by Will Jordan
Now Drake had three days to change that.
‘This place is a beast,’ Franklin decided, reviewing the blueprints with a critical eye. ‘No wonder nobody ever escaped.’
The strength of Khatyrgan lay in its simplicity. The entire facility was just a big square, built with typical Soviet functionality in mind. The south side housed the guard barracks, mess hall, armoury, security centre, administrative areas, power generation and vital utilities.
It was also where the one and only gate was located. One way in, one way out.
Tunnelling would have been an exercise in futility. The ground beneath the prison was permafrost; permanently frozen soil with the consistency of poured concrete.
There were no windows, no ventilation ducts, no maintenance corridors or obscure passageways. Each of the cell blocks was secured at both ends by heavy reinforced doors that were impossible to breach with anything less than high explosives.
The east and west sides of the square housed the general population, while the north block contained the solitary confinement cells. This was where the most dangerous prisoners were kept, and where Maras was likely to be found.
In the centre of the facility lay the exercise yard – a wide open space that contained nothing useful to them. It was big enough to land a chopper in, if the pilot was feeling daring, but doing so would leave them covered from elevated positions on all sides.
Escape from within was impossible.
‘It was designed to keep people in, not to keep them out,’ Drake remarked, deep in thought. ‘All their security measures are focused inward. There has to be a way we can use that.’
‘Maybe, but you still have the problem of making entry. The only way in or out is through this main gate here,’ Franklin said, indicating the gate on the blueprints.
After passing through a covered archway in the outer wall, one would find themselves in a smaller inner courtyard, presumably where supplies could be unloaded or prisoners disembarked. That courtyard and archway could easily be turned into a kill zone by a couple of guards with AK-47s.
‘Plus you’ve got these watchtowers at each corner of the building.’ He indicated the four buttress-like fortifications that ringed the prison. ‘Each of them has a clear field of fire over the yard and the open ground beyond the prison.’
Again, simplicity was the key. The exercise yard was just one big open space, and there was nothing beyond the prison walls but hundreds of yards of icy ground, devoid of cover of any kind. Anyone spotted trying to cross that ground would have nothing to do but die.
Drake sighed and shook his head. They couldn’t fight their way in, they couldn’t scale the walls, and they couldn’t get out without neutralising the guard towers.
A ground assault was a no-go.
‘We could try a HALO jump,’ he said at last.
HALO stood for High Altitude Low Opening, referring to the practice of jumping from an aircraft at extremely high altitude, free falling for the next couple of miles before pulling one’s chute with just a few thousand feet to spare. The obvious advantage was that it rendered their approach almost undetectable, since the aircraft would be too high to spot visually and the assault team would be nothing more than a group of black-clad figures falling silently through the night sky.
It wasn’t for the faint-hearted though, and the idea of parachuting straight into a prison filled with armed guards didn’t fill him with joy. If one of the team got snagged on some obstruction or landed in the prison yard, it was dying time. Plus, if they overshot their target area, there would be no way to correct it.
Franklin was quick to see the problem as well. He might have been an administrator rather than an operative these days, but he still thought like a soldier. ‘That’s a pretty tight window to hit if you’re free falling in.’
‘It’s the only way I can think of to get us inside. The last thing they’d expect would be an assault from the air.’
Franklin wasn’t convinced. ‘Ryan, use your common sense here. A HALO jump would mean flying an aircraft directly over the prison. The Russians might be a little suspicious if an unscheduled flight suddenly passes through their airspace.’
Drake said nothing, instead turning his restless gaze back to the map laid out on the conference table. Khatyrgan Prison lay in the extreme north of the Sakha Republic. Surrounded by Arctic tundra and with the nearest town lying 97 miles due south, it was without doubt one of the remotest places he’d ever encountered.
But something else about the location had piqued his interest. It was less than 40 miles from the East Siberian Sea.
‘So we do a High Opening jump instead.’
HAHO, or High Altitude High Opening was, as its name suggested, the opposite of a HALO jump. Instead of free falling, they would pop their chutes a few seconds after leaving the aircraft. Exiting at 30,000 feet, and with a little luck and skill, the team could cover 40 miles or more before touching down.
‘We come in from the north-east in some kind of long-range transport – maybe an MC-130 – and across the East Siberian Sea,’ he said, indicating the route on the map. ‘Then we start our jump just as the plane approaches the coast. As soon as we’re out, the pilot turns away like he’s realised he’s approaching Russian airspace, and that’s us on our way.’
Franklin stared at the map for several seconds, weighing up the reality of what Drake was suggesting. ‘That’s a good forty miles,’ he said, dubious. ‘You’d be at the limit of your range.’
‘If you’ve got anything better, I’m all ears.’ When Franklin said nothing, Drake glanced at the prison blueprints again, imagining the scenario unfolding in his mind’s eye. ‘So assuming we make it that far, we aim to come down on the prison roof. It’s flat according to the blueprints, so we shouldn’t have any problems landing. We take out any guards or electronic surveillance up there and post a sniper to cover us. The rest of the team then makes entry through one of the tower stairwells, and Bob’s your mother’s brother. We’re in.’
