‘No weapon, no comms, no phone – we have no way of keeping in touch with you once you leave here. What if it goes wrong?’
Eva jerked her thumb over her shoulder at Miles, who had climbed out of the vehicle and was leaning against the back of it, listening to their conversation.
‘Then he and Decker make a decision whether to proceed with the rest of the plan or not. We’ve already agreed all this. Give me two hours, and if you don’t hear from me, assume it’s all gone pear-shaped. Don’t hang around. We have to stop Maxim.’
With that, she pulled on the old coat Decker handed to her and shouldered the backpack she had brought with her.
‘I’ll see you in a couple of hours.’
She paced back through the undergrowth towards the rough track, and then turned right and began to pick up her pace to close the distance between her and the village before night fell.
After the noise of the city, the forest held a deathly silence, and whereas in Cyprus – or England – she would expect to hear birdsong at this time of late afternoon, there was nothing.
It was as if even the wildlife had abandoned the area.
She wondered how the villagers managed to eke out a living, and then realised they were probably responsible for providing Maxim and his men with food supplies, and that the community probably lived in fear of retribution if they didn’t comply.
As she walked, an idea began to form – an improvement upon the plan she and the rest had made the previous day with Knox.
It would be risky, but she reckoned she stood a better chance than trying to steal a vehicle without being seen.
She checked her watch, and realised half an hour had already passed. She would reach the village soon.
A renewed awareness of her surroundings swept over her. The location of the testing facility was still some miles away, but if she was Maxim, she would have guards posted around the village to keep an eye on things.
She slowed her pace and altered her stance from that of a confident and deadly assassin to one of a downtrodden woman, on her last legs.
With no electricity in such a remote and forgotten area of the country, it was some time before Eva noticed the first lights from the tiny community.
An enterprising person had lit oil lamps at the end of the track where the first houses hugged the roadside.
Eva slipped into the shadows, keeping her back to a dilapidated stone wall that bordered the first of the properties.
Through the shutter-less window, she could see a family sitting down to an early evening meal, light from candles in the centre of the table reflecting on their faces.
She drew a little closer, safe in the knowledge that they wouldn’t be able to see her through the glass.
A family of three sat around the table – an older couple, and a boy of about thirteen. All three bore the signs of malnutrition, their cheekbones hollow and their eyes sunken. Despite this, they took their time eating and Eva realised they were doing so to savour every mouthful.
She moved away, and edged down the side of the track to the next property. Again, no-one seemed to worry about privacy – it was evident that once the sun began to sink below the horizon, people returned to their homes and didn’t venture outside in the freezing weather unless they had to.
The thought caused her to check over her shoulder once more, to make sure that she hadn’t been followed.
The road behind her was silent and empty, and she turned back to the sight before her.
She frowned. Once again, a family sat around a table to their evening meal, this time with two boys – one about the same age as the kid in the first house, and the other a few years younger.
She hurried to the next house, a thought occurring to her.
As she peered through the window, her concerns crystallised.
There didn’t appear to be any teenage girls or young women in the village.
Eva realised that her best bet to find out what was going on was to speak to one of the older women.
She edged her way around the back of the house, to find that the building and the neighbouring properties all backed onto the forest. There were no gardens.
Outside the back of the buildings, smaller shed-like structures had been built, and as she approached one of them, the stench assaulted her.
Realising that the houses shared communal toilets, she hunkered down in the undergrowth close by to wait.
Cramp was beginning to seep into her muscles when the back door to one of the houses opened, and a woman hurried towards the shed nearest to Eva, hugging a shawl around her shoulders against the cold.
Eva stayed in the shadows while the woman occupied the shed.
She had hung a lantern outside the door, and Eva realised this was because it was unsafe to have a naked flame anywhere near the open cesspit.
She fought down the urge to move away, to put a safe distance between her and the natural explosives, and concentrated instead on the noises she could hear.
When it seemed that the woman was ready to vacate the shed, Eva move closer.
The door opened and the woman emerged, but before she could reach up to and hitch the lantern, Eva’s hand snaked around her mouth and pulled her towards the undergrowth.
The woman’s muffled cries subsided, and her body grew limp in Eva’s arms as if she’d lost all hope.
Eva lowered her mouth to the woman’s ear, and spoke in Russian, hoping the old woman would understand, given her age and the fact the language had been spoken by Communist occupiers until only a couple of decades before.
‘I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to help. I’m going to take my hand away from your mouth. Don’t scream. Okay?’
The woman nodded, and Eva released her, ready to strike if the woman changed her mind.
‘Who are you?’
‘A friend.’
‘You’re not from around here, are you?’
‘Is my Russian that bad?’
A bitter snort reached Eva’s ears before the woman spoke again.
‘If you were from one of the bigger towns near here, you’d run away and not come back.’
‘I haven’t got much time. Will you help me?’
‘Why should I?’
