Skeleton Coast

  WITH soldiers blasting away along the east and west walls, Cabrillo stayed low and circled the prison. He loaded another round into the RPG as he ran. He came up hard against the wall opposite the last door that led into the prison. So far none of the guards had recognized his strategy of locking them inside the parade ground, but all it took was one sharp officer to understand what was happening and order men back inside. He knew their first job would be to execute Moses Ndebele. His whole plan hinged on every guard being outside to witness the execution and him being able to prevent them from retreating.

  He popped up between two stone blocks and fired, ducking back as a dozen automatic weapons backtracked the RPG’s contrail and peppered his cover position. The air was alive with grit and shattered bullet fragments. The rocket motor didn’t burn evenly, causing the missile to shoot skyward in a complete misfire. He slithered out of the worst of the fusillade and crawled thirty feet, pausing to let the undisciplined fire die down. He slipped the MP-5 over the wall and triggered off half a clip, aiming across to the second floor so as not to accidentally hit his men down below.

  In response, the guards redoubled their counterfire, raking the stone as if sheer volume of rounds would bore through the rock. Juan ignored the scream and whine of bullets passing inches over his head and calmly reloaded the RPG. He crawled farther along the roof, coming to the point where he would need to fire at the most oblique possible angle and still hit the last remaining door, but he was at least fifty feet from where the guards were still hammering with their AKs.

  The distance he’d covered would buy him perhaps a second before he was spotted again. Then he thought of a better strategy and rolled away from the wall lining the courtyard. He backed from the edge until when he got to his knees he couldn’t see the men down on the ground. And more important, they couldn’t see him. He shuffled forward a couple of inches and could see a little farther into the prison, a little farther down the far wall. He took another couple of tentative steps on his knees. There! He could just make out the Roman-like arch above the distant door but couldn’t see any of the guards milling around.

  Cabrillo brought the RPG to his shoulder, aimed carefully, and touched the trigger.

  What he couldn’t see and couldn’t know was that a sergeant of the guards had recognized Juan’s tactic and was leading a small squad to the door when the rocket streaked across the courtyard. One of the soldiers was directly under the door’s arch when the shaped charge slammed into the wall. As the explosion blew chunks of rock across the parade ground and cut the squad apart, the concussion from the blast shattered every bone in the lead soldier’s body before he was crushed under an avalanche of debris.

  Juan rushed forward so he could see the results of his attack. Though badly damaged, he could still see the dark confines of the prison through the ruined doorway. There were gaps in the rubble large enough for a man to crawl through. He spied a soldier making a break for the door. Cabrillo tripped his machine pistol’s laser sight and when the tiny speck of light appeared between the guard’s shoulders he fired one-handed, forgetting the weapon was on full auto. It didn’t matter that his second, third, and fourth rounds went wild. The first one drilled the guard exactly where he’d aimed. He crashed into the pile of loose stones and lay still.

  Cabrillo reloaded the rocket launcher a fifth time, taking a new position to better center the door. A solid sheet of lead rose from the angered soldiers and seemed to fill the sky where he’d been standing moments earlier. He inched forward again so he could see the crown of the door opening and fired off his next round, ducking when he knew the shot to be true. He loaded the Russian antique yet again, hearing the sound of an avalanche over the frenzied fire. When he peeked over the wall he saw the doorway was now a mountain of jumbled stone blocks obscured by a cloud of dust.

  The guards could no longer enter the prison proper. It was time to call in the cavalry.

  DOWN in the courtyard the commanding officer screamed at the top of his lungs to get his men’s attention. The ambush had set them off like berserkers and, apart from the one sergeant who’d realized the attack was meant to trap them on the parade ground, the men seemed blithely unaware that they were standing in a potential killing field. At any moment he expected gunners on the roof to open up and cut down his command like lambs at the slaughter.

  He singled out three of the smallest of his men, slender youths who had a chance to slither through the destroyed doorways and execute Moses Ndebele before the assault force could spirit him away. He also directed some men to open the prison’s main gate, but to do so carefully in case there were more troops waiting outside. With so many weapons firing it was impossible to hear if any of the perimeter alarms had been tripped.

