Deception Game (6 page)

Drake coughed, tasting blood in his mouth. His clothes were soaked and torn, covered with mud and other less savoury substances that he preferred not to think about. He knew he’d regret this little tussle when he woke up tomorrow morning, but adrenaline was doing a good job of suppressing the pain for now. He was alive – the rest could be sorted out later.

‘Hang in there, champ.’ Reaching for his radio, he spat bloody phlegm on the ground, trying to get his breathing back under control. ‘Target down.’

‘Overwatch has eyes-on,’ Frost confirmed. He couldn’t see the drone hovering overhead, but presumably it wasn’t far. ‘Smile for the camera.’

Drake would smile once he was out of here with Fayed in tow. Removing a set of plasticuffs from his pocket, Drake knelt down beside his target and used them to secure the man’s ankles together, followed by his wrists. Even if he woke up now, he wasn’t going anywhere.

Hearing the sound of approaching footsteps, he looked up as McKnight emerged from the shadows, weapon up and ready.

‘Jesus,’ she said, taking in the unconscious man and Drake’s dishevelled appearance. ‘You okay?’

‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ he replied, moving a short distance away to retrieve the weapon he’d dropped during the brief confrontation.

‘Bullshit. This guy could have killed you.’ McKnight gave him a disapproving look. ‘I told you to wait for me.’

‘And I told
you
I was going after him,’ Drake shot back, an edge of irritation in his voice. ‘Last time I checked, I’m in charge. Deal with it.’

‘Guys, get a room,’ Frost interjected over the radio net. ‘All this tension’s getting me horny.’

Glancing up, Drake at last spotted the drone hovering not ten feet above them. Its microphones were likely relaying their argument to the pilot.

‘Piss off, Overwatch,’ Drake ordered, giving the unmanned aircraft the finger. ‘Get rid of that thing.’

‘Copy that, One.’ The amusement in her voice was obvious. ‘Bringing the drone in.’

As the buzzing of the drone’s engines receded, Drake retrieved a little mechanical device about the size of a ballpoint pen from a pouch in his jacket. Known as an autojet, it was a quick, easy and effective means of injecting the target with a preset dosage of Etorphine – a synthetic opioid between 1,000 and 3,000 times more potent than morphine. Even a small amount was enough to render an adult human unconscious for several hours, with the added advantage that it was easily countered by a compound called naloxone, allowing them to wake him up within a matter of minutes if need be.

Placing the head of the autojet against Fayed’s neck, Drake had to do nothing more than depress the button at the other end to activate it. It was that simple. The last thing he needed was to be messing around with hypodermic syringes and risk sticking himself by accident, tearing an artery or snapping the needle at a critical moment.

There was a faint hiss as the autojet deployed its contents into the man’s bloodstream. He was incapable of anything but the most feeble of movements, but Fayed’s eyes were on Drake now, wide and frightened, as well they should be. Even in his fucked-up state of mind it would have dawned on him that his past misdeeds had caught up with him. No doubt he was now wondering what dark hole he was about to be dragged off to.

Drake avoided eye contact as he went about his work. Whatever his own thoughts on the matter, Fayed was a target to be secured, and nothing more.

And sure enough, within moments Fayed’s recently opened eyes began to grow heavy once more. Drake kept a finger pressed against the carotid artery in his neck, monitoring his pulse as the drugs took hold and his consciousness faded.

‘Target prepped for transport,’ Drake reported over the radio. ‘Units One and Three are exfilling now. ETA sixty seconds.’

‘Two is in the stairwell, heading down,’ Mason added.

‘Copy that,’ Drake replied, then turned to McKnight. The pain of his injuries was starting to kick in now, but he knew this was no time to stop and assess the damage. He could still walk and function, and that was enough.’ Give me a hand with him, would you?’

She didn’t protest. Despite their brief argument, both knew that cooperation wasn’t just a matter of necessity at times like this; it was a matter of survival. However, the look in her eyes told him the matter would be revisited later.

Taking an arm each, they heaved the unconscious man to his feet and dragged him back down the alley towards the waiting van. If anybody in one of the adjacent apartments overlooking the alley had heard something unusual, they made no effort to challenge the two operatives. Either they had succeeded in a silent retrieval, or people in this part of the city had learned to mind their own business.

