Downfall, page 43
Anya’s face was tight with pain. ‘None of us will be unless we get out of here.’
As one young man darted forward to pelt them with pieces of brick, Drake decided it was time to act. Drawing the Desert Eagle, he aimed a few feet above the youth’s head and capped off a round.
The sight of the weapon alone was enough to extinguish whatever fire of courage he possessed, but the booming gunshot quickly sent him scurrying for cover. His retreat was accompanied by screams and yells from the assembled mob, some frightened, others angry. All focussed on the three foreigners trying to beat a hasty retreat.
This show of force was enough to make the crowd draw back, but Drake knew it was a temporary reprieve at best. The use of weapons would only escalate the situation. Bring a gun to a rock fight, and soon enough the other side will fetch their own guns.
The three of them were ducking down as a renewed volley was hurled from upper windows, when suddenly a vehicle came to a screeching halt at the intersection up ahead. Drake’s first instinct was to turn his weapon on this new arrival, thinking the local police or military had decided to join the party.
Until he saw the driver.
‘Well?’ Dietrich called out, flinching as a bottle rebounded off the truck’s hood and shattered on the road. ‘You want a ride or what?’
Drake couldn’t say he and Dietrich shared a good history. But that didn’t change the fact he could have kissed him at that moment.
‘Go! Go!’ he said, urging Anya and Rojas towards the vehicle while he covered them, firing off another warning shot at the crowd who sensed their enemy was about to escape.
He was the last member of the bedraggled party to clamber up into the truck’s rear bed, with rocks and bottles and other missiles raining down around them. Thrusting out a hand, Frost helped him up, then hammered on the driver’s cab.
‘They’re in! Get us the fuck out of here!’
Dietrich did just that, and with a squeal of skidding tyres and a cloud of burned rubber, they were on their way, leaving the frustrated mob to vent their anger somewhere else.
Chapter 67
After driving due south more or less flat out for about 20 minutes, with the hot desert wind snapping at the clothes of the small group clustered in the back, Dietrich decided they’d gone far enough. He turned off the main road and pulled in behind a low rocky escarpment covered with dry scrub, hiding them from view. The sun was just going down, its light blazing across the sky. He killed the engine and slumped back in his seat, letting out a weary but relieved breath.
Against the odds, they’d located Drake and made it out of the city with him in one piece. More or less.
Reaching into his pocket, Dietrich found his pack of cigarettes and lit one up, taking a deep and well deserved draw.
The others clambered down from the rear cargo bed on aching limbs. None of them had said much during the journey, the situation being too fraught, the wind too loud, their minds too weary.
Instead they had busied themselves dressing wounds and stabilizing injuries as best they could, particularly Rojas. Constant pressure had helped slow the bleeding. He would certainly need more attention, but barring infection the wound was unlikely to prove fatal.
Drake however knew that there were other more pressing matters to attend to, starting with an apology to the rest of the group. They deserved that much at least.
He first approached Frost. ‘Keira, I wanted to—’
She swung around abruptly and socked him hard across the jaw.
‘That’s for being a fucking selfish asshole, Ryan!’ she shouted. ‘Goddamn you, we’ve travelled halfway across the fucking world looking for you, nearly got ourselves killed for this shit. Don’t you have any idea what you’ve put us all through? Don’t you know how worried we were? We thought you were gone for good, you prick!’
Rubbing his throbbing jaw, Drake looked at her sadly. She was shaking with rage, her voice wavering towards the end of her tirade, her eyes glistening in the orange sunset.
He understood why she’d done it, and didn’t blame her one bit. He deserved it. Deserved a lot more, come to think of it.
He glanced around at the others, who were all watching him closely, waiting to see how he’d respond. Likely few of them trusted him after everything he’d done, and he wouldn’t blame them for that either.
‘You might as well form a line, guys,’ he said, managing a pained smile. He was pretty sure she’d split his lip.
Rushing forward, Frost threw her arms around him in what might have been considered a bear hug if she’d been bigger. As it was, she clung to him so hard it hurt.
