of no concern to her. Still, they warranted a response.

  His left hand was resting on the steel deck. Taking aim, she struck a quick, sharp blow with the hammer. There was a crunch as the first knuckle of his middle finger shattered under the impact of several pounds of unyielding steel.

  ‘Answer my question,’ she said when his cries of pain had died down.

  He must have bitten his tongue when she struck him. Spitting bloody phlegm on the floor, he at last responded. ‘He visited the crash site. Kourash knew he had been sent to … find the men who shot down the helicopter. He was a threat to us.’

  That made sense, she supposed. It was logical that this Kourash, whoever he was, would keep tabs on potential threats.

  ‘And why did you shoot down that helicopter?’ she asked. That was what Drake had been sent here to find out, after all.

  He shook his head. ‘That is not my concern. We are told only what we need to know.’

  Again, she detected no hint of deception in him. He was a foot soldier, there to act as hired muscle. There was no sense in giving men like him information that could compromise an overall operation.

  Instead she decided to try a different approach. Reaching into her pocket, Anya held up the crypto phone. ‘This is your cellphone. What is the access code?’

  ‘Fuck you, whore.’ That one was delivered in English.

  If he had been hoping to stir her to anger, he was mistaken. She had a far more effective retort in mind. Raising the hammer again, she calmly took aim at his other knee.

  ‘Wait!’

  She paused, keeping the hammer ready, and glanced up at his face. There was a look of desperation in his eyes now. He was breathing hard between clenched teeth, pain threatening to overwhelm him. It seemed he was at the limits of his tolerance.

  Everyone had a limit – she knew that much from personal experience. All it took to find it was a little perseverance.

  ‘No more,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘No more …’

  ‘The code,’ she prompted.

  Closing his eyes, he recited the code, speaking slowly and deliberately. ‘One, five, five, three, one, six.’

  Anya regarded him dubiously. ‘For your sake, I hope you are not lying.’

  The takedown man sighed and shook his head again, broken and defeated. ‘The code is correct. I promise you that.’

  Lowering the hammer, Anya turned her attention back to the phone and inputted the numbers. The unit gave a single bleep, then went blank.

  Straight away she knew what he’d done. A duress code, designed to wipe the phone’s memory and render it useless.

  Looking at him again, Anya saw a crooked smile on his face. He would die, and he knew it, but he had at least scored a minor victory.

  ‘You asked for a code, I gave you one. Now the phone is useless to you.’ He closed his eyes again, steeling himself for what was coming. ‘You can do what you want to me. I have nothing more to give you.’

  He was right about that.

  She used the hammer one more time, then opened the sliding door and jumped lightly down onto the dusty ground, returning to the driver’s cab.

  A quick check of the fuel gauge told her the tank was just over half full. More than enough to do the job. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the rear-view mirror and noticed a splash of the takedown man’s blood on her cheek, wiping it away without a second thought.

  It took her a moment or two to find the cigarette lighter built into the cheap plastic dashboard – having not smoked in nearly twenty years, it wasn’t in her nature to look for such things out of habit.

  Pushing it in, she opened the glovebox and found a tattered cleaning rag amongst the mess of receipts, manuals and other assorted junk that had been jammed inside. She suspected it was used to clear condensation from the window, but tonight she had a different purpose in mind.

  The cigarette lighter popped out about thirty seconds later, by which time she had removed the van’s fuel cap and jammed the rag into the opening. Making a mental note of the van’s licence plate, she retrieved the glowing red lighter and held it against the rag, blowing gently on it until she had coaxed a small flame into life.

  There was nothing more she needed to do. Fire and fuel would handle the rest. Leaving the doomed vehicle, she turned away and strode off into the night, already composing a text message to warn Drake against a similar attack.

  She had covered about 50 yards before the desert lit up vicious orange around her, followed by a deep concussive boom as the van’s fuel tank ignited. Even from this distance she could feel the heat from the raging inferno.

  She didn’t look back.

  Chapter 18

  Drake was alone in the 8-by-10 brick cubicle that served as his room. With a simple steel-framed bed pushed up against one whitewashed wall and a cheap writing desk next to it, it was hardly a luxury suite. Still, it was a roof over his head and a bed beneath it.

  He knew he needed both things at that moment. It was late. He should have been asleep hours ago, but after everything that had happened today he felt keyed up and restless, filled with energy he couldn’t expend.

  His laptop was powered up and displaying a still image of Kourash lifted from Mitchell’s hostage video. The audio-visual technicians at Langley had done what they could to enhance and clean up the grainy image, even producing a couple of composite renderings of Kourash’s face sporting various combinations of hairstyle, beard and moustache to account for attempted disguises.

