Redemption (2 page)

‘So if it’s still in the air, it’s flying without direct control.’ Kaminsky glanced at Faulkner. ‘Contact air traffic control. Find out if it’s still airborne.’

Shit, I hope it’s not over a populated area, he thought. The drone might have been an unmanned aircraft, but it was still an aircraft with engines and on-board reserves of fuel, not to mention any munitions it might have been carrying. Plenty of things to go boom if it crashed in the middle of a town.

‘If it loses incoming control, it’ll revert to its automated flight programme,’ Faulkner assured him.

That wasn’t much comfort.

‘Maybe it’s a problem at our end?’ Kaminsky suggested.

‘The other drones are fine. If it was a problem with our uplink, we’d have lost control of everything.’

Kaminsky opened his mouth to reply, but before he could say anything, the monitors around him suddenly flickered back into life as the data feeds resumed, telemetry readings once again reporting the status of an aircraft hundreds of miles away.

Faulkner glanced at the technician. ‘What did you do?’

‘Nothing, sir. It just came back all of a sudden.’

Cursing under his breath, Kaminsky reached into his pocket and put on a pair of reading glasses, leaning closer to the screens to take a look for himself. Now in his early fifties, he needed glasses more than he cared to admit.

‘Get me a full system diagnostic, now,’ he ordered, his eyes darting across the various screens. Altitude, heading, airspeed, engine temperature, fuel pressure … All of it looked fine.

Such was his concern for the technical status of the aircraft, he almost didn’t notice the feed coming in from the downward-looking nose cameras. Designed for battlefield observation and intelligence gathering, the high-resolution digital cameras could zoom in close enough to pick out individual facial features from 10,000 feet.

Now, however, they were focused on an urban area of some kind. Characteristic of the ancient cities that dotted Iraq, it was a maze of narrow streets, walled courtyards and old sandstone buildings.

It was a scene of utter chaos.

One of the buildings had taken a direct hit, blasting out an entire wall and collapsing part of the roof. Smoke
and
flames billowed from the ruined structure, rescue crews and fire fighters trying to fight their way through the destruction and search for survivors. And everywhere, scattered on the streets around the building, lay the motionless forms of the dead.

‘Sir.’

Tearing his eyes away, Kaminsky looked at Hastings. The young man was pale, a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead. He looked as if he was about to be sick.

‘What is it?’

Hastings swallowed hard. ‘All three Hellfire missiles have been deployed.’

Shock and disbelief were reflected in the eyes of every person in the room. Nobody uttered a word.

With slow, deliberate care, Kaminsky removed his reading glasses and turned to his subordinate. ‘Pete, better call Langley right now.’

Chapter 2

Washington DC, 7 May 2007

IT WAS A
damp, cool Sunday morning in the capital, with a low fog lingering over the muddy waters of the Potomac. Summer days in Maryland were hot and humid, but the mornings often started out chill and misty.

A lone jogger shuffled along beneath the dripping leaves, following a muddy track that wound through Anacostia Park. To a casual observer he would have seemed perfectly unremarkable: mid-thirties, medium build, standing an inch or so above 6 foot. His short dark hair was damp with sweat, his face downturned, his eyes on the ground ahead.

Just another anonymous bureaucrat, just another DC office worker trying to stave off the beer gut and high blood pressure. The sort of man one might pass in the street and forget within moments.

But for those who cared to look beyond the obvious, a different picture emerged. Though tired, he moved with sure, confident strides, maintaining a steady ground-covering pace that would be familiar to soldiers the world over.

And those eyes, which seemed loosely fixed on the muddy ground ahead, would often flick left and right,
quickly
taking in his surroundings, maintaining constant awareness of his situation.

Those who knew what to look for would see he was no office worker.

Trying to ignore the burning in his lungs and the ache in his legs, Ryan Drake glanced at his watch, noting the time and comparing it with the familiar landmarks around him. He’d jogged this route so many times that he knew exactly where he should be at any given time, and he wasn’t there today.

He was falling behind.

