SACRIFICE

For Margaret, my rock

Part One

Recollection

In 1839, British troops based in India invade Afghanistan, beginning the First Anglo-Afghan War. Despite their capturing key cities, a growing tide of rebellion forces the army to withdraw two years later. Subjected to constant ambushes, the entire force is annihilated.

It is considered one of the worst disasters in British military history.

Total Casualties:

16,500 British and Indian soldiers and civilians killed
Total number of Afghan deaths unknown

Chapter 1

Parwan Province, Afghanistan, 8 August 2008

Dust.

Dust and sand and rock, stretching from horizon to horizon.

Sitting perched by the open crew door on the side of the UH-60 Black Hawk chopper, Private Lawrence ‘Law’ Carter watched as the arid, wasted landscape of eastern Afghanistan slid by beneath them at 120 knots.

Everywhere he looked he saw withered fields, wind-scoured outcroppings of rock, endless stretches of open dusty ground and winding, tortuous valleys that led nowhere. All of it stretched out beneath him, fading away to a hazy yellow-grey horizon that masked details and defied any estimation of distance.

The whole country looked the way he imagined the Dust Bowl of the 1930s Midwest had been – all the life and colour bleached out of everything, scoured away by the relentless wind and dust.

What a hell of a place to be fighting a war over.

He tracked the six barrels of his door-mounted M134 Minigun slowly from left to right, not really expecting to see anything, but feeling the need to do something to ease the boredom. Cruising at 2,000 feet, they were too high for him to make out much on the ground anyway.

‘I heard they’re sending us out tomorrow night,’ a thin, nasal Texan voice remarked. Carter could almost picture the mischievous grin behind that voice. It belonged to Eric Myers; a pinched, red-headed San Antonio native who hadn’t even left his home state until he joined the army. ‘Night patrol, along the edge of the green zone. Captain’s got us specially picked out.’

‘Yeah? Who’d you blow to get that intel, Myers?’ another man asked, his voice deep and gruff. Dino Hernandez, a wiry Hispanic man from Fresno, California, who had enlisted to join his two older brothers.

‘It’s God’s honest truth, I swear,’ Myers promised, as if that meant anything. Roughly 50 per cent of whatever he said was pure bullshit. ‘Heard one of them tactical planning REMFs talking about it. We’re on the company HQ shit list, you mark my words, brother.’

REMF, or Rear Echelon Mother Fucker, was a colloquial and obviously none too flattering term for anyone involved in the planning, but not the execution, of front-line ops.

‘You mean you’re on the shit list,’ Carter replied, turning away from the Dust Bowl terrain to speak to Myers. ‘Your number’s been up ever since that fuck-up with the 203.’

During a firefight with Taliban insurgents several months previously, Myers, fancying himself the hero, had crouched on the flat roof of a building, taken aim at his elusive target and triggered off his M203 grenade launcher, only for the high-explosive round to slam into the stone parapet right in front of him. Fortunately for him, the projectile was designed not to arm itself until it had travelled around 20 metres.

‘I guess they really are retard-proof after all,’ Hernandez concluded, laughing at the memory of Myers’ panic-stricken leap from the roof, his former bravado gone.

Carter couldn’t help laughing as well, and after a few moments of stubborn silence, even Myers joined in.

But one man who wasn’t laughing was the fourth occupant of the crew cabin. A real gloomy customer sitting at the aft bench on the port side, directly behind Carter.

The young private couldn’t help but look at him again.

He was easily in his fifties, he guessed, with a tanned, deeply lined face hidden by a greying beard that made him look a lot older. Clearly he’d been in-country a while. His eyes were staring out at the Dust Bowl through the grimy window beside him, dark and pensive.

There was a tension, a nervousness about the guy that put Carter on edge. The fact that he hadn’t spoken a word to any of the men on board the chopper since they’d lifted off from Firebase Hammer thirty minutes ago only added to his disquiet. He had been bundled aboard at the last minute; a hitcher, a foreign and not altogether welcome presence.

He wasn’t military – that much was obvious. There was no name tag on his body armour, no unit badge or rank insignia on his clothing. Nothing to identify him at all, in fact.

None of them had said it out loud, but they were all thinking the same thing. The guy was a spook, either CIA or NSA or some other clandestine group that was way above their pay grade. Part of another world that neither Carter nor the others had any desire to join.

But what was he doing on their chopper?

Unknown to Carter, a pair of binoculars was trained on the lumbering chopper as it beat a path through the dusty sky, exhaust fumes shimmering from the engine outlets. The thud of the main rotors from two miles away was just faintly audible in the warm air, but getting louder as the chopper approached.

The hands clutching the binoculars were big, square and strong, the digits – all eight of them – thick and powerful, hardened and calloused by years of manual labour. The last two fingers on the left hand were missing, terminating in lopsided stumps just before the first knuckle.

The field glasses were lowered, revealing a lean, gaunt face, prematurely lined and marked by a lifetime of conflict and hardship. A man, middle-aged, halfway through a life that had been neither short nor easy.

