Deception Game (43 page)

Sitting with his back against a crumbling sandstone wall, Cole Mason was in a sombre mood as he surveyed the rolling desert that disappeared off into the night, like a dark and stormy sea frozen in time.

All throughout the afternoon they had maintained a constant vigil on the desert surrounding their hilltop refuge, wary of being caught off guard by another passing traveller. Having no knowledge of this area, it was hard to understand whether these ruins held any special significance for the local tribesmen, perhaps acting as a landmark or even holy ground, or whether the encounter had been nothing more than random chance.

Whatever the reason, Mason knew it was almost time to move. Drake had specifically warned that if they hadn’t heard from him, they were to pull out and get themselves across the border to Tunisia before dawn. He hated the thought of abandoning his two teammates, but as Drake had rightly pointed out, if he hadn’t made contact by now then the chances were he never would.

‘Goddamn it,’ he said under his breath, rising to his feet and returning to the interior of the ruined building.

Frost was waiting for him, her dark expression making it clear she knew why he was there, and what he wanted to say.

‘Forget it, Cole,’ she warned, pre-empting him. ‘We’re not going anywhere.’

‘I don’t like it any more than you do. But Ryan ordered us—’

‘Fuck his orders.’ She rose to her feet, fists clenched. ‘I don’t go in for that noble self-sacrificing bullshit any more than you do. He could still make it.’

‘Yeah, he could.’ Mason’s voice was quiet, even gentle. He knew that shouting at her was a waste of time. She had to be persuaded to see sense. ‘But he gave us those orders for a reason. If we’re still here at dawn, we won’t be able to move until tomorrow night. Our water won’t last three people that long.’

Being captured or even killed was one thing. Dying slowly of thirst out here in the burning sun was quite another.

‘So we cut the number of mouths to feed,’ the young woman said, glancing at Laila.

Mason let out a sigh. If the worst came to the worst and they were forced to leave Libya without Drake and McKnight, they would cut Laila loose once they reached a friendly country. She might not have much of a future to look forward to with no home and no husband, but at least she’d have her life. He wasn’t about to execute an innocent civilian now, when he’d risked discovery to avoid doing so earlier.

‘That’s not who we are,’ he said, staring into her eyes. ‘You know that.’

Frost held his gaze for a moment, then seemed to waver as the import of her hasty suggestion sank in. She swallowed, looking away uncomfortably. ‘What are you suggesting?’

‘We get ourselves close to the border, then we wait and listen out on the radio. If we still haven’t heard from Ryan by dawn, then we go.’ It wasn’t much of a window, but it was the best he could offer. ‘Fair enough?’

Frost chewed her lip, which she always seemed to do when she was unhappy. Then, seeming to reach a decision, she reached down and picked up the shotgun that had been resting against a fallen pillar beside her.

‘I’m not giving up on him,’ she mumbled, unwilling to look him in the eye.

That was about as close to an agreement as he was likely to get, but it was enough. Mason reached out and laid a comforting hand on her shoulder, knowing there was nothing he could say or do that would make them feel better about what was happening.

But just as he was about to speak, he was alerted by a noise over by the north wall. The scuffling of footsteps on the sand, followed by the faint metallic clink of a weapon being readied.

His head snapped around, and straightaway he caught sight of a figure rising up from the shadows like a ghost, having approached unseen and unheard.

‘Contact,’ he hissed, reaching for his automatic.

Frost too went for her weapon, dropping to her knees to present as small a target as possible as she brought the shotgun to bear.

‘You not move!’ a voice shouted from behind, warning her that a second attacker had them covered.

Even as she began to turn towards this new threat, she spotted a third man crouched in the rubble on the east side of the building. A man dressed in traditional Bedouin desert clothes, armed with a long-barrelled rifle. A man who had prayed at this very spot earlier in the day.

In a matter of seconds they were cornered and surrounded, covered from three different directions at once. They had fucked up by letting that young man escape earlier, she realized then. The tribesman who they had believed ignorant of their presence had obviously seen something and quietly left to report it, coming back later with reinforcements.

