Silent kill, p.22
Silent Kill, page 22
part #1 of Extreme Series
Then Pretorius addressed the twenty-two other guys. ‘We’ll move into position and wait for their signal. Soon as we get it, that’s our cue to move in. We’ll divide into separate fireteams and ambush the sangars simultaneously. Six sangars – that equals four guys on each team. Stegman will organize you into fireteams. You go in hard, spray anyone who moves. Fuckers won’t know what’s hit ’em.’
A chorus of grunts rose up from the soldiers around Bald.
‘Jimmy, you’re with me on the sixth team. We’ll attack the sangar closest to the tailgate. Once we’ve broken through we’ll help put out any fires at the remaining sangars.’ Pretorius pointed out two hefty black guys to Bald’s left. ‘Goodluck, Moses – you’re on our team. Stegman?’
‘Yes, Mr Pretorius.’
‘Look after my wife. Take good care of her.’
‘Of course, Mr Pretorius.’
Bald said, ‘I need a piece.’
Pretorius flashed him a broad grin and cocked his head at one of the Toyota pickups. ‘There’s a stack of Colt Commandos in the crates loaded on the back. Fill your boots.’
Bald paced over to the pickup and grabbed a Colt CAR-15 Commando semi-automatic rifle from the nearest crate. He smiled on the inside. The weapon felt familiar in his grip. He’d first used a Colt Commando in the early days of his career in the Regiment, putting down rounds on the range at the Brecon Beacons. It was reliable as fuck, effective up to a range of three hundred metres and, unlike most women, it had never let Bald down. He snatched two extra mags. With a fresh clip inserted into the mag feed on the underside of the weapon and twenty rounds per clip, Bald had sixty rounds in total. He stuffed the two spare clips into his back pockets and trudged after Pretorius. Goodluck and Moses, the two other guys on their fireteam, were at his nine o’clock. Indian Ocean surf flashing at his three, the airport at his twelve. Stegman, Eli and the other eighteen soldiers who made up the remaining five fireteams at his back. Imogen stumbled along beside the South African. She lifted her head wearily and made eye contact with Bald for a second, shot him a look of hate so pure you could bottle it and sell it at Whole Foods. It wasn’t the first time a woman had looked that way at him. Wouldn’t be the last either.
He was a hundred and eighty metres from the sangar guarding the main gate when Deet’s voice crackled over the comms. ‘We’re in.’
Bald tensed his muscles. Stilled his breath.
This is it.
He still didn’t know what he was going to do. The prospect of taking over the Comoros appealed to Bald. But if he walked away from the Firm, his life would be over. He’d have to go underground, sticking to the shadows, hopping from one fallen state to the next – much like Pretorius. And before any of that, he had to find a way of dealing with Eli. An irresistible weight pressed down on him, like two big sacks of sand weighing on his shoulders. He shook his head clear. Focus, John. The Colt Commando felt reassuring in his grip.
A hundred and fifty metres from the main gate, Pretorius knelt down and examined the Herc through the xGen Pro viewfinder. Bald chased his line of sight as his eyes gradually adjusted to the dark.
‘There she is,’ Pretorius said. ‘Sixty million dollars’ worth of transport craft. In a little over twenty minutes it’s going to be ours.’ He flashed a grin at Bald. ‘Makes you feel good to be alive, eh?’
Whatever else Pretorius might be, Bald had to admit the guy had a pair of brass balls on him. The plan had all the hallmarks of a Regiment op. It was bold, surgical, and mad as fuck. And Pretorius had won his grudging respect. He was a leader of men. Not a rupert kissing arse and climbing up the greasy pole, but a man who led from the front. A soldier’s soldier, as Stegman had put it. As the minutes counted down to the assault, Bald found himself thinking of another great warrior: his old mucker Joe Gardner.
Lights flickered from within the terminal building. The asphalt runway was riddled with potholes and ran for maybe five hundred metres on an east–west axis, with the terminal building to the north and Bald and Pretorius approaching from the south. A row of concrete anti-blast blocks flanked the runway on each side. On the north side Bald spied a ‘technical’ – African-speak for a battered pickup converted into a gunwagon. This one had a Browning M2 heavy machine gun mounted on the flatbed. The other five sangars were strategically located around the airfield, offering full-spectrum security: two sangars were sited on the southern side of the runway, with one at the runway’s eastern fringe and a fourth west of the Herc. The fifth sangar protected the terminal building.