Dark eyes surrounded by deep crow’s feet surveyed the rapidly approaching target, the keen mind behind them imagining the sequence of events that was about to play out.

The men inside the chopper were confident and complacent, oblivious to what was coming. They thought themselves safe, protected by altitude and armour and technology.

They thought wrong.

Myers was about to launch into another story when suddenly high-pitched threat warnings started blaring from the cockpit, the aircraft’s on-board computers screaming a warning that they were being targeted by something.

Instantly Carter felt himself tense up, his heart rate soaring as his body prepared itself for a danger it didn’t understand. He was a gazelle on the African plains that had just spotted a lion stalking him in the long grass. Death coming for him.

In his mind he begged for it to be a false alarm. An instrument malfunction, a blip from a nearby radar array, even some asshole on the ground with a radar gun who was curious to know how fast military choppers really travelled.

‘We’re being lit up,’ the pilot warned.

A moment later, the bleeping alarms changed to a constant, high-pitched tone.

‘Shit! We’re locked up. We’re locked up.’

‘Anybody see anything?’ the co-pilot called out.

Leaning out further, Carter looked down towards a range of low hills off to the east, saw an innocuous little puff of white smoke and felt his blood run cold.

The missile was about 1.5 miles from its target when the operator depressed the trigger. Just shy of 2,500 metres. It left its launch tube an instant later, propelled by a small disposable ejector unit that fell harmlessly away after serving its purpose. The main rocket motors kicked in a second later, and with a tearing roar the missile accelerated up to Mach 2.2 – more than twice the speed of sound.

‘Missile inbound!’ he yelled, more through instinct than intent.

The pilot’s reaction was immediate. ‘Hang on.’

Jinking the stick left and jamming the throttles wide open, he put them in a hard turn to port under full power, raising the collective to claw for more altitude. He was no nervous rookie on his first flight, but a seasoned veteran of the Afghan theatre who had been shot at by rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire more times than he could count. He knew all the tricks, and how best to exploit them.

Turn, increase speed, gain altitude.

The Black Hawk was no Apache gunship. Its turns were slow and lazy by comparison, like a luxury sedan set against an F1 racing car, but even then the sudden violence of the turn was enough to push Carter forcefully down into his seat.

‘Deploy flares.’

An instant later, the chopper ejected a stream of bright incandescent flares from both sides, designed to confuse and disorient incoming warheads that might be homing in on the heat from their engines.

All of it was futile, because the missile stalking them had been designed to defeat such things. Ignoring the flares, it came straight at them: 1,000 feet, 500 feet, 200 feet.

The bright flash as 3 kilograms of high explosive detonated against the port engine housing was followed a moment later by an expanding cloud of superheated gas that rippled outwards, peeling back armour plates, buckling internal support struts, shattering highly stressed machinery, tearing apart hydraulic lines and electrical cables, and turning all of it into a deadly hail of shrapnel that ripped through the chopper’s body, causing yet more damage.

The aircraft appeared to flinch, knocked sideways in mid-air by the force of the blast, one side crumpled, one engine reduced to a burning ruin while the other faltered and belched oily black smoke.

Hernandez, unlucky enough to be sitting next to the point of impact, didn’t stand a chance. His soft and fragile body presented no resistance whatsoever as the bulkhead behind him disintegrated, fist-sized chunks of shrapnel scything right through him.

‘Oh, Christ! Oh, Christ!’ Myers yelled, his cries almost drowned out by the scream of overloaded machinery and the groan of rending metal as the airframe started to give way around him.

‘This is Kilo Six Niner, we’re going down,’ the pilot managed to say, having to shout to be heard over the din of his stricken aircraft. ‘I repeat, we’re hit and going down.’

Further forward, Carter could do nothing but cling to his safety harness as the chopper lurched and spun towards the ground in its death throes. He had no idea how fast they were descending, whether the pilots still had any control or whether they were falling out of the sky like a stone.

The world outside was a blur of movement and lurching horizon and dusty orange sky and dirt and rocks and winding valleys that led nowhere.

The Dust Bowl.

Not far away, the silent observer watched the aircraft spiral down towards the ground, trailing smoke and flames. Its rotors were still turning, probably because the engine’s freewheeling unit had automatically disengaged from the crippled drive train, but there was no purpose to its movements. If the pilots were still alive, they would be wrestling with ruptured hydraulic lines and control surfaces that were no longer connected.

He almost felt pity for them.

The missile had done its work well. There had been no spectacular explosion, no thunderous fireball like in the movies; there had just been a small, efficient flash and a jet of flame that soon died down, giving way to a pall of smoke from the crippled engines.

It had taken a good second or two for the concussive boom of the explosion to reach him, but when it did, he spread his arms as if to embrace it, revelling in the sound of the blast as it echoed off the rock walls around him.

Now he watched as the nose tilted down, the stricken craft yawed violently left as the last semblance of control vanished, and it ploughed into the ground in a spray of dust and soil and smoke.

