Ghost Target (Ryan Drake)

by Will Jordan

‘Hard to say, exactly, but he’s been making a lot of moves towards the Pakistanis over the past couple of weeks. Even sent one of his own operatives out there to make contact with their intelligence service.’

  ‘The ISI?’

  ‘Yeah. My guess is he’s putting together some kind of closed-door deal with them, on their home turf no less. Must be something pretty big to risk exposing himself like this.’

  Drake’s mind was racing, quickly churning through everything he’d heard as he tried to make sense of the deputy director’s actions. ‘So he wouldn’t want to meet with them at the embassy, and there’s no way he’d risk going to their own headquarters. He must have a neutral location in mind. Can you pull up a list of Agency safe houses in Islamabad, see if any of them have been cordoned off?’

  ‘Way ahead of you, buddy. He’s already staked his claim on one of our most secure locations in central Islamabad. No reason given, according to the station chief.’

  Nor would there be, Drake knew. Cain didn’t want anyone seeing or hearing what was discussed in that safe house. Pre-prepared locations like that were deceptively hard to penetrate, and protected against all forms of surveillance, from visual to electronic. In short, they were a nightmare to bug and virtually impossible to break into.

  But not for him, because he had an advantage that no foreign intelligence service could call upon. With Franklin’s help, he would know exactly how that safe house was designed, what its security measures were, and what their weaknesses might be. And given time, he would figure out how to defeat them.

  ‘Can you send whatever you’ve got on that safe house to me?’ he asked, fervently hoping he wasn’t asking for something his friend couldn’t give.

  ‘I had a feeling you’d ask that,’ Franklin acknowledged. ‘That kind of information is held on a secure network; anyone trying to access it is logged automatically – even me. I don’t have the expertise to get around that kind of security.’

  Fortunately, Drake knew someone who did. ‘Keira can do it. All she needs is a valid access code to get through the Agency’s firewall.’

  ‘Mine, you mean.’ Franklin hesitated. ‘You sure she can do it?’

  ‘She’s the best hacker I know.’ She was also the only hacker he knew, but that was beside the point. ‘If anyone can get in, it’s her. But she can’t do it without you.’

  His old friend sighed. ‘One of these days I’m going to regret helping you.’

  ‘Wouldn’t blame you, but we can make this work. I know it.’

  ‘And you’re set on going through with this?’ Franklin asked. ‘No backing out?’

  Drake glanced out to sea for a moment, his thoughts lingering on his three teammates, on Anya, on the sister he’d left back in the UK. All of their lives might rest on Downfall.

  ‘I’ve come too far to back out now,’ he said honestly. ‘Downfall is my last option.’

  Silence descended between them, broken only by the faintly audible crackle on the long-distance line. Drake could sense how conflicted Franklin was, how much he was asking the man to risk. Normally he’d never consider putting someone else at risk, but they both knew Franklin was living on borrowed time just as much as Drake. Cain might not have openly declared him an enemy, but sooner or later he would outlive his usefulness.

  The only question was whether he was prepared to risk the time he had left on one last gamble.

  ‘All right, Ryan,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll make it happen.’

  Drake closed his eyes for a moment and let out a breath. ‘Good man.’

  ‘Just make sure you don’t fuck this up,’ Franklin said, trying to adopt a tone of faint mockery to lighten the mood. ‘Cats might get nine lives, but you’re coming up short.’

  Drake grinned. ‘I’ll keep that in mind.’ However, his smiled faded as he reflected for a moment on everything Franklin had risked to help him. ‘Oh, and Dan?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Thanks… for all of it. I mean that. I won’t let you down.’

  The good humour was gone now as the reality of what Drake was about to undertake sank in. For all they knew, this could be the last time they spoke.

  ‘Take that son of a bitch out, for both of us. Good luck to you, Ryan.’

  Pocketing the phone, Drake strode back along the deck, making his way below. If Franklin was right, then time was already against them.

