Redemption (43 page)

‘Bullshit,’ Frost retorted. He had suspected it was her based on her height and build, and the voice confirmed it. ‘Why the fuck are you protecting someone like her?’

‘Because she’s the only one who can help me.’

Dietrich’s brows drew together in a frown. ‘What do you mean?’

Drake opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment the light blinked out, plunging the room into darkness.

An instant later, he heard a crunch followed by a low groan of pain, and then the dull thud of a body hitting the floor.

‘Contact!’ Frost cried out in warning.

‘Rahul’s down!’

It could only have been Anya. Drake had no idea where she was, especially in pitch darkness, but she was in there somewhere with them. He felt the hairs prickle on the back of his neck, and a creeping sense of dread rising up from the pit of his stomach. She was a predator stalking her prey; silent, remorseless, deadly.

Maras – a goddess of war.

Without hesitation, he made a dash to the right, reached down and felt his fingers close around the stock of the AK-47. Snatching the weapon up, he thumbed the safety catch off and backed up against the Hilux.

Suddenly the room blazed with red light as Dietrich triggered a signal flare, dropping the device at his feet.

For a brief moment, Drake saw the man silhouetted against the crimson glow, his weapon up and ready. Then there was a blur of motion on his left. A figure leapt from the shadows, grasped the weapon in a vice-like grip and yanked it from his hand.

Dietrich lashed out with his fist, meeting nothing but air. She was a ghost, no more substantial than the grotesque shadows cast by the flare. Before he could recover, Anya moved around to his other side, grabbed him and drove her knee into his stomach. A hard strike to the back of his neck sent him sprawling on the concrete floor.

She wasted no time contemplating her victory. Frost was mere yards away, searching the flickering shadows for a target. Hearing the commotion, she turned towards the source of the noise, bringing her USP to bear.

Anya was on her in a heartbeat. Staring in horrified fascination, Drake watched as her hand shot out, gripped the weapon’s slide and shoved it backward just as Frost pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened. With the slide in its rear position, the hammer was blocked, preventing it from striking the round in the chamber.

Twisting the weapon away, Anya drew back her left arm and drilled Frost across the jaw, snapping her head to the side. Stunned, the young woman slackened her grip on the weapon.

Anya pulled it out of her grasp before she could recover. With casual ease, she ejected the magazine, pulled back the slide and pressed the release pin on the right side of the frame. With the locking assembly disengaged, the weapon literally fell apart in her hands, its components clattering to the floor.

But Frost wasn’t finished. The blow had enflamed her already wounded pride, and the older woman’s brief pause to disarm the weapon had bought her a vital second or two to regain her wits. Unsheathing a combat knife from her webbing, she spun back to face her adversary, lashing out with the blade in a vicious backhanded swipe.

Anya stepped back a pace, allowing the blade to sail past her throat by mere inches. From her perspective it was a clumsy swing, lacking speed or finesse, and easily evaded.

For a fleeting moment, Frost glared at her enemy in the flickering red light. Anya made no move either to advance or retreat. She was just standing there, waiting for Frost to attack. Only her eyes glimmered in the light of the flare, cold and blue and utterly without mercy.

Maras – a goddess of war.

‘You fucking bitch,’ Frost hissed, tightening her grip on the weapon. ‘I should have killed you on the plane.’

With aggression born from simmering resentment and anger, she came at Anya, thrusting and swiping the blade, aiming for any vulnerable spot she could find.

But her target proved as elusive as she was intimidating. Twice Frost swung, and twice Anya dodged aside with infuriating ease, the blade slicing nothing but air. When a third unsuccessful attack left her overextended and vulnerable, Anya at last went on the offensive, catching Frost’s arm and twisting it behind her back.

The young woman cried out in pain and fear, bucking and kicking with desperate strength to try to free herself, but Anya’s grip was unrelenting. The pressure increased, stretching sinews and tendons. The knife fell from her grip, her fingers numb and tingling.

Nearby, Drake caught movement out of the corner of
his
eye. It was Dietrich, struggling to rise after being knocked down by Anya. The sight of the two women locked in combat was enough to revive him, and he snatched up the MP5 that the woman had taken from him.

