Silent kill, p.23
Silent Kill, page 23
part #1 of Extreme Series
‘I’ll drive in a circuit,’ Pretorius said as he tugged at the door on the driver’s side of the technical.
‘Roger that.’ Bald caught his breath. ‘Keep the speed steady. That way I’ll have a chance of nailing as many of the fuckers as possible.’
Pretorius clambered inside the cab as Bald vaulted up on to the flatbed and got to grips with the Browning. He knew the basics – he’d handled one several times with the Regiment. A quick weapons check revealed that the last user had kindly inserted the end of a link of ammo into the feed tray: .50 BMG calibre. An absolute beast of a round capable of vaporizing a human-sized target at a range of up to a thousand metres. Had to be at least three hundred rounds stacked in the ammo crate. The Browning rested on an M3 mount. Bald hooked around to the back plate on the HMG and pulled on the bolt release, manually cocking the weapon. There was a loud ker-thunk as the link shunted through the closed feed tray and the first round shunted into the firing position inside the chamber. Now Bald clasped both hands around the spade handle grips located on either side of the back plate, both thumbs resting on the butterfly trigger mechanism. Finally he was in business.
Pretorius flipped down the sun visor and the keys tumbled into his lap. He cranked up the ignition. The engine sputtered into life, the tyres screeched as he put his foot to the pedal. They accelerated towards the sangar at the eastern end of the runway, travelling in the opposite direction from the way the Herc pointed, skimming around the runway’s edge. The two remaining soldiers at the sangar were fleeing across the asphalt. They had no choice. They were coming under heavy fire from the eight cowboys, who had broken out from the cover of the anti-blast blocks and were now charging towards the sangar. Sixty metres from the technical to the cowboys. Bald brought the .50-cal in a steady arc towards the sangar. Lined up the targets with the sights, front and rear, straining to keep the Browning trained on them as the technical bumped over a deep pothole.’
Then he let rip.
The perforated barrel lit up. Bald felt the recoil shaking in his bones, juddering through his muscles. It was like clinging on to a pneumatic drill. The muzzle flashed repeatedly, lighting up the asphalt as three rounds pelted out of the barrel and streaked through the air like fireflies. The force of the recoil drove the bolt back and shanked another round of .50 BMG link into the feed tray. Spent jackets belched out of the T-ejector located at the right side of the receiver. The first three rounds smacked into the cowboys as they neared the sangar. Two of them vanished in a cloud of blood and gristle. A third guy jackknifed. The other cowboys stumbled forward, chopping their strides in a desperate attempt to reach the cover of the sangar. Bald unloaded two more rounds, pulverizing the back of a fleeing cowboy’s head. His skull exploded like he’d put a hand grenade in his mouth and pulled the pin. Blood everywhere. His decapitated body rolled limply away.
‘Circle the sangar!’ Bald bellowed above the jarring engine.
‘On it,’ Pretorius roared back.
They were eight or nine metres beyond the sangar now. Pretorius hit the brakes and the technical canted as he swerved to the left, turning so that they were facing the sangar head-on. He accelerated towards the sangar at the side of the runway and parallel to the Herc. Stegman shoved Eli face down on the asphalt next to Imogen as Bald thumbed the butterfly trigger and pummelled the five cowboys charging the sangar. The cowboys had no chance. Their bodies jerked and jittered with the impact of the hot lead. Limbs exploded. Torsos were ripped in half. The cowboys were taking a trip to the dark side by the time Bald relaxed his thumb on the trigger and arced the Browning towards the next targets, at the sangar next to the Herc, sixty metres ahead.
He was starting to think that he and Pretorius made a good team.
‘Everyone on board the Herc!’ Pretorius ordered over the comms. ‘NOW!’
At once the soldiers began dashing across the asphalt towards the lowered ramp. Moses led the charge. The cowboys directed their sights towards the technical. Bullets peppered the cab. Bald let them have it. Easy. By the time he was finished, the cowboys had more holes in them than a bunch of hookers on a golf course.
Sixteen cowboys down. Thirty-two to go.
