Something to Die For

by Will Jordan

  As the young woman set to work, Drake turned his attention to the others. ‘Mitchell, Dietrich, we need to be prepared for different assault plans. Where are we on weapons and equipment?’

  An op like this would require specialist weaponry and equipment – the kind you couldn’t purchase from a local hunting store. But one of the advantages of their line of work was having a network of contacts in the weapons trade, with access to gear stolen or ‘misplaced’ from military arms depots.

  ‘I’ve got some guys in Baltimore who can set us up,’ Dietrich confirmed. He paused, adding, ‘Won’t be cheap, though. They charge a lot of money not to ask questions.’

  Drake shook his head. Money was of little concern at this point.

  ‘Do you trust them?’

  The German gave a thin smile. ‘As much as you trust Starke.’

  ‘Very funny,’ Drake hit back. ‘We need the full package. Assault, breaching and sniping work.’

  Glancing past the big imposing operative, Drake spotted Jessica over by the perimeter of the room, her arms folded and her shoulders hunched over. Drake could guess what was on her mind.

  ‘Get in touch with them,’ he instructed. ‘I’ll draw you up a list soon.’

  Dietrich nodded. ‘I’m on it.’

  Moving past him, Drake approached his sister tentatively. He knew all too well how difficult it was to hear how their mother had died and, more importantly, who was responsible.

  ‘I’m sorry you had to hear that, Jess,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Don’t be,’ she replied, keeping her back to him. ‘I came here for answers, knowing I wouldn’t like them. I got what I wanted.’

  ‘She tried to make things right.’ Drake sighed, reflecting on all the things he’d once believed about Freya Shaw. ‘I was wrong about her. All those years, it was so easy to blame her… hate her even. All that time wasted. I wish I could take it back.’

  The woman he’d once viewed as distant, selfish and dismissive, then as a ruthless, power-hungry operative working for a shadowy clandestine organisation, had finally been revealed. He saw her now as a good woman forced to make difficult choices and painful compromises, giving up parts of herself in pursuit of a higher goal, only to be thwarted time and again.

  His sister didn’t respond for a time, and he began to wonder if she might be holding back tears. But when she did finally speak, her voice wasn’t strained or wavering. It was cold, and hard and resolute.

  ‘Promise me something, Ryan.’

  Drake took a step closer. ‘What?’

  She turned to face him, her eyes locking with his. ‘Promise me you’ll be the one to kill him. Not Frost, not Dietrich, but you. Promise me you’ll look him in the eye when he dies.’

  At any other time, Drake might have been taken aback by the change in her, but not now. She’d been through too much, lost too much, suffered too much. He understood her sentiment, her desire for retribution, because it burned just as fierce and cold inside him.

  ‘I promise.’

  Swallowing, Jessica nodded. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Ryan!’ Frost called out from the other side of the room. ‘I’ve got something you should see.’

  Drake looked at her, then back at his sister. He was reluctant to leave her alone.

  ‘Go on,’ Jessica urged him. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  Drake strode over to join the technical specialist at her makeshift work terminal. ‘What have you got?’

  ‘I may have a lead on Anya,’ Frost replied. Seeing his change in expression, she added, ‘Don’t get too excited. It’s not a precise address or anything.’

  Drake frowned. ‘So what do you know?’

  ‘I told you that Alex nuked my computer when I tried to make contact. Little shit sent a virus that wiped my entire hard drive.’

  ‘Okay, so he fucked you over,’ Drake conceded. ‘What about it?’

  ‘You only pull a move like that as a last resort.’ She paused for a moment, searching for a suitable metaphor for her computer-illiterate comrade. ‘It’s like… a boxer throwing a big haymaker. He doesn’t do it often because it’ll leave him wide open if it doesn’t connect.’

  ‘But it did connect,’ Drake reminded her. ‘He wiped your computer.’

