Ghost Target (Ryan Drake)

by Will Jordan

  If he came in too fast, it wouldn’t matter how well the descent had gone – he’d still break bones, which would put him out of action for good. But to his relief, his descent was slowing, the angle of the line growing shallow due to the natural flex of a cable stretched out over such a long distance. He glanced down at the glass-topped perimeter wall as it passed beneath him, wary of enemies but finding none.

  The upper terrace wall loomed out of the darkness right in front of him. Bringing his legs into position, Drake braced himself. A thump and scrape as both boots slammed into the wet concrete wall, followed by a jarring impact that travelled up his legs as if his bones were reverberating with the hit. Drake bent his knees, softening the impact, then let out a breath as he finally came to a halt.

  He’d made it.

  Relief at this momentary success surged through him, but it was quickly tempered by the realization that he needed to move. Undoing the quick release strap on his wrist, Drake slipped free of the pulley and ducked aside just as Mason arrived.

  The older man’s touch down was more graceful than his own. A seasoned army ranger, Mason was no stranger to house assaults like this, and knew how best to position his body so that he landed with maximum efficiency.

  In a matter of seconds he had released himself from his pulley, drawn his weapon and scurried over to join Drake, who was positioned by the door leading inside, covering the entrance.

  A single curt nod confirmed he was good to go, and Drake reached for his radio. ‘Alpha team’s in position,’ he whispered. ‘Standing by to move in.’

  ‘Copy that. I see you, Alpha,’ Anya confirmed. ‘No targets in sight.’

  The rooftop door was secured with an electronic combination lock, a single red indicator light burning in silent defiance, confirming it was locked.

  ‘Bravo, kill the door lock.’

  A second or so later, the light turned green, followed by a metallic click as the lock disengaged. The way ahead was open.

  ‘Wish we’d had this shit in Iraq a few years ago,’ Mason remarked as Drake reached for the door handle.

  ‘Hard part’s still to come,’ Drake warned him. ‘Alpha team’s moving in.’

  A single turn of the handle, and the door swung open. With Drake leading the way, the two men advanced inside.

  * * *

  ‘Suppose for a moment this all works out exactly as you hope. You kill Bin Laden and decapitate al-Qaeda,’ Qalat began. ‘Do you really believe it will make any difference? You and I both know how hard his followers are prepared to fight. We should – we trained many of them ourselves. A fact you may have found it politically convenient to forget.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten a single thing we did,’ Cain assured him.

  ‘Then you know that killing one of their leaders will not stop them. These men are fighting a holy war on behalf of Allah Himself. Any one of them would gladly lay down their life in His name.’

  ‘Would you?’

  Qalat shifted position. ‘I am not afraid of death, if that is what you mean.’

  Cain’s eyes glittered. ‘There are worse things than death, Vizur. Much, much worse. Believe me, you don’t want to find out what I’m capable of.’

  * * *

  Drake descended the steel steps leading from the rooftop terrace outside, his wet boots making only the faintest clang against the metal with each step. The MP7 was up at his shoulder, its bulky silencer fixed on the open doorway below as they approached. Mason was only a few steps behind, covering him. The faint drip of water from their soaked clothes was the only other sound in that cramped stairwell.

  Having studied the building’s design blueprints and committed them to memory, Drake knew every inch of this safe house as if it were his childhood home. Beyond the doorway below lay the upper floor hallway, leading to the living room at the far end. That was where they would find Cain and his mysterious contact.

  Unlike the building’s exterior which projected an image of sophisticated modernity, the stairwell was plain and starkly utilitarian by comparison. The walls were simple plasterboard, unmarked save for a couple of handwritten notations scrawled across their surface, likely left by the builders during construction. Illumination came via a single bare light bulb in the ceiling. No effort had been put into finishing or decorating this area, because it was never intended to be lived in.

  ‘Alpha’s in the stairwell, approaching first-floor hallway,’ he said, his voice barely audible over the pounding of his own heartbeat. ‘Bravo, what’s the sitrep? How many tangos ahead?’

