Redemption

by Will Jordan

  Drake was starting to get an uneasy feeling. Cain was suggesting they try to stage some kind of jailbreak in a sovereign country with the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.

  He looked up. ‘You’re serious about this, aren’t you?’

  Cain’s gaze didn’t waver for a second. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Can’t we cut a deal with the Russians?’

  By this, he meant bribery. A few million dollars went a long way in Russia these days, and it wasn’t as if the CIA was short of cash.

  Cain shook his head. ‘Not an option. She’s too valuable to them. And if we open negotiations, we’ll lose our window. Besides, we’re working to a tight schedule. Our only viable option in this case is direct intervention. It has to be done quickly, quietly and, most important of all, anonymously. The Russians get one sniff that the Agency was behind this, and we’re all in the shit.’

  It also meant that if the Shepherd team involved was caught or captured, they could expect no outside support.

  Now Drake was starting to understand why they wanted him on board. He was British, with no immediate connection to the CIA. He was an ideal choice for a job like this.

  Drake leaned back in his chair, taking several moments to digest everything he’d heard. He felt as if he’d just landed in some cheap spy novel.

  ‘So let me get this right,’ he said at last. ‘You want me to take a team deep into Russian sovereign territory, infiltrate a high-security prison, find and recover a prisoner whose name I don’t even know, then somehow escape with her and make it back to US soil without anyone finding out who was behind it?’

  ‘That’s about the size of it,’ Cain confirmed. ‘And time’s ticking, Ryan. We have three days. If we don’t have her back on US soil by then, it’s over.’

  Three days to plan and execute what might well be the most difficult and dangerous operation of his entire career.

  ‘That’s … quite an ambitious timetable.’

  To his surprise, Cain laughed. ‘I’m not the Pope, son. You can speak freely here. In fact, that’s exactly why we brought you in. I want an honest, no-bullshit assessment from you. Can it be done?’

  Drake said nothing. The problem with honest answers was that once given, they were impossible to retract. He’d been on his share of operations that were slapped together at the last minute, and they rarely left him with pleasant memories. And this was one job where there could be no margin for error.

  He glanced down at the photograph of the prison again, hesitating a moment before delivering his answer. ‘It’s possible.’

  Cain’s eyes lit up. ‘So you’ll do it?’

  ‘I didn’t say that, sir,’ Drake amended. ‘I said it’s possible in theory. But theories have a tendency to fall apart when you’re halfway around the world on a covert mission into hostile territory. And if this goes wrong, none of us will make it back alive.’

  ‘Risk is part of the job,’ Cain reminded him. ‘If you can’t handle that, it wouldn’t be hard to find someone who can.’

  The change that had come over the older man was startling. Without altering his posture or moving a muscle, his entire bearing had changed. He wasn’t the smiling, affable movie star who had welcomed Drake into the room a few minutes earlier. Now he was cold, ruthless, businesslike. He was a king on this particular chessboard, and he had no time for pawns like Drake unless they proved their worth.

  ‘With all due respect, I think it would, sir,’ Drake replied, his tone calm and even. If Cain wanted to play hardball with him, then so be it. ‘None of the other Shepherd team leaders will take this job on. They don’t have the training or the background for it. You picked me because I helped run snatch-and-grab operations in Afghanistan. You could go outsource and use a special forces unit – say Delta or Task Force 88 – but then you’d have the problem of deniability if they were caught, and operational security if they weren’t. Whatever history this “Maras” has with the Agency, I’m guessing you want to keep it in-house, quiet and deniable. So that leaves you with me.

  ‘You asked for a no-bullshit assessment of the situation,’ Drake went on. ‘Well, mine is that this entire operation is a house of cards just waiting to fall over. And anyone unlucky enough to get caught up in it is either going to get killed or captured, which in this case is just as bad.’ He sighed and glanced away for a moment. ‘I’m not afraid to put my life at risk, but what I can’t and won’t do is drag a Shepherd team in without good reason.’