‘Shit,’ he said under his breath, pushing his body to even greater efforts to try to make up for lost time. He didn’t care about the fatigue that clawed at him, didn’t care about the thumping of his heart or the burning in his muscles. None of that mattered. He plodded on with single-minded determination.

He’d read somewhere that running was supposed to release endorphins and other feel-good chemicals in the brain. That had yet to happen for him, though. Maybe his brain wasn’t wired that way.

In any case, the usual result of his morning forays was that he came home exhausted, sweaty and often soaked by a sudden rain shower. The damp climate in DC almost made his childhood home in England seem tropical by comparison.

Leaving the quiet parkland behind, his route took him straight down Maryland Avenue towards the towering dome of the US Capitol building. Almost all of the roads in DC converged on this one structure, like the spokes of a gigantic wheel. As long as you could see it, it was almost impossible to get lost in the city.

At 5.30 on a Sunday morning there wasn’t much traffic on the streets; just delivery trucks out making the rounds
and
a few poor souls heading to work in some office or government ministry. Most were bleary eyed and clutching cups of coffee as though their lives depended on it.

He sympathised.

Skirting the Capitol building, Drake headed west through Henry Park towards the Washington Monument.

Lit from below by floodlights, the vast marble obelisk stood stark and white against the dim backdrop of the early-morning sky. For a lot of people, this structure was a symbol of America itself, an indomitable monument to democracy and all that other good stuff. For him it meant he was almost finished his run.

Everyone was a winner, then.

Beyond lay the Lincoln Memorial building at the end of the Reflecting Pool, backed right up against the Potomac. That was his finish line.

Summoning his flagging reserves of energy, he pushed himself in one final effort down the length of the Reflecting Pool.

Almost doubled over, he ascended the fifty-eight steps to the base of the memorial. Fifty-eight steps, each one sending a stab of pain through his tired and aching muscles, and drawing deep from his meagre reserves of strength.

At last he staggered to the top, winded and exhausted, clutching one of the stone columns for support.

He felt like shit, plain and simple. His muscles ached, his lungs burned and his head pounded with a vicious headache. Still no sign of those elusive endorphins either, he thought with a wry smile. But the smile soon faded when he checked his watch – a minute slower than yesterday.

Ten years ago, back when he’d been a young soldier
in
the Special Air Service, he’d done runs like this just to warm up. Now he was killing himself trying to make it through.

He closed his eyes for a moment as the blood roared in his ears and a wave of nausea hit him like a brick wall. But this was no injury or fatigue brought about by exercise. It was a hangover.

It was a good couple of minutes before the nausea abated and he felt composed enough to stand up straight. Taking a deep breath, he pushed himself off the pillar and descended the steps once more, heading north-west to the Roosevelt Bridge, and crossing over from Maryland into Virginia.

Stopping off at a coffee shop along the way, he ordered a bottle of water, a white coffee with no sugar and a bacon-and-cheese bagel. Hardly the breakfast of champions, but what the hell – nobody was here to lecture him.

He downed the water in one gulp, and was just exiting the shop with his bagel in hand when he felt his cellphone vibrating in his pocket. Frowning, he fished it out and checked the caller ID:
Dan Franklin (Work)
.

Shit.

Once a friend from his former life in the military, Franklin was now a combination employer, manager and occasional financial lifeline. As reluctant as Drake was to admit it, Franklin was the reason he had a job and a roof over his head.

He was calling from his desk at Langley, which Drake took to be a bad sign. If your boss called at 6.00 on a Sunday morning, it was unlikely that it was to invite you over for tea and biscuits. Especially if that boss worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.

There was shit brewing. He could feel it in his bones.

He hit the receive button, already bracing himself for bad news.

‘Dan …’ he began.

‘Ryan, where are you right now?’ Franklin asked, wasting no time in greetings.

‘Good morning to you, too,’ Drake replied with unveiled sarcasm. He was starting to wish he’d left the phone at home.

‘I’m serious. We need to talk.’

Drake frowned. ‘About what, exactly?’

‘Not over the phone. We need you to come in.’

