Saneh took Bishop’s short answers in her stride and focused her attention on the wounded Aleks. He had only superficial burns on his forearms but the big Russian grinned, lapping up the attention of the beautiful woman. Bishop watched as she tended Aleks’ wounds; so far she’d impressed him. Maybe there’s potential for her after all, he pondered.
Chapter 48
PRIMAL Safe House
The ride back to the safe house was swift on the empty roads. Kurtz parked the van in the double garage. They gathered in the living room.
“Good work, team,” Bishop said. “You all handled yourselves pretty damn well.”
Kurtz looked down at the ground, scuffing at the worn carpet with his boot. “I am sorry about the break-in. It was an amateur move to be compromised. I’m a dombkopf”
“You got the data, Kurtz, that’s what counts. And that ambush? Well, you saved our arses there and gave Dostiger a bloody nose.”
The German looked up with an ever-so-slight smile. “Ja, we showed those blockheads what real firepower is.”
“You sure did, but what’s important now is that we’re all back here in one piece and ready for the next move. I’m not sure what that’s going to be yet, but I’ve a feeling we’re done here in Kiev.” He didn’t want to reveal too much in front of Saneh. “Get some rest. I’ll take the first watch.”
The men filed out of the living room and Aleks gave him a big bear hug before he left. “Thanks for coming back for me, Aden. I know you didn’t have to,” he said.
Bishop extracted himself from the big Russian’s grip. “You feeling OK?”
“Da, da, a beautiful angel looked after me,” he replied with a wink, giving Saneh a grin before heading to bed.
The Iranian sat on the battered couch, watching the team file out. Once they had gone, Bishop turned to her.
“I didn’t get a chance before, but thanks for getting me out of the club,” he said.
She smiled. “We made quite an exit, didn’t we?”
“If it wasn’t for you and the sacrifice of your men, I probably wouldn’t be here. You saved my life today, Saneh. That’s not something I’ll forget.”
Tears welled in the MOIS agent’s eyes and she looked away. “My men died trying to get me out too,” she whispered quietly. She hunched over, shoulders shuddering as she started to sob.
Bishop stood in front of her, unsure of what to do. Right now she looked so vulnerable, feminine, out of her depth. Part of him wanted to wrap her in his arms, hold her tight against his chest and console her. Another, albeit smaller, part of him was keenly aware of this woman’s reputation. She was an Iranian agent—the enemy.
She looked up at him with eyes smudged by make-up. They stared at each other. Bishop was drowning in her jet black eyes; she seemed to be staring into his soul. Slowly she stood up and he felt his pulse quicken as she placed her arms around his waist and lowered her head to his chest, hiding the slight smirk on her face before she started crying. He held her tightly as she released all of the emotion of the last twenty-four hours.
“I’m sorry, Tim, this isn’t like me,” she sobbed, still clinging to him.
“It’s OK, I understand, I’ve lost men before. It’s always hard.” Bishop sounded calm but his mind was racing. She eventually let go of him, sitting back on the lounge, wiping her tears. Bishop pulled one of the plastic equipment trunks over and sat down in front of her.
“Well, I’m alone now.” she sniffled.
“What are you going to do?” Bishop asked, trying to hide his feelings. His emotions were in turmoil and he knew Vance would not approve of where they were leading him.
The intimacy was interrupted by the shrill ringtone of Saneh’s phone. She pulled it from her handbag and examined the screen. “I really need to take this.”
“Sure, you can use the kitchen.”
“Thank you.” She left the living area, shutting the door to the kitchen behind her. Once she was alone, she answered the call.
The voice was harsh. “It’s Rostam. I told you to report in at 2200.”
“Sorry, sir, I was delayed.”
“Stopped to get your nails done?” Rostam asked cynically.
“No, sir. I helped the MI6 agent escape from Dostiger’s men. My team members were both killed.”
“WHAT! Both of your men are dead? How the hell did that happen?”
“Sir I... the...”
