Redemption (7 page)

Now she understood. Somehow he’d wired the metal water tap into the room’s electrical system, turning it into a giant cattle prod. As soon as she touched it, the resulting discharge had thrown her clear across the room.

Only Rash seemed to show any concern. ‘I think she’s really hurt,’ he warned. ‘Look at her. What if she dies?’

No doubt he was more worried than anything else about the repercussions for himself if a prisoner died on his watch. Even here, questions would be asked.

Striding forward, Bastard knelt down beside her and sat there on his haunches for a few moments, grinning as she tried feebly to move her arm. ‘Had a little accident, did we?’

Her eyes blazed with anger. She wanted to reach out, to tear the bloated, sagging flesh from his face with her bare hands, to gouge his eyes from their sockets, but her body wasn’t listening to the commands her brain was sending it.

‘She’s fine,’ he decided. Rising up, he drew back his boot and slammed the steel toecap into her exposed abdomen. Unable to protect herself, she could do nothing but groan as a fresh wave of agony tore through her.

‘See? Nothing wrong at all.’

The blow was repeated a second time with even greater force. This time she did move, but only to double up and be violently sick across the tiled floor. All of her food for the day, gone in a single moment.

Satisfied, Bastard took a step back, watching with a kind of amused curiosity as she groped and flailed for his boot. Was she trying to attack him? To plead for mercy?

She lay naked before him, helpless and vulnerable. Only her eyes still burned with defiance and rage. He could feel himself becoming aroused just looking at her.

He loved it when he saw that look of helpless rage in her eyes, when her mask of self-control slipped aside and he saw her for who she really was.

He looked at his two companions. ‘Wait outside.’

The two men glanced at each other, but neither uttered a word of protest. The sound of their footsteps on the tiled floor receded. She heard the rasp as Bastard unzipped his trousers.

She was helpless, unable to protect herself, unable to resist as he grabbed her shoulder and rolled her onto her stomach. She could barely feel the chill of the tiles on her naked skin, but she did feel the first gut-wrenching penetration as he thrust inside her.

She closed her eyes and tried to separate her mind from what was happening, wanting nothing more than for it to be over.

Chapter 8

OF THE FOUR
specialists that Drake had requested, Keegan was the first to arrive. Living in the small town of Brookeville just a few miles north of DC, he was within easy reach of CIA headquarters.

A short, wiry man with a wrinkled, deeply tanned face, dishevelled blond hair, pale blue eyes and a bushy moustache, he always looked as though he’d just dragged himself out of bed. He was the sort of guy who could make a thousand-dollar suit look bad, so it was just as well he wasn’t a follower of fashion.

Ignoring the dress code at Langley, today’s ensemble consisted of a worn brown leather jacket, a crumpled white shirt, faded Levi jeans and a pair of scuffed hiking boots. Pretty much the same thing he’d worn the last time Drake had seen him.

‘Ryan. How the hell are ya, buddy?’ he asked with his distinctive South Carolina drawl, cracking a toothy grin as they shook hands. He might have been built like a rake, but there was a robust strength in his wiry old muscles that belied his size.

‘Keeping busy, mate.’

‘Well, good. I guess you’ve got a real shit bird lined up, huh?’

Drake couldn’t help but smile. Keegan was closer to the truth than he knew. ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’

Mason arrived next, having made the 30-mile drive from his home in Baltimore in under an hour. Unlike Keegan, he was a big man, tall and broad shouldered, with a lean, angular face, olive-coloured skin and dark eyes that missed nothing.

He always kept his hair shaved to the bone, typical of his military background, but Drake suspected he was getting thin on top and just didn’t want to admit to it. In any case, he had dressed for the occasion, wearing a grey business suit that looked as if it had come straight off the peg.

‘Jesus, Ryan, you look like shit today,’ he remarked without preamble.

‘Better than looking like shit every day,’ Drake returned with a wry smile.

The older man grinned. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

Frost was next. She’d been about 100 miles south in Richmond when the call came in, though she arrived only a few minutes behind Mason. God only knew how many speed limits she’d broken on the way here, but Drake wasn’t surprised. Speed limits had never meant much to her.

