Sacrifice (25 page)

Everything they had seen so far pointed to a plan; a series of phased, mutually supportive actions building towards a desired result.

Had he changed his plan, or had this been his intention all along?

‘How long?’ he called out.

Crawford didn’t take his eyes off the road. ‘A lot longer than if you shut the fuck up and let me drive,’ he replied tersely. He was feeling the pressure just as much as they were.

Drake’s phone was ringing. Amidst the background noise, he felt rather than heard it. It was Frost calling with another update.

‘Ryan, you need to hurry,’ the young woman implored him. ‘Anwari is broadcasting again.’

Frost could do nothing except watch and wait. She ached to be out there with her companions instead of stuck in this dusty conference room, knowing they were about to put their lives on the line. When Drake returned to Bagram, she fully intended to kick his ass for leaving her behind.

On the video feed in front of her, Anwari was spitting venom once more, delivering his final hate-filled speech before he executed his captive.

‘We have given you every opportunity to negotiate, yet still you ignore us. We gave you a chance to save this man’s life, but you refused to take it.’

Frost watched as he reached into his camouflage jacket and drew out a pistol. The same one he had used to shoot Mitchell in the leg.

‘If this is the only language you understand, then so be it.’

‘Hurry, Ryan,’ Frost whispered.

‘This is it,’ Crawford said as the Humvee roared up the side of a low hill. ‘Twenty seconds!’

Drake tensed, readying himself, gripping the M4 carbine he had armed himself with from the vehicle’s weapons bin. A side arm might have been adequate
for a house raid, but for possible urban combat like this he wanted something with greater range and firepower.

With only seven operatives against an unknown number of hostiles, their chances of success were far from guaranteed. Still, they were all highly trained professionals, and between them they were capable of causing a lot of trouble.

Perhaps, just perhaps, it might be enough.

Keegan reached into his shirt, plucked out the necklace he wore for luck and kissed the crucifix dangling from the end. Superstitious to his core, he performed the same ritual before every operation.

Maybe there was something in it – he’d never been killed yet.

Sensing Drake’s eye on him, he turned and flashed a grin.

‘If you tell me this is just like old times, I’ll have to shoot you,’ Drake warned.

The grin broadened. ‘Wouldn’t dream of it, buddy.’

‘Ten seconds!’ Crawford called out as they crested the hill. Ahead and below stood their target.

The cement works, another relic of the Soviet attempts to turn Afghanistan into a modern Socialist republic, was a bombed-out ruin of a place. Two of the three big concrete storage silos had been blasted open, their steel shells peeled back like orange skins, with the support gantries and walkways lying broken and twisted in giant heaps of rusted metal.

Nearby, the main kiln stood as a sad wind-scoured shell, its machinery long dead and rusted solid. Off to the right, beyond the sole remaining silo, was the cement mill, where the coarse aggregate had once been ground down into fine powder. Various other buildings, offices
and warehouses, clustered in around the cement processing facility, all long since abandoned.

They were hurtling towards what had once been a delivery yard near the entrance to the cement works, still moving with frightening speed. Drake braced himself, ready for the sudden deceleration that would tell him it was time.

A moment later, it came. Turning the wheel hard right, Crawford stamped down on the brakes, bringing the Humvee skidding to a halt amidst a cloud of dust and sand.

‘Go! Go!’ Drake yelled, throwing his door open and jumping down onto the dusty ground.

Keeping low, he sprinted about a dozen yards to the collapsed remains of a brick outbuilding and ducked down behind it, the weapon at his shoulder. The first rule of disembarking into a hot landing zone was to get away from the vehicle and find cover as soon as possible. The open ground around the Humvee was a killing zone.

A scuffling on the sand followed by the muted thump of flesh meeting concrete told him Keegan and Crawford were beside him. With both Humvees shut down, the only sound was the sigh of the wind and the tick of their cooling engines. All around was ominously quiet and still.

‘You see anything?’ Crawford asked, scanning the buildings around them.

‘Nothing,’ Keegan replied, then leaned in closer to Drake. ‘What’s the plan?’

Popping his phone’s Bluetooth headset in his ear, Drake enabled the device and dialled Frost’s number.

