Sacrifice (16 page)

Wooden chairs and tables similar to the ones in the bar below were stacked in various places, along with sagging cardboard boxes, rusty machinery that could have belonged to anything, and a couple of threadbare floral couches that looked as though they’d been supporting the world’s most obese man for the past few decades. The floor was nothing more than bare boards, warped with age and marked by a variety of stains. Some looked like dried blood.

This room was at least better illuminated than the bar below. The wooden shutters were closed, but they too had warped and shrunk with age, allowing bright shafts of evening sunlight to stream through.

Drake took another step forward, gripping the weapon tight.

His eyes were everywhere, seeking a target, seeking movement, seeking anything. The room was quiet and still, with only the background noise of the city outside, and the muted thump of his boots on the floorboards within.

Where the hell was his contact? If they wanted him here, why keep him waiting like this?

‘You’re getting sloppy, Ryan,’ a voice announced from behind.

Drake twisted around, bringing the weapon to bear. His heart was racing, his pulse pounding, his mind focused on threat assessment and target acquisition, ready to make the countless decisions and calculations necessary to decide whether or not to fire.

But the moment he locked eyes with the figure who emerged from the shadows, it all fell apart. The decisions, the calculations, the assessments and judgements, all of them vanished from his mind as shock and disbelief swept them away.

‘Anya.’

The weapon lowered seemingly of its own volition as he stared at the woman standing just a few paces away, comparing her with the memory etched for ever into his mind.

The same pale blonde hair. The same finely sculpted, almost noble features. The same wry smile and the same intense icy blue eyes. It was her. It was Anya.

But a different Anya from the one he had known. She had changed in the year they had been apart. Her hair was cut short now, her skin tanned from long exposure to the sun, her once thin and malnourished body filled out and healthy. The close-fitting black T-shirt she wore revealed the contours of her athletic physique, her bare arms betraying the taut, sinewy muscles of hard-won physical strength.

All things considered, she looked much improved since their last encounter.

‘Hello, Ryan,’ she remarked, taking in his appearance. He sensed she was entertaining similar thoughts, though he doubted he compared as favourably. ‘How have you been?’

The question was posed as awkwardly as it was phrased. Anya had never been big on small talk, and the past year had clearly done little to change that.

‘You mean since you shot me in the stomach and left me to bleed to death in the middle of the desert? I’m tip-top, thanks.’

Anya had been a wanted woman when they’d parted ways – wanted by the Russians, wanted by the Agency, wanted by Cain. Knowing that Drake would have taken the fall for allowing her to escape, she had done the unthinkable and shot the man who had twice saved her life. It had been enough to convince the Agency that he was still playing for the right team.

By almost killing him, she had probably saved his life.

But if she was expecting gratitude, she would be waiting a long time. He had been willing to follow her, willing to risk everything for her, and she’d left him behind. Left him to go back to his old life, to linger on alone, to live with a sword hanging over his head for the past year. That was something he wasn’t ready to forgive.

The wry smile faded. ‘I did what I could for you. You are still alive.’

‘I’ll be sure to send you the medical bill.’ He tucked the Beretta down the back of his jeans, more or less sure it wouldn’t be needed for now, and looked at her again. ‘I assume you caused that breakdown back on the road?’

The breakdown that had stopped traffic and blocked Drake’s path, forcing him to exit his vehicle to investigate. Then it had been a simple matter of approaching while he was distracted, and the rest practically took care of itself.

She shrugged. ‘A few dollars to have a local taxi driver pretend to break down. That was all it took.’

‘Why? You knew where I was. You could have found me before now.’

His question was implicit – if you knew where to find me, why did you leave me alone for more than a year?

He could almost feel her impatience. ‘Of course I could have found you. But what then? Unless you are more stupid than you look, you will know you are being watched closely by the Agency.’

She was right, of course. Much as he hated to admit it. Keeping friends close and enemies closer had never been more relevant where Cain was concerned.

‘Believe me, I’m very aware of that fact,’ Drake said, flashing an accusing glare at her. She said nothing, as he knew she would. Whatever she had come here for, it hadn’t been to bicker and squabble with him.