“Pull yourself together, Agent Ebadi. Tell me what the hell happened.”
Saneh struggled on. “Sir, the meeting with Dostiger was uneventful, I gained nothing of real value. As I was leaving, Fischer arrived... ah... Dostiger’s men threw him through a window and I helped him escape. My men were killed in the alley., Fischer and I escaped in my car after one of his men was captured...”
“Go on,” said Rostam.
“Dostiger’s men chased us and the rest of Fischer’s team ambushed them. I’m sure they’re not MI6; they killed everyone.”
“Is that all?”
“No, sir. Fischer and his men went back to the club and rescued their man.”
“What about Dostiger? Did they kill him?” Rostam sounded concerned.
“No, he wasn’t there. I think he fled south to his Odessa facility. My source mentioned it when we last spoke.”
“And where are you now?”
“In Fischer’s safe house.”
There was silence as Rostam considered the situation. Saneh waited with apprehension.
“Congratulations, a perfect mess. Our only hope now is that Fischer has a plan to recover the device from Odessa. At least we’re positioned to take advantage of the circumstances - aren’t we, Ebadi?”
“Yes, sir.”
“There is potential for this to slip through our fingers, Alfsaneh. Our success is now intimately tied to Fischer and his actions. Get even closer to him. Ensure that he’s successful. I don’t care what it takes. Is that clear?”
“I understand, sir,” she replied quietly.
“Do not fail me again!” Rostam terminated the call.
The Iranian agent slumped against the kitchen bench, her hands shaking. She grasped the hem of her torn dress, contemplating whether to rip it higher. Instead she left it, wiped the tears from her face and turned towards the door.
Chapter 49
PRIMAL Safe House
Bishop stared at the door, wondering if PRIMAL was monitoring Saneh’s call. That reminded him he would have to report in to Vance and Chua. He looked at his watch: three in the morning—around mid-day on the island. The team would all be up and waiting but he couldn’t face them. In the last six hours they had botched a break in, stuffed up a meet with Dostiger, and shot up half of Kiev. Vance was going to flip out. Bishop glanced at his laptop sitting on the table and decided he would send the command team a quick email. There was no need to talk to them face to face when there was nothing positive to discuss. Dostiger had no doubt disappeared and he’d probably blown his only chance to kill him. He just hoped the team had been able to pull something useful off Dostiger’s computer.
The door from the kitchen creaked open just as Bishop opened his laptop. Saneh noticed the glum look on his face. “What’s wrong?”
“Huh? No, nothing. Just thinking, wondering where Dostiger would have gone.”
Saneh smiled. “Odessa.”
“What?”
“That call, it was from my source.”
“You have a source?” Saneh had Bishop’s complete attention now.
“I told you when we first met, in the car park. I said I had other means.”
She’s right, he thought. I was too busy staring at her arse. “Tell me more about Odessa,” he asked.
“After we escaped the club, Dostiger’s head of security went, with his men, south to Odessa.”
That would explain the lack of guards at the club, surmised Bishop.
“My source thinks they’re expecting a big delivery. In the past they’ve escorted large shipments of drugs from
the airport to a lab nearby.”
He nodded, realizing a drug processing facility would have a lot of the equipment needed to safely handle a chemical agent.
“Tim, I’ve laid myself open. That’s all I have.” Saneh sat back on the couch. “I want to work with you. Our governments are aligned on this one.” She took a deep breath. “We need to stop the Revolutionary Guards, otherwise a lot of people are going to suffer.”
“You’ve lost your entire team, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but I’ll share all my information. My source is still active.”
“Yeah, alright,” he said, giving her a broad smile. “So far we’ve turned out to be a pretty good duo.”
She smiled sheepishly. “If, by duo, you mean me saving your butt?”
Bishop laughed, noticing her stunning smile. “Yeah, I guess I owe you one.” He took a deep breath. “By the way, my name’s not Tim. It’s Aden.”
“I already know that; your Russian let it slip. Oh, and it’s two; you owe me two: one for saving you and one for my car’s mirror.”
