Redemption (45 page)

Leaning against one of the jeep’s massive front tyres, Anya busied herself field stripping her AK-47, laying out the working parts on a mat in front of her. She’d known the weapon was in good order from her brief inspection earlier, but cleaning it was one of those little things that made her feel more secure. And it kept her occupied, giving her an excuse not to talk to Drake.

She was wearing just a white vest top, having removed her shirt so she could work more easily. Her hands and arms were soon smeared with gun oil. A loose tendril of blonde hair escaped the tie at the nape of her neck, and she tossed her head back to get it out of the way.

‘You should get some sleep while you can,’ she suggested. ‘We will leave in a few hours.’

Drake didn’t reply. He sat hunched over the fire with his rifle cradled in his lap, staring into the flames without seeing anything.

He was still angry with her. She supposed he had a right to be. But she didn’t regret what she’d done.

She looked up, staring into the vast darkness of space and the thousands of tiny points of light. ‘I am sorry things have turned out as they have, Drake. I am sorry you find yourself stuck out here, with me. And I am sorry you have been forced to fight against your own friends. You do not deserve any of these things.’

Her gaze rested on him again. ‘But I am not sorry for what I did back there. I only did what I had to do to survive. I am not proud of it, but I am not ashamed either.’

He was avoiding her eyes, staring instead into the flames.

‘You saved my life when you snatched that weapon away. He would have fired on us both. I saw the look in his eyes.’ She looked down at her hands, smeared with oil and grease. ‘I have not had reason to thank anyone in a long time, Drake, but I thank you now. Twice you have saved my life. Whatever else happens, I won’t forget it.’

She sighed and turned her attention back to the weapon. ‘That’s all I have to say.’

As she carried on working, Drake watched the dancing shadows cast by the fire, the occasional spark drifting upward into the darkness like fireflies.

It was mesmerising, hypnotic. Even as he sat there watching, he could feel the creeping sense of disorientation as his exhausted mind lost its grip on the world.
Images
of Anya, of Dietrich and Frost and Jessica and Munro whirled around in his head, blurred together and separated; a confusing kaleidoscope of thoughts and memories and emotions.

He was so tired, it was an effort just to keep his eyes open. If only he could rest just for a moment.

Just for a moment.

With blood painting the inside of the windshield, the ruined car slewed sideways off a road, trailing smoke and steam from its shattered engine. Coming to rest in a shallow ditch, it pitched forward, the passenger door swinging open on broken hinges
.

Drake awoke with a start, heart pounding, primal fear surging through his veins, sweat coating his brow. Instinctively he gripped the AK and brought it to bear, frantically searching the darkness for a target.

‘Drake!’

He turned, bringing the weapon around. Anya was standing before him, but not as the woman who had returned to the room last night. She appeared as she had that night in Khatyrgan, dressed in filthy ragged clothes, her face and hair stained crimson with blood, her cold blue eyes focused on him, shimmering with that same inhuman lust for murder.

She was horrific, nightmarish. She was a demon made real, and she was coming for him.

His finger tightened on the trigger.

In a sudden blur of movement, he felt something close around his hand. An instant later the weapon was torn from his grip, gone before he could pull the trigger, and his head was jerked around by a hard slap across the face. White light exploded through his brain, blobs of colour like camera flashes imprinted on his eyes.

Hurling the weapon aside, Anya rushed at him, knocked him to the ground and pressed an elbow against his throat.

‘I warned you not to point a weapon at me unless you were ready to pull the trigger,’ she hissed, her face only inches from his. Do you think you have what it takes to kill me, Drake?’

His answer was to wedge his knee against her chest and drive it upward with all the power he could summon, dislodging her grip and throwing her off. She landed with graceful ease, rolled once to lessen her momentum and sprang back up, ready to finish what he had just started.

‘Stop,’ he said, holding up his bandaged hand.

His heartbeat was returning to normal, the adrenalin thinning in his blood as the nightmare receded. Like a deadly predator, it had withdrawn to the shadowy recesses of his mind. For now.

She relaxed a little and unclenched her fists, some of the tension leaving her muscles, though she remained on her feet. Her gaze held lingering suspicion, and something else. Sadness.