‘Where are all the young women? I haven’t seen any. There are loads of boys, but no girls – none that are older than teenagers, anyway. What’s going on?’
The woman wiped at her eyes and pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders with shaking hands.
‘The guards take them.’
‘From the testing facility?’
The woman nodded, her bottom lip trembling. ‘When they are fourteen, the men take them. There’s nothing we can do. If we try, they shoot the boys.’
Eva clenched her fist, and took a step back. ‘I’m presuming they’re taking all your food as well.’
‘Yes. We are allowed to keep a quota, but it’s not enough. We are starving.’
Eva reached out and placed her hands on the woman’s shoulders. ‘I can get the girls back. I can stop the guards. But I’m going to need your help, and you can’t tell anyone that you’ve seen me.’
The woman held her gaze for a moment, and then spoke.
‘What do you need me to do?’
Twenty-One
Eva held the binoculars to her face and hunkered lower in the long grass.
A slight breeze ruffled the leaves of a dandelion plant next to her, the sweet scent of dead and rotting leaves that carried on the wind evoking a brief memory of a childhood in the countryside before it was gone, the wind direction changing once more.
Beside her Decker remained still, his face passive behind the scope of the rifle, the sleeves of his jacket rolled up to his elbows despite the early morning chill.
They’d arrived in darkness, walking the distance between the van where Nathan kept watch on their progress via satellite and their current location. Neither had spoken during the transit, both too busy concentrating on avoiding the trip
wires that criss-crossed the forest floor.
And the fact Decker was still angry with Eva.
The old woman from the village had slipped back into her house the previous night, returning half an hour later with a set of keys.
‘My husband is passed out, drunk. He has a van, it’s old, but you’ll be able to get close to the facility because it’s the one we use to transport fresh vegetables there every week.’
Decker’s temper when she’d returned driving the old panel van and announced she intended to rescue the girls before the facility was razed to the ground could have been best described as ballistic.
Eventually she’d calmed him down enough to tell him and the others about the rest of the conversation she’d had with the old woman, and passed him the map she had drawn for her – a rough sketch of the area, complete with as much information as possible about the traps that had been set around the perimeter to ward off potential attacks.
Then he’d fallen silent for a while, his jaw clenched, before a fresh torrent of abuse filled the air – this time aimed at Maxim and his guards.
‘How does she know all of this?’ said Nathan, the doubt in his voice echoed in his eyes as he snatched the map from Decker.
‘Apparently, the men from the village poach rabbits and small deer from the forest around the facility,’ said Eva. ‘They have to – they’re starving. So, they’ve worked out where the tripwires and other traps are.’
Miles had risen from his position crouched next to the back wheel of their four-wheel drive, and slapped Decker on the shoulder.
‘All right. We all feel the same way about the situation, but now we need to enhance the plan Eva has, to make sure Maxim’s bioweapon is stopped, and that the only people who leave this place alive are those girls.’
But, in the middle of the night while Eva took the opportunity to get some sleep for a while, he had disappeared.
‘Says he’s got another trick up his sleeve, and that he’ll see us later,’ Nathan had explained when she’d asked.
Paranoia threatened once more, and Eva wondered if the man had simply decided that it was too risky to be with them and had turned tail and fled – taking the four-wheel drive vehicle with him.
She’d woken as Nathan had started the van’s engine and pulled away from their hiding place, Decker’s eyes glinting in the low light cast by the dashboard dials. She doubted he’d slept at all, but she knew better than to ask.
Now, and despite a fitful sleep in the back of the van, Eva’s senses were alert.
Although the old Cold War bunker appeared abandoned to outsiders, they’d agreed that Maxim would have guards on patrol in the surrounding woodland, and they would take no chances.
There was too much to lose.
As they’d climbed the tree-lined embankment from the road, the soft purr of the van’s engine receded into the distance as Nathan took up his position, blocking the guards’ vehicles in their parking spaces under a canopy of trees that had been invisible to the satellite imagery. Thanks to the old woman, all the vehicles had been accounted for.
At least, that’s what Eva hoped.
In case anyone asked, Nathan’s instructions were to puncture one of the back tyres of the van to disable it. To work around his lack of Russian, he’d simply pretend to be deaf.
‘Stop worrying. He’ll be fine.’
Decker’s voice cut into her thoughts, low and barely above a whisper.
She frowned and swept the binoculars to her right, over a disused shed with a dilapidated lean-to hanging off its side, until she could see the beat-up farmhouse that huddled against the west side of the clearing.
‘Yeah,’ she managed.
She exhaled, trying to let some of the tension out of her system before lowering the binoculars and twisting her neck from side to side.
The sweet scent of pine needles and leaf rot tickled her nostrils.
A faint mist lifted beyond their position, a curling strip of grey-white that flattened along the length of a stream that separated them from Maxim’s boundary and imminent danger.
A young girl had appeared at first light, a blanket around her otherwise naked figure, and had made her way over to a small box-like structure off to the left.
