by Will Jordan
The site for their meeting was located deep within the city’s western residential district. The kind of well-to-do area that belonged to doctors, lawyers, successful government ministers, or just those who were good at skimming a little off the top without getting caught. That was where he would finally meet his old CIA contact.
Marcus Cain – a man he hadn’t spoken to face to face in over 20 years. How both of their lives had changed in that time, he reflected. Both had risen through the ranks of their respective organizations, through fair means and foul, and both had proven themselves worthy adversaries. And here they were, each with something the other wanted, about to step into the ring once more.
‘How long?’ he called to his driver, Baloch, up front.
His two bodyguards were up there, with three more following in a second car about 40 yards behind. He doubted Cain would go to this much trouble just to stage an assassination, but that didn’t mean he was prepared to walk into this meeting without protection.
‘Five minutes, sir,’ the big, heavily built man replied over his shoulder. His already sizeable frame was bulked out by the body armour he wore beneath his suit.
Qalat nodded, easing back into his seat. Staring off to the north, he caught sight of the four massive minaret towers of Faisal Mosque jutting up into the night sky, illuminated from below by powerful floodlights. A modern design intended to evoke Islamabad’s own melding of past and future, of tradition and progress, it was, in Qalat’s view, a decadent and ugly piece of engineering.
If he’d been a devout Muslim, he supposed he might have said a prayer as he passed it, invoking Mohammed’s help in his work tonight, but he had little need of such spiritual props. A real man shaped his own destiny with courage, willpower and intelligence. He had enough to have made it this far, and he didn’t intend to fail now.
He was ready for Marcus Cain.
* * *
‘This is it. Stop up here,’ Drake said, pointing to a narrow side street just off the main road. The safe house wasn’t far from here, and it was time to disembark.
Turning off the road, Samantha manoeuvred the Range Rover into the street and brought them to a halt, keeping the engine running so she could move off as soon as the assault group were out.
Closing his eyes for a moment to calm his mind, Drake nodded to himself and reached for his door. ‘This is it. Get yourselves into position and stay on comms. We’ll radio when we’re in position.’
Frost twisted around in her seat to look at him, no doubt wishing she were going with them. Unfortunately she had other tasks to perform tonight. ‘Kick some ass out there, you hear me?’
Mason grinned at her. ‘Wouldn’t have it any other way.’
Disembarking, Mason and Anya circled around to the rear of the vehicle and popped the trunk to retrieve their weapons, tactical gear and the grapple launchers. All of it was stowed away inside heavy canvas bags that they’d have to carry up to the rooftop. No doubt the sight of three people hauling such conspicuous loads would arouse suspicion if they were seen in broad daylight, but fortunately the darkness would mask them somewhat.
Drake too was about to leave when Samantha turned around. ‘Ryan?’
‘Yeah?’
She held out hand to him. He could tell from the look in her eyes that there was much she wanted to say, but they both knew she couldn’t. Time was a luxury they no longer had. Instead, Drake reached out and clasped her hand. Her grip was strong, knuckles standing out hard and white against the skin, as if she never wanted to let go.
‘We’ll be back soon,’ he promised. ‘Keep the seats warm for us, okay?’
She smiled then, but there was nothing light hearted about it. It was a sad, bittersweet smile, full of regrets. ‘Come back soon. Or I’ll kick your ass myself.’
‘Ryan, we have to go now,’ Anya said, leaning in his doorway with a heavy satchel slung over one shoulder. He couldn’t help notice her gaze flick momentarily to Samantha, and caught himself wondering what secrets lay between those two.
But now wasn’t the time. Releasing Samantha’s hand, Drake ducked out onto the sidewalk and swung the door shut behind him, slapping the roof to signal they were good to go.
Samantha wasted no time backing out onto the road and accelerating away. Within moments the Rover was lost amongst other traffic, leaving the three operatives alone.
