by Will Jordan
His short burst was met with a storm of automatic fire, heavy-calibre rounds slamming into the dirt around the hatchway, kicking up clouds of dust and broken stones.
‘I think they’re pissed at me.’
Quickly Drake unlatched two more weapons from the rack and thrust them at Crawford and McKnight. ‘Grab as much ammunition as you can carry and get ready to move.’
‘Where are we going?’ McKnight asked, sliding the unusual box magazine into its groove along the top of the weapon. As soon as it was home, she racked back the priming handle to chamber the first round.
With dubious armour protection and hundreds of pounds of aviation fuel still in its tanks, the crashed chopper could easily be turned into a steel coffin by a single well-thrown grenade. Their only chance was to make a break for it.
‘Anywhere but here,’ Drake replied, snatching up what remained of Mitchell’s evidence folder. Many of the pages had been scattered in the crash and he had no time to gather them all, but with luck there was enough left to make the difference.
‘Targets, fifty yards out,’ Keegan warned, flinching as another burst of fire traced its way along the top of the doorway.
‘Headcount?’ Drake asked, shoving the folder down the front of his shirt. This done, he forced a couple of spare magazines into his belt.
‘Fuckin’ lots,’ was the simple reply. ‘I can’t hold them off.’
‘Bin it, mate,’ Drake advised. ‘We’re moving now. I’ll take point, you bring up the rear. Everyone else on me. Crawford, Sam, ready?’
He was met by a pair of nods.
‘All right. Move!’
Chapter 50
The reinforced windows of Carpenter’s office provided panoramic views over Kabul, allowing its sole occupant gaze out across the city without fear of attack. The armoured glass would withstand anything short of an anti-tank round.
But Carpenter was oblivious to the impressive vista at that moment. He had shut himself away in his office with explicit instructions that he not be disturbed for any reason. All of his attention was focused on events several miles to the north unfolding in real time on his computer screen.
His bird’s-eye view of the battle came courtesy of a small remote-controlled drone orbiting several thousand feet above the crashed chopper, its only weapon a high-resolution infrared camera mounted in the nose.
Carpenter had vectored one of these little aircraft into the ambush area to survey the crash site for survivors. Sure enough, he could see bright white blobs of colour moving around the interior of the crashed chopper; the unmistakable thermal images of human bodies. Clearly someone had survived the crash, though if Vermaak and his strike team had anything to do with it, it wouldn’t be for long.
Already he could see men converging on the crash site from three separate directions, pausing occasionally to lay down covering fire while their comrades rushed forward. It was a textbook example of a fighting advance by men who were well drilled and used to working with each other.
And it was just as well, because time was running out. Even he could do nothing to hide the fact that a Coalition chopper had been shot down on the outskirts of Kabul, triggering a search-and-rescue response from all units in the vicinity. The survivors had to be eliminated quickly before any relief effort could be mounted.
Involuntarily his hands clenched into fists. His career, his company, everything he had worked to build in the past five years, and perhaps his very life, now hung in the balance.
It all depended on what happened in the next few minutes.
The RG-31 shuddered to a halt at last. The rear doors were swung open and Anya was pushed roughly outside, making sure to stumble and fall with a groan of pain as she hit the ground.
Cursing under his breath, the big Hispanic operative moved forward and lifted her bodily to her feet. She noticed with a momentary feeling of distaste that his hand found her breast as he raised her up.
Her eyes took in everything as she was escorted towards the main building. She saw a couple of other armoured jeeps parked near a maintenance area, in the process of being refuelled. Several operatives were milling around, some standing off to one side and smoking.
All were armed with M4 carbines; an excellent assault rifle that had served her well on many operations during her long career.
Over by the perimeter wall, she was relieved to see the ruined Toyota pickup truck being lowered from the winch of an armoured recovery vehicle. Its engine bay had been crumpled and deformed by the crash, rendering it inoperable, but that didn’t matter now. It still had a part to play.
Normally at times like this she was able to purge her mind of all other thoughts, concentrating solely on her objective. Yet, oddly, she found herself thinking of Drake.
She felt guilty for leaving him behind, for allowing him to be drawn into this mess when it was of her making. Once again he was paying the price for her mistakes, and as hard as she tried to cut herself away from such thoughts, she couldn’t get past the feeling that she owed him more than that.
She shook her head to rid herself of such doubts as she was led inside the main building.
She had been here once before, a very long time ago. It had been different then, of course. Different owners, and a different purpose. She had been different too. But even now, after all these years, this place still elicited a lingering sense of dread in her.
The holding cells would be down in the basement. That was the way it had been twenty years ago, and she didn’t imagine much had changed since then. Carpenter wouldn’t have troubled himself to alter such a feature of this building, especially when it served such a useful purpose.
Sure enough, after taking a left off the main corridor, she was led down a flight of stairs that she remembered all too well. They might have been given a new coat of paint since then, but what lay beneath hadn’t changed.
Two guards accompanied her down; the big Hispanic man named Martinez, one hand clamped around her arm, and his smaller companion Shaw.
