Behind them the remnants of Johnny’s routed forces were in full retreat. Most of them had thrown away their weapons and were running for the cover of the jungle. There was only one gateway on that side of the airfield and they jammed the opening in a struggling mass. The range was much too far for the little machine pistol to throw with any accuracy. Nevertheless Hector fired a full magazine at them to help them on their way. He aimed high to compensate for the distance. He saw none of them drop, but there was a sharp increase in their efforts to escape and the volume of their screaming.
Paddy was the first of his team up the ladder and into the landing craft. He shouted at Hector, ‘What happened to Johnny and his lover boy? Where did the bastards go to?’
‘That’s them there!’ Hector shouted back at him, and he pointed ahead at the gate in the perimeter fence just as the white Rover sped through it. ‘Hurry it up, for Chrissake. They are getting clean away from us.’
There were three of Paddy’s men still clinging to the steel boarding ladder when Hector engaged the gears and drove away down the road towards the airport gates. He had seen Dave Imbiss leading his team at a brisk trot up the far side of the runway, heading for the warehouse and barracks. When Hector came abreast of them he swerved off the road, brought the landing craft to a halt and stood up in the control turret. He looked back and saw that Bernie had already started to taxi the Condor towards the laager. He shouted across the runway at Dave.
‘Get back there and stand guard over the Condor, until we get back. We are chasing Johnny up there.’ He pointed up at the castle. Dave waved and shouted an acknowledgement.
Hector dropped back into the driver’s seat, and then he accelerated out through the gates and took the landing craft onto the road leading up to the castle. Ahead of them he saw the dust of the white Rover. It was already more than halfway to the summit.
Cautiously Paddy, Nastiya and Paul made their way forward, clinging to the grab handles as the deck lurched and bounced under them. They clustered behind Hector. The speedometer on the dashboard was reading a reckless forty miles an hour, much too fast for this lumbering behemoth on the narrow twisting track. Nobody protested. They hung on grimly.
‘How many casualties did you take, Paddy?’ Hector demanded without taking his eyes off the road.
‘We had three men down,’ Paddy replied. ‘There was a bastard behind us in the barracks with an AK. He let us pass and then he opened on us from behind.’
‘But, I cancelled him out.’ Nastiya’s expression was serenely satisfied. ‘And none of our casualties are fatal. They are all walkers. I sent them back to the plane.’
‘Good girl, Nazzy,’ Hector commended her, and then he glanced over his shoulder at Paul Stowe. ‘How steep was our butcher’s bill, Paul?’
‘Higher than Paddy’s, I’m sorry to say, sir,’ Paul replied. ‘Four of our boys went down. One is certainly a goner, maybe two of them.’
Hector ducked down lower in the control turret as a burst of AK-47 fire rattled against the bodywork of the vehicle. The others flung themselves down on the deck and huddled under the shelter of the armoured sides.
‘Where the hell did that come from?’ Hector demanded.
‘There is a bunch of goons up there on the castle battlements,’ Paddy replied. ‘This old bus should be impervious to small-arms fire. But just pray that they haven’t got an RPG or a couple of fifty-calibre cannon up there.’
‘I’ll leave the praying to you. I never touch the stuff when I’m driving.’ Hector kept his eyes on the road as he broadsided the craft around the next turn in a cloud of dust and loose gravel.
‘The way you drive the goons don’t need an RPG, Hector Cross,’ Nastiya told him severely. She crammed her Kevlar helmet down over her blonde curls with one hand and clung to Paddy’s shoulder with the other. As always they were using this frivolous banter to mask their essential terror.
Now the automatic rifle fire from the battlements fell on them with the intensity of a tropical monsoon storm. It pounded down on the armour plating like a berserk drummer, and screamed off it in ricochets. It ripped up the surface of the road ahead so they drove upwards through a fog of flying dust and tracer bullets.
Peering through the driver’s slit in the landing craft’s frontal armour, Hector glimpsed Johnny’s Rover disappearing through the castle gates above them. He swore bitterly as he watched the castle gates swing closed behind it.
