Redemption by Will Jordan

the job, someone else would have done it, if only because they’d been ordered. He’d almost convinced himself that they were doing a good thing by rescuing a woman from what was no doubt an appalling situation.
    None of these excuses sat well with him, because that’s all they were – excuses. They weren’t the truth.
    Whatever they promised you, I hope it was worth it
.
    ‘Yeah. Me too,’ he said, pushing himself off the bag. He’d done enough for one night.
    Their flight to Alaska was scheduled to leave Andrews Air Force Base tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. Once at their jumping-off point, they would have a few precious hours to check their gear, make any last-minute adjustments to their plan, and prepare themselves for what lay ahead.
    Tomorrow was going to be a long day, for all of them. But as for tonight, they had nothing but time.
    Leaving the heavy punchbag still swinging from the rafters of his garage, he shuffled through the utility room and into the kitchen, peeling off his protective hand wraps as he went.
    His home was a two-bedroom, single-storey detached house in the suburbs west of central DC. The kind of house owned by mid-level government workers and young couples thinking about starting families but not quite ready to take the plunge yet. Not a bad place by any stretch. In fact, in the right hands it could have been pretty decent. Unfortunately Drake was most definitely not the right hands.
    He’d been living here for the past three years, but the place still had that chaotic ‘just moved in’ feel. Many of his belongings were still in packing boxes in the spare bedroom, forgotten and destined never to be opened.
    It was as if he somehow still thought of this situation as a temporary one, as if he might suddenly have to pack up and leave tomorrow. But it wasn’t, and he didn’t.
    He knew none of his neighbours beyond the occasional nod of greeting. He’d wondered from time to time what they thought of the aloof Englishman who went away for weeks or even months at a time. He didn’t suppose they held him in high regard, but that was fine by him. He was as much of an outsider here as he was in the Agency.
    A takeaway pizza box was waiting for him on the kitchen counter; he’d stopped off to collect it on his way back from Langley. He wasn’t all that hungry, but he knew he needed to eat something and couldn’t be bothered cooking anything. There were a stack of similar boxes in the garage.
    He flipped open the box and levered a thick slice free, long strings of melted cheese still clinging to it as he took the first bite.
    His laptop was resting beside the pizza box, plugged into a charging point. He hit the power button, then sat at the breakfast bar and wolfed down his pizza while it booted up.
    A quick trip to the fridge-freezer saw him return with a handful of ice wrapped in a kitchen towel. Holding the ice bag against his aching hand, he found his gaze drawn to the half-empty bottle of Talisker whisky sitting a few feet further down the breakfast bar.
    It had been full last night.
    His eyes rested on it for a few moments longer before the Windows chime drew his attention away.
    Connecting to the Net, his first port of call was CNN. com and a quick skim of the day’s news stories. Straight away his attention was drawn to the top news article:
Deadly blast kills twelve in Iraq
.
    He clicked on the link, which took him to a video feed.
    ‘We now have the number of confirmed deaths at twelve, with at least three missing and another twenty people injured by the blast,’ the Iraq correspondent said, his expression as serious as his suntan. ‘The Iraqi Coalition Government has yet to release a statement on the attack, but speculation is rising that a suicide bomber was responsible.’
    The feed then switched to an overhead shot of a destroyed building, one entire side caved in by what looked like a high-explosive detonation. Smoke was still rising from the rubble while rescue workers and