Reaching the bottom of the stairs, she found herself facing a narrow corridor with heavy steel doors set along each side, each secured by deadbolts. She couldn’t tell if any of them were occupied, but there were no other operatives around, the cells being impossible to escape from.
She almost smiled. Perfect.
Allowing herself to stumble, she pretended to lose her footing and sagged in her captor’s arms; a dead weight, a useless burden.
‘Get up, goddamn it,’ Martinez growled, shoving her forward irritably.
Her time had come. With a single twist of her wrist, she slipped free of the handcuffs and spun around to face him, swinging the now exposed ratchet as a crude, blunt hook.
Her aim was perfect, the rough metal edge making contact in the centre of his forehead, gouging a bloody path across his right eye and down his cheek. Screaming in pain, he twisted aside, clutching his mangled face.
I will show no mercy. I will never hesitate.
Rounding on Shaw just as he swung the barrel of the M4 to bear on her, Anya grabbed the weapon’s protruding foregrip and yanked it upwards, forcing it away from her. An instant later, her right hand leapt out, striking a quick, vicious blow to Shaw’s exposed throat.
When it came to unarmed combat, Anya knew of few more effective ways of subduing an opponent than a hard blow to the thyroid cartilage surrounding the larynx. The intense pain and temporary inability to breathe thus produced was enough to drop even the toughest fighter, and Shaw was no different.
Coughing and gasping, eyes wide with fear, he released his grip on the weapon, staggered sideways and fell to his knees, trying to make for the stairs. It was a futile effort, and soon ended when Anya brought the butt of the M4 down on the back of his neck.
With one opponent now removed from the fight, she turned her attention to Martinez. Injured and half blinded he might have been, but he was still a threat, and threats had to be dealt with.
Keira Frost opened her eyes, startled by
the agonised cry echoing from the corridor outside her cell. But no sooner had it started than it was abruptly cut off.
She swallowed, her throat dry, her skin cold and clammy. Bound on the floor as she was, she could do nothing to protect herself. She had chafed the skin around her wrists raw trying to break the plastic cuffs, to no avail. She knew from experience that they were near impossible to remove by brute force.
She had never had much fear of water until today. Even now she vividly remembered the agony of trying to draw breath that wouldn’t come, the terror of knowing she was drowning, the helplessness of fighting in vain to break free.
In the end she had told them what they wanted to know, had given them every detail of her hacking attempt, the information she was trying to access, the suspicions Drake and his team harboured towards Horizon. She had told them everything, and she hated herself for it.
Where Drake was now, whether he was even still alive, she had no idea. More than likely she would never know. They would kill her once they were certain she could be of no further use.
She tensed at the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside. Footsteps, slow and deliberate, coming closer. Coming for her.
In a feeble attempt at retreating, she shuffled along the floor, backing away from the door even as the footsteps halted outside.
This was it, she knew. They had come to kill her.
She stared wide-eyed as the bolt was withdrawn and the door swung open.
But nothing could have prepared her for the sight that now confronted her.
Chapter 51
‘Contact!’ Drake yelled, ducking down as a volley of automatic fire sliced through the air above him. The rounds came so close to his head as they whizzed past that he could actually feel the change in air pressure. Taking a rough bearing on the muzzle flash, he fired a short automatic burst in reply.
Beside him, Keegan was capping off rounds with his own weapon, taking his time and aiming well to conserve ammunition. Empty shell casings littered the ground all around them.
Despite their grave situation, Keegan’s face was a picture of calm, as it always was during contacts. Drake could have sworn he was humming a tune under his breath.
As he’d thought, the chopper had come to rest in a dried-up river, its crumpled nose buried in the dust and rocks that had once formed the stream bed. He suspected this had once been an irrigation channel, part of a larger network used to supply farms in this region. Decades of fighting had destroyed many of these delicate water systems, consigning once lush farmland to drought and abandonment.
‘We’re pinned down,’ McKnight hissed. Sighting a target moving amongst the tangled scrub 50 yards away, she swung her weapon around and loosed a long, sustained burst. ‘We’ve got to find cover. We’re sitting ducks out here.’
‘I hear you,’ Drake agreed.
He glanced around, seeking anything that might provide more substantial protection.
About 100 yards further along the river bed lay the crumbling remains of a farm compound. Like most of the buildings in this region, the dwelling itself was surrounded by a high wall, either for protection from the elements or for keeping livestock penned in.
It was a gamble, but anything was better than where they were.
‘That’s our play,’ he said, pointing to it. ‘Can you make it that far?’
‘Only if you hold my hand,’ she quipped, flashing a wry smile.
Ignoring her remark, Drake turned to the others. ‘We make for that compound over there. Two-by-two formation. John, on me. Sam, Crawford, you follow.’
‘Copy that,’ Keegan replied without looking around. ‘That’s a lot of open ground to cover,’ Crawford warned him.
‘It’s all we’ve got. If we stay here, we’re dead,’ Drake said bluntly. Now wasn’t the time for gentle persuasion.
He took a deep breath, rallying his flagging strength.
‘Okay, go! Go!’
‘You have got to be shitting me,’ Frost gasped, staring in disbelief at the woman now standing in the doorway. Cold blue eyes stared back at her.
