Sacrifice

by Will Jordan

  ‘It’s fucked,’ the man replied bluntly. ‘They were able to trace the virus back to its source. I don’t know how, but they did it. Two Horizon hit men tried to take me out when I returned from our meeting.’

  Anya’s heartbeat stepped up a notch. There was pain in his voice. He was trying to hide it, but to her it was as plain as day. He was hurt.

  She felt a momentary surge of concern but angrily pushed it away. His welfare was no one’s responsibility but his own.

  ‘What’s your situation?’ she asked, forcing herself to be cold and clinical.

  ‘I’m safe for now, but Frost isn’t. They got to her while I was with you.’

  Again she detected pain in his voice, but of a different kind. One unrelated to physical ailments, but real all the same. The loss of the young woman had shaken him profoundly. He couldn’t hide it.

  She wondered for a moment if he would feel the same pain for her.

  ‘They are mobilising their forces for a big operation,’ she said, switching to something she was more comfortable talking about. ‘I would guess they are searching for you.’

  ‘They’re not the only ones,’ he added. ‘My team’s been detained. We must have got too close – Cain and Carpenter are trying to take us out.’

  For a moment, Anya closed her eyes, mastering the emotions that vied for dominance within her. She couldn’t allow attachment and personal feelings to get in the way, she told herself. She had to be cold, clinical, logical.

  Drake had become a liability. A liability she could no longer afford.

  ‘Go home, Drake,’ she said at last.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said go home.’ She was doing the right thing, she knew. The only thing that would keep him alive. ‘Find the nearest ISAF patrol and turn yourself in. You can do nothing more here – you would not last a day with Horizon and the Agency hunting you.’

  Silence greeted her for several seconds. He was beginning to realise she was cutting him loose, abandoning him like dead weight. ‘I thought we were supposed to be working together.’

  Her grip on the binoculars tightened. ‘We agreed to cooperate. There is a difference.’

  ‘I can’t leave. This isn’t over yet.’

  ‘It is for you.’

  ‘And what about you?’

  Anya said nothing to that. Her eyes were still on the Horizon compound.

  A fortress; huge, strong, indomitable. But a fortress now lightly guarded.

  Reaching into her pocket, she pulled the cellphone out, dropped it on the ground and stamped on it.

  Chapter 44

  ‘Fuck,’ Drake growled, killing the phone.

  Anya had pulled the plug. Now that he was no longer useful, she was cutting him loose like the dead weight he’d become. He should have seen it coming. In truth, what else had he expected? Anya was a survivor, not a charity.

  And in some part of his mind he knew she was right to feel that way. He had let her down, just as he had let down Frost and the rest of his team.

  No. He couldn’t allow himself to entertain those thoughts. Not now. He could still make this right.

  Pocketing the phone, he glanced out onto the road from the alleyway he’d taken position in. The sun was already slanting down towards the western horizon, casting long shadows across the streets and buildings of central Kabul. A little further down the busy main road lay the coffee house where he and Cunningham had sat only this morning. It felt like a lifetime ago now.

  No way was he waiting there for Cunningham to show up. There was always a chance his friend would have brought someone with him, or been tailed here. Drake wasn’t going to make a move until he was sure Cunningham had come alone.

  He had used some of the money stolen from the cameraman to purchase a pair of sunglasses and a fake suede jacket at the nearest street market. It was hardly sophisticated, but it was enough to hide his stained T-shirt and the cut on his cheek.

  He’d also helped himself to a couple of packets of painkillers. At 5 cents per packet, their quality was dubious at best, but he needed something to take the edge off. His ribs were throbbing, each breath bringing another stab of pain.

  At last he spotted Cunningham hurrying towards the restaurant on the other side of the road. He watched his friend closely as he halted outside. Like Drake, he was dressed in civilian clothes, but he didn’t doubt the man was armed.

  He was glancing around now, looking for Drake but trying to be subtle about it. If Drake saw him make eye contact with anyone nearby, or glance upward to one of the windows overlooking the street, he would bail without a second thought.

