*
The Condor taxied sedately back down the runway towards the main airport building, beside which waited the three parked vehicles and Johnny Congo’s reception committee.
Hector stood well back against the rear bulkhead of the cockpit, crouching behind the pilots where he could not be seen through the windshield of the cockpit. With a pair of binoculars he was scanning the layout of the terminal buildings and the sandbagged redoubt.
‘Okay, I have a positive ID on Johnny Congo. He is the big black brute on the roof of the white vehicle to the right of the redoubt. Dark-blue shirt and cream-coloured chinos. It’s impossible to mistake the swine,’ he spoke into his mike for all his team leaders to hear him. ‘And there is Carl Bannock standing on top of the wall of sandbags above the MG emplacements. He is doing a war dance and waving an automatic rifle over his head. The little bastard is wearing a long red-patterned robe. It looks like a dressing gown. He is barefooted, as though he has just climbed out of bed. He must be totally out of his mind with giggle juice. Just remember all of you that he is mine.’ His tone was fierce. ‘There is a crowd milling around the parked vehicles. It’s difficult to say how many; maybe fifty or sixty or even a hundred of them; all Johnny’s hookers and thugs. His whores are decked out in all sorts of weird gear. Most of them are almost naked and it looks as though a few are totally starkers, letting everything hang out all over the scenery. There is going to be bloody pandemonium when the shooting starts. Don’t be too squeamish about peripheral damage when we engage. Better a few innocent bystanders go down than you let a bogey stay on his feet to take us under fire.’
Jo’s voice sounded in his ear. ‘I didn’t hear that. So help me God, I never heard that!’
Hector frowned, and then went quiet as the Condor neared the end of the runway. The range closed rapidly and he was better able to weigh the odds and to make his final decisions. He started speaking again, well aware that he was the only man aboard, apart from the pilots, who could see what was awaiting them.
‘The layout of this redoubt looks exactly the same as the one Dave has just silenced. They have the same pairs of twin-barrelled fifty-calibre MGs sited in embrasures and pointed at us. The good news is that the sides of the embrasures are too deep to permit the weapons to traverse to either left or right. The bad news is that we don’t have the option of blowing dust into the faces of the gunners. If we try to pull that stunt again, all those goons who are outside the jet blast will throw down a solid sheet of fire on us…’ Hector broke off suddenly as he felt a light touch on his shoulder and he looked around quickly.
Jo stood close behind him. Up until that time he had been unaware that she had left the jump seat in the galley.
‘Hector, listen to me,’ she urged him quietly. ‘Why don’t you use the warehouse building over there as a shield?’ She pointed ahead through the windscreen of the cockpit. ‘If Bernie takes the Condor down the taxi path on the left-hand side of the warehouse we will be hidden from Johnny Congo for as long as it takes to deploy the rest of your assault teams. Johnny will go on believing you are a bunch of juicy little call girls until you come roaring out from behind the warehouse.’
Hector stared at her for a moment, reviling himself silently for not having seen the answer as quickly as she had. ‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘I owe you another one.’ And then he turned back to the pilots.
‘Bernie, you heard the lady! Go straight past the redoubt. Tuck us in behind that warehouse as close as you can get. Then immediately drop the landing ramp. Keep all four engines running, and stand by for a quick turnaround and an emergency getaway if things go haywire.’
Then he spoke quietly into the PA system. ‘Heads up, everybody! We are only minutes away from Go. We are going to park behind the main airport buildings. We will be protected from hostile fire while we disembark. Both White and Black Teams move back to your exit stations, now!’
He patted Bernie and Nella on their shoulders. ‘There is the secure laager for the Condor.’ He pointed it out to them. ‘Get this old bus into it just as soon as we are clear. Now I am off. Bye-bye! Sit tight! We’ll be back.’
‘Happy hunting, Hector,’ Nella replied and he turned and left the cockpit. He paused only to embrace Jo Stanley and kiss her parted lips. Then he whispered into her mouth, ‘I adore you, but for once please do what I ask. Stay here and don’t come after me. It’s a dangerous world out there. I need you to be with me for another fifty years or so.’
