The Pride, page 32
At that moment there was gunfire, close by. Sonja felt blood spatter her face and thought for a moment she was shot. Then she saw that two bullets, single shots fired in rapid succession, had exited David’s chest. He fell to the ground.
‘Contact! Contact!’ Johnsy’s warning, too late for David, was punctuated by a long burst from Johnsy’s RPD machine gun.
Sonja dropped and leopard-crawled towards the perimeter. She saw men advancing through a field of young, straggly maize. One had stopped in the open, an AK-47 at his shoulder. He fired a burst. Sonja took aim and squeezed the trigger on her rifle. The man fell.
Sonja looked over her shoulder from where she lay. Steve was bending over David. ‘Get that fucking chopper back here, now!’
Sonja fired again then got up and ran around the building to where Johnsy was. Wynand had run up to reinforce him and they were both firing. Empty casings spat from the ejection point of Johnsy’s gun as he raked the cornfield.
‘What happened to those trucks?’ Sonja asked Wynand.
‘Stopped, as soon as the fighting started. I think we might be surrounded. The drivers got out. Last seen hiding in the stormwater drain there by the road.’
Sonja looked out over the field. The jihadis – if that’s what they were – had been temporarily halted by Johnsy’s sustained fire and had gone to ground. One stood, perhaps hellbent on showing his bravery, and Sonja saw the long, pointed protrusion of an RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher on his shoulder.
‘Drop him,’ Sonja said, ‘and cover me.’
‘What? Sonja, no . . .’ Johnsy’s protest was lost on her as she slung her AK-47 over her back and scaled the cyclone mesh perimeter fence, rolled over the top and let herself fall.
As Sonja started running across the open ground, she was pleased to hear the two men, at last, open up, giving her covering fire. She swung her AK around and fired a burst from the hip at a man in camouflage fatigues and a black headdress who stood and took aim at her. He fell, either hit or scared.
There was no sign of the man with the RPG launcher, but Sonja ran towards where she had last seen him. Her chest was pounding, her knee sending an electric shock of pain to her brain with every heavy, uneven footfall in the farmer’s field. Do not give out on me now, she prayed. Bullets crack-thumped over her head. Their fire was ill-disciplined and inaccurate, but it didn’t take much to get lucky with an assault rifle on full auto.
The gunfire from the villas had slowed. Sonja dropped and crawled, figuring Johnsy must be changing magazines. More rounds scythed the plants on either side of her. She popped up onto one knee, saw a man running her way, and fired two single shots at him. There was no doubt she had hit him – he was checked in mid-stride and swatted backwards.
Sonja went forward on knees and elbows and came to a body dressed in grubby, now-blood-soaked fatigues. The RPG-7 lay next to him. Sonja rolled the man over and slid a canvas pack, tailored to carry two spare rocket-propelled grenades, from his back. She shrugged it on, slung her own rifle and picked up the launcher.
‘Come on, Johnsy.’
The noise of the Alouette’s blades chopping the humid tropical air reached her across the field. That and the sound of a long stream of bullets leaving Johnsy’s machine gun were her cue. Sonja planted a fist in the ploughed dirt to steady herself, and forced herself to her knees, then stood.
She ran, burdened with the launcher, grenades and her own rifle. A few rounds chased her, but Johnsy and Wynand were turning on the heat. Sonja’s breath came in long, ragged gasps. Jacob had done a good job on her ribs and each inhalation felt like a knife into her torso. She had no hope of scaling the perimeter fence of the villa complex with the load she was carrying, and in any case her target was on the opposite side. She ran along the fence line.
Steve was yelling and waving, but the blood pounding in her ears and her ragged breathing drowned out his words. Sonja heard gunfire, and puffs of dust appeared in front of her. She weaved and then dropped to her knees. The two trucks carrying the guns were on the road leading to the holiday villa complex. One of the drivers was firing at her.
Sonja lifted the RPG onto her shoulder. She flipped up the iron sights and the front and rear of the launch tube, then pushed down the hammer at the rear of the pistol grip with her right thumb. Sonja took aim at the lead truck – the driver was between her and the vehicle, still firing at her. Bullets were getting closer to her, even if he was a lousy shot. Sonja pulled the trigger. The firing pin shot upward, connecting with an igniter on the propellent charge, and the rocket-propelled grenade left the tube with a whoosh of smoke out the rear of the launcher.