‘So why now?’ he asked, adopting a calmer tone. ‘What are you doing out here?’

Sighing, she settled herself on one of the wooden chairs that looked in less danger of collapse than its comrades. ‘You may want to take a seat,’ she suggested, gesturing to an empty chair opposite.

‘I’ll stand.’

‘Suit yourself.’ She shrugged, dismissing the issue. His personal comfort was not a concern of hers. ‘I’m here because I have questions, Drake.’

‘What sort of questions?’

‘I was in a Russian prison when we first met. I assure you, I did not end up there by being reckless or stupid. The Russian FSB intercepted me on my way to Iraq five years ago.’ She looked him hard in the eye. ‘It seems logical that someone I trusted betrayed me to them. When we parted ways last year, I intended to find out who and why. The trail led me as far as Afghanistan, then I
hit a dead end,’ she said, unwilling to elaborate. ‘That was when I learned you were here.’

‘What do you mean, you
learned
?’ It wasn’t as if his arrival had been printed in the local newspapers.

‘I have been keeping tabs on you,’ she explained, as if it were obvious.

‘Why?’

‘Because you are a source within the Agency, and you are a link to Cain.’ She hesitated, finding it difficult to express herself. ‘And … because I wanted to know you were all right.’

Very compassionate, he thought, resisting the urge to touch the scar on his stomach. First she shot him in the gut, then she kept careful tabs on him to ensure he was safe – talk about mixed messages.

The look in his eyes gave his thoughts away to Anya as clearly as if he’d spoken them out loud. She seemed to withdraw a little then, relinquishing whatever tentative effort she had made to reach out to him.

‘You still didn’t answer my question,’ he pressed. She was stalling, and that only made him more determined to reach the truth. ‘Why contact me now?’

Anya leaned back in the rickety old chair, her arms folded across her chest, thin strips of orange light from outside playing across her face as her icy eyes surveyed him. ‘Two days ago a Black Hawk helicopter was shot down not far from here. Less than twenty-four hours later, you and your team arrive. Given your … profession, it seems likely these two things are connected.’

She said nothing further, just sat there watching him, waiting for him to confirm or deny her theory.

Drake looked away, saying nothing, content to let her sweat for a while. He felt like a poker player sizing up
his opponent, trying to see how far they were willing to go.

‘If you want to sulk like a spoiled child, do it in your own time,’ Anya said, rising from her chair as if to leave. ‘But do not waste mine.’

‘One of the men on that chopper was a CIA operative,’ Drake said, unwilling to see her walk away. He’d bluffed, and she’d just called it.

Slowly she sat back down, keeping her eyes on him. ‘Go on,’ she prompted.

With a sigh, he took a seat on the chair opposite her. ‘He’s being held hostage by an Afghan insurgent group. If we don’t close down one of our biggest detention centres and release all the prisoners within three days, they’ll execute him and shoot down more aircraft.’

The woman appeared unmoved by this revelation. ‘I assume the Agency will not give in to these demands?’

Drake shook his head. It was a ludicrous demand to have made in the first place; no one man’s life was worth releasing hundreds of terrorists and insurgent leaders. ‘They can’t. You know that as well as I do,’ he said. ‘Our only option is to find him before the deadline. That’s why we’re here.’

‘Why you?’

He chewed his lip for a moment, as reluctant to get into this discussion with Anya as he had been with Frost. ‘Because I captured the leader of the group five years ago.’

‘I see,’ she said thoughtfully, taking careful note of the change in his posture, the tension in his shoulders. ‘You could have killed him, but you spared his life, yes?’

Drake said nothing to that, which told her everything she needed to know.

‘It is not the things we do that we regret, but the things we
don’t
do—’

‘Are you finished?’ Drake snapped, immediately regretting it.

Anya surveyed him in silence, her gaze cool and assessing. She was sparring with him, pushing him, trying to elicit a reaction. Why, he didn’t know. But she had succeeded, and that only raised his ire further.

‘I’ve answered your questions,’ he said, forcing calm into his voice. ‘Quid pro quo, Anya.’