  Cain said nothing for the next few seconds, just sat there regarding Drake with a thoughtful expression. Drake for his own part tried to meet the older man’s inquisitive gaze without flinching, and resisted the growing urge to swallow.

  ‘Ryan, I asked you to speak plainly, so I’ll extend you the same courtesy,’ he said at last. ‘I told you that I read your dossier long before you walked in here. I know what happened to you out there, the business you got caught up in. I know you got yourself a court martial and a discharge from the military.’

  Drake could feel his jaw tightening.

  Always it came back to that. A dishonourable discharge – an embarrassment, a fiasco. It was like a black mark on his life, a penance following him everywhere he went. It would be there on every job application he ever made.

  The only people willing to take him on had been the CIA, and then only because Franklin had fought his corner with such tenacity that his own career had been put on the line. He would never forget that, just as Franklin would never forget what Drake had once done for him.

  Cain smiled a little, enjoying his discomfort. ‘What if I was to tell you I could change all that?’

  Once again he felt his heartbeat quicken. ‘How?’

  Cain shrugged, as if it was a matter of no consequence. ‘We all have favours we can call in, and I have more than most. I can have the Judge Advocate reopen your case, get your conviction overturned, your record expunged. It’ll be a blank slate. You can make a fresh start, either with the Agency or somewhere else if you want.’

  Drake said nothing. His mind was racing. Could he really do such a thing?

  Of course he could. Cain moved in circles Drake would never be part of. He could exert influence at the highest levels, strike deals, bribe or intimidate just about anyone. His power within the Agency and beyond was immense.

  Cain was offering him a chance that would never come again. A chance to clear his name. A chance at redemption.

  How could he refuse that?

  ‘I have your word on this?’ he asked quietly.

  Cain smiled. It was the smile of a chess player who knows he has won the game, long before his opponent does. ‘You come through for me, I’ll come through for you. You have my word on that.’

  Drake said nothing.

  ‘I wish I could give you more time to think things over, but we have to move fast on this one. This is your chance, Ryan. Maybe your only chance. For your sake, I suggest you take it.’

  Drake looked down at the surface of the polished table, saying nothing.

  This was his chance. His only chance.

  The choice was made before common sense had time to assert itself.

  ‘I’d need free rein on support and logistics,’ he said quietly. ‘And absolutely all the intelligence we have on this prison.’

  ‘You’ll have it.’

  ‘And my choice of team specialists,’ he added.

  ‘Done.’

  Once more Drake glanced down at the photograph of Maras. Her piercing blue eyes stared back at him, as if to bore straight into his soul. What they would see there, he didn’t care to imagine.

  I hope you’re worth it, he thought.

  ‘All right,’ he said without looking up. ‘I’m in.’

  Chapter 4

  Cell No. 62, Khatyrgan Prison, Siberia

  FORTY-ONE, FORTY-TWO, FORTY-THREE …

  Breathing hard, beads of sweat dripping from her brow, Prisoner 62 forced her aching arms to work, pushing her body up fr
om the freezing concrete floor before slowly lowering it back down again. Over and over she performed the same exercise without rest or respite.

  Forty-four, forty-five …

  She’d had a name once. Maras; a code name given by a man who once cared about her. And before that, another name given by parents who once protected her. Both were gone now. There were no names in Khatyrgan. Here she was Prisoner 62, and that was all.

  Wispy tendrils of steam rose from her warm skin, her body heat radiating out into the tiny unheated cell. She kept quiet as she worked, limiting her breathing to short gasps, knowing that any excessive noise might draw the guards to her cell. Guards with fists and boots and rifle butts.

  Forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight …

  Always they came in force, too many to fight off alone in that cramped cell where she couldn’t move properly. If they were angry or vindictive or just felt like having fun, they would beat her until she was close to blacking out, when she almost begged for the darkness to swallow her for ever. In those situations there was nothing she could do except curl into a ball and wait for it to end.