“OK, OK. Look, Saneh, the mirror aside, if we work together, you have to understand a few things.”
“What?”
“My mission is to stop Dostiger from supplying a particular weapon to a third party, any third party. If you work with me, there is no way your mission can succeed.”
“How can you assume my mission is to recover the weapon? What if my mission is just to stop Dostiger from supplying it to someone else?” she asked defensively.
Bishop continued cautiously. "Then our missions would align and we can work together. Just don’t try to cross me, Saneh. We need each other’s help at the moment, but that can change.”
Saneh met Bishop’s intense stare. “You can trust me, Aden, and you need me. I don’t want that to change.”
“Me neither,” he said. His features softened. Bishop had found himself lost in her eyes again.He turned away, moving back to his laptop. “Anyway, we need to get a few hours sleep before we work out our next move.” He looked back at Saneh’s ragged black cocktail dress, borrowed cold weather jacket and scuffed calf-high boots. “And we should probably look at getting you some appropriate clothing.”
She smiled. “I guess I am a little over-dressed.”
“Just a little,” Bishop chuckled. “We can tackle that problem tomorrow. Right now you need some rest. You can have the couch.”
“Are you going to sleep?” Saneh asked.
“Yeah. I’m going to shoot an email to my headquarters before turning in though.” Bishop was hoping Saneh’s new information about Odessa would help him avoid the wrath of Vance and Chua. PRIMAL’s commander, in particular, wasn’t going to be happy when he found out about the incident in the club.
Saneh rose from the couch as he turned his attention to the laptop. She walked over, leant down and kissed him gently on the cheek. “Goodnight, Aden.”
Chapter 50
Khod Valley
The time displayed in the bottom right corner of Mirza’s night vision told him it was 0350 hours. In a little over sixty minutes the first traces of dawn would appear on the horizon and he and Ice needed to be in position well before then. Vance was expecting them to coordinate the bombing of the extraction site—that is, if the Pain Train was operational.
The pair had worked their way around the western flank of the mountain, sticking to the high cliffs that overlooked the extraction site. Their progress had been slow, strong winds and freezing temperatures making it difficult to traverse the rugged terrain. Using the map, they had identified a potential hide location, a small outcrop with observation onto the whole southern side of the mountain. Inspecting the contours on the map, they had planned to move to the position through a small depression carved into the mountain by heavy winter rains. If they crawled, they hoped they could get in and out unobserved, even in broad daylight.
Mirza wasn’t enjoying crawling over sharp rocks again. Despite his thick clothing, they dug into his knees and elbows, and the hard ground felt like permafrost. He crawled steadily in front of Ice, his compact sniper rifle cradled in his arms. It felt like an eternity just to cover the few hundred meters to the outcrop. He paused as his gloved hand touched something metallic. He focused his night vision, revealing a pile of heavily corroded cartridges and machine gun link.
It looked as if somebody else had used the same spot in the past, perhaps the Mujahideen attacking the Russians. A tap on his boot reminded Mirza to hurry up; they were running out of darkness. He reached forward, pushed the old cartridges aside, then felt something tight against the palm of his hand. Too late, he realized what it was.
Trip wire!
The rocket streaked into the air with a whoosh, startling both men. They instinctively pressed themselves flat against the ground, waiting for the inevitable. The flare ignited under a small parachute, lighting up the entire area. Mirza’s shivering was immediately dispelled as his heart thumped hard, sending adrenaline burning though his veins. He knew there was a good chance he had just condemned them to death.
The flare spluttered out, plunging the mountain back into darkness, but the PRIMAL operatives remained perfectly still. From down below they could hear yelling echoing off the cliffs. Both men knew they had well and truly stirred up the hornet’s nest. If the Pain Train were on-station, it wouldn’t have been a problem. They would simply crawl forward, laze the targets, and blow them all to hell. Mirza tipped his head skywards in frustration.
Behind him, Ice remained calm. Nothing they could do would change the fact they had hit a trip-flare and he knew they needed a new plan.