  He grunted in satisfaction when he saw one of his officers attempting to erect a long piece of pipe against the eaves so men could scale it and gain access to the roof. As soon as the top of the pipe touched in a notch between two of the stone crenellations, a soldier with an AK-47 slung across his back and no shoes on his feet shimmied up the rusted piece of steel with the agility of a spider.

  EDDIE Seng saw the soldier climbing the length of pipe too late. He had scant seconds to aim before the man reached the top of the wall and vanished. With his vantage limited by the truck’s undercarriage, he flipped onto his back to get a better view, raising the assault rifle’s barrel so he had an approximate shot. He was within a hair’s breath of pulling the trigger when the man disappeared and angrily moved his finger away. There was no sense in firing and giving away their position. Juan would have to deal with this new threat on his own. Eddie slid deeper into the shadow cast by the truck. Mike laid a hand on his shoulder, a reassuring gesture meant to tell him there was nothing he could have done.

  It did little good.

  CABRILLO was hunched over the RPG, loading his second-to-last round. All he had to do was blow the main gates open and Mafana and his men would charge into the prison, freeing him to find Ndebele and Geoffrey Merrick. He clicked the round home and stood.

  The sun was still low on the horizon and the shadows it cast were elongated to the point that it was impossible to tell what cast them. The shadow that suddenly emerged next to where he stood hadn’t been there a second ago. Juan whirled and just had time to see one of the guards standing with his back to the courtyard when the man’s AK opened up, its muzzle flash like a strobe light aimed into his eyes.

  Juan dove left, hit the wooden roof with his shoulder, and before the guard could adjust to the fact his quarry had avoided the ambush, he had the RPG tucked against his flank. He pulled the trigger, aiming by instinct rather than sight.

  The rocket leapt from the barrel in a cloud of stinging gas. The guard’s body didn’t provide enough resistance to set off the explosive head when it slammed into his chest, but the kinetic energy of a five-pound projectile traveling at a thousand feet per second did more than enough damage. With his ribs crushed back against his spine the guard was flung off the roof like a limp doll. He landed amid a throng of his comrades thirty feet from the wall where he’d been standing, and this time the force of the impact was enough to detonate the shaped charge. The explosion tore through flesh and bone, leaving a smoking crater rimmed with the dead and injured.

  Juan had just one last round for the RPG and if it failed so would the assault. He fitted it hastily, rushed forward to get a bead on the thick slabs of wood that protected the main entrance into the prison, and fired, dimly aware that there were a cluster of men about to open the doors.

  The rocket ran true and hit the gate dead center, but the projectile failed to detonate. The guards who’d dropped flat when the missile flashed over their heads got to their feet slowly, nervous laughter turning into cheers when they realized they’d been spared.

  Seeing what happened, Cabrillo flipped his machine pistol off his back. As soon as the laser sight speared out in the area around the embedded rocket he opened fire. Splinters erupted from the door as the hot-
loaded 9-mm rounds chewed into the wood. Just before the magazine ran dry a bullet struck the dormant projectile. The resulting explosion scythed down the men who’d been celebrating their good fortune moments earlier and blew the door apart in a shower of smoldering boards.

  Just beyond the sensor range of the perimeter alarms, four trucks idled, their occupants all battle-hardened veterans of one of Africa’s bloodiest civil wars and all ready to lay down their lives for the one man they thought could pull their nation back from the brink of ruin.

  22

  “LAWRENCE of Arabia calling Beau Geste. Come in, Beau.”

  So exhausted by the past forty-eight hours—and especially the past twelve—Cabrillo had forgotten all about the tactical radio he was wearing and for a moment thought he was hearing voices. Then he remembered that Lawrence of Arabia was Linc’s call sign.

  “Damn, Larry,” Juan radioed back. “Am I glad to hear you.”

  “Just saw an explosion at the main gates and looks like our new allies are sweeping in.”

  “Affirmative. What’s your position?”