They should have killed him when they’d had the chance.

To start shooting now would be suicidal; she knew that right away. The shotgun was effective at little more than fifty yards, and could fire only two shells at a time before it had to be reloaded. Mason too was low on ammunition for his silenced automatic, leaving them at a heavy disadvantage in both numbers and firepower.

Still, she wasn’t afraid to fight, and if it came down to it she would rather die on her feet than rot away in a Libyan jail for the rest of her life. She glanced at Mason, wondering if he was of like mind.

‘Wouldn’t try it, if I were you,’ a voice warned them. A voice that certainly didn’t belong to this country. ‘Put down your guns and raise your hands.’

Frost let out a startled breath. She knew that voice.

Hearing footsteps on the sand by the south wall, she turned in time to see a man emerge from the growing shadows. A man dressed in desert camouflage gear, with a cloak wrapped around his body and a khaki-coloured keffiyeh covering much of his face.

An AK-74 assault rifle, its barrel and stock painted yellow-brown to help it blend in against the desert background, was up at his shoulder, covering them. She knew all too well that a single sustained burst would be enough to wipe them all out.

Reaching up with his free hand, he unwound the keffiyeh and allowed it to fall away, revealing the face beneath.

Frost felt her blood run cold as her worst fears were confirmed.

‘Oh fuck.’

‘Envoy to all units, acknowledge,’ McKnight said, speaking quietly into her radio as their car bumped and rumbled across the open desert. ‘Repeat, all units acknowledge this transmission.’

‘You’re wasting your time,’ Drake warned her, steering the Toyota around a dune that would almost certainly have bogged them down had he tried to tackle it head-on. ‘We’re still too far out.’

They had been driving cross-country for the best part of two hours. With the headlights turned off to hide their presence and the slowly deteriorating engine running at low revs, Drake had rarely been able to achieve more than 30 mph as the difficult terrain required constant attention. It had been a wearying task, to say the least, not helped by the constant threat of pursuit or interception.

Nonetheless, the miles had slowly crept by beneath their wheels – ten, twenty, thirty. According to the odometer they had covered more than sixty miles, with about forty still to go. Forty miles. Still beyond the range of their compact tactical radios.

‘The atmospherics seem pretty good tonight. Figured it was worth a shot,’ McKnight replied. ‘If only we had a bigger antenna.’

Drake glanced around. ‘I’ll let you know if I see any.’

They had encountered virtually no signs of human habitation in the past two hours, save for a line of crooked fence posts without anything to link them together. McKnight had spotted the recognition lights of a small aircraft off to the south some time earlier, possibly a chopper judging by the low airspeed. The distant sighting had forced them to halt their progress and kill the engine, waiting in tense silence to see if the mystery aircraft came any closer.

Mercifully, the lights had faded off towards the east before disappearing over the horizon. If the Libyans were indeed conducting a search for the stolen vehicle, they had over 700,000 square miles of desert to cover. A daunting task to say the least.

McKnight smiled a little at his remark, though her demeanour soon turned more serious. ‘How are we doing?’

‘Well, oil pressure is almost zero, oil temperature is off the gauge, and engine temperature’s right behind it. Oh, and we’re running low on fuel.’ He gave her a sidelong look of mock disapproval. ‘You picked a winner here, Sam.’

‘Screw you,’ she retorted, though she could sense the intended humour in his remark. ‘It’s not like people were lining up to give me their cars. I had to pretend to be dying for this guy to stop.’

‘I thought you could charm your way into one.’

‘I’m not that charming.’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. You have your moments.’

The woman looked at him, torn between surprise and amusement at his unexpectedly playful attitude. ‘Seriously? Are you flirting with me right now?’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’

‘Yeah, sure you wouldn’t.’ She grinned, warming to the game that seemed to have developed between them. It certainly beat staring out into the darkness in tense silence, wondering what lay out there. ‘Anyway, I can’t blame you. It’s a pretty common reaction.’

‘To what?’