He left her and ran back through the empty passenger cabin. His men had already moved back to their places at the rear exit ramp. He followed them through the open pressure door into the cavernous cargo hold. Paddy’s Black Team was drawn up on the starboard side of the hold. Paul had the White Team on the port side.
As Hector hurried down between the ranks towards the rear of the hold he was checking his equipment for the last time.
He wore a camouflage flak-jacket of Kevlar body armour and a helmet of the same material. Both of these were resistant to multiple hits from NATO-standard small arms. In the MOLLE pockets attached to his jacket by Velcro fastening he carried two M84 flash-bang stun grenades and twenty spare magazines each containing forty rounds of 9mm parabellum ammunition for his submachine gun. In the front fastening of the jacket was a tiny hidden pocket. It was just large enough to contain one of the Hypnos knock-down hypodermic syringes from Dave Imbiss’s arsenal of dirty tricks.
He carried a Brügger & Thomet MP9 submachine gun as his main weapon. He loved it for its small size, light weight, quick handling and superb accuracy. With a flick of the thumb he was able to change from single shot to nine hundred rounds per minute cyclic rate of fire. Despite its short barrel the top-mounted optic sight allowed him to be certain of hitting a hen’s egg-size target with four shots out of five at a range of fifty yards, shooting out of hand.
Hector reached the loading ramp where Paddy and Nastiya waited at the head of the Black Team, and he told them quietly, ‘Bernie is going to park us behind the warehouse on the far side of the airport, so initially we will be screened by it from Johnny Congo and his goons. As soon as we disembark we are going to split up. I am going to take my team to the right and come out behind the sandbagged redoubt. You will go the long way round the back of the warehouse and the barracks to get behind them. I will keep them busy on my side until you hit them in the rear. Between us we have to stop them retreating up the hill. At all times bear in mind that we are only here to take Johnny and Carl, not to fight it out to the last man standing. As soon as we have grabbed those two we will get the hell out of here. If we are forced to follow them through the maze of the castle we are going to take casualties.’
‘Perish the thought,’ Paddy grunted.
‘My team will go out first. As soon as we are clear you can disembark.’ Hector punched Paddy’s arm lightly. ‘Break a leg!’ He grinned at him. Paddy grinned back. Both of them were high on the fizz of blood in their veins, the heady excitement of mortal danger that kept bringing them back into the fight.
Hector turned away and went to join Paul Stowe at the head of the White Team on the other side of the hold. The Condor jolted to a standstill so abruptly that they were almost thrown off their feet. The rear loading ramp started to drop, but so torturously slowly that Hector could not contain his impatience.
‘Follow me!’ he snapped at Paul. Then he ran up the moving ramp and dived head-first through the narrow opening. It was an eight foot drop to the ground on the outside. As he fell he flipped his body over to land on his feet like a cat. He absorbed the shock with his legs and then bounded forward towards the corner of the warehouse. He heard his men hitting the ground behind him and pounding after him but he did not spare them a backwards glance.
He reached the corner and flattened himself against the wall. He was breathing lightly but could feel his heart pumping like a well-tuned racing motor. As he glanced around the corner of the wall his vision was as bright and focussed as a gun sight.
&n
bsp; Very little had changed in the minutes since he had last seen it; Johnny was still standing on top of the Rover with his hands on his hips. Around the vehicle were clustered the motley horde of militiamen and juvenile whores. Most of them were staring perplexedly towards where they had seen the Condor disappear behind the warehouse. Some of the Thai toys were still dancing and clapping their hands, but one of the semi-naked girls was leaning against the side of the Rover and copiously vomiting up the liquor she had been fed.
The machine gunners in the redoubt had left their weapons and clambered up the wall to peer over the sandbags in his direction. However, what attracted Hector’s full attention instantly was the bizarre figure of Carl Bannock still balancing on top of the wall. He was no longer dancing, but unlike all the others his back was half turned to Hector, and he was shouting at Johnny Congo.
