Fidgeting uncomfortably in the suit jacket, she caught his eye and guessed what he was thinking. “Not one word, Ryan.”
That they were breaking the law and risking their lives wasn’t what pissed her off most, but rather that he could bring up her present discomfort any time he felt like annoying her. Which, as it happened, was disconcertingly often.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Drake replied, managing to hide his smirk.
The tense silence was broken by a crackle from the radio earpiece Drake was wearing, stolen from Krasinski.
“All units, be advised, we have hostiles in the building. Unknown number, possibly armed, and they have our target,” a male voice sounded out over the radio net, sounding out of breath. No doubt he was moving to try to intercept them. “Krasinski is down and his TAC radio is missing. I say again, our comms are compromised. Switch your net to the alternate frequency and acknowledge my last.”
Drake was about to power down the radio, when the same voice spoke up once again. “Are you listening? I’m talking to the man trying to escape from this hospital right now.”
Drake said nothing.
“I assume you are, otherwise you wouldn’t have taken the comms unit. Smart move. I can tell you’re a smart guy, Drake.” His voice was low, the anger and disgust barely hidden beneath a veneer of professionalism. He allowed that statement to hang in the air a moment or two before continuing.
“Yeah, I know who you are. Now do the smart thing and listen to me. I don’t know what you’re hoping to achieve, but I can promise that you’re going to fail. You have no idea of the shitstorm that’ll come down when we catch up with you. And believe me, we will find you. I can’t offer you any kind of deal, so instead I’ll give you some friendly advice, one field op to another – let the prisoner go and walk away Drake. Walk away while you still can, and maybe we won’t come looking for you.”
Slowly, deliberately, Drake reached for the radio and pressed the transmit button. “If we’re giving out advice, here’s mine – don’t come looking for me. You’ll live longer.”
A squirt of static in Drake’s ear told him the frequency had been vacated. He removed the earpiece, knowing he’d get nothing more of value from it.
“I take it they’re onto us?” Frost said, catching his look.
Drake said nothing.
“Fuck. I was hoping they’d take longer to figure it out.”
He decided not to voice his agreement. Unfortunately only one of the men assigned to monitor their target drank the water they’d spiked with a powerful emetic. Even Drake couldn’t take down a trained field operative with witnesses all around, so his only choice had been to put their hasty plan into action and hope for the best.
“We’ve got who we came for,” Drake said instead, glancing down at the unconscious woman still handcuffed to the gurney. The rapid movement had caused her to stir a little in her sleep, though her eyes were still closed. “Hard part’s over.”
“Bullshit. Hard part’s over when we’re out of Turkey,” Frost snorted. She, too, looked at the patient. “I hope she’s worth it, Ryan.”
“Yeah. So do I.” Drake avoided her eye as he reached for the access panel and flicked the switch from STOP to RUN.
* * *
“Goddamn it, I said I want all units to converge on this location now!” Wheeler snapped, racing down the stairs two at a time while he barked out orders across the radio net. “Rogers, what’s the status on that elevator?”
Rogers was the team’s technical expert, having tapped the building’s unsophisticated security system in preparation for their own extraction attempt. What they’d failed to anticipate was the possibility they’d find themselves trying to stop someone else kidnapping their prisoner.
“They’ve stopped.”
“Where?”
“Ground floor.”
“Can you bring them back up?”
“They’ve engaged the manual override, I’ve got no control from here.” He paused. “Could be trying to open the inspection hatch and escape up through the shaft.”
“Negative. Their target’s unconscious and handcuffed to a gurney. However they’re planning on getting out, it ain’t climbing. Have they exited at ground level?”
“Nothing on security cameras,” Rogers confirmed. “They’re just sitting there.”
Of course they wouldn’t get out, Wheeler thought. Exiting at ground level would have brought them face-to-face with dozens of doctors, nurses, patients and visitors, all of whom would be alerted by the sight of a handcuffed patient being wheeled through the corridors in plain sight. But if they didn’t plan on getting out, why stop there? Were they preparing something?
“Hold up!” Rogers called out, breaking Wheeler’s line of thought. “They’re on the move again, heading down.”
“Where to?”
“All the way. Sub-level two.”
Wheeler could sense the pieces coming together, having studied the layout of the building himself in preparation for their own operation. Sub-level two was an underground parking lot, accessible to hospital staff only.
“They must have an escape vehicle waiting down there.”
He didn’t stop to question how Drake and his accomplices had managed to impersonate doctors in a foreign hospital, how they’d overridden the elevator controls, or even how they’d managed to sneak a vehicle into a supposedly secure underground parking lot. Those were questions for another time: when they’d captured the bastards and were free to interrogate them at their leisure.
For now, Wheeler’s course of action was clear. Even with Krasinski down, he had four armed operatives at his disposal, and he intended to make use of them.
“All units, get down there. Rogers, unlock the doors en-route.”
“On it.”
“Targets may be armed, and should be considered extremely dangerous. You’re cleared to engage on my authority. Move!”