‘What do you want?’

Drake leaned forward in his chair, locking eyes with her. ‘Tell me what you know about Stinger missiles.’

That question caught her off guard. He could see the surprise in her eyes, even if her face appeared impassive. It seemed suddenly as if her mind had jumped up a gear, evaluating, considering, analysing new possibilities.

‘We brought many into Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation,’ she answered at last. ‘I helped smuggle some of them over the border from Pakistan.’

Drake still found it hard to believe; she could only have been in her twenties at the time. How had someone so young become caught up in all that?

Still, those were questions for another day.

‘Could one of those Stingers have shot down a Black Hawk?’

Anya was silent for a few moments, considering his question. ‘No,’ she decided at last. ‘Not after two decades. The Stinger’s battery coolant units would not survive more than a couple of years without skilled maintenance, and replacements would be impossible.’

‘And if I told you we have hard evidence it
was
shot down by a Stinger?’

At this, the woman shrugged. ‘I can’t argue with facts.
But if a Stinger shot down that chopper, I would bet my life it was a new weapon.’

Drake frowned, perplexed by her revelation. The only theory that seemed to fit the available facts had just been shredded. Was it possible she was wrong? He supposed even Anya wasn’t infallible, and yet she seemed adamant about it.

He was missing something – he knew that much. Some vital piece of the puzzle remained hidden. The problem was, he had no idea where to look for it.

He glanced at her again, struck by another thought. ‘There’s more to this, isn’t there? You wouldn’t have taken a chance like this just to catch up with an old “friend”. What do you really want?’

For a moment he thought he saw a faint smile, as if she were amused that he had finally caught on to something that should have been blindingly obvious.

‘You’re right. Even if it took you a while,’ she added. ‘I came here to warn you.’

‘Warn me?’

‘You recently visited the headquarters of Horizon Defence. I saw your vehicle drive into the compound,’ she explained. ‘I imagine you spoke to a man named Carpenter while you were there.’

At the very mention of his name, she seemed to tense up, the muscles in her shoulders tightening, her hands curling into fists.

‘And if I did?’

She leaned forward again, her eyes locked with his. ‘I suggest you be on your guard around him. He is not a man to be trusted.’

That went without saying. Drake hadn’t exactly warmed to the man during their brief meeting earlier. Still, it didn’t explain what her beef with him was.

‘How do you know him?’

For a moment, her eyes seemed to lose focus as her mind flashed back to another time, another place, replaying old memories.

‘He was once my … teacher,’ she said, her voice soft, quiet, tinged with old pain. ‘When I first joined the Agency.’

Drake frowned. ‘I thought Cain was your instructor?’

As he understood it, Cain had been Anya’s mentor. He had spotted her potential, inducted her into the Agency, trained her and prepared her for the clandestine operations she would one day take part in.

Cain had eventually become her handler and, Drake suspected, something more. But whatever relationship they had once shared, it had long since turned sour.

To his surprise, she chuckled at this notion. ‘Cain might have brought me in, but he was no field agent. For the work I was to do, they needed someone with more … unique skills. Carpenter was that man. He taught me everything I needed to know – taught me how to survive, how to fight, how to kill. He taught me how to do all of those things, and feel no emotion about it. He made me into … a soldier.’ There was a bitter undertone in her voice when she added, ‘I have a lot to thank him for.’

No wonder Carpenter hadn’t responded well to his probing questions, Drake thought. If this was a man who had moulded Anya into the operative she had become, then he wasn’t someone to be fucked with.

‘So what’s the problem?’

‘I made the mistake of underestimating him,’ she admitted. ‘It did not end well for me.’

And then, just like that, she blinked. The memories vanished, the barriers went back up, and her eyes focused on Drake once more.

‘I told you I was in this country looking for answers. Well, Carpenter is my best chance. He knows more about me than anyone left alive, except Cain. I intend to find out just how much he knows.’

And then at last the truth dawned on Drake. ‘So that’s why you really made contact. You need my help.’

Anya said nothing, though the uncomfortable look in her eyes told him everything he needed to know.