Drake was pretty sure he knew which one was true.

In any case, he had other issues to contend with. Carrying a heavily built man through a rubbish-strewn alleyway at night is no easy task, and Drake and McKnight were soon breathing hard, their arms and shoulders aching by the time they rounded the corner and found the truck parked before them.

Mason, having returned from Fayed’s apartment, was already in the driver’s seat. The rear doors were open, and Frost was waiting for them.

‘Just had a report of a disturbance from one of the apartments,’ she called out, a pair of headphones pressed against one ear, linked to a police scanner. ‘Police are sending a unit to take a look.’

‘ETA?’ Drake asked, realizing they hadn’t been quite as lucky as he’d hoped. Even in a place like this, the sound of breaking glass didn’t pass unheeded.

‘Four, five minutes tops.’

‘Let’s not be here when they arrive,’ Drake said, heaving the unconscious man into the van’s cargo area. As he finished securing the prisoner, Drake spotted a second man lying in an alcove nearby, apparently unconscious. ‘Problems?’ he asked, clambering in beside McKnight.

The woman glanced at him, flashing a knowing smile. ‘Nothing I can’t handle.’

As Drake slammed the doors shut, Mason started the engine up and eased the truck out of the alleyway, then onto the main road beyond. Within moments they were accelerating away from the scene of the lift, with no evidence of pursuit or follow-up.

‘And that’s the way we do it!’ Frost said, pounding the steel panelled walls for emphasis. ‘Screw the A-Team. We owned that one.’

Drake didn’t quite share her jubilation. True, they had recovered their target alive and more or less unharmed, but it had come at a cost. Their op had almost been blown by the botched entry, not to mention the beating he’d taken subduing the man.

Fayed’s dossier had described him as an administrative officer in the Libyan army – a pen-pusher, more used to doing battle with spreadsheets than armed combatants. Where the hell had he learned to fight like a seasoned field operative? And what had really brought him to Paris, of all places?

‘Cole, you find any intel in his apartment?’ he called out, wondering if there had been anything on site that might give them some clues about Fayed.

‘Lots,’ Mason replied. ‘Laptops, cell phones, the works. It’s all encrypted and password-protected, but it seems he was running some kind of op from that apartment. I’ve bagged it in the back there.’

Reaching into Mason’s holdall, Drake retrieved a laptop computer that looked like it had been packed away in a hurry, the charging cable still hanging loose where Mason had ripped it out of the wall. Unfolding the device, he held down to the power button to boot it up. Sure enough, a password screen appeared right away.

Unwilling to risk triggering some kind of automated data wipe, he glanced at Frost. ‘Keira, can you do anything with it?’

The young woman studied the computer for a few moments, then shook her head. ‘Not here. I need a proper terminal to get down into the system registry.’

‘Shit,’ he concluded, closing it down. This sort of thing was the work of the rendition team they were soon to hand Fayed over to; it was a breach of protocol to even be messing with the evidence they’d collected.

Perhaps he would never know the truth about their mysterious captive, or perhaps he was just being paranoid. Shepherd teams were there to capture and bring back their targets, not to interrogate or question them. Once they dropped him off, he was gone for good.

Such was life.

Stripping off his soaked and dirty jacket, he reached into one of their equipment bags, retrieving a bottle of water and a first-aid kit. Taking a deep gulp to satiate the thirst that always seemed to follow operations like this, he followed it up with a couple of painkillers.

In truth, he would have preferred something stronger, but that would have to wait for now. They still had to deliver Fayed to his rendition flight.

‘Relax, Ryan,’ Frost said, sensing the lingering tension in him. ‘Hard part’s over.’

Drake wanted to believe that.

Marigny Air Base, situated in the Marne region about seventy miles east of Paris, had been laid down during the 1950s as a NATO base for fighter interceptors. According to Drake’s briefing notes, it had been designed as a ‘bare bones’ facility with just enough infrastructure to keep the place ticking over in peacetime, ready to be quickly brought into action in the event of a Soviet invasion of western Europe.

Fortunately such an invasion had never happened, and by the 1980s the base had fallen into disuse. These days it was more of a wildlife sanctuary than a military stronghold, its 3,000 metre long runways beginning to crack and break up as weeds and grass slowly prevailed over poured concrete.