Rushing forward, Drake grabbed the long silencer protruding from the end of the barrel. Dietrich’s instinctive reaction was to squeeze the trigger. Drake jerked the weapon upward as a burst of automatic fire scythed the air, pattering into the roof overhead.

But the superheated gases inside the weapon caused the barrel to heat up almost immediately. Drake winced as the hot metal seared his skin, and wrenched the weapon aside. He was stronger than his adversary and he had surprise on his side.

For an instant, their eyes met. Dietrich’s held a mixture of shock and anger. A hard cross to the jaw sent him down for good.

Wasting no time, Drake threw the red hot weapon aside. Adrenalin was masking the pain for now, but he would feel it later, he knew.

Anya almost felt sorry for her adversary. Young, proud and arrogant, she possessed both speed and aggression, but little skill. Her actions were predictable, her movements easy to read. Anya could have disarmed her at any time, but she had waited for the right moment, wanting to minimise the risk of injury to herself. Even an amateur could sometimes get lucky, and she couldn’t afford to get injured tonight.

Now she had Frost at her mercy. The young woman who would have sliced her throat without a second thought, who would have put a bullet through her skull without hesitation. She could kill her in a heartbeat.

Anya felt the familiar thrill of victory, of having pitted
herself
against an enemy and prevailed. She should kill her now and get it over with.

‘Anya!’

She glanced up, and saw Drake standing before her, the barrel of his AK levelled at her head.

‘Let her go.’

In an instant, she weighed up the odds and made her decision.

Leaning in close, she whispered in the woman’s ear. ‘Remember this moment. Remember what I could have done.’

Exerting downward pressure, she forced Frost to her knees, raised her arm up and brought an elbow down on her shoulder. She heard the telltale pop as the joint gave way and felt the arm go slack, followed immediately by an agonised scream. Frost was out of the fight. Grabbing her by her webbing straps, Anya hurled her aside, out of the path of the Hilux.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Drake yelled, appalled.

Anya looked at him, exasperated. ‘She’ll live. Get the shutters open.’

Turning away, she pulled open the driver’s door of the Hilux and clambered in. As she’d expected, the keys were laid beneath the seat.

Drake by contrast stood rooted to the spot, staring at the injured woman who was now curled into a ball and moaning in pain.

‘Drake! Come on,’ she yelled, turning the engine over. It spluttered once then roared into life. ‘Get the shutters.’

Shooting her a vicious glare, Drake hurried over to the shutter control and pressed the button to retract them.

He was visibly shaking with anger when he returned to the vehicle. ‘This didn’t have to happen. They would have listened to me.’

‘Were you willing to bet your life on that? And your sister’s?’ Anya shot back. As the shutters ground upward, she turned to look at him, her eyes shining with baleful fire in the glow of the dashboard light. ‘And unless you plan to pull the trigger, don’t ever point a weapon at me again.’

With that, she turned her attention back to the road ahead and gunned the accelerator. The big vehicle lurched forward out of the garage and took off down the street in a spray of dust.

Chapter 59

‘GODDAMN IT! THIS
was supposed to be a clean takedown,’ Franklin raged down the phone. ‘What the fuck happened?’

Dietrich winced, holding the phone with one hand and an ice pack against his head with the other. The medics had told him he might have a minor concussion, which did little to improve his mood.

‘They had help. They bailed out of the house before we could secure it. We tracked them to a garage nearby, but Maras ambushed us.’ He clenched his jaw. ‘She blew through us like we weren’t even there. I’ve never seen anything like her.’

‘So people keep telling me,’ Franklin observed sourly. ‘What’s your status now?’

‘I’m hanging in there. Frost is hurt, though.’

That changed his attitude. ‘How bad?’

The young woman was being attended by a pair of medics. With one man holding her steady, another gripped her dislocated arm and pushed upward to reset her shoulder, eliciting an angry cry of pain.

‘Ow, goddamn it! Son of a bitch!’ she yelled, pushing the first man away. He stared at her open mouthed, too surprised to respond.

Defiant to the end. Dietrich couldn’t help but smile. ‘She’ll live.’

