by Will Jordan
‘We’ve put out an APB, but it could be anywhere by now.’ He heard a sigh at her end. Like the rest of them she’d been operating virtually without sleep for two days straight, and the strain was beginning to show. ‘What about you? Any sign of Ryan?’
‘He was here – that’s about all we know right now,’ he admitted.
‘I’m on my way.’
‘Keegan’s on it,’ he assured her. ‘There’s nothing more you can do here.’
‘I know. But I … I want to be there.’ There was something in her voice, a certain tension and emotion that went beyond mere professional concern for a comrade. He had suspected as much.
‘All right. I’ll call you if the situation changes,’ he promised, hanging up.
Eyes and weapons sweeping the darkness, both men said nothing for several seconds; just allowed their eyes to adjust to the weak moonlight filtering in from outside.
‘Clear,’ Cunningham said quietly.
‘Clear,’ Drake confirmed.
Lowering his weapon, he turned to the right, where a soft green glow was emanating from a plastic keypad mounted on the wall. It was an ultrasonic alarm unit, and a good one at that – he recognised the make and model as one typically favoured by the Agency for its resilience.
There was no time to consult the phone or any written notes. Drake had watched an agent enter the disarm code the day before and was reasonably confident he had retained it. He just hoped his brain was still cooperating.
The alarm was already counting down, triggered the moment they opened the door. Most units of this type were on a ten-second delay, leaving him with perhaps four or five seconds to input the code before it went off.
It wouldn’t make a sound if it went off. Instead it was linked up to the Agency’s own security service, and would immediately put an automated call through to report the break-in. Within minutes a van full of armed security operatives would come screeching to a halt outside.
Opening the cover on the panel, he keyed in 917214, sent a silent prayer to whatever deity might have been inclined to listen, and hit enter.
The simple LED readout flashed once to acknowledge the code entry, and that was it. The alarm was down.
‘Good job,’ Cunningham said, gently closing the door behind him.
Drake might have looked calm, but his heart was beating overtime. It had all come down to this. Either they would find what they were looking for, and Carpenter and Horizon would fall, or they would find nothing.
He preferred not to consider that possibility.
‘Let’s get it done,’ he said, handing the Beretta back to its owner. ‘You take the ground floor. I’ll go upstairs.’
Normally splitting up was a big no-no in situations like this. They were supposed to advance in pairs where they could cover each other’s backs, but in this case they simply didn’t have time for a room-by-room search. They had a lot of ground to cover, and little time in which to do it.
Every second they stayed here increased their chances of being caught.
Cunningham nodded, well aware of their precarious situation. He fished a small flashlight from his pocket and fired it up, allowing the weak beam to play across the floor. ‘On it, mate. Call out if you see anything.’
‘Good luck,’ Drake said as his friend advanced deeper into the house, heading for what had once been the kitchen.
Leaving him to it, Drake went for the stairs, pushing aside the pain, intent only on finding what he needed.
Chapter 48
CIA Training Facility ‘Camp Peary’, Virginia,
27 November 1985
Confused, Anya struggled to her feet, forcing her aching muscles to comply. Her rush of elation was starting to fade now as she watched Carpenter walk a slow circle around her. The other recruits were standing in a line behind her, unmoving, seemingly oblivious to the pounding rain.
‘What was the final promise you made to me?’ he asked.
‘I will never surrender, sir.’ She was trying to get her laboured breathing under control, to slow her frantically beating heart, to stand up straight as a soldier should.
‘And do you know why I chose that?’
‘No, sir.’ She could guess, however. They were to be a clandestine unit, sent deep behind enemy lines to sabotage, ambush and assassinate. If they were caught, they could expect no rescue. The solution was simple – no surrender.
‘At the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon’s army collapsed and retreated. They were broken, in mind and body. The only ones who stood their ground, who refused to give in, were the Old Guard. The elite, the best of the best.’ His keen eyes swept the ranks of men standing before him. ‘When the British asked them to surrender, they replied, “La Garde meurt, elle ne se rend pas!” The Guard dies, it does not surrender! That is what I expect from each and every one of you. No surrender, even in the face of death.’
Last of all his eyes rested on Anya. ‘Can I expected that from you, Recruit?’
Anya was just opening her mouth to reply when suddenly Carpenter rounded on her, drew back his fist and delivered a crippling punch to the centre of her chest, knocking her sprawling in a deep pool of mud.
Shocked and winded, she could barely resist as he jumped on her, forcing his knee into her chest and crushing the air from her lungs. His fingers grasped a matted clump of her hair and yanked her head up.
‘You really think you have what it takes to be in this unit?’ he hissed, his face mere inches from hers. ‘You ready to lay down your life before you’d surrender?’
Before she could speak, he shoved her head back, submerging it beneath the surface. Anya let out an involuntary scream as thick mud closed in around her face. She couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. She flailed and kicked desperately, trying to free herself, but his grip was relentless. She even tried to strike him, but he easily deflected the blow.
‘Now you’ve got a hundred-and-ninety-pound man on top of you,’ she heard him say. ‘He’s gonna drown you unless you surrender to him. Why aren’t you fighting back?’