  As he’d hoped, Frost was sitting at the communications console, her feet up on the desk as usual. Both laptops were up and running, one of them set to a music download site while she tapped away on the other. Tinny dance music was faintly audible through the headphones she was wearing.

  Sensing his presence, she pulled off the earphones and spun around in her chair to regard him. ‘What’s the good word, captain?’ she asked, noting his purposeful stride.

  ‘I’ve got some good news for you.’

  She cocked an eyebrow. ‘Don’t tell me. They’re remaking Final Fantasy VII?’

  ‘No idea what that means,’ he said, brushing off the facetious remark. ‘But how do you feel about doing a spot of computer hacking for me?’

  That got her attention. ‘Against who, exactly?’

  ‘The CIA.’

  She seemed to deflate then. ‘In that case, no fucking way. I’m good, but even the best hacker on the planet can’t get past their firewall.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ he assured her. ‘Dan’s going to send you his access codes. What I need you to do is find something for me without being detected, otherwise they’ll track it back to him. Can you do that?’

  ‘Hell, yes.’ A slow smile began to spread across her face. ‘What do you need?’

  ‘Better if I explain it to all of you.’

  Summoning Mason and McKnight to their makeshift conference room, Drake hurriedly explained what Franklin had revealed to him during their call. All three operatives listened in rapt attention as he laid out what he knew so far, and more importantly what it could mean for their plans.

  ‘In the past three years, Cain has never ventured this far from Langley. He’ll obviously have security with him, but only those he trusts to keep secrets. He’ll be outside the Agency’s umbrella, and that makes him vulnerable.’ Drake looked at each of them in turn. ‘If we’re going to make Downfall work, we won’t get a better chance than this.’

  The look on Mason’s face suggested he wasn’t inclined to argue. However, that didn’t mean he was entirely pleased with the proposal either. ‘So we’ve got to put together a plan to take down one of the most paranoid men on the planet, including all the equipment, weapons and resources we’ll need, then get our asses to Islamabad and implement all of it within 48 hours.’

  Drake glanced at his watch. ‘Actually it’s more like 47 now.’

  His friend snorted in grim amusement. ‘You’re spoiling us, Ryan.’

  ‘We’ve done this sort of thing at short notice before,’ Frost reminded him. ‘In Libya.’

  McKnight raised an eyebrow. ‘Hardly a great example. We almost died in Libya.’

  ‘Nobody’s pretending this will be easy, or pretty,’ Drake said, stepping in before an argument flared up. ‘But we only have to make it work once. Downfall is our endgame, our last play. We do it right, and all of this goes away for ever.’

  As always, they had to be unanimous. Drake would never consider ordering his friends to risk their lives on something like this, because none of them owed him anything. All he could do was give them the choice and let them make it.

  ‘Shit, I’m in,’ Mason said right away. ‘Not like I’ve got anything to go back to in Milan.’

  Frost too seemed to be of like mind, and her usual dark sense of humour was never far away. ‘I’d rather die than live here without cable TV. I’m on board.’

  Drake’s eyes turned to McKnight, who had remained largely silent for now. He had come to recognize her as a voice of reason and restraint amongst the group, her cautious and pragmatic outlook in stark contrast to Frost’s gun
g-ho impetuousness and Mason’s stubborn refusal to back down. He didn’t always agree with her, but he did respect her opinions and value her advice.

  ‘Sam? What’s it going to be?’

  To his surprise, there were no words of caution or pleas for rationality this time. This time her thoughts seemed to mirror those of her comrades.

  ‘If this is our last play, then I say we make it together. We go all the way this time,’ she said, her tone one of deeply buried anger and hatred that was at last bubbling to the surface. ‘Find that asshole and kill him.’

  Such was Drake’s surprise at her change in attitude that it actually took him a moment or two to find the words. Still, perhaps she had finally come to accept what he’d tried to tell her the other day: that as long as he drew breath, Cain was a deadly threat.