He smiled, thinking about the reaction this attack would provoke, the fear and panic it would instil in his enemies. The game had changed today, changed for ever.

And soon, very soon, he would have the one thing he desired most – retribution.

He was alive.

For several seconds, Carter’s mind could process nothing beyond that one remarkable realisation. He was alive. He could feel the blood pounding in his ears, could hear the ragged sigh of his breathing.

Somehow he had survived the crash.

As his mind snapped back into awareness, the first waves of pain rushed in against it, all struggling to reach him at once.

His world was pain. His chest felt as though it was being crushed in a vice, squeezing his lungs, every feeble attempt to draw breath bringing a fresh stab of agony. Broken ribs pressing against his lungs.

He opened his eyes with difficulty and looked around. The inside of the crew compartment was a mess of deformed metal, broken instrument panels and human bodies that had been thrown around like rag dolls in the crash.

One was dead for sure, lying sprawled against the rotor column, his head virtually severed from his shoulders by a chunk of rotor blade that had sheared off. It took Carter a moment to realise it was the pilot. Perhaps he’d been thrown from his seat on impact.

He could smell fuel. He had to get up. The shock of the crash was fading now, survival instinct taking over.

He made to get up, then instantly regretted it. Agony exploded outwards from his right leg as shattered bones grated against each other, and he let out an involuntary scream as his vision blurred.

Suddenly Carter spotted movement outside. And a moment later, two men ducked into the cabin. Silhouetted as they were against the blinding light streaming in through the open doorway, it was impossible to make out their features, though he did see the distinctive weapons they both held. AK-47 assault rifles.

Further back in the cabin, another man was dragging the limp body of the spook who had hitched a ride with them, pulling him towards the open hatch to take him outside. Carter couldn’t tell if he was dead or alive.

His thoughts were disturbed when he heard Myers pleading with the armed men. ‘W-we’re Americans,’ he stammered, crawling into view with his hands up. ‘We ain’t armed, man. Don’t—’

With casual ease, the first man to make entry raised his weapon up to his shoulder, took aim and squeezed off a single round. There was a deafening crack that reverberated around the cabin, and suddenly the back of Myers’ head exploded, blood and brain matter coating the wall behind him. Carter could feel some of it on his own face, still warm with recently extinguished life.

Too shocked to move, he could only watch as the barrel of the assault rifle swung around towards him. He should have felt fear, terror, grief at knowing his life was about to end, but none of those emotions stirred in him. There wasn’t time to feel them.

He glanced outside, seeing the dust and sand and wind-scoured rocks.

What a hell of a place to die, he thought as a second sharp crack echoed through the cabin.

Chapter 2

Washington DC, twelve hours later

It was a warm, humid Friday evening in the nation’s capital, the sky glowing vibrant orange in the west as the sun set, with the first stars starting to appear in the deep azure expanse to the east.

It was the tail end of the rush hour, but traffic was still heavy as the last government employees filtered home after a long week. Row after row of bland, efficient saloons, SUVs and the occasional limousine rumbled along the main drags, looking as tired as their drivers.

And amongst the weary procession, a silver sports car weaved in and out, changing lanes, accelerating and braking hard, jostling for position like a racehorse in the midst of a pack.

‘Come on, come on,’ Ryan Drake said under his breath, gunning the accelerator to get in front of a GMC Yukon that was trying to block him out. The stressed-looking office worker at the wheel gave him a look of pure disgust.

Drake ignored such censure, took an off-ramp to escape the crowded freeway and hit the gas, pushing the Audi TT hard. The powerful German sports car wasn’t great on corners, but with 250 horses under the hood, it more than made up for it on the open road. The 3.2-litre VR6 engine roared as he accelerated through a set of lights that had just changed to red.

He glanced at his watch and swore under his breath. He was going to be late for his rendezvous. And this was one meeting at which tardiness would not be tolerated.

‘She’s going to kill me. I know it.’

Seeking to divert his thoughts from this unpleasant prospect, he switched the radio on. It was the financial round-up.

‘The Dow Jones fell in afternoon trading again today, closing two hundred and fifteen points down, with analysts predicting another major slump in prices amidst growing concerns of insolvency in major investment banks. Overall the Jones has fallen over twenty per cent since this time last year, with further turmoil in European markets …’

There were a lot of reports like this nowadays, all using terms like ‘sub-prime mortgage crisis’ and ‘unsustainable debt burden’. The truth was obvious even to those who didn’t understand the finer details – the economy was rapidly going from bad to shit to worse, and nobody knew how to fix it.

It was funny how much things could change in a year, Drake thought as he turned left at an intersection.

He soon found himself in a world of plush suburban houses, vibrant green lawns and immaculate SUVs. The whole place had the feel of a planned community, as if Walt Disney had designed it all.

Every block or two he’d pass fashionable coffee houses with tinted-glass windows and stainless-steel tables; regular hangouts for people with thick-framed glasses and hair they’d spent half an hour styling for the just-out-of-bed look, pretending to be doing something important with their laptops as they sipped their moccaccinos.