‘Ow! Take it easy!’ he implored, though he couldn’t help but smile with relief. ‘There’s not much of me left that doesn’t hurt.’
‘Goddamn you, don’t ever do that again,’ she whispered, her voice close to breaking. ‘You die, I’ll fucking kill you.’
Drake closed his eyes, hugging her back just as tight. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
Frost finally released him, her face flushed with embarrassment. It wasn’t often she let her guard down, and for once she seemed to be at a loss for words.
She might have been the most vocal of the group, but it was obvious to Drake that the others harboured similar thoughts. They needed – more than that, they deserved – to hear something from him. Some explanation that might justify the insanity of the past few days, some reasoned account of his actions that would make all this worth it.
He wished he could give it to them.
‘You all took a huge risk coming here, and an even bigger one trying to bring me back when I was… not myself.’ He paid particular attention to Anya when he said this. ‘I know it doesn’t add up to much now, but I’m grateful for what you did. All of you. And I’m… sorry that I put you through this.’
He was right. It didn’t sound like much at all, woefully inadequate considering everything he’d done. But it was pretty much all he had left at that point.
‘Explanations, Ryan,’ Dietrich said as he took another drag on his cigarette. ‘Apologies can wait. For now, I’d rather hear your side of the story.’
Drake eased himself down onto a jutting rock. Dietrich wasn’t wrong, but answering his questions wasn’t going to be easy. He looked at each of them in turn, at this group of people who had risked their lives to bring him in. Some of them he’d served with for years, others he barely even knew beyond their names, yet here they all were, gathered in a loose semicircle around him, waiting expectantly for answers.
‘What do you want to know?’
For the next 15 minutes he talked and they listened; Drake doing his best to explain the change that had come over him, the resurrection of some shadowy dormant persona from the depths of his mind – this was a particularly hard element to relate, and just the thought of it was enough to make his skin prickle – his desperate and ruthless hunt for answers that always seemed to be just beyond his grasp, his brief phone conversations with his mysterious benefactor, and finally the mission that had brought him here to Tunisia.
‘Tenbrook was supposed to be the final link in the chain,’ Drake said, bringing his dark tale to a close. ‘He was the CIA liaison who handed out our mission objectives in Afghanistan. He knew what Operation Hydra was all about.’
‘And now he’s dead,’ Rojas reminded him.
Drake nodded. Whatever answers the man might have provided had gone with him to his grave. ‘He never got a chance to tell me what he knew.’
He looked down at the sandy ground, feeling the full weight of his actions, the deaths he’d caused, settling on him like a physical presence. He might not have been in full control, but neither was he without blame. The people he’d killed to get here might have been good or bad, but they’d died for no other reason than because they’d been unlucky enough to get in his way. And that was a shitty thing to live with, in a life already filled with regrets.
‘This was all for nothing. Rio, the lab, Tenbrook… A lot of people are dead, and I’m no closer to answers than when I started.’
‘You might not be, but we are,’ Anya said.
Drake turned to her. She was sitting on the tailgate of the truck, having stayed quiet during Drake’s summary of events. Her clothes smeared with dirt, her arm wrapped with an improvised dressing, but her gaze was just as keen and sharp as always.
And it was concentrated on Drake.
‘The man who contacted you, who sent you to kill people… I know this man.’
Drake could feel his body tensing up. ‘How?’
She swallowed briefly. ‘His name is Romek Karalius. He was a member of my unit for nearly 20 years. When I was captured by the FSB, I lost contact with him and could find no trace of him after I escaped. I believed he was dead like the others. But somehow he survived. He was with us in Rio, he helped Dietrich and me escape that safe house.’
‘And he’s been feeding me information,’ Drake finished, stunned by the revelation.
‘So what does this mean? Is he the enemy of our enemy?’ Rojas asked.
Anya wasn’t convinced, and her expression showed it. As she’d learned, the enemy of my enemy could be a whole host of things. Friend was rarely at the top of the list.
