Free Betrayal by Will Jordan Page B

surprised grunt, and just like that he went down.
    ‘Tango down!’ Drake shouted, advancing towards him and kicking the weapon clear of his grasp. He didn’t have time to examine it in detail, but it looked like an automatic of some kind. ‘Secure the van!’
    ‘Roger that,’ O’Rourke replied. ‘No other Tangos in sight!’
    Drake’s eyes swept the darkened room, looking for more targets. As O’Rourke had suggested on the way here, the storage lock-up was one big open space about 8 yards square. Big enough to hold a couple of delivery trucks parked side by side, but in this case more or less empty. Nowhere to hide.
    The internal lights were switched off. The only illumination was provided by the dim red glow of the van’s rear lights.
    ‘Clear left!’ another operative called out.
    He heard a click and a faint groan as the van’s cargo doors were hauled open. ‘Vehicle’s clear. Nothing inside!’
    But that didn’t interest Drake now. His attention was focused on the lone figure strapped to a cheap plastic office chair in the far corner of the room. The prisoner wasn’t moving, and from what he could see in the crimson glow of the vehicle tail lights, he doubted he or she ever would.
    ‘I’ve got something over here,’ he called out. ‘Far corner. Bring some light.’
    Flashlight beams pierced the gloom around him, illuminating the chair’s inhabitant, though Drake quickly caught himself wishing they hadn’t.
    They had found Demochev all right, or what was left of him.
    Stripped to the waist, his expensive suit thrown idly to one side, the FSB’s director of counter-terrorism bore the grim hallmarks of the torture he’d endured. His head lolled back, no longer supported by conscious effort, his eyes staring blankly at the roof as raindrops continued to patter off the thin sheet metal.
    His face was battered, bruised and swollen, rendered almost unrecognisable by the terrible beating he had taken, while three fingers of his right hand were missing, sliced off by a pair of wire cutters that was now lying on the concrete floor, covered in blood. Looking down, Drake could see that the man’s left foot had been given similar treatment. All five digits had been crudely snipped off.
    His throat too had been cut; likely to finish the job. The angle of his head had pulled open the gaping wound, exposing the torn flesh and severed windpipe. Drake opted not to devote too much attention to that.
    Instead he tried to take in the scene as the sum of its parts, concentrating on each detail and gleaning what information he could from it. Out of all the injuries inflicted on him, the one which drew Drake’s attention was the series of deep lacerations across Demochev’s chest. Carved into his flesh with a sharp blade was a single word written in Cyrillic:
    повинный
    Drake was familiar with a few words in that language, but this wasn’t one of them.
    He inhaled, tasting the pungent odour of human excrement. He guessed Demochev had soiled himself, probably at the point of death. It was an unpleasant reality of executions like this, and far from rare.
    ‘Poor bastard,’ he heard one of the operatives remark. ‘Carved up like a fucking roast.’
    ‘It’s in Russian. Any idea what it says?’ O’Rourke asked.
    ‘You got me, sir.’
    Drake was no longer listening. Instead his attention had been drawn back to the floor at Demochev’s feet, where the wire cutters and the body parts they had been used to remove were lying scattered around. Amongst the gruesome remains he saw something else. Small and black, gleaming in the glow of the operatives’ flashlights.
    Something that had no rightful place there.
    ‘Give me your torch, would you?’ he said, motioning to O’Rourke.
    The man glanced up, disturbed from his inspection of the body. ‘Huh?’
    ‘Your flashlight,’ Drake repeated irritably. ‘Hurry.’
    Catching the portable light that O’Rourke tossed to him, Drake knelt down to examine what