They’d levelled the odds. But there was still a way to go before they could kick back and crack open the Stella. Pretorius kept his foot to the pedal as they streaked past the Herc, all thirty metres of her, and raced towards the next sangar being overrun by the cowboys, twenty metres beyond the plane’s nose cone. At the same time a mechanical whine sounded as Priest and Deet fired up the Herc’s turboprop engines. The noise crescendoed to a droning peal and the rightmost of the four propellers started to whirr.
‘Keep going!’ Bald thundered as he swung the Browning towards the next targets. Brass jackets rolled around the flatbed like loose change. The cowboys at the third sangar were still getting their shit together as Bald unleashed a flurry of rounds on their position. Three of them did the dead man’s dance. Another took a round to his arm. The .50-cal bullet shattered his elbow; his forearm dangled like a loose thread. Their cries were drowned by the drone of the Herc’s engines. The remaining two cowboys scarpered back towards the Landies, sixty metres outside the airport. The soldiers, who had been on the retreat, smelled blood. They brassed up the cowboys before they could reach the vehicles. As they were cut down, one after the other, the cowboys’ wretched cries carried across the pre-dawn sky.
Good work. Half the cowboys were now dead or wounded. The surviving twenty-four were spread out across the other three sangars. Bald looked past his shoulder as Pretorius angled the technical towards the fourth sangar a hundred metres past the Herc. The rest of the soldiers hurried towards the loading ramp. No sign of Stegman. He was still at the sangar next to the Herc alongside Eli and Imogen, providing covering fire for the other soldiers. A second four-bladed propeller began to spin – slowly at first, then faster, until it became a blurred circle. The Herc was almost primed for take-off.
Bald faced forward. They were forty metres from the fourth sangar. The cowboys attacking sangars four, five and six had given up trying to take down the soldiers and concentrated their fire on the technical. But Pretorius weaved this way and that, slaloming across the asphalt, dodging bullets and impressing Bald. He wasn’t just a first-rate warrior – he had some serious driving skills. Rounds zipped either side of the cab and ricocheted off the flatbed’s sides. Bald kept his cool and put the drop on the cowboys at sangar number four with a devastating arc of.50-cal gunfire. He severed one guy in half at the waist. Reduced another to a rag of blood and bones. The cowboys were on the back foot.
We’re winning! Bald thought.
He missed that feeling. It was a long time since he’d last experienced it.
Deet’s voice hissed over the comms. ‘Thirty seconds to take-off. Hurry it up!’
Pretorius slammed on the brakes and fishhooked around the front of the Herc so that they were heading towards its rear. All four propellers were now spinning. Bald turned his attention to the cowboys at the fifth and sixth sangars and opened fire. His wrists were burning from locking the Browning on target while Pretorius skated and skidded across the runway. One sangar left – the one next to the terminal. Pretorius raced towards it as the Herc began to slowly taxi along the runway, the drone of its engines blasting across the carnage-strewn airport. The last soldiers piled into the back of the Herc. Bald saw Stegman and Eli making a break for it, sprinting towards the plane, Stegman shouldering Imogen, with Eli hobbling after them.
Drop these last cowboys, Bald told himself, then we’re home and dry—
CA-RACK!
A loud bang was followed by a sharp hiss as a bullet punctured the front wheel. The technical dipped to the left and swerved out of control, yanking Bald away from the HMG and throwing him off the flatbed. He landed on the ground with a jarring crunch; it felt like his jaw had slammed into the roof of his skull. Sharp pains fired down his left side. His head felt like someone had dropped a piano on it. Every nerve ending in his body screamed. The haze cleared from his head and he saw a cowboy storming towards him. SCAR muzzle trained on his chest. A cold fear clamped around his neck. He had no time to react. The cowboy had him in his sights.
He waited to die.
Then a blur of motion shot across the asphalt. The cowboy paused for the slightest moment as Bald watched a pair of headlights paint halos on his chest. The cowboy turned to his right just in time to see the technical arrowing towards him. The front bumper slammed into his midriff and cut him down. He rolled like a rag doll under the wheels as the vehicle bounced over him before screeching to a halt next to Bald. The driver’s door flew open. Pretorius jumped out and offered Bald his hand.
‘Now I’ve saved your life, how about we get out of here and get rich?’
