PRIMAL Unleashed (2) (29 page)

The door from the kitchen creaked open just as Bishop opened his laptop. Saneh noticed the glum look on his face. “What’s wrong?”

“Huh? No, nothing. Just thinking, wondering where Dostiger would have gone.”

Saneh smiled. “Odessa.”

“What?”

“That call, it was from my source.”

“You have a source?” Saneh had Bishop’s complete attention now.

“I told you when we first met, in the car park. I said I had other means.”

She’s right, he thought. I was too busy staring at her arse.
“Tell me more about Odessa,” he asked.

“After we escaped the club, Dostiger’s head of security went, with his men, south to Odessa.”

That would explain the lack of guards at the club, surmised Bishop.

“My source thinks they’re expecting a big delivery. In the past they’ve escorted large shipments of drugs from the airport to a lab nearby.”

He nodded, realizing a drug processing facility would have a lot of the equipment needed to safely handle a chemical agent.

“Tim, I’ve laid myself open. That’s all I have.” Saneh sat back on the couch. “I want to work with you. Our governments are aligned on this one.” She took a deep breath. “We need to stop the Revolutionary Guards, otherwise a lot of people are going to suffer.”

“You’ve lost your entire team, haven’t you?”

“Yes, but I’ll share all my information. My source is still active.”

“Yeah, alright,” he said, giving her a broad smile. “So far we’ve turned out to be a pretty good duo.”

She smiled sheepishly. “If, by duo, you mean me saving your butt?”

Bishop laughed, noticing her stunning smile. “Yeah, I guess I owe you one.” He took a deep breath. “By the way, my name’s not Tim. It’s Aden.”

“I already know that; your Russian let it slip. Oh, and it’s two; you owe me two: one for saving you and one for my car’s mirror.”

“OK, OK. Look, Saneh, the mirror aside, if we work together, you have to understand a few things.”

“What?”

“My mission is to stop Dostiger from supplying a particular weapon to a third party, any third party. If you work with me, there is no way your mission can succeed.”

“How can you assume my mission is to recover the weapon? What if my mission is just to stop Dostiger from supplying it to someone else?” she asked defensively.

Bishop continued cautiously.  "Then our missions would align and we can work together. Just don’t try to cross me, Saneh. We need each other’s help at the moment, but that can change.”

Saneh met Bishop’s intense stare. “You can trust me, Aden, and you need me. I don’t want that to change.”

“Me neither,” he said. His features softened. Bishop had found himself lost in her eyes again.He turned away, moving back to his laptop.
“Anyway, we need to get a few hours sleep before we work out our next move.” He looked back at Saneh’s ragged black cocktail dress, borrowed cold weather jacket and scuffed calf-high boots. “And we should probably look at getting you some appropriate clothing.”

She smiled. “I guess I am a little over-dressed.”

“Just a little,” Bishop chuckled. “We can tackle that problem tomorrow. Right now you need some rest. You can have the couch.”

“Are you going to sleep?” Saneh asked.

“Yeah. I’m going to shoot an email to my headquarters before turning in though.” Bishop was hoping Saneh’s new information about Odessa would help him avoid the wrath of Vance and Chua. PRIMAL’s commander, in particular, wasn’t going to be happy when he found out about the incident in the club.

Saneh rose from the couch as he turned his attention to the laptop. She walked over, leant down and kissed him gently on the cheek. “Goodnight, Aden.”

Chapter 50

Khod Valley

The time displayed in the bottom right corner of Mirza’s night vision told him it was 0350 hours. In a little over sixty minutes the first traces of dawn would appear on the horizon and he and Ice needed to be in position well before then. Vance was expecting them to coordinate the bombing of the extraction site—that is, if the Pain Train was operational.

The pair had worked their way around the western flank of the mountain, sticking to the high cliffs that overlooked the extraction site. Their progress had been slow, strong winds and freezing temperatures making it difficult to traverse the rugged terrain. Using the map, they had identified a potential hide location, a small outcrop with observation onto the whole southern side of the mountain. Inspecting the contours on the map, they had planned to move to the position through a small depression carved into the mountain by heavy winter rains. If they crawled, they hoped they could get in and out unobserved, even in broad daylight.