‘To being here, doing what we do,’ she explained. ‘Happens all the time to soldiers after a battle. The danger, the adrenaline, the rush of being so close to death and making it out alive. The rational part of your brain eases off the gas and the primitive side takes over. Pretty soon all you can think about is doing what you’re designed to do.’

‘That being?’

‘Screw, of course.’

So taken aback was he by her blunt sentiment and matter-of-fact delivery that he couldn’t help laughing. ‘Well, there’s a chat-up line if ever I heard one.’

‘No shame in admitting it,’ McKnight said, her tone one of playful consolation. ‘It’s human nature; might as well be honest about it. Look at me and tell me you’re not feeling that way now.’

Drake opted not to rise to that particular challenge, partly because he needed to concentrate on the difficult task of negotiating the rough terrain they were driving through, but mostly because he knew she was right.

‘Thought so.’ She leaned back in her seat with a smirk on her face, placing her feet up on the dashboard as she surveyed the great expanse of desert beyond the windshield. ‘So do you want to pull over and go for it on the hood?’

Drake couldn’t say exactly why he started laughing. Maybe it was the tension and stress of the past couple of days that had finally found a means of release, or the knowledge that they were at last on their way out of this country which had brought them nothing but danger and death since their arrival, or maybe just because it felt good to be here with Samantha, to hear the sound of her voice, to know she was with him.

Whatever the reason, he just couldn’t help himself. And before long, she was laughing along with him. Because she understood as well as he that they both needed it.

However, their amusement was short-lived. A sudden bang and crunch up front told them something mechanical had just come apart, and within moments the steering wheel went slack in Drake’s hands. Turning it left or right seemed to make no difference at all. No longer answering to the wheel, the car slewed off to the right, following the slight downward contours of the land before coming to a grinding, shuddering halt.

‘What was that?’ McKnight asked, her smile gone now. ‘We lose power?’

Drake shook his head. The engine, though rough and clearly not in a good way, was nonetheless still running. The problem didn’t lie there. It was as if something had become caught in the car’s axle.

Opening his door, he stepped outside and picked his way around to the front to inspect the damage.

‘Shit,’ he said under his breath. Both front wheels were pointing in different directions. ‘We’ve snapped a tracking rod.’

A vital component of the steering system, the tracking rod was there to keep the front steering wheels pointing in the same direction. If it failed, the car simply couldn’t move.

‘Any ideas?’ McKnight prompted.

‘Not without a full workshop and a new rod.’ Drake looked at his watch, doing a rough calculation based on time and distance. ‘We’ve got about four hours ’til sunrise. We can make it, if we move fast.’

The woman eyed him dubiously. ‘Thirty miles in four hours. That’s a hell of a walk, Ryan.’

There was no need to add that if they were caught out in the desert after sunrise, they’d be unlikely to survive the day without water.

‘Then we’d better get moving,’ Drake said, rallying his flagging strength for the task ahead. Every moment they spent here talking was a moment wasted.

Keira Frost knew this man. This man standing before her with an assault rifle levelled at her chest, who had tracked and cornered her out here like a wild animal, who might very well kill her at any moment.

Certainly he looked different from the last time they’d met. He had aged visibly; his hair grown out, his face marked by lines that hadn’t been there before, his jaw partially hidden by a greying beard. But for all the changes brought about by time and circumstance, it was unmistakably the same man she’d met during their mission in Afghanistan last year.

The man who had presented himself as Drake’s old friend; someone to be trusted, someone they could rely on. The man whose betrayal had cost the lives of several Agency operatives. Including her friend John Keegan.

‘Cunningham,’ she said, practically spitting the name out in disgust. ‘You fucking piece of shit.’

She had no idea what inexplicable chain of events had brought him to this part of the world at this time, whether he had been sent to hunt them by the Libyans, whether he was working for Cain or Faulkner or some other group entirely, or whether this whole encounter was nothing more than terrible coincidence.

She didn’t know, and nor did she care. He was here, and so was she.

‘Drop the weapon,’ he repeated, speaking in the same broad Scottish accent she remembered so well. ‘I won’t say it again.’

Frost glanced down at the shotgun in her hands. A heavy, old-fashioned weapon, difficult to handle and poorly suited to her small frame. Certainly no use for what she had in mind.

