Betrayal (49 page)

Some of the doors were standing open, their rusted frames protruding out into the corridor, but one or two were still latched shut. Edging closer to the nearest one, Drake reached out and tried the bolt holding it closed. It was rusted solid, and a few experimental tugs failed to dislodge it. A good hard blow with the hammer would probably be enough to free it up, though he saw little point. Clearly it hadn’t been used in a long time.

The sound of voices behind drew his thoughts back to the present, and as he whirled around he saw a pair of shadows dancing across the floor at the far end of the corridor; figures moving past one of the electric lights. At least two of them coming his way.

Drake backed up into one of the empty storage rooms, clutching the PPK. Hidden behind the doorway as he was, it was unlikely he’d be spotted unless his new friends entered the room. Still, if they were headed for the torture chamber, they’d spot Yuri’s body and know right away what had happened.

They were getting close now. Drake strained to hear them above the thumping of his own heart. They were speaking in Russian as he’d expected so the content of their conversation was unknown. Their voices were fast and urgent, but not necessarily alarmed. They sounded more like men gearing up for something, working against a tight schedule.

He had to act now. He couldn’t afford to let them find Yuri, or to have a go at torturing Miranova. His only choice was to go at them.

He withdrew the hatchet from his jeans and tested the grip, trying to get a feel for the weight. The PPK was in his left hand. He wasn’t a great shot left-handed, and the broken finger wouldn’t help matters, but if things worked out the way he intended then it wouldn’t matter. However, he needed the hatchet in his undamaged right hand.

What he had in mind was risky, messy and violent, but sometimes all three things were needed in his line of work.

He held his breath as the footsteps drew level with the door, closed his eyes for a moment and tried to focus his thoughts, tried to imagine the correct sequence of events playing out in his mind. Tried to imagine himself not getting killed.

The two men carried on past without breaking stride.

This was it. Gripping the hatchet, he rounded the doorway and advanced into the corridor beyond. As he’d thought, there were two of them, both dressed in civilian clothes; one in a leather jacket and jeans, the other in dark trousers and a fur-lined overcoat. Both were big men, about Drake’s height, and heavier than him, judging by their bulked-out frames. Heavier usually meant stronger, which wasn’t good news in his current condition.

Still, there was no time to contemplate this now. Picking the man on the right, Drake took two steps towards him and swung the hatchet in a fast, hard strike, aiming for the base of his skull. His aim was good, and the keen steel edge easily cut through the collar of his jacket, and the skin and muscle beneath, to shatter the vertebrae of his neck and sever his spinal cord.

An injury like that doesn’t leave much margin for error. He jerked once as if stunned by an electric shock, then his legs buckled beneath him and he fell without a sound. If he hadn’t been killed outright by such a violent blow to the head, he’d be dead from blood loss within a matter of minutes.

Drake immediately forced any thoughts of compassion or mercy from his mind as he yanked the hatchet free. It was a rotten way to kill a man, but this was not a situation in which fair play would be rewarded. He couldn’t control two prisoners by himself. At least now the odds were even.

Alerted by the crunch of axe meeting skull, his companion whirled around, drawing a pistol from inside his leather jacket. Drake was half a second ahead of him, getting in close and smacking his forearm hard with the flat of the hatchet. He didn’t want to sever the limb – he needed the man alive for now – but he had to take that weapon out of play before it became a threat.

There was a dull thump as the hatchet once again struck its target, and Drake’s adversary let out a snarl of pain as the weapon fell from his grip. A kick to the back of his knees dropped him to the ground, and before he could recover, Drake had jammed the barrel of the PPK against the side of his head.

‘Don’t move,’ he warned.

His new friend got the message. A pistol held against one’s head was a wonderfully persuasive argument.

Backing off a pace, Drake planted a firm kick between his shoulder blades that sent him sprawling face first on the rough stone floor. He knew better than to resist as Drake pulled his arms behind his back and used the cuffs that he’d only recently escaped from to secure his wrists. Unlike himself, this man didn’t have Anya around to provide a key.

With his prisoner secure, Drake crossed the hallway and retrieved the fallen weapon. Unlike the PPK, this one was a six-shooter; a Smith & Wesson .38 calibre. The sort of gun wielded by Chicago cops in the Prohibition era.

