by Will Jordan
For the next few hours he remained hunched over the computer fruitlessly trawling through photographs of other attacks staged by Kourash’s group, reading intelligence reports, crime scene files and analysis until the words blurred and began to seep into one another.
He checked Anya’s phone over and over, searching for a text message that never arrived, then angrily turned his thoughts back to his work. The images and memories were still bombarding him, but with less cohesion and purpose now; one scene blending into the next as the consciousness governing them began to fade.
He looked at his watch – 04:13.
He replayed his encounter with Vermaak, with Carpenter, with Cunningham, and most of all with Anya. He saw the woman smiling at him from the shadows of that room above the tea house, then a moment later saw her as she had appeared a year earlier, suddenly raising a weapon and putting a round in his stomach.
And yet, again and again his thoughts drifted back to Mitchell, to his hostage tape. Over and over he saw the man’s eyes flicking open and shut with unnatural regularity.
He was missing something, he realised then. Something his subconscious mind was trying to tell him. Something he had seen without really seeing.
And at last, an idea struck him.
Once more he accessed Mitchell’s hostage tape and hit the play button, immediately finding himself looking at the same dingy room with a battered Mitchell secured to a chair in the centre of the frame. He was staring right at the camera, his eyes wide with fear as his masked captor came into view.
Kourash was soon busy launching into his tirade against Western imperialism, growing more animated as he got into full swing. Mitchell, however, continued to stare into the camera, his eyes flickering in a seemingly random fashion. A cut over his left eye was apparently troubling him.
Or was it?
Frowning, Drake leaned in, looking closer at the bound captive. He was still blinking, but there was something unusual about the eye movements. Sometimes they would flicker rapidly, other times they would close for nearly a second at a time.
‘What the fuck …?’
There was purpose in the seemingly random gestures, he realised. Mitchell, bound and gagged as he was, was trying to communicate using the only means still available to him – his eyes.
Blink, close, blink. Dot, dash, dot …
‘I’ll be damned.’
It was Morse code, he realised now. Mitchell had been talking in Morse code. Drake was far from an expert in such an antiquated form of communication, but he recognised enough of the letter patterns to understand the intent behind them.
If only it hadn’t taken so damned long. It had been there this whole time and nobody saw it, Drake included.
He had seen without truly seeing.
Hastily reaching for a notebook and pen, Drake moved the pointer back to the start of the video and hit play again.
Part Three
Retaliation
In 1979, the Soviet 40th Army crosses the border into Afghanistan. Despite their securing major cities, Mujahideen fighters wage a vicious guerrilla campaign against the Red Army, leading to an eventual withdrawal in February 1989.
The Soviet Union will formally dissolve two years later.
Total Casualties:
14,000 Soviet soldiers killed and 54,000 wounded
18,000 Afghan government soldiers killed
90,000 Mujahideen fighters killed (estimate)
Up to 2 million Afghan civilians killed and 3 million wounded
Chapter 19
CIA Training Facility ‘Camp Peary’, Virginia,
3 November 1985
Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight …
Forcing her burning, aching muscles to obey, Anya heaved her body up from the muddy ground, only to lower it back down again, going through the same motion again and again without rest, without relief.
Freezing rain hammered the back of her head to run in rivulets down her face and into her eyes. Limp strands of dirty blonde hair hung down around her, soaking into the mud every time she lowered herself to start another press-up. The full equipment pack she was wearing felt like a boulder pressing down inexorably upon her, crushing the life out of her.
All night long they had been at it. Running, marching, fighting, and finally this grim, unrelenting test of endurance.
She was falling behind. The dozen other men in her unit were pulling ahead of her, their movements still fast, efficient, mechanical, as if all concept of pain and weakness was foreign to them. All strong, fit, capable men in their prime.
Next to them she was nothing. And every day, with every march, every drill, every test of strength and endurance, she was made to feel it.
Thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six …
‘You ladies aren’t getting tired, are you?’ a deep, powerful voice called out.
‘Sir, no, sir!’ they replied in unison. A dozen men shouting out together, proclaiming their collective strength and defiance and support of each other.
A dozen men and one woman, her voice virtually drowned out.
‘Good. Because what we have here is a lesson – endurance. One of many qualities it’s my sorry duty to instil in you worthless sacks of shit,’ the voice went on. ‘What’s the first promise you made when you joined this unit?’
Again the reply came at once, twelve men and one woman crying out, ‘I will endure when all others fail!’
Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three …
Every movement was agony. Her lungs heaved, her heart pounded, her vision swam as exhaustion clawed at her.
‘Again!’
‘I will endure when all others fail!’
Anya barely had the strength to cry out, could barely find breath in her lungs to make the sound. Every nerve ending in her body was on fire. Every muscle screamed at her to stop.
Forty-four, forty-five …
‘Again!’
‘I will endure when all others fail!’
This time no woman’s voice cried out. This time she could summon up no words. It was all she could do to raise herself up again on trembling arms.