  Frost shook her head. ‘That was never much of a problem. The only thing it really cost me was time, and he knew it. He was trying to delay me. He knew I’d back up everything online, just like he knew I’d be able to reconstitute the drive and find his virus.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s a nasty piece of work, but at the end of the day it’s just computer code. Once you pick it apart, you can learn a lot about it. Such as where the activation command came from. He was using a VPN to mask his IP address, but—’

  ‘Skip to the interesting part,’ he advised. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Pakistan.’

  Drake cocked an eyebrow. ‘Pakistan?’

  ‘I don’t know what he’s up to, but I’d bet my ass he isn’t there alone.’

  Drake rubbed his jaw, deep in thought. ‘Can you communicate with him again?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she admitted. ‘He wiped everything I used to track him before. He won’t make the same mistakes again.’

  She gestured to the makeshift terminal she’d established.

  ‘I can keep trying, but I can’t do that and plan our op against Cain. So… which do you want me to focus on?’

  Drake was silent for a few seconds. Much as he wanted to re-establish contact with Anya, the pragmatic part of his mind knew she would resurface only when she was ready. In any case, they had a more important task at hand. Finding her had to take a back seat to their mission against Cain.

  ‘Leave it,’ he decided. ‘Put everything you have on Cain.’

  He’d made the only decision he could under the circumstances, yet he remained troubled and preoccupied with more new questions that had sprung up. What was she looking for in Pakistan? And what would she do when she found it?

  Chapter 42

  Islamabad, Pakistan

  Reclining in the back seat of his luxury SUV as it slowly advanced through evening traffic, Vizur Qalat was in an upbeat mood. He had good reason to be. His recent ascent to the top position within the ISI, Pakistan’s premier intelligence agency, had allowed him to usher in a series of sweeping changes that had greatly bolstered his position.

  Old enemies and political rivals were either eliminated or quietly ushered into meaningless figurehead roles, while long-time allies and younger, more easily influenced personnel were phased in to replace them.

  In barely six months, Qalat had reshaped the most influential organisation in the country, consolidating power around himself. He had spent most of his long career preparing for this, operating on the periphery of major events, biding his time and waiting for the right moment to make his move.

  That moment had come in the summer of the previous year, during a tense but ultimately fruitful meeting with Marcus Cain, the interim head of the CIA. Each man had come away from that meeting with something he’d long sought, or at least believing he had.

  Qalat smiled faintly at the memory. Powerful and ruthless he might have been, but Marcus Cain still had much to learn. He would come to understand that in due course, as they all did.

  The traffic up ahead had slowed to a crawl. Curious, Qalat leaned forward to peer between the two muscular bodyguards seated up front. Pakistan could be a dangerous country, and a man in his position couldn’t afford to put himself at risk.

  ‘What’s the hold-up?’ he asked, his mood soured by the delay. It had been a long day; he was tired and hungry, and entirely unwilling to be waylaid.

  ‘Looks like a breakdown up ahead, sir,’ the driver replied. ‘Engine trouble, maybe.’

  A rusted old panel van had shuddered to a halt in the middle of the road, the rear end sagging noticeably on old suspension. Busy oncoming traffic meant it was impossible to go around the obstruction.

  Qala
t made a dismissive gesture. ‘Get them out of the way. Push them off the road if you have to.’

  Nodding, the driver leaned on his horn, sounding an angry blast to the van’s owner. Doubtless he hoped to avoid the indignity of getting out and helping push the dilapidated vehicle aside himself.

  As if in response to this, the van’s rear doors suddenly swung open. Qalat’s first assumption was that the van’s passengers were preparing to push the machine off the road, but a sudden flash from inside the darkened cargo area caused him to jump in surprise.

  It was followed an instant later by a thunderous bang that reverberated through the SUV’s frame, and the crunch of disintegrating machinery. With a terrible surge of alarm, he realised that someone was shooting at them, targeting the car’s engine bay.

  It was an ambush!

  ‘Get us out of here!’ he screamed as a second violent impact shook the SUV.

  The driver threw the gear stick into reverse and stomped on the accelerator, but his effort yielded nothing. The car’s power plant had been reduced to a mess of broken cylinders and ruptured fuel lines by a pair of heavy calibre armour-piercing rounds.

