Trial by Fire

by Trial by Fire (retail) (epub)

  But it wasn’t Flashback’s face that greeted him.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Frost gasped, staring in horror at the cold and lifeless face on the screen. Even through the distorted images from his camera feed, she was able to make out the thick beard, the grim countenance that had seemingly never known a smile, the thinning hair parted across the shiny dome of his head.

  She was looking into the face of the man who had driven them here.

  No sooner had this revelation sunk in than both camera feeds went blank. However, it wasn’t because the signal had been lost or the transmission interrupted. Both screens were rendered pure white because the photoreceptors inside the devices had just gone from total darkness to dazzlingly bright light, their sensors overwhelmed by thousands of watts of illumination.

  ‘Ah, fuck!’ she heard Mason cry out, followed by a rough fumbling as he discarded his now useless thermal goggles. ‘We’re blinded!’

  ‘Contact! Contact!’ Drake screamed at the same moment, followed by the sharp, unmistakable crackle of gunfire.

  The team had just walked right into an ambush.

  Chapter 13

  Crouched in that dingy abandoned apartment, Frost could do nothing but stare in horror at the blank screens as the sounds of her comrades fighting for their lives filtered across the radio net.

  ‘Cover! Take cover!’ Drake shouted.

  ‘Can’t see a thing!’ Mason replied. ‘We’re surrounded!’

  Again gunfire crackled over the radio net, the report echoing around the enclosed space of the basement where the two men were trapped. Frost could actually hear the muffled, thunder-like booms with her own ears.

  She couldn’t believe what was happening. The team had been caught in a trap. Their enemies must have captured their driver not long after the drop-off, tortured him for information and executed him. They had known the Shepherd team were on their way, and rather than hunt for them, had simply sat back and allowed their prey to come to them.

  With a trembling hand she reached up for her radio transmitter. ‘K-Keegan… Charlie, report,’ she hastily corrected herself. ‘What can you see from up there?’

  She needed to hear Keegan’s voice as much as his report. Needed to know she wasn’t alone out here, that one of her team at least was still safe from the ambush.

  But she didn’t hear him. No reply came to her, save for the pop and hiss of static, mocking her with its emptiness. She imagined Keegan’s sniper position up on the roof with its perfect field of fire over the factory, imagined the laconic operative slumped over his weapon, blood leaking from a gunshot wound to the back of his head. If their enemies had been prepared for Drake and Mason’s arrival, Frost had little doubt they would be ready for her and the sniper.

  Which meant they were coming for her next.

  This horrifying revelation snapped her out of the shock that had gripped her for the first few seconds. Her team was surrounded and under attack, and unless she wanted to end up like Drake and Mason, she had to act.

  The first priority was to eliminate any incriminating intel that could be used against them. Snatching up the USP, Frost reached out and held down the F12 key on her laptop, initiating a fast-delete of the entire hard drive. Not only would it wipe the highly sensitive software, but it would repeatedly overwrite it with garbled and useless data, rendering it impossible for even the most sophisticated crypto-analysts to digitally reconstruct.

  Leaving the laptop to do its thing, she keyed her radio. ‘What are your orders, Alpha?’

  ‘We’re compromised!’ Drake shouted over the radio. ‘The mission’s blown. All units, pull out now!’

  ‘What about you?’ Frost asked, though she already knew the answer.

  ‘I’m giving you a direct order, Delta! Pull out now!’

  Deep down Frost knew he was right, knew that he was in damage-limitation mode now. Even if he and Mason had walked into a trap, he was trying to protect the rest of the team as best he could. She knew that if she was sensible and logical about it, his was the only rational decision to make. And she should obey him.

  She was already making for the exit when another transmission sounded out over the radio net.

  ‘Argh! Fuck, I’m hit!’ Mason cried out. ‘I’m hit!’

  Frost stopped, torn between two choices. This was a moment, she knew, that would decide the course of her life. She could run, try to escape the ambush, maybe even make it out of Pripyat and the Exclusion Zone. If luck was with her, she might find herself back at Langley one day in Franklin’s comfortable office, explaining the details of her narrow escape.

