Free Sacrifice by Will Jordan

work.’

Chapter 8
    ‘Wow, real garden spot,’ Frost remarked to herself as she surveyed Mitchell’s office.
    His place of work was a modest, unremarkable little office, perhaps 10 feet square, with a small window overlooking a parking lot. One desk, metal framed, with a wood laminate coating marked by coffee rings, faced the window. On it sat a dusty computer with an old-fashioned CRT monitor and a cheap inkjet printer.
    Scattered across the desk was the usual office paraphernalia, none of which sparked much interest, while a couple of filing cabinets were set against the wall.
    And that was it. All things considered, it was a bland, clinical working space that looked barely used. The only hint of personality was a framed photograph sitting on the edge of the desk. Mitchell, several years younger and with more hair, plus what Frost assumed to be Mrs Mitchell. They were standing together at a beach somewhere, his arm around her shoulder, smiling and relaxed.
    Frost glanced away, thinking it best not to get too involved. Settling herself at the desk, she fired up the computer and waited for it to start up, drumming her fingers impatiently on the cheap wood-veneer desk as the seconds dragged on.
    ‘Jesus, their IT people should be shot,’ she said.
    Realising the computer would take a while to boot up, she crossed the room to the nearest of the two filing cabinets. At least she could make a start on Mitchell’s paper trail, she thought, reaching for the first drawer.
    The drawer moved half an inch, then came to a halt, jammed on its runner. She pulled again, to little effect.
    ‘You picked the wrong day, and the wrong girl,’ the young woman said, gripping the drawer tighter and gritting her teeth, just allowing the frustration to build. ‘Come on, you son of a bitch.’
    One hard yank was enough to free up the jammed runner, and the drawer shot open with a grating rasp.
    Peering inside, she frowned in confusion. ‘What the fuck?’
    With Vermaak and his security team standing a short distance away, Drake and McKnight picked their way through the mangled remains of the Black Hawk chopper. Both had donned surgical gloves for handling any wreckage they came across, partly to avoid disturbing the scene further but mostly for their own protection. Choppers were filled with all kinds of toxic fuels and chemicals.
    ‘That’s where the missile impacted,’ McKnight said, indicating the mangled engine pod overhead.
    ‘That’s what the army forensics team concluded,’ Drake agreed. He had read their preliminary report on the flight out. ‘An RPG impact against the outer armour.’
    The RPG-7, or rocket-propelled grenade, was a Soviet-made anti-armour rocket dating back to the early 1960s. Simple, reliable and capable of punching through 12 inches of high-density armour, they had been the bane of tank crews for nearly half a century. Close to 10 million of thethings had been made, with tens of thousands ending up in the hands of militias, terrorists and insurgents.
    It was easy to see why the army forensics team saw the RPG as the most likely culprit. However, it seemed McKnight didn’t agree. ‘It wasn’t an RPG round. It was a guided missile.’
    That was a bold claim to make, considering she had been here all of five minutes. ‘What makes you so sure?’
    She glanced at him, a faint smile on her lips. He was testing her, and she knew it. ‘The RPG is an anti-tank weapon. It’s designed to take out slow-moving targets from close range, not fast aircraft hundreds of feet in the air. A Black Hawk’s standard cruising speed is a hundred and fifty knots. It’s about twenty metres long and five metres high, right?’
    Drake shrugged. He wasn’t exactly an aircraft buff. ‘If you say so.’
    ‘I do. The US Army did a hit evaluation of the RPG-7 a few years back. The chances of hitting a slow-moving target from two hundred metres were less than fifty per cent. Factor in the relative velocity and the increased range,