She answered straight away. ‘Ryan, we have a Predator drone orbiting the area. We see you.’

‘Good. Any activity around us?’

‘Nothing. The place is quiet.’

Drake frowned, wondering if Kourash had known of their approach, or whether he was trying to lead them into an ambush. Still, they were here now. There was little choice but to see it through.

‘Do you have a fix on the signal?’

‘On your two o’clock, forty yards.’

Following her description, he spotted their most likely candidate. It was the only large building in that area. ‘It’s got to be the cement mill.’

‘That’d be my guess.’

Taking a deep breath, Drake nodded to himself. ‘All right, we’re going for it. I’ll stay on comms. Call out any targets if you see them.’

‘Roger that. Watch your back.’

He intended to. Turning to his companions, Drake pointed towards the cement mill. ‘That’s our target. We’ll move in a five-metre spread. John, you take the left. Crawford, you go right. Everyone else on me. Understand?’

He was met by half a dozen nods, which was just as well. There was no time to plan anything more sophisticated.

Drake paused for a second to focus his mind on the task ahead. He never allowed himself to wait longer than that. Dwelling too long on the situation would lead to hesitation, indecision and all too often, death.

‘All right. Move.’

Bringing up the M4 to his shoulder, he rose up from behind cover and started forwards at a steady run. Sprinting was a bad idea because it was impossible to fire accurately at full tilt.

Keegan and Crawford followed a few paces behind, spreading outwards to take positions on either flank, while the four other agents moved behind Drake in a
loose column. Drake and the men behind him were far enough apart that a single burst couldn’t wipe them out, but close enough that they could support each other in a firefight.

At any moment, he expected a storm of gunshots to erupt around them, chewing up the ground until they found soft human flesh. All of them were wearing Kevlar vests, but Drake wouldn’t rate their chances of stopping anything bigger than a 9mm round. An AK-47 could make short work of them.

And yet, to his amazement, nothing happened. The entire group crossed the open space without mishap, converging on the entrance to the cement mill.

A truck-sized set of rusted double doors stood half open, allowing them a glimpse of the shadowy interior of the building. Backed up against the door on one side, Drake glanced over at his companions.

He held up his hand with three fingers extended, and Keegan nodded understanding. Three, two, one.

Gripping the M4, he rounded the door and advanced inside, with Keegan and Crawford right behind him and the other operatives following close behind.

The cavernous interior of the building was dominated by a massive cylindrical metal drum that ran from one end of the structure to the other. Gantries and walkways lined the walls around it, with heavy machinery at one end that had once allowed it to rotate.

It must have been an impressive place when it was operational, but now it was a scrapyard; another rusting monument to a failed invasion.

One end of the cylinder had been blasted apart by explosives, shredding the outer shell and crumpling it like a beer can. The destruction had also detached it from its support cradle can so that it was lying tilted on its
axis. The floor was covered with decades of wind-blown sand that had found its way in here and, with nowhere else to go, had slowly piled up, probably a couple of feet deep.

Drake hesitated, catching the scent of something in the air. Stale, rotten, decaying. It was an odour that so often accompanied war and conflict, that hung in the air for days and weeks after the battle had passed – the smell of decomposing human flesh.

‘Secure the area. Crawford and Keegan, on me,’ he said quietly, advancing towards the ruined machinery that largely screened the far end of the room from view. The long barrel of the M4 stood out in front of him, ready and eager for a target.

The smell was growing stronger as they approached. Drake wrinkled his nose, doing his best to breathe through his mouth. His heart was hammering, his pulse pounding in his ears.

He slowed for a moment beside part of the ancient drum mechanism, huge and rusted.

This was it.

‘Go!’ he hissed.

The fetid smell of decay hit them like a wave, almost knocking them back with its power. Doing his best to ignore the choking stench, Drake scanned the darkened area behind the winch assembly. Straight away his eyes fastened on the source of the smell.

‘Know that this man’s blood is on your hands.’

Drawing back the hammer on his weapon, Anwari held it against Mitchell’s head, turned away to avoid the inevitable blood splash and pulled the trigger.