When the projectile was a few metres away from her, its integral rocket charge ignited and it sailed across the field, trailing dirty grey smoke. Sonja dropped the launcher and unslung her AK-47.
The grenade missed the truck, landing short and detonating against the raised embankment on which the road sat. The blast was enough, however, to either kill or stun the driver. Sonja saw the second driver half crouch, seeming to be deliberating whether or not to join the fight. She fired a burst of rounds at him, which made him dive for cover.
She needed to get closer, within two hundred metres of the vehicles. She picked up the launcher with her left hand and set off. When she had covered a football field’s length she stopped, took a rocket out of the backpack, and slid it into the tube. Again, she took aim.
One arm, then another, appeared from under the canvas siding covering the back of the truck. The canopy was thrown upwards, onto the roof, and Sonja saw at least half a dozen armed men inside. All at once, they started firing.
Ambush, she thought. They’d been waiting, like Trojans inside the horse, to get into the compound, but her first RPG round had flushed them out. Bullets zinged around Sonja as she held her nerve and her aim, and fired again.
The grenade slammed into the crush of men in the back of the truck and detonated among them. Smoke, blood and wounded and dying men erupted from the vehicle as the canvas cover caught fire. She heard the welcome chop of rotor blades in the heavy tropical air.
To her left, above the villa complex, the pilot of the Alouette flared the nose of his helicopter as he came in to land. Sonja kept her head down and loaded the last rocket into the RPG-7 launcher. Bullets were landing around her. A quick peek over the foliage confirmed that more men were exiting the second truck, now that their surprise attack was blown.
Steve must have hustled his men, carrying the wounded David, onto the chopper in record time, because a couple of minutes later it was airborne again. There was the chatter of a machine gun firing and Sonja looked up again, after cocking the RPG-7. The Alouette was circling. Johnsy was sitting in the door and laying down fire on the tree line. Sonja guessed the insurgents were moving to try and capture the trucks or outflank her.
She stood, aimed, and fired. Her last grenade was a direct hit on the second vehicle. The explosion sent a shockwave that knocked her off her feet. Sonja rolled over, retrieved her AK-47 and looked above the shredded maize plants. The truck she had just hit must have been packed with explosives – perhaps another surprise for her, David and the other contractors.
The Alouette came towards her. The rotor downwash caught the oily black smoke from the burning trucks and pushed it across the fields opposite Sonja. It also provided a smokescreen for twenty or more jihadis, who emerged from it.
‘Allahu-Akbar!’ the lead man called. Others started firing on the run.
Johnsy leaned out and aimed backwards. Two men on the ground fell, but others, including one carrying a black flag with white writing, charged on.
Sonja had discarded the launcher and pack. She dropped to one knee, took aim and started firing at the advancing men. One fell. She felt the blast of grit, sand and leaves wash over her as the Alouette flared above her. She fired a long burst of fifteen rounds then hooked the rifle’s sling over her head.
The pilot swung his machine around to give Johnsy and Wynand clear fields of fire. Steve opened up from the co-pilot’s seat. Sonja grabbed onto a wheel strut as soon as it was in reach. The insurgents kept coming, whipped up into a fervour, firing on the run at full auto. Sonja heard the ping of a bullet punching through the chopper’s flimsy skin.
‘Go, go, go!’ she yelled.
The pilot needed no further encouragement and started to lift off. Sonja’s legs were bicycling in the air as she fought to lift her own body weight, which was multiplied by the forces of gravity. Wynand reached a big hand out and she grabbed it in a monkey grip. He hauled her up, dragging her inside until she lay sprawled on the cargo floor.
David Rafferty was lying next to her, on his back. His face was white and the hastily applied wound dressings on his chest were soaked with blood. He seemed to be breathing, though – just.
