Betrayal

by Will Jordan

  ‘All right, here’s the deal.’ He leaned forward, his elbows on the desk as he eyed his friend. ‘There’s no easy way of saying this, so I’ll just say it. I’m afraid you haven’t made the grade. I’m sorry, mate, but I can’t certify you fit to return to duty.’

  For a long moment, Mason said nothing. He didn’t react at all. He just looked at Drake across the desk, as if waiting for him to say something more, to add in something that would turn it all around.

  It didn’t happen. Drake had nothing to give him.

  The Shepherd teams had no time for guys who made the cut on their third attempt, when they knew what to expect and how to deal with it. Just as there were no second chances out in the field, so it was with training and selection. They were ruthless because they had to be.

  ‘You know the standards they set for Shepherd operatives,’ Drake went on, more to fill the silence than because he thought his words would offer much comfort. ‘The bar is pretty fucking high, and I can’t lower it for anyone, no matter how much I might want to.’

  ‘So that’s it, huh?’ Mason finally said, an undertone of bitterness and simmering frustration creeping into his voice. ‘I’m done. You pack me off and send me home?’

  ‘Of course not. There are other jobs in the Agency—’

  ‘Doing what? Flipping burgers in the fucking canteen?’ Mason snapped, rising to his feet as his temper got the better of him. ‘That what you think I’m fit for now?’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ Drake said, knowing he had to handle this delicately. ‘You’ve got years of experience in the field. You could get into training, mission planning … whatever you wanted. There are plenty of opportunities—’

  ‘No, Ryan,’ the older man said, shaking his head vehemently. ‘I’m no more cut out for that shit than you are. We’re both field ops – always have been, always will be.’

  Except one of us doesn’t have the tools for the job any more, Drake couldn’t help thinking. It was a harsh thought to entertain about a man he considered a friend, but theirs was a harsh profession that didn’t make allowances for weakness or injury.

  Calming himself a little, Mason continued. ‘Look, we worked together for years, right? You know me, you know what I can do. So I didn’t ace every test they threw at me today – so what? I can still do my job out there, where it matters.’ He paused a moment, as if sensing the line he was about to cross, then went for it anyway. ‘It … wouldn’t be hard to change my scores a little. We both know it’s been done before, so why not now? You know I’d have your back if the situation was reversed.’

  This was a very different man from the one he’d parted company with after the prison raid, Drake realised now. The Cole Mason he’d known then never would have contemplated what he’d just suggested. Then again, that had been before the painful surgeries, the punishing months of rehab, the financial trouble that came with existing on half pay while his future hung in the balance.

  Drake understood why he was doing this, why he felt the need to regain everything he’d lost, to prove to himself that he wasn’t a useless cripple who couldn’t even fire a gun properly. He might well have felt the same way in that position, but this was one line of thought that needed to be stopped right now.

  ‘Cole, listen to me,’ he said, rising from his chair. ‘I’m going to tell you something you don’t want to hear, but for both our sakes you need to hear it. I know you’d never let me down if you could help it. You were one of the best operatives I ever worked with, but the fact is you’re a liability now. That’s a shitty deal, but it’s the truth. If I clear you for field ops, I’d be risking the lives of any team you ever served with. You saw what happened on the rifle range earlier. That could have been me, or Keira, or some innocent civilian caught in the crossfire. You want to live with that for the rest of your life?’ He sighed and looked down at his desk for a moment. ‘You said you’d have my back if the situation was reversed. Well, if it was, I’d expect you to give me the same lecture I just gave you. I’d be pissed off with you, and I’d probably resent you for a long time, but eventually I’d realise you were right. I’m asking you to let this one go, mate. Don’t make it any worse for yourself.’

  That was enough to blunt the edge of Mason’s anger. Drake saw him hesitate, realising that his shortcomings today weren’t just bad luck or pedantic adherence to some arbitrary standards, but a simple and unavoidable fact. Despite all the operations and the rehab and the training, he simply wasn’t the man he’d once been.

