Betrayal (37 page)

Drake nodded. The assault team had announced their arrival as plainly as it was possible to do, yet no shots had been fired. What was Anya doing?

‘Anything from our eyes in the sky?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘No movement. Nothing on thermal imaging.’

He wasn’t surprised. Infrared cameras were all well and good, but even they couldn’t see through solid walls. If Anya was here, she was likely hidden away in one of the buildings.

‘Then we do it the old-fashioned way,’ he decided. ‘Building by building, room by room. Take your assault team and move in on those hangars. Cole, on me. We’re going for that office building over there. Ready?’

‘Say the word,’ Mason assured him. House assaults and urban combat had been his speciality back in the day, and he was no doubt eager to prove he could still cut it.

‘I don’t—’ Miranova began.

‘No arguments,’ he said, a harder edge in his voice now. He wasn’t interested in negotiating with her over who was in charge of the assault. If he had to, he’d tear this airfield apart with his bare hands to find Anya. ‘We’re moving now. Cover by twos, five-yard spread. Go!’

Without waiting for her response he pushed himself off the wall and took off at a sprint, keeping low to present a smaller target. The scattered trees and bushes provided some visual cover, but they would be of no help if someone started shooting at them.

He could hear Mason’s boots pounding through the mud behind him. Just as he’d instructed, the man was keeping several metres back. This way they could support each other in a firefight, but maintain enough distance that a single burst of gunfire couldn’t wipe them both out.

At any moment he expected to hear the distinctive crackle of automatic fire and feel rounds whistling past to churn up the muddy ground, yet no such thing happened. Aside from the distant beating of the helicopter rotors and the patter of raindrops, the airfield remained oddly quiet.

An empty doorway lay ahead, the space beyond shrouded in shadow. Pausing a moment or two to allow Mason to catch up, Drake switched on the flashlight mounted beneath the barrel of his automatic and slipped inside.

His eyes were by now accustomed to the gloomy conditions, but the darkness inside the ruined building was absolute. The narrow beam looked like a 1,000-watt searchlight illuminating the empty, desolate corridor in which he now found himself.

The place was a mess. Years of rain and wind, freezing and thawing had gradually undermined the building’s internal structure. Plaster was falling off the walls in big chunks, paint was peeling, and roofing panels had collapsed to reveal the electrical wiring and rusted pipes above. The walls were streaked with mould and damp.

The flashlight beam reflected off tiny shards of broken glass scattered across the floor. About halfway along the hall, a stairwell led to the upper level.

He inhaled, tasting the scents on the air. Despite the freezing temperature, there was a strange, unpleasant odour lingering in the corridor. Stale and rotten; the festering reek of decay. The smell turned his stomach, reminding him of another time, in Afghanistan, when he and his companions had stumbled across the decomposing corpse of a man they had been sent to rescue.

Surely that wasn’t possible here? Masalsky had only been abducted a couple of hours earlier.

‘Come on,’ he said under his breath as he crept forwards, his boots crunching on the broken glass. ‘Come on. I’m ready.’

He could hear movement behind, and felt a tap on his shoulder as Mason fell into step behind him, covering his back. Whatever their earlier differences, Drake knew he could rely on the man in situations like this.

Together they advanced down the corridor, passing by an empty room on the left. The door was missing, and a quick glance inside revealed nothing save for a couple of rusted filing cabinets piled in a heap in the centre of the room.

Two more rooms also yielded nothing of interest. It felt as if no one had walked this hallway since the day the airfield was shut down.

‘Fucking ghost town, man,’ Mason said quietly. ‘Reminds me of that city they evacuated after Chernobyl. Dishes still in sinks, kids’ toys lying where they’d been dropped …’

Drake was about to tell him to shut up, but a sudden crash further down the corridor abruptly halted their conversation. Both men froze at the unmistakable sound of movement coming from deeper inside the building.

Drake’s heartbeat soared, and he could feel the pulse pounding in his ears as a mixture of fear and anticipation swept through him. Someone or something was in here with them.

Glancing at Mason, he raised his weapon and pointed down the corridor. The older man nodded understanding, his body held taut and ready.

