Sacrifice (15 page)

‘We leave those arseholes to stand on their own, and you can bet the Taliban will be back in power within the year,’ Cunningham went on. ‘If we can’t stay, and
the Afghans can’t hold their own, PMCs are about the only option we have left.’

‘So you’re fine with guys like Vermaak being a law unto themselves?’ Drake asked with more heat than he’d intended.

‘None of us are angels, son. You know that as well as I do,’ he remarked with a pointed glance at Drake. ‘But as hard as this is to believe, most of these guys are honest soldiers just doing their job. Some are saving for retirement, some are doing it because they believe in the cause, and some just don’t have anywhere else to go.’

‘And which are you, Matt?’

For a moment, an unspoken tension hung in the air between the two men. They stood facing each other in that wide open expanse of concrete as music blared from distant loudspeakers and the thump of helicopter rotors echoed around them.

Cunningham relaxed, his gaze softening. The world carried on around them as if nothing had happened. ‘A bit of all three, I suppose.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Drake said at last, realising he’d been giving his friend a hard time for no real reason. ‘It wasn’t fair of me to ask that.’

The older man smiled. ‘No problem, mate. If I was the sensitive type, I wouldnae be here.’

Drake glanced at his watch. It was 5:57 p.m. In an hour or so it would be dark.

‘Listen, I’d better get going,’ he said, thinking about all the things that he still had to do once he got back to Bagram.

‘No rest for the wicked, aye?’ Cunningham asked.

‘Remember what you were saying about me landing a cushy number with the Agency? Forget it, mate. Stick
with Horizon,’ he advised, hitting his key fob to unlock the Explorer.

‘I’ll let you know if there’s any openings here,’ his old friend replied as Drake pulled open the driver’s door. ‘I could always use somebody to shine my boots.’

‘Well, since we’re not in the Regiment and you’re not my sergeant any more, piss off.’

‘Been waiting a long time to say that, eh?’ Cunningham asked, snorting in amusement. ‘Seriously though, stay in touch, mate.’

Drake grinned as he fired up the engine. ‘Hey, you’re my liaison officer, remember?’

With that, he slammed his door shut, threw the Explorer into gear and drove off, leaving his old friend behind.

Hoping to avoid the heavy traffic congestion that had characterised central Kabul, Drake took a circular route that veered off to the west before looping back northwards. And as he drove, he couldn’t help taking in his surroundings.

Kabul had been around for more than three thousand years, and each architectural era had left its mark on the ancient city. Graceful archways, shuttered windows, courtyards, domes, cupolas and ornate fountains stood side by side with 1970s high-density office and apartment blocks. Satellite dishes crowded the evening sky next to minaret towers.

And everywhere there were construction sites, workers and heavy equipment clearing away rubble to make way for new developments. Trucks laden with building materials roared by on the main drag, heedless of anything that stood in their path, while a group of children were picking at the garbage beside the road, searching for anything of value.

In the distance he spotted the grandstand and floodlight towers of Ghazi Football Stadium, built by the King of Afghanistan in the 1920s in honour of their victory over the British. Quite why they would choose to celebrate the defeat of their hated enemies by playing a sport invented by them was lost on him, but each to their own.
Anyway, the stadium had seen plenty of action over the years, especially under the Taliban when thousands would pack the terraces to watch criminals being stoned to death.

His thoughts returned to his earlier confrontation with Carpenter, once again pondering the man’s motives. It was of course possible that he was just distrustful of Drake because he wasn’t American, or because he worked out of Langley. Or both. But Drake sensed a deeper motivation. The man was hiding something, but what?

Had he already been told that the chopper had been shot down by a Stinger, and ordered to cover it up? It wasn’t impossible. After all, he’d said himself that Horizon were here to do the jobs the military couldn’t.

Still, whatever Carpenter was up to, he could see little connection to Mitchell’s abduction, or why his captors had gone to such lengths to get him. It also didn’t explain what Mitchell had really been doing out here.

He still had far too many questions, and too few answers.

