by Will Jordan
The look in his eyes told her he wasn’t amused.
‘All right, all right! I’m going.’ She hesitated a moment, eyeing the pizza. ‘Mind if I take a snack?’
‘Go, Keira. Before I get my gun,’ he warned.
Helping herself to another slice, she grinned at him. ‘You were never that good, Ryan.’
‘You’re right. I was better.’
He watched her go, but his smile soon faded when he heard the door close and the roar of her motorbike fade into the distance.
Instead, his gaze shifted left, drawn inexorably towards the bottle of whisky. For a long moment he just sat there staring at it, as if he could will it out of existence, silence the urge to pour another glass.
He couldn’t.
Chapter 13
East Siberian Sea, twenty-four hours later
THE WEATHER WAS lousy as the MC-130 ploughed its way through strong winds and snow clouds. Chunks of dry frozen hail hammered off the fuselage like shotgun pellets, while the deck lurched and swayed like a ship in a storm. The external windows had been sealed over with metal covers to prevent any light escaping from within, and the aircraft was running without recognition lights. It was a useful precaution, but it only served to enhance the feeling of claustrophobia for the small group of passengers imprisoned within the massive airframe.
Drake grimaced as another jolt slammed his head against the fuselage. Such abuse wasn’t doing his headache any favours. It had been with him since the moment he awoke this morning in DC, dry mouthed and bleary eyed, courtesy of half a dozen glasses of Talisker.
He took another gulp of strong, black, bitter coffee. It was dangerous to drink too much – the last thing he wanted was to be nervous and jittery when they got on site – but he needed it to stay alert. His mind felt fogged and slow, two factors that could easily get him killed tonight.
What the hell were you thinking? he thought, angry with himself for being so self-indulgent last night. He should have been getting as much rest as possible before the operation began. But he knew he couldn’t have slept without it.
Get a fucking grip and pull yourself together. This is the most important night of your life. You’re not going to make a mistake. You’re not going to fail. You’re not going to hesitate. You’re not going to let your team down.
Taking another sip of coffee, he glanced at his comrades.
Keegan, relaxed and laconic as always, was occupied with checking the action and optics on his sniper rifle. He’d been issued with a Dragunov for this operation, a big heavy Russian weapon that fired a high-velocity 7.62 mm projectile. The veteran sniper wasn’t thrilled by the choice of rifle, preferring lighter weapons that were easier to handle, but circumstances dictated otherwise. Anything American made was out of the question. All of the team’s weapons and equipment had had the serial numbers removed, making them impossible to trace.
Drake almost smiled when he saw the necklace dangling from Keegan’s neck. A simple black leather thong, it held a silver crucifix, a dice and a wedding ring, symbolising his three loves in life – religion, gambling and women.
He’d been married a bunch of times, but for some reason it never seemed to take. Three messy divorces hadn’t diminished his enthusiasm, though. God only knew how he afforded the lawyer’s fees.
Maybe that explained his second love in life.
Keegan was more superstitious than a gypsy, and wore the necklace on every operation he took part in, either around his neck or tucked into a pouch in his webbing. Nothing on earth would persuade him to leave it behind.
Frost on the other hand looked nervous and agitated, and Drake didn’t blame her. Her experience of parachuting was, as they had discovered during the planning session yesterday, almost non-existent, forcing her to tandem jump with Mason. It was far from an ideal solution, and it would leave them vulnerable until the two were able to disengage from their harness, but it was the only way to get her on site.
She was sorting through her electrical kit for the tenth time. Weight restrictions meant she was very limited in what she could take, forcing her to make some difficult choices. The situation was further complicated by the fact that they knew little about the security system employed at Khatyrgan. Dietrich had provided a few educated guesses based on similar facilities he’d visited during his days with West German intelligence, but Drake was inclined to take what he said with a grain of salt.
The man himself was sitting away from the others, saying and doing nothing. If possible, he looked even worse than Drake felt. He was pale and haggard, as if he hadn’t slept a wink. Was he sick? Drake had no idea, but it left him uneasy.
‘I just spoke to the pilot,’ Mason said, taking a seat next to Drake. ‘He says we’ve got a storm front coming in from the north-west tonight. We should touch down before it hits, but it might make extraction difficult.’
Drake raised an eyebrow. Just what he needed – another problem to worry about. His gaze remained on Dietrich.
‘We’re gonna have trouble with that one,’ Mason remarked in a low tone, following his line of sight.
Avoiding his friend’s questioning gaze, Drake took another sip of coffee. ‘I can handle him.’
‘Yeah? But can you handle him and Maras at the same time?’
Drake said nothing for a few seconds. ‘What do you suggest?’
‘We don’t need any loose cannons tonight. Not on a job like this.’ Mason’s expression was the kind one might wear in casual conversation, but his words were deadly serious. ‘Wouldn’t be unknown for him to have problems with his breathing gear, or maybe a badly packed chute that stops him from jumping …’
Drake looked at him. He understood what Mason was trying to do, but he wasn’t prepared to cut Dietrich loose.
He shook his head. ‘We need him. He’s an arsehole, but we need him on this one.’