Bald watched. And waited. Tiny black flies the size of specks of dust flitted about his face – thousands of them. Sandflies. Evil fuckers. He’d witnessed the effects of sandfly fever up close. A mate had come down with it during an op in Sierra Leone, bitten during a tab through the jungle. Next thing he knew, the guy was shitting water and pissing blood, his skin turning black. He ended up spending three months on a drip in Selly Oak. Bald swatted the flies away and waited some more.
At 0414 hours the comms unit crackled into life.
‘All set,’ said Deet.
Pretorius sprang to his feet, motioning to Bald, Goodluck and Moses.
‘That’s it, let’s go!’ he barked as he sprinted towards the main gate.
Bald immediately gave chase, blood pounding in his veins. His breathing seemed impossibly loud. He hurried along a metre behind Pretorius. Goodluck and Moses jogging at his side. A hundred and twenty metres to the sangar now. He slowed his stride and tucked the rifle’s stock against his shoulder, index finger tense on the trigger, ready to give the guards operating the sangar a bellyful of brass. Around him the other five fireteams were sweeping towards the remaining sangars. Stegman kept Imogen close beside him.
A hundred metres to the sangar defending the main gate. Lights from the terminal building bathed the runway in an apricot glow. Bald noticed that the tailgate on the Herc was in the lowered position. He could see the incandescent fizz of the cargo bay’s lights from within the fuselage. Must have landed not long ago, he thought. The letters ‘UN’ were painted on the vertical rudder.
Eighty metres from the sangar, Pretorius stopped. Bald wondered why for a moment. Then he saw it too, and instantly sobered up.
‘What the fuck—?’
The sangar had been abandoned.
Pretorius and Bald stood side by side on the spot for a beat. Then Pretorius walked on ahead of Bald. Approaching the sangar. Bald scanned the airport. The other fireteams had closed in on their designated sangars. Every one of them was unmanned. HMGs appeared to have been removed in a hurry, with the tripods and brass link left behind. Bald joined Pretorius at the sangar, rifle at his side, and scratched the back of his neck as he tried to figure out what was going on.
‘Oh, shit,’ Goodluck said. ‘Look!’
Bald and Pretorius swapped a look. They simultaneously looked at Goodluck. The guy pointed out something at their six o’clock. Coming from the direction of the main road. Bald chased his line of sight and felt a cold dread sink its claws into his guts. He counted a dozen pairs of headlights shimmering in the distance, white as aspirins. He couldn’t calculate how far away they were, not in this dark. But the lights were getting bigger. Second by second. They swerved past the parked Rams and Hiluxes and swelled to the size of distant moons. The growl of engines carried like animal noises through the desert night air. In the next moment twelve Land Rovers percolated out of the darkness, rear tyres spewing out clouds of dust the colour of charcoal ash. A long line of them. They all screeched to a halt sixty metres due south of the sangar guarding the main gate.
Doors thudded open. Operators jumped out of the Landies. White guys, Bald noticed. Four operators to a vehicle. Forty-eight guys. They were all kitted out in tactical combat gear, armed with FN SCAR assault rifles identifiable by their khaki-coloured stocks and the Picatinny rail systems on top of the chamber. A leaden feeling plunged through Bald and a grim realization hit him like a fist to the guts.
They had walked straight into a trap.
Twenty-eight
0416 hours.
There was a lapse of maybe a second between the Landies’ doors slamming and the operators firing the first shots. Their SCARs lit up in a staccato sequence. Gases squirted out of the barrel snouts. Flames erupted and the ground at their feet lit up as if someone had just thrown a load of firecrackers. Bullets zipped across the night sky, a shrill clang sounding as they ricocheted off the concrete and landed wide of their targets, along with the distinctive clink of spent jackets tumbling to the ground.
‘Get behind cover!’ Bald roared as he spun away from the operators and scrabbled towards the hessian sandbags amassed at the sangar.
Pretorius displaced in the same instant. The two men scrambled behind the sangar as the operators unleashed a second volley of 5.56x45mm NATO rounds, which thudded into the sandbags. A few more rounds thwacked into the asphalt either side of the sangar. There was a wet slap as a bullet pierced Goodluck’s throat. He pirouetted on the spot, blood gushing out of the hole before he slumped to the ground. Moses rushed past his dying mate as several bullets sparked against the concrete, eight of them landing in a close grouping. As he dived behind cover, another grouping spattered the sandbags in a chorus of dull slaps.
‘Who the fuck are these guys?’ Bald shouted above the throated screams of soldiers being cut down at the other sangars. A couple of stray rounds ripped into Goodluck’s lifeless body.