  ‘I’m sorry, but this was my decision.’

  ‘Must have been a tough call, huh, Ryan?’ he said bitterly.

  Drake said nothing.

  Sensing he would get nothing more from his friend, Mason raised his chin a little in a flash of defiance.

  ‘Well then, I guess we’ve got nothing more to say,’ he decided, his tone now cold and businesslike. ‘Thanks for the opportunity. Maybe I’ll see you around some time.’

  He shook hands with Drake, his grip crushingly strong as if to demonstrate the strength he still possessed.

  ‘Funny old world, huh?’ he said at length, releasing his hand and leaving the office.

  Letting out a breath, Drake eased himself back into his chair. He’d just destroyed a man’s career from the comfort of an office desk. The computer on which he was writing up his final assessment of Mason’s performance was his weapon now, and it was just as cruel as any rifle.

  This wasn’t him. This wasn’t who he wanted to be.

  He rubbed his eyes and pushed himself away from the desk, swinging his chair around to stare through his small office window at the dimly lit world beyond. Past the trees that surrounded CIA headquarters lay the distant lights of DC, shrouded in sombre grey clouds. It was early evening in December and getting dark fast, with flurries of sleet pattering against the window.

  Again he replayed the events of that night last year: the dangerous raid on the remote Russian prison, the decisions he’d made, the things he could have done differently. He’d been through it more times than he could count, but Mason’s appearance today had triggered the memories once again.

  In retrospect, nothing good had come out of that mission. The rescue of that enigmatic prisoner had started a chain of events that had very nearly ended Drake’s life, not to mention that of his sister and her family back in the UK, ruined his career and left him trapped in an uneasy stand-off with powerful men who wanted him dead. And yet again today, he’d been confronted with another reminder of the consequences of his actions.

  ‘Fuck this,’ he growled, rising from his chair.

  The report could wait until tomorrow. It was nothing more than an autopsy anyway. Whatever he noted in it, it wouldn’t change the fact that the patient was dead. Explaining how and why it had happened was a task he didn’t feel up to completing tonight.

  Grabbing his coat off the back of the door, he jammed his hands in the pockets, feeling for his car keys.

  Laying aside the heavy sports bag, Anya knelt down and unzipped it, exposing the carefully wrapped package within. A KSVK sniper rifle, stripped and dismantled for easy transport.

  With the efficient, unhurried ease born from long practice, she set to work reassembling the weapon, clipping together the breech mechanism before attaching the enormous metre-long barrel. A quick test pull of the trigger confirmed that the firing mechanism was in good order, after which she attached the scope to the rail mounted on top of the weapon.

  The last task was to insert the magazine. She didn’t slam it into place the way they did in the movies, but simply applied firm pressure to push it home until she felt the click as the locking pins engaged. A slight downward pull was enough to assure her the magazine was secure.

  Reaching into her pocket, she fished out a Bluetooth earpiece and fitted it to her left ear, then powered up her cellphone and dialled a number from memory. It was answered immediately.

  There was no greeting; the ringing simply stopped.

 
; ‘I’m green,’ she reported. ‘When do we start?’

  ‘Our friends are on their way. Fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Understood.’

  There was no need for further conversation. Both she and her contact knew what had to be done; it was simply a case of doing the most difficult part of any sniper’s job – waiting.

  Drake emerged from the liquor store clutching a carefully wrapped bottle of wine, his head down and his coat turned up against the driving sleet and hail that pelted him with each gust of wind. It was a miserable evening, and not likely to get much better by his estimation.

  He’d gone for a five-year-old bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, thinking it was fairly forgiving stuff that most people could drink easily, but now he was starting to wonder if he should have bought a Chablis Chardonnay instead.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Ryan, it’s a bottle of wine,’ he said under his breath, giving himself a mental slapping.