  ‘Unit One, we’re hit!’ the driver yelled into his radio. ‘Shots fired at the corner of—’

  His voice was silenced abruptly by an explosion of glass from the supposedly bulletproof windshield, followed by a kind of wet popping sound as his head was blasted apart. Qalat instinctively shrank away from the gruesome sight, his face and expensive suit sprayed with blood and fragments of bone.

  ‘Get down! Down!’ the second bodyguard called out, taking cover just as a figure emerged from the van’s cargo bay.

  Qalat could only stare in disbelief through the broken, blood-splattered windshield. Their adversary was encased head to toe in a suit of heavy, cumbersome ballistic armour that reminded him obscenely of a knight from some medieval battlefield. Even his head and face were obscured behind an armoured mask and helmet. An assault rifle hung from one shoulder, the weapon’s frame bulked out by an extended drum magazine.

  Behind him, Qalat could see the long barrel of an anti-armour sniper rifle mounted in the van’s rear bay, probably a big .50 calibre unit designed to punch through armoured military vehicles like Humvees and APCs.

  ‘Get our backup in here now,’ he demanded, his shock and surprise giving way to colder, clearer thinking. As brutal as this ambush might have been, they had anticipated such attacks.

  ‘Unit Two, we’re pinned down!’ his bodyguard spoke urgently into his comms unit. ‘Target is in the open. Take him out!’

  A second vehicle had been trailing them a short distance behind, ready to lend assistance. Qalat heard the sound of doors slamming, and twisted in his seat as a pair of agents advanced past his window, one armed with a sidearm, the other clutching a P90 submachine gun.

  Both men opened fire in unison, spraying their target with a deadly hail of mixed calibre gunfire. All around them, panicked civilians screamed and shrank away in terror, while nearby motorists abandoned their vehicles and fled for their lives.

  The would-be assassin staggered backwards under the impacts, his ballistic armour rippling with each hit. But instead of crumpling to the ground in a pool of blood as he should have done, he instead swung the M4A1 assault rifle around on the agents and opened up with a long, sustained burst.

  Spent shell casings clattered to the ground all around him as he cut down his enemies like a scythe through standing grass. Their light Kevlar vests offered almost no protection from the unrelenting hail of fire.

  Qalat jumped back as one man slumped against the window, his fading eyes filled with pain and fear, before sliding out of sight, leaving a long smear of blood on the glass.

  ‘Where are our reinforcements?’ Qalat demanded as the masked figure ejected the spent drum magazine and reached for a fresh one. ‘We need them here now!’

  ‘Mayday, mayday.’ His sole remaining bodyguard had switched his comms unit to an open frequency, appealing for help from anyone in the vicinity. ‘We are under attack. Officers down, requesting backup.’

  His look of growing panic made it clear he was getting nowhere.

  ‘Can’t get a signal out. They’re jamming all frequencies.’

  Qalat clenched his jaw, considering his limited options as their enemy slapped a fresh magazine into place and raised their weapon.

  ‘This car is armoured. He can’t get in. We sit tight and—’

  His voice was drowned out by the staccato hammering of gunfire against the window, the glass cracking and buckling under the relentless assault. Somehow the window held, but not by much.

  Lowering the assault rifle, the attacker paused to consider this problem. Then, reaching into his webbing, he withdrew a small metallic object and held it up in plain sight. Qalat was familiar enough with military hardware to recognise a white phosphorous grenade when he saw one. Armoured or not, no vehicle was going to protect them from the lethal incendiary.

  Then, to his surprise, the masked gunman held something else up against the window. Something less dangerous but, as it turned out, far more effective.

  A piece of paper with two simple sentences written in Punjabi.

  All I want is Qalat. Give him to me, and you get to live.

  To emphasise his point, he waved the grenade slowly back and forth, taunting them. The bodyguard’s gaze slowly turned towards the passenger in the rear seat, splattered with the blood of his fallen comrade.