  * * *

  In the passenger seat of the Range Rover a couple of hundred yards away, Frost switched the video feed to the hallway cameras, searching for a good angle on Cain’s bodyguards.

  ‘Bravo has – shit,’ she gasped as the feeds suddenly cut out, leaving her staring at nothing more than a series of blank test screens. ‘Stand by, Alpha.’

  She could feel her heart beating faster as she frantically sought the source of the problem. Don’t panic yet, she told herself. It could just be a glitch.

  ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ McKnight demanded, leaning in closer.

  ‘I’m working on it,’ Frost hissed, fear and concern making her defensive.

  McKnight glared at her. ‘Well work faster, for Christ’s sake. Cole and Ryan are sitting ducks in there!’

  * * *

  Crouching down in the stairwell and forcing calm into his voice, Drake hit his transmitter again. ‘What’s the sitrep, Bravo?’

  He heard a muttered curse. ‘Bravo is in the dark,’ Frost reported, unable to hide the fear in her voice. ‘We have no visuals inside the building.’

  The breath caught in his throat. ‘Can you get them back?’

  ‘The whole thing’s dead, I don’t have control here,’ she admitted. ‘Repeat, Bravo does not have control.’

  ‘Christ,’ Mason growled, tensing up and eyeing the doorway with his weapon raised. ‘We’re blind.’

  ‘I don’t like this, Alpha,’ McKnight’s voice echoed in his ear. ‘Recommend you fall back now.’

  ‘No,’ Drake insisted.

  ‘We’re locked out. We have to abort.’

  ‘We abort now, we’ll lose him.’ He could feel the anger, the impatience, the desperation mounting with each passing second. They had travelled halfway around the world, risked everything to get this far, and now Marcus Cain was sitting no more than 10 yards away. ‘And this was all for nothing.’

  ‘I know how bad you want this, but use your head, Alpha,’ she pleaded with him. ‘This isn’t worth dying for.’

  Drake already knew what he was going to do, but he needed to know Mason was with him. Taking his eyes off the doorway for a moment, Drake glanced at his teammate, the two men sharing a look born from years of serving together on missions just like this, of risking their lives and placing their trust in each other.

  ‘We go all the way,’ he said quietly.

  Mason nodded. ‘Damn right we do.’

  Sparing his friend a brief smile of gratitude, Drake reached for his radio. ‘All units, stand by. Alpha is going in.’

  With Mason right behind him, he vaulted down the last couple of steps at the bottom of the stairwell, through the doorway and into the pristine marble corridor beyond. His silenced weapon’s tritium sight swept left and right, eagerly seeking a target and finding none. The hallway was empty.

  No targets, no bloodstains from the two supposedly dead ISI operatives. Had they been killed on the ground floor? Had their murderers already cleaned up the crime scene and moved to dispose of the bodies?

  ‘Clear left,’ he whispered.

  Mason, covering his back, similarly found no enemies. ‘Clear right.’

  The doorway leading to the living room was directly ahead. No guards stood in their way. Beyond lay Marcus Cain. He had to be there. There was only one way in or out of that room, and he couldn’t possibly have escaped without them seeing him.

  He was there, and Drake was
coming for him.

  Chapter 53

  On the rooftop of the apartment building overlooking the safe house, Anya was still crouched by the parapet, her eye to the powerful magnified scope, oblivious to the rain that was still hammering down around her. The long barrel of her rifle tracked slowly back and forth across the building’s exterior, searching for a target and finding none.

  No sign of any security presence at all, in fact.

  Something about this assault wasn’t right. She couldn’t explain it rationally, but her gut instinct told her something was afoot. In the course of her long career she’d taken part in operations that, for one reason or another, had proven less challenging than anticipated. But this was something else. It was simply too easy.

  It was as if they were being led inside…

  Eyes opening wide as the disparate pieces suddenly coalesced into a single chilling possibility, Anya reached for her radio transmitter.

