Shadow Conflict

by Shadow Conflict (epub)

  ‘And?’ Cain prompted impatiently.

  Sullivan was quiet.

  ‘Jesus Christ, are you going to make me fly back to Langley and beat the answers out of you, or are you going to spit it out?’

  Sullivan sighed. ‘Fine, but it’s your ass. The angle of inclination wasn’t great, but it looks like the Soviet troop convoy diverted to Tajbeg Palace on the outskirts of Kabul before the rest of the ground forces returned to their dispersal areas.’

  Cain’s knew it well. That building had housed first the Afghan royal family, and latterly the country’s president, before the Soviet invasion. These days it served a more militaristic function.

  ‘That’s the 40th Army’s headquarters.’

  ‘Like I said, I knew you wouldn’t like it.’

  On the contrary, Cain was elated. Anya was alive, and now he knew where she was being held. Regardless of how well defended the place might be, he would find a way in.

  ‘Can you fax through a satellite overhead of the compound?’

  ‘I guess so, but—’

  ‘Great, you’ve got my number here. I need it as soon as you can.’

  ‘Marcus, whatever you’re thinking, you need to let this go,’ Sullivan warned, clearly nervous. ‘There’s no way into a place like that, and there sure as hell isn’t a way out.’

  There would be. Cain would make sure of it.

  ‘Just get that fax through. I’ll be in touch, Sully.’

  ‘Marcus, don’t—’

  Cain cut him off by jamming his hand down on the hook, then immediately dialling another number without bothering to replace the receiver. As he’d expected, it was answered straightaway. The recipient was just as eager for news as he’d been.

  And for once, Cain had good news for them.

  ‘Romek, call the group together,’ he instructed, his voice tinged with excitement. ‘I want a meeting within the hour, and make sure everyone’s there. We’ve got a location.’

  * * *

  Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland

  ‘Tell me you have Drake back in custody,’ Cain said as he walked across the vast hangar towards the Gulfstream V jet that was waiting for him, flanked by a pair of armed agents.

  He’d arranged this flight under conditions of extreme secrecy, making sure no details of it were officially logged and that its passenger’s identity wasn’t recorded. Andrews AFB was no stranger to hosting clandestine international flights. Even the Agency was largely unaware of his hastily organized trip to Europe, and with luck he’d be able to keep it that way until this situation was resolved.

  ‘We’ve got him,’ Hawkins confirmed. ‘He put up a fight, but he’s secure.’

  Cain would have expected nothing less. ‘Injuries?’

  ‘A couple of our guys are—’

  ‘I’m talking about Drake,’ Cain interrupted. Casualties amongst the field team were Hawkins’ domain. ‘He’s no good to us if he doesn’t survive until the exchange.’

  ‘He’ll be alive,’ Hawkins promised him. ‘Can’t say he’ll look pretty, though.’

  ‘Good enough. Did you get anything useful out of him?’

  There was a pause, which told its own story. ‘He blew our undercover agent.’

  ‘Then your plan was a waste of time and resources, wasn’t it, Jason?’ Cain remarked as he ascended the stairs to the aircraft’s hatch. ‘Remind me again why I keep you around?’

  ‘I captured Drake and his whole team for you in Pakistan.’

  ‘But you didn’t get Anya, which is the only thing that actually matters. The rest of them are no threat without her. And you lost half our field team in the process,’ Cain snapped.

  Individual casualties concerned him little, but collectively they became a problem that required more and more resources to contain. Hawkins undoubtedly had his uses, but he was overzealous and trigger happy. He was a sledgehammer in situations that called for a scalpel.

  ‘You know your problem? You’re messy, Jason. You don’t clean up after yourself, and you leave too many loose ends untied. People like that don’t stay in my good graces too long.’

  Hawkins was hot-headed, but wise enough not to argue that particular point.

  ‘Lucky for you I’m coming to handle this myself. You get a pass, for now,’ Cain allowed, handing his overcoat to a crew member and ducking into the cabin.

  ‘I’m ready, pilot. Take off now,’ he called through to the cockpit as soon as he was in his seat.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The pilots were already going through their final pre-flight checks. Cain turned his attention back to Hawkins.