It sounded simple enough, but then most things did when gathered around a planning table with a cup of coffee. An awful lot of things could go wrong, yet he could think of no better way to get inside.
Franklin looked down at the blueprints again. ‘You’ll need someone who speaks Russian. If you want to find Maras quickly, you might have to start questioning her fellow prisoners.’
Which meant choosing a specialist, Drake knew.
Apart from the permanent case officer, most Shepherd teams were drawn from a pool of about fifty specialists who could be brought in when needed, then cut loose again. Most came from military backgrounds, trained in everything from assault to explosives, sniping, counter-terrorism, electronic warfare, interrogation, computer hacking, safe cracking and any other skill that a covert operation could conceivably require.
The exact size and composition of a Shepherd team varied depending on the job, and it was up to the case officer to decide which of these specialists he needed at any given time. Teams could be as large as ten or as small as two – it depended on the job and the skills required, and to some extent, the officer heading it up.
However, it did sometimes result in disputes when one specialist was needed by two or more case officers at the same time. Drake had seen such debates become quite heated at times, forcing Franklin to step in and mediate between bickering team leaders.
‘Borowski speaks Russian like a native,’ Drake suggested.
Franklin considered it only for a moment before dismissing the notion. ‘He’s also over the hill, and fifty pounds overweight.’
Andre Borowski was a Polish-born intelligence analyst who had been working with the Shepherd teams on and off for years. He’d been a field operative himself once upon a time, but at fifty-two years old, his active career was all but over. He was out of shape and out of the loop.
‘So who, then?’
Franklin was silent for several seconds, weighing up his limited options.
‘We need D
ietrich,’ he decided.
Drake shook his head. ‘No. No way.’
‘Come on, he’s perfect. He speaks Russian, he’s parachute trained and he works well under pressure.’
‘He’s also an arsehole,’ Drake felt moved to point out.
Franklin was right about his skills. Jonas Dietrich was an excellent translator and an experienced field operative. He didn’t just know the Russian language, he knew the Russian people. He’d spent years studying them and working against them during the Cold War. He knew how they thought, how they acted, and best of all, he knew how facilities like Khatyrgan operated. He had even taken part in similar operations twenty years earlier.
On paper he was the perfect man for the job. But he was also a man who Drake would happily have given his right arm never to work with again.
‘Can you think of anyone better?’ Franklin challenged.
Drake frowned, his mind churning over with thoughts of anyone else who might be suitable. He was drawing a blank.
Shit.
‘Fine. Make the call,’ he said, at last bowing to the inevitable.
The older man threw up his hands. ‘Hell, no. This is your operation, buddy. You want him, you call him.’
If looks could kill, Franklin would have been lying stone dead at that moment.
Chapter 6
THE PHONE RANG for so long that Drake was beginning to think he’d missed Dietrich altogether. Then, at last, someone picked up and a familiar voice snapped a less than friendly greeting.
‘What?’
Clearly the man had lost none of his charm.
Jonas Dietrich had been in the covert operations game most of his adult life, starting out in the mid-eighties working with the BND, the West German intelligence service, mostly in espionage and counter-intelligence – catching enemy operatives and interrogating them. During his time, he’d built up an extensive knowledge of the Soviet military and intelligence machine, as well as a formidable understanding of ‘coercive interrogation’ techniques, better known as torture.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, he moved to the United States and offered his services to the Agency. Being fluent in Russian, English, German and Polish, not to mention highly trained in paramilitary work, he soon found his services in high demand, eventually becoming a Shepherd team leader himself.
But such professional success only served to bolster his already inflated ego, and he soon developed a reputation as a loose cannon who acted on his own initiative and often employed excessive force. Opinion was split between those who admired him and those who despised him, but everything changed when he and Drake worked together on a job in Estonia.
Drake had been new to the Shepherd teams at the time; just a specialist fresh out of the military. He’d been shocked by Dietrich’s cavalier attitude towards mission planning, and his complete disregard for any advice or opinions presented to him. The final straw came when Dietrich, acting on his own initiative during a house assault, tripped an alarm and blew the entire operation. In the resulting firefight, two of his team were caught in the open and almost killed by enemy fire.
Drake, realising the man was as much a danger to his own people as their adversaries, had threatened to resign unless something was done about him. An internal inquiry soon followed, ending Dietrich’s career as a team leader and demoting him to the role of specialist. It was a shitty thing to do, but he’d seen no other option.
And yet, here he was, pleading for his services.
‘Jonas, it’s Ryan.’
Straight away the line went dead. No wonder. Dietrich knew what Drake had done, and there was no love lost between the two men.
‘How did it go?’ Franklin asked.
‘Better than I expected,’ he replied, redialling.
Again it rang for a good ten seconds before Dietrich at last picked up.
‘Don’t hang up. This isn’t a social call,’ Drake cut in before the other man could speak. ‘We’ve got a job for you.’
‘I’m not interested.’
‘It’s important. We need a Russian translator.’
‘Goodbye, Ryan.’
‘They’re offering double the normal rate,’ Drake cut in.
