Tuesday interrupted them. ‘Listen, guys, whatever you decide to do, decide it quickly. If this Luhaka is sixty miles away it’s going to take them a while to get there, but the clock’s ticking. Sizwe and I can’t hang around waiting for you.’
‘Then I’ve decided,’ Jude said grimly. ‘I’m not leaving until she does.’
‘Okay, okay,’ Rae relented, holding up her hands. ‘Compromise. Give me six hours. Just to let me have a chance to do what I need. Then we all leave here together. Agreed?’
Tuesday shook his head. ‘No can do, sorry. Two hours, max. That’ll give me time to get to the airport and figure out how to fly the bloody chopper. Assuming there is one to fly. If not, we’re screwed anyway, and we’ll have to come up with a Plan B.’
‘I can’t do anything in two hours,’ Rae said. ‘Give me four.’
Tuesday sighed, glanced at Jude, and said, ‘You got three. I won’t budge on that, okay? Ben and Jeff will be out there in the thick of it sometime in the next few hours. Maybe I can’t help them, but I’m damned if I’m missing the chance to try.’
Rae nodded. ‘It’s a deal. We’ll meet you back here three hours from now.’ Turning to Jude, she said, ‘You didn’t have to do this for me, but I appreciate it that you did. Thank you.’ She moved close to him, raised herself up on tiptoe and pecked him on the cheek. The kiss froze Jude up like an idiot, and he stood there staring at her.
Tuesday gave them a couple of walkie-talkies that he and Sizwe had taken from the soldiers they’d run into, and showed them which channel to use. He also had a pistol lifted from one of the bodies, which he offered to Jude. ‘Just in case you meet up with any more unwanted company. Can you handle that?’
‘Yeah, I can handle it,’ Jude said, taking the gun and stuffing it in his belt behind the right hip, the way he’d seen Ben do. ‘I think.’
‘Good luck, guys,’ Tuesday said as he set off at a run, Sizwe jogging after him. ‘You’ve got three hours.’
Still no sign of the black Mercedes as the morning ticked by and the sun bearing down on Mont Fleury threatened to cook Victor Bronski inside the surveillance van. He’d resorted to running the engine for the air con when his phone buzzed. The call was from Gasser, who was with Shelton a quarter of a mile away watching the villa from the other side and probably suffering just as badly as Bronski. Gasser was calling to tell him to tune into the radio. It sounded urgent.
‘I’ll call you back,’ Bronski said.
The local stations were all in French. Bronski quickly dialled up BBC World Service and caught the tail end of the announcement saying: ‘… the large contingent of rebel troops was sighted this morning advancing within ten kilometres of Luhaka City’s western outskirts. Local reports suggest an imminent coup on the governorship of the province; no further details are available at this time but we hope to bring you an update shortly as the situation develops … ’
Bronski turned it off and ran the numbers in his head. If someone was about to launch a coup on Louis Khosa, he had a pretty good idea who that someone might be: a certain loving brother with a serious axe to grind, his eyes on political power and a fifty-million-dollar fortune in his pocket.
‘Anything to do with us?’ said Gasser when Bronski called him back a moment later.
‘Could explain why our boy’s not home,’ Bronski said. ‘Stay tuned and let me know where it goes.’
‘Copy.’
Then Bronski saw a movement in his wing mirror and said, ‘Hold it. Scratch that.’
The black Mercedes purred up the street. The sunlight gleamed dully on paintwork streaked with dust after a long drive out of the city. The car paused as the villa’s automatic gates swung open to let it through, then glided up the drive and parked in the shade of the trees next to the gold roadster. The gates swung shut behind it.
Bronski put down the phone and snatched his binocs to see the tall figure of César Masango unfold himself from behind the wheel of the limo and close the door. He was alone, and looked calm and relaxed, if a little stiff from the drive.
Bronski tracked him as he walked to the house. When Masango disappeared inside, Bronski picked the phone up again and said to the waiting Gasser, ‘Honey, I’m home.’
‘You want to make a move?’
Bronski gritted his teeth. He’d have dearly loved to get out of this hellhole of a van, but he was far too disciplined to let weakness get the better of him. ‘Not just yet. Let’s hang back a while longer and see what he does next.’