Drake’s eyes turned towards the apartment building that lay nearby. They were on site, but they still had to reach the roof.
‘Let’s go,’ he said quietly, hoisting the satchel up onto his shoulder.
* * *
At an industrial estate on the southern edge of Rawalpindi, the night watchman jumped up in shock as several black SUVs came roaring through the main entrance, heading deep into the maze of warehouses and factories at top speed.
The small convoy came to a screeching halt outside one warehouse in particular: a small, decrepit, rusting edifice that looked like it was being held up by sheer willpower. No sooner had the SUVs stopped than black-clad tactical operatives poured out, converging on the warehouse from all sides, submachine guns up at their shoulders.
Urgent orders and updates flashed across the radio net as they took up position at key access points, ready to storm in as soon as the command was issued.
Meanwhile, ten miles away in neighbouring Islamabad, Gondal was seated in one of the ISI’s many situation rooms, watching shaky, green-tinted footage being transmitted live from a couple of the operatives’ helmet-mounted cameras.
‘The strike team leader reports they are in position,’ Mahsud said, a phone cradled against his sizeable chest. ‘Waiting for go command.’
Gondal let out a breath. ‘Go.’
A blur of movement, the muted boom of shotgun blasts obliterating door locks, and suddenly he found himself looking at the familiar interior of the warehouse. This time, however, there was no Range Rover, no dilapidated old Russian van, and most importantly no sign of the building’s occupants.
Clenching his fists, Gondal leaned back in his seat as the tactical team, doing their duty, carried out a search of the small network of offices and storage rooms at the rear of the warehouse. He already knew they wouldn’t find anything.
‘Robert Douglas’ and his cohorts were way ahead of them.
He looked up at Mahsud, whose grim and unhappy expression mirrored his own. ‘Put out a city-wide alert on both vehicles, and start circulating those facial composites I had drafted up. I want them found!’
Those people, whoever they were and whatever their purpose in Pakistan, had murdered two of his field agents. He would see to it they answered for their crime.
* * *
At the top of the apartment building overlooking the safe house, Drake eased open the stairwell door half an inch, then knelt down and felt around the doorjamb for the tell he’d left there – a broken fragment of matchstick. It was still in place.
Gripping his silenced Browning automatic tightly, he pushed the door open further and advanced out onto the roof, sweeping the area. Mason was right behind him, clutching a pistol in one hand and his heavy canvas equipment bag in the other. Anya brought up the rear, similarly armed and weighed down.
‘Clear,’ Drake hissed, lowering the weapon and easing the door closed.
Straight away Anya went to work. Dumping her satchel on the ground, she knelt down and unzipped it, quickly removing the dismantled sniper rifle she’d brought with her. She worked with calm, expert efficiency, her fingers quick and nimble as she slotted the bolt and firing assembly together, before inserting the barrel and clipping it into place.
Mason too was busy unpacking his own bag, carefully lifting out the two MP7 submachine guns, followed by eight 40-round box magazines – four apiece. They could perhaps have carried more, but both men agreed there was little to be gained by it. If there was a situation that 320 rounds of automatic gunfire couldn’t get them out of, they were dead anyway.
As his two comrades went about the
ir allocated tasks, Drake hurried over to the building’s parapet, keeping low to avoid being seen from the ground.
Raising himself just high enough to look out over the edge, Drake lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes and focussed in on the safe house. As he’d expected, the internal lights were on and the blinds closed. There was no sign of any activity on the rooftop terrace or in the courtyard below, which meant any operatives on site had to be inside.
Hearing the light crunch of boots on gravel, Drake turned just as Anya crept over beside him, the sniper rifle cradled in her arms. Laying the heavy weapon down, she raised herself up, quickly surveying their target.
‘Looks quiet,’ she remarked.
It was no surprise. Armed guards patrolling the courtyard or the building’s rooftop would have attracted attention from the police, local security patrols, even curious neighbours. All of which was exactly what Cain was no doubt hoping to avoid.