“Everything’ll be OK, buddy,” Ice whispered, activating his satellite radio.
“Pain Train, this is Ice.”
“Mitch here. Go ahead.”
“Mitch, we’ve been compromised.”
“Roger, can you evade?”
“We’ll move to an alternate location. When will air support be on-station?”
“ETA to your location is three hours,” Mitch replied.
They didn’t have three hours. Dawn was forty minutes away and the Taliban would come looking once it was light.
“Ice, you there?” Mitch queried the silence.
“Mitch, if we get in the shit we’re going to head north.”
“Acknowledged. Are you able to send us coordinates for the excavation site?”
“Yes, will transmit within the hour.”
“Hey, Ice,” Mitch said, pausing. “Listen my good man, if it gets real hairy, just get out. We can target the camp ourselves. Get clear and we’ll have you picked up.”
“OK, but we need to move now. I’ll check in as soon as we get the coordinates.”
“Roger. Mitch out.”
Ice switched back to the internal frequency he shared with Mirza. “OK, buddy, let’s move.”
***
In the camp not far below Ice and Mirza, Yanuk was awake. The Russian had fallen asleep in the early hours of the morning, slumped against an equipment case inside his tent. As the flare popped, his eyelids had snapped open and he had rushed out of the camouflaged shelter.
Standing in the middle of the camp, he stared up at the cliffs through his night vision binoculars, wondering if it was a false alarm. The Taliban had placed trip flares on any likely observation points. After yesterday’s activity, he figured the Americans had probably inserted a team of Navy SEALs. Their numbers would be small but they would be well equipped. He knew they would make short work of any Taliban in the darkness.
Yanuk couldn’t afford to waste time thinking about SEALs or any other Americans; he needed to focus on the dig. Cursing under his breath, he returned to the shaft, throwing back the two layers of heavy blackout curtains before reaching the red-lit interior of the tunnel. He yelled out for the village elder he had left in charge. The man took half a minute to emerge from the depths, covered from head to toe in dust, his eyes bloodshot. The Afghan was hunched over from physical exhaustion.
>
“How far?” Yanuk barked.
“Five more meters, sir.” The man leant against his shovel, barely able to stand.
Yanuk looked back down the shaft, mentally calculating. The locals were working well; raw fear of the Taliban motivated them. At this rate, in another three to four hours, they would break through to the main chamber.
“Keep digging,” he ordered. With a wave of his hand, he dismissed the man.
As he left the shaft, he caught a glimpse of white robes. Like a ghostly apparition, Khan appeared out of the darkness.
“Who do you think it is, Yanuk?” he asked.
“More Americans.”
“I think you may be right. I will send more men to kill them. Dawn is approaching and they won’t be able to hide.”
Yanuk nodded. It was true. No one knew the area like the Taliban. If anyone could chase the SEALs from the mountain, it would be them. “If you can keep them away, in three hours we’ll be through.”
Khan reached out and grasped the stocky Russian’s shoulder. “No more mistakes, Yanuk.” With that Khan turned on his heel and disappeared back into the darkness.
Yanuk fumed. He didn’t need Khan’s threats. They were almost through, and despite all the problems, he was sure the operation would still succeed. He took a deep breath and smiled at the thought of the money Dostiger had promised. In just over twelve hours he would be a very wealthy man.
Chapter 51
Khod Valley
Mirza and Ice had given up crawling and were moving fast across the mountain. They scrambled over the rocky ground, driven by the knowledge that the Taliban would come; they just needed to stay one step ahead and get to another observation point before dawn. Time was closing in on them, and if the Pain Train didn’t get on-station soon, they would have to abort and start escape-and-evasion.
They agreed the most viable plan was to head north, back towards the Afghan air-defense missiles. The new location would still allow them a good view down onto the excavation site, but if they needed to withdraw, they could drop off the northern slope towards the more hospitable lands of the Hazaran tribes, the mortal enemy of the Taliban.
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