Chapter 39
RFI 1 Afrique was the station playing on the radio inside Jean-Pierre Khosa’s Hummer as the spearhead of the convoy roared into the outskirts of Luhaka City. The army’s approach was no longer any secret. The news bulletins were buzzing with tense speculation over the imminent outbreak of fresh fighting in an area that had remained relatively peaceful since the last civil war. Lying seven hundred miles from the mouth of the Congo River, with a population of just over 800,000, Luhaka was one of the country’s most important inland ports after Kinshasa and a key hub for river and land transportation, marketing and distribution of goods across the nation. Whoever controlled it commanded immense power.
In Luhaka City itself, the rumours that had been escalating all morning had reached fever pitch even before the first vehicles of the invading army came storming through. People were grabbing their children and whatever money or valuables they possessed, and choking the streets in their desperation to get away.
The actual sight of the column of heavily armed vehicles laden with soldiers caused outright panic to spread like wildfire through the outside edges of the city. The first casualties of the attack weren’t military ones, but civilians who were too slow or too infirm to keep up with the stampeding crowds and were trampled underfoot.
Anyone who had dared stop to watch as the convoy blasted by might have caught a glimpse of the fearsome scarred face of the General himself through the dusty windscreen of the Hummer that led the charge, stretched out in the passenger seat, boots up on the dash, arm dangling nonchalantly out over the sill, flash of gold catching the sun. Still sated from the diabolical activities of the night before, fire dancing in his eyes behind the mirrored aviator shades, teeth bared in a snarl of happiness as he led his army into battle.
Jean-Pierre Khosa, relaxed and completely at home in his element.
Soon, he wouldn’t be the only one.
The long procession of trucks and off-roaders wound its way deeper into the city in a beeline for the governor’s mansion at its heart. So far, their approach had met with no resistance whatsoever – but that wouldn’t last. Khosa knew that his brother’s two-thousand-strong heavily armed personal guard would be deployed to repel the invaders. Louis Khosa wasn’t a man to forget his roots, even if he had one foot in politics these days and had exchanged his combat uniform for a sharp suit and tie. Once a warrior, always a warrior. But Jean-Pierre had three times the military force, and he had the hunger to win. Whatever else happened here today, there was no doubt that much blood would be spilled.
It began minutes later, just eight blocks from the governor’s residence. The head of the convoy screeched around a corner that had long since emptied itself of fleeing civilians, and found itself speeding into a dead end. The long, broad street ahead that minutes ago had been a colourful buzz of open market stalls selling fruit, fish, and a thousand other goods of all varieties was blockaded from pavement to pavement by a barrier of trucks, Jeeps, heaped sandbags, oil drums, wooden pallets, burning braziers and heavy machine-gun posts whose gunners opened fire the instant the vehicles came into their sights.
The convoy slammed into a wall of bullets that zinged and splatted into metal, glass, and human flesh. The driver at the wheel of Jean-Pierre Khosa’s Hummer swerved violently to the left and ploughed a furrow of flying wreckage through an abandoned market stall, sending up a wave of squashed bananas, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and yams over the front of the vehicle. The driver skidded into a side street and
narrowly escaped the barrage of fire from the blockade. A pickup truck managed to squeeze through at its tail, light machine gun blazing, strafing a squad of enemy soldiers attempting to block their path.
Caught out in the open, the rest of the convoy came to a ragged halt in the street and began returning fire on the blockade. The governor’s forces defended their position with equal ferocity. During those opening salvos, the air was so thick with metal-jacketed lead that nothing could have lived in the no-man’s land between the blockade and the halted convoy. Windows and windscreens and headlights shattered. Cascades of spent shell casings streamed in golden rivers that caught the sunlight and bounced and rolled on the ground. Sparks danced like lightning off the vehicles and metal barriers of the blockade. Grenades popped from launchers and exploded in bright flashes. Vehicles burst into flames, their occupants spilling out left and right. Men screamed and fell and painted the ground with their blood. The stench of cordite quickly filled the air. Among the first casualties of the attacking army was Colonel Raphael Dizolele, sent into combat despite his wounded leg. But there would be many more before the day was over.
The full-on battle had begun.