Pretorius said, ‘I reckon it must be the Americans working with AMISOM.’ He cursed under his breath in French. ‘Cowboys. They’re not supposed to be on patrol in this area.’
‘Then what the fuck are they doing here?’
‘They must have known about the attack. Lured us into a trap so they wouldn’t have to fight us on open ground.’ Pretorius thumped a fist against his thigh and worked his features in a scowl. ‘Someone betrayed me.’
The cowboys were getting closer. Bullets peppered the top sandbags inches above Bald’s head. Ten, eleven, twelve rounds thumped into them in quick succession. A round zipped above the sandbags and grazed Moses’s cheek. He fell back, clasping a hand to his face. Bald ducked low and hunched his shoulders. He turned to Pretorius. ‘We’ve got to get to the Herc before the cowboys overrun us.’
‘I agree,’ Pretorius shouted above the blunt, mechanical hammering of rounds being discharged. ‘But if we make a run for it, there’s no way we’ll reach the Herc in time. The Yanks will wipe the floor with us.’ He scanned the terrain. ‘There must be some other way.’
The rifle reports were growing louder. The cowboys were closing in. There was a break in the firing and Bald risked a glance above the sangar, mind frantically racing as he tried to think of a way out of the shit. They were splitting into six groups, eight guys to a team, pepper-potting towards the individual sangars. Four guys in each group concentrating fire on the sangars while their muckers kept their eyes fixed to their SCARs, waiting for the moment their clips emptied before taking their turn to blitz the sangars with hot lead. Bald counted four dead soldiers. The rest of the team were hunkered behind cover, loosing off rounds whenever the opportunity presented. He spied Stegman’s fireteam at the sangar next to the Herc at the edge of the runway, forty metres to his left. Eli crouched behind cover, Imogen curled up in a ball, eyes clamped shut, her body rigid with fear.
Thirty metres from Bald to the cowboys approaching his sangar. Levelling his Colt Commando, he sprayed a three-round burst at them. He missed by a mile, but sent the cowboys scuttling behind the anti-blast blocks twenty-five metres short of the sangar. He unleashed another burst. This time his aim was truer and the rounds spattered against the blocks, throwing up puffs of concrete dust into the humid air. He dropped to a crouch as the cowboys returned fire. A ferocious stream of fire peppered the sangar, shredding the sandbags.
‘Twenty metres, master!’ Moses yelled, pawing his cheek, blood oozing between his fingers. ‘We can’t hold them off much longer.’
Four guys down. Minus Deet and Priest in the Herc cockpit, that left twenty soldiers against a force more than twice that number. Crap odds. They were stuck. If they made a run for it, the Yanks would cut them down. But if they’d stayed put, the Americans could bide their time, keep them pinned down until their ammo reserves ran dry, and then move in for the kill. Unless—
Pretorius beat him to it. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Over there.’
He was pointing towards the other side of the runway. Bald chased his line of sight. Herc at his two o’clock, at a distance of twenty metres. Terminal thirty metres away at his twelve. Then he saw it too: the technical parked next to the terminal building. The one with the HMG mounted on the flatbed. Pretorius said, ‘If we can get to the technical, one of us can use the .50-cal.’
‘I was just thinking the same thing,’ said Bald. A wicked grin creased his features. ‘It packs enough punch to put the drop on the cowboys. Gives us a chance to board the Herc by the tailgate.’
Pretorius grinned. ‘Last one on the plane buys the beers.’
‘Deal.’
Pretorius turned to Moses. The guy fired a burst at the cowboys, seemingly oblivious to the blood seeping out of the wound to his cheek. He slid down behind cover as the PMC chief spoke. ‘Here’s the plan. Me and Jimmy will make a run for the technical. On my count, you’ll put down covering fire. Now, you keep your finger tight on that trigger until you’re out of ammo, no matter what they throw at you. Got it?’
Moses nodded dutifully. ‘Yes, master.’
Then Pretorius plugged a finger in his left ear and reached out to Deet via the boom mike attached to his earpiece. ‘We’re getting the fuck out of here,’ he said sharply. ‘What’s your status?’
Deet’s voice crackled over the comms: ‘We have a problem.’ A pause. ‘It’s Liam, sir. He’s out of his depth.’
Pretorius frowned. Bald felt his chest muscles constrict as an invisible band pulled tighten around him. Priest had been rumbled, surely? He sensed the op hanging in the balance. Tried to act casual as he waited for Pretorius to respond.
‘“Out of his depth.