  ‘Charlie to Alpha. Bravo is right, this is a trap. Fall back now. I repeat, fall back!’

  * * *

  But Drake wasn’t hearing her. He was already committed to the attack, the blood pounding in his ears as his heartbeat went into overtime.

  Sprinting down the short length of hallway, his boots leaving wet prints on the marble tiles, he halted in front of the door, weapon raised, safety off. Mason closed in beside him, ready to cover his every move.

  They had rehearsed this final step of the attack countless times. Each had their own sectors of the room to cover, their own fields of fire. When they breached the door, Drake would go right, Mason left, advancing quickly to put some space between them, and killing anything that pointed a weapon in their direction.

  Once they had Cain and his ISI contact in their sights, they would subdue both men and prep them for transport. Drake almost hoped that Cain tried to resist. He wouldn’t kill him – yet – but a 4.6 x 30mm round through the kneecap was unlikely to be fatal.

  He briefly thought about using the breaching charge to make entry, but dismissed the idea after a quick inspection of the door barring their way. This was no hardened, reinforced security barricade, but a simple internal door set within a standard wooden frame. No explosives would be needed to get it open.

  Glancing one last time at his companion to check that he was ready, Drake nodded once, raised his boot and planted a single, powerful kick just beneath the lock. Straight away the door flew open, yielding to the force of the impact with the crunch of splintering wood, revealing the big open-plan living room beyond.

  Both men were moving instantly, Mason going in first because Drake’s kick had interrupted his momentum for half a second. As planned, Drake fanned out right while his companion moved left, both sweeping the room for targets.

  Drake’s eyes and weapon were a blur of adrenaline-fuelled movement, taking in every detail of his surroundings as he advanced. The room was large, its sparse furnishings serving to emphasize its proportions. The blinds were drawn over the windows, obscuring their view of the city outside. A pair of leather couches sat on either side of a coffee table in the centre of the room. A couple of book cases stood against the far wall, both empty.

  A big, mostly empty room. No Cain. No ISI agent.

  Nothing.

  ‘Clear!’ he called out, lowering his weapon.

  ‘Clear!’ came Mason’s reply from the other side of the room. ‘What the fuck? There’s nothing here.’

  A hundred questions were whirling through his mind in that moment, but all of them were silenced by the deep knot of fear and apprehension that had suddenly tightened in his stomach.

  ‘This is all wrong,’ he said under his breath.

  Mason turned towards him, his expression one of utter disbelief. ‘This is impossible. Frost had eyes on him, and there was no way he could have slipped by us. He was in this goddamn room!’

  Only then did an idea stir in Drake’s mind. A possibility, seemingly remote and unlikely yet the only one that fit with what they knew. The only explanation for what had just happened.

  ‘No he wasn’t,’ Drake gasped. ‘It was fake.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It wasn’t real! What Keira saw on her monitor was happening somewhere else. It was all staged to lead us here!’

  Somehow Cain had known of their plan in advance. Somehow the bastard had been one step ahead yet again. He couldn’t explain how it had happened, couldn’t rationalize how his plan had suddenly unravelled in such horrifying fashion, but those were questions for another time.

  For now, getting out of this place was the priority. Disbelief and shock instantly gave way to an urgent, overwhelming urge to escape.

  ‘On me!’ he hissed, raising his weapon and striding towards the door. As he did so, he reached up and clicked his radio transmitter. ‘Alpha to all units, Downfall is blown. I repeat, we’re compromised. Fall back to—’

  He winced at the sudden high-pitched electrical screech that suddenly pulsed through his comms unit, and hurriedly tore the earpiece out before the noise deafened him. Judging by Mason’s own growl of pain and similar reaction, he had just experienced the same thing.

  ‘Ow! Goddamn it. What the fuck was that?’ Mason demanded.

  Before Drake could reply, the building’s internal lights suddenly went out, plunging the room and the two men inside it into darkness. They were alone, cut off from support, unable to communicate, unable even to see.