  ‘You stand your ground,’ Qalat ordered, sensing his wavering loyalty. ‘If he doesn’t kill you, then I will. And your whole family.’

  A potent threat under normal circumstances, Qalat’s words lacked their usual authority. It took the bodyguard all of three seconds to make his decision.

  Drawing his sidearm, he held it up by the trigger guard, then unlocked the door with shaking hands and stepped out. The masked assailant kept him covered as he dropped his weapon and backed away with arms raised, finally breaking into a run and fleeing.

  With his last vestige of protection running like a frightened child, Qalat could only watch in simmering anger as the assault rifle poked in through the door, trained on him.

  ‘Out!’ a voice commanded.

  The voice that spoke was strong and authoritative, but also distinctly female. His entire protective detail had been dismantled in under a minute by a woman.

  ‘Now!’ she repeated. ‘Hands where I can see them.’

  Qalat reluctantly opened his door and stepped out, keeping his hands raised.

  ‘You won’t get away with this, my friend,’ he said calmly as she yanked his hands behind his back. ‘My people will come for me. They will repay this attack tenfold.’

  ‘You and I will talk soon enough, Vizur,’ she replied, securing his wrists with cable ties and leading him towards the waiting van.

  He was shoved roughly inside, landing hard on the dirty floor of the cargo deck. Clambering in beside him, his abductor swung the rear doors shut then hammered a gloved fist against the driver’s cab.

  ‘We’re in! Go!’

  In seconds, the engine roared back into life and they were moving, leaving behind a scene of utter devastation.

  Chapter 43

  Washington DC

  ‘All right, listen in,’ Drake said, beckoning his team over to the makeshift planning table he’d set up, which was already strewn with design blueprints and maps of central DC – everything from street layouts to satellite images, subway maps and even sewage and utility tunnels.

  Frost’s computer skills had unearthed a treasure trove of information on their proposed Area of Operation, much of which was freely available online as a matter of public record. This intel had allowed Drake to put together the outline of an attack plan, including potential ambush points and escape routes. It was still sketchy, but it was the best they had.

  ‘We know that Cain’s confirmation hearing will take place in the Senate chamber on Capitol Hill,’ he began, indicating the Senate buil
ding on the map spread out before him. ‘We also know he’s likely to use the underground parking area beneath the South Capitol Park, so there’s no way to get to him once he’s in there.’

  ‘So we hit him before he gets there,’ Mitchell reasoned.

  ‘Exactly. We know he’ll be travelling by armoured motorcade, so our best shot is to lay down an ambush en route. The objective will be to intercept his motorcade, neutralise his security detail and take him out before they can call in reinforcements. Preferably with minimal civilian casualties.’

  Dietrich folded his arms. ‘That’s a tall order, Ryan.’

  Drake nodded, acknowledging his reservations. ‘To do this, we have three main problems to overcome. One, we need to know where and when to hit him.’

  ‘I’ve got you covered,’ Frost said.

  * * *

  The last time Drake had found himself standing at the Thomas Jefferson Memorial late at night, it had been on New Year’s Eve two years earlier. The night he’d discovered that Anya was still alive, after believing her killed in Moscow.

  The place was exactly the same as it had been back then, save that the cherry trees encircling the rotunda were now in full spring blossom. He was lingering in the shadows of one of the building’s arched entryways, the cold steel of a concealed sidearm pressed into the small of his back. Beside him, Frost was similarly armed.

  Hearing the click of shoes on the flagstones surrounding the memorial, Drake swapped a glance with his younger companion. She nodded, ready to follow his lead. Ascending the steps into the rotunda, the new arrival advanced into the big open space and halted, scanning the darkness around them.

  ‘I’m here,’ Starke announced with mild impatience. ‘And I don’t have much time.’

  Drake emerged silently from the shadows, with Frost right behind him.

  ‘You’re late,’ he announced.

  Starke turned casually to face him. ‘And you’re good. I didn’t hear a thing.’ Turning his attention to Drake’s companion, Starke inclined his head in greeting. ‘You must be Keira Frost, if I’m not mistaken?’