The next twist in the road cut off his view of the main castle gates, but they were still exposed to hostile fire from the battlements much higher up. In the heart of the storm of flying bullets Hector spoke into the voice-activated mike of his Birkin.
‘Jo!’ He had to raise his voice to a shout for her to hear him. ‘Jo Stanley, are you copying?’
‘Affirmative!’ she replied immediately. ‘But goodness gracious me, what is all that din?’
‘Just a whiff of grape, as Bonaparte once remarked. More importantly, do you and Emma have a fix on Johnny and Carl? They have done a runner,’ Hector told her. ‘They have gone to ground in the castle.’
‘Affirmative,’ Jo confirmed. ‘Emma has a positive on her cameras in the castle. Your two targets have just driven into the courtyard in a white vehicle. Johnny has pulled Carl out of the rear door and is carrying him up the stairs into the main building. Carl seems to be injured. Emma can hear him moaning and she can see that he is bleeding.’
‘He is injured all right,’ Hector told her grimly. ‘I blew his bloody legs off.’
‘Oh, my God!’ Jo’s voice dropped to a horrified whisper. She did not attempt to disguise her shock.
‘You didn’t think we came here to play gin rummy with him, did you?’ he snapped at her. It was the first time he had ever done so, but her squeamishness in the heat of battle, when his own men were being killed and wounded, made him very angry. ‘This isn’t a game any longer. People are getting hurt out here. Pull yourself together, woman!’
As he was speaking he steered the vehicle around the last tight bend, and as they came out of it he saw the castle keep only three hundred yards ahead of them. The heavy wooden gates were shut tightly.
The road was now running almost parallel to the castle, and so close to the foot of the walls that they were screened from the enemy on the battlements. The barrage of gunfire coming down on them was cut off abruptly.
In the comparative silence Hector spoke again into the Birkin mike. ‘Jo, are you still reading me?’
‘Yes, sir. I am still reading you.’ Her tone was brittle as hoar frost. She had not taken his rebuke lightly.
God save us from amateur sulks and tantrums when we are trying to get the job done! he thought, but kept it to himself. Nevertheless, his tone was as cold as hers as he spoke into the mike.
‘Does Emma have a count of the strength of the garrison in the castle?’
‘Sir! Yes, sir!’ Jo replied. ‘Emma confirms the presence of twenty-three hostiles in the castle precincts, that is in addition to Johnny and Carl. Fifteen of them are on the battlements. Five more are defending the main gateway. And then the last three are with Johnny, assisting him to carry the man whose legs you blew off.’
‘Message received and understood.’ He ignored her gibe. His tone was neutral, but his thoughts were not: I shouldn’t have brought her along on this jaunt. I was not thinking with my head, I was taking orders from much lower down in my anatomy.
He did not check his speed as he neared the castle gates, instead he jammed his right foot down on the accelerator and the engine bellowed as he drove straight at them.
Now he was so close that he could pick out three gun slits in the gates themselves and two more in the stone jambs on either side of them. From all these openings protruded the black barrels of automatic rifles aimed at him by the guards on the far side. A renewed fusillade of gunfire hammered against the bows of the landing craft and Hector found himself staring through the narrow eye-slit in the frontal armour directly into the blazing enemy mu
zzles.
He was forced to run this gauntlet for only a few more seconds before he crashed the landing craft headlong into the fifteen-foot-high gates of hewn timber. The huge gates were unable to resist the charge of the massive steel-hulled vehicle. They imploded in a welter of planks and splinters, and came crashing down on the stone cobbles of the inner courtyard. The three riflemen standing behind them and firing through the gun slits were crushed by their weight.
The landing craft climbed over the wreckage and roared into the courtyard. Hector brought it to a standstill in the centre of the open square. The two surviving guards deserted their posts on either side of the demolished doors, and ran back towards the staircase leading into the great hall of the main castle building.