Bald hesitated for a beat. Then he took the hand. Fuck Priest. Fuck the op. And fuck the Firm. He owed them nothing. People said money didn’t make you happy, but that was a lie preached by sad cunts who didn’t have a pot to piss in. The truth is, money opens doors. Money buys you respect, women, friends. Money buys you better teeth and a longer life expectancy. When you got down to it, it was money that got people elected president and featured on the front of Forbes magazine. Bald figured it was time he started looking out for number one.
‘Let’s get bang on it,’ he said as he climbed to his feet.
The cowboys at the final sangar sprayed rounds at the technical. Pretorius hit the ground. Bald crouched by the front wheel as rounds pinballed through the vehicle and starred the windscreen. Ten metres short of the Herc, Eli collapsed. His cries for help were drowned out by the gunfire. Stegman hauled Imogen on board the plane with his back to his slave, unaware of the fact that he’d fallen.
They had only a few seconds left to board the Herc. Bald had to act now. Or never. He sprang onto the balls of his feet, reached into the cab and grabbed the Colt Commando lying across the front passenger seat. He let off a burst at the cowboys, but his aim was way off and the targets quickly shrank behind the sandbags. Didn’t matter. He’d bought himself a second or three. That was all he needed. At the same time Pretorius picked himself off the ground and leapt up onto the flatbed – exposing himself to enemy fire.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Bald barked.
‘Dismounting the .50-cal. We can’t board with it mounted. It’s too high, we’ll crash against the cargo ceiling. Cover me.’
‘Shit!’ Bald hissed. They were taking too long. The Herc was going to leave without them. Too late now. Gritting his teeth, he sprang up from cover and put down a second burst on the cowboys while Pretorius pulled out the pin securing the HMG to its mount. The gun toppled onto the floor of the flatbed like Saddam’s statue. In his peripheral vision Bald saw Eli struggling to his feet. Ten metres to the Herc. The soldiers were crammed inside the cargo hold, the uninjured tending to the wounded. No one had spotted the slave sprawled on the ground to the rear of the plane. Bald sensed his opportunity.
Now Pretorius jumped down off the flatbed and dived into the front passenger seat. Meanwhile Bald gave the cowboys a third burst of good news before climbing behind the steering wheel. A pair of spider-web cracks decorated the windscreen. Glass shards sprinkled the dashboard. To the right of the technical, twelve metres away at his three o’clock, the surviving cowboys were manoeuvring out from behind the sixth sangar.
Bald shifted into Reverse. Pedal to the floor. The technical groaned as it backed away from the sangar. The speedometer needle registered ten per. Then fifteen. The tyres squealed. The eight cowboys at the sangar switched their weapons to fully automatic and unleashed continuous bursts at the reversing technical. Rounds blitzed the bodywork. There was a sound like a bag of coins spilling on the ground as the front passenger-side window shattered. Pretorius ducked forward. A round embedded itself in the side of his seat.
‘Hit the throttle,’ Bald said over the comms. ‘But hold the brakes. We’re on our way.’
The Herc’s engines now reached a deafening roar, obliterating the wounded cowboys’ howls of agony and the steady thrum of the technical. Bald looked over his shoulder and lined up the vehicle with the ramp. Eli rolled onto his back and waved frantically at him to stop. Bald kept going. With the front wheel fucked, the technical threatened to veer to the side of the ramp and he had to fight hard to keep it in a roughly straight line. Ten metres. Then five. Eli stopped waving.
There was a look of dumb horror on the slave’s face as the rear bumper hit him. He was sucked under the technical and Bald heard a brief scream and then a satisfying crunch as the wheels crushed him. Pretorius shot him a look.
‘What the fuck was that?’
Bald said nothing. He smiled on the inside. Take that, you prick. That’s what you get for screwing with me. The technical lurched again as Eli passed under the front wheels and his lacerated body rolled to a halt in the middle of the runway. Pretorius couldn’t see him – his side of the windscreen was obscured by cracked glass. Pleased with his work, Bald continued to reverse. There was a jolt as the technical bumped up the ramp and into the cargo hold. Behind the vehicle the soldiers hurriedly cleared a path, carting the wounded to the rear of the hold. Bald ejected from the cab, hit the intercom fixed next to the ramp.
‘GO! GO! GO!!’ he roared.
From somewhere behind the technical Stegman screamed, ‘My fucking son!’