But not now. Now the tables stood empty, with scarcely a laptop or pair of designer glasses in sight. One place even had its shutters pulled down, as if the world were bracing itself for a gathering storm.

Pushing those thoughts aside, he made a hard right turn at the next junction, changed down into second gear and stamped on the pedal.

He arrived at his destination an hour and fifteen minutes late. Not bad by his standards, but unacceptable for the people he was meeting.

Killing the engine, Drake stepped out into the warm evening, the chirp of crickets and other night insects plainly audible. Tiny flies buzzed and flitted back and forth around him, circling each other in lazy arcs like ancient biplanes locked in an endless fight for supremacy. A house on the opposite side of the road had the stars and stripes flying above their porch – it was that kind of neighbourhood – but the flag barely moved in the still air.

He inhaled, tasting the scent of fresh-cut grass, the fragrant bloom of flowers, the sharp tang of newly sawn wood and above all, the smoky aroma of meat cooking on a nearby grill.

Or perhaps burning was the more accurate definition.

Hoping his olfactory senses were mistaken, Drake jogged up the brick driveway to the front door and knocked. There was no reply.

He knocked again, louder this time, only to meet with the same result.

‘Oi, John! Anyone alive in there?’ he called out, backing up a little so his voice could be heard in the backyard.

At last he was rewarded with a reply.

‘Round back, buddy! Gate’s open.’

Vaulting over a shrub at the edge of the porch, Drake headed for the side gate and let himself in.

John Keegan’s home, in stark contrast to his often dishevelled personal appearance, was a neat, well-ordered suburban house in Brookeville, a small town about 15 miles west of central DC. Indeed, ‘small town’ was the perfect description of this place. It was the sort of area where people left their cars unlocked overnight, where everyone knew each other and stopped to shoot the breeze when they passed in the street.

Drake doubted he’d spoken to his own neighbours more than a dozen times in all the years he’d lived there.

As he’d smugly admitted on more than one occasion, Keegan had picked up this place for a song, buying it at auction when the previous owner died. The fact that the roof had leaked, the electrics had been shot and it hadn’t been redecorated in twenty years hadn’t fazed him for a second.

Keegan was an eternally practical man, throwing himself into the renovation with the kind of patient confidence that somehow reminded Drake of his grandfather. Guys like that belonged to a different generation; one that just seemed to know how such things were done.

But the house was a mere side-show tonight. Keegan’s pride and joy was the solid brick grill he’d built for himself in the backyard. True to his Southern roots, it was a genuine mesquite wood-burner rather than gas or propane.

In his own words, gas was for pussies – real men cooked with wood.

It made little difference in Drake’s opinion, but then he supposed his palate had been ruined by his days as an SAS operative. Their barbecues had consisted of an oil drum cut in half lengthwise and filled with just about anything that would burn. And if they’d been struggling on that score, there was usually a jerrycan of gasoline on hand to help things along.

Keegan grinned like a lunatic as he worked the barbecue, beer in one hand and spatula in the other. His scruffy mane of blond hair was hidden beneath a frayed baseball cap emblazoned with the Carolina Panthers team logo. Even his bushy moustache looked like it needed trimming.

His DIY abilities were unfortunately not matched by his cooking skills, and he seemed to have an innate desire to cremate everything that had once been alive.

‘Nice of you to join us, mate,’ he remarked. For some reason, he seemed to find it amusing to say the word ‘mate’ in his distinctive Southern drawl.

Keira Frost, standing a safe distance from the billowing smoke, wasn’t quite so subtle.

‘Where the hell have you been, Ryan? You stop for dinner on the way?’

Drake forced a smile and nodded at the grill. ‘Can you blame me?’

Of course, there was another reason he’d been late tonight. It was the same reason he was late for almost everything outside of work, even if he wasn’t prepared to admit it. Burying himself in work helped him forget what had happened last year.

And it helped him forget the woman behind it all.

Frost didn’t look convinced, and seemed on the verge of saying something else when Keegan, perceptive enough not to push the issue, nodded to the steel bucket off to his left. Beers of various brands floated in the icy water. ‘Well, you’re here now. Grab yourself a beer, man. I’m almost done.’

Drake smiled and grabbed a Corona, wiping most of the water off before popping the lid open. He was more of a Peroni man, but when his throat was dry and the beer was plentiful, he wasn’t complaining.

‘So what’s the deal, John?’ Frost asked, taking a pull from her own bottle. ‘Were you taking a shit when they taught us all how to cook or what?’

The older man grinned. ‘Damn. You’re on fire tonight, Frost.’

‘So are those burgers if you leave them any longer.’

Drake smiled at the banter between the two specialists. They had served together on a dozen operations over the past couple of years, and despite their differences, a certain grudging affection had developed between them.

That was part of the reason Keegan had taken to hosting occasional barbecue evenings, particularly when the team had just finished their debriefings and wrapped up another operation. It was like a wrap party; something to bring an op to a definitive end.

Or in Keegan’s case, it was an excuse to open the tequila and put the world to rights.

