Kingmaker (Alex King Book 16), page 19
King nodded and pointed at the image. “Two ideal observation points here and here…”
Clive looked at his watch. “We can get those OPs covered today. A change of watch and we’ll have a better idea twenty-four hours from now.”
“We have night-vision and field glasses,” King replied. “You and David can take first watch, Ollie and Phil, you take second watch. Six hours on, six hours off.”
“What will you be doing?” David asked drolly.
“Don’t worry about me,” King replied without looking at him. “Tool up with the Makarovs and keep the longs in the vehicles. This is a surveillance operation and we’ve had enough interest today already.” He paused. “And if you get seen, then don’t bother coming back here and you can kiss goodbye to the rest of your bounty…”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Lucinda Davenport had the story mapped out in her head. She had already written the introduction and two summaries, depending on the outcome of her visit. What she needed now was the man’s own words. She had left Dimitri behind. The man was being paid handsomely by her husband to be her bodyguard, but in a country where money could buy anything, it wasn’t enough for the Russian. Unconvinced that she would be allowed access to interview Desmond Lambadi, he had got out of the vehicle and given her a choice. She had made her decision and driven off in the Land Rover, leaving Dimitri at the side of the road. The man had left his Sig 9mm pistol in the glovebox for her and wished her good luck. The fact that the man tasked with her security thought it too dangerous to proceed was not lost on her. But if she could bribe her way inside, with the camp commandant now gone, then perhaps she would get lucky. The thought of what could happen to her did not outweigh the possibility of such a monumental story, and she knew that she was being reckless and optimistic at best, suicidal at worse. Dimitri had left her with few words, but haunting, nonetheless. No story is worth your life, and too often in Africa, lives are worthless. Especially that of a young, attractive Western woman…
Lucinda, meanwhile, could see Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes ahead of her, if she could deliver the man and his story to the world.
Chapter Fifty
Umfasu Parish, 24 hours later
The night-sight turned everything green. Shade upon shade, but all green as he swept the scope across the compound. Compound. The name did not do the place justice. A Garden of Eden on the outskirts of the hub of commotion, poverty and bustle of Umfasu. The property’s boundary was a tall wire fence with razor wire on top. Inside the fence tall palms hid the razor wire, while a ten-foot stone wall with climbing plants on the inside fooled the occupants into forgetting the wire security fence and the world outside. In total, the compound occupied ten acres of prime Burindi real estate.
Phil could see the entirety of the grounds from his vantage point – King’s initial surveillance hide which had been hidden by cut fronds and easily reconstructed - but was on the cusp of his marksman abilities and the vintage .303 rifle’s range at eight-hundred metres, so he would have to hope that the furthest sentry was at the three, six and nine positions of his imaginary clock face, rather than twelve. He centred the crosshairs on the furthest sentry, who was now at the six-hundred metre mark. Each line of the crosshairs was marked with a line which gave him markings for distance, windage and elevation. He had placed markers with material tied to the top of pegs that told him the direction of the wind, and the marker that King had placed on the boundary fence during his reconnaissance gave him the distance from which he could make further calculations. King had assured the man that the marker was exactly one foot in height, and that allowed Phil to calculate using it as a scale.
