Sacrifice by Will Jordan

to drink plenty of water until then, otherwise you’ll start to dehydrate after a couple of hours. But don’t let the daytime heat fool you – it can get cold as hell at night.’
    Drake said nothing to this. He’d experienced his share of Afghan nights up in the mountains, and hadn’t come away with pleasant memories.
    ‘By the way, the local time is 09:20,’ McKnight added as she pulled open the Explorer’s trunk. ‘Time difference is a bitch, huh?’
    ‘Roger that,’ Keegan said, grinning.
    After dumping their gear in the back, McKnight fired up the engine once more and eased them away. There was a strict speed limit in the aircraft dispersal areas that even the Agency wasn’t allowed to break.
    They hadn’t gone far before they encountered a security checkpoint at the perimeter of the airfield. A quick flash of McKnight’s ID card, along with an official document signed by the office of Bagram’s commanding officer, was enough to get them through.
    Leaning back in her seat with the air conditioners blasting cold air in her face, McKnight drove with the casual ease born from familiarity through the bustling military base.
    Around them, soldiers, engineers, civilian contractors and technicians hurried back and forth, all with places to go and things to do. The roads were busy with vehicles of all kinds, from big M35 military cargo trucks down to Chevrolet Tahoes and other civilian 4x4s.
    Beyond the airfield’s maintenance facilities and admin buildings lay a vast swathe of wooden huts the size of a small town. Known as B-huts, they served as accommodation for more than 7,000 military and civilian personnel living and working on base.
    Their guide pointed to a large steel-and-concrete air-raid shelter half buried in the ground as they cruised past. A layer of dirt had been piled on top to add to the protection. ‘Keep those shelters in mind. If the air-raid warnings go off, you drop whatever you’re doing and double-time it to the nearest one. No exceptions.’
    That didn’t inspire confidence. ‘What’s the security situation here?’ Keegan asked, echoing all their thoughts.
    ‘They hit us with rockets once or twice a month, usually at night.’ She pointed to the nearby mountains. ‘That’s where most of them come from – only takes a couple ofminutes to set up, fire their birds and bug out before we can target them. The Taliban have started bribing the locals to launch rockets and mortars on their behalf. Most of them are so dirt poor they’ll do anything to make a few bucks.’
    ‘What about outside the base?’ Frost chipped in.
    ‘Not so good,’ she admitted. ‘We’ve established green zones around strategic towns and along most of the major highways, but anything outside that is fair game. Taliban, al-Qaeda, Iranians, Uzbeks, anti-Coalition militias – you name it. They cross over from Pakistan, set up an ambush and plant trip mines in ditches and culverts. Our guys get blasted apart when they try to take cover. Then they bounce back across the border before we can nail them.’
    Frost raised an eyebrow. ‘Sounds like the goddamn Wild West.’
    ‘You get used to it.’ She turned to Drake, a flicker of amusement in her eyes. ‘So what’s the plan, sheriff?’
    ‘Is Mitchell’s office near here?’
    ‘He’d have been based at the Agency’s HQ,’ she judged, pointing off to the right. ‘It’s about half a klick that way. It looks like a fortress – you can’t miss it.’
    ‘Good.’ Drake twisted around in his seat to speak to Frost. ‘Keira, double-time it over there. I want you to find Mitchell’s office and go through everything he was working on. Computer files, documents, Post-it notes … whatever.’
    ‘What am I looking for?’
    ‘Anything out of the ordinary,’ Drake replied. ‘Any sign that he was involved in something he shouldn’t have been.’
    It was a pretty broad remit, but in situations like this he trusted her judgement implicitly. Frost was nothing