Taking a deep breath and gripping his own weapon tight, Drake crept forwards. The lingering stench that he’d noticed on entering the building was growing stronger with each step, causing bile to rise in his throat.

Whatever it was, it seemed to be coming from just up ahead. Most of the rooms stood open, their doors either removed or destroyed when the airfield was abandoned, but this one remained closed and sealed. Rusted and decayed by age, the heavy steel door was an imposing barrier standing in their path.

The footsteps had stopped and silence descended on the ruined building. The place was eerily quiet as the two men crunched their way through the debris-covered floor. Even the howl of the wind outside seemed to have died down.

Drake’s heart was pounding as he approached the door. The knowledge that Mason was covering his back did little to ease the sense of dread and foreboding that seemed to have descended on him.

Halting in front of it, he raised his foot and glanced for a moment at his companion. ‘Three, two, one …’

With a single powerful kick, he sent the heavy door flying inwards, flecks of rust grating off the neglected hinges. Drake was in straight away, his weapon and flashlight sweeping the room while Mason moved in right behind him.

The damp, mould-ridden room beyond must have been an armoury when this airfield was still operational. Ammunition racks lined the far wall, all empty and corroded. A couple of cheap tables sat in the middle of the room, their wooden veneers long since rotted away. The floor was covered with paper that had decomposed into piles of frozen pulp.

His inspection was interrupted by a sudden flurry of movement as something huge and dark bounded from a darkened corner and into the centre of the room.

Drake’s heart surged with a burst of adrenalin, and instinctively his finger tightened on the trigger as he brought the weapon up to fire. But at the last moment, he stopped himself.

Of all the enemies Drake had faced in his career, never before had he encountered a wolf. This one, however, was a monster, topping the scales at 120 pounds or more. Broad, shaggy shoulders gave way to long, powerful legs and wide clawed feet splayed out for extra purchase on the decaying floor. Its thick grey-white pelt, able to resist the cold far better than their own clothing, seemed to ripple as the muscles beneath bunched and coiled.

Sleek, powerful and agile, it was perfectly adapted to the environment that it called home. Its vicious predatory eyes were fixed on the two humans who had been foolish enough to wander into its territory, lips drawn back to reveal rows of wicked-looking teeth.

That explained the source of the smell, Drake thought. It had never occurred to him that with humans gone, the indigenous wildlife would have stepped in to fill the void. This wolf had made the office block its territory, and would likely defend it to the death. There was no telling how many more were lurking in the darkened rooms and corridors.

Mason was apparently entertaining similar thoughts. ‘This is not a good place to be.’

‘Easy, mate,’ Drake whispered. ‘Let’s back off, yeah? No sudden movements.’

Covering the deadly predator with his weapon, Drake took a step back, then another, slowly retreating down the corridor. The wolf watched them go, hackles raised, teeth bared, ready to strike the moment it sensed a threat.

Behind him Mason took another step, eager to get out of there. Drake heard the faint rattle as he disturbed something, then winced inwardly as a rusted section of the ammunition rack gave way, landing on the floor with a horrific metallic clang that echoed down the corridor.

The uneasy stand-off was broken. In an instant, the wolf launched itself forwards, loping towards them with powerful bounds, jaws already opening wide to tear into flesh.

The report of the gunshot in the confined space was deafening, causing Drake to flinch aside. He heard a frightened yelp, and suddenly the wolf crashed to the ground, its momentum causing it to skid and roll several feet before finally coming to rest at their feet.

Spinning around, Drake saw Mason standing beside them, wisps of smoke trailing from the barrel of his weapon.

‘What the fuck were you doing?’ he demanded, angry both at the needless death he’d just witnessed, and the gunshot that had just given away their position.

‘Saving your life, you asshole,’ Mason replied, lowering the gun. ‘Or would you rather I let that thing kill you?’

Drake opened his mouth to retort, but before he could say a word his radio unit crackled into life, Miranova’s urgent voice resounding in his ears.

‘Ryan, come in! Report.’