Even if it was only viewed via a video link, the crack of a single round discharging in a confined space,
accompanied by the sight of Mitchell’s skull being blasted apart in a cloud of blood, brain and bone was enough to make it shockingly real.

In an instant the light went out of his eyes. His head was jerked sideways by the force of the impact, then he slumped forward, unmoving, blood still leaking from the devastating exit wound.

Frost looked away from the screen, her heart sinking. They had failed.

‘He’s dead, Ryan,’ she said, her voice now devoid of emotion as she spoke into her phone. ‘We were too late.’

‘I know,’ Drake replied. ‘Way too late.’

Mitchell was sitting slumped forward in the same chair he’d been executed in. That must have been a couple of days ago judging by the state of his corpse, now hideously bloated by heat and decomposition.

Flies buzzed and swarmed around the gory splatter of blood and brains on the sandy ground, as well as the gaping hole in the side of his head. It was a horrific sight matched only by the repulsive smell of corruption.

Keegan coughed and retched, turning away for a moment to steady himself. He was no stranger to death, but the body’s reaction to such things was physical as well as emotional. When it hit, it hit hard.

You failed, a voice in Drake’s head echoed, filled with recrimination. You failed before you even left Langley. He was dead this whole time. You came all this way, risked your whole team for a dead man.

Drake immediately cut that voice out, shut it off so he could concentrate on matters at hand. Blame could come later. Right now there was still a chance they could find clues that would lead them to the men who did this.

‘The sons of bitches must have recorded the video days ago,’ Keegan said, his voice muffled by the rag he’d tied around his face to ward off the stench. He moved closer to inspect the body.

‘Don’t touch him,’ Drake ordered. ‘Let forensics deal with it.’

Keegan hesitated a moment, but nodded.

‘They planned to execute him right from the start,’ Crawford said, though he kept his distance from Mitchell’s body. ‘The hostage tape, the ransom demands … It was all a bluff. Mitchell was already dead.’

‘They knew we’d never meet their demands,’ Keegan reasoned. ‘Maybe they were trying to make it look like they’d given us a fair chance.’

Crawford shook his head. ‘Then why bring forward his execution? The deadline was three days away.’

Just then, Drake’s Bluetooth headset came to life. ‘Ryan, what’s your situation out there?’ Frost asked.

There was no emotion in her voice, as if all the life had been sucked out of her. She had cut away from those feelings, detached herself from what she had witnessed. It was the only way to deal with it.

‘We’ve found Mitchell. He’s dead,’ was his simple reply. ‘They executed him days ago and cleared out of here.’

‘No sign of anyone?’

‘None. They must have set the transmission on a timer, or maybe used a remote trigger.’ He surveyed the room once more. ‘You’d better get a forensics team out here.’

‘Understood.’ She hesitated. ‘And … Ryan?’

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m sorry. About Mitchell.’

Drake sighed. ‘Yeah. Me too.’

With that, he ended the call and removed his headset. He had nothing more to say. Debriefings would come soon enough, but for now he just felt empty.

‘The Ordnance Disposal guys are sweeping the area for mines as we speak. Forensics can finish up once they’re
done, but I doubt they’ll find anything.’ Drake spoke into his phone, watching as Mitchell’s body was wheeled out of the ruined cement plant. To his relief, it was bagged and sealed up.

A Black Hawk chopper had arrived about ten minutes after their own dramatic entry, complete with a squad of US Army Rangers ready to secure the scene. Drake had left them to it, instead deciding to deliver the bad news to Breckenridge back at Langley. McKnight and Frost were also on the line, dialling in from the conference room at Bagram.

‘Christ, what a screw-up,’ Drake heard Breckenridge say.

‘Fucking asshole,’ Frost muttered, perhaps thinking she was out of range of the speakerphone. He doubted she cared whether Breckenridge heard her or not.

‘Mitchell was dead before Ryan and his team even got here,’ McKnight said, rising to Drake’s defence in a more constructive manner. ‘It seems killing him was their plan all along. There was nothing anyone could have done.’

Her words were cold comfort to Drake at that moment. This wasn’t like running a marathon or climbing a mountain – there were no accolades for effort, no consolations for trying and failing. In the back of his mind, he couldn’t shake the notion that they had let Mitchell down.