The Herc catapulted forward. There was a grating sound like a dentist’s drill as the ramp drew up and the plane gained speed. Every fitting shook. Bald planted a firm hand on the padded fuselage to steady himself. He glimpsed the cowboys shrinking from view, taking random shots as the Herc scorched across the desert. Then a jolt, and suddenly they were climbing. Only then did Bald breathe a sigh of relief.
He wiped his sopping brow. He needed a drink. Then he remembered he’d left the Grouse in the Dodge. Cursing himself, he scanned the hold. It was twelve metres long, a shade over three metres wide and roughly the same height. He counted twelve soldiers aside from himself, Pretorius and Stegman. Fifteen all told. That meant they’d suffered nine KIA on the ground. Eight, Bald corrected himself, remembering that he’d taken care of Eli personally. He smiled briefly at the image of his limp body rolling on the asphalt.
No one said a word. There was just the whirr of the engines and the faint hum of the air-con pressurizing the compartment. Cold air wafted Bald, turning the beads of his sweat on his face to drops of ice. He spotted Imogen hunched up in a corner, her knees pulled tight to her chin, her eyes carrying the same thousand-yard stare Bald had seen on the vacant faces of a hundred squaddies after getting their first taste of war.
Stegman marched up to Bald. His face was twisted into a hideous knot of rage. His jaw muscles twitched. He was spitting mad. ‘You cunt,’ he said. ‘You killed him. My son. He’s fucking dead.’
‘What’s this?’ said Pretorius.
‘Eli?’ Stegman rasped, jabbing a finger at Bald. ‘This prick ran over him.’
Bald feigned a look of ignorance. He was good at those. He’d had plenty of practice down the years. ‘No idea what you’re talking about, mate,’ he said. ‘I was focused on getting us out of the shit.’
‘Bollocks. I saw it with my own eyes. Eli was crying out for help. You drove over him.’
Bald went to protest. Then he felt the icy tip of a muzzle pressing against the nape of his neck.
‘Turn around,’ Pretorius said.
Bald raised his hands slowly and said, ‘I didn’t kill him.’
‘I don’t care.’
Bald did a one-eighty. Came face to face with Pretorius. The PMC chief was training the Beretta on a spot between his eyes, breathing heavily through his nostrils. A wicked smile teased his face.
‘Liam told us everything,’ he went on. ‘We know you’re working for Six, Jimmy. Or should I say . . . John. You led the Americans here. And now you’re going to pay. The minute we step off the plane, you’re a dead man.’
Thirty
Grande Comore, Comoro Islands. 0736 hours.
The Hercules C-130 landed with a shudder and a screech. In his fold-up seat in the rear cargo compartment John Bald bucked forward as the transport plane rumbled along the ground, rattling and shaking violently. The militia team gripped their seat belts in grim silence. Kurt Pretorius, the leader of this rogue band, stared ahead calmly, not moving a muscle. There was a final jolt as the Herc braked. Then the engine noise reduced to a faint hum. The men breathed a collective sigh of relief as Bald sat there and grimaced. Riding in the back of a Herc was just as crap as Bald remembered it from his days in the Regiment. Like being inside a tin can someone had kicked down the street.
There was a sense of tension in the plane. Bald could feel it, mixed in with the sweat and the stench of diesel and kerosene wafting in from the four turboprops. Three hours ago the soldiers had loaded onto the back of the Herc at an airfield near Mogadishu and travelled 1500 kilometres south along the east coast of Africa, to a small cluster of islands north of Madagascar and east of Mozambique: the Union of the Comoros. The Comoros was an unlikely paradise, thought Bald. The people were dirt poor and the islands themselves were starved of natural resources. But the President had a habit of embezzling foreign aid, the government was weak and the military poorly trained. If you were going to launch a coup, the Comoros was the place to do it. Which is exactly what Kurt Pretorius was about to do. He operated on the principle of high risk, high reward. And, Bald reflected, rewards didn’t come much higher than this.
‘This is it, gentlemen,’ said Pretorius. ‘Grande Comore. Capital of the Comoro Islands. No turning back now. We’re about to make history.’
The men whooped and hollered with delight, no doubt already thinking of the money that would be coming their way once they’d ousted the President and seized control of the entire country. Pretorius remained perfectly still as he fixed his gaze on Bald, his teeth gleaming in the semi-dark of the compartment.