‘Good. Now what are we doing to find them?’

‘It seems logical to assume they’re heading for Iraq. We’ve alerted all border guards and put out an APB on the vehicle, but we’ve got six hundred miles of largely unpatrolled desert to cover. That’s a big search area.’

‘Just do what you can, Jonas.’

Great advice. Dietrich was about to hang up, but thought better of it. ‘There’s something else …’

‘Well, spit it out, for Christ sake,’ Franklin snapped.

It took a great deal of self-control not to voice the first thought that came to mind. ‘Before the lights went out, Drake said something about Anya being the only one who could help him.’

Silence greeted him for several seconds. ‘What are you getting at?’

‘Something else is going on here, Dan.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted.

‘Damn it, Jonas. I need more than vague theories and cryptic hints. Don’t you have anything useful to tell me?’

Dietrich bit his lip. ‘I’ll get back to you.’

Closing down the phone, he walked over to talk with Frost, doing his best to hide his limp.

‘How are you feeling?’

The young woman’s shoulder was heavily strapped up, the right side of her face discoloured by dark bruising along her jawline.

‘Like I just lost a fucking fight,’ she spat. ‘How do you think?’

The physical injuries would heal, but there was no tonic for wounded pride. ‘We’ll get you on a flight home soon.’

She looked up at him, her grey eyes blazing. ‘The hell
you
will. If you try to take me off this op, I swear to God I’ll kill you, Dietrich.’

‘You’re injured.’

‘So are you,’ she reminded him, then lowered her voice. ‘And not forgetting your … “condition”. Wouldn’t want anyone to find out about that, would we?’

Dietrich glared at her, torn between anger, frustration and a certain grudging respect for her determination. ‘If you slow us down …’

‘I won’t,’ she assured him.

He shook his head in dismay. ‘Fine. Have it your way.’

If she was determined to get herself killed, he wasn’t about to stop her.

Leaving her to it, he walked away in search of Rahul. The man was on the other side of the street outside the garage, a couple of plastic sutures holding together the cut on his forehead. Anya had struck him with a wrench; checking her force so as not to deal him a fatal injury.

Another man she could have killed, but hadn’t.

‘Are you going to survive?’

The Saudi lieutenant offered him a pained smile. ‘I’m beginning to wish I had not volunteered for this job.’

‘You’re not the only one,’ Dietrich assured him before turning to more practical matters. ‘Where are we on leads?’

‘We have found nothing so far, though with such a big search area, it will be almost impossible to box them in. We are trying to tie in with local Army commanders to help with the search, but they are not being cooperative.’ He offered a lopsided grimace. ‘Apparently their units are tasked to “other operations”.’

He had expected as much. ‘What about Khariri?’

‘We have him at an interrogation centre not far from
here
. He continues to deny any involvement with or knowledge of the woman.’

‘He gave them food and shelter, and helped them escape,’ Dietrich reminded him. ‘He must know something.’

‘No doubt, but I do not think he will break easily. He is former Saudi Army, trained to resist interrogation.’

Everyone could be broken. Dietrich knew that much from experience. All you had to do was find the right buttons, and push them.

‘We have his family in custody, don’t we?’

He had an idea. It wasn’t an idea he would have contemplated under normal circumstances, but at that moment he could think of nothing else.

‘Yes.’

He looked at the younger man, his expression hardening. ‘Better bring them in.’

Chapter 60

WITH THE POWERFUL
engine rumbling away, they raced northward on Highway 50, their speed never dropping below 70 miles per hour. There was little to stand in their way at such a late hour.

Drake said nothing, but Anya could feel his silent, brooding anger as he worked to bandage his burned hand. He had injured himself to save her life, she realised. She could have used Frost as a human shield, but she was glad it hadn’t come to that.

Still, he was angry with her. She understood why, yet what else could she have done? If she hadn’t fought to defend herself, they would both be in custody now, or dead.

She had seen the look in Dietrich’s eyes just before Drake intervened. He would have happily killed Frost to get to her.

‘How is your hand?’ she asked, hoping to concentrate on something practical, something she could deal with.