  But she would have to live with the knowledge that she’d abandoned her team; that three men were dead because she hadn’t done everything in her power to help them. For the rest of her days she would have to look at herself in the mirror and accept what she’d done.

  ‘No,’ she said, springing back into life. Only now her plan wasn’t to flee the apartment block and slip into the darkened woodland beyond, hoping against hope that she would not be pursued.

  This time her plan was something very different. It was foolish and dangerous and might well result in her death, but she was doing it anyway.

  ‘Hang in there, Alpha,’ she implored Drake as she sprinted out through the stairwell door and darted across the road, aiming for the gap that Drake and Mason had cut in the chain link fence. ‘I’m on my way.’

  Chapter 14

  Keira couldn’t say how long she lay there in that camp bed, shivering and alone, waiting for a friend who might never return. Her mind drifted in and out of consciousness as fever began to take hold, and she would rouse herself only to double over with another fit of coughing. Each time the effort took a greater toll.

  I’m going to die here, she thought to herself. I’m going to die because I was too stubborn to go home. Maybe Shane, fat prick that he is, will have the last laugh after all.

  It was in this feverish state of half-awareness that she heard the bang of a door opening, saw someone approaching her bed. She saw a big, powerfully built man reaching out for her, lust and hatred in his eyes.

  She opened her mouth to cry out, but another voice spoke to her. A young woman’s voice. ‘Shh, it’s okay, fish. It’s me. I’m back.’

  Keira felt her sleeve being pulled back, felt a sharp pin prick in her arm, before darkness finally swallowed her up.

  * * *

  Just like Drake and Mason, Frost encountered no resistance as she slithered through the gap in the wire fence that encircled the factory, snagging her webbing on the sharp links where Mason had sliced through them. Sprinting across the open space beyond, she made for the doorway used by the assault team to make entry, pausing only for a second to listen. The sounds of sporadic gunfire still echoed from inside, telling her that at least one of her teammates was still in the fight.

  ‘This is so fucking stupid, Keira. You’re out of your goddamned mind,’ she whispered. Nonetheless, the thought that she might still be able to salvage something from tonight’s disaster galvanised her will, and she shoved the door open and advanced inside before she could think of a reason to back out.

  The interior of the building was much changed from the ghostly infrared images she’d seen through the team’s night-vision scopes. Now its cavernous internal space was illuminated by a number of portable work lights that had been set up at intervals around the room, apparently all running from a common power source, their glow casting her surroundings in a curious half-light that was like a blazing midday sun compared to what she’d just passed through.

  The bare concrete floor was covered with debris of all sorts, from broken pieces of glass, plastic and wood, to discarded scraps of paper and a fine coating of dust that had settled everywhere over the years. Looking closer, Frost could see the distinctive tread patterns of two pairs of boots. Drake and Mason, leading toward the stairwell.

  Gripping the USP in sweating hands, Frost crept forward, following the tracks deeper into the building.
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br />   She was getting close. She could feel it. Even as she advanced, her boots crunching through the detritus, and the crackle of weapons firing echoing down the ruined assembly line, she could imagine her two comrades downstairs in the machine room, fighting desperately to stay alive.

  That was when she heard it. In between the staccato bursts of automatic gunfire from below, the low murmur of conversation coming from directly ahead. Two voices, male, speaking urgently in Russian. Keeping low and staying in the shadows, she advanced toward them.

  It didn’t take her long to spot them. Two men lingering near the entrance to the stairwell. Both were clad in civilian clothes, one with a heavy leather jacket and the other wearing a dark blue tracksuit, as if he’d just finished an evening jog. Next to the desperate firefight going on below, their casual garb seemed almost ludicrous. But what weren’t ludicrous were the two assault rifles cradled in their arms, their wooden stock guards and general shape suggesting they were AK-family weapons.