  ‘All right, we go for it,’ he decided. ‘Keira, get online. Dan should have sent through his access codes by now. As soon as you’re inside the Agency’s network, find everything you can on that safe house: Cain’s travel plans, security measures on site… Everything. Understand?’

  ‘On it,’ Frost replied, spinning back around to face her workstation. ‘Better get some coffee on the go. We’ll need it.’

  Drake nodded. ‘Cole, I need a list of weapons and equipment for this job. Sam, vehicles and a staging area to operate from.’

  ‘What about you?’ McKnight asked.

  Drake raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m going to figure out a way to get us into and out of Pakistan without being caught or killed.’

  ‘That would be preferable,’ Frost remarked without looking up from her work.

  Indeed, but it didn’t mean he had the answers yet.

  ‘All right, the clock’s ticking. Let’s get to work.’

  Chapter 22

  ‘Yo! I’ve got it!’ Frost called out.

  Drake and the others were by her side within moments, watching as she brought up a series of construction blueprints on the flat-screen monitor fixed to the wall overhead.

  ‘Can anyone tell you’re accessing this?’ Drake asked.

  ‘Only if they’re smarter than me, which is unlikely,’ she said with no trace of humour. ‘We’re under the radar.’

  Drake leaned in closer, his eyes rapidly scanning the screen, taking in as much information as possible as if it might suddenly be whisked away from him without warning.

  Safe houses by their nature could come in all shapes and sizes depending on what the Agency needed them for, from tiny one-bedroom apartments in the middle of a crowded city up to luxurious country houses set within acres of carefully maintained grounds. The things they had in common, however, were that they were secure and closely monitored, offering their occupants a high degree of both privacy and safety. In short, they were ideal places for carrying out clandestine meetings with foreign intelligence agents.

  In this case, the structure appeared to be an actual house; a modern two-storey villa set within a walled compound of some sort. The kind of place that was particularly hard to bug because there were no other buildings physically connected to it. Cain had chosen his location well. Even a cursory glance at the blueprints was enough to tell Drake that this was going to be a tough nut to crack.

  ‘Jesus, this place is a fortress,’ Mason said, echoing his thoughts as he surveyed the plans. ‘Double-layered walls reinforced with steel rebar, structural I-beam frame, solid concrete base… Looks like it was built to survive a siege.’

  Drake rubbed a hand along his stubble-coated jaw. ‘Or an earthquake.’

  Mason glanced at him. ‘Huh?’

  ‘Islamabad’s near the edge of two tectonic plates. They get earthquakes all the time there, so any new buildings have to be designed to survive major ground tremors.’ He pointed to several unusual looking structures laid out at regular intervals in the building’s foundations. ‘See these? Seismic dampers, designed to absorb shockwaves and isolate the building’s core from ground movement. Like a shock absorber on a car.’

  ‘How do you know so much about this shit?’ Frost asked.

  ‘Because I studied structural engineering at university for two years,’ he replied without looking away from the screen. ‘I was planning to go into architectural design.’

  ‘Jesus.’ For once she actually looked impressed. ‘Why’d you quit?’

  ‘This is all very interesting, but maybe we could get back to the matter at hand?’ Mason suggested impatiently. ‘Ryan, you said this is all down to earthquake proofing. What does that mean for us?’

  ‘Well, it means we’re not going to be tunnelling in,’ Drake concluded. ‘Even if we could dig through the subsoil in time, the villa’s basement is structurally isolated. We’d have to break through two feet of solid concrete without anyone hearing us.’

  ‘So we can’t make entry from below. What about from above?’

  ‘We ain’t going to be parachuting into this one, that’s for sure,’ Frost remarked with no small measure of relief. ‘There’s a small terrace up top, but the roof’s nothing but angled tiles, and they’d spot us in a heartbeat if we landed in the courtyard.’

  Drake turned his attention back to the blueprints, looking for something within the perimeter that might help. Internally there was little to give him cause for optimism.

  ‘That looks like a panic room right there,’ Mason said, pointing to a small rectangular space near the core of the house. ‘Cain gets inside, and the whole thing’s a bust.’