  “We’re about three miles out at five thousand feet. Eagle-eye Gunderson saw the blast. Are you ready for us to land yet?”

  “That’s a negative,” Cabrillo replied. “I still have to secure our passengers and we need to make sure Mafana’s men can keep the guards bottled up long enough for you to come in.”

  “No problem, we’ll keep circling,” Linc said, then added with humor in his deep baritone, “Danger pays by the hour, anyway.”

  Juan slammed a fresh magazine into the receiver of his MP-5 and racked the bolt to chamber a round. Before anyone else tried to outflank him by climbing onto the roof he dashed to where his parachute billowed over the outside wall of the prison, one end held fast by one of the eyebolts his men had installed earlier—when this was supposed to have been a simple clandestine hostage rescue from a bunch of long-haired ecoterrorists.

  The battle in the courtyard now sounded like World War Three as the Zimbabweans fought each other in such close quarters that their assault rifles were used as clubs as much as guns.

  Clutching the fabric of the chute, Juan slipped over the edge of the roof so his feet dangled three stories above the desert floor. He lowered himself slowly and carefully. The nylon was as slick as silk. When he reached the end of the writhing mass of parachute cloth he was still a good three feet above the window opening. He planted his boots against the wall, tucked his knees against his chest, and kicked off as hard as he could.

  His body pendulumed away from the prison for nearly ten feet before gravity took hold of him and sent him careening back toward the building. It felt like his knees would explode when he slammed into the rough stone, but the experiment told him he could make the attempt, but his timing would have to be perfect.

  Again he flexed his legs and launched himself into space, his grip on the chute like iron. When he reached the apex of his swing, he focused on nothing but the dark opening that gave entry into the prison. He started arcing down, building up speed, and more importantly angular momentum. Like a stone released from a sling, Juan let go when his feet were pointed at the window.

  He flew through the window, clearing the bottom sill by inches and smashed onto the floor, rolling until he came up hard against the iron railing that overlooked the floors below. The sound of his body slamming into the loose railing echoed in the cavernous cell block.

  He groaned as he got to his feet, knowing that in a couple of hours his back was going to be zebra-striped with evenly spaced purple bruises.

  Feeling no need to be stealthy in this block of cells after such a loud entrance, Cabrillo rushed down the stairs. He already knew from Eddie’s reports to Linc that this particular section of the prison was empty. On the ground floor he paused at the open door, checking the hallway in both directions, thankful that the generator was still powering the lights. When he started off to the right he took the precaution of smashing the exposed bulbs as he went. He had no intention of leaving the prison the way he had come in and he didn’t want to make it any easier for a guard who managed to enter through the blown-up doorways.

  He peered around a corner, saw a chair outside a large door, exactly how Eddie had described the scene where they were holding Merrick. Although their original mission had been to rescue the scientist, Cabrillo’s first obligation now rested with getting Moses Ndebele to safety. He trotted past the door, imagining that Merrick’s kidnappers were holed up inside, not knowing how to react to the unfolding situation.

  The prison never really shed the heat it absorbed during the torturous days, and now that the dawn had arrived the passageway was growing hotter. Sweat ran from Cabrillo’s pores as he jogged. He was halfway down the long hall when motion ahead caught his eye. Two slightly built guards ran toward him from the opposite direction. They were much closer to the entrance to the next cell block than Cabrillo, and their presence told him that this was where they were holding their prize prisoner.

  Juan dove flat, his elbows scraping against the stone floor as he aimed his machine pistol. He fired a wild spray that forced the soldiers back the way they’d come and around another bend.

  They must have climbed through the debris piled outside the doors, he thought absently and tried to ignore the fact he was too exposed and out-gunned. He slithered back to where the hallway was much darker and rolled to the opposite wall to confuse them. He fired every time one of the guards tried to check the hallway, filling the air with the stench of burned gunpowder. The area around the Chairman was littered with stumpy brass shell casings.

  He slid across the hall again a moment before one of the soldiers laid down a blistering barrage of cover fire. Bits of stone and hot copper bullets seemed to fill the corridor. Juan tried to suppress the burst of autofire with a return volley, but the guard hung tough and continued to shoot.

