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She didn’t slam it into place the way they did in the movies, but simply applied firm pressure to push it home until she felt the click as the locking pins engaged. A slight downward pull was enough to assure her the magazine was secure.
    Reaching into her pocket, she fished out a Bluetooth earpiece and fitted it to her left ear, then powered up her cellphone and dialled a number from memory. It was answered immediately.
    There was no greeting; the ringing simply stopped.
    ‘I’m green,’ she reported. ‘When do we start?’
    ‘Our friends are on their way. Fifteen minutes.’
    ‘Understood.’
    There was no need for further conversation. Both she and her contact knew what had to be done; it was simply a case of doing the most difficult part of any sniper’s job – waiting.
    Drake emerged from the liquor store clutching a carefully wrapped bottle of wine, his head down and his coat turned up against the driving sleet and hail that pelted him with each gust of wind. It was a miserable evening, and not likely to get much better by his estimation.
    He’d gone for a five-year-old bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, thinking it was fairly forgiving stuff that most people could drink easily, but now he was starting to wonder if he should have bought a Chablis Chardonnay instead.
    ‘Jesus Christ, Ryan, it’s a bottle of wine,’ he said under his breath, giving himself a mental slapping.
    In this case, however, it was more than a bottle of wine – it was a peace offering. It wasn’t much in the way of recompense considering how he’d treated the intended recipient over the past couple of months, but it was the best he could come up with.
    He was just approaching his car when he felt his phone go off in his pocket, signalling an incoming text message.
    For a moment Drake was tempted to leave it. He suspected it was work-related, and was in no mood for dealing with some boring administrative issue at 6 p.m. on a Friday.
    Still, he wasn’t the sort to leave a message unread; curiosity and a frustratingly innate sense of duty compelled him to take a look. Laying the bottle down on the passenger seat, he opened the text. His curiosity soon intensified when the sender came up as Anonymous.
    But more intriguing still was the message itself.
    Ryan – We need to talk. 1st Street and Delaware Avenue. 10 mins.
    Drake felt a chill of anticipation run through him as he scanned the message again. It was impossible to tell from such an impersonal form of communication, but the style matched that of a woman who was accustomed to arranging such clandestine meetings at short notice.
    A woman he hadn’t seen since his return from a mission in Afghanistan four months ago that had seen one of his team dead.
    A woman he couldn’t afford to ignore now. If she had taken the risk of making contact in the heart of DC, she must have something important to tell him.
    Either way, he knew he had to get to her.
    Pocketing the phone, he jumped in the driver’s seat, glancing for a moment at the bottle of wine lying on the other side. He felt a fleeting moment of regret, knowing what it represented.
    Peace offerings would have to wait for now, he thought, as he fired up the engine and pulled out into the busy road, gunning the accelerator hard to avoid hitting an oncoming bus.

Chapter 3
    Central DC was in a state of organised chaos as Drake tried to fight his way through the rush-hour traffic, manoeuvring his car through spaces it had no business trying to fit into, taking side streets and any possible short cuts he could think of.
    Despite his best efforts, he was forced to abandon his car in a residential area several blocks south of the meeting place and make his way there on foot, doing his best to ignore the stinging hail and sleet that had been getting dumped on the capital all day. It was a miserable evening, but in truth his mind wasn’t on the weather.
    If he was right, then the person waiting for him a few blocks away was someone he’d spent