  Likely these men were a rearguard, on standby in case Drake and Mason somehow managed to fight their way clear of the ambush and make it back up the stairs. Instead they would run into a wall of heavy-calibre automatic gunfire.

  There was no choice. They had to die if she was to get to her comrades.

  Forcing herself to keep her breathing under control, she crept closer still, gripping the USP so tight that it hurt. Again and again she played the scene out in her head: saw herself raising the weapon, getting a good sight picture of the tracksuit man’s head and pulling the trigger. One shot, one kill. Neat and clean. Before his comrade had a chance to react, she imagined herself lining up the sights and pulling the trigger a second time.

  Two kills. Easy.

  In theory, at least. The reality was that she was about to take on two men who were far more heavily armed than she was, and that if she missed, they would simply hose her with automatic fire until she was dead. And, more importantly, she was about to kill two men. No amount of training and range practice could prepare you for that reality.

  As she crept forward, keeping hidden below an old conveyor belt, all her attention was focussed on her two targets. She didn’t notice the broken metal support rod hanging off the edge of the belt, barely felt it when her shoulder brushed against it, causing it to topple off the edge.

  The echoing clatter as the rod rattled onto the concrete floor caused her to jump visibly, her heart rate surging at the unexpected clamour right beside her. But the reaction from her two targets made her fear even worse. Immediately they turned instinctively to face the source of the noise, saw the figure lurking in the shadows behind the conveyor, and realised that one of their targets had escaped.

  Everything seemed to go into slow motion then. She saw the one with the tracksuit open his mouth to shout out a warning, saw the barrel of the AK rise up toward her, and his body start to tense up as he prepared to open fire.

  Frost already had him in her sights, her finger tight on the trigger. She saw a moment of blank, uncomprehending shock in the man’s eyes as she squeezed off a round.

  There was a flash, the weapon kicked back painfully against her wrist, and an instant later she saw a cloud of blood paint the pale concrete wall as the round blasted out his back. He toppled backward and collapsed to the floor, his body jerking spasmodically as his dying body tried in vain to respond to commands from his brain.

  There was no time to take proper aim at her second target, who was already moving into position to respond to her attack, trying to get a clear shot at her through the conveyor machinery. She opened fire first, squeezing the trigger again and again, ignoring the pain in her wrist and the repeated heavy thump of the suppressed .45 calibre rounds as they were expended. Her sole focus was putting as many shots on target as she could.

  Her aim, though hasty, was nonetheless true, and he jerked and stumbled backward under the onslaught. His dark leather jacket made it impossible to spot bloodstains, but she saw the distinctive crimson spray as at least one round passed straight through him. He went down, his finger tightening involuntarily on the trigger of the assault rifle, sending a wild unaimed burst up into the ceiling.

  When at last he hit the ground and the echoes of the gunfire had died away, a moment of silence descended on the empty factory. Smoke lingered in the air around her, still trailing from the barrel of her automatic, while the stench of cordite stung her nostrils. Frost could hear nothing but the short, sharp gasps of her own breathing as she stared wide-eyed at the two dead men lying barely ten yards away.

  It lasted only a second or two before her mind screamed at her.

  Get up! Move now!

  She obeyed without hesitation, rising up from behind the conveyor and hurrying over to where the men lay, blood pooling beneath them. She had the weapon levelled at them, but the slide had flown back and locked, revealing an empty breech. In the heat of the moment, she hadn’t even noticed that she was out of ammunition.

  Hastily ejecting the spent magazine and allowing it to clatter to the floor, she extracted a fresh one from her webbing. Her hands were shaking as adrenaline did its work, and it took two attempts to line the magazine up properly with the port. Still, at last she managed to push it home, allowing the moving parts to draw in the first round.

  Both her targets were down, and wouldn’t be getting up again. She thought she would feel something at a time like this; some upwelling of grief or shame, but nothing of the sort happened. They were dead because they’d tried to kill her, and if she’d been a second slower, they would probably have succeeded. The only emotion she felt was relief that it was them and not her.

  Whether she would stay alive much longer was still very much in doubt.