Releasing her grip, she allowed the gun to drop to the sandy ground at her feet. A heartbeat later her hand went for the knife at her waist, yanking it from the sheath even as she launched herself towards him.

She heard a cry of warning off to her left, thought that perhaps it might have been Mason pleading with her not to do it. Cole Mason; a good man who didn’t deserve to die in this shithole at the ass end of nowhere. She pushed that thought from her mind the moment it entered. She couldn’t think about that now, couldn’t think about anything except closing to within knife-range of her target.

She wanted Cunningham. If he really had been sent here to kill her and the others, she wouldn’t go down without a fight. Even if it cost her her life, she would take that bastard down with her.

He had the drop on her; she knew that, even as she closed in on him, the knife clutched tight in a death grip. Her unexpected attack might have caught him by surprise and bought her a moment or two, but such an advantage was short-lived. He was still armed with an automatic weapon capable of wiping out all three of them with a single devastating burst, and certainly wouldn’t hesitate to use it.

At any moment she expected to see the distinctive muzzle flare as the first round was fired, and to feel the crushing impact as it tore into her unprotected body. She didn’t care. Images of Keegan lying dead amidst the shattered ruins of an abandoned farm in Afghanistan assailed her mind, just as they had done every night for the past year.

And yet, to her disbelief, he didn’t fire. Instead she saw him cast the weapon aside as if he had no need for it, and raised his hands to defend himself. She almost smiled at the realization that he intended to fight her hand to hand. The arrogant bastard actually thought he could take her in a fair fight.

She would show him. This fight would be anything but fair.

Planting her foot on a fallen block of masonry, she leapt towards him with the knife held high, ready to plunge it down into his chest. Then, even as he prepared to duck aside to avoid the plunging blade, she suddenly reversed her grip on the knife. Landing with nimble grace on the sandy ground, she allowed her momentum to carry her downward, before springing back and thrusting the knife upwards into his abdomen.

A stomach wound. One of the slowest and most painful ways to die, she thought with a momentary glimmer of satisfaction. Acids from the ruptured stomach walls filling his abdominal cavity, burning and destroying the torn flesh even as he bled out. This far from civilization, he’d never get to a doctor in time.

But her deadly strike never found its mark. Even as she thrust the blade upwards to meet him, he suddenly twisted aside with a speed that belied both his size and his age, causing the knife thrust to miss by mere inches.

Surprised by his quick reflexes but unwilling to give him a chance to recover, she jumped back to her feet and launched herself at him again with renewed frenzy, swiping the blade around to catch him in the neck. A quick death, perhaps, and certainly better than he deserved, but a death all the same.

Yet even as the knife arced in towards its target, it came to a sudden, jarring halt as he clamped a hand around her knife-arm mid-swing, in a painful, bruising grip. Keira Frost was well versed in fighting, was nimble and agile and capable of sudden, explosive bursts of strength and aggression that had surprised more than a few enemies over the years. But there was a different kind of power that only came with sheer size and muscle mass, and those were two things in which she could never hope to equal her opponent.

Before she could even attempt to free her arm from his grip, she felt herself lifted bodily off the ground and tossed aside like a rag doll. She did her best to roll with it and absorb the impact, but the unyielding wall that slammed into her back was enough to knock the wind and the fight out of her. She felt like her entire ribcage had been crushed as she slumped to the ground, coughing and struggling to draw breath.

She looked up in time to see Cunningham looming over her; a massive and terrifying presence about to finish the job he’d started. She saw him crouch down to pick up the knife that had slipped from her grasp when she hit the wall.

Killing her with her own weapon.

‘Do it!’ she cried, though the injury had robbed her voice of much of its strength. She glared up at him defiantly despite the pain that now wracked her body. ‘Finish it, you...fucking coward!’

But far from using the knife to end the brief fight, he instead threw it aside in disgust. ‘If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already,’ he snarled. ‘Anyway, we’ve got a lot to talk about.’