‘We’ll soon change that,’ Drake assured her, reaching for his tactical radio. ‘Alpha One to Bravo One. We’re at the rally point. What’s your sitrep?’
‘Bravo One is in position. Comms pack is green. Standing by to patch in now.’
‘Copy that. Wait for my command.’ Clicking his radio off, Drake crept over to where Mason had unpacked their weapons and other gear.
‘We good?’ the assault specialist asked, his voice hushed.
‘So far, at least.’ Unzipping his jacket to expose the dark T-shirt beneath, Drake picked up the body armour that Mason had laid on the ground and pulled it over his head, quickly locking the clips into place and tightening the straps until it was good and secure.
The spare magazines went into a series of pouches fixed to the right side of the vest. Since Drake was right handed and therefore used his left to reload, it would have been awkward and cumbersome to have to reach anywhere else. Mason, however, favoured his left hand, and so his vest had been adjusted accordingly.
The stun and smoke grenades went into a pair of sealed Velcro pouches across his chest. Hollywood might show soldiers with grenades dangling from their body armour by their pins, but Drake had never seen it happen in real life. Not unless the soldier in question had some kind of deep-seated grudge against his own body.
Last of all came the breaching charges. Both Drake and Mason were carrying one shaped plastic explosive charge each, in a special pouch wrapped around their thigh. The charges could blast through pretty much anything, from a reinforced door to the hinges on a bank vault. They could be triggered remotely if necessary, but such a set-up took time, and Drake preferred to keep it simple. Thus Samantha had rigged a basic grenade fuse set to a five-second delay for them.
Mason had also removed and assembled the two Plumett grapple launchers. Gripping the big cumbersome guns by their carry handles, he carried them over to the far edge of the roof and laid them down beside Anya. When the time came, that was where they would launch their hooks from.
‘Both guns are primed and loaded,’ Mason said as soon as he returned.
Drake nodded acknowledgement.
His comrade hesitated then. ‘You know there’s no spare hooks or line reels.’
‘I know.’
‘If we miss…’
Drake gave him a sharp look. ‘We won’t.’
The Plumetts were fitted with fairly primitive iron sights, allowing them to be adjusted up to their maximum range of 100 yards, but they were hardly precision weapons at the best of times. The heavy steel grapple hook along with its trailing line of cable was about as aerodynamic as a brick hurled from a catapult, forcing the two men to fall back on their years of experience and training in weapons handling, plus a dose of luck.
Drake’s best-case scenario was that both hooks would find their target, allowing the two men to slide down their lines simultaneously for maximum surprise, but failing that, he knew one high-tensile line could support both of them at a pinch. That was part of the reason they were wearing lighter body armour and carrying smaller, more compact weapons to keep their combined weight down.
Of course, there was always a chance that both hooks would fail, in which case their assault was over before it began. Drake preferred not to think about that.
‘I know, Ryan.’ Mason eyed his friend for a second or two before turning his attention back to his prep work. With his armour fixed in place and his spare ammunition loaded, he pulled on a pair of leather climbing gloves that would aid them during their fast rope descent, tensing and flexing his fingers several times to get a feel for them.
Drake looked him over. Mason was a big man, his body hardened and well muscled by an active career and supplemented with regular weight training. A descent by fast rope should have been easy for a man with such upper body strength, but Mason was nursing an old gunshot injury to the shoulder. Surgery and rehab had done their part, but the wound still gave him problems. Drake could guess what was going through his mind.
‘Hey,’ he said, tapping him on the arm with his own gloved hand. ‘You’ve got this. The descent’s the easy part.’
Mason nodded slowly, chewing his lip.
‘Just try not to land your fat arse on someone’s flower bed, yeah?’
That at last prompted a reaction. ‘When this is over, remind me to drag you into a boxing ring sometime,’ Mason said, eyes flashing with pride and defiance. ‘Then we’ll see who’s out of shape.’