Several vehicles back down the line, the first that the passengers in Ben and Jeff’s truck knew of that first contact with the enemy was when they were violently thrown forwards under braking as the truck skidded to a halt and narrowly missed piling into the one in front of it. From one instant to the next, bullets were zipping holes in the canvas top, punching through the metal of the cab and sides like hot needles through soft butter. A bullet from a fifty-calibre heavy machine gun was a serious projectile, a copper-plated dart half an inch in diameter and as long as your finger. It could shoot through six inches of armour plate or thirteen inches of reinforced concrete, and keep on moving in search of something else to destroy. When it hit a target as delicate and soft-skinned as a human being, it simply tore it apart at the seams on its way through. From a machine gun generating a thousand rounds a minute, it could pulp a platoon of men like diced watermelons within the space of a heartbeat. And when one of the soldiers just a few feet away from Ben in the back of the truck caught one in the upper arm, it blew the limb clear off at the shoulder in a fountain of blood that splashed over his comrades as if a bucketful had been sloshed over them. There was no scream. The shock killed him instantly. But there was plenty of screaming from the others as they fell about in terror.
Jeff glanced at Ben, eyebrows raised. Here we go, his look said.
Ben was the only one in the truck not reacting. He barely glanced at the blood, or the shattered body slumping to the floor, and he felt oblivious of the panic and the chaos around him. Jeff’s look lingered on him an instant longer, and in that split second Ben could read a thousand anxious thoughts in his friend’s eyes. He knew what Jeff was thinking, that he’d flipped, that he was no longer himself.
And Jeff was right. Because when Khosa had hurt Jude the way he had, he’d cut away a piece of Ben, too, deep in his core. That was the part of him that cared about getting hurt. An unsafe state for Ben himself to be in, but much more unsafe for others.
To let that happen was Khosa’s first bad mistake.
Behind them the convoy broke its line as vehicle after vehicle skidded to an urgent halt, filling the street in ragged formation. Officers were barking commands. Soldiers grabbing their weapons. The trucks emptying as everyone scrambled out and hit the ground running through the noise and the heat. Some making it only a few paces before they were cut down and lay where they fell. The familiar chunking clatter of AK-47s interspersed with the rip of submachine guns and the furious roar of the heavy weaponry tearing the street to pieces, drowning out the screams and yells of Jean-Pierre Khosa’s fighters in a maelstrom of sound that split the thick humid air. In combat, it only seems loud for the first few moments. The rush of adrenalin as the body’s defences and responses amp up to the max very quickly makes you numb to the noise.
Which was something Ben Hope knew all about. His boots touched the ground, and he was immediately at home. As if he’d suddenly found his place here at last. This wasn’t Khosa’s world any longer. It was his. The violence and gunfire exploding all around him as if in slow motion felt like laughter and sweet music drifting on a summer evening’s breeze. His heart rate was no more than sixty beats a minute. His breathing was calm. He was as cool as a stone. The bruises and cuts over his face and body no longer hurt. The weapon in his hands weighed nothing and fitted his body as though he’d been born with it attached to him.
Ben Hope, armed, dangerous, and back in control.
To let that happen was Khosa’s second bad mistake.
Chapter 40
Buildings to the left, buildings to the right. Nothing that offered safe cover from the destruction of the heavy machine gunners hunkered down behind the street barricade sixty yards away. But out of sight was better than being mowed down like the bodies already piling up beside the stopped vehicles. Instants after Ben was the last man to jump from the truck, it took a hit from a grenade and burst violently ablaze, belching smoke and flame.
Jeff was making a break for the shelter of a recessed doorway on the right side of the street. Ben followed. Squibs of dust exploded at his heels, chasing him down. He moved fast, but not hurriedly. He reached Jeff in the doorway. The masonry was taking hits, bullets chewing bite-size chunks of stone out of the wall just inches from where they crouched for shelter. Behind them, in front of them, across the street, dozens of Khosa’s fighters were doing the same. Some cowering, others ducking around the edge of the disintegrating walls and loosing off bursts of return fire.
‘Take your time, eh,’ Jeff yelled over the noise as Ben joined him in the nook of the doorway. ‘In case you hadn’t noticed, mate, we’re being shot at here – and you’re strolling about like John fucking Wayne!’
The look on Jeff’s face made Ben smile. Like an angry mother chastising a reckless child for skating on thin ice or riding no-hands on his racing bike.