‘What the hell is that stupid mothering arsehole, Yuri Volkov, playing at now?’ he yelled.
He was totally unaware of Hector’s gaze upon him. The range was less than fifty yards. In his hands Hector held one of the sweetest little firearms he had ever fired. Before him was the cleanest shot that the fickle gods of war had ever presented to Hector. The man he had come to kill was completely at his mercy.
There was only one consideration preventing him from doing so. He wanted to be looking into Carl’s eyes as he died. He wanted to smell the rancid odour of overwhelming terror on his dying breath. He wanted the last thing Carl ever heard to be the name of the woman Hector had loved. He wanted to whisper Hazel’s name in his ear at the final moment so that Carl would carry it with him into the flames of hell.
While he hesitated, the moment was passing. He began to lift the weapon, but suddenly Johnny Congo bellowed in a voice of thunder, ‘Get down off that wall, Carl, you stupid prick. This is a trap. It isn’t Yuri in that freaking plane. It’s Hector Cross.’ His feral instincts were so critically tuned that Johnny Congo had smelled the danger.
Carl did not react at once to the warning; he remained transfixed. The opportunity was still there for Hector, but now it was fleeting. Swiftly but smoothly he brought up the gun and fired a five-round burst. The recoil was so light that through the magnification of the optical lens he could watch his bullets strike.
He had aimed at Carl’s legs to anchor him, but not to kill him. Two of his bullets missed. He saw one kick up a tiny puff of dust way out near the perimeter fence. The second missed shot caught the sick Thai woman in the background as she leaned heaving with nausea against the side of the Rover. It must have hit her in the head for she went down as though a trapdoor had opened under her feet.
The other three bullets all hit Carl where Hector had aimed. One went into the ankle joint of his bare left foot. Judging by the angle of entry Hector knew that it had shattered the complex of metatarsal bones where they hinged with the descending fibula and tibia bones. The other two bullets went marginally higher as the gun rode up in Hector’s hands with the recoil. Carl’s legs were directly in line with each other, so when the bullets passed through the left leg they went on to strike the right one behind it, breaking bones in both.
Simultaneously his legs folded up under him and he went over backwards. He tumbled down the far wall of the redoubt and out of Hector’s sight.
Just as swiftly Johnny Congo disappeared from the roof of the white vehicle, but he had jumped. Hector could still hear his voice roaring orders at Sam Ngewenyama in Swahili. Hector had been fluent in that language since childhood. He understood that Johnny was ordering Sam and his men to catch the Thai whores and use them as a screen to deter the attackers.
*
Under cover of the walls of the sandbagged redoubt Johnny ran forward to where Carl Bannock was writhing in a puddle of his own blood on the hardstanding of the runway.
‘My legs!’ Carl whimpered. ‘Oh God help me. Both my legs are broken.’ Then his voice changed to a wail of terror. ‘Johnny! Please help me. Where are you, Johnny?’
‘I am right here with you, Carl baby.’ Johnny stooped over him and lifted him against his chest like an infant. Carl squealed again as his shattered legs twisted and swung loosely, bone grinding on shattered bone chips. Johnny ran with him back to the Rover.
Sam Ngewenyama’s thugs chased down and rounded up most of the Thai whores, although a few escaped and raced away terrified and screaming amongst the airport buildings. The thugs dragged those they had captured back towards the vehicles. Twisting their arms up behind their backs, they forced them to face outwards towards Hector’s men.
*
As soon as Carl dropped out of sight behind the redoubt wall, Hector ran forward followed closely by Paul Stowe and the rest of the White Team. Hector came around the corner of the redoubt wall, and found Johnny with Carl in his arms and his gang bunched up around him in full retreat back towards the three parked vehicles, dragging their struggling hostages with them.
Johnny Congo’s conscripts were all men of the Nilotic family of tribes. They were by their very origins taller than most other human beings. They disdained any man less than six feet in height as a stunted dwarf. They towered head and shoulders over the tiny oriental hostages behind whom they were trying to take shelter. They were also screening Johnny Congo and the body he was carrying back to the Range Rover.