A slow smile spread across Keegan’s face as he turned to look at Frost. ‘Hey, I meant to ask you – how’s that car of yours?’

Even in the dim evening light, Drake could see the colour rise to Frost’s face. The young woman had bought an old, beat-up Ford Mustang at the start of the year, hoping to turn it into a restoration project. The last time Drake had had the heart to ask about it, the entire engine block had been lying in pieces in her garage.

‘Doing just fine,’ she replied, but there was no conviction in her voice.

Keegan paused in his work, his expression pensive. ‘You know, my daddy once said never let women near guns, cars or VCRs. Sometimes I think he was wiser than he knew.’

Frost wasn’t rising to the bait. ‘Yeah, well, I suppose that kind of attitude was common in the 1930s. You know, when you were a kid.’

Seated at the edge of the garden’s decking area – another flawless creation built from scratch by Keegan – Drake took a pull on his beer, closed his eyes and exhaled slowly.

After a day of flickering computer screens, ringing phones and whirring printers, it was a relief to be outside in the fresh air, just listening to the sounds of the world around him.

‘Hey.’

Drake opened his eyes as Frost sat down beside him.

He winced, already bracing himself for another verbal assault. ‘Listen, Keira. About tonight –’

To his surprise, she shook her head. ‘Don’t worry about it. You’re here now, at least – that’s the important thing.’

Drake raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t like her to be so forgiving.

Her unexpected conciliatory attitude had caught him off guard. He felt awkward, unsure of what to say, but he didn’t want to let the conversation falter.

He recalled something about her moving house, yet the details remained elusive, like a half-formed idea long since discarded. His mind was a jumble of reports and classified documents and deadlines and a dozen other work-related problems that seemed to swallow up everything else.

‘So how are you doing with the new apartment?’ he asked, deciding to chance his hand. ‘Moved your stuff in?’

The flicker in her eyes told him he’d made a big mistake. ‘Ryan, that was three months ago. And it was my sister who was moving.’

Drake’s heart sank. He worked with these people almost every day, spent far more time with them than his own family, yet at times like this he felt he barely knew them. The only reason he was even here tonight was because Frost had parked herself in his office and refused to leave until he agreed to come.

Her excuse had been that she didn’t intend to suffer Keegan’s food alone, but even then he’d sensed a deeper motivation. She’d wanted to keep him involved, to make him focus on something outside work.

It was a valiant but futile effort.

‘I’m sorry, Keira,’ he said, taking a pull on the beer to hide his embarrassment. ‘My mind’s been all over the place lately.’

In truth, his mind had been in one place, and one place only – Iraq, last year. After being hunted as a fugitive by his own people and travelling halfway across the world, he had uncovered conspiracies and corruption that went almost to the very top of the Agency.

Then it had all unravelled. The one man who could help them had been executed, while those behind the entire thing had not only survived, but prospered. Drake himself was only alive because of a deal struck by his friend Dan Franklin, buying his security in exchange for silence.

Drake’s life was now in limbo; he was unable to leave the Agency, yet knew that one day his luck would run out. He understood now how Damocles must have felt at that banquet table, trying to enjoy his roast beef with a bloody great sword hanging over him.

‘Easy mistake to make.’ Frost was silent for a few moments, contemplating something. Or maybe weighing up whether the time was right to say what she wanted to. ‘Mind if I ask you something?’

He looked at her, wondering what was coming. ‘You’ve never let it stop you before.’

‘Why do you push yourself so hard?’ she asked, dead serious.

Drake hesitated. Keira Frost was a straight talker who wasn’t afraid to voice her opinions, but it wasn’t like her to get into this deep and meaningful stuff.

‘You’re in that office working until Christ knows when,’ she went on. ‘You barely do anything in the real world. I mean, shit, I had to practically hold a gun to your head to get you here tonight. My company that bad?’

‘I’ll take the Fifth on that one,’ he said, hoping to lighten the mood but soon realising it was a wasted effort. She wasn’t about to let this one go. ‘Look, it’s just the way things are with work …’

‘Ryan, there’s always going to be too much work if you want there to be.’

Drake was careful to avoid her gaze. ‘I imagine you’re going somewhere with this,’ he prompted, wishing he didn’t sound so defensive.

‘You’re burning yourself out,’ she said simply. ‘It’s like you’re trying to punish yourself, or prove something. Either way, it’s not good.’

‘For who?’

‘For anyone,’ she answered. ‘If you’re exhausted and strung out, you’re not thinking straight, which means you put all our lives at risk next time we’re in the field.’ She fixed him with a searching look. ‘And as much as I’ll hate myself for saying this, I’m worried about you. I don’t want to see you burn out. You don’t deserve it.’

At last Drake turned to look at her, his vivid green eyes shimmering in the glow of electric lights nearby.

But before he could reply, he felt his phone buzz in his pocket. Out of habit he fished it out and checked the caller ID.