  His partner dashed from around the corner to add his gun. While neither of them could see Cabrillo in the darkened passage, the chance of a lucky shot doubled. The first guard broke from his position and raced for the entrance to the cell block. Either the door hadn’t been locked or he’d shot away the mechanism because he disappeared inside before Juan could take him down.

  Cabrillo had seconds before the guard assassinated Moses Ndebele. In what must have seemed like reckless rage, he launched himself from the floor and out of the murky shadows. His gun spit flame as he ran, firing from the hip. The beam from his laser sight was a ruby line cutting through the smoke. It finally settled on the guard’s torso; the next three rounds hit center mass and tossed him off his feet.

  Cabrillo kept sprinting. Rather than slow to enter through the open door to the cell block, he careened off the stout jamb, absorbing the blow on his shoulder with barely a check in speed.

  A line of cells was directly in front of him, each enclosure fronted by iron bars. They all appeared empty. For all he knew Ndebele could be on the second or third floor and the guard had too much of a head start to find him. Then, over the sounds of his ragged breathing and hammering heart, he heard voices coming from behind the cells. The voice was melodious, soothing, not the plaintive cries of the condemned, but rather the fatherly understanding of a priest granting absolution.

  He raced around the corner. The guard was just outside of one of the cells while a man wearing a filthy prison uniform stood next to the bars, not two feet away from the soldier aiming at his head with an AK-47. Moses Ndebele stood calmly, with his arms at his side as if he weren’t facing his executioner but rather talking with a friend he hadn’t seen in while.

  Juan raised his gun to his shoulder, the laser never wavering from the guard’s shiny forehead as the African turned at the sound of Cabrillo coming to a halt thirty feet away. The soldier started to draw down on his weapon in order to engage but wouldn’t have the time before Juan pulled the trigger. The bolt crashed against an empty chamber. The click of metal on metal was loud but at the same time nothing compared to what was s
upposed to happen.

  The guard had his weapon aimed halfway between Juan and Moses Ndebele. He wasted a half second of thought between his sworn duty and the need to eliminate Cabrillo. He must have figured he could riddle the main rival of his nation’s dictator and still gun down Juan before Cabrillo could reload the machine pistol or draw a handgun because he started to turn back toward Ndebele.

  Juan let the Heckler & Koch drop from his hands and kicked his artificial limb up into his chest so he could wrap his hands around his calf, his knee braced against his shoulder as though he were holding a gun.

  The barrel of the soldier’s AK was just a couple of arc degrees from pointing at Ndebele when Juan’s fingers found a button recessed into the touch plastic exterior of his combat leg. It was a safety device that allowed him to depress another button on the opposite side of the limb.

  Integrated within the prosthesis was one more trick Kevin Nixon in the Oregon’s Magic Shop had devised—an eighteen-inch-long, nickel-pipe in .44-caliber. The dual triggers guaranteed the weapon would never discharge accidentally. When Juan hit the second one the single-shot gun went off with an explosion that shook dirt from the rafters and blew a nearly half-inch hole through the bottom of his boot.

  The recoil sent him tumbling. He picked himself up quickly, yanking at his pants cuff so he could draw the Kel-Tec .380 automatic pistol. He needn’t have bothered. The hollow-point .44-caliber slug had hit the guard in the right arm as he stood in profile to Cabrillo and transited his entire body through his chest cavity, shredding his internal organs. The exit wound in his opposite shoulder was the size of a dinner plate.

  Moses Ndebele looked at Juan in stunned silence as the chairman rammed a fresh magazine into his machine pistol and returned the Kel-Tec to its hiding place inside his leg. There were blood splatters on his prison uniform and a trickle of crimson on one cheek. Juan noticed the burn marks on Ndebele’s bare arms, the swelling around his eyes and mouth, and how he stood with all his weight on one leg. Juan looked down at Ndebele’s bare feet. One was normal, the other was so swollen it resembled a football. He guessed every bone from ankle to toe had been broken.