  ‘My flight lands in Ramstein in eight hours. Be there to meet us, and have Drake and Frost prepped for transport.’ As the engines began to spin up, Cain added, ‘And mobilize every field asset you have. I want them all standing by.’

  ‘I’m on it.’

  ‘Oh, and Jason?’ Cain added. ‘Don’t disappoint me again.’

  Chapter 41

  Lauren stared at the young boy who had apparently been sent to watch over her. He was as much of an enigma to her as everything else about this situation. No more than 12, he seemed to approach his duty with the nonchalant confidence of one who had been presiding over kidnappings his whole life, reclining in a chair with his long skinny legs stretched out before him, feet resting on the open drawer of a simple wooden dresser nearby. Making a show of it, demonstrating that he was in control and had nothing to fear from her.

  Despite his laconic attitude, his attention remained focussed on her the whole time, a mixture of diligent alertness and mild curiosity, as if she were some unusual trinket. She sensed no hostility, but didn’t doubt he would raise the alarm the moment he sensed trouble.

  The silence was broken when the door opened and Anya entered, looking as if she’d just completed some strenuous physical task.

  She spoke a few quiet words in a language Lauren didn’t recognize, but presumably she was relieving the boy of guard duty, because he stretched and made to leave. Anya waited until he’d left the room before taking a step towards Lauren.

  ‘I’m going to remove your gag now,’ she said, reaching for the strip of duct tape. ‘You can scream if you want, but I’d rather you didn’t.’

  Lauren braced herself, managing not to show discomfort as the tape was removed.

  ‘How do you feel?’ Anya asked. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘What do you care?’

  ‘I don’t. But my agreement with your father was to return you unharmed.’

  ‘Well, we wouldn’t want to disappoint him, would we?’ Lauren said. ‘Is Alex okay?’

  Despite the fact he’d been complicit – albeit reluctantly – in her kidnapping, she did still feel a twinge of guilt for injuring him. It wasn’t in her nature to wish harm on others.

  Anya tilted her head slightly, curious. ‘What do you care?’ she asked, mirroring Lauren’s earlier remark.

  Lauren held her nerve. ‘I stabbed a sharpened spoon through a man’s arm. I’d like to know if he’s seriously injured.’

  ‘He won’t die because of what you did, Lauren, but he has proven himself a poor guard. Luckily there was someone better prepared to back him up.’

  ‘Yeah, interesting company you keep. Arming kids with tasers. What’s next? Putting bombs in baby carriages?’

  Of all the things to have derailed her escape attempt, the last thing Lauren would have expected was a kid with a stun gun. She still bristled at having come so close.

  ‘We each use the tools at hand,’ Anya said tersely.

  Lauren was quick to seize on her choice of words. ‘So that’s what people are to you? Tools to be used?’

  ‘I’m fighting a war, Lauren. I don’t have the luxury of your moral judgements.’

  ‘So you’d prefer to turn kids into soldiers?’

  ‘I would prefer not to have to fight at all.’

  Lauren tilted her head in mockery of Anya’s gesture. ‘Spoken like a true tyrant, pleading a love
of peace while waging war. People like you have used that excuse for thousands of years.’

  ‘People like me,’ Anya repeated. ‘Tell me, what do you really know about me?’

  ‘I know enough,’ Lauren contended. ‘I know how much it hurt my dad when you betrayed him. And I know you’re holding me against my will so you can hurt him again.’

  Anya didn’t respond to that one. Instead she reached behind her back.

  Lauren heard the rasp of metal on metal. Anya slowly held a blade out towards her, so that she could see the keen edge gleaming in the stark electric lighting. She knelt beside Lauren’s right foot and went to work with the knife.

  Lauren felt tension and resistance around her ankle, and suddenly the cable tie fell away, quickly followed by the other. Anya repeated the process on her wrists, then backed away, giving her some room.

  Lauren sprang to her feet, eager to escape the confines of the chair.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ she asked, watching in puzzlement as Anya gently laid the knife on the floor a few feet away, then eased herself into the chair that had been occupied by the boy earlier.