Through her blurred vision she saw a pair of boots splash through the mud towards her, coming to a halt so he could kneel down in front of her.
Carpenter.
She didn’t look at him. She could already picture the expression on his lean, chiselled, terrifying face. It was the same mixture of disdain and simmering resentment he’d given her the first time they’d been introduced six weeks earlier.
‘What’s wrong, Recruit Thirteen? Did you forget your promise?’
There were no names here. They hadn’t earned the right to their own names yet. She was merely Recruit 13. Lucky 13.
Forty-six …
‘Sir … no … sir!’ she managed to gasp.
‘Then why the fuck didn’t you sound off? Are you disrespecting me?’
She couldn’t speak, couldn’t escape the pain and exhaustion that consumed her, burned away all rational thoughts like an inferno the rain was powerless to stop.
‘Why are you slowing down, Recruit Thirteen?’ Carpenter yelled, his face so close that she could feel his warm breath on her cheek. ‘All I asked for was fifty push-ups. Fifty! Can’t you even give me that?’
Forty-seven …
‘Are you tired? Are you hurting?’ he taunted. ‘Pain and weakness are nothing. Nothing! They’re beating you because you don’t have what it takes to overcome them. How can you be a soldier if you can’t endure?’
Muscles trembling, chest heaving, she tried with desperate strength to push her body up again. The pack pressed down on her. The rain hammered her skull. Blood surged in her ears, and stars and strange lights flitted across her eyes.
With an exhausted, defeated sob, she collapsed in the mud, utterly spent.
Satisfied that she was beaten, Carpenter rose to his feet, staring down at her without a hint of compassion or remorse. Saying nothing, he turned and walked away, leaving her shaki
ng and crying in the mud.
Central Hotel, Kabul, 11 August 2008
Turning off the water feed, Anya let out a breath and stood leaning against the wall of the shower cubicle with her eyes closed, wisps of steam curling around her. Hot water, much like electricity, was still something of a temperamental luxury in Kabul, but one that she was very grateful for.
After spending four years in a freezing Russian prison, the mere notion of hot running water under her control would always seem like a luxury.
Taking another deep breath, she opened her eyes, stepped out and grabbed a towel from the rail to dry her hair. Naked and dripping water, she walked through to the main living area.
With cheap carpets, a hard lumpy bed and air conditioning that didn’t work properly, the room was certainly nothing impressive, but it was more than enough to meet her needs. She didn’t sleep on the bed anyway. And unlike the more expensive and prestigious Kabul Serena Hotel, this place was low-key and inexpensive – ideal for her cover as a freelance writer trying to discover the ‘real Afghanistan’.
There were plenty such people here these days.
If she ever did get around to writing a book about her experiences in this country, it would be rather more illuminating than most of the tomes penned by self-professed experts.
She had travelled here under a Norwegian identity. She tended to pick Scandinavian nationalities for her aliases, partly because it fitted with her physical appearance – tall, blonde-haired, blue-eyed – but mostly because it seemed to make international travel easier. Countries like Finland, Norway and Sweden were seen by most immigration officials as neutral and inoffensive, with generally affluent populations who didn’t meddle in crime or terrorism.
Like most things based on human psychology, it was irrational, but it worked.
She tossed the towel on the bed and, seeing herself in the mirror, turned to regard her reflection.
Her body had filled out a little in the past year, partly due to better diet but mostly as a result of the intense training regime she had put herself through. After escaping Iraq last year and recovering from the various injuries she’d sustained, she had determined to claw back as much of her former strength and fitness as possible.
Daily 5-mile runs, weight training, stretching and sparring had been easy enough in her twenties, but maintaining such a demanding regime at forty-three years old had been rather more difficult.
Still, the results spoke for themselves.
With a firm, flat stomach, long slender legs, toned arms and shoulders well defined with hard, compact musculature, Anya appeared little different now from ten years earlier. The impression was heightened by her short haircut, which she had told herself was purely for reasons of practicality.
But deep down she wondered if she was somehow trying to erase the past decade.
Dismissing such thoughts, she took a gulp of water and sat down at the table to access her laptop (another benefit of her cover as a writer). It had been humming away on standby and took only a few seconds to boot back up.
Logging into her email account, she found only one new entry – there was no title, and the sender was listed simply as Loki.
She was comfortable enough with modern technology when obliged to use it, but Anya had little knowledge or experience in the confusing world of computer hacking. For that, she was forced to rely on others.
She had been introduced to Loki through a mutual acquaintance, and although they had never met in person or exchanged real names, she knew two things about her enigmatic contact – Loki was English, and he had never let Anya down when it came to information retrieval.
She opened the message, hoping against hope that good news was waiting for her.
Have run a check on the number plate you sent. A Volkswagen van, reported stolen in Kandahar a week ago. No police follow-up.
Also tried reconstituting the phone’s memory – it’s knackered. The duress code wiped it completely. If the memory had still been intact I might have broken the encryption scheme, but I doubt it. It was very sophisticated, much more than normal commercial models. My guess is military or intelligence agency.