  None of them would be much use to the ISAF and ANP troopers charged with looking for him. In his fifties, with a gaunt, weather-beaten face, heavy brows and a high, deeply lined forehead, Kourash could blend in anywhere in Afghanistan.

  But Drake would know him if he saw him. That much he was certain of.

  ‘Where are you?’ Drake said under his breath as he took a drink from his glass of whisky; the potent, smoky taste was by now quite familiar to him.

  Knowing how difficult alcohol was to c
ome by on bases like this, he had had the foresight to bring a bottle of Talisker along, hidden within his pack. Being a Shepherd operative had its advantages – their bags couldn’t be searched at customs, meaning it was easy to smuggle in minor items of contraband like this.

  He felt guilty for drinking on the job, but he also knew he needed it. His thoughts were racing, chaotic, endlessly replaying everything he’d seen and heard today.

  He took another pull, allowing the potent spirit to light a small blaze in his stomach as he stared at the picture, boring into those dark eyes that were so filled with anger and hatred. Images of the twisted, scorched Black Hawk flashed through his mind, and for a moment he could have sworn he detected something in the air besides the peaty aroma of whisky.

  The scent of charred plastic and burned human flesh.

  Questions. All he seemed to have were questions, and no answers.

  And yet the answers he desperately sought were near. He sensed it; his instincts told him he was missing something. Something fundamental. Something he had seen and yet hadn’t seen.

  He frowned at the unfamiliar bleep of a text message tone, realising a moment later that it was Anya’s phone. He felt a surge of anticipation and immediately rebuked himself for it as he fished the phone from his pocket.

  However, his excitement quickly changed to concern as he read her message.

  Two of Karl’s friends found me. You were followed. Suggest you watch yourself.

  Naturally the message was coded to conceal identities, and thus avoid arousing the suspicion of any CIA signals technician who happened to intercept it. Karl was her word for Kourash, just as Christopher or Cameron might double up for Carpenter. Still, the meaning was clear. Two of Kourash’s men had tried to ambush her, and she blamed him for it.

  Knowing Anya, he didn’t doubt she would have responded to this with lethal aggression, but her revelation brought with it a pang of guilt and anger. She had taken a risk by making contact again and already he had fucked up. Burning with self-recrimination, he composed his own coded reply.

  Made it back without trouble. Why did they come after you?

  She hadn’t said it explicitly, but in her message he sensed a certain concern. She wasn’t texting just to report the encounter; she wanted to know if he too had been attacked, and if he was all right. None of which made him feel any better.

  His grim thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door.

  ‘Who is it?’ he called, irked by the distraction.

  ‘It’s Keira. Open up.’

  Setting his glass on the sorry excuse for a desk, Drake rose from the bed and unlocked the door to find Frost standing before him. She was clutching several sheets of paper, and judging by her wide-eyed appearance she had been working and gulping down coffee rather than resting as he’d told her to.

  ‘You ordered dirt on Horizon, I’ve got it,’ she said, holding up the printed sheets with a triumphant grin. Drake spotted at least a dozen notes scrawled across them in her chaotic handwriting. ‘Mind if I come in?’

  Without waiting for a response, she slipped past him and into the room.

  He noticed her eyes linger for a moment on the almost-empty glass of whisky, though she said nothing about it. Even she knew when to hold her tongue.

  ‘Don’t you ever sleep?’ Drake couldn’t help asking, impressed by her dedication but concerned about what it would mean for her performance tomorrow.

  ‘Not if I can avoid it,’ she admitted. ‘Anyway, I could ask the same of you, but you’d just get all moody on me. So why don’t we skip that and get down to business?’

  He took a seat at the small desk. ‘All right, what did you find on Horizon?’

  Frost settled herself on the bed and glanced at her haphazard dossier.

  ‘They’re major players in the PMC scene,’ she began. ‘As far as I can tell, they’ve only been around since 2004 but already they’ve established themselves as one of the big boys out here. They recruit operatives from all over the world, with a heavy emphasis on Special Forces.’

  ‘Why?’ Drake asked.

  ‘They don’t operate like a normal PMC. Companies like Blackwater handle low-level protection details out here, like guarding roadblocks or watching over politicians we can afford to lose. Horizon are organised more like a front-line infantry regiment, or maybe a Special Forces unit. These guys are set up for full-on combat ops. In fact, they’ve already been used for house raids, snatch and grabs, and assaults against Taliban strongholds, all with an excellent success rate. They’ve got the manpower, the resources and expertise to run just about any operation they need to, fully independent of ISAF.’

  ‘Like a private army,’ Drake mused, unsettled by her revelation.