It was Anya. The woman she had risked her life to rescue from a Siberian prison. The woman who had threatened to kill her on the flight home, who had dislocated her shoulder during a violent confrontation in Saudi Arabia. The woman who had shot Drake and left him to die.
She was standing mere feet away, clutching an M4 assault rifle, watching her as a predator might regard its prey. A splash of blood coated her cheek. In her shock, Frost barely registered the fact she now had dark hair, or that her eyes were a different colour.
Saying nothing, the older woman drew a knife from her belt and advanced on her, the blade gleaming in the electric lights.
Frost was breathing harder, her heart hammering in her chest as she tried to back away. She could only imagine what Anya intended to do with that blade.
Then, just like that, she spoke.
‘I am not here to kill you,’ she said, kneeling down beside her. ‘Unless you give me a reason to.’
Frost felt the blade against the skin of her wrist, but only for a moment. With a single firm slice, the plastic cuffs came away, releasing her hands.
Wasting no time, Frost jumped to her feet and backed away, too shocked by this sudden turn of events to say anything for the next few seconds.
‘W-what the fuck are you doing here?’ she finally managed to stammer.
‘I did not come here to rescue you, if that’s what you mean,’ Anya replied, quick to quash any such thoughts. ‘But if you want to get out, follow me, stay silent and do as I say. Understand?’
Still too shocked to give any other response, Frost merely nodded.
Satisfied, Anya turned away, reached up and yanked the long brunette hairpiece free, throwing it aside to reveal a mane of short, dishevelled blonde hair. And with a little more care she drew a fingertip across each eye to remove the contact lenses she’d been wearing. She would need unimpeded vision from now on.
This done, she crept out into the corridor with the assault rifle up at her shoulder. Frost followed behind, noting the two Horizon operatives lying sprawled on the floor, one with blood pooling beneath his head.
With the M4 covering the stairs leading upwards, Anya knelt down beside one of the fallen men and patted down his pockets until she found what she was looking for: a cellphone.
‘What are you doing?’ Frost asked as the woman dialled a number.
‘I presume you forgot what I said about keeping quiet,’ Anya said without looking up. ‘Just be ready to move when I give the word, and stay close to me.’
With the number inputted, she gripped the assault rifle tight and hit the button to connect the call.
In the walled marshalling area outside, Anya’s rusty, battered Toyota pickup truck sat parked near the perimeter wall. With its paintwork faded to a dull, pale blue, bald tyres and an exhaust barely held together by increasingly futile spot-welds, it was an unremarkable vehicle to say the least.
Unremarkable but for its cargo.
Packed into a space between the fuel tank and the transmission was a metal box containing several pounds of Composition 4 plastic explosive. Inserted into it were several electric blasting caps wired into a battery, the firing switch controlled by a simple, commercially available cellphone.
The instant Anya’s call connected, the change in voltage was enough to trigger the switch, which in turn caused electricity to surge into the blasting caps.
Five seconds after dialling the number, her improvised bomb detonated with enough explosive force to crumple the pickup truck like a toy. The shockwave rushed outwards in all directions, reverberating against the concrete wall opposite with crushing power, while the contents of the fuel tank added to the destruction.
Up in his office, Carpenter flinched at the bright flash off to his right, followed a moment later by a shockwave that seemed to reverberate up from the very core of the building. Rising from his desk, he watched in disbelief as a section of
the perimeter wall appeared to lean precariously outwards, before collapsing in a cloud of smoke and broken masonry.
Flames were roaring upwards from a ruptured fuel tank, with a pall of smoke and dust now hovering over the entire scene.
‘What the fuck …?’ Turning his attention back to his desk, he picked up his phone and hit the quick-dial button for the building’s security centre. As always, the call was answered straight away.
‘Wilson here, sir,’ the duty security chief began.
‘Wilson, what the hell is going on out there?’
‘We’re working on it now, sir.’
Only a fool would try to storm the Horizon building. Even with the wall breached, every possible approach was covered with security cameras and emplaced machine guns.
Logically he knew the Horizon compound was, to all intents and purposes, impregnable, but that didn’t stop his gut telling him something wasn’t right.
‘Take every man you can spare and form a cordon around that breach,’ he ordered. ‘Anyone comes within 50 yards of our wall, shoot to kill. Do you understand me?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘One more thing,’ he added. ‘Have a chopper fuelled and standing by on the roof. I want to be airborne in ten minutes.’
He was too close to this whole affair. It was time he distanced himself, perhaps left Afghanistan permanently. And if the shit hit the fan, he had no intention of waiting here for ISAF to come and arrest him.
‘Copy that, sir. Ten minutes.’
Hanging up the phone, Carpenter turned his attention back to his computer screen, and the real-time images of the battle unfolding around the ruined chopper. He could still see figures moving near the wreck even as bright blobs of tracer fire arced in around them.
Vermaak and his men were closing the noose.
Chapter 52
With Crawford and McKnight covering them, Drake and Keegan rose up and charged along the shallow depression, hunched over to present smaller targets. The ground was rough and uneven, and covered with rocks that made their footing treacherous. Hidden explosives were a constant menace, but there was no time to check for them.