‘That remains to be seen.’
Drake however was more interested in how Karalius had come into contact with him. ‘But if you’re right, how would this man even know who I was, or where to find me?’
Anya shook her head. ‘I don’t know, but Romek was resourceful and well connected. Maybe he has been watching us, planning this for a long time. Or maybe he found information on you through the Agency.’
‘Then we need to meet with him. If he’s your man, then he answers to you.’
If only it were that simple, Anya thought bleakly. ‘He would not agree to meet with me. He said it would only happen when the time was right, when you had finished your task.’
‘Jumped through fucking hoops for him, you mean,’ Dietrich added.
Rojas looked at Drake. ‘Losing Tenbrook wasn’t part of his plan, I assume.’
Drake’s mind was already racing ahead. ‘Tenbrook was a link in the chain, but he wasn’t the end. Powell’s the one he really wants, the one everything leads back to. But only he knows how to get to her.’
‘I thought you got to her in Rio?’ Mitchell reminded him.
He shook his head. ‘I did, but it was a mistake and he knew it. He tried to warn me against it. He knew what would happen.’
Dietrich frowned. ‘And what did happen?’
Drake didn’t respond. He had no desire to relive that particular encounter.
‘Ryan, this is a hell of a time to be holding out on us,’ Frost warned.
Drake sighed, knowing they weren’t going to like what they heard. ‘She stopped me.’
Frost sat up straighter. ‘What do you mean, she stopped you?’
‘It’s hard to explain. Maybe I don’t have the words. But it’s like… she was able to reshape the world around me, just by speaking. Whatever she said became real in my mind. If she’d told me the sky was green and the ocean was red, I’d have believed her. If she’d told me to put a gun to my head and blow my brains out… I think I would have done it. I couldn’t kill her, I couldn’t even disobey her. For those few minutes we were talking, she had me under her control. And I couldn’t resist… I didn’t want to resist.’
His words failed quite to convey the true terror of those few minutes, the devastating war that had raged within his mind, but even his limited description was enough to give them some idea. That alone was a disturbing prospect, and it showed in their nervous glances.
‘So who is she?’ Dietrich asked. ‘How exactly do you know her, and how did she get this kind of control over you?’
Drake frowned, striving to recall those memories. He couldn’t say for certain, but he felt like he was close to a breakthrough. Almost, but not quite.
‘She was there,’ he said, his voice small and quiet. ‘Back during my training, when I was part of 14th Special Operations Group. I don’t remember much, but I see flashes… moments. A white room. A table. Bright light. She’s there, talking to me, asking me questions. Smiling at me.’
The pieces seemed to be coming together, like fragments of a jigsaw drawing closer to each other, the pattern almost discernible. Almost. And then in a flash they had broken up once more, and the pattern was lost. He let out a frustrated sigh.
‘It’s like trying to replay your earliest memories,’ Drake fumbled to explain. ‘There’s no sense of order to them. All you see is pieces.’
‘Elizabeth Powell is head of a major pharmaceutical research group,’ Frost said, hoping it might help him sort through his chaotic thoughts. ‘They’ve got divisions working on new medical treatments, drugs, gene therapies, you name it. And if someone with her background and expertise is connected to the Agency, well, join the dots. What you’re describing sounds an awful lot like brainwashing to me.’
Mitchell seemed to see the connection, even if she wasn’t convinced by the young woman’s conclusion. ‘So you were conditioned to… forget her? How is that even possible?’
‘Come on, don’t you watch The X-Files? It’s like that MK-Ultra shit they did back in the 60s,’ Alex said, quickly picking up on the idea. ‘Mind control, drug-induced hypnosis, mental programming… They had hundreds of people researching all that stuff, trying to create the perfect spy or the most effective interrogation tools.’
‘Nothing but bullshit if you ask me,’ Dietrich said. ‘Just Cold War nonsense. It was shut down decades ago.’