  In this case, however, it was more than a bottle of wine – it was a peace offering. It wasn’t much in the way of recompense considering how he’d treated the intended recipient over the past couple of months, but it was the best he could come up with.

  He was just approaching his car when he felt his phone go off in his pocket, signalling an incoming text message.

  For a moment Drake was tempted to leave it. He suspected it was work-related, and was in no mood for dealing with some boring administrative issue at 6 p.m. on a Friday.

  Still, he wasn’t the sort to leave a message unread; curiosity and a frustratingly innate sense of duty compelled him to take a look. Laying the bottle down on the passenger seat, he opened the text. His curiosity soon intensified when the sender came up as Anonymous.

  But more intriguing still was the message itself.

  Ryan – We need to talk. 1st Street and Delaware Avenue. 10 mins.

  Drake felt a chill of anticipation run through him as he scanned the message again. It was impossible to tell from such an impersonal form of communication, but the style matched that of a woman who was accustomed to arranging such clandestine meetings at short notice.

  A woman he hadn’t seen since his return from a mission in Afghanistan four months ago that had seen one of his team dead.

  A woman he couldn’t afford to ignore now. If she had taken the risk of making contact in the heart of DC, she must have something important to tell him.

  Either way, he knew he had to get to her.

  Pocketing the phone, he jumped in the driver’s seat, glancing for a moment at the bottle of wine lying on the other side. He felt a fleeting moment of regret, knowing what it represented.

  Peace offerings would have to wait for now, he thought, as he fired up the engine and pulled out into the busy road, gunning the accelerator hard to avoid hitting an oncoming bus.

  Chapter 3

  Central DC was in a state of organised chaos as Drake tried to fight his way through the rush-hour traffic, manoeuvring his car through spaces it had no business trying to fit into, taking side streets and any possible short cuts he could think of.

  Despite his best efforts, he was forced to abandon his car in a residential area several blocks south of the meeting place and make his way there on foot, doing his best to ignore the stinging hail and sleet that had been getting dumped on the capital all day. It was a miserable evening, but in truth his mind wasn’t on the weather.

  If he was right, then the person waiting for him a few blocks away was someone he’d spent much of the past eighteen months searching for.

  Anya, the woman he’d been charged with liberating from a Russian prison last year. Once known by her code name Maras, she’d been one of the Agency’s best field operatives in her time. She had also been an infrequent but profound influence on his life ever since that night, her presence often heralding great upheaval and danger.

  But as much as it galled him to admit it, she was also his lifeline; the one person on this earth who could unravel the web of deceit and betrayal that reached to the top echelons of the Agency. Only time would tell whether she held the key to setting things right.

  However, there was always a chance that his enigmatic contact wasn’t Anya at all. If so, he intended to be ready. Reaching into his pocket, he felt the solid frame of the 9mm Sig Sauer automatic, taken from the glove compartment of his car just before he’d dumped it. He always kept a weapon there these days.

  The corner of 1st Street and Delaware was, on the whole, a pretty unremarkable area for such a meeting. Looking around, he saw little of interest on the unassuming tree-lined roads except an apartment complex to the north-east, with rows of two-storey residential houses opposite. The cars parked beside them confirmed his suspicion that this was a less-than-affluent neighbourhood.

  A Baptist church stood on the south-east corner. Judging by the sounds drifting out on the cold air, it was the kind of place where they did a lot of gospel singing and tambourine banging. At least someone was having a good evening.

  Traffic chugged past on both main roads, less congested here than on the big freeway a short distance to the north, but enough to make crossing a dicey affair. There were almost no pedestrians, save for an overweight old man out walking his dog on the grassy area near the low-rise apartments. Drake couldn’t hide a flicker of amusement as the man pretended not to notice his charge hunker down and leave a big steaming turd on the grass, walking on as if nothing had happened. He’d used the same tactic himself when forced to take the family dog for morning walks as a kid.