He moved the rifle to his right and could pick out David and Clive making their way through the wire fence. They had been equipped with wire and connectors to divert any electrical current – although King had assured them that it was not electrified, the men had elected to take precautions just in case - and heavy-duty wire cutters to slice cleanly through the fence. Both teams carried light-weight extendable ladders that they had purchased from a hardware store in the capital, to make easy work of the stone wall, and as he swept the sight over the compound, he could see both King and Ollie scaling the stone wall and covering one another with their rifles. King laid the thick folded builder’s membrane over the top of the wall, covering the shards of glass, then hauled up the ladder and spun it around, sliding it down the other side and waited for Ollie to climb down. After two long minutes, Phil checked both teams and could see that they were ready. All four men were crouched low, using the palms as cover, weapons shouldered and facing their objectives. As planned, they had maintained radio silence. Phil moved the rifle slowly and steadily, bringing the crosshairs onto the electric junction box on the road. He fired once, worked the bolt and fired again. The PIR lights dotted around the grounds went out, and he immediately turned the sights to the chest of the furthest sentry. The man, who had been walking slowly some six-hundred metres distant stopped at the sound of the gunshot echoing across the valley. Phil took a deep, steadying breath and kept the sights fixed on him then inhaled, slowly exhaled and when he had no breath left inside him, he gently squeezed the trigger. The rifle recoiled harshly, and he lost sight of the man in his reticule, resighting urgently to see the man’s body lying motionless on the neat lawn. Phil brought the crosshairs back across the lawns and to where he had last seen the second sentry. Panic rose within him as he realised that he had lost his second target, but the man stepped out from some flowering bushes, the lit cigarette in his mouth glowing red, as he craned his neck to listen. Phil wasted no more time. Four-hundred metres. He used the line directly above the centre cross and aimed just below the man’s neckline. The gunshot rang out as he squeezed the trigger and he caught sight of a spray of mist as the man slumped to the ground.
“Electricity and targets are down…” he said into his throat mic. “Go! Go! Go!”
Upon Phil’s confirmation King sprinted out across the lawn and made his way to the main house. He heard two more gunshots, both as loud as before and knew that if Phil wasn’t giving follow-up shots, then he was already working on the engine blocks and front tyres of the escort vehicles. By the time he had crossed the lawn and the large patio area surrounding the swimming pool, four more shots had thundered across the compound and if all had gone well, Phil would be packing up his rifle and kit and heading for his vehicle. King checked for Ollie, who for a big man was faster and more agile than he expected but was slowing pace as he reached the patio. King held back to aid Ollie with breaching the doors, but the man-mountain pounded past him and launched a leaping front kick at the centre of the two doors, splintering them inwards. He flicked on his headtorch, and King followed him through the doors, his own head torch illuminating the gloom. Both men switched on the Maglites taped to the fore-ends of their Kalashnikovs and swept the area inside. King took the lead and checked the open living area, his torch beams casting deep shadows across the whitewashed walls, occasionally silhouetting a mounted animal head, or tall skinny pieces of African art.
“Clear!” shouted King. He turned and headed out through the large kitchen which was furnished and equipped with everything in the brochure. Standing in the corner with their hands raised in the air and a shattered bottle of milk at her feet was a stout woman who King took to be the maid he had seen on his earlier reconnaissance chaperoning the child who had been swimming. She certainly wasn’t a member of Mustafa’s family. With a dressing gown pulled tightly over her she stood frozen in fear, and yet as King’s light illuminated her, she started to babble angrily at him in pidgin English. King glanced at her bare feet surrounded by shards of glass and figured she wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. He yelled at her to stay where she was and headed out through into the grand-looking hall which was packed full of African wood carvings with tribal weapons and artefacts adorning the walls.
“Heading upstairs!” Ollie shouted and proceeded to take the stairs one at a time, his weapon shouldered and everything he surveyed passing through the open sights and beam of terrific white light. King followed and had no sooner stepped on the first stair tread when gunshots rang out from above and Ollie went down.
“Shit! Man down! Man down!” King shouted into his throat mic as he fired a short burst up the stairwell and was met with return fire. Ollie grimaced and jerked on the stairs as whoever was firing at King sent a few more bullets into him for good measure. “Man down! Man down!”