Having gained on the elevator while it had sat motionless at ground level, Wheeler was able to descend the remaining steps and beat it to the underground parking lot. The place was about half-full, with everything from cheap sun-bleached hatchbacks belonging to orderlies and nurses, up to big expensive saloons and sports cars, no doubt owned by high level administrators and consultants.
Ignoring this vehicular microcosm of Turkish society, Wheeler drew his Glock 17 automatic and shoved his way through the now unlocked electronic doors at the base of the stairwell. To his relief, he found two of his field operatives were there waiting for him: Mark Hobbs, a short and stocky powerhouse of an ex-Marine, and Rebecca Santos, a young but top-rated field agent determined to prove herself. She might have been half Hobbs’ size, but pound for pound she was as strong as any male operative.
Nodding at Wheeler, Santos pointed to the floor readout above the elevator doors. It was almost upon them.
Sweating and breathing heavily due to the strenuous run and nervous anticipation, Wheeler motioned for the others to spread out, then dropped to one knee and levelled his weapon at the doors. If their adversaries did anything except walk out slowly with their hands in the air, all three operatives would open fire.
Three, two, one…
There was a dull ping, and the doors slid open.
“Son of a bitch,” Wheeler growled.
Chapter 3
“How much time?” Drake asked as manhandled the gurney and its handcuffed occupant along the busy hospital corridor.
Frost glanced at her watch. “Twenty-five seconds.”
Well aware that the Agency would have tapped into the building’s security system to keep an eye on their target, Frost had done the same, taking pains to keep her digital presence hidden. Once inside the system, she had adjusted the frame rate of the data feeds coming from the security cameras on this level, causing them to slowly but surely fall behind real time. In effect, she had created a small but vital buffer that would hopefully buy them the time they needed to escape.
“It’s going to
be close,” Drake said, quickening his pace. He knew the layout and how long it would take to get to where they were going. The margin for error was small indeed.
“Best I could do at short notice.”
They’d planned as best they could in the limited time available, but this operation was still mostly improvised.
“Couldn’t you just play some footage on a loop?”
The young woman gave him a withering look. “That only works in dumb action movies. Any operative with functioning eyes would see through it in about two minutes.”
“Better than twenty-five seconds.”
If looks could kill, Drake would have been a dead man that moment.
“Left here,” he said, swinging the trolley around a junction, with Frost adding her weight to his efforts. He’d memorised the layout of this floor and knew the exact route they needed to take to get outside. The only question was whether they could make it before the CIA field team figured out what they were up to.
* * *
“I’m telling you, they’re not here,” Wheeler barked into his radio, striding angrily away from the vacant elevator. “They must have exited on another floor and sent the elevator down on automatic.”
Two blocks away, in a small, cramped apartment that served as the nerve centre for the CIA operation, Rogers was hunched over his laptop frantically trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Laid out on a flat screen TV in front of him, like a high tech mosaic, were the feeds from dozens of security cameras located throughout the hospital.
“I don’t understand it. They didn’t get off at the ground floor – there’s a camera pointing straight at the elevator bank.”
Rogers glanced up, confirming to himself yet again that he was getting a good feed from the cameras. Each of them showed normal scenes for a busy hospital: a pair of consultants striding down a corridor deep in conversation; a frail-looking old man shuffling toward a bench, wheeling an IV drip behind him; an attractive young woman in a blue dress making her way to one of the visiting rooms.
“Come on, come on. I can beat you. You’re not smarter than me.”
Then he saw something that made him stop and stare in disbelief. That same young woman in the blue dress, now suddenly two floors up. There was no way she could have covered such a distance so quickly, unless…
Without saying a word, he turned his attention back to the laptop and directly accessed the data feeds from the security cameras watching the elevators. Just as he’d suspected, there was a lag in the feed. A lag placed there intentionally, by whoever was trying to abduct their target.
Fast-forwarding through the redundant footage, he found what he was looking for, and wasted no time calling it in.
“All units be advised, the cameras were compromised. Targets exited on the ground floor – one male, one female, both Caucasian. The male is wearing a paramedic uniform, the woman is in a dark grey suit. They’re heading west down the central corridor.”
In the underground parking lot, Wheeler’s heart rate quickened once more. “Copy that. All units, move to intercept. Rogers, keep calling out their position. Don’t fucking lose them!”
* * *
It never ceased to amaze Drake how much power and authority one could wield simply by bluffing and looking confident. He’d learned early in his career with the Agency that people instinctively deferred to authority figures, legitimate or not, and that it was all too easy to avoid difficult situations simply by looking like you were in charge.
Patients, visitors and orderlies alike parted way for the two operatives as they wheeled their charge along the wide corridor, Frost’s shoes squeaking on the linoleum covered floor. She and Drake, for their part, were happy to sell the ruse as much as possible, knowing that every second counted if they were to make it out alive.
“Almost there,” Drake said, nodding to a sign overhead that directed them to a patient drop-off and collection point.
“Thank Christ,” Frost said. “Then I can take off these goddamn shoes.”
“For what it’s worth, I think they look lovely,” Drake taunted, reaching for his cell phone and quickly punching in a text message.
SIT REP?