Revolvers like this were popular for home defence because they could be left loaded for long periods of time, unlike automatics whose magazine springs gradually lost their tension. A .38 revolver certainly wasn’t the kind of weapon Drake wanted to go into combat with, but it was still a gun, and better in his hands than his new friend’s.

Shoving the weapon down the front of his jeans, he returned to the prisoner, gripped him by the shoulders and rolled him over on to his back. As Drake had thought, he was a big man, his neck thick and bullish, his chest and shoulders bulked up by heavy weight training. His face was broad and square, his hair shaved right down to the scalp, his nose flattened as if he’d once been a boxer who favoured blocking punches with his head.

‘Speak English?’ he demanded.

The man in the leather jacket said nothing, apparently weighing up what to do. Still, the fact that he hadn’t spoken at all gave Drake the impression that he understood.

Drake pressed the PPK against his forehead. ‘Let me try that again. If you don’t speak English, you’re no good to me. And you end up like your mate on the floor there. Now, do you speak English?’

He saw the broad face twist in disgust. ‘Yes.’

‘Where’s the female FSB agent?’

The big man nodded over Drake’s shoulder. ‘That way.’

Hope surged up inside Drake, but he knew he couldn’t allow it to override caution. His new best friend might be trying to lead him into a trap.

‘Here’s the deal. Take me to her, and you get to stay alive. Sound good?’

He was silent for a moment. ‘Yes.’

‘Thought so,’ Drake remarked, hauling him upright.

Miranova backed away from the door at the unmistakable sound of footsteps approaching. She had managed to loop her cuffed hands beneath her feet to get them in front of her, but otherwise she had little means of defending herself.

The steps had halted outside her door. She backed up against the wall, listening to the gritty rasp as the bolt was withdrawn from the other side, followed by the squeal of stiff hinges.

The door swung open, and she watched a squat, bulky figure stagger into the room, only to be struck from behind to fall forwards, landing face down on the concrete floor. It was then that she noticed his unnatural posture; the way his arms were pinned behind his back. Glancing down, she saw the metallic gleam of cuffs around his wrists.

‘Anika!’ a voice hissed.

Looking up, she let out a strangled gasp as she found herself face to face with Drake. One look at him was enough to confirm that, even though he was still very much alive, he’d been in the wars since their last encounter. His face was cut and bruised, his clothes filthy and torn, and it looked as though someone had bitten a chunk out of his neck. Blood gleamed in the wan light from the corridor.

‘Ryan, what happened to you?’ she breathed. ‘How did you get out?’

‘A little help from a friend.’ Reaching into his pocket, he produced a key and set to work on her cuffs. ‘The woman in the surveillance footage from Grozny. She gave me this.’

‘She helped you escape?’

Drake nodded, though he avoided her gaze as he removed the cuffs and tossed them aside. Once more she thought about his words to Kamarov during the attempted ambush on Poklonnaya Hill. Both men were somehow connected to this target.

‘You know her,’ she said, phrasing it as the statement it was. ‘How?’

‘All I know is she helped me when she didn’t have to. That counts for something in my book. The rest we can get into when this is over.’ Pulling a revolver from his jeans, he thrust it into her hand. ‘Here, a little Christmas present. I’d prefer if you didn’t use it on me.’

She looked at him dubiously. ‘Not much firepower.’

‘It’s what you do with it that counts. Come on, we have to move.’

He glanced into the cell she’d been occupying. The big man who had led him here was lying face down on the floor, though his chest was still rising and falling. He’d have quite a headache when he woke up, but he’d live.

Stepping aside, he swung the door back into place and pulled the bolt over to lock it shut. Their friend wasn’t going anywhere.

‘What is our situation?’ Miranova asked, glancing down the corridor with the snub-nosed revolver at the ready.

‘Shit, but possibly improving,’ he admitted. ‘The man behind this thing is called Atayev. He reckons Masalsky and the others were part of a plot to bring Viktor Surovsky into power, and he’s out to punish them for it.’ Reaching into his pocket, Drake held up the cellphone he’d taken from Yuri. ‘My people are on their way. All we have to do is keep Atayev busy until they get here.’