  It had been worse when she first arrived here, before they learned the kind of grudging, reluctant respect they had for her now. In those first few months they had tried to beat her down, tried to subjugate and break her, but she didn’t react like the other prisoners. She didn’t cower in fear, she didn’t meekly submit.

  She fought back.

  All too often they had come away with gashes and bruises of their own. And more than one unfortunate guard had to be carried out by his comrades, moaning and bleeding. She could fight like a wild animal if the need was upon her, lashing out with a ferocity that surprised even her jailers, and refusing to stay down until she was physically unable to stand.

  Eventually, despite the ferocious beatings they exacted in revenge, they had grown tired of nursing their own injuries and suffering the indignity of being hurt by a woman, and they had relented in their assault. It was just as well, because by that point she was almost at the end of her rope.

  Those had been some of the darkest days of her life, and she had seen many of those.

  Forty-nine, fifty.

  With one final push, she got her knees under her and rose up from the floor, clenching and unclenching her fists to get some circulation going again. She had wrapped her hands in rags to keep them from freezing, but still the cold seeped through. The cold was everywhere in Khatyrgan.

  It was her true enemy. Not the guards or the other prisoners, but the remorseless, relentless cold.

  It was why she exercised with such dogged determination each day, why it was the first thing she did when she woke each morning and the last thing she did before falling asleep at night. The body heat it generated kept the cold at bay, at least for a while.

  In any case, there wasn’t much else to do here. She was kept in solitary confinement twenty-four hours a day, carefully set aside from the rest of the inmate population. She knew there was an exercise yard in the prison, but she had never seen it since the day of her arrival. She hadn’t seen sunlight since then either – there was no window in her cell.

  How long had that been? Two years? Three?

  She didn’t know. She had lost count.

  Better not to know.

  This cell was her world now. 6 feet long by 8 feet wide and 8 feet high – 384 cubic feet. One toilet. One sink. One worn-out mattress laid on the floor. No window. Bare brick walls (she had counted the number of bricks in each wall). A single dim bulb in the ceiling that dictated her night and day.

  The only change came when she was let out for twenty minutes each week to use the shower room. Always under armed guard, of course.

  The possibility of escape was non-existent. She knew, because she had spent every day for months brooding on the problem, to no avail. She couldn’t get out of her cell. The door was locked by a simple deadbolt on the other side, with a hatch set at eye level for observation or passing in food. The guards always came for her in groups of at least three, forcing her to stand back while they opened the door.

  The other inmates might have opportunities, brief moments when they weren’t being watched so strictly, but not her. Whenever she wasn’t locked in the cell, she had weapons trained on her. It was hopeless.

  More than once she had pondered the prospect of killing herself. It wouldn’t have been hard. She knew how.

  The simplest and most convenient way to die would be to make a run for it when they took her to the shower, allowing them to gun her down. Of course, there was always the chance that she wouldn’t be killed outright, but would instead lie maimed and bleeding. Gunshot wounds could take hours or even days to claim their victim, and she had little desire to go out like that.

  There were other options, though. The food, such as it was, was served on steel trays. Cheap, thin and flimsy things, battered and dented by years of use. A bit of bending and working would allow her to snap one in half, providing a rough edge she could use to slit her wrists. It would be hours before the guards made their rounds; plenty of time for her to bleed out.

  Or she could tear up the thin blanket for her bed and knot the strips into a crude rope, winding it around the light fixture overhead to make a noose. Of course, she’d also have to tie her wrists behind her back before throwing herself off the edge of the bed. No matter how strong her resolve, the moment that noose tightened around her neck, she knew she would fight it.

  And yet, she’d never done any of those things. Something had always stopped her. Perhaps it was sheer stubborn refusal to give in, as if she was somehow making a point by staying alive.