*
Emma stared at Fiona. Her head was reeling as she looked into the other woman’s eyes. This spy was hellbent on bringing Sonja in on some trumped-up charge. Assuming Sonja had not gone full psycho and started assassinating witnesses, then perhaps it was Fiona, who admitted she had been tailing them, who had been leaving the trail of death in their wake.
‘You want to kill my mother,’ Emma said as the realisation sank in.
‘I want justice,’ Fiona said.
‘She’s not some ISIS terrorist on an international hit list, Fiona.’
‘She’s dealing arms from warlords who are now serving the Taliban and selling guns to terrorists and criminals.’
Kelvin came out onto the deck, drying his hands with a white towel. The Chinese gangster with the MP5 covered him.
‘He needs surgery.’
‘Can’t you do it here?’ Fiona said.
Kelvin shrugged. ‘I’d need anaesthetic, properly sterilised instruments. You’ve got a glorified traveller’s first aid kit in there and a staple gun. I’ve cleaned his wound as best as I can – the bullet carried shirt fabric in with it – and dosed him with painkillers and antibiotics, but he needs a hospital.’
‘Is he lucid?’ Fiona asked.
‘Groggy, but, yes, more or less.’
Fiona took out a phone. ‘I’m getting a chopper for him, but it’s your job to keep him alive until it gets here.’
‘I can’t guarantee that,’ Kelvin said.
Fiona finished sending her message. ‘Well, I suggest you give it your best shot . . . or else.’
Fiona left them under the guard of the Chinese man. Emma looked through a porthole into Wu’s cabin. She watched as Fiona bent over him, and kissed him on the lips.
‘That woman’s crazy,’ Kelvin whispered.
‘No,’ Emma said. ‘Worse. She’s a believer.’
‘How many men on this boat?’ Kelvin asked, looking quickly around.
Emma had already been assessing their odds of escaping or taking over the boat. ‘Crew of three that I’ve seen so far – the skipper, a deckhand, and our friend with the gun.’ Their guard had backed off, keeping watch over them from the shade, sitting on the stairs that led to the wheelhouse, above, where the captain was at the helm.
‘Got to figure at least a couple of them are armed,’ Kelvin said. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘I don’t know,’ Emma said. She nodded to the porthole – Fiona had fetched an iPad and was sitting with it, beside Wu on the bed. ‘She wants my mother to come to her, here.’
Kelvin looked through the porthole again. ‘What is she up to?’
Chapter 26
Steve Oosthuizen turned back from the co-pilot’s seat and shouted: ‘Wu’s vessel’s up ahead.’
Sonja got up, stepped over the barely breathing David, and peered out through the Plexiglass cockpit. ‘No wake.’
Steve checked with a pair of binoculars. ‘Nope, he’s static.’
The sun was a red ball, low on the horizon. Sonja tapped the pilot on the shoulder. ‘Come in from the west. Drop to wave height, three hundred metres short of the boat, then do a slow pass over them.’
The pilot looked to Steve for confirmation.
‘Do as she says,’ Steve said.
The pilot nodded. ‘You’re paying the bill, man.’
The chopper banked. Sonja unslung her AK-47. She knelt beside Johnsy. ‘Give me your pistol.’
‘What?’
‘Hand it over, Johnsy.’
‘Eish,’ he yelled back at her over the engine noise, ‘you’re always losing my guns, girl.’
‘Don’t call me a fucking girl.’
Johnsy put his RPD machine gun, which he had been cradling in his lap, on the floor of the Alouette. He unholstered his pistol and handed it to her. She pushed the release button and the magazine slid into her left hand. The magazine was not full; it was, as she suspected, missing two rounds. She slapped it back into the butt.
Johnsy smiled at her, but she twisted her gun hand and slammed the butt of the pistol into Johnsy’s face. He moved one hand to his shattered nose, but instinctively, his other towards the RPD. Sonja was quicker – she kicked the machine gun out of the open door. It tumbled away in the slipstream and splashed into the Indian Ocean.
‘Restrain him,’ Sonja ordered Wynand, and the big man did as she ordered.
Steve looked back over his shoulder. Sonja held up the pistol. ‘He shot David. I saw Johnsy loading this pistol before we took off and now it’s two rounds lighter. He set us up to be ambushed – he’s a gun runner and somehow he must have known earlier that David was an undercover cop.’