Mirza wasn’t enjoying crawling over sharp rocks again. Despite his thick clothing, they dug into his knees and elbows, and the hard ground felt like permafrost. He crawled steadily in front of Ice, his compact sniper rifle cradled in his arms. It felt like an eternity just to cover the few hundred meters to the outcrop. He paused as his gloved hand touched something metallic. He focused his night vision, revealing a pile of heavily corroded cartridges and machine gun link.

It looked as if somebody else had used the same spot in the past, perhaps the Mujahideen attacking the Russians. A tap on his boot reminded Mirza to hurry up; they were running out of darkness. He reached forward, pushed the old cartridges aside, then felt something tight against the palm of his hand. Too late, he realized what it was.

Trip wire!

The rocket streaked into the air with a whoosh, startling both men. They instinctively pressed themselves flat against the ground, waiting for the inevitable. The flare ignited under a small parachute, lighting up the entire area. Mirza’s shivering was immediately dispelled as his heart thumped hard, sending adrenaline burning though his veins. He knew there was a good chance he had just condemned them to death.

The flare spluttered out, plunging the mountain back into darkness, but the PRIMAL operatives remained perfectly still. From down below they could hear yelling echoing off the cliffs. Both men knew they had well and truly stirred up the hornet’s nest. If the Pain Train were on-station, it wouldn’t have been a problem. They would simply crawl forward, laze the targets, and blow them all to hell. Mirza tipped his head skywards in frustration.

Behind him, Ice remained calm. Nothing they could do would change the fact they had hit a trip-flare and he knew they needed a new plan.

“Everything’ll be OK, buddy,” Ice whispered, activating his satellite radio.

“Pain Train, this is Ice.”

“Mitch here. Go ahead.”

“Mitch, we’ve been compromised.”

“Roger, can you evade?”

“We’ll move to an alternate location. When will air support be on-station?”

“ETA to your location is three hours,” Mitch replied.

They didn’t have three hours.
Dawn was forty minutes away and the Taliban would come looking once it was light.

“Ice, you there?” Mitch queried the silence.

“Mitch, if we get in the shit we’re going to head north.”

“Acknowledged. Are you able to send us coordinates for the excavation site?”

“Yes, will transmit within the hour.”

“Hey, Ice,” Mitch said, pausing. “Listen my good man, if it gets real hairy, just get out. We can target the camp ourselves. Get clear and we’ll have you picked up.”

“OK, but we need to move now. I’ll check in as soon as we get the coordinates.”

“Roger. Mitch out.”

Ice switched back to the internal frequency he shared with Mirza. “OK, buddy, let’s move.”

***

In the camp not far below Ice and Mirza, Yanuk was awake. The Russian had fallen asleep in the early hours of the morning, slumped against an equipment case inside his tent. As the flare popped, his eyelids had snapped open and he had rushed out of the camouflaged shelter.

Standing in the middle of the camp, he stared up at the cliffs through his night vision binoculars, wondering if it was
a false alarm. The Taliban had placed trip flares on any likely observation points. After yesterday’s activity, he figured the Americans had probably inserted a team of Navy SEALs. Their numbers would be small but they would be well equipped. He knew they would make short work of any Taliban in the darkness.

Yanuk couldn’t afford to waste time thinking about SEALs or any other Americans; he needed to focus on the dig. Cursing under his breath, he returned to the shaft, throwing back the two layers of heavy blackout curtains before reaching the red-lit interior of the tunnel. He yelled out for the village elder he had left in charge. The man took half a minute to emerge from the depths, covered from head to toe in dust, his eyes bloodshot. The Afghan was hunched over from physical exhaustion.

“How far?” Yanuk barked.

“Five more meters, sir.” The man leant against his shovel, barely able to stand.

Yanuk looked back down the shaft, mentally calculating. The locals were working well; raw fear of the Taliban motivated them. At this rate, in another three to four hours, they would break through to the main chamber.

“Keep digging,” he ordered. With a wave of his hand, he dismissed the man.