It was George Breckenridge – the officer in charge of the CIA’s Shepherd programme, and Drake’s immediate superior. The man who’d previously held that post, Dan Franklin, had been promoted to director of Special Activities Division last year, leaving a power vacuum that had to be filled.

Drake had little contact with his former friend now.

There was little choice but to take the call. In the Agency, if one’s boss called outside work hours on a Friday night, chances were the news wasn’t good.

And yet, for once, he welcomed the distraction.

‘Yeah, George?’ Drake said.

Breckenridge was, as always, brisk and to the point. He had little time for grunts like Drake, and made no attempt to hide that fact. ‘We need you to come in. Where are you?’

‘Brookeville. Keegan’s place. Why, what’s going on?’

‘We’ve got a situation here. We want your input.’

Which told him nothing at all. Not that he was surprised – this was an open line, and while Drake doubted the Russians or Chinese were listening in on his every phone call, there were still rules. More than one op had been compromised in the CIA’s history by casual conversations on unsecured lines.

‘How urgent is it?’

‘I’m sorry, did I give the impression this was a dinner invitation?’ Breckenridge asked, employing his most patronising tone. ‘We want you and your team here five minutes ago. Exactly what part of this is unclear?’

Not for the first time, Drake found himself seriously questioning Franklin’s choice of successor. Whatever the vetting process for that position, it clearly wasn’t designed to filter out arseholes. ‘Abundantly.’

‘Good. I’ll see you in Conference Room One in thirty minutes.’ He hung up without saying anything further.

‘Prick,’ Drake said under his breath as he closed down his phone.

Frost regarded him suspiciously. ‘Trouble in paradise?’

‘SNAFU, as your Marine cousins are fond of saying.’

She nodded sagely. SNAFU – Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.

‘What does he want?’

Drake tipped back his beer and downed it in one gulp.

‘Well, the good news is you’ve escaped Keegan’s food tonight.’

Chapter 3

CIA Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

One thing Drake had to commend the Agency on was their sense of irony. The George Bush Center for Intelligence (itself a contradiction in terms) was where some of the most important decisions in the world of espionage, counter-terrorism, clandestine operations and global politics were made, yet the place reminded him more of a garden centre than an intelligence-gathering hub.

Set within acres of well-maintained parkland, there were trees and flower beds and neatly trimmed lawns everywhere. The main entrance was even a long glass-covered archway with plants and expensive decor. All they needed to complete the look was a coy pond and a café selling overpriced coffee and pastries.

There were two main elements to the CIA’s headquarters – the Old Headquarters Building (OHB) and the imaginatively named New Headquarters Building (NHB). The OHB was a double H-block arrangement that dated back to the Agency’s beginnings in the 1950s, while the NHB consisted of a pair of six-storey office towers that dominated the landscape like a pair of modern-day castles.

Drake and his two companions were headed for the northernmost of the two towers. After passing through the main security checkpoint and traversing the length of the glass tunnel, they took a left at the T-junction.

‘This had better be fucking good,’ Frost hissed, striding along beside her two companions with a look in her eye that would give most guard dogs pause for thought. ‘I’m talking alien invasion or Presidential kidnapping here.’

‘That how you define good, huh?’ Keegan quipped.

‘Big words, John,’ she bit back. ‘Thought you rednecks were still learning how to read and write.’

The older man flashed a grin. ‘Must’ve been a child prodigy.’

Their route took them past an outdoor seating area overlooking the infamous Kryptos sculpture. Appearing as four large metal plates engraved with a seemingly meaningless stream of letters, Kryptos had been an object of fascination for code breakers and conspiracy theorists since it was unveiled nearly twenty years earlier. The code on three of the plates had since been broken, but the fourth remained stubbornly unsolved.

Even today, Drake knew that people within the Agency liked to hang out around it, particularly the intelligence analysts who made a living breaking codes and sought to test their mental prowess. He had never understood the fascination himself. Breaking codes for bragging rights made about as much sense to him as jumping into an empty swimming pool. Still, each to their own.

Passing through the automatic doors that led to the north tower, he and his companions found the nearest elevator and rode it up to the fifth floor, Drake ignoring the curious glance from the young man in a sharp business suit who got in at the second floor. Langley was a shirt-and-tie kind of place, but unfortunately Drake wasn’t a shirt-and-tie kind of man, especially not tonight. If Breckenridge wanted him here so urgently, he would have to take him as he came – in this case clad in cargo pants, a casual shirt and trainers that had seen better days.

Frost didn’t take kindly to the disapproving look either. She had been in a foul mood since finding out that her planned evening of drinking and relaxation had been whisked away and replaced with a high-priority briefing with a man nobody liked.

‘Something wrong, pal?’ she challenged, staring right at him.

She was spoiling for a fight, and the young man sensed it. Saying nothing, he glanced away and suddenly became very interested in checking his cufflinks.

Smart guy, Drake thought.

Conference room 1 was first in line as they stepped out on the fifth floor. It was a big, plush room reserved for top brass and high-level briefings, partly because it looked impressive but mostly because it was totally secure from any form of surveillance. The fact that the meeting was being held there told Drake a lot more than Breckenridge’s ambiguous phone call.