Drake grinned. When all else failed, taking the piss out of someone was usually the best course of action. It had worked in the military, and it still worked now.
He was about to respond to his friend’s challenge when he felt something land on his cheek. Reaching up, he touched at it and found his glove glistening with moisture.
The droplet of rain was followed by another, and another. Drake could hear them pattering on the gravel-covered roof all around them. And then, as if someone had turned a shower head on, the heavens suddenly opened. Crouched out in the open as they were, the two men could do little but watch as the rain shower quickly turned into a soaking, hammering deluge.
Pakistan and Afghanistan might have entered the popular consciousness as mountainous, desert countries, baked by scorching hot summers and chilled by bitterly cold winters, but Islamabad enjoyed a tropical continental climate. And tropical weather meant monsoons. It seemed the dark rain clouds that had been gathering throughout the day had chosen this moment to drop their load on Drake and his companions.
‘Well, I’ll take this as a good omen,’ Mason said, trying to shield himself from the onslaught. His clothes were already soaked through, as were Drake’s. ‘Like having a seagull shit on you.’
Sure enough, Drake’s earpiece crackled into life. ‘Might want to grab your ponchos, Alpha Team,’ Frost advised, speaking from the perfectly dry confines of the Range Rover. He could hear water droplets hammering on the roof, even over the radio net. ‘Looks like rain.’
‘No shit, Bravo,’ Drake replied tersely. ‘We’d barely noticed.’
On the plus side, bad weather meant fewer people on the streets, less activity and less chance of being spotted. And the sound of the rain itself might well provide some useful ambient noise that would help mask their attack.
On the other hand, it meant sitting here in darkness, soaked to the skin while they waited for their targets to arrive. That was nobody’s idea of a good time.
‘This ain’t going to do our comms equipment much good,’ Mason pointed out.
‘Try to shield it as best you can.’ Their tactical radios were designed to survive inclement weather, but no electronic device was entirely immune to moisture, and they had no spare units available. Anyone whose radio failed was effectively cut off.
‘Heads-up,’ Anya called out, speaking over the radio net to make sure she had everyone’s attention. ‘I have a vehicle approaching the safe house. One SUV, black. Late model Mercedes.’
Drake was over by the wall within moments, his binoculars trained on the target building. Sure enough, a vehicle ma
tching Anya’s description had pulled to a stop in front of the automatic security gates. He saw a window roll down, saw the driver lean out to speak into the gate’s radio intercom, holding his arm up to shield himself from the downpour.
And a few moments later, the gates began to trundle open as electric motors worked to draw them back along their runners.
Swapping an excited look with Anya, Drake keyed his radio. ‘All units, look sharp. We have one vehicle making entry to the compound. This could be it.’
Chapter 50
As his vehicle pulled to a halt by the main entrance of the grand, lavishly designed residence, Vizur Qalat couldn’t help but feel impressed. And perhaps a little envious. He had to hand it to Marcus Cain; the man certainly did things in style.
The chosen place for their meeting was a luxurious two-storey private villa, set within a walled and gated compound that was no doubt covered from every angle by cameras and motion sensors. The building itself was a little too modern for his tastes – all sharp uncompromising angles, grey concrete and big sheet-glass windows – but its sheer ambition and dominance held a certain appeal for him.
It was particularly impressive given that this safe house was now effectively burned. He now knew of its existence, which rendered its function useless after tonight. It was a powerful statement of how much Cain could afford to give up just to make a simple meeting happen. This fact was not lost on Qalat.
Braving the heavy onslaught of rain, Qalat’s driver circled around to his door and opened it for him. He carried no umbrella, and his suit was already glistening with damp.
Taking a deep breath, Qalat rose from his seat and strode directly for the building’s front entrance, moving at a brisk but measured pace. He didn’t run despite the rain. Nor did he glance around as his two bodyguards hurried to flank him.