The older man shrugged. ‘Fair enough. I’m glad he won’t be watching my back, though.’ He looked a little closer at Drake, noting the man’s glazed eyes and drawn appearance. ‘You all right, man? You look worse than him.’
Drake could feel himself tensing up. Was it that obvious?
Suddenly the aircraft’s intercom buzzed, and the pilot’s tinny voice echoed around the cabin. ‘Attention, crew. We’re at thirty minutes to drop zone. Thirty minutes.’
Downing the last of his coffee, Drake turned to his friend. ‘Still in the fight, mate.’
Rising to his feet unsteadily on the pitching deck, he raised his voice to address the rest of the team. ‘All right, final weapon and equipment checks! Gear up!’
Chapter 14
She lay on her back amongst the long grass, staring up into the endless blue sky overhead. No clouds marred its perfection or measured its vastness. It was a warm, still summer’s evening, with just the faintest breeze rippling through the yellow stalks around her. The kind of evening that made her grateful simply to be alive.
Then, high above, she spotted the contrail of some aircraft tracing a line from north to south, straight as an arrow. It was hard and definite near the tip, seeming almost solid, but breaking up and dissipating as her eyes followed it northward.
Where was it going? She didn’t know. But as she lay there staring upward, the sky seemed to carry on for ever. She felt so small she could almost lose herself in it.
She inhaled, tasting the scent of pine needles, grass, wild flowers, rich loamy earth and other growing things. She loved to lie out here on evenings like this, feeling a part of the world around her, having nowhere to go and nothing to do. She was at peace.
Her thoughts were disturbed by the rumble of a car engine crunching up the rocky road to the house.
PRISONER 62 BLINKED, opening her eyes a crack as a cell door slammed shut further down the block. Was it day or night? She didn’t know. She never knew. Day and night had no meaning in a world where the sun was a half-forgotten memory.
She was cold. Her feet were blocks of ice. The blanket she’d been given wasn�
�t long enough to cover her fully unless she drew her knees up to her stomach. She must have moved in her sleep.
She’d been dreaming again. It was a dream that came to her from time to time. A memory, an old memory of the distant, barely remembered time Before. Before she was alone. Before she had to fight just to live. Before the long list of bad things that had brought her here.
Dreams of Before always made her angry. Once they had left her with an aching, crushing feeling of loss and despair, but she had long since burned emotions like that away, cut them from her psyche as one might remove a gangrenous limb. It was a sacrifice necessary to keep the remainder of herself vital, to survive. Now the dreams just made her angry, because they reminded her of things she would never have again.
Family, love, protection, safety, compassion and tenderness … Those were luxuries she could never enjoy.
The cold persisted. Pushing herself up from the bed, she lay down on the floor and started a set of press-ups, ignoring the pain of her aching muscles. She had to get the blood and warmth flowing through her limbs again.
Sadness, regret, grief, fear … All of those things were weaknesses that she could no longer afford. If she was to survive in Khatyrgan, if she was to keep some part of herself whole and untouched, she had to remain strong.
Her life Before was gone now. Survival was all that mattered. It was her goal, her objective, her one hope. It was no longer a means, but an end in itself.
Every day she survived was a victory. It was all she had now.
She endured.
She stood.
And she was utterly, agonisingly alone.
Chapter 15
‘THREE MINUTES TO deployment! Three minutes!’
Drake felt his heartbeat quicken. This was it. Equipment and weapons had been given their final checks, all preparations had been made. The vast logistical effort that had started yesterday morning at Langley was now about to come to fruition halfway around the world, less than forty-eight hours later.
Drake was at the rear of the group. As the most experienced at airborne operations, he was serving as the group’s jump master. His job was to observe each team member as they exited the aircraft and, if necessary, to assist them. The nightmare scenario would be if someone’s harness became snagged on something.
If so, their only chance at survival would be for someone to cut them free. To this end, Drake was wearing a long-bladed combat knife strapped across his chest, its edge wickedly sharp.
It was a relic from his days with the SAS; a memento of his time there. The blade was a distinctive shape, thinner than the average knife, and longer. A deep groove had been cut into the hand guard. In close combat, that groove was designed to snag an opponent’s blade and disarm them.
He hoped he wouldn’t need it, either for combat or for assisting a comrade in trouble.
Keegan was in front of him, with Dietrich next and Mason crouched down at the very edge of the exit ramp. He would be jumping tandem with Frost, so he was to be the first out.
He exhaled, hot and uncomfortable. The pressurised jumpsuit was heavy and cumbersome, weighing him down with thermal insulation, oxygen canisters, pressure gauges, altimeters, GPS navigation systems and primary and secondary parachutes. Combined with his personal weapon, spare ammunition, body armour and combat fatigues, he was carrying close to 80 pounds of excess weight. It was starting to tell.
He glanced down at the GPS unit, checking to make sure it was still tracking his position. Khatyrgan’s latitude and longitude had been programmed in, leaving him with a series of waypoints leading all the way to his target. As long as he kept to them, they would reach the prison without difficulty.
He blinked as the aircraft’s interior lights went out, replaced by dull red units that bathed the world around him in an unnerving crimson glow.