Silence greeted him for several seconds. ‘Who is?’
‘Franklin. He’s already signed off on it.’ He gave his friend a meaningful look. Franklin had done no such thing, but he knew that money was about the only carrot he could wave Dietrich’s way. Anyway, Cain was writing the cheques, and he’d already made it clear that Drake had a blank one at his disposal.
‘Put him on,’ Dietrich demanded.
Drake pressed the conference call button and replaced the receiver in its cradle. ‘You’re on speaker with him.’
Franklin leaned in a little closer. ‘Hello, Jonas. It’s good to speak—’
‘I want triple,’ Dietrich interrupted.
To his credit, Franklin stayed calm in the face of such an outrageous demand. ‘Well … we can talk about that when you come in.’
‘There won’t be any talking about it, Dan. The only talking you need to do is “yes”.’
Franklin glanced up at Drake. ‘You’re cutting a pretty hard deal.’
‘These are hard times, Dan. Besides, we both know Ryan wouldn’t have called me if he could find anyone else. So the job you have in mind must either be so difficult that you need my help, or so dangerous that nobody else is willing to take it on. Either way, it looks like you need me. So, triple the normal fee, or I’m hanging up right now.’
Drake saw Franklin swear under his breath. ‘Fine. Triple. But we need you to come in straight away,’ he added, as if it were some crushing final remark.
Both men could almost imagine Dietrich’s amused smirk. ‘Good talking to you again, Dan. Oh, and Ryan?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Say please.’
Drake frowned at the speaker phone in the centre of the table. ‘What?’
‘I want you to ask me nicely to come in,’ Dietrich repeated slowly. ‘Courtesy doesn’t cost a thing, and I think you owe me some.’
Drake glanced up at Franklin, who merely shook his head.
‘All right.’ He clenched his teeth, having to force the words out. ‘If it’s not too much trouble, could you please come in?’
Dietrich chuckled down the phone. ‘See? That wasn’t so hard.’ He let that hang in the air for a few moments. ‘I’m on my way. Looking forward to working with you again, Ryan.’
With that, the line went dead.
‘I don’t fucking believe that guy,’ Franklin said, turning the phone off.
Drake unclenched his fists and took a deep breath to calm himself. ‘Like I said, it went better than I thought.’
‘Well, we got him. At least that’s something,’ Franklin decided, putting an optimistic spin on things. ‘While we’re making calls, you might as well notify the rest of your team. I assume you’ve got some names in mind?’
Drake nodded, dragging his thoughts away from Dietrich to concentrate on the job in hand. The way he saw it, he needed three other specialists for this job.
He wanted a general assault and demolitions expert who could handle themselves in a firefight, plus destroy any physical barriers they might encounter; a decent sniper to provide observation and top cover for the team; and an electronics specialist to defeat any security measures on site.
The first role was the easiest to fill.
‘I want Mason in on this. If I have to put up with Dietrich, I need someone else I can rely on.’
An ex-member of the Combat Applications Group, better known as Delta Force, Cole Mason had opted to leave the military at the age of thirty-five rather than take a promotion away from the front line. His speciality had been demolitions, and there was still a possibility they would have to put his skills to the test on this job, but mainly Drake wanted him on board as back-up. If anything happened to him, he knew Cole could take over and lead the team without difficulty.
‘And
Frost as our electronic specialist,’ he added. ‘We’ll need her to take out their security system.’
Khatyrgan struck him as a low-tech sort of place, but even simple video cameras could compromise the team. Someone had to be on hand to eliminate them, and he could think of no one better than Keira Frost.
5 foot 2 inches tall and weighing no more than 100 pounds, Frost wasn’t the kind of person one would immediately associate with clandestine operations into maximum security Russian prisons, but appearances could be deceiving. She was ex-US Army, working for their Signals Intelligence division before transferring to the Defence Intelligence Agency. Technically she still worked for them as an outside contractor, but more and more she was transitioning into the Shepherd teams.
She was fully combat trained and, as Drake knew from experience, not afraid to get stuck in despite her diminutive size. He’d once watched her literally throw herself at an armed man twice her size and many times her strength during an operation in Kosovo. He’d almost felt sorry for the guy, seeing the brutal and fiercely aggressive way she wrestled him down.
He didn’t know what kind of experience she had at high-altitude parachuting, but if necessary she could tandem jump with another team member. Either way, he wanted her on board.
Franklin had been nodding agreement thus far, obviously having anticipated his choices. ‘Anyone else?’
Drake thought about it for a few moments. ‘Keegan,’ he decided at last. ‘He’s a bit of an old bastard, but he’s the best sniper I can think of.’
Unlike most of their specialists who came from military backgrounds, John Keegan was a former FBI agent, serving in their SWAT teams as a sharpshooter for nearly ten years before leaving in search of better things.
He’d since drifted into CIA fieldwork, operating mostly on independent ops. One didn’t have to read his file to surmise that most of this work involved assassinations, but that seemed to sit just fine with him. As far as he was concerned, it was up to God to sort them out – he was just the delivery boy.