‘Come on, mate. It’s a Sunday,’ Drake reminded him. ‘And it’s my first day off in three weeks.’

Jesus, he’d only just finished with the debriefings and reports and testimonies and all the other bullshit from his last operation. If this was to go over some mismatching statement or lost document, he was ready to tell Franklin where to ram it.

‘Excuse me while I break out the violin,’ Franklin replied without sympathy.

‘Very funny.’ Drake took a bite of his bagel as he walked, covering his other ear to muffle the sound of traffic on the main drag nearby. ‘Is it a debriefing issue?’

‘I wish. No, this is something new. It’s important. There are some big pay cheques overseeing this, if you catch my drift.’

Yeah? I bet none of them come my way, Drake thought with a momentary flash of resentment. Considering the kind of work he did, the payments were unsatisfactory to say the least.

‘This could be a big opportunity, Ryan.’

‘For who?’ Drake couldn’t help asking.

Franklin said nothing for a few moments. ‘Look, I was asked to recommend someone for a job. I told them you
were
one of our best case officers. Don’t be an asshole and prove me wrong.’

‘You’re so good to me, Dan.’

‘What are friends for?’ Franklin asked with a brief flash of humour. ‘Look, come in and hear what we have to say. I want your professional opinion on this one. If you’re interested, we’ll take it from there. If you think it can’t be done … well, we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.’

Drake sighed. He hadn’t planned anything for today, which in itself was a welcome novelty. For the first time in a long time, he had no work to do, no reports to file, no briefings to attend or plans to review. He could afford to relax.

He had a feeling he could kiss goodbye to that idea.

‘No promises,’ he grunted.

Chapter 3

Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters, Langley, Virginia

APPROACHING THE CONFERENCE
room where Franklin was lurking, Drake glanced down at the dark grey business suit he’d thrown on, resisting the urge to pat down a crease on the left sleeve. After taking a cab home, he had showered and quickly donned his suit before jumping in his car and battling through the morning traffic to get here. He hadn’t even had time to shave.

Sunday it might have been, but dress-down days were an urban myth at Langley. Business suits, freshly ironed shirts, ties and gleaming shoes were the order of the day here. Everyone looked as though they belonged in an office-wear catalogue, and somehow it made him feel as though he never quite measured up.

He was an outsider here, and always, just beneath the surface, he felt it. A Brit working for the CIA – rare enough, and not altogether welcomed by some. He also had no real background in the intelligence game.

He was a soldier, not a spook. At least, he had been once. Now he occupied a curious middle ground where those hard-won skills were still put to the test, just by different employers.

He hesitated outside the door. Who the hell was going to be in there with Franklin? What were they going to
ask
of him? What could be so serious that they needed him in this early on a Sunday?

He was far from at his best today. His mind was still fogged by a combination of fatigue and hangover.

Well, too late to back out now. Just get it over with. Steeling himself, he reached for the handle and opened the door.

The conference room was designed to accommodate at least ten people in considerable comfort, with a long wooden-topped table running down the centre, its surface polished to a mirrored shine. Flat-screen televisions were mounted on the walls at each end, no doubt used for teleconferencing and presentations.

The decor was the height of corporate luxury: pristine carpets, wood-panelled walls, expensive leather-backed chairs, the works. Even the coffee set was made of silver instead of the cheap plastic Thermos units Drake was accustomed to.

The entire wall opposite consisted of tinted one-way windows that allowed for impressive views over the surrounding woodland and the Potomac river beyond. The sky was lightening now as the sun crept higher, slowly burning through the early-morning fog. It was shaping up to be another hot, humid day, but one would never know it in there. The air conditioners kept the room at a steady 18 degrees Celsius no matter what the weather.

Despite its size, the room was occupied by only two men, both of whom were sitting at the table with several files and folders laid out in front of them.

The first and younger of the two was Dan Franklin.

Thirty-eight years old, Franklin had served much of his career in the US Marine Corps. He came from a distinguished military family and bore all the baggage
that
went with it; a graduate of West Point, top 10 per cent of his class, the whole spit-and-polish routine.