Sacrifice (26 page)

Breckenridge cleared his throat. Not because he needed to, but because he wanted to draw attention to himself before speaking.

‘That’s as may be,’ he allowed grudgingly. ‘The official debriefing will establish the facts. In the meantime, I suggest you pack things up and get yourselves on the next flight home. You can submit your report once you’re back at Langley.’

‘No,’ Drake said right away.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Kourash is still out there.’

‘Your point?’

‘That’s not acceptable to me.’

‘Not acceptable?’ Breckenridge repeated, an edge of anger in his voice now. Mild insolence was one thing, but outright insubordination was something else entirely. ‘The CIA doesn’t operate based on what you find “acceptable”, Drake. You take orders just like the rest of us. Anyway, what you’re suggesting is outside your remit. You’re a rescue team, not assassins, and certainly not vigilantes. If you want to turn this into some kind of revenge trip, forget it.’

Typical bureaucrat, Drake thought bitterly. Always viewing the world like it was a spreadsheet, everything fitting neatly into niches and roles and responsibilities.

‘This isn’t about revenge,’ Drake said, practically forcing the words out. ‘It’s about saving lives. Kourash has at least two more Stingers he can use. What’s to stop him shooting down another chopper next week?’

‘Dealing with potential threats to US personnel is a job for our Afghan field office,’ Breckenridge pointed out. ‘You were brought in to recover our man, and you didn’t do it. The operation is over. What part of that don’t you understand?’

Drake could hold his frustration in check no longer.

‘For fuck’s sake, this isn’t some hypothetical scenario we’re dealing with!’ he snapped. ‘I’m telling you there’s more going on than just a random insurgent attack. And if you’d ever taken your fat arse out of the office you’d know that when your team leaders tell you something, you should fucking listen.’

But listening wasn’t on Breckenridge’s agenda. Not after an outburst like that.

‘Consider yourself relieved, Drake,’ he said straight away. He was on autopilot now, barking orders with cold efficiency. ‘McKnight, you’re acting team leader now. I want that team on the next flight home, with Drake in tow. Is this in any way unclear?’

There was a pause. A second or two while McKnight decided what to say, whether to obey orders from a superior officer or tell him to go fuck himself. Drake felt for her. She should never have been put in a situation like that.

‘No, sir. You’ve made yourself very clear,’ she said at last, failing to keep an edge of hostility out of her voice.

‘Good. Then get it done,’ Breckenridge concluded. ‘And Drake, when you get back, you and I are going to have a talk about insubordination.’

With that, the line went dead.

Another moment or two of stunned silence before McKnight spoke up. ‘Ryan, I don’t know what to say to you right now …’

‘There’s nothing to say, Sam,’ he assured her, his voice quiet now. ‘I’m coming back to Bagram.’

As far as his superior was concerned, it was over.

But not for him.

Half an hour later Drake again found himself in Kabul’s southern outskirts as their Humvee made its way back to Bagram at an unhurried pace. With no leads to pursue and no pressing time constraints, he was content to take his time and brood on his thoughts.

Crawford had for once relinquished control of the vehicle, leaving Drake behind the wheel. It was a very different experience from McKnight’s Ford Explorer. Now he felt every jolt and shudder as the heavy vehicle fought its way through potholes and sudden dips.

Nobody was saying much, which suited him just fine. All three men were feeling tired and dejected after the death of Mitchell, and Drake was increasingly aware that they might have outstayed their welcome here.

Drake hadn’t texted Anya about their failure yet. He had already been forced to admit it more times than he wanted to, and would save that particular task for a more opportune moment once they were back at Bagram.

‘This is bullshit, man,’ Keegan decided, his battered baseball cap pulled down low to shield his eyes from the afternoon sun. ‘Breckenridge can’t just pull the plug on us. He’s got no right.’

‘Unfortunately he does,’ Drake replied. As far as the letter of the law was concerned, at least. ‘He’s our boss.’

‘He’s a pencil-pushing REMF, that’s what he is.’

Drake glanced at him in the rear-view mirror, surprised at the vehemence in the normally laid-back operative. ‘You getting mutinous on me, mate?’