It was in this very room, over a year ago, that he had first been handed the mission to break into a Siberian prison and rescue a woman identified only by her code name Maras. It had seemed like a simple objective at the time; only later had he discovered how wrong he’d been.

Drake hadn’t been back here since. Normally his orders and debriefings were handled in one of the many smaller, more utilitarian rooms downstairs which were more suited to the unobtrusive nature of his work.

Access to the room was controlled by a swipe-card terminal next to the door. Drake’s personal access card would have been cleared in advance, so all he had to do was swipe it through the reader, punch in his PIN, and he was good to go.

There was a single beep and a crisp click as the lock disengaged. As always, everything worked flawlessly here. Here we go, he thought.

As the door swung open, he couldn’t help comparing the room before him to the one vividly imprinted on his memory.

The place hadn’t changed much in the past year. Same long conference table topped with a single unbroken length of polished mahogany that probably cost more than he made in a year. Same high-backed leather chairs, same expensive silver coffee set. Same majestic view over Langley’s garden-centre grounds, the dense woodland beyond and the muddy sweep of the Potomac about half a mile away.

In fact, the only thing different about the room was the occupant. Instead of Dan Franklin and Marcus Cain, the former director of Special Activities Division, this time he was greeted by the fleshy, unsmiling face of George Breckenridge.

In his early fifties, greying and overweight in a way that suggested he’d never really been in shape, Breckenridge looked exactly like what he was – a guy who’d been shining seats with his not-inconsiderable arse since leaving college. God only knew what strip-lighted back-room office Franklin had dug this guy up from, but it wasn’t a place Drake was keen to visit.

He knew little about Breckenridge, because theirs was not the kind of relationship that encouraged the exchange of personal information, but he knew one thing – his volume of admin and paperwork had more than doubled since Breckenridge took over the Shepherd programme.

It was hard to say how much Breckenridge knew of Drake’s past exploits, or indeed whether he’d been brought in specifically to keep an eye on him and ensure he didn’t cause further trouble. Either way, Drake had resolved to keep him at arm’s length and tell him as little as possible.

‘Drake. Good of you to join us.’ There was no thought of calling Drake by his first name; Breckenridge wasn’t that sort of man. He barely even acknowledged Keegan and Frost.

He eyed Drake’s casual clothes with unveiled disdain. His own dark blue business suit looked as though it had been pressed that very morning.

In response, Drake gave a dismissive shrug. ‘You wanted me here as soon as, George. Well, you’ve got me.’ He always called his boss George because he knew it pissed him off, and that made Drake feel just a little better. ‘So what’s this about?’

Breckenridge said nothing to that. Instead, he reached for the speaker phone in the centre of the table and punched in a couple of buttons. The dial tone sounded three times before it was answered.

‘Yeah?’ a familiar voice asked, sounding tired and strung out.

‘It’s Breckenridge, sir.’ He sounded like a schoolboy talking to the headmaster. ‘They’re here.’

In a moment, the voice changed, becoming more focused and authoritative. ‘Good. I’ll be right along.’

The phone clicked off, leaving the two men standing on opposite sides of the table in an awkward silence. Neither was willing to sit down, as if it would be seen as a sign of weakness.

Frost had no such compunction, and immediately helped herself to a chair, tilting it back as far as it would go. Keegan followed suit a moment later.

Drake occupied himself staring over Breckenridge’s shoulder, watching a red sports car cruising along the road on the far side of the Potomac. He hoped the driver was having a better evening than him.

At last the doors buzzed and clicked open, and Drake turned to greet his old friend.

Dan Franklin had been an infantryman once upon a time. He and Drake had served in the same composite task force in Afghanistan, until a roadside bomb put an end to his military career and very nearly his life. The old shrapnel wounds had left him with ongoing back pain that worsened after long periods of inactivity.

But as the director strode into the room, Drake paused a beat, taken aback by the change in his friend. Franklin had just turned forty, yet he looked many years older. His forehead was etched with deep worry lines, and there was a visible tension in his posture, as if he carried a heavy weight on his shoulders. The burden of responsibility was, it seemed, not an easy one to bear.

Franklin glanced at Drake, and for a moment he saw a glimmer of warmth in the older man’s eyes. Franklin’s right arm moved a little as if to shake hands, but he quickly thought better of it and turned away, making for the far end of the conference table. He was almost able to make it seem as if the gesture had never happened. Almost, but not quite.

‘Good to see you again, Ryan,’ he said, though his words were as stiff and formal as his posture. ‘How have you been?’

‘Can’t complain,’ Drake replied, wondering how long it had been since they’d last spoken. He certainly hadn’t seen much of the man since his promotion last year, which he supposed wasn’t surprising. The Shepherd teams were just a small gear in the complex machine that was Special Activities Division.

That seemed to satisfy Franklin. He gestured to the chairs running the length of the table. ‘Please, have a seat.’ He glanced at Frost and Keegan with a raised eyebrow. ‘I see your team’s ahead of you.’