  An instant of shock, and Drake’s brain immediately switched from thoughts of evacuation to simple survival. Killing the lights in the building could only be a prelude to one thing, and this terrible realization was confirmed by the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside.

  ‘Down!’ he yelled, turning and throwing himself behind the nearest couch just as a burst of silenced gunfire erupted from the doorway.

  * * *

  In the Range Rover not far away, Frost looked up from her laptop, her face screwed up in pain as she wrenched the radio transmitter from her ear. ‘Shit, we’re being jammed!’ she warned, recognizing the distinctive static distortion all too well. ‘Ryan and Cole are cut off. What the fuck do we do?’

  McKnight had heard enough. Abandoning her vigil over the technical specialist, she slipped back into her seat behind the wheel and turned over the ignition key. The engine fired first time, rumbling back into loud, urgent life like some ancient beast awoken from its slumber.

  ‘Hang on,’ she advised, throwing the big vehicle into gear.

  * * *

  Drake barely cleared the couch with his desperate leap, landing hard on the marble tiles beyond and pulling the heavy piece of furniture down on top of himself just as the shooter in the doorway opened fire. The first burst arced just over his head, the rounds passing so close that he could feel the subsonic change in air pressure as they whizzed by.

  There was little noise beyond the low-pitched thump of the weapon’s suppressor and the click of the feed mechanism at work, allowing him to hear the distinctive crunch of glass as some of them embedded in the big windows beyond.

  Adjusting his aim, the shooter opened fire on full automatic, spraying the upturned couch with silenced rounds. Unable to respond in the face of such murderous fire, Drake was forced to flatten himself against the floor as shots tore through his meagre cover, showering him with torn shreds of fabric, foam padding and fragments of shattered wood. The muzzle flare of each discharge illuminated his surroundings like lightning bursts, drawing his sparse surroundings in stark, cordite-lit relief.

  He had no idea where Mason was, or what kind of situation he was in. From his position behind the bulky couch, he could only see a small portion of the room, but that alone was enough to tell him they were deep in the shit.

  Sooner or later the gunman in the doorway would run dry, but there was every chance that one of his companions was waiting right there beside him, ready to take over. They could be moving into the room at this very moment under his covering fire, no doubt using night-vision equipment to
let them operate with ease while their opponents were blinded. Cornered, outnumbered and outgunned, this was one fight he and Mason could never hope to win.

  Twisting around, he brought his own weapon to bear and opened fire on full automatic, spraying his shots straight though the couch just as his enemy had done. There was no thought of aiming or controlling his ammunition usage; he just wanted to put as many rounds in that bastard’s direction as possible.

  The MP7 kicked back hard against his shoulder, spent shell casings pattering against the floor all around him. The couch, already damaged by his opponent’s fire, was virtually shredded under the onslaught. Drake felt something zip past his arm from the other side, leaving a hot, uncomfortable trail as it passed, but paid little attention to such a minor irritation.

  Switching to firing the compact submachine gun one handed, he reached into his webbing with his free hand, yanked one of the stun grenades free and hooked his thumb into the pin. A single hard pull was enough to snap it free. Releasing his fingers to let the fly-off handle detach, he hurled the grenade over the top of the couch in what he hoped was the direction of the doorway and put his hands over his ears.

  ‘Cole, bang out!’ he screamed, an instant before the grenade detonated.

  The couch protected his eyes from the searingly intense flash. Vaguely he detected a muffled cry of pain over near the doorway, and urgent commands spoken by at least two men.

  ‘Infra-red’s blown.’

  ‘Fall back. Cover! Cover!’

  More movement, rapid footsteps thumping against the marble tiles. They were moving, falling back from the bottleneck of the doorway, trying to regain their cohesion after having their night vision knocked out by the flashbang.

  He expected a flurry of gunfire in retaliation, but what he heard instead was a series of dull pops, too loud for a silenced weapon but too muted to be a conventional firearm. He felt a moment of confusion, wondering what form this fresh assault would take.