She’d returned to the farmhouse after five minutes, knocked on the door, and disappeared back inside.
Miles had groaned when she’d told them about her plan to rescue the kidnapped women from the camp, but had acquiesced. None of them wanted to leave them behind, not after what Maxim and his men had done to them, but it added risk to an already fraught operation.
Eva and Decker had agreed that Maxim was likely in the farmhouse, but until they confirmed it, they were working on assumptions.
So they sat and waited, and counted off the guards they saw moving around the forest camp.
‘Here we go.’
She raised the binoculars once more. Sure enough, an armed man had appeared against the opposite tree line, his rifle slung over his shoulder and a cigarette between his lips as he rested his hands on his waist and stretched.
Eva checked over her shoulder.
A large tree provided a shelter behind them, obliterating any chance someone would have of sneaking up on them, but they couldn’t afford to make a mistake.
Not now.
She twisted back round until she was facing the clearing.
Decker hadn’t moved.
His forefinger graced the trigger, ready to fire if he needed to.
‘I still hate this plan,’ he muttered.
‘We’re not leaving the girls behind to die.’
‘You could die trying to free them.’
She sighed. ‘Decker, I’ve spent most of my life killing people. It’d be nice for once to do something good, don’t you think?’
They fell silent as the guard meandered back towards a low-slung building that had been placed between the main farmhouse and a smaller hut.
They had only counted a dozen guards in total, and Eva realised that Maxim deliberately kept the numbers small to avoid knowledge of his secret facility becoming known. Any more than twelve guards, and he would likely have incurred the risk of dissidents and a power struggle.
The guard placed his hand on the door latch, and Eva heard Decker exhale.
'Get ready to run.'
She raised herself to her feet, keeping low so as not to alert the guard to their position, and held her breath.
A red spurt of blood exploded from the guard’s head a moment before the suppressed cough from Decker’s rifle reached her ears, and then she was running, heading for the hut and the imprisoned girls.
Guards poured from the accommodation block, weapons raised as they tried to flush out the man who had killed their colleague.
Panicked commands were issued as they began to run away from Decker’s line of fire, and Eva took advantage of the confusion.
She took a deep breath and launched herself towards the smaller hut.
Twenty-Two
Eva ducked behind the woodpile as gunfire chattered from the guard’s accommodation block, quickly followed by a volley from Decker’s position.
She crawled to the far end, took a deep breath, then edged around the corner, weapon steady.
A girl of about seventeen crouched beside the back door, a younger version of herself hunkered close by, eyes wide.
They turned at Eva’s low whistle and she put a finger to her lips, then scuttled closer to them, keeping her back to the wooden slats of the building.
‘How many of you?’ she whispered in Russian.
‘Only six now,’ came the reply. The older girl wiped at tear-streaked eyes. ‘Anya died two weeks ago. He made us bury her in the forest.’
A sense of dread swept over Eva as she wondered if Maxim had already released the weaponised smallpox.
‘Was she sick?’
The girl bit back fresh sobs, then shook her head. ‘Maxim and his men raped her.’
Eva reached out and sque
ezed the girl’s shoulder before eyeing her younger sister.
‘I’m here with friends. Three men. We’re going to end this once and for all, but you need to be brave, and you need to do as I say, okay?’
Both girls nodded, and Eva relayed the plan.
The girl’s hand shook as she took the rough map the old woman had drawn.
‘This is my grandmother’s handwriting.’
‘It’s because of her bravery that we’re here,’ said Eva. ‘She wanted to help us free you.’
The girl sniffed. ‘He told us all they were dead, so we wouldn’t try to escape to get back to the village.’
Eva pulled the girl into a fierce hug, and then pushed her away, her grip tight on the girl’s wrist.
‘I will kill him for everything he’s done to you. Now, go and round up the others, and be ready for the signal.’
The older girl moved towards the door. The younger of the two followed her sister, then hesitated and glanced over her shoulder.
‘Will we hear your signal?’
Eva smiled. ‘Oh, yes – I guarantee it.’
She waited until they’d disappeared back into the building, their muffled voices soon lost amongst the gunfire that streaked across the clearing.
Eva ran to the end of the building, circling back towards her original position, and wondered where the hell Newcombe was.
Despite the weaponry provided by his NSA contact, and the fact Maxim’s guards had evidently never seen active service, the adrenalin coursing through her veins was beginning to wane, and she fought down an urge to panic that was both alien and frightening.
She had to get the girls to safety.
She needed the distraction Newcombe had promised, and they needed it—
Eva was knocked off her feet by the force of the blast that tore through the farmhouse and sent a hot, fierce fireball several metres up into the air.
She rolled, covering her head with her arms as she sought cover from the projectiles that peppered the clearing, hot shrapnel that smoked and burned as it descended.
Movement out the corner of her eye roused her dulled senses, and she saw the two teenage girls emerge from their hut, stunned expressions on their faces.
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