‘Hook up,’ he said, speaking into his suit-mounted intercom.
Reaching over, he attached his line to the anchor line cable running along the side of the compartment and gave it a couple of hard tugs to make sure it was solid. This was a fixed-line jump, meaning the parachutes would automatically deploy once they exited the aircraft. As long as they were hooked on properly, technology would do the rest.
Inspecting Keegan’s line in front of him, he gave the man a slap on the shoulder to indicate he was good to go. Keegan repeated the process with Dietrich, who in turn checked Mason’s line. It was a simple thing, but an important one.
With their final preparations made, Drake turned his eye to the indicator panel above the exit ramp. There were three lights – red, amber and green. The red one was already on, warning that deployment was imminent.
A moment later, the yellow light started blinking.
‘Ramp coming down!’ Drake warned. His heart was hammering away in his chest, and he could feel the adrenalin starting to kick in.
Even within his pressurised suit, he felt the sudden rush of air as the door slid down. The howling shriek of the wind filled his ears, the slipstream roaring by outside at 300 miles per hour. Within seconds, the ambient temperature inside the aircraft dropped to minus 40 degrees Celsius.
The world beyond the ramp was darkness, sheer and absolute. It felt as if they were about to leap into a void of nothingness.
‘Get ready!’ he called out, still watching the lights. The yellow light was burning steadily now to signify that the ramp was down.
They were only seconds away.
He closed his eyes for a second, sending a silent prayer to whatever deity might be inclined to listen at that moment. He thought of all the things that could go wrong, all the mistakes and problems that could spell doom for them all.
He thought about them, and then he banished them from his mind.
The green light came on.
‘Go! Go! Go!’
He watched Mason take a couple of heavy, faltering steps toward the edge, cross his arms in front of him and then pitch forward. And just like that, he and Frost were gone.
Dietrich went next, hesitating for half a second before launching himself out into the darkness.
He saw Keegan stop just for a moment, cross himself, then take a run down the ramp and throw himself out like a long jumper.
Drake was alone. For one brief second, he was alone, staring out into infinite darkness. Somewhere far below lay an impregnable Russian prison, and within it, the woman who was their sole objective tonight.
A woman Cain was prepared to do anything to bring home. A woman for whom Drake was risking five lives in the most dangerous mission of his career. A woman who might well hold the key to his own redemption.
So much depended on one person. He just hoped she was worth it.
More than that, he hoped he was worthy of redemption.
Taking a breath, he strode forward, crossed his arms across his chest and stepped out.
Chapter 16
SHE LAY AWAKE on the hard lumpy mattress, watching her breath slowly misting in the cold air as she exhaled. She couldn’t sleep.
She rested her hands behind her head and closed her eyes, trying to imagine the sun, trees, grass, warmth and light, the feel of wind on her skin, being able to run until her legs could no longer carry her.
It was an exercise she practised every once in a while, a means of escape, even if only within her own mind.
But not tonight.
She frowned, struggling to recall the familiar images; what it felt like to be outside, to stand beneath the sky with no walls around her, no ceiling above her, no hard and cold concrete floor beneath.
Nothing came to her. Every time she tried to picture it, she saw the same grey cell. Her world. The only world she knew now.
Have I forgotten?
For the first time in a long time, fear, sudden and uncontrolled, flooded her body. Her mind had been her last bastion, the one aspect of her life that she could still control.
But not now. Now she was a prisoner within as well as without. A cold, hard knot of dread and despair s
welled up inside her, twisting and writhing in her guts like a snake.
You let it in, she thought with bitter recrimination. You let it get to you, and you lost the only thing that still mattered. You failed. This place has beaten you.
She squeezed her eyes shut, clutching the thin blanket in a white-knuckle grip as her muscles locked up. She screamed a silent, agonised, furious scream.
Suddenly the cell block reverberated with the harsh clang of a door being thrown open. Too heavy for a cell door. It was one of the bigger security doors that separated the solitary confinement cells from the rest of the building.
The one at the west end of her block had a rusted hinge that grated horribly when it was hauled open. It always made her cringe, knowing there were guards out there. Were they coming for her, or another one of the poor wretches in the adjacent cells?
She strained to listen to the sound of the footsteps, and frowned in confusion. There were three of them. She recognised the heavy tread of Bastard, but the other two weren’t familiar. They were moving fast, coming her way.
Was this some new punishment that he had devised? Had he brought new friends along to help him? Did he ever stop?
Not again. Not again so soon. Please.
Her heart started beating faster as she pulled herself out of bed, already tensing her muscles, readying herself for what was coming.
She could hear voices, hushed and muffled. She couldn’t make out the words. That only increased her unease. The daily grind of casual violence and abuse no longer bothered her, because it was predictable, and there was a certain security in that.
But deviations from the norm frightened her. She felt out of control, about to be plunged into a new situation that she didn’t understand.
What was going on?
They were coming for her. There was no doubt about it now. They were almost at the door. The footsteps were moving fast and urgent.
With her heart pounding, she rose to her feet, clenching her fists. Come on, then. Come on. Get it over with, you bastard. Have your fun and get it over with.