  ‘Pretty much,’ Frost agreed. ‘But an army that isn’t governed by the normal rules of engagement.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, for a start they’re able to hire characters like your friend Vermaak with no questions asked,’ Frost explained, for some reason looking like a kid who had just found the hidden cookie jar. ‘I did some digging on the guy when Sam told me what happened at the crash site.’

  Flicking through her heavily annotated dossier, she found the page she was looking for and began to read.

  ‘Piet Vermaak, born in Pretoria in 1961. Joined South African Defence Force in 1980 before moving to Special Forces Brigade in 1984. He was heavily involved in the Border War for the next few years, even led his own covert strike team until he was discharged, apparently for executing prisoners. After that, there’s almost no official record of him for the next decade. He went dark, probably working the freelance mercenary circuit. Then a few years ago he pops up again, this time working for Horizon. Now he’s one of their most senior ground commanders.’ She glanced up from her report. ‘In short, the guy’s bad news. He shoots first and asks questions later.’

  Drake didn’t need Frost to tell him that Vermaak wasn’t a man to be trusted, but this put a whole new slant on his actions at the crash site.

  However, there was one name she hadn’t mentioned yet.

  ‘What about Carpenter?’

  At this, the young woman grinned conspiratorially. ‘I’ve saved the best for last,’ she said, flicking to the final page in her dossier. ‘Richard Carpenter. Enlisted US Army 1963, aged twenty-one. Served two tours in Vietnam before joining a task force of the 327th Infantry Regiment, better known as Tiger Force.’

  That was enough to get Drake’s attention. Tiger Force had been a special composite unit formed to wage guerrilla warfare against the Viet Cong, employing many of the same methods and tactics as their enemy. Unfortunately the unit became rather too good at their job, eventually descending into brutality and mindless killing. Countless rumours had circulated about them over the years, from torturing civilians, to rape, murder and mutilation.

  ‘The unit was disbanded in ’69. They were rumoured to be involved in all kinds of weird shit, like wearing necklaces made from human ears,’ she said with a disdainful curl of her lip. ‘Anyway, our friend Carpenter was apparently cleared of any wrongdoing. He carried on working in various Special Forces outfits, then got promoted to colonel in 1980. But it’s not until ’84 that things get interesting.’

  Drake frowned. ‘How so?’

  ‘Because nothing happened. His service record just stops. There’s no mention of any deployments, any operations, any transfers. Nothing. It’s like a black hole in his life, from ’84 up to ’89. Then, around the time of the First Gulf War, it just starts up again like nothing happened.’ She laid down her folder and looked at Drake across the table. ‘Read between the lines on this one, I’d say he was involved in some kind of black op – something so dirty that they expunged the whole thing from his record.’

  ‘I want to know what he was up to,’ Drake said.

  In some part of his mind he knew he was allowing himself to become distracted, that he was allowing his encounter with Anya to intrude on his investigation
, but he didn’t care. He wanted to know her history with Carpenter. He wanted to know why she was really here.

  ‘Hey, I can’t find what isn’t there.’ She hesitated, having seen something in his expression that went deeper than mere professional interest. ‘Anyway, why the focus on Carpenter all of a sudden? Even if he is hiding something, who cares what he was up to twenty years ago?’

  Drake glanced away. He could say nothing further on the subject without revealing his meeting with Anya last night, and that was one road he was unwilling to go down.

  ‘It’s just a hunch,’ he lied. ‘Something about the guy doesn’t add up.’

  Frost eyed Drake hard. ‘You know, if I was the cynical type, I’d say you know something you’re not telling us.’

  ‘Then I should be grateful you’re not the cynical type, Keira,’ he said, returning her gaze. ‘What are the chances of you accessing Horizon’s computer network?’

  Her brows rose at this. ‘You mean hacking in?’

  ‘I didn’t hear anyone say the word “hacking”, did you?’

  Their remit as special investigators granted them a certain amount of latitude in matters of covert intelligence gathering, but hacking into the computer system of a major DoD contractor was crossing the line.

  She weighed up the matter for a moment or two. ‘Dicey,’ she concluded. ‘I can try, but I’d guess they’d have some pretty serious firewalls in place.’

  Drake rubbed his jaw, wondering whether it was worth the risk. ‘All right. See if you can scope it out. If it looks too dangerous, forget it.’

  ‘No problem.’ The young woman rose from the bed, heading for the door.

  ‘Oh, and Keira,’ he called after her. ‘Get some sleep first. That’s an order.’

  She looked over her shoulder at him. ‘Yeah? What about you?’

  He shrugged. ‘That’s my problem.’

  As soon as she was gone, Drake threw himself back into his work. The whisky lay untouched now – he had no desire for it and was angry at himself for his weakness. Anya had almost been killed tonight while he’d been sitting here getting drunk.