Sonja looked to Johnsy; he glared back at her and spat blood out the door. ‘I could have left you to die or be arrested in the Matetsi,’ he said to her, nose and eyes streaming.
‘Then why didn’t you?’ she said over the noise of the helicopter’s engine. He just stared back at her.
‘What now?’ Steve yelled.
‘Get David to hospital and keep Johnsy on ice – I want to talk to him. For now, tell the pilot to take her down and do as I say.’ The pilot banked and put the Alouette into a gradual turn, losing altitude at the same time.
He bled off speed. The sun was behind them, which meant it would be right in the eyes of anybody on board the vessel. Sonja sat in the open door of the helicopter, legs in the slipstream.
Steve looked back at her again. ‘What are you playing at?’
The water flashed below them, the helicopter low enough for its rotor wash to leave ripples on the ocean’s surface. ‘Circle the boat a couple of times,’ Sonja called to Steve. ‘Keep them busy.’
‘What?’
Sonja launched herself out of the rear of the helicopter and into the sea.
*
The boy Kelvin came into the cabin. Fiona could see what Emma saw in him.
‘What do you want?’ Fiona said. She tapped the screen of her iPad then put it in the side pocket of her cargo pants.
‘There’s a helicopter overhead, circling us,’ he said. ‘Maybe he’s come to pick up this guy.’
Wu blinked up at him. ‘Please . . .’
Kelvin moved to check on his patient.
Fiona pulled a Makarov pistol from the waistband of her pants, took aim and shot Wu between the eyes. The Chinese man with the MP5 appeared in the cabin doorway. Fiona swung the pistol and fired two shots; both hit the man in the chest and he fell backwards, over the railing and into the sea.
Kelvin ran for the door. Fiona raised her pistol and aimed at his back. Then she hesitated, just for a moment, remembering Emma’s dishevelled state, the half-smile on Kelvin’s face that had disappeared the moment she entered their room and disturbed their afterglow. Kelvin burst through the door and dived over the railing, into the water.
‘Coward,’ Fiona said.
Outside, she held up a hand to the late-afternoon sun. The helicopter did a low-level circuit around the boat, then headed west, towards the shore. That told her two things: Johnsy was not in control of the Alouette, as per the plan, and Sonja Kurtz was somewhere nearby.
Fiona called to the two Chinese crewmen who had emerged from the wheelhouse; both now carried pistols. She said in Mandarin: ‘Everything is fine. Watch the ocean – someone may try to board the boat.’
They moved to the railings and set off, in opposite directions, to check the perimeter. Fiona had learned Mandarin for her posting to Beijing, as a covert MI6 agent based in the embassy. Prior to that she’d added Pashto to her A-Level French as a third language in time for the first of her three rotations to Kabul.
Before joining the security service, Fiona had served as an officer in the British Army. After excelling at school she had gained acceptance to Sandhurst, the army’s military academy, and graduated with the Sword of Honour, the award given to the highest-performing officer cadet. She had been posted to Afghanistan as a lieutenant in the intelligence corps, where she had excelled. MI6 had come looking for her after that. The Secret Intelligence Service had been a perfect fit for Fiona. It allowed her to pursue two things she was privately obsessed with – money, and Sonja Kurtz.
‘Ow!’ Emma yelled.
Fiona followed the screech to the aft of the boat. One of Wu’s men had Emma by the arm.
‘Let her go,’ Fiona said in Mandarin.
The man nodded and did as he was told, then stepped back.
‘You shot Wu in the head,’ Emma said.
Wu’s man must have understood English, because his eyes widened and he started to raise his pistol. Fiona shot him and he fell overboard.
‘What are you,’ Emma asked, ‘a licensed serial killer?’
Fiona pursed her lips. ‘Hmm. That’s one way of looking at it.’
‘Where’s Kelvin?’
Fiona laughed. ‘Abandoned ship like a rat. No happy ending with that one, Emma.’
*
Sonja trod water for half an hour, waiting for the sun to set. Every now and then a hand-held spotlight swept across the gentle swell and she ducked her head below the surface to escape detection.