Alex snorted. ‘You think? Who’s to say they didn’t just move the whole thing overseas, someplace without any oversight or superiors to answer to? Someplace like Brazil? Or what if they were just biding their time, waiting for technology to catch up? Or for some ambitious young research scientist with no morals to come along and finish what they started? If that’s what they could do 40 years ago, imagine what they’d be capable of with twenty-first-century tools and all the dirty money they could ask for.’
Dietrich had no answer, so instead he took a final drag of his cigarette and flicked the glowing butt into the sand.
None of the others could refute his idea either. Alex’s words seemed to hang in the air around them, refusing to be dispelled by the fitful desert wind. The implications were as frightening as they were profound. If his wild supposition was right, then Drake was a living example of a highly secretive, highly unethical and highly illegal programme to reshape the human mind itself.
What had they done to him? And what might they do to others if left unchecked?
Chapter 68
Jason’s foot came down on the beer can, sending it clattering across the room. It wasn’t much really, but in the deadened night silence of the lounge, it was like the pealing of church bells. He heard a grunt from the recliner, looked down in horror as his father’s eyes flickered briefly, then shot open, wide and alert and suspicious. He saw them snap to him, then to the box cutter in his hand.
‘What the fuck?’ he mumbled, then seemed to assemble the disparate pieces of information and mash them into a stark and infuriating conclusion.
‘Dad, I was—’
Tyler Hawkins’ fist shot out like a piston, slamming into his chest so hard that Jason crumpled like a paper bag, dropping the box cutter, gasping and straining to breathe, feeling like his entire ribcage had been caved in.
‘You little sneaking, pussy-assed son of a bitch,’ his father snarled, kicking him hard enough to send him sprawling. Through blurred eyes he saw his father bend over and snatch up the box cutter, working the blade backwards and forwards a couple of times as if considering its purpose carefully.
He turned towards Jason again. ‘You gonna kill me, boy? Is that it? You gonna kill your old man in his sleep, you cowardly fuck?’
Jason saw the huge booted foot swing back, braced himself as it impacted his stomach, and immediately doubled over, throwing up a thick trail of vomit over the rug.
‘Goddamn you, boy. Always knew you was trouble,’ Tyler Hawkins growled, planting another kick in his already bruised ribs.
Jason was really panicking now. He tried to cough the chunky vomit and mucus out of his throat, but there was no breath in his lungs with which to shift it. He tried to breathe in, only to find his airways clogged, his chest aching, his lungs sagging like deflating balloons. He tried to roll over on his back in the hopes it would make his breathing easier, but his father planted another hard kick right in his ass. A fresh wave of pain exploded inside him, and he let out a scream that emerged instead as a terrified, choking whimper.
‘Dad, please no!’ Samuel screamed, terrified. ‘Don’t hurt him!’
Tyler Hawkins rounded on his youngest son. ‘You get back to your room, you little bastard! Get back now and don’t come out, or I swear by Jesus you’ll be next!’
He must not have noticed Samuel when he first awoke, Jason thought with a flicker of relief, hadn’t connected him to the events that had been about to play out. That was something at least.
Jason had taken plenty of beatings at his father’s hands before – some deserved, most not – but never like this. Tyler Hawkins might have taken a perverse pleasure in meting out violence against his sons, but there had always been a limit to his rage.
Not now. Now there was real, towering fury as he seized Jason by the T-shirt and dragged him across the room towards the kitchen, to the door leading out to the garage.
‘You come with me, boy. You’re gonna get one,’ his father said, speaking almost to himself as he yanked the boy behind him, the fabric of his T-shirt ripping and straining. ‘Oh by Christ you’re gonna get one tonight.’
He threw the door open and hauled Jason outside. He felt rain lashing down on him, soaking his clothes and chilling his skin, before his father opened the garage door and hurled him in.
He pitched forward, slammed shoulder-first into a shelving unit that rattled and swayed alarmingly, scattering tools and other implements on the floor around him, with one hammer in particular barely missing his head. He was too frightened to take much notice of the pain.