‘What is wrong with you, Drake?’

Wiping a hand across his sweat-soaked brow, he reached for his water bottle and gulped down several mouthfuls, splashing some on his face for good measure.

‘I asked you a question.’

He shot her an angry look. ‘It’s my problem, Anya. Not yours. I don’t need you.’

She stared at him intently, watching the tiny changes in expression, the movement of his eyes, the set of his jaw, the tension in his muscles. All of them told her one thing.

‘This isn’t going to work if we can’t rely on each other,’ she said at last. ‘Do you remember those words? You spoke them to me not so long ago.’ Letting out a breath, she lowered herself to her knees, still staring at him. ‘If I can’t rely on you, if I can’t trust you, then we can go no further together. It’s that simple.’

‘Trust,’ he repeated, as if the word were a cruel joke. ‘Would you trust me if you knew the things I’d done?’

‘Try me.’

He glanced up to the sky, as if seeking answers there. There were none. Only the distant glimmer of the stars, hard and cold and remote.

He swallowed hard and looked her in the eye, steeling himself for what was coming next. He had come down to it at last. There could be no more evasion, no more excuses or reprieves.

All he had left was the truth.

‘I shot a kid,’ he said at last. ‘A little girl. She was twelve years old.’

Anya said nothing. Watching him in the flickering light of the fire, she waited for him to go on. She knew as well as he did that it had to come out.

‘It was my first tour in Afghanistan. We’d been in the country a couple of months, running patrols along the highway west of Kandahar. They were worried about the Taliban regrouping in the area to try for an assault on the city, so we were sent in to help secure the western approaches.’

He inhaled deeply, taking a moment to collect himself before he went on. ‘We’d bedded down one night in a forward operating base, and we were just passing through the main checkpoint to start our next patrol. Then suddenly we spotted a car coming the opposite way. An old beaten-up thing that looked as old as I was,
going
full speed straight for the main gate. We tried to wave it down, get the driver to stop so we could inspect it, but he ignored us. He was just staring straight ahead, oblivious. Then I saw his passenger.

‘It was a girl. Young, skinny, terrified. I can still see her so clearly. She was wearing a blue dress, her hair was braided. The bastard was using her as a human shield, gambling we wouldn’t fire on them. I could see the look in her eyes. She knew she was going to die.’

He trailed off, having to fight just to keep his composure. Anya could see the battle raging within him; the guilt and self-hatred and anger all striving to break through whatever barriers of self-control remained.

She knew what was coming, but she also knew he had to say it for himself. ‘Go on,’ she said gently.

‘The … others, the men on my patrol were yelling at me for orders. They knew what was about to happen as well as I did, but they needed me to make the decision. It had to come from me.’

He sniffed and raised his chin. A condemned man facing up to his crime. ‘So I gave the order.’

He closed his eyes, seeing for a moment a windshield shattering under a volley of automatic fire, little blossoms of red painting it from the inside. He saw a car slew sideways off a road, trailing smoke and steam from its shattered engine. He saw a door swing open on broken hinges. And like a knife driven into his stomach, he saw a blue dress, tattered and stained crimson. When he opened his eyes again, they were wet with tears.

‘I did it. I killed her,’ he said quietly. ‘Whatever she was, whatever she could have been … I took it all away in an instant.’ A smile touched his lips then, bitter and filled with disgust. ‘And you know the best part? I was
rewarded
for it. I was given a commendation for stopping
a
suicide bomber. That was how they dealt with it – give them a medal and send them on their way.’

The horrible irony was that the entire incident had earned him a reputation for making difficult decisions under pressure, and brought him to the attention of other, more secretive military units where men with such abilities were in high demand.

Eager to escape the constant reminders of what had happened, he had leapt at the chance, and barely six months later was back in Afghanistan as part of a covert UK–US task force – 14th Special Operations Group. But any hopes of making a fresh start had been utterly dashed by events later that year.

That, however, was a whole other chapter of history. Another series of mistakes and missed opportunities in a life filled with them.