‘And do you have any idea how to do that?’

‘Fuck, no. I’m making this up as I go along,’ he admitted. ‘Just stay close to me and keep your eyes open.’

‘That is sound advice at any time.’

He grinned and nodded to the far end of the corridor. ‘Let’s go.’

They were going up. If Atayev was still here, they had to keep him busy long enough for McKnight to get here. And somehow, Drake had to find a way to stop Anya getting killed in the crossfire.

‘This is it!’ Pushkin yelled, gesturing to a big eighteen-wheel heavy-haulage truck rumbling along the main highway just ahead of them, watery slush churned up by its passage spraying across the roadside.

‘Force it over,’ Kamarov ordered.

Accelerating hard, their driver brought them around in front of the massive vehicle and switched on his lights and sirens. A second car took up position on its left, while a third hovered close behind, boxing it in. The trailing car had orders to open fire on the truck’s wheels if the driver attempted to ram them off the road.

However, no such thing happened. Straight away the truck driver hit his brakes and began to slow, veering right on to the loose gravel that lined the highway before coming to a complete halt.

The moment they stopped, Pushkin and a second tactical agent in the car were out and moving, their sub-machine guns trained on the truck’s cab and the terrified-looking driver inside. He had already killed the vehicle’s massive engine, and raised his hands to show he was unarmed.

Drawing his side arm, Kamarov hurried towards the rear of the vehicle, flanked by a pair of armed agents. Two more were converging on the big doors at the back, one of them already clambering up to secure a breaching charge to the door lock.

Giving Kamarov a nod, he leapt down and retreated a few paces, while two of his companions lingered by the doors, ready to act when the time came. Kamarov held back, bracing himself for the blast.

It came two seconds later. Sounding more like a rifle crack than an explosive boom, the small breaching charge nonetheless did its job with ruthless efficiency, blasting apart the locking mechanism as if it were cardboard.

Wasting no time, the two agents by the rear sprang into action, with one hauling open the smouldering remains of the door while the second hurled a flashbang grenade inside.

A second sharp crack echoed from within as the grenade detonated.

‘Move in!’ Kamarov ordered.

Once again the doors were hauled open, with a trio of sub-machine guns and flashlights now trained on the interior. It took Kamarov all of three seconds to realise they weren’t going to find what they were looking for here.

‘Goddamn it,’ he said under his breath as he surveyed the empty cargo container.

Turning aside, he strode back towards the vehicle’s cab. The driver, a squat, balding man in his sixties, had been hauled out and now sat on his knees by the side of the road, shivering in the cold breeze. His gaze flicked from the pair of sub-machine guns covering him, to the agent now approaching.

‘What’s your name?’ Kamarov demanded.

‘Oleg Ryumin.’

‘And where are you taking this truck?’

‘To Noginsk. I’ve just dropped off my load in Moscow.’ His eyes, wide and pleading, stared into Kamarov’s. ‘What have I done wrong? I have all my documents and licences. I’ve broken no laws.’

This man was going to give him nothing. Whatever else he might have been, he was no terrorist.

He looked at Pushkin. ‘You’re certain this is the truck?’

The younger man nodded, still covering the driver with his weapon. ‘Our tracking system is locked in. Drake is here.’

At a loss, Kamarov looked around him in search of answers. It wasn’t until he saw the ladder fixed into the steel side of the cargo container that he began to get an inkling of what might have happened.

Holstering his weapon, he strode over to it and clambered up. The cold of the frozen steel seemed to cut right through his gloves, but nonetheless he made it up on to the roof without incident.

The top of the container was much like the sides – corrugated-steel panels built on top of internal ribs for structural strength. With no cargo to weigh it down, the whole assembly flexed a little every time another large vehicle thundered past on the main highway.

Squinting against the cold wind and the spray kicked up by passing vehicles, Kamarov glanced about him, searching for anything out of the ordinary.

It didn’t take him long to find it.

Lying about halfway back from the cab was a lump of clay-like substance about the size of his fist. It was stuck to the metal surface of the container, having no doubt been thrown down from a bridge or overpass.