Sacrifice (2 page)

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.

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.