Hector stood up quickly in the turret and fired two quick bursts. The first man went down in a heap at the foot of the staircase and lay without twitching. The second one made it to the top of the staircase before Hector swung onto him and hit him with a full burst. He arched his body as the string of bullets stitched across the back of his camouflage jacket. Then he collapsed and rolled down the stairs, coming to a stop beside his fallen comrade, both of them motionless.
Hector had a fleeting sense of relief that although Emma in Houston might have witnessed the swift execution on her cameras, she would not have been able to share the images with Jo Stanley in the Condor. The two of them were only communicating by shortwave radio. Jo had already endured sufficient to overload her delicate susceptibilities.
‘Paddy, did you copy Jo’s transmissions?’
‘Every word.’
‘I am going after Johnny and Carl.’
‘Okay, Heck.’
‘Take your team up and sort out those fifteen goons on the battlements. They won’t stay up there much longer. They might even be coming down to take us on. But most likely they are already running for the trees like their comrades down on the plain.’
‘Leave them to me,’ Paddy said and snapped an order at the surviving members of his team crouching behind the steel side of the landing craft. ‘On me, lads!’ They jumped to their feet.
Hector shot a quick grin at Nastiya. ‘As for you, my lethal tsarina, don’t be greedy. Leave some pickings for the rest of us.’
She flashed him one of her haughty glances. ‘Crazy man, Cross. Nonsense you must always talk me, like I am baby.’ Under stress Nastiya’s English diction crumbled around the edges, and she tended to dispense with all articles and prepositions in the Russian manner.
She turned and vaulted over the side of the craft, landing just behind Paddy. The two of them led the Black Team at a run towards the foot of the staircase where the dead men lay.
Again Hector spoke into his Birkin mike. ‘Jo, please ask Emma if she is able to give me another fix on Johnny and Carl. Please note that I said please.’ He made a small peace offering.
‘Please hold on a moment, Hector, and please note I responded in kind.’ There was a trace of a smile in her voice, and she had used his given name. She came back swiftly. ‘Hector, Emma has them on camera. They have descended to level Bravo, beneath the main kitchens and storage cellars. They are in the passageway at Bravo Tango 05, moving along it in an easterly direction towards the small postern gate that comes out above the lake. There are still five of them in the group.’
‘Thank you, Jo Stanley. We are in pursuit. Standing by.’
‘Don’t mention it, Hector Cross. Standing by.’ At least it was a truce, if not a full peace agreement. Hector brushed it out of his mind. He jumped down from the landing craft and led his team into the castle.
*
Immediately as he entered the great hall Hector picked up the blood trail. But there was only a light speckling of drops across the glazed tiles. Johnny would have stemmed the flow with a tourniquet.
‘Good!’ Hector thought as he followed it. ‘I don’t want the poisonous little swine to bleed to death before I can get my hands on him.’
Even though Emma had told them that the way down into the dungeons was clear, they fell naturally into the follow-up procedure that was second nature to them. While Hector went forward with a stick of four men, Paul and his stick took cover behind them and screened their advance. When Hector reached a secure vantage point he went to ground and he signalled Paul forward. They leap-frogged swiftly across the great hall and started down the circular stairway that led into the dungeons. When the leading stick reached each successive landing they paused, and allowed the following team to take over the lead from them. They went down through the kitchen area, and kept on down the stairway until they came out at last into the maze of the dungeons.
When they paused there they heard the far-off echo of gunfire coming down to them from the castle battlements high above. It lasted only a short while before the heavy silence fell again.
‘Emma reports that Paddy made contact with the hostiles on the battlements,’ Jo told Hector over the Birkin. ‘Paddy has dispersed them and cleared the area. The survivors have fled in disarray. Your rear area is secured, Hector.’
‘Thank you, Jo.’ Hector suppressed that last residue of his resentment towards her. ‘Please relay this to Paddy. He is to follow us into the dungeons and try to catch up with us as soon as possible. I might need his support.’
‘Roger that, Hector!’
‘Now please give me an update on my own position.’