Still watching Mason, Drake hit the transmit button at his throat. ‘We’re fine,’ he said, an edge of anger still in his voice. ‘Just local wildlife. There’s nothing here.’

She was silent for a moment. ‘Then you need to come to the hangar.’

He frowned, struck by the tone of her voice. ‘What have you got?’

‘We have found Masalsky,’ she said simply. ‘He’s dead.’

Anya once again found herself alone, this time picking her way northwards through quiet woodland towards the border with neighbouring Dagestan. As before, she and her unlikely comrades had separated for the journey to their next location, minimising the chances of the group being compromised.

Anya had chosen this route specifically because there were no border checkpoints here. It was little more than a winding forest trail, seldom used except by the occasional hunter or logging company. She had abandoned her car some distance back, knowing it was useless in the heavily forested terrain.

She was going to have to hike across the border on foot. It made for a long walk in poor weather, but she had endured far worse.

She didn’t doubt that the FSB would be out hunting for her and the others, but the Chechen border was hundreds of miles long and largely unmarked by either natural or man-made barriers. It was impossible for them to cover every avenue.

So far she had encountered nothing since leaving the main road, and had no reason to believe her way was guarded. Still, she remained wary and unhappy, particularly with the FSB’s rapid advance on the airfield. Despite Atayev’s apparent calm, the group had been forced to clear out of there much faster than they’d originally intended.

Only a prompt warning had saved them from capture.

Temporarily absorbed in her dark thoughts, she allowed her normally acute awareness of her surroundings to slip. Thus it took her a moment or two to heed the increasingly urgent warnings being ferried by her subconscious mind. Only when she felt a chill of foreboding ripple through her did she realise something was wrong.

She was being watched.

Cursing her carelessness, she reached for the weapon at her back.

‘Forget it,
mako
,’ Goran’s familiar voice warned her, coming from perhaps 20 yards away. ‘I’ve got you covered.’

Anya closed her eyes and let out a sigh of disappointment, angry with herself for not seeing this sooner. Worse, she should have detected him following her long before this.

Perhaps he was a better soldier than she’d given him credit for. Or perhaps she had allowed herself to grow complacent.

‘Are you here to kill me, Goran?’ she asked without turning around.

‘Depends what you do next. Take your weapon out by the barrel and drop it.’

To resist now would be foolish. Anya removed the weapon as he’d instructed, then dropped it on the ground.

‘Good girl. Now raise your hands and turn around.’

Turning, she watched as he emerged from behind a tree further down the slope, advancing towards her with an AK up at his shoulder. He was a fair shot, and caught out in the open as she was, she knew he’d drop her before she could find cover.

‘Back up,’ he instructed.

Again she did as ordered. There was no sense antagonising him. Not yet at least.

Keeping her covered, he bent down and picked up the M1911 she’d dropped, turning it over in his hand. ‘A good weapon,’ he remarked, pointing it playfully as if he were gunning down rows of enemies. ‘Like
Dirty Harry
, huh?’

Anya said nothing. Only her eyes reflected the depth of her contempt.

He grinned, undaunted by her anger now. ‘You just keep staring at me with those pretty blue eyes of yours,
mako
. Maybe I’ll take one as a souvenir. Would you like that?’

She didn’t dignify that with an answer. ‘What do you want?’

‘You, as it happens. We’re going for a walk together.’ He flicked the barrel of the gun towards the path. ‘Come on. Move.’

Miranova was right – they had indeed found Masalsky. In this case he’d been left in one of the small storage rooms at the back of the abandoned aircraft hangar.

Much like Demochev before him, the senior FSB leader had been stripped to the waist, beaten and tortured before being executed, though in this case the
coup de grâce
had come via a single gunshot to the forehead. The other gory details were, however, almost identical.

The bolt cutters, the severed digits, the single word in Cyrillic carved into his chest. Drake didn’t need to be an expert in Russian to recognise the word
guilty
.

Drake knelt down in front of the body to examine something else lying on the floor, looking absurdly out of place in such gruesome surroundings. Black and gleaming, carved with great care by hand, it was a knight from a chess set.