Just when it seemed her lungs must burst, he yanked her head out of the mud. She let out her breath in a sudden explosion of air, desperately gulping in more.
‘Why aren’t you fighting?’ he demanded. ‘Because you’re tired? You think war only happens when you’ve had a good night’s sleep?’
It was insane. She had been training all night. She couldn’t lift the weight of a man, couldn’t fight him off. She could barely stand.
‘I can’t—’ She was cut off when he jerked her head back again.
‘You can’t, huh? That all you can say?’ he taunted her. ‘Do you want to die, Recruit? Is that it? If you won’t fight for your own pathetic life, how do you expect other people to fight for you?’
Nobody suspects a woman.
Having spent the past two decades working in a profession populated almost exclusively by men, Anya had had quite some time to ponder the relative merits of her gender when it came to the art of killing.
And sitting there now, handcuffed and surrounded by armed operatives in the back of the RG-31 as it bumped and rolled towards the Horizon compound, she was afforded a few moments to contemplate her conclusions.
Certainly she wasn’t as big or as strong as the majority of her opponents had been, forcing her instead to rely on technique, skill and experience to see her through. She couldn’t intimidate others in the same way men could, her voice lacked the natural depth and authority that men possessed.
And of course, there were other inconveniences and weaknesses inherent to her gender that she had become well acquainted with during captivity.
And yet, the one truth that had eluded her for so long was that all of these things could ultimately be used to her advantage.
Women were easy to underestimate, particularly for experienced operatives like this. Strong, fit, well trained and in the prime of their lives, they feared little, particularly the female of their species. Why would they? Most o
f the women they had known had been mothers, sisters, girlfriends, random sexual partners.
Not soldiers. Not enemies to be feared and respected.
For so long, Anya had worked, striven, fought to overcome the limitations of her sex, never realising that those same things which she saw as weaknesses could be strengths; those limitations allowed her to excel in her chosen profession.
Nobody suspected a woman, least of all the occupants of that armoured vehicle, sitting all around her, secure in the knowledge that she was drunk, frightened, cowed and handcuffed.
The first three had been an act right from the start, further exploiting their overconfidence. And as for the last one, she was working on that.
Protruding from the clasp of her wristwatch was a little sliver of metal that had gone unnoticed by the men who escorted her aboard the armoured vehicle. But as soon as she had sat down and her hands were obscured from view, she gently teased the shard out and went to work on the cuffs.
Handcuffs, utilising simple locking mechanisms, were easy enough to pick if one knew the right way to tackle them. Anya had had plenty of opportunities to perfect the art of lock picking in her long career, and was familiar with the most popular brands.
She coughed, spitting up phlegm on the deck and moaning softly to maintain the illusion of a drunken idiot slowly waking up to the fact that she’s in way over her head. She could have done without being punched in the guts, but when it happened she decided to make the best of it and promptly threw up all over the ground. Her stomach still ached from its violent contortions, but like many such discomforts, she ignored it, concentrating on her task.
She was under no illusions about her chances. Despite her experience and abilities, the prospect of being killed in her effort was ever-present. But for her, there was no question of backing down, of walking away and putting this behind her.
She had waited too long for this moment.
It wouldn’t be the first time she had faced such danger, and even if she was successful today, it wouldn’t be the last. She wasn’t destined to see old age, to find a peaceful death at the end of a long life.
She had spent her life fighting and sacrificing for hopeless causes, serving thankless masters and killing undeserving enemies. She had wasted her life and her strength, but she still had a measure of each left to her. And with both of those things, she intended to put right her mistakes.
Starting with Carpenter.
‘Come on, where the fuck are you?’ Drake hissed, pacing the room in growing agitation.
He had swept the entire upper floor, moving from room to room and finding little more than bare floorboards and brick walls. The upstairs bathroom didn’t even have a toilet or sink; just outlet pipes protruding from the floor and walls.
Only the room next door contained anything interesting. Presumably used as a workshop, it was dominated by a workbench covered with various power tools. Packing crates had been stacked against one wall, all empty, with the crowbar used to open them still resting on top.
He didn’t doubt that Mitchell would have hidden his evidence somewhere on the property, but he also would have needed it easily accessible for his own use. So where had he stashed it?
‘You found anything down there?’ he called out without much hope.
‘Of course, mate,’ Cunningham’s sarcastic reply echoed up to him. ‘I’ve just been having a cup of tea.’
Drake shook his head, returning to his own thoughts.
He was missing something – he was sure of it.
He ran a hand through his damp hair as he continued pacing, while the wound at his side throbbed with pain. Surely he hadn’t come all this way just to stumble at the final hurdle.
‘Think, for Christ’s sake. Think!’
Wrapped up in his own grim thoughts, he barely noticed the creak of a floorboard beneath his boot, or felt the slight give in the loose wood.
But his subconscious mind did. Attentive to things he was too busy to consider, it recognised something out of the ordinary. Something significant.
Drake stopped, frowning as the realisation hit him.