  He did no such thing. Neither could Drake see any people or cars in the immediate vicinity holding position for no good reason. There were no furtive glances, no subtle hand movements that might indicate the use of discreet radio transmitters, no men or women turning their heads slightly to speak into their collars.

  Of course, it was a busy street with dozens of civilians coming and going, and therefore impossible to keep track of everyone. There was always an element of risk to meetings like this. Training and observation were useful tools, but ultimately one just had to go with gut instinct.

  Fuck it, he decided, emerging from the shadows. He managed to keep the pain hidden from his face as the gunshot wound protested at the movement. Maybe those painkillers weren’t such a bargain after all.

  Cunningham spotted him as he was crossing the street, though he was careful to keep his expression neutral. Saying nothing, he hurried forward and met Drake on the sidewalk.

  ‘Not here,’ he said quietly, steering Drake down a side street that was too narrow for cars to pass through.

  Drake wasn’t about to argue. He didn’t want to be on the main drag any longer than necessary. If Horizon were after him they would almost certainly have men patrolling the city’s main thoroughfares.

  ‘Talk to me,’ his friend said, low and urgent. ‘What the fuck happened?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Drake admitted.

  It happened fast. Clapping a hand on his shoulder, Cunningham yanked him backwards, spun him around and drove him into a breeze-block wall.

  As waves of pain washed over him, Cunningham grabbed him by the jacket and leaned in close. ‘You don’t know?’ he said through gritted teeth, his face just inches from Drake’s. ‘I risked everything for you, you fucking prick! “I don’t know” isn’t fucking good enough!’

  Those painkillers still weren’t doing their job, but Drake had recovered enough to bat his friend’s hand away, his green eyes blazing with anger.

  ‘Maybe I should ask you the same question, Matt,’ he hit back. ‘You’re the one who planted the virus. How do I know you didn’t fuck it up intentionally? For that matter, how do I know you haven’t called your Horizon mates to come and lift me?’

  This seemed to cut through Cunningham’s anger. Taking a step back, he looked his friend up and down. ‘Aye, we could play these games all day,’ he conceded. ‘But believe me, I’m in just as much shit as you, Ryan. Now tell me what happened to you.’

  Quickly Drake related his arrangement with Frost at the InterContinental, his brief departure and return, and finally his encounter with the two Horizon operatives in the elevator.

  ‘They’re both history,’ he concluded. ‘I had no choice.’

  Cunningham swore under his breath and looked away for a moment. ‘You’re sure they were from Horizon, aye?’

  ‘They were the same arseholes who tried to stop us getting to the crash site. Believe me, I’d remember them.’

  His friend said nothing to that. ‘So why did you run?’ he asked instead. ‘Why not contact your mates at Langley?’

  ‘Because I don’t have any friends at Langley,’ Drake hit back. ‘Not now. My team’s been detained. Carpenter has contacts within the Agency and he’ll use them to shut down the investigation from that end while he hunts for me at this end. Either way, I’m fucked.’

  ‘From both ends, no less,’ Cunning
ham remarked with a sardonic smile.

  Drake wasn’t impressed. ‘Piss off. We just lost our best chance of bringing him down.’

  ‘And what makes you think Carpenter was behind this?’ he asked. ‘What proof do you have?’

  Drake exhaled slowly, weighing up how much to tell him. He didn’t want anyone knowing about Anya unless there was no other choice, but neither could he convince Cunningham unless he gave him something.

  ‘I met with a source,’ he said at last. ‘Don’t ask me who. They told me Mitchell was brought in to investigate Carpenter and Horizon. Whatever Mitchell uncovered, Carpenter found out about it and ordered him killed. When we came in to look for him, Horizon tried to block our investigation every chance they got, and when we got too close, Mitchell was conveniently executed. First he takes away our reason for being here, and when we still refuse to leave, he comes after us. He’s trying to hide some kind of arrangement with Kourash and his group.’

  ‘Not exactly up to date on current affairs, are you?’ Cunningham said. ‘Carpenter and Horizon are the new golden boys in the War on Terror. They announced the death of Anwari and his mates at a special press conference. The media are all over it.’