King emptied his magazine up the stairwell and changed seamlessly to a new magazine as he charged up the stairs, caught hold of Ollie’s ankle and hurled him back down the stairs and out of the line of fire. It was the best he could do for the man, and he threw himself onto the next flight of stairs and fired at a movement on the landing. He pushed himself up the next four treads on his belly and caught another movement as someone ducked behind the corner of the wall. King fired a foot or two inside the plasterwork and a man stumbled out and fell onto his knees clutching his stomach. King fired again and the man slumped and lay still. He changed magazines again, the awkward tilt and snap of the Kalashnikov’s magazine so much slower to make ready than his favoured M4, Sig 516 or Heckler and Koch G3 assault rifles. By contrast the weapon was tinny and crude. He worked the bolt and dropped the selector down all the way to ‘single fire’. He was closer to the family now, and he needed precision shots. He had taken down the guard, but his lack of discipline firing through the wall had put the family at risk and he knew that he could not risk another shot like that and had to maintain calm in the heat of battle. He pressed onwards. Briefly thinking about Ollie lying injured downstairs, but he wasn’t going to risk the success of the mission for a man he had only just met. Every man knew the risks involved and for the entire overthrow to succeed, Stewart had insisted that they needed this vital bargaining chip with Mustafa. Given the breadth of the operation, King had been miffed and felt side-lined considering the size of the task ahead of Stewart and the other team, but here he was, and he was not going to fail at any cost. He tried to steady his breathing, but his adrenaline levels were off the scale. He dried the palm of his right hand on his trousers, then gripped the pistol grip of the rifle once more and eased out around the corner of the wall and played the torch beam down the corridor. Gunshots echoed across the compound as David and Clive engaged the bodyguards at the guest house. He could hear chatter on the net between them, and he tore the earpiece out of his right ear to tune into his surroundings and listen for any tell-tale sign that would give him the edge. He could hear hushed whispers and knew that panic was panic in any language. A girl was crying further down the corridor, and he held his breath to hear more, but all he could hear now was the thudding of his own heart and his pulse hammering away in his ears. His hand was wet with perspiration again, but he dare not take his finger away from where it was hovering just millimetres from the trigger. Somewhere ahead of him a door creaked open. He played the light of the torch strapped to the rifle down the walls, his headtorch illuminating the other side of the corridor. The thought that if someone fired at the light then they would hit his forehead dead centre plagued him, and he snatched at the band and ripped it off his head, just as a door opened and a man stood before him with a machine pistol raised. The man was frozen to the spot, but then again, so was King until a split second later he tossed the headtorch at the man’s feet, and it illuminated him like the spotlights on the plinth of a statue. The man was temporarily dazzled, but he fired the machine pistol as King dropped to one knee and emptied the Kalashnikov into him. The man fell as King continued to fire, then the weapon went quiet, and King heard the ‘dead man’s click’ as the bolt struck a final time on the empty chamber. The feel of the trigger was loose without the firing pin being cocked on the last bullet’s gas recoil, and King tossed the weapon aside knowing that he was out of magazines, and he drew the tiny Makarov pistol instead. He carried on down the corridor, snatched up the headtorch and held it in his left hand as he kept the pistol raised in his right. He opened the first door he reached and checked inside. Empty. He dropped onto his stomach and swept the torch underneath the bed. Nothing. Outside, the gunfire had died down and had been replaced by the occasional single shot. King thought at first that the men had been mopping up stragglers, but he felt a chill down his spine as he wondered whether the two experienced ex-soldiers were negating the taking of prisoners. For a moment he pictured men on their knees, hands on heads and the two men using their pistols as they stood behind the surrendering bodyguards. He shook the thought from his mind and headed for the next door. He had barely placed his hand on the handle when the door flung wide, and a man pushed a large revolver into King’s face. King batted the weapon aside with his left hand and dropped the torch. The man countered with a parry and a punch and at once King could tell that the man was strong. He had King’s right wrist in his clasp and clamped his other hand on King’s elbow to hold the arm like a vice. King kicked at the man’s shins, his military boots smashing against the bone like a mallet. The man started to pull on King’s arm, using his hip to place King off balance. King was familiar with the basic