Sorry I don’t have better news.
L.
Anya chewed her lip, suppressing a surge of disappointment. She hadn’t expected much when she connected the crypto phone to her laptop and allowed Loki to remotely access it (something she never would have done with another person), but there was always a chance it might have borne fruit.
Not this time.
By now she was questioning the wisdom of her decision to kill the two men who had tried to abduct her. If she had spent more time and effort on the takedown man, there was a chance she might have broken him. A slim chance perhaps, but a chance nonetheless.
It had seemed logical to kill him at the time, but now she wasn’t so sure.
She had been on the receiving end of physical torture more times than she cared to remember. And although she understood its necessity on an intellectual level, to her dying day she would never forgive those who had inflicted it on her.
She would ponder that in more depth later. For now, she turned her thoughts to what little information Loki’s email had imparted.
Crypto phones, though expensive, weren’t difficult to obtain. Anyone with the cash could buy one. But phones with sophisticated military-grade encryption were another matter entirely.
Clearly the men who had tried to abduct her were part of something more than just another Islamic extremist group. If they had access to Stinger missiles and sophisticated communications equipment, they were something very different indeed.
It was lucky for her that last night’s takedown had been hastily formulated and executed with only two men. No doubt she had been a target of opportunity rather than a planned objective.
However, they had Drake under surveillance. No one had followed her to the meeting – she was certain of that. Therefore they must have been trailing Drake, following his movements.
From her understanding of the Shepherd teams, she knew their operatives were protected by a fog of secrecy. Only a select few knew their true identities and purpose, yet apparently Kourash had been able to penetrate that veil.
On the one hand she felt a certain relief that Kourash and his group seemed to have no knowledge of who she was or why she was here, yet on another she felt concern, disappointment and even a degree of anger towards Drake for not realising he was being tailed.
That was partly why she hadn’t replied to his text message. He had confirmed he was safe, and that was enough for now. She would be certain to question him on the matter next time they met face to face, though.
Anya leaned back in her chair and took another sip of water. She had warned him of the danger, and for now at least there was little more she could do.
Drake would have to look out for himself.
Chapter 20
Bagram Air Base
The day dawned hazy and vague over Bagram, the sun visible only as a brighter disc through thick dust clouds off to the east. Its red-hued rays set the nearby mountains ablaze, tinged the sky orange and cast long indistinct shadows across the runways. The temperature, which had dipped close to freezing overnight, began to climb inexorably with the rising sun.
As the local mosques called the faithful to Fajr, the first of Islam’s daily prayers, soldiers rose from their bunks and cots to start another day.
Drake, however, had no need of the daily Reveille to wake him. He had been wide awake since his revelation the night before, and had been working laboriously to identify and decipher the message in Mitchell’s grainy, low-resolution hostage tape.
By the time he shoved his way into the conference room for his morning briefing, he was haggard and bleary-eyed but triumphantly clutching his laptop in one hand and a sheet of paper covered with handwritten notes in the other.
McKnight wasn’t there, having already departed to continue her search for the missing Stinger. However, Frost and
Keegan were waiting for him.
The young woman wasted no time in voicing her thoughts.
‘Jesus, Ryan. You look like shit.’
Drake wasted no time responding to her insult, even if it was partially true. He was too buoyed by his discovery. Setting his laptop down on the table, he looked up at his two team members. ‘I know where Mitchell is.’
Keegan glanced at his comrade, looking like a dubious spectator about to witness a magician’s trick. ‘This ought to be good.’
‘You were right, Keira. There was more to that hostage tape than we realised.’ Opening his laptop, he powered it up and set Mitchell’s video to play once again, leaving the volume muted. He had no interest in Kourash’s venomous words now. ‘Focus on Mitchell. Look at his eyes.’
They did as he asked, both watching the screen intently. Keegan spotted it first, accustomed as he was to searching for the subtle visual clues that would give away an enemy’s position.
‘He’s signalling,’ the old sniper remarked.
Drake nodded. ‘He’s using his eyes to send us a message. It’s Morse code.’ Finally he laid his sheet of paper down on the table and turned it around for them to see.
On it he had scrawled a series of dots and dashes as he’d picked them up from the video, some crossed out and amended as more information had emerged with repeated viewings.
But beneath it all, written in bold capital letters, were two words: HOUSE FOUR.
‘House four?’ Frost repeated, looking at Drake quizzically. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
Drake smiled. It had seemed cryptic to him when he’d first deciphered it. Only by putting it in the context of Mitchell’s purpose in Afghanistan had he at last been able to make sense of it.
‘Mitchell was here to help build an intelligence network. You said yourself, his official job was to establish a series of safe houses throughout the country. Safe … houses.’
Frost’s eyes lit up. ‘Son of a bitch …’
For once, Drake felt as though he was starting to gain ground on Kourash. He was finding his feet with this investigation at last. And now, perhaps, he had found a way out.