As he left the shaft, he caught a glimpse of white robes. Like a ghostly apparition, Khan appeared out of the darkness.

“Who do you think it is, Yanuk?” he asked.

“More Americans.”

“I think you may be right. I will send more men to kill them. Dawn is approaching and they won’t be able to hide.”

Yanuk nodded. It was true. No one knew the area like the Taliban. If anyone could chase the SEALs from the mountain, it would be them. “If you can keep them away, in three hours we’ll be through.”

Khan reached out and grasped the stocky Russian’s shoulder. “No more mistakes, Yanuk.” With that Khan turned on his heel and disappeared back into the darkness.

Yanuk fumed. He didn’t need Khan’s threats. They were almost through, and despite all the problems, he was sure the operation would still succeed. He took a deep breath and smiled at the thought of the money Dostiger had promised. In just over twelve hours he would be a very wealthy man.

Chapter 51

Khod Valley

Mirza and Ice had given up crawling and were moving fast across the mountain. They scrambled over the rocky ground, driven by the knowledge that the Taliban would come; they just needed to stay one step ahead and get to another observation point before dawn. Time was closing in on them, and if the Pain Train didn’t get on-station soon, they would have to abort and start escape-and-evasion.

They agreed the most viable plan was to head north, back towards the Afghan air-defense missiles. The new location would still allow them a good view down onto the excavation site, but if they needed to withdraw, they could drop off the northern slope towards the more hospitable lands of the Hazaran tribes, the mortal enemy of the Taliban.

As they approached the new position, they slowed, alert for any wires or booby traps
.
Ice was on point this time; the trip flare had rattled Mirza’s confidence. The veteran PRIMAL operative checked for trip mines. Nothing says you’re not welcome like having your legs blown off, he thought. Nearing the cliff’s edge, Ice slid forward on his stomach, wedging himself between two rocks. In front of him the slope dropped away sharply, running down towards the area he’d assessed as the probable location of the dig site.

Through his thermal scope he could only make out a number of small hot spots, not as many as he expected. He pressed the backlight on his iPRIMAL, double-checking the grid coordinates Chua had given them. It was definitely the right spot. Ice carefully looked through his night scope again, zooming in closer,
then realized the Taliban were using counter-surveillance measures.
The entire work site was shrouded in camouflage nets. He had never seen nets like these. They blocked the thermal signatures. There was no way the Pain Train would have been able to precisely locate the mouth of the dig site.

He switched his scope over to night vision mode, looking for any light sources. Scanning back and forth across the dark shapes of the nets, a tiny flash of light at the edge of the camp caught his eye. He focused on the area. A few seconds later he saw a lone figure walking towards the cliff at the side of the camp. There it was again. As the figure disappeared into the cliff, Ice glimpsed an ever so slight exposure of light. It looked as if someone had a lantern behind a curtain and every so often the curtain moved, allowing some light to escape.

Figuring the mouth of the shaft was shrouded with blackout curtains, he used the built-in laser-rangefinder on the scope to get an accurate coordinate, then transmitted it to Mitch.

The Pain Train’s weapons officer was waiting by the radio. He responded immediately. “Job well done, Ice. Now get the hell out of there.”

“OK. We’re going to push north. I’ll report back in a couple of hours. Ice out.”

He switched back to Mirza. “We need to go, buddy.”

“Steady, Ice, we’ve got company,” Mirza replied. “Two hundred meters, top of the cliff, one Talib.”

Mirza rolled on to his side, looking back up the hill. The sky had started to glow, and in the pre-dawn light he could just make out the gray figure standing at the crest of the feature. Without a doubt it was one of the men from the missile site.

“Stay low,” Ice instructed. “We’ll wait it out.”

While Mirza watched the single Afghan, Ice turned his attention back towards the extraction site. The faint glow on the horizon had spread throughout the camp. He unclipped the night vision device from the front of his sniper scope and slid it into a pouch before looking over the camp through the normal optics. There was very little movement and he realized most of the men would be digging deep within the mountain. He moved the scope further up towards the position they had abandoned and saw a line of men in robes spread out across the slope. “Mirza, there’s more of them. Below us.”