She was carrying her leather biker’s jacket over her arm as she approached.

‘This had better be good, Ryan,’ she warned, tossing it over the back of the nearest chair. She reached up and brushed a lock of dark hair out of her eye. Frost had a temper like no one he’d ever met, especially in the morning.

‘Interrupted your beauty sleep, did we?’ Keegan quipped as he poured himself a coffee.

Frost gave him the finger.

‘Grab a coffee and a chair,’ Drake suggested. ‘We’ll get started in a minute.’

As it turned out, it was another ten minutes before Dietrich finally showed up, sauntering into the conference room as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He only lived 10 miles away, yet it had taken him longer than any of the others to get here.

Drake was taken aback by the change in him. The Dietrich he’d known had been a muscular, intimidating man with piercing blue eyes and rugged good looks. He’d always worn expensive clothes, top-of-the-range watches, kept himself groomed to the point of vanity.

In contrast, the man before him was lean and spare, the veins in his exposed arms standing out hard against his skin. His dark hair was longer and dishevelled, greying a little at the sides, and he’d grown a goatee beard. But even that couldn’t hide the hollowness in his face.

He was wearing a grey polo shirt and jeans – a far cry from the Gucci suits that used to be his apparel of choice.

But for all that, his eyes still gleamed with quick intelligence, and he moved with the confident, unhurried walk of a man firmly in control of the situation.

‘Nice of you to join us, Jonas,’ Drake remarked with a pointed glance at his watch.

‘Good to be here, Ryan.’ Taking in Drake’s appearance, he frowned. ‘You’re looking tired these days.’ He leaned in closer and added, ‘Not as easy as you thought being a team leader, is it?’

Drake met his gaze evenly. ‘Well, that’s not something you have to worry about now.’

Dietrich’s smile contained no warmth as he locked eyes with Drake. Then, without saying anything he helped himself to a chair and tilted it back, making sure he was quite comfortable before looking expectantly at Drake. ‘Well, aren’t you going to get us started?’

Chapter 9

NAKED AND HALF
frozen, she was dragged into her cell and dumped on the floor without a word. Her mind barely registered the flash of pain as her head hit the concrete, but she did feel the cold begin to seep through her skin. Her clothes were tossed in a moment later, landing on the stained mattress.

Bastard had seen to it that she was dragged naked through the general population block, still dazed and struggling to regain control of her muscles after the massive electric shock she’d received. The other inmates had loved that one, yelling and banging on the cell bars. They had even hurled a few new insults her way, though she barely heeded them.

Still chortling with amusement at the earlier spectacle, Lazy Eye backed out of the cell and slammed the door shut behind him.

She was alone.

She coughed and spat, leaving a trail of bloody phlegm on the floor. She must have bitten her tongue when they’d shocked her. She could taste copper in her mouth, but the pain didn’t register.

Pain was something she had become so accustomed to, it was almost the norm for her now.

For nearly a full minute, she didn’t move a muscle, just lay there watching her breath misting in the cool air.
She
almost didn’t want to move. She felt as if she had been beaten from the inside out.

It had been some time since Bastard had had her, and he’d done his best to make up for lost time. Twice he had raped her in that cold shower room. Twice she had had to endure the weight of his massive, heaving bulk on top of her, feeling his hot breath in her ear as he grunted and thrust away. She couldn’t decide which was worse; the hard, fast and brutal first time, or his slower and more thorough second attempt.

She should have felt anger at what had happened. She should have felt revulsion and hatred and disgust and grief and a dozen other emotions that normal women would have felt.

No such feelings stirred within her now. The only anger she felt was towards herself and her body – her soft and vulnerable body that could be so easily hurt. Had she been born a man, she could have endured places like Khatyrgan with ease.

She could have endured many things in her life.

She was tired. Tired of this place, tired of waiting for the next round of pain and humiliation, tired of being cold and eating the same shit food every day.