Drake’s thoughts were drawn back to the present as the traffic up ahead ground to a halt, accompanied by beeping horns and shouted curses. Frowning, Drake strained to see what was wrong, but a van with a heavily laden trailer blocked his line of sight.

‘Shit, this is all I need,’ he grumbled, killing the engine and removing the keys.

He opened the glovebox, quickly finding what he was looking for: a Beretta 92FS handgun. Like most Agency vehicles, the Explorer came stocked with several weapons in case of a contact, from pistols to sub-machine guns.

Checking the safety, he tucked the weapon down the front of his jeans and pulled his shirt down, then unlocked his door and stepped out onto the pavement.

As he’d suspected, it was a breakdown: an ancient Volvo estate about six cars ahead of him was billowing steam from beneath the bonnet while the overweight driver tried to force it open, scalding his hands in the process. With oncoming vehicles refusing to slow down to help clear the blockage, traffic was rapidly backing up.

‘Great,’ Drake said under his breath, wondering how long he’d be stuck here.

He was just turning away when suddenly he collided with someone heading in the opposite direction, apparently unaware of his presence. He heard a startled intake of breath and a muttered curse in Pashtun as the stranger tripped and stumbled, having to grip his sleeve to keep from falling.

Straight away he went for his gun, instinct and training combining to put him instantly on guard. He was in the Wazir Akbar Khan district – a comparatively safe neighbourhood where many countries had seen fit to establish their embassy buildings, but even here kidnappings and attacks on Westerners weren’t unknown.

Drake looked down, only to be met by a wall of fabric and a narrow grille where eyes should have been. His new friend was a woman dressed in the traditional
chadri
– a loose robe designed to keep the entire body hidden. Their use had been demanded by law under Taliban rule, but they were gradually being discarded by all but the most conservative families now. Clearly this one didn’t come from a progressive household.

No wonder the poor woman had bumped into him. She probably couldn’t see more than a narrow slit of the world around her.

‘I’m sorry,’ Drake said, helping her back up. His grip on the Beretta relaxed.

To his surprise, his efforts at apology received only a few gruff words in return, and he suspected they weren’t complimentary. Pushing his hands away, the woman turned and hobbled off as fast as she could on arthritic old joints, her back bowed by age.

Drake watched her go, saying nothing. To anyone watching he appeared unmoved by the incident. Privately, however, his mind was racing. Something had happened when the old woman had pushed him away; an expert piece of legerdemain that nobody else had seen, but which couldn’t possibly have been an accident. He’d felt something pressed into his hand when she pushed him away, something thin and square. A folded piece of paper.

He didn’t open or even acknowledge it in plain view. If the woman’s intent had been to covertly pass him some sort of message, he wouldn’t undo her efforts by letting others see him open it. Instead he kept his fist closed around it and retreated into the Explorer to unfold the little piece of paper.

On it was scrawled a short message in English, written in a strong, flowing hand:

Tamim Bazaar. There is an old tea house on the north square. Meet me on the second floor. Come alone, Ryan.

Drake felt his heartbeat shift up a gear as the words sank in. Clearly his mysterious new friend was not what she appeared. In fact, stooped and hidden beneath that concealing
chadri
, there was no telling if she even
was
a woman. Secret messages, clandestine meetings … who was this person, and what did he or she want with him?

The tea house mentioned in the note wasn’t familiar to him, but he’d heard of the bazaar in which it could be found. It was close, just a few hundred yards to the north, in fact. He could be there within minutes.

His first instinct was that it was a trap intended to lure him to some out-of-sight location where he would be exposed and vulnerable. He didn’t discount the possibility, but he doubted this was a simple abduction attempt. Only a handful of people in Afghanistan knew his name, and nearly all of them were trusted military or Agency operatives.

No, this was something else. And if he wanted to find out what, he had little choice but to follow the instructions on the note.

The traffic up ahead was starting to move. Several good Samaritans – or impatient motorists pissed off by the delay – had combined forces to push the crippled Volvo off the road, allowing vehicles to squeeze past.