Keegan’s eyes met his and he flashed a faint grin. ‘I’m too old to give a shit about insubordination. Anyway, I happen to agree with you – there’s more going on here than a simple kidnapping. If they’d executed Mitchell days ago, why go to all the trouble of releasing that hostage tape? Why make demands that would never be met? Doesn’t make any goddamn sense.’

Drake would have smiled back, but instead was forced to turn his attention back to the road ahead. Traffic had come to an abrupt halt on the approach to a bridge up ahead.

A crumbling concrete edifice that spanned a muddy drainage canal in a single ungainly leap, it had clearly suffered from decades of abuse and neglect. In places the stonework had broken away to reveal rusted steel reinforcing rods beneath.

However, the bridge itself wasn’t the problem – it was the truck blocking the northbound lane that had brought traffic to a standstill. Horns sounded and angry shouts were exchanged, but nothing much was happening. It was hot, and it seemed nobody could be bothered to sort out the mess.

There were three or four other cars between Drake and the truck, but his high driving position allowed him a clear line of sight. Removing his sunglasses, he peered through the heat haze and engine fumes at the offending truck.

It was a Tata 407, an Indian-made utility vehicle painted in the colours of the Afghan National Army. But in all other respects it was a decrepit-looking vehicle, sagging on its rear axles and hastily repaired
in places with what looked like amateur spot-welds. Its flatbed cargo area was covered by a worn and patched tarpaulin.

‘What a hell of a place to break down,’ Keegan groaned.

Crawford surveyed the scene with the kind of long-suffering resignation of a man well acquainted with such delays. ‘Happens all the time with the ANA. Half their gear is older than I am. Give it about two minutes until some asshole shunts him off the road.’

But Drake wasn’t hearing him. He leaned forward, struck by a sudden feeling of unease. What were the chances that the truck would come to a halt right in the middle of such a bottleneck? And why was the driver making no effort to get it moving?

Suddenly he was reminded of his encounter with Anya the previous day, and her use of a fake breakdown to bring him to a halt so she could make contact.

‘This isn’t right,’ he said, reaching for the gear stick to put them in reverse.

‘Huh?’ Keegan leaned forward, alerted by the tone of his voice. ‘What’s up?’

No sooner had he spoken than the truck’s rear tarpaulin parted, revealing the long, eager barrel of a Russian KPV heavy machine gun. Drake recognised the distinctive weapon in an instant. Normally used for shooting down low-flying aircraft, it was now swinging around to bear down on them.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Crawford gasped.

Drake reacted on instinct. Throwing the Humvee into gear, he popped the clutch and jammed the accelerator to the floor. Tyres skidding on the rough tarmac and throwing up clouds of dust and burned rubber, the Humvee lurched forward, straight towards the truck and the weapon mounted inside.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Crawford shouted. ‘You’re heading right for him!’

Drake ignored him. The KPV had an effective range of over 3,000 metres; to have attempted to retreat down a busy road would have been worse than futile. His only option, as far as he could judge in the half-second it took to make his decision, was to try to exploit the weapon’s heavy, cumbersome size.

Throwing the wheel hard over, he swung the Humvee left, narrowly avoiding a collision with a small hatchback in front before stomping on the gas again.

And at virtually the same moment, the truck gunner opened fire.

The rhythmic thud of the auto-cannon’s discharge sounded more like the rumble of thunder than the crack of any kind of conventional weapon. The muzzle flare illuminated the truck and the surrounding road like lightning as round after round was expelled, spent shell casings clattering onto the ground.

Their erratic movement proved to be their saving grace, as the first volley missed them by mere feet, instead striking a taxicab that was unlucky enough to be turning the wrong way.

The effect on the civilian vehicle was catastrophic. Steel and glass gave way without resistance, high-explosive shells tearing through the unprotected car to thud into the ground behind it. In a matter of seconds, it had been reduced to a shattered nightmare of twisted metal and mangled human bodies.

‘He’s tracking us!’ Keegan called out, staring at the long barrel of the heavy machine gun as its operator struggled to haul it around.

They were now careening down a narrow side road that paralleled the canal. With water on his right and
rows of shops and houses on his left, there was nothing for Drake to do but punch it and try to escape the weapon’s firing arc.