He turned his eyes back towards the fire. ‘So you wanted to know the truth about me, Anya. There it is.’ He swallowed hard. ‘I’m a killer – a murderer.’

He didn’t look at her again. He didn’t want to see the look in her eyes. The disgust, the embarrassment, the hatred for what he had done. He felt all of those things towards himself, and more.

He heard movement, the slight rustle of footsteps in the sand, and felt the woman sit down beside him. He felt her hand on his arm. He didn’t take his eyes off the fire.

‘Drake.’ Her voice was gentle, but with an undertone of strength and authority that he’d never heard before. ‘Drake, look at me.’

His eyes rose to meet hers. She was sitting close. He could smell the faint scent of her, could see the pain and sadness in her eyes.

‘Twenty years ago, I killed a man,’ she said. ‘My first.
He
was a Russian sentry, not much more than a boy himself, but he was an enemy with a weapon who could have compromised us. So I took him out like I was trained to do, severed his windpipe with my knife. He didn’t even fight back as I cut him, just stared at me like a frightened animal, as if he expected me to stop.’ Her throat rose and fell as she swallowed. ‘I will never forget the look in his eyes.’

Reaching down, she took his hand and placed it against her chest. He felt the beating of her heart, the strong and steady pulse of life. ‘I’m alive now because I killed him. I’m not ashamed of this, and I do not ask for forgiveness. I did what I had to do to survive, just as you did.’

Drake’s own heart was pounding as hard as hers. He had never spoken to anyone about what happened, never shared his grief or his guilt, never let it out. But here, at last, he had found someone who understood, who had felt what he did, who knew the same pain.

‘We are both soldiers, Drake. No matter what they tried to make us, we are soldiers, and we do what we must to survive. That is the life we chose for ourselves.’

She understood, and she accepted. Without condoning or condemning, she accepted him for who he was and what he’d done.

She understood.

Still clutching his hand, she moved it slowly lower until it was cupping the soft swell of her breast. She was still staring at him in the flickering firelight, her lips slightly parted, breathing a little faster. But there was something else in her eyes now, something primal, something compelling and entrancing.

Always the soldier, she was challenging him, trying to provoke him.

‘No,’ he rasped, pulling his hand away. ‘We’re not doing this.’

But she wouldn’t let go of his wrist. She had it clamped in a vice-like grip.

‘You want me, Drake. I know you do.’

As always, she was right about him. He had wanted her this whole time, even if he’d never consciously acknowledged it. But now there was no denying it. Now he wanted her with such all-consuming ferocity that it left him breathless.

‘Not like this,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Let go of me.’ Trying in vain to pull his hand free, he finally lost patience and shoved her in the chest, knocking her backward.

She rounded on him, her eyes blazing.

‘Are you afraid of me?’ she taunted. Before he could reply, she had delivered a stinging slap that left his ears ringing and his cheek burning.

‘Is that it? Are you a coward, Drake?’

She drew back her arm to slap him again, but this time he caught her by the wrist, and suddenly she was in his arms, her body pressed against him. Her mouth found his, hesitant at first as if the act was unfamiliar to her, then harder and firmer as her need grew more intense.

He could feel the strong beating of her heart, the hot life coursing through her veins. Holding her close, feeling the warmth of her body against his own, he wanted her, needed her with a desperate urgency he’d never known.

He couldn’t help what happened next. Sensation and instinct had taken over, driving rational thoughts aside. Exerting her strength, Anya pushed him backward onto the sandy ground and straddled him, her hands tearing at his shirt. His body responded in kind, and he felt his own need rise almost instantly.

Grasping the light fabric of her T-shirt, he pulled it quickly off, exposing her full breasts. Anya stifled a gasp as his tongue ran over a nipple contracted by the cold air, and pressed herself against him, running her hands through his hair.

As they kissed again, his hands ran up and down her back, tracing the curve of her spine, her shoulder blades, the firm muscles tightening and releasing. And criss-crossing it all, the faint indentations of scar tissue. He felt no hesitation, no hint of embarrassment or revulsion. They were part of her, testimony to the life she had lived, for good or ill. He accepted them as he accepted everything about her.