As he’d hoped, the reply came moments later.
IN POSITION. HURRY
Drake almost smiled, thinking about Samantha McKnight, the third member of his team, waiting impatiently for them at the collection area. An explosives and weapons expert with an encyclopaedic knowledge of all things that went boom, she had also proven herself a handy getaway driver. Which was just as well, because those skills were going to be needed today.
“I see it,” Frost informed him as they rounded a corner into a smaller reception area, apparently set up to handle pick-ups and drop-offs. Bored outpatients were lounging around on the thinly upholstered benches, looking like prisoners awaiting release. And at the far end of the room beyond the set of automatic doors, sat the vehicle that would get them out of here, engine idling.
Drake couldn’t see the driver from this distance, but he could imagine McKnight anxiously watching the doors, hoping every time they rolled open to see the two members of her team.
They were just making their way towards the exit when a voice called out from behind. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Bringing the gurney to a halt, Drake gritted his teeth. Of all the rotten luck, to encounter an obstacle now, so close to their goal. Forcing himself to assume a calm, professional veneer, he turned to face the balding, bespectacled doctor who had confronted them. Tall but overweight, his loose-fitting surgical scrubs did little to hide his protruding stomach and fleshy, hair-covered arms. He was staring at Drake with a mixture of confusion and anger.
The name tag on his scrubs read ‘Dagtekin’. Drake recognised him as one of the doctors assigned to their patient’s ward.
“Doctor Dagtekin,” Frost began smoothly, stepping in front of him. She reached into her jacket and flashed a fake ID. “Karen Foster, US State Department. What can I do for you?”
“You can tell me where you’re taking my patient before I call security and have you arrested,” Dagtekin replied. He spoke excellent English, as did most of the doctors at the hospital, Drake had noticed. Likely many of their specialists had been educated overseas. “This woman is recovering from surgery and trauma. She cannot be moved.”
“She’s been remanded into our custody for extradition.”
Drake glanced surreptitiously at his watch, his other hand straying a little closer to his concealed weapon. Shooting their way out wasn’t his preferred method of exfiltrating the hospital, but if the chips were down they would do what they had to.
Dagtekin’s small dark eyes scrutinised the young woman suspiciously. “As I have told you already, the patient is still in a dangerous condition. She can’t be moved yet.”
“I understand, sir,” Frost conceded, her tone composed and official. Just another government employee doing her job. “But she isn’t secure here, and we have our own team of doctors on standby. She’s to be extradited to the United States. As of now, you’re relieved of professional responsibility for this patient.”
* * *
“I have them!” Rogers called out over the radio, his tone triumphant. Doubtless he’d spent the last thirty seconds frantically scanning camera feeds. “Outpatient collection point, ground floor, west wing. They have the target.”
“Seal all the external exits in that section,” Wheeler ordered, sweating and breathing hard as he hurried down the corridor, practically elbowing a young nurse aside. He couldn’t be more than thirty seconds away. “Lock it down. Nobody gets out!”
“On it,” Rogers confirmed.
“And mobilise all ground teams. If they have a vehicle waiting outside, I want it neutralised.”
“Copy that. Ground teams en-route now.”
* * *
A soft moan from the gurney told Drake their patient was starting to regain consciousness. They needed to wrap this up quickly. The last
thing either of them needed was for her to wake up and start screaming that she was being abducted.
“We have her release papers here,” Frost added, handing him a forged release document that she’d prepared for just this eventuality. “I think you’ll find everything in order.”
“Give me that.” Dagtekin snatched it from his hand and quickly scanned it. “It says here her release was signed by Doctor Batuk?”
“That’s correct, sir.”
The man glanced up at her. “This isn’t his signature,” he said, thrusting the form back into Frost’s hands. “Who exactly are you two?”
Drake had heard enough of this. Walking forward, he placed an arm around Dagtekin’s meaty shoulder and quickly steered the man away from the gurney, towards a quieter corner of the reception area behind a pair of vending machines.
“I was hoping we wouldn’t have to tell you this,” he said, his voice low and grave.
“Tell me what?” the doctor asked, unaware that Drake had carefully positioned him out of sight of most of the patients in the room.
Dagtekin, distinctly middle-aged, out of shape and not expecting trouble in the midst of a busy hospital with security close at hand, didn’t even see the autojet coming. Jamming the device against his neck, Drake depressed the button. There was a click as the needle deployed, then a faint hiss as it deposited its load of drugs into his bloodstream.
Covering his mouth was enough to prevent him crying out, and his weak flailing was easily controlled until the drugs began to kick in. As his legs started to give way, Drake eased the man’s considerable bulk down into a sitting position, propping him against the wall.
Stepping away, he slipped the autojet into his pocket, then called out loudly, “Someone help! The doctor’s collapsed!”
A murmur passed through the room, people staring blankly at Drake, either because they didn’t understand what he’d said or because they were wary about getting involved. Humans are for the most part herd animals, used to staying in the safety of a group and reluctant to take the initiative alone. Thus there was no immediate reaction amongst the patients in the room.
Second Chances Page 2