With no further excuse for lingering here, it was decision time.

‘I must be mad,’ he said under his breath, easing the Explorer forward and taking the next junction that led north.

It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for. Even if he hadn’t been familiar with the layout, the thronging pedestrian traffic and smell of spices and cooking meat would have announced the presence of Tamim Bazaar as effectively as any signpost.

Occupying several narrow streets and courtyards, it was a sprawling conglomeration of kebab shops, farmers’ stalls and retailers of every kind. In ancient times outdoor markets like this would have sold silks, spices and livestock, but these days television sets, digital watches and pirated DVDs were more in vogue.

Like Kabul itself, it was a curious mix of the ancient and the modern, all thrown together in choking heat and shouting confusion. The combined smell of grilling meat,
engine fumes, goat shit, tobacco smoke and unwashed bodies was almost overpowering.

Parking the Explorer in plain view of an ANP checkpoint, Drake locked up the vehicle and made his way along the street, glancing at a few of the stalls but moving on before the owners took too much notice of him. He knew from his experience of markets back home that getting away from such people was like trying to remove barnacles from the hull of a ship.

Anyway, there were plenty of other Westerners here waiting to part with their cash, probably from one of the many American companies that had opened branches in Kabul lately; all looking for traditional Afghan souvenirs to take home to the family. Most were accompanied by heavily built minders who looked more like bodybuilders than bodyguards.

The bazaar opened out at last when his street joined several others that had converged on a large square, much to Drake’s relief. Sure enough, a two-storey building occupied the east corner of the square – squat, old and weathered, with a flat roof supporting an ancient satellite dish. At ground level, Drake spotted a faded sign, written both in Pashtun and English, for the tea house mentioned in the note.

The place looked closed up, as if it had gone out of business. There were only a couple of windows out front, and they were shielded by wrought-iron bars for security. Heavy wooden shutters had been pulled closed, blocking his view of the interior. The front door was also shut, though a quick check of the handle told him it was unlocked.

Pausing a moment, he gripped the weapon beneath his shirt, pulled the door open and slipped inside.

The room beyond was low-ceilinged and dimly lit,
with a dozen old tables and chairs dotted around, their wood stained almost black with decades of spilled drinks and smoke. There was a small bar area at the back, though nobody was manning it. Another door led to a rear work area, probably a kitchen, while a flight of steps ascended to the second floor. The smell of dried tea leaves and tobacco was pervasive; probably soaked into the very fabric of the place.

Now that he was off the street, he drew the Beretta from his jeans. A military variant of the popular police officer’s sidearm known as an M9, it was a 9mm, fifteen-round semi-automatic pistol. Though lacking a little in stopping power, they were otherwise excellent weapons, tried and tested all over the world.

Disengaging the safety, he held the weapon low and advanced into the room. Hollywood always shows the hero moving with his arms bent, weapon pointing up at the ceiling, and while it might look impressive, in reality it would just make it easier for an assailant to grab the weapon or knock it aside. Keeping it below waist height makes it much more difficult to take out of the game.

His eyes scanned the shadows, looking for any sign of movement. His other senses strained to detect any sounds of breathing, any scents that didn’t belong. There were none. He appeared to be alone down here.

He headed for the stairs and crept up them, keeping his feet away from the centre of each step where the boards would be weakest. Still, it was impossible to eliminate all noise, and the ancient wood groaned several times under his weight as he ascended.

Reaching the top, he found himself in a short corridor, with a door standing open at the end of it.

This was it. Whoever his new friend was, they were
likely waiting for him in that room. Waiting to help him, or waiting to kill him, he didn’t know.

‘Fuck it,’ he said under his breath, and advanced through the doorway.

His eyes took in his surroundings in an instant. A snapshot, a flash that his brain immediately processed and analysed.

The room seemed to occupy most, if not all, of the building’s upper floor. Whether it had been living accommodation at one point, he couldn’t tell. There seemed to be no utilities up here. But whatever purpose it had once served, the place was clearly being used as a storeroom now.