Keeping his foot on the floor, he yanked the wheel left to avoid a faded red Nissan that had jammed on its brakes. The screech of metal on metal told him he’d clipped the vehicle, but he didn’t care. Finding cover was his only concern.

They would not be so lucky a second time. The truck gunner had at last manhandled the 14.5mm cannon around, and now let loose with another burst.

Drake was forced to duck as the left quarter-panel beside him disintegrated in a spray of metal and smoke, leaving a gaping hole the size of a football. Above him the reinforced glass windshield exploded inwards, showering the vehicle’s interior with broken fragments.

‘Get down!’ he screamed, unable to do anything but keep his foot planted on the gas. The engine roared and the vehicle bumped and skidded onwards. Rounds thumped into the buildings above and behind them as the gunner tried to keep pace with their desperate escape attempt, though he clearly had no concern for civilian casualties, keeping the trigger depressed on full automatic.

Drake knew it would happen sooner or later. On a busy road in the middle of the afternoon, one could only drive blind so far before colliding with something.

Suddenly he was thrown forward in his seat as the Humvee slammed into an old Toyota saloon whose driver had been too slow to react. The scream and crunch of deforming metal was almost drowned out by the roar of the Humvee’s engine and the screech of its tyres as it tried to power them through, partially crumpling the
unfortunate Toyota beneath it and breaking the forward axle in the process.

With Drake no longer able to exert any meaningful control, the stricken Humvee slewed off the road and down the concrete embankment into the canal, rolling over onto its roof before finally coming to rest amidst a cloud of dust, smoke and steam from the shattered engine.

Kourash picked up his phone the instant it started ringing. The call was coming from Pendar, the leader of the strike team he had allocated to destroy Drake’s Humvee and everyone in it.

‘Is it done?’ he asked.

Situated on the roof of a building about 500 metres from the ambush point, he had both heard and seen the destruction the heavy weapon had dealt out. At least one civilian car had been obliterated and several shopfronts damaged by stray fire, but he felt little concern for such things. They were casualties of war, and this country had seen more than its share of war.

‘The Humvee crashed into the canal,’ came the reply. ‘We hit it hard.’

That was not the question he had asked, Kourash thought with a flash of anger. He had seen it for himself. Rather than try to retreat away from the weapon, the Humvee had launched itself forward in what had seemed a suicidal charge before swinging left at the last moment, disrupting the gunner’s aim. He had watched it hurtle down the road before a burst of fire at last found it.

‘Is Drake dead?’ he asked, leaving a slight pause between each word and the next.

‘We think so.’

Kourash closed his eyes for a moment. He hadn’t come
all this way, hadn’t risked everything, to let Drake slip away now. If he was alive, he was surely trapped in the wreckage. Trapped and helpless, just waiting to be finished off.

‘Move in and confirm he’s dead.’

‘We are exposed here,’ Pendar warned, an edge of anxiety in his voice now. ‘If the ANP arrive …’

Kourash gritted his teeth, threatening to break one of the fillings in his molars. They would never get another chance like this.

‘We must finish him
now
,’ he hissed, clenching his fist and feeling the two stumps of his missing fingers. ‘Move in. Kill any survivors. That is an order.’

‘It will be done.’

Drake’s mind drifted back from the verge of unconsciousness, alerted by distant shouts and panicked screams.

With great effort he forced his eyes open, and found that the world was upside down. Beyond the shattered windshield, he could see the muddy garbage-strewn channel of the canal, the line of houses stretching out on either side, and the ugly concrete bridge in the distance. Beneath him, the endless blue sky stretched out, the hot sun beating down through a haze of smoke and dust. Dry wind-blown grit whipped in through the broken windows, peppering his face and eyes.

The vehicle must have come to rest on its roof. Still strapped into his seat, he was inverted. How fucking stupid he must look, some part of his mind reflected.

He wasn’t sure if he was hurt or not. He wasn’t in much pain, but everything felt hazy and disconnected, his reactions deadened as if he was intoxicated. He was vaguely aware of something warm and wet dripping across his face.

‘Ryan, you alive?’ he heard Keegan ask.

Managing to twist around in his seat, he saw the old sniper crouched on what had once been the roof, shaking his head to clear it. His face was cut and grazed, but he didn’t look seriously injured.