Hector had a clear plan of this area in his head from studying the architectural drawings that Ronnie Bunter and Jo had obtained from Andrew Moorcroft. However, they were now fifty feet below ground level and there was not a glimmer of light in this labyrinth of stone. Hector had no reference points to relate to his mental map. He dared not forewarn the enemy of his position by switching on the headlamp that was built into his Kevlar helmet.
He could only scan the way ahead through the black light which was built into the optical sight of his weapon. With it he could pick up the fluorescent glow of the blood trail that Carl had left on the stone cobbles. Finally this petered out, but Johnny and the men with him had Carl’s blood on the soles of their boots and they left smudges of it on the stone flooring slabs for Hector to follow.
In the utter darkness his men had closed up behind Hector, keeping contact with him and with each other by a hand on the shoulder of the man ahead.
At her computer in Houston Emma could follow their advance with the cameras she had placed in the dungeons. Each of these contained an infrared eye that clearly reflected the heat emitted by a human body. Through the same device she could also see exactly where Johnny’s band were at any time.
Jo’s whisper in Hector’s earpiece pinpointed his position for him and directed him forward. They gained so rapidly on Johnny that now they could see the beams of his flashlight reflected off the walls of the tunnel ahead of them.
Then suddenly even that glimmering of light was snuffed out.
‘Bad news from Emma.’ Jo spoke softly in Hector’s ear. ‘She reports that Johnny has reached the funk hole, and disappeared into it. Emma has lost all contact with them.’
Hector knew of the existence of the funk hole, so he had been expecting this to happen. Nevertheless he felt a flutter of dismay in his guts. They knew nothing about the interior design of the funk hole. Carl and Johnny had built it only after Emma had left Kazundu. Therefore she had not been asked to set up her cameras inside the area. Of course, Emma had overheard Carl and Johnny discussing its construction. That was how she knew the name they had given it. She had listened as they had planned it as their refuge of last resort.
She had even been able to follow the progress of the actual work. One of her cameras was fortuitously placed in such a position that it overlooked the stretch of wall through which Carl and Johnny had excavated the entrance into the bunker.
Judging only by the time it had taken to construct it, and by the amount of earth the workmen had removed, it was obvious that the funk hole must be extensive. Once the work was completed, Emma had been able to
watch as the entrance to the bunker was elaborately disguised. However, all that lay beyond that door was still a mystery.
‘Okay, Paul.’ Hector spoke in a normal conversational voice. ‘They have gone to ground behind the secret door. We can switch on headlamps now. They won’t be able to see the light.’ They all blinked in the sudden illumination after the darkness.
Hector led them forward again. The soft rubber soles of their combat boots made only a whisper of sound on the stone floor. As Hector rounded the next corner in the tunnel he came to what looked like a dead end. He saw tiny droplets of Carl’s blood leading up to the base of the blank wall. He went forward to stand in front of the wall and he examined it closely. He ran one hand lightly over the masonry.
Jo’s voice in his earpiece relayed the instructions she was receiving from Houston. ‘Emma is watching you. She wants you to move about two feet to your right. Do you see a smaller triangular block of blue stone just below your eye line? Okay, push it in hard. Use the butt of your palm. Put your weight on it and feel for it to give. That’s great! Now, still holding the pressure, twist it anti-clockwise.’
As Hector followed these instructions he realized that Emma had often watched Carl or Johnny carrying out this procedure.
Now he felt the block of stone revolve reluctantly under his hand. There was the muffled sound of a locking mechanism releasing within the stonework. Then an entire section of masonry pivoted ponderously on a concealed fulcrum. It swung aside to reveal a green painted door.
Hector leaned forward and touched the door. He knew at once that it was metal and not wood. He tapped its surface lightly with his fingertips, judging its resonance.
This was not anything like armoured high-grade chromium stainless steel; the type of material that the doors to bank vaults are made from. It was a low-grade mild steel. The welding was crudely executed, especially around the hinges. It had probably been done by local workmen in Kigoma, across the lake.