  The wound at Drake’s side blazed with pain as if the bullet had just struck home for the first time. He was shocked, dumbfounded by what he’d just heard.

  ‘Kourash is dead?’ he repeated.

  ‘Aye, and then some. I saw the pictures – they weren’t taking any chances with that arsehole. He’s gone for good.’

  Gingerly Drake settled himself on a large rectangular block of stone which had perhaps once served as a front doorstep, wincing and clutching his side as he did so. He was tired, and the wound was hurting more than he cared to admit. Reaching into his pocket, he fished out his tab of aspirin and dry-swallowed a couple.

  It didn’t make any sense. If Carpenter and Horizon had struck some kind of deal with Kourash to gain safe passage through his territory, and had apparently used him to take out Mitchell, why kill him now?

  ‘It doesn’t change a thing,’ Drake decided. ‘Whatever he’s trying to hide, he’s willing to kill for it. And we’re next. The only way we’re getting out of this – and the only way I can get Frost back – is if we take Carpenter down.’

  It was Cunningham’s turn to look unimpressed. ‘Aye? What are you going to do, Rambo? Charge in there, guns blazing?’

  ‘That wasn’t my first plan.’

  ‘Then what is your plan, Ryan?’ he asked, his impatience obvious. ‘Because from where I’m standing we’ve got jack shit. We’ve got no information, no resources and nobody on our side. We don’t even have a fucking safe house to hole up in.’

  Drake paused, jolted out of his musings by that single thought. A safe house.

  A secure place where one could meet contacts, plan operations, cache weapons and equipment. Or perhaps, just perhaps, hide classified documents on a major private military company.

  In a flash, Mitchell’s coded message suddenly reverberated through his mind, replaying over and over like a tape recorder stuck on an endless loop.

  HOUSE FOUR.

  Safe house number 4.

  Drake could have kicked himself at that moment. Caught up in the frantic rescue attempt, the meeting with Anya and the brutal ambush in the elevator, he had almost forgotten Mitchell’s cryptic message. Now, finally, it made sense.

  He had been trying to tell them a location, but not of himself. He’d been trying to tell them where he’d hidden his evidence.

  Mitchell’s official role here had been to establish a series of safe houses in and around Kabul. Whatever he wanted them to find was stashed away in safe house number 4.

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ he gasped as the full magnitude of it settled on him. Why hadn’t he seen it before? It had been right there the whole time. He had stood in that very house only yesterday. He just hadn’t known what to look for.

  Cunningham stared at him, perplexed by his reaction. ‘What is it?’

  Drake felt like a condemned man given a last-minute reprieve. Well, perhaps not a reprieve, but at least the chance of one. But only if he acted on it now, while there was still time.

  He looked up at his friend. ‘Mitchell was brought in to investigate Horizon. Before he was killed, he’d amassed evidence against them. According to my source it was much bigger than anything they’d imagined, but Mitchell was so paranoid that he wouldn’t go into any details. He wouldn’t even say where he’d hidden it.’

  Cunningham was watching him through narrowed eyes. ‘All right …’

  Drake let out a breath. ‘Until now. He left a coded message on his hostage tape. All this time we assumed he was trying to tell us where he was being held, but he wasn’t. He knew he was going to die. He was trying to tell us where he’d hidden his evidence.’

  HOUSE FOUR.

  ‘Safe house number four,’ Drake said. He shook his head, still unable to believe he had missed such an obvious clue. ‘It was there in front of us all along.’

  The look in Cunningham’s eyes quickly went from doubt to suspicion, and at last, to comprehension. ‘Fuck me …’

  ‘We get to that safe house and find the evidence,’ Drake said. ‘And Carpenter goes down.’

  It was a couple of miles to the safe house from where they were. An easy five-minute drive in a car. On foot they’d be lucky to make it there in under thirty minutes.

  Pushing himself up from his makeshift seat, he clenched his teeth as a wave of pain radiated outwards from the bullet wound at his side, threatening to drop him. Clutching at the crumbling remains of the door frame for support, he closed his eyes and willed the pain and weakness to subside.

  ‘You don’t look so good, mate,’ Cunningham said, watching his friend with a mixture of sympathy and doubt. ‘Maybe you should sit this one out.’

