Sacrifice (22 page)

Central Hotel, Kabul, 11 August 2008

Turning off the water feed, Anya let out a breath and stood leaning against the wall of the shower cubicle with her eyes closed, wisps of steam curling around her. Hot water, much like electricity, was still something of a temperamental luxury in Kabul, but one that she was very grateful for.

After spending four years in a freezing Russian prison, the mere notion of hot running water under her control would always seem like a luxury.

Taking another deep breath, she opened her eyes, stepped out and grabbed a towel from the rail to dry her hair. Naked and dripping water, she walked through to the main living area.

With cheap carpets, a hard lumpy bed and air conditioning that didn’t work properly, the room was certainly nothing impressive, but it was more than enough to meet her needs. She didn’t sleep on the bed anyway. And unlike the more expensive and prestigious Kabul Serena Hotel, this place was low-key and inexpensive – ideal for her cover as a freelance writer trying to discover the ‘real Afghanistan’.

There were plenty such people here these days.

If she ever did get around to writing a book about her experiences in this country, it would be rather more illuminating than most of the tomes penned by self-professed experts.

She had travelled here under a Norwegian identity. She tended to pick Scandinavian nationalities for her aliases,
partly because it fitted with her physical appearance – tall, blonde-haired, blue-eyed – but mostly because it seemed to make international travel easier. Countries like Finland, Norway and Sweden were seen by most immigration officials as neutral and inoffensive, with generally affluent populations who didn’t meddle in crime or terrorism.

Like most things based on human psychology, it was irrational, but it worked.

She tossed the towel on the bed and, seeing herself in the mirror, turned to regard her reflection.

Her body had filled out a little in the past year, partly due to better diet but mostly as a result of the intense training regime she had put herself through. After escaping Iraq last year and recovering from the various injuries she’d sustained, she had determined to claw back as much of her former strength and fitness as possible.

Daily 5-mile runs, weight training, stretching and sparring had been easy enough in her twenties, but maintaining such a demanding regime at forty-three years old had been rather more difficult.

Still, the results spoke for themselves.

With a firm, flat stomach, long slender legs, toned arms and shoulders well defined with hard, compact musculature, Anya appeared little different now from ten years earlier. The impression was heightened by her short haircut, which she had told herself was purely for reasons of practicality.

But deep down she wondered if she was somehow trying to erase the past decade.

Dismissing such thoughts, she took a gulp of water and sat down at the table to access her laptop (another benefit of her cover as a writer). It had been humming
away on standby and took only a few seconds to boot back up.

Logging into her email account, she found only one new entry – there was no title, and the sender was listed simply as Loki.

She was comfortable enough with modern technology when obliged to use it, but Anya had little knowledge or experience in the confusing world of computer hacking. For that, she was forced to rely on others.

She had been introduced to Loki through a mutual acquaintance, and although they had never met in person or exchanged real names, she knew two things about her enigmatic contact – Loki was English, and he had never let Anya down when it came to information retrieval.

She opened the message, hoping against hope that good news was waiting for her.

Have run a check on the
number
plate you sent. A
Volkswagen
van, reported stolen in Kandahar a week ago. No police follow-up.

Also tried reconstituting the phone’s memory
– it’s knackered.
The duress code wiped it completely. If the memory had still been intact I might have broken the encryption scheme, but I doubt it. It was very sophisticated, much more than normal commercial models. My guess is military or
intelligence agency.

Sorry I don’t have better news.

L.

Anya chewed her lip, suppressing a surge of disappointment. She hadn’t expected much when she connected the crypto phone to her laptop and allowed Loki to remotely access it (something she never would have done with another person), but there was always a chance it might have borne fruit.

Not this time.

By now she was questioning the wisdom of her decision to kill the two men who had tried to abduct her. If she had spent more time and effort on the takedown man, there was a chance she might have broken him. A slim chance perhaps, but a chance nonetheless.