‘We don’t stand on ceremony in this unit, sir,’ Frost replied innocently. ‘That’s the way Ryan trained us.’

Drake shot her a sharp glance as he helped himself to a chair, but said nothing. Now wasn’t the time for petty reprimands.

‘I was just bringing Mr Drake up to speed, sir,’ Breckenridge said.

Franklin gave a curt nod that made him look exactly like what he was – a senior executive impatient with trivialities. ‘Then don’t let me stop you.’

Breckenridge coughed, clearing his throat, and turned his attention to the wireless keyboard in front of him. A few keystrokes and mouse clicks were enough to bring up an image on the big flat-screen television at the far end of the room.

The image was a personnel photograph of a man in his mid-fifties. With a greying beard, dishevelled hair, strong and severe features, and a nose that looked as if it had been broken at least once before, he was a serious-looking customer. The hard, penetrating look in his eyes told Drake that the man was a field operative.

‘This is Hal Mitchell, one of our case officers based in Afghanistan,’ Breckenridge began. ‘He’s been with the Agency nearly twenty-five years now, and he’s an expert in that theatre. A good man.’

Drake would take his word on that one. ‘Smashing. So what’s the problem?’

Breckenridge shot him an impatient glance, as if he was a magician whose trick had been spoiled at the crucial moment. ‘About twelve hours ago, Mitchell boarded a Black Hawk chopper heading for one of our firebases about fifty miles east of Kabul. He never made it back.’

He brought up another image, this one showing the charred and blackened remains of what might once have been a helicopter airframe. Drake could only assume the fuel tanks had gone up, because the entire thing looked as if it had been blasted apart from the inside. The metal skeleton was warped and twisted by the extreme heat.

‘His chopper was brought down by some kind of surface-to-air missile while en route to Bagram,’ Breckenridge went on. ‘By the time a search-and-rescue team arrived on site, well, there wasn’t much left to recover. Five men were killed in the attack – the pilots, plus three army passengers.’

‘What about Mitchell, sir?’ Frost asked. Something about the way she said ‘sir’ held a note of contempt – a fact that was not lost on Breckenridge.

He looked at her for a few moments, seemingly on the verge of rebuking her, then thought better of it. ‘About an hour ago, we received this.’

A couple of mouse clicks, and the display changed as a video file started to play. Drake once again found himself looking at Hal Mitchell, only this time he was looking very different from his file photo.

This time the man was duct-taped to a crude wooden chair, his mouth gagged, his clothes ripped and torn and stained with blood, from injuries sustained either in the crash or afterwards. His head lolled to one side, his eyes barely open, one of them blackened and swelling shut.

Drake felt his stomach churn. He had seen videos like this before, and could guess where this one was heading.

The camera, shaky and clearly manipulated by an amateur, zoomed out a little to show Mitchell’s surroundings. He was in a room of some kind. There was a bare brick wall behind him, the mortar crumbling, the stones cracked and stained in places by yellow mould. Electric light was coming from an off-camera source, though it flickered from time to time as if the bulb was about to give out.

Another man walked into view. Dressed in loose flowing trousers, a heavy, worn-looking camouflage jacket and ancient webbing that looked as if it had been pilfered from a dead Russian twenty years earlier, it didn’t take a genius to work out that he was an insurgent. He was tall and lean, and even the thick jacket couldn’t mask his spare frame.

He was an older man, his skin leathery and lined from years of sun and wind, his heavy brows and thick beard greying. Drake could have sworn he recognised him but immediately discounted the possibility. There was no way the man he was thinking of could be on this video.

‘You know now what we can do,’ he began, his voice deep and heavily accented. ‘None of your men are safe from us. Not on the ground, not in the cities, and not in the air. We can strike anywhere we wish, at any time. Nothing can stop us, because we are Allah’s holy warriors. Everywhere we go, we will root out traitors, unbelievers and spies.’

At this, he gestured to Mitchell.

‘You send men like this to our country to turn our own people against us, to ask the faithful to betray their brothers. And you dare to call us terrorists?’

Reaching into his heavy camouflage jacket, he withdrew an automatic pistol. Drake couldn’t be sure, but it looked like a Browning 9mm; a reliable old semiautomatic that had been around since the 1930s.

But there was another thing Drake noticed as he pulled the jacket aside to draw the weapon. The last two fingers of the man’s hand were missing. In that instant, he felt as though a knife had been driven into his stomach.

He knew this man.

Without hesitation, the insurgent aimed the gun downwards and calmly squeezed the trigger. There was a flash, a sharp crack, and suddenly Mitchell was no longer semi-conscious. His body went rigid and he strained against his bonds, screaming into his gag, his eyes wide with agony. A crimson stain was now spreading out across the left leg of his trousers.

‘Fuck …’ Frost said under her breath, shaking her head.

Drake ignored her, concentrating instead on the video.

The gag muffled Mitchell’s cries, but the gunman was forced to raise his voice to be heard when he spoke again.

^th