  ‘You are no longer a prisoner,’ Anya informed her.

  Lauren stared at her. ‘What?’

  ‘I said, you are not a prisoner,’ the woman repeated, speaking with deliberate patience. ‘If you wish to leave, you can.’ She paused, eyes flicking to the knife. ‘All you have to do to win your freedom is kill me.’

  Lauren’s mouth gaped. She couldn’t believe Anya was even remotely serious. And yet, one look at the woman was enough to persuade her otherwise.

  ‘Go ahead, pick it up,’ Anya prompted. ‘I won’t try to stop you.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’

  Anya’s eyes hardened. ‘Pick up the knife, Lauren.’

  Lauren couldn’t believe what was happening. She took a small, hesitant step forward, waiting for a reaction, waiting for Anya to spring at her and snatch up the blade. But she just sat there, watching and waiting.

  Another step, and another. Lauren felt her foot brush against the knife. Watching Anya with wide, fearful eyes, she inched slowly down, stretching out her hand, reaching, searching. She felt soft carpet beneath her fingertips, moved her hand left a little, then touched the solid haft.

  Anya still had made no attempt to stop her. She was daring Lauren to do it.

  Snatching up the blade, Lauren jumped to her feet, brandishing the weapon.

  Only then did Anya rise from the chair. Her eyes were not on the blade, but rather on the young woman holding it.

  ‘Stay back, I’m warning you!’ Lauren said, holding the knife out in front of her.

  ‘You don’t need to warn me,’ Anya replied, calmly. ‘You had the courage to pick up that knife. Now let’s see if you have the courage to use it.’

  ‘You’re sick! You’re playing some twisted game.’

  Anya shook her head. ‘You wanted to know who I am, Lauren. This is who I am.’ She spread her arms wide, as if inviting the blade now clutched in the young woman’s hands. ‘It’s time to find out who you are. Will you use it on me? Will you kill me to save your own life?’

  Lauren’s throat was tightening, making it hard to breathe. Her hands were shaking as she raised the knife, pointing it clumsily at Anya’s chest. The woman took a step forward so that the blade was almost touching her.

  ‘You can do it,’ Anya coaxed. ‘Believe me, you can do almost anything when your own life is at stake. The only thing holding you back now is fear. But what are you really afraid of, Lauren Cain? That I’m lying to you, and I will kill you if you try to use that knife? Or that I’m telling the truth, and you really will kill me?’

  Lauren tried to rally her body as she prepared to strike. She didn’t even know what to do, where to aim, which was the proper way to hold the blade.

  Guessing her thoughts, Anya helped her out. ‘The best place for an amateur to strike is the stomach. It is vulnerable, unprotected, and if you angle the blade upwards there is a good chance you will penetrate the lungs or the heart. Either one will be fatal.’

  She had to do it. She wouldn’t end up as a helpless hostage, her fate to be decided by others. She couldn’t let this woman get away with it. She had to act, had to strike now!

  ‘This is your last chance, Lauren,’ Anya said impatiently. ‘What are you waiting for? If you won’t fight even to save your own life, what right do you have to live? Do it, you coward!’

  The blade fell from Lauren’s hands as she let out a strangled, choking sob. She took an unsteady step back, felt herself bump up against the wall and slowly slid down it until she was on her knees, tears flowing down her cheeks.

  Anya let out a breath – relief or disappointment, she couldn’t say – and glanced away.

  ‘Not so easy, is it? Taking a life,’ she said, retreating to the chair. She was quiet, her expression pensive.

  ‘I will tell you a secret, Lauren,’ she said at last. ‘The same thing happened to me, the first time. He was a Russian sentry, stationed in some outpost in Afghanistan, long before you were even born. I got close to him, so close I could smell him, see the hairs on his jaw where he hadn’t shaved. I had my knife. I knew what I was supposed to do, what I had been trained to do, but something stopped me. It was as if my body refused to obey me. I couldn’t take another man’s life.’

  She raised a sad, wistful smile.