Of all the reactions she had expected, this wasn’t one of them. Frost looked at the knife lying a short distance away, then back up at him, wondering if this was some attempt to goad her into action. She was quick to suppress any thoughts of renewing her attack, however. He’d fought her off with ease once already, and she was barely capable of standing in her present condition.

He knew that as well. Why then had he spared her life?

‘Who the hell are you?’ Mason asked, having witnessed the brief confrontation with horrified but impotent fascination, unable to intervene lest the two men covering him open fire. ‘What do you want with us?’

Cunningham glanced at him for a moment, regarding him as one might regard a piece of dog shit stuck to one’s heel. ‘Shut it, big man. I know her; I don’t know you. That means I don’t give a fuck if you live or die. Understand?’

Mason said nothing to that, though the simmering anger in his eyes made his thoughts on this man plain.

With that matter settled, Cunningham glanced at one of the two Bedouin men accompanying him – the same young man that Mason had come so close to killing earlier – and spoke a quiet command in Arabic. Lowering his weapon, the man hurried over to Laila, produced a cell phone from a pocket in his robes and held it up in front of her, comparing her face with the one displayed on the screen.

A simple nod from him was enough to confirm that it was a match. They had, apparently, found who they were looking for.

Kneeling down beside Frost, who was only now starting to drag herself up from the sandy ground, Cunningham surveyed the injured woman without compassion. ‘I’m going to ask some direct questions and I want direct answers, aye? So let’s get started. Where’s Ryan?’

‘Go fuck yourself,’ Frost replied, coughing again. ‘That direct enough for you?’

‘That’s the girl I remember,’ he said, smiling in amusement at her words. ‘I always said that mouth of yours would get you in trouble.’

In response, she reared back and spat bloody phlegm at his feet. ‘If you’re going to shoot me anyway, shut up and get it over with, you Scottish prick. I’m not telling you shit.’

Cunningham exhaled slowly, thinking the matter over. ‘The funny thing is, I believe you,’ he acknowledged at last. ‘Lots of people talk tough when they’ve got their backs against the wall, but it’s just piss and vinegar when you get right down to it. But
you
...you’ve got that fire in your belly. You’d rather die than tell me what I want to know, which means you’re protecting something. Or someone.’ His gaze travelled to Mason, who was holding his ground a short distance away. ‘Let’s find out, shall we?’

Without saying another word, he reached for an automatic holstered on the left side of his chest and trained it on Mason, flicking off the safety catch with the same movement.

‘No!’ the young woman cried out.

‘I don’t know him, remember?’ Cunningham prompted her. ‘So I don’t have to care if he dies. It’s all on you.’

‘Don’t give this asshole a word,’ Mason urged her, glaring at Cunningham.

‘You know the drill, Frost. I’ll give you to the count of three,’ their captor warned her. ‘A bit old-fashioned, but it does the trick. One...’

She could see his finger tightening on the trigger. Considering he was already responsible for killing several Agency personnel, she didn’t doubt he would happily add another to that list.

‘Two...’

Her gaze flicked to Mason, knowing these could be his final moments. She’d already lost one good friend to Cunningham. She couldn’t bear to lose another, couldn’t allow him to die for this, but neither could she betray Drake and McKnight. To tell Cunningham anything might well seal their fate. The agony of indecision and conflicting emotions was plain to see in her eyes.

That was when she saw it. The faint nod of acknowledgement, of understanding. Mason knew what she was feeling, and accepted that neither of them would betray their companions to this man. Even at the cost of their own lives.

‘Three—’

‘Wait!’ another voice called out.

Surprised, Cunningham turned toward Laila, who had taken a step toward him with her arms raised to show that she was unarmed.

‘Killing these people will do little to help your cause,’ she carried on. ‘If you wish to know what has brought them here, I will tell you.’

Cunningham lowered the weapon, though he didn’t holster it. What he did with it would depend on the answers she gave him in the next few minutes.

‘See that, Frost?’ he said, glancing at the young woman lying on the ground before him. ‘We’re all out to help each other here. All it takes is a bit of negotiating.’ He turned his attention back to Laila. ‘So, enlighten me.’