  The only thing missing in this picture of urban blandness was Anya. That wasn’t surprising in itself. She always controlled the time and place of their meetings, and saw to it that he didn’t find her until she wanted to be found, but it wasn’t in her nature to be tardy.

  Pulling his jacket collar up, Drake looked down at his watch. It had been well over ten minutes since her text message. Where was she?

  The light levels were falling rapidly up on the roof. It was winter, the sun had set about half an hour earlier and darkness was descending on the capital. For Anya, it was perfect. The brightly lit highway in front of her made picking targets easy, while the gathering dark kept her position safely obscured.

  Not that she had to worry – there were few buildings in the vicinity that overlooked this rooftop. That was one of the reasons she’d chosen it in the first place.

  ‘One minute.’

  Gritting her teeth, she heaved the bulky weapon up on to the metal air-vent cover beside her, allowing it to rest on its integral bipod as she worked the bolt action, drawing the first round into the breech.

  The KSVK held five rounds of 12.7 x 108mm armour-piercing ammunition; powerful enough to punch through the metal skin of the average APC and kill anything on the other side. Two targets, five rounds, no time to change magazines.

  ‘Thirty seconds.’

  Anya reckoned the wind speed at about 6 or 7 knots, blowing more or less straight towards her from the east. It wouldn’t divert the rounds off target, but it would contribute to a slight drop in shot as each projectile had more air to travel through. She adjusted the scope’s lateral compensation a couple of notches and settled in behind it, finding a comfortable position for the butt against her shoulder.

  ‘Twenty seconds.’

  Closing her eyes, she allowed her breathing to come slower and deeper, her heart rate to calm, her muscles to relax. Sniping was one of the most difficult skills for any operative to master; years of training and preparation all coming down to a single moment of truth. One shot, one chance, one kill.

  ‘Ten seconds.’

  Opening her eyes once more, she leaned into the scope, surveying the traffic on the freeway until she found what she was looking for. A pair of silver Mercedes-Benz sedans travelling in loose convoy in the centre lane. Distance, 700 metres. Speed, approximately 40mph.

  ‘Five seconds.’

  She needed no prompting now. Sighting the second car in the convoy, she focused in on the left side of the winds
hield. The glass was tinted as it often was on official vehicles, making it difficult to see the driver, but it didn’t matter. She was familiar with the make and model of the car and knew exactly where he would be seated.

  Her gloved finger tightened on the trigger.

  ‘Now.’

  Exhaling slowly, she fired.

  The recoil of a single 12.7mm round slammed the weapon back into her shoulder with bruising force. The blast from the muzzle caused a shockwave to spread across the metal vent cover in front of her, raising tiny showers of water, while the boom of the discharging round left her ears ringing.

  Half a second later she watched as the toughened windshield exploded inwards, accompanied by a sudden cloud of red that coated the broken glass.

  Straight away her right hand was moving, working the bolt to eject the spent cartridge and draw a fresh one into the breech. There was a loud click as the moving parts worked, followed by a dull ping as the spent casing clattered on to the rooftop, smoking and sizzling where it rested on the damp surface.

  She was no longer looking at the second car in the convoy. That was done now. It would only be a matter of moments before the driver of the lead vehicle looked behind and realised something was wrong.

  There was a brief blur of movement as she shifted her aim, focusing on the lead vehicle. Her shoulder was aching now from the impact, but she ignored the pain as she worked the bolt action, lining up her second shot. Vaguely she was aware of the growing panic on the highway as her first target slewed sideways, crashing into a people carrier and pinning the lighter vehicle against the freeway’s concrete wall. Horn blasts and the screech of brakes filled the air as motorists tried to work out what was happening.

  The driver of the lead Mercedes had picked up on it too, but unlike the bored commuters around him, he knew exactly what to do and jammed his foot down on the accelerator. His training would have kicked in now, telling him to speed up, put in evasive manoeuvres, get clear of the kill zone as fast as possible.