  Gritting his teeth, Drake forced himself up again. ‘We’re doing this together, Matt. I have to be there – I have to finish this,’ he said firmly, his bright green eyes boring into the older man’s. ‘You understand, don’t you?’

  Cunningham said nothing for a moment, perhaps weighing up his chances of forcing Drake to stay behind.

  ‘You always were a stubborn arsehole,’ he said at last, clearly unhappy.

  Drake nodded. His friend might not have supported him, but neither would he oppose him. For now at least, that was enough.

  Chapter 45

  Crawford and McKnight were in the rooftop field ops tent poring over a map of the local area when Keegan hurried in.

  ‘I know how they got Frost out of here,’ he began, breathless after his rapid climb to the roof.

  Crawford looked up. ‘Thrill me.’

  ‘They knocked her out and threw her down the laundry chute.’

  The field agent’s eyes narrowed. ‘Are you shitting me?’

  ‘She’s small. She could fit down a narrow gap like that, and the chute’s curved at the base. If there was enough padding beneath it she could survive the fall. It’s the only way they could get her off that floor without being seen.’

  ‘Okay. So what then?’ he asked, still sceptical.

  ‘They had a truck waiting for her. I checked with the security guards – they had a laundry truck arrive this afternoon, earlier than usual. It left real quick with only one load, then twenty minutes later a second truck shows up. The real one.’

  Crawford’s eyes lit up. Clearly Keegan had been busy. ‘Son of a bitch …’

  ‘The loading dock’s covered by a security camera,’ he carried on, now in full flow. ‘Assuming it works, we backtrack the footage, pull the licence plate and run a trace on it. We find that truck, we find Frost.’

  Crawford was amazed by how much Keegan had deduced in such a short time, but before he could say anything, Faulkner hurried over clutching his cellphone.

  ‘Just got a call in from the local police. They found a canvas bag matching the one carried out by Drake. They also recovered some bloodstained cloth
es.’

  Crawford was on it right away, gesturing to a map of the city spread out across the table. ‘Show me.’

  ‘Right around here.’ Faulkner indicated an area of open ground on the western fringe of the city. ‘It’s waste ground, mostly. Some kids found it.’

  ‘That’s less than a mile from here,’ McKnight observed. ‘Ryan must have been looking for someplace out of the way.’

  Crawford looked up at her. ‘You think he’s heading for the hills?’

  Aside from a small village to the west, there was a whole lot of nothing for at least 30 miles beyond that point. It was the kind of rough, mountainous terrain where a single man could disappear with ease.

  ‘I doubt it,’ Keegan cut in. ‘Even if he did disappear in there, there’s no place for him to go. He could be trying to throw us off the scent, maybe double-back on himself.’

  Crawford nodded thoughtfully. ‘Either way, we won’t learn anything more here. Grab your gear, we’re leaving.’

  But Keegan hesitated, clearly torn between his two comrades. Drake and Frost had gone in different directions, and he could only pursue one. ‘What about the truck?’

  ‘I’ll follow up the truck,’ McKnight volunteered. ‘You’ll be more use on site than me, especially if they need someone to pick up Ryan’s trail. You concentrate on him, I’ll find Keira. Go, John. I’ve got this.’

  Waiting a moment longer, Keegan finally nodded.

  Anya sat alone in the Toyota 4x4, parked near an intersection on the main road leading towards the Horizon compound, the engine idling as she waited for her opportunity.

  She wasn’t frightened or apprehensive – she’d been doing things like this for too long to feel such emotions now – but she did feel a certain sense of anticipation, of eagerness to get it over and done with. She had always felt the same before an operation. She could handle the danger, the prospect of injury or death, but it was the waiting that had always troubled her.

  The distant, low-pitched roar of a heavy diesel engine announced that the time for waiting was almost over. Reaching into the glovebox, she lifted out a half-empty bottle of whisky and took a gulp, grimacing in distaste as it settled on her stomach. She also dabbed some on her hands and wiped them on her neck and shirt, making sure the smell of potent alcohol was strong on her.