They were still serviceable enough to land aircraft, however, as evidenced by the Gulfstream jet parked at one end of the runway. Sleek and compact, it was visible only by the glow of instrument panels in the cockpit – everything else had been powered down to reduce its infrared profile.

‘Almost there,’ Mason called from up front. ‘Time to wake up sleeping beauty.’

They had been monitoring Fayed’s vitals during the hour-long drive from central Paris. Fortunately he had remained unconscious and stable the whole time, easing the pressure on his captors.

Now it was time to bring him round. The retrieval team waiting on the jet would want to verify that he was conscious and responsive when they took possession of him, and Drake felt the same way, mostly to cover his own arse. If Fayed died during the flight, at least he could rightly claim that he’d been alive and well when he handed the man over.

Removing an autojet filled with naloxone, McKnight pressed the device against Fayed’s neck and hit the pneumatic plunger to trigger it. There was a faint hiss as the device deployed its potent cocktail of stimulants.

Meanwhile Drake had switched frequencies on his radio, selecting a channel agreed before the operation began. ‘Boxer to ground team. Whirlwind. I say again, whirlwind.’

Whirlwind was their code word for a successful retrieval mission. It was also an invitation to respond with the appropriate confirmation word. If Drake didn’t hear ‘Hotel’ in the next few seconds, he would order Mason to turn the van around and get them out of there as quickly as possible.

‘Copy that, Boxer,’ came the reply. ‘Hotel. Repeat, Hotel.’

Drake relaxed, letting out a breath as Mason slowed them down and finally came to a halt a short distance from the plane, the engine idling.

A sudden commotion alerted them that Fayed had regained consciousness, and was well and truly making his presence known. He was yelling something, though the gag they’d placed in his mouth as a precaution made it impossible to discern the words.

‘Got a screamer,’ McKnight said, sounding remarkably calm as she fought to hold the struggling man down. Even with his feet and wrists bound, he was making it hard work.

‘No shit,’ Frost remarked, wrinkling her nose in distaste. ‘You want to tase him again?’

She shook her head. Use of such weapons always carried an element of risk, and the last thing they needed was for him to go into cardiac arrest mere feet from his rendition flight.

Leaving them to it, Drake opened his door and stepped out into the cool morning air to meet with the retrieval team. This far from the city, there was little in the way of ambient noise save for the gentle chug of the truck’s engine. Dawn was still a couple of hours away, but the sky in the east was gradually lightening, the twinkling stars giving way to the deep azure of predawn.

‘Nice morning for it,’ a voice remarked.

Drake directed his gaze toward the plane as the leader of the retrieval team moved forward to speak with him. He was short and stocky, probably in his early fifties, with thinning brown hair combed over the considerable dome of his skull. Combined with a pair of thin-framed glasses and a bushy handlebar moustache, the impression thus conveyed reminded Drake more of a bank manager than a case officer in command of a rendition flight. Then again, he knew from experience that it took a certain kind of man to apply a power drill to someone’s kneecaps, then go home and sleep soundly at night. Presumably this guy was such a man.

‘Name’s Wilkins,’ he said, offering a pudgy hand.

Drake shook it. ‘Good to meet you, Wilkins.’

He saw a faint gleam as Wilkins smiled, perhaps amused that Drake had neglected to give his own name. ‘By the sounds of things, you’ve got a live one for us,’ he said, nodding towards the truck, where a couple of muted thumps resounded from within.

‘We dosed him up with 10 cc’s of Etorphine about an hour ago. Just brought him out of it,’ Drake said, knowing it was important to explain what they’d shot Fayed up with.

Wilkins nodded, watching as Mason and McKnight half dragged, half shoved Fayed towards him. Even bound, he was still thrashing and kicking like the best of them. Frost followed behind, carrying a holdall laden with the intel that Mason had snatched from Fayed’s apartment.

‘Any injuries?’

Drake shook his head.

‘Looks like you caught a shiner yourself,’ Wilkins remarked, studying Drake’s bruised and grazed face.

Drake shrugged. ‘Like you said, he’s a live one.’

‘We’ll keep that in mind if he gives us any shit,’ Wilkins promised him. ‘Otherwise, good work. We’re done here, so get your team clear of the area.’