‘Go for head shots!’ Hector snapped at Paul. ‘Keep your aim high, and try not to hit the little yellow buggers.’
In the centre of the retreating line Sam Ngewenyama was the tallest of them all. Hector locked eyes with him and Sam saw the little B&T submachine gun in Hector’s hands coming up. He tried to get in the first shot, swinging up the heavy rifle in one hand. The AK-47 is notorious for its tendency to ride up in automatic mode. This is almost impossible to control with a single hand. To exacerbate Sam’s predicament the naked ladyboy that he was trying to subdue with his other hand pulled Sam off balance at the critical moment. His first burst kicked up dust around Hector’s feet without touching him. A fraction of a second later Hector replied with a single shot that struck Sam in his forehead, a half-inch above the bridge of his nose. He went down in a tangle of lanky arms and legs.
Without lowering his weapon Hector swept it along the line of retreating militia. He fired three more single shots in quick succession, aiming at their exposed heads. As each shot cracked out one of the militia dropped, kicking and twitching convulsively.
The shortest man amongst them was at the end of their line furthest from Hector. His flat uncouth features were scarred by smallpox. The little yellow girl he was holding as a shield broke out of his grip and raced away, leaving both his hands free for a clean shot. He managed to get off a lucky burst with his AK. The Cross Bow men flanking Paul Stowe were both hit and they went down.
Hector swivelled and fired through the gap they had left. Scarface dropped his rifle and walked backwards, clutching his throat with both hands. Then he fell on his back still clutching his throat. Hector switched his attention to the thugs in front of him. He got off a short burst before the weapon fired its last round. He released the empty magazine, but before he could load a fresh one the line of militiamen confronting him disintegrated and scattered.
Most of them ran straight into Paddy’s Black Team as they charged around the far side of the warehouse buildings. Hector smiled grimly at the success of his pincer movement and left the survivors for Paddy to deal with.
He switched all his attention back to the two men he had come to kill. He saw that behind the screen of his retreating men Johnny had run with Carl in his arms to the Rover, carrying him around the far side of it. He threw him into the back seat, then he darted to the driver’s side to get behind the wheel.
Hector tried to get a clear shot at him. But now the residents of the barracks behind the warehouse, panicked by the shouting and the gunfire, came swarming out of the building like ants from a nest being attacked by killer wasps. Paddy’s men came up hard behind them, driving them to wilder abandon, until they ran headlong into the thugs and
the terrified Thai whores trying to escape from Hector’s team. This throng of humanity swept across Hector’s front, between him and his target, foiling Hector’s aim.
Hector ran forward, shoving hysterical tribeswomen and their squalling brats out of his way, but he saw that he was not going to be able to prevent Johnny escaping in the Rover.
Johnny already had the door open and as he ducked his head to climb into the cab Hector shouldered to one side a black woman with an infant strapped to her back. Then he let fly with the machine pistol. He emptied a full magazine at Johnny. He saw his bullets splatter against the side of the Rover, starring the glass of the windows and dimpling the paintwork. But the devil’s luck held true. Johnny was behind the wheel and unscathed when the gun in Hector’s hands clicked on an empty chamber.
Johnny gunned the engine, spinning the wheels in the dirt and throwing up dust. When the heavily lugged tyres bit the Rover shot away down the road towards the airport gates.
Hector ran to the nearer of the two abandoned amphibious landing craft. He scrambled up the steel boarding ladder onto the boat-deck of this great ungainly machine. Then he ran forward to the pilot’s seat in the armoured turret in the bows. With a quick lift of relief he saw that the key was in the ignition switch on the control panel. The powerful diesel engine was still hot and it fired at the first kick. Then it throbbed rhythmically, blowing blue smoke through the elevated exhaust pipe above his head.
Behind him Paul Stowe had led his men up the ladder onto the deck. Hector saw that there were four of them missing, but he had known that casualties were inevitable. He put it out of his mind and jumped up on the driver’s seat, waving his arms and yelling at Paddy and Nastiya. They saw him and brought their team at a run, shoving the bewildered black women and children out of their path.