‘I can see that,’ Ben said. A second grenade hit the burning truck and it exploded, taking out windows and blowing shrapnel like confetti. For a few seconds they were shrouded in blinding smoke.
‘So what’s the plan, Mr Wayne?’ Jeff yelled.
Ben already knew what he wanted Jeff to do. ‘Find the boy.’
Jeff blinked. ‘What boy?’
‘Mani. You know the one I mean. Find him and keep him safe. Get yourselves out of here.’
Jeff stared at him, not understanding. Ben wanted the boy to be safe. He didn’t deserve to be in this. But Ben wanted Jeff to be safe, too. Using the wellbeing of the kid was his way of forcing his friend’s hand.
Jeff, though, wasn’t so easily persuaded. ‘What the fuck are you talking about, get myself out? What about you?’
‘I have my own plans,’ Ben said.
‘Like getting yourself killed.’
Ben shrugged. ‘I won’t be the only one. But not you.’
‘No bloody chance, mate. I’m staying right by your side where I can watch your stupid back, like always.’
They ducked deeper into the doorway as a raking line of bullets strafed the wall, clawing brickwork into dust, leaping right and left like a living thing. One of the men taking cover a few yards ahead of them fell back as the side of his head disappeared in a pink mist, and his weapon clattered out of his hands.
Ben moved closer to Jeff and looked long and hard into his friend’s worried eyes. ‘I need you to do this. Don’t make me beg, Jeff.’
Jeff just stared at him, with a kind of desperation in his expression as he tried to read Ben’s thoughts. A terrible realisation filled Jeff’s face as he understood. ‘Don’t tell me – you’re going after Khosa?’
‘It has to end here.’
‘You’re a lunatic. There are thousands of the bastards everywhere.’
‘Then I guess I’ll just have to even the odds a little.’
‘You can’t kill them all.’ r />
‘If Jude’s alive,’ Ben said, ‘tell him that I’m sorry I failed him. Make him understand I had to do this.’
It was goodbye. Ben had nothing more to say. Before Jeff could reply or try to stop him, and before Jeff could see the sadness that suddenly welled up inside him, he slipped out of the doorway and moved quickly back out into the street, using the wall of smoke that was gushing from the ruins of the truck as cover from the gunsights of the governor’s soldiers. He didn’t look back. Felt the heat of the fire on his face and the sting of the smoke in his eyes as it enveloped him. More gunfire rattled up the street, making it impossible for Jeff to chase after him.
Ben skirted around the rear of the burning truck and reached the opposite pavement, moving fast up the street past the dead and the dying. Bullets snapped past him and kicked craters out of walls. More vehicles were on fire and pumping curtains of black smoke, like a blanket of night through which the enemy’s muzzle flashes lit up like burning stars.
But they weren’t Ben’s enemy. He had only one enemy, along with the men who fought for him, and anyone who stood in Ben’s way as he went after him.
You can’t kill them all. Jeff’s words echoing in his head. Jeff had been right about that. But then, Ben didn’t intend to kill them all. Just the ones he saw.
Twenty yards further on, a group of Khosa’s men were sheltering behind a Jeep. Its windows were gone and its bodywork was buckled and riddled with holes. All seven men had their backs to him and were firing indiscriminately over the top and around the sides of the wreck, in that way that inexperienced soldiers have of thinking if they build a wall of bullets around them, nothing can touch them. They were wrong.
Ben recognised two of the soldiers. One was the man who had put the rope around his ankles to string him up. The other had been the pickup truck driver who’d enjoyed playing chicken with the prisoner as he’d dangled upside down, bound and helpless.
So Ben shot those two first. Single shots, in rapid succession, two for two, punching out their lungs and hearts before any of them had time to register his presence. Normally, he preferred not to shoot a man in the back; today he didn’t give a damn. Their comrades whirled around. One of them was quicker than the others, and Ben shot him third, before he shot numbers four, five, and six, his rifle sights gliding from one target to the next, bang-bang-bang, fast and smooth, drilling centre of mass with instant killing power. The seventh man managed to duck down behind the Jeep before Ben could get to him, squeezed off a wild shot from his AK that went a mile wide and then bolted like a frightened rabbit, running straight into incoming fire from the barricade up the street. The governor’s forces had saved Ben a bullet.