She had thought herself strong once, able to endure anything, able to fight her way out of any situation. Years ago she had been a soldier, a warrior, a killer who struck without remorse, without fear, without conscience or regret, and who none could stand against. She had once stood on the brink of greatness, commanding power and respect that most could only dream of.

Yes, she had been strong then, and arrogant.

And wrong.

Now, lying there naked and shivering, with her insides
aching
and burning, she understood just how wrong she had been.

Yes, she had been wrong, and she was paying the price for that every single day of her life. Every day in this 6-foot-by-8-foot world, she lost a little more of that strength. Every day another piece of her died, until at last there wasn’t all that much left to call her own.

If she was to just lie there, the cold would eventually take her. It was such an easy thought, such an easy escape.

She would fall asleep, and that would be it.

Maybe it was better that way.

Suddenly, unbidden, her mind echoed with a voice that was not her own, speaking words that had once been recited to her long ago, words which had been drilled into the very core of her being, words which had sustained her many times when her hope had faded.

I will endure when all others fail. I will stand when all others retreat. Weakness will not be in my heart. Fear will not be in my creed. I will show no mercy. I will never hesitate. I will never surrender
.

Her eyes snapped open, focused now with a clarity that her torture and rape had all but extinguished. A fire of defiance, of hatred and rage flared up inside her, driving away the weariness and the thoughts of surrender and despair.

I won’t die here. I won’t. They can kill me if they want, but I won’t lay down and die for them. I won’t give them that pleasure.

Get up. Get up now
.

Slowly, painfully, she managed to get her arms beneath her and pushed herself up from the floor as she had
done
so many times. The effort left her trembling and gasping for breath, but she was up.

Forcing her rigid, frozen muscles to work, she reached out and grasped her clothes in a white-knuckle grip, dragging them across the floor towards her.

I will never surrender
.

Chapter 10

‘GOOD MORNING, EVERYONE,’
Drake began. ‘I’m sorry we had to call you in at such short notice, but we have an urgent situation and very little time to bring you up to speed. Here’s an overview of what we have so far …’

He had spent the past two hours collating their objectives, the fledgling assault plan, the vast array of intelligence documents retrieved by Cain, and his own thoughts and recommendations into what he hoped was a logical and concise briefing dossier.

It was still rough, strewn with typos and dangerously vague in places, but it was the best he could do in the time available. Any gaps would have to be filled with verbal questions and answers as they went.

For the next twenty minutes, he outlined in broad terms what had happened thus far, what their objectives were, how they were to be carried out, as well as everything he’d been able to learn about Khatyrgan Prison.

‘So to summarise, our goal is to find an operative answering to the name
Maras
, secure her and get her back to US soil as quickly as possible. The entire operation has to be carried out with total deniability. Questions?’

Frost wasn’t shy about voicing hers. ‘Is this for real? I mean, launching a covert op against Russia? Parachuting into a maximum security prison?’

‘It’s very real,’ Drake confirmed. ‘Next question.’

Dietrich was next. ‘Who exactly is this woman?’

Drake glanced to his right. Cain, along with Franklin, was sitting in on the briefing. Officially they were present to review Drake’s plan and give it the green light, but he suspected Cain was simply there to keep a handle on what was being discussed.

‘Her identity is classified,’ Cain answered.

‘You’re asking us to risk our lives for her. I think we deserve to know.’

Cain gave him a look that would have made most men squirm in their seats. ‘You’re not in a position to make that call. If that’s not acceptable, you’re free to leave any time, Mr Dietrich.’

At this, Dietrich simmered down a little. Even he knew when to back off.

Drake cleared his throat, carrying on with the briefing. He was quite happy to watch Cain tear him a new one all day, but they were short of time already. ‘Needless to say, if any of us are caught or captured, the Agency will deny all knowledge of our existence.’

‘Surprise me,’ Keegan remarked with dry humour.

‘I’m serious,’ Drake cut in. ‘Before we go any further, I want everyone to be clear about what they’re getting into. If anyone wants to back out, this is the time. Nobody will think less of you.’