judo move, but even with it happening by brute strength and in slow motion, he knew that he would be off his feet in a matter of seconds, and he reached his left hand for the KA-Bar knife on his belt, drew it from its leather sheath and buried the seven-inch blade deep into the man’s side. The knife went in and out effortlessly, aided by the blood-groove pressed into the blade, and King followed up with three more thrusts and the man released his grip and fell back on the floor. Blood pooled around him, and King could see that he had stabbed the man’s liver. He sheathed the knife and was about to leave, when he thought about the dying bodyguard and his effort to fend him off so desperately. He found a light switch and flicked it on, forgetting that the power was out. He cursed his own stupidity as the two cut-crystal chandeliers which would have brightly lit the room did nothing. He picked up the headtorch and played it across the room, his eyes fixed on a fitted mahogany wardrobe that filled the far wall ten feet high and twenty-five feet wide. He’d given up trying to hear anything – his pulse still thudding in his ears – and kept the pistol trained on the doors of the wardrobe. It was an exquisite French design, installed a hundred years previous, but King did not take in the rich colours and patterns in the wood, nor the carved roses and leaves at the edges. He could hear movement inside and stood to one side as he tried the nearest door. The gunshot sounded like a cannon and a hole the size of a cricket ball appeared in the centre of one of six doors. Another hole appeared almost immediately, and the room filled with the noise and echo of the shotgun and smoke wafted out of the second hole. King caught hold of the doorhandle and wrenched the door open, grabbing the scorching barrels of a double-barrelled shotgun. Knowing it was empty after its two shots, he snatched it out of the teenaged boy’s hand and to his credit, the boy rushed at King, but he had too much to control with the other three sets of eyes peering out from the gloom of the closet and King brought the butt of the pistol down sharply on the boy’s head and kicked his legs out from under him. He stepped back, the pistol aimed at the boy as he shouted for the two girls and their mother to get out and kneel on the floor. They screamed and howled and cried, but they stepped out one-by-one and King stepped back further to prevent the chances of somebody else being a hero. He looked down at the boy. Part of him was feeling guilt at having hit him, another part of him was angry at being put in that position, but he knew that the boy had only been trying to protect his family. If the situation was reversed, King would have done the same. Anyone would have.
With the family located, King put his earpiece back in and tried the throat mic. “This is King, sit-rep, over…”
“Security personnel neutralised,” David drawled into King’s ear. “Clive’s taken a bullet in the calf, but he’s walking wounded.”
King grimaced. Another complication. “Ollie’s down at the foot of the stairs,” he reported. “Family located, three tangoes down. Rendezvous on me in the master bedroom.” He looked at the woman and said, “Do you speak English?”
“Of course,” she replied hatefully.
“Good. Do what I say, and you and your family will be OK.”
“But not my husband,” she sneered. “Just kill us now, you baturai pig and go about your day!”
“Nobody is going to kill you,” King assured her, but he was shocked by what she had said, and he knew deep down that Mustafa would be lucky to survive the overthrow. Britain had no allegiances or business deals to do with the socialist dictator. He simply had no value and would be perceived as a threat by Lucky Man Jonathan Mugabe. The woman knew this too, and in that moment, King understood the futility of the operation. When this was over, he couldn’t tell himself he’d done the right thing and installed a leader who had his peoples’ interests at heart, or that Burindi would be a better place for all the bloodshed. He was no better than Mugabe or Mustafa. But at least those men had some skin in the game. King, like so many warriors fighting on the continent before him had merely taken the ‘King’s Shilling’ and blindly followed orders.
“Ollie’s gone,” David said quite casually as he entered the room.
King was startled by the man’s silent arrival. He looked around and said, “Gone?”
“Dead.”
“Right,” King replied, trying to make sense of it all. “There’s two more rooms I haven’t checked.” The man nodded and stepped back out into the corridor. King pushed his thoughts aside and set about clamping the woman’s hands with the heavy-duty cable ties he had brought along for the task. The woman did not resist. There was a fatalistic acceptance to her demeanour that King found altogether unnerving. He fastened the teenaged boy’s wrists next, checking his skull as he did so. There was a lump the size of an egg, but no blood, so at least he felt better about that. The girls were frozen, and he made short work binding their wrists behind their backs. He looked back at the woman. “You and your children will not be harmed in any way,” he assured her. “You have my word.”