  ‘That hesitation almost got me killed, along with the rest of my team. But then a man named Romek stepped in and did what I could not. He protected me, you see? Not from the Russians, but from our own men, because he knew what they would do to me if the truth came out. He told no one what had really happened, said I did my duty perfectly, made sure they all believed it. I felt sick to my stomach. I didn’t sleep that night. I lay awake replaying what happened, over and over. I had never felt so powerless and frightened in all my adult life. I hated myself for being so weak. So I made a decision never to feel that way again, never to hesitate, never to be weak.’

  ‘You’re saying that’s what I am? Weak? Powerless?’

  ‘I had to know what kind of person you were,’ Anya answered. ‘And you showed me.’

  ‘No, I showed you what kind of person I’m not.’ Lauren said. ‘I’m not a killer like you. And I’m not ashamed of that.’

  Anya shrugged, unwilling to engage in such an argument.

  ‘You said you had an agreement with my father,’ Lauren said, changing tack. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going to give you back to him, alive and unharmed as agreed. In return, he is going to give me three people he is holding hostage, hopefully in the same condition. Then we part ways.’

  Lauren blinked, surprised by the matter-of-fact answer. ‘Just like that?’

  ‘Not quite,’ Anya conceded unhappily. ‘Your father has been hunting me a long time. He won’t let a chance like this pass him by.’

  Lauren shook her head, still not understanding the deep-seated enmity between them. ‘Why?’ she asked, her voice hushed. ‘What could you have done that’s so bad he’d want you dead?’

  For a second, she thought Anya was going to tell her. She could see it – the tension, as if she were a dam straining to hold back a great flood of water on the verge of breaking through.

  ‘We’ll be leaving early tomorrow, and we have a long day ahead of us,’ she said. ‘I suggest you get some rest tonight. The room is yours. I will not keep you restrained unless you give me reason to. The windows are sealed and there is no way out except through the door, which will be locked and guarded at all times. I am showing faith in you, Lauren. Do not make me regret it.’

  Anya retrieved the knife from where Lauren had dropped it, and turned away towards the door.

  She was about to reach for the handle when suddenly she stopped. ‘You were right, by the way’, she said over her shoulder. ‘You should be proud.’

  The young woman frowned. ‘Of what?’

  ‘I told you I wan
ted to see what kind of person you were, and I did,’ Anya explained, turning to face her again. ‘I see a young woman who is strong and intelligent, and resourceful enough to escape an armed guard with no weapons. But I also see someone who is good-natured, kind and compassionate. Someone who would rather sacrifice her own life than take another.’ She looked almost regretful. ‘Those are things you should be proud of. Hold on to them, because they are very easy to lose.’

  She was just reaching for the door handle when Lauren spoke up.

  ‘Would you have let me do it?’ she asked, sniffing and wiping her forearm across her eyes. ‘If I had used that knife. Would you really have stopped me?’

  Anya looked at her. ‘Do you really want to know?’

  Chapter 42

  Drake grunted as a sharp shove sent him stumbling forward into the room. With his hands tied behind his back, the last thing he needed was to fall face-first onto a concrete floor.

  The door slammed shut behind him. The room was wide and low-ceilinged, with various pipes and ducts snaking across the ceiling – almost certainly a basement or maintenance room of some kind. A temporary holding location before he was moved somewhere else, but where? And when?

  The van ride here had lasted just over an hour; he’d counted out the minutes as he lay on the jolting, bumping floor, bound and hooded. That meant he was still in the Czech Republic, but the question was what Cain planned to do with him next.

  ‘Ryan,’ a voice exclaimed.

  Turning suddenly, Drake was just in time to see a short, dark-haired woman emerge from the shadowy corner of the room and rush at him, her expression one of mingled relief, joy and sadness.

  ‘Keira,’ Drake managed to say as Frost threw her arms around him. He could feel her body shaking, heard the sound of muffled sobs as she pressed her face into his shoulder.

  ‘Let me look at you,’ he said when she seemed to have regained her composure. ‘Let me see.’

  Frost pulled away. Her face was bruised and cut down one side, her hair greasy and matted. Her clothes were ripped and covered in stains. It made his heart ache to see her like this.