  Or perhaps the will to survive was too strong in her. She had spent so much of her life fighting to hold on to the life she had, it was too deeply ingrained in her nature to give it up now.

  So she waited.

  She waited. For what, she didn’t know.

  Nobody was coming for her.

  Nobody would help her.

  Nobody cared about her.

  She had accepted all of these facts long ago.

  She was starting to feel the cold now that she’d stopped moving. Taking a deep breath, Prisoner 62 knelt down on the floor to start her next fifty.

  Chapter 5

  DRAKE TOOK A deep pull of his coffee while staring pensively at the photograph of Maras pinned to the whiteboard in front of him. For some reason he kept finding his gaze drawn to that picture.

  ‘She’s something, isn’t she?’ Franklin remarked, spotting the object of his preoccupation.

  That she was. But there was more to it than mere physical attractiveness. It was what was behind that face which intrigued him most; what secrets lay behind those piercing, icy blue eyes. What had she done to end up in a place like Khatyrgan?

  ‘Who is she, Dan?’ he asked now that they were alone. ‘Why is Cain willing to go through all this to get her?’

  Cain himself had long since left, sensing that his interference would be more of a hindrance than a help at this stage. In any case, his work was done – Drake was on board, and that was all he cared about.

  Although he made a point of learning as much as possible about a missing operative as part of his job, he rarely concerned himself with them on a personal level. There was always a line he didn’t cross, a gulf of professional detachment that separated him from the person he was required either to rescue or to hunt as the situation dictated.

  But not this time.

  Franklin shook his head. ‘Sorry, buddy. Stuff like that is above your pay grade – and mine,’ he added with an unhappy look. ‘All I was told was that she was important, and we were to use any and all resources to bring her in. I chose you.’

  ‘I’m honoured.’ Drake took another gulp of coffee and rubbed his eyes. His mind still felt sluggish, and the headache from earlier hadn’t left him.

  His friend frowned. ‘You feeling all right?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You don’t look fine,’ the o
lder man persisted. ‘Late night?’

  ‘Early morning,’ Drake evaded, unwilling to say more.

  Franklin exhaled slowly. ‘Listen, I’m sorry for putting you on the spot like that. I didn’t know Cain was going to give you such a hard time.’

  Drake flashed a wry smile. ‘You’re a shit liar, Dan. You always were.’

  ‘And you’re a shit cook. What are you gonna do?’ He grinned. ‘Look, for what it’s worth, I was trying to do you a favour. I thought it might be a chance to put all that shit behind you, make a fresh start.’

  Drake sighed and nodded. Whatever else, Franklin was being honest about that. ‘Well, I appreciate the thought.’

  He took another drink of coffee and turned his attention back to the vast array of documents spread out across the conference table in front of them. ‘Right then, let’s plan our jailbreak.’

  Cain had made good on his promise to provide them with all the intelligence available on Khatyrgan, literally dumping two packing boxes’ worth of it in their laps. Everything from construction orders to design blueprints, personnel transfers, logistics arrangements and maintenance requests – it was all there. The National Security Agency was even working to tap into the prison’s outgoing communications.

  According to the files they’d been able to sort through, Khatyrgan had been founded as a penal colony under Stalin’s regime in the 1930s, mostly using slave labour. Ironically enough, the construction crews who survived the brutal working conditions would go on to become the first batch of prisoners. Drake had to admire the Russian pragmatism, forcing men to literally build their own prisons.

  In any case, its isolated location in the midst of a frozen wilderness made escape impractical as well as impossible, and Khatyrgan soon became a warehouse for some of the most dangerous enemies of the Soviet Union.

  Thousands found their way there over the next sixty years, often without trial or parole. Most ended their days behind those grim walls, never to be seen or heard from again. Its current inmate population was just shy of three hundred.

  And in all its seventy years of continuous occupation, there was not a single record of any prisoner successfully escaping from Khatyrgan.