  Holstering the USP, she reached down and snatched up tracksuit man’s weapon, knowing she needed its greater firepower. It was an AKS-74: the paratrooper’s version with a collapsible metal stock instead of the standard wooden one. A powerful if slightly crude weapon, she’d fired it a couple of times on the range and knew from painful experience that it kicked like a mule. But when it came to antipersonnel work, there were few guns better at emptying a room of living targets.

  ‘Don’t fuck this up, Keira,’ she whispered to herself as she removed the magazine, checked it was fully loaded, then reinserted it. ‘You can do this. You can do this.’

  Winding the strap around her shoulder, she turned toward the stairwell, raised the heavy weapon and advanced.

  The sound of battle downstairs had ceased, and all was eerily quiet. Reaching up, she pressed her transmit button.

  ‘Delta to all units, I’m evaccing now, heading north through the woods,’ she lied, in case anyone was listening in. ‘Alpha, what’s your sitrep?’

  Silence greeted her.

  ‘Anyone copy me?’ she asked without hope.

  Nothing.

  ‘Fuck,’ she whispered, tightening her grip on the weapon. ‘Okay, you bastards. I’ll come to you.’

  As she reached the base of the stairwell and edged out into the machinery space beyond, she tried to tell herself there was still a chance. Maybe Drake and Mason had been subdued and taken prisoner. Maybe their captors would be so preoccupied with their prize that they wouldn’t notice her approach. Maybe a single deadly burst of 7.62mm rounds would cut them down, allowing her to rescue her injured teammates.

  Such were the fantasies she conjured up; anything to give herself enough nerve to keep moving, to keep pressing forward, to take the fight to the cowardly fuckers that wanted them all dead.

  That was when she saw him, lying propped against the side of a circuit-breaker box, his blood smearing the grey metal behind him. Drake: injured, bleeding, maybe dying, but alive. She could see his chest rising and falling, his breathing fast and shallow.

  Frost’s eyes flitted left and right, seeing nothing, as she circled around toward him, trying to cover every direction at once. Her heart thundered in her ears, blood rushing through her veins.

  She had to go for it.
She had to get to him.

  She tucked her head down low and darted forward, skidding to a stop on her knees beside him. Drake for his part stared at her in shock.

  ‘Frost?’ he said, his voice thick and heavy.

  He was hurt bad, hit at least twice in the torso, blood staining his clothes and the floor beneath him. She knew he needed help, but now wasn’t the time. Getting him out of here had to come first.

  ‘It’s okay, Drake. I’m gonna get you out of here,’ she said, trying to hook an arm beneath him. ‘Where’s Mason? Is he still alive?’

  ‘Go,’ he managed to say, his voice weak. Then reaching out, he grabbed her arm and looked her hard in the eye. ‘Get out of here.’

  Frost unleashed a defiant grin. ‘With all due respect, sir, you can kiss my—’

  She was interrupted when something heavy and metallic landed nearby. Turning toward it, she was just in time to see the cylindrical shape of a grenade lying barely ten feet away. Then there was a bright, blinding intense flash, and she saw no more.

  Vaguely she was aware of falling through the white void that was suddenly everywhere, dizziness and disorientation overwhelming her, then she felt a distant impact and darkness swallowed her.

  Chapter 15

  When Keira finally came around and opened her bleary eyes, the first thing she saw was her friend’s face looking down on her.

  ‘Well shit, about time,’ Stevie said. Her relief was palpable. ‘Thought you were never gonna come round.’

  ‘How long was I out?’ Keira asked, sitting up slowly and painfully. Her head was pounding, her throat dry and sore.

  ‘All night and all day. Started to think you weren’t coming out of it.’

  The camp bed was damp with sweat, as were her clothes. Her fever must have broken at some point during the day.

  ‘You stayed with me?’ she asked, surprised by Stevie’s dedication. And yet looking at her companion, it was clear that her task had taken a toll. She was visibly pale, her eyes shadowed with fatigue, and there was a tightness in her expression, as if she were in pain or discomfort.