It had seemed logical to kill him at the time, but now she wasn’t so sure.

She had been on the receiving end of physical torture more times than she cared to remember. And although she understood its necessity on an intellectual level, to her dying day she would never forgive those who had inflicted it on her.

She would ponder that in more depth later. For now, she turned her thoughts to what little information Loki’s email had imparted.

Crypto phones, though expensive, weren’t difficult to obtain. Anyone with the cash could buy one. But phones with sophisticated military-grade encryption were another matter entirely.

Clearly the men who had tried to abduct her were part of something more than just another Islamic extremist group. If they had access to Stinger missiles and sophisticated communications equipment, they were something very different indeed.

It was lucky for her that last night’s takedown had been hastily formulated and executed with only two men. No doubt she had been a target of opportunity rather than a planned objective.

However, they had Drake under surveillance. No one had followed her to the meeting – she was certain of that. Therefore they must have been trailing Drake, following his movements.

From her understanding of the Shepherd teams, she
knew their operatives were protected by a fog of secrecy. Only a select few knew their true identities and purpose, yet apparently Kourash had been able to penetrate that veil.

On the one hand she felt a certain relief that Kourash and his group seemed to have no knowledge of who she was or why she was here, yet on another she felt concern, disappointment and even a degree of anger towards Drake for not realising he was being tailed.

That was partly why she hadn’t replied to his text message. He had confirmed he was safe, and that was enough for now. She would be certain to question him on the matter next time they met face to face, though.

Anya leaned back in her chair and took another sip of water. She had warned him of the danger, and for now at least there was little more she could do.

Drake would have to look out for himself.

Bagram Air Base

The day dawned hazy and vague over Bagram, the sun visible only as a brighter disc through thick dust clouds off to the east. Its red-hued rays set the nearby mountains ablaze, tinged the sky orange and cast long indistinct shadows across the runways. The temperature, which had dipped close to freezing overnight, began to climb inexorably with the rising sun.

As the local mosques called the faithful to
Fajr
, the first of Islam’s daily prayers, soldiers rose from their bunks and cots to start another day.

Drake, however, had no need of the daily Reveille to wake him. He had been wide awake since his revelation the night before, and had been working laboriously to identify and decipher the message in Mitchell’s grainy, low-resolution hostage tape.

By the time he shoved his way into the conference room for his morning briefing, he was haggard and bleary-eyed but triumphantly clutching his laptop in one hand and a sheet of paper covered with handwritten notes in the other.

McKnight wasn’t there, having already departed to continue her search for the missing Stinger. However, Frost and Keegan were waiting for him.

The young woman wasted no time in voicing her thoughts.

‘Jesus, Ryan. You look like shit.’

Drake wasted no time responding to her insult, even if it was partially true. He was too buoyed by his discovery. Setting his laptop down on the table, he looked up at his two team members. ‘I know where Mitchell is.’

Keegan glanced at his comrade, looking like a dubious spectator about to witness a magician’s trick. ‘This ought to be good.’

‘You were right, Keira. There was more to that hostage tape than we realised.’ Opening his laptop, he powered it up and set Mitchell’s video to play once again, leaving the volume muted. He had no interest in Kourash’s venomous words now. ‘Focus on Mitchell. Look at his eyes.’

They did as he asked, both watching the screen intently. Keegan spotted it first, accustomed as he was to searching for the subtle visual clues that would give away an enemy’s position.

‘He’s signalling,’ the old sniper remarked.

Drake nodded. ‘He’s using his eyes to send us a message. It’s Morse code.’ Finally he laid his sheet of paper down on the table and turned it around for them to see.

On it he had scrawled a series of dots and dashes as he’d picked them up from the video, some crossed out and amended as more information had emerged with repeated viewings.

But beneath it all, written in bold capital letters, were two words: HOUSE FOUR.