  They had encountered a similar feature during a house raid in Libya several months earlier, and it very nearly derailing their entire plan.

  ‘So if we’re going to get to him, it has to be done quickly and quietly. We can’t afford room-to-room fighting,’ Drake concluded.

  ‘Main gate?’ McKnight suggested.

  Frost shook her head. ‘If I’m reading this right, it’s locked electronically. Numerical keypad, and the approach is covered by cameras.’

  ‘We could use signal jammers on the cameras,’ Mason said. A signal jammer emitted a powerful electronic surge across all wavelengths, effectively nullifying anything that tried to transmit a signal, including radios and security cameras. Again, it was a tactic they had used before with considerable success.

  ‘But they’d know something was wrong if all of them suddenly went down,’ Frost pointed out.

  Mason grunted in disapproval. ‘And Cain heads straight for the panic room.’

  Drake said nothing to this. His mind was racing ahead of them, already deep within the bowels of that target building, devising and discarding possible alternatives far quicker than the group could discuss them. The entire safe house had been designed to resist both overt attacks and infiltration. Its electronic and physical security measures were both sophisticated in their design and deceptively simple in their implementation. A potent combination.

  As he’d surmised, it was going to be a tough nut to crack.

  No attack force could overcome its formidable security measures quickly enough to catch their target; that much was plain. But there was one element which the designers of this safe house, for all its clever design and safeguards, couldn’t anticipate any opponent ever getting their hands on.

  ‘The Judas code,’ he said suddenly.

  All eyes turned to him.

  ‘Huh? Sounds like a shitty adventure novel,’ Frost snorted. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Every high-level safe house has an override code built into their security system. We called it the Judas code,’ he explained. ‘It’s a safeguard against hostage taking. In the event the building gets compromised, the Agency can remotely take control of the security system. Cameras, alarms, electronic door locks… they can override anything that’s linked into the system, so they’ll know exactly where their enemies are when they try to retake the place.’

  Frost was incredulous, clearly having never heard of such a code. ‘How the fuck do you know about all this?’

  ‘Shepherd team leaders were all briefed on it, in case we ever ne
eded it for mission planning.’ He looked at her, unable to hide a wry smile. ‘Sorry, but you weren’t important enough.’

  At this, she gave him the finger.

  ‘So that code is our ticket in,’ Mason said, bringing them back on track. ‘We take control of the security system, which is all well and good, but we still have to get our asses inside without being seen by Cain or his men. We can’t come in from the air, we can’t approach on the surface, and we can’t tunnel in from below. What does that leave us with?’

  In that respect, he was right. They may have overcome one problem, but there were plenty of others to contend with.

  ‘Can you pull up a view of the surrounding area?’

  Frost went to work, calling up an online satellite map of the area around the safe house. Like most major cities, Islamabad had been photographed extensively from the air, allowing her to project a pseudo three-dimensional image of the surrounding landscape onto the screen.

  As Drake had supposed based on its size and quality of construction, the safe house sat in the midst of what looked like a new high-end residential development. Most of the properties seemed to be of similar size, if not design, and laid out to give the impression of space while packing in as many units as the housing company could get away with.

  ‘Come on. Somewhere high, somewhere high,’ Drake said under his breath as he surveyed the isometric view of the city, looking for a suitable target. Then, suddenly, he spotted a candidate. ‘There! That building right there. Can you give us a better look at it?’

  Zooming in as much as the program’s limited resolution would allow, Frost called up an image of a low-rise residential apartment block near the edge of the development, perhaps intended for those who couldn’t afford their own villa but still wanted to be part of the prestigious neighbourhood. It looked to be about five storeys high, with a flat roof accessed via a central stairwell.

  Perfect, assuming it was within range.

  ‘How far would you say that building is from the safe house?’ he asked, hoping his hasty calculations weren’t proven wrong.

  Zooming out once more, Frost used the site’s scaling tool to estimate a rough distance. ‘About…70 metres, give or take.’