Retracing his steps, he put his weight down once again.
Creak.
Kneeling down, he ran his hands over the floorboards. They were made from rough and unfinished wood intended to be carpeted over. And yet, they had all been well laid and neatly joined by a skilled craftsman.
All except one.
His heart beating faster, Drake hurried into the other room, retrieved the crowbar and, finding the loose floorboard once more, jammed one end into the gap and levered it up.
There was a slight groan as the nail slipped free of the joist, but otherwise the board presented little resistance. It had been lifted several times by the looks of it.
Then, in an instant, Drake stopped.
He had seen something. A tiny sliver of wire gleaming in the moonlight, trailing from the underside of the floorboard to something fixed against the joist with duct tape. Leaning in closer, Drake spotted the distinctive cylindrical outline and fuse head of a thermite incendiary grenade.
It was a trap, he realised, designed to prevent Mitchell’s evidence falling into the wrong hands. If he had lifted the floorboard a few more inches, it would have pulled the pin and triggered the grenade, incinerating anything within 10 feet.
With great care, he laid the floorboard aside, making sure to keep tension out of the wire. There was just enough slack to move the board out of the way, allowing him to see what lay beneath.
Nestling in the alcove between two joists was a cardboard folder with a single handwritten word on the front – Horizon.
With shaking hands, Drake lifted it out and laid it down on the floor. It was heavy, containing a good hundred pages’ worth of documents, many of different sizes and colours.
Undoing the bindings that held it closed, he flipped the file open at a random page. His eyes darted from line to line, page to page, impatiently devouring the information contained within. He felt like a starving man presented with a sumptuous feast, yet only allowed to sample tiny mouthfuls here and there.
The folder seemed to contain a bizarre collection of information from different sources; everything from handwritten interview notes to transcripts of phone conversations, shipping manifests, emails, spreadsheets, photographs, forensic reports and even newspaper clippings.
And over all of it, written in what he guessed was Mitchell’s neat, precise handwriting, were notes of his own findings and opinions, key sections of documents underlined and circled.
As Drake read on, a picture soon began to emerge from the scattered documents, words and phrases leaping out at him with shocking clarity.
… Horizon colluding with insurgent groups …
… supplying them with weapons and equipment …
… proof that they engineered Anwari’s escape from prison …
… suggested they planned at least three separate attacks against ISAF forces …
… using them to kill off key Taliban commanders …
… Stinger missiles from supply convoy …
… possibility of attacking Coalition aircraft …
‘Oh, my God,’ Drake breathed, awed by the scale of Mitchell’s findings.
He was eager to read more, but now wasn’t the right time. First they had to get this document and its contents to safety. Then he would work out how to ensure it found its way to the right people.
No way was this getting swept under the carpet. Not this time.
Snapping the folder shut, he quickly retied the bindings that held it closed, then reached into his pocket for Anya’s cellphone and dialled Dan Franklin’s number back at Langley. He needed someone removed from this whole situation; someone who would believe what he was saying.
Someone with enough authority to keep the Agency off his back long enough to present his findings.
He was about to put the call through when a familiar voice spoke up.
‘Put it d
own, Ryan,’ Cunningham ordered.
Drake’s head snapped around. ‘Matt, what—’
The words died in his throat the moment he saw his friend standing in the doorway, his weapon trained on Drake.
For an instant, the world around him seemed to stop, his surroundings fading into darkness. All he could see was his friend, his jaw set with grim resolve, eyes gleaming cold and hard in the moonlight. And clutched in his hand, the pistol.
And then, like a dam strained beyond its limits, something gave way inside his mind, unleashing a torrent of thoughts and memories. He saw Cunningham taking the memory stick from Frost; Cunningham trying to convince him to go home; Cunningham casting doubt on his suspicions about Carpenter; Cunningham urging him to let him come to the safe house alone.
Matt Cunningham: his friend, the man he trusted. The man who was going to kill him.
Just like that, the moment passed, the shock and disbelief vanished, and the world snapped back into place with painful clarity. Drake was in survival mode now, his mind racing as he sat crouched there, staring down the barrel of the weapon.
‘Stand up,’ Cunningham commanded.
Drake rose slowly to his feet, slipping the phone into his jacket pocket. Unable to think of anything else at that moment, he hit the call button.
Within seconds, the call had been routed through the network of transmitting stations, geostationary communications satellites, cellphone masts and hard lines to Dan Franklin’s office halfway around the world.
Eager for news, the director of Special Activities Division snatched up his cellphone and hit the button to receive the call.
‘Ryan, what’s going on out there?’
There was no response, save for the faint rustle of fabric.
‘Ryan?’
Nothing. Suddenly struck by a deep sense of foreboding, he pressed the receiver tight against his ear, straining to listen.
For several seconds, neither man said a word. Both merely stood in the pale moonlight filtering through the shuttered window, motionless, staring at each other.
‘Hands behind your head,’ Cunningham ordered. ‘You know the drill, mate.’
There was no emotion in his voice, no hint of remorse or hesitation. He was a killer, cold and hardened and ready to act at the slightest provocation.