‘House four?’ Frost repeated, looking at Drake quizzically. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

Drake smiled. It had seemed cryptic to him when he’d first deciphered it. Only by putting it in the context of
Mitchell’s purpose in Afghanistan had he at last been able to make sense of it.

‘Mitchell was here to help build an intelligence network. You said yourself, his official job was to establish a series of safe houses throughout the country. Safe …
houses
.’

Frost’s eyes lit up. ‘Son of a bitch …’

For once, Drake felt as though he was starting to gain ground on Kourash. He was finding his feet with this investigation at last. And now, perhaps, he had found a way out.

‘What better place to keep the man hostage than in one of our own safe houses?’ he asked. ‘It’s secure, it’s anonymous to passers-by, and it’s the last place
we’d
ever think to look.’

Keegan, however, didn’t seem quite so eager to buy into his theory. ‘That’d be a hell of a risk to take. There must be a hundred easier places to stash him.’

‘Easier, but not as impressive,’ Drake said, refusing to be deflated. ‘Kourash doesn’t just want to beat us. He wants to rub our noses in it, prove how superior he is, just like before. His arrogance and vanity are his biggest enemies.’

Frost shrugged. ‘Good enough for me,’ she decided, already reaching out to pack away her gear.

‘You stay here,’ Drake ordered, giving her a significant look. ‘I want you to get started on what we discussed last night.’

Even if he was right about Mitchell, Anya’s comments about Carpenter still weighed heavily on his mind. He sensed there was more going on than Horizon were willing to admit, more than one aspect to this investigation, and he intended to resolve them all before he was finished.

‘But—’

‘No arguments,’ he cut in, turning his attention to Keegan. ‘John, you’re with me. We need to find Crawford and put together an assault team.’

Keegan’s gaze flicked to Frost, no doubt pondering the meaning of Drake’s instructions to her. ‘Something I should know about?’

‘Best that you don’t,’ Drake advised. The fewer people who knew his intention to probe Horizon’s computer network, the better. ‘Kourash and Mitchell are all we need to focus on right now. Let’s get them.’

Both men were within his grasp. He could feel it. And now that he was closing in, nothing was going to get in his way.

A small crowd had gathered to watch as the body was heaved up onto a waiting stretcher and wheeled over to a nearby ambulance; no easy task considering the size and weight of the victim.

In most cities, the discovery of a brutal murder in the middle of a street would have elicited shock and outrage from local residents, but here the assembled faces reflected only weary resignation. Kabul had seen more than its share of death over the years, and those experiences had profoundly changed its inhabitants.

Kourash had seen enough. Turning on his heel, he strode quickly away from the scene. His face might have displayed the same casual disinterest as the others, but his eyes blazed with wrath.

Two good men dead in one night – Faraj found lying in a muddy ditch with his throat cut, while Ashraf, or what was left of him, had been discovered in the smouldering remains of the van several miles east of Kabul.

Two good, capable men wasted. And to make matters worse, their mysterious killer was still out there somewhere.

His grim musings were cut short by the buzz of his cellphone. Kourash knew who it was, and flinched inwardly as he imagined the conversation he was about to have.

Punching in the access code, he retreated into an arched doorway and held the phone to his ear. ‘Yes.’

‘You disobeyed my instructions,’ the voice on the other end said without preamble. Even over the phone line, Kourash could hear the veiled menace, the barely contained anger in that voice. ‘Your job was to kill Mitchell and put an end to his work. I presume you have an explanation for this?’

‘Mitchell is taken care of,’ Kourash assured him.

‘Then why are Drake and his team still here?’ his benefactor demanded. ‘Could it be the ransom demand you made?’

He allowed that question to hang in the air for a moment, and Kourash made no attempt to answer it. Any response he gave would be futile anyway.

‘Did you really think I wouldn’t find out? You’re allowing your pride to get the better of you. You’re jeop-ardising everything we’ve worked for. That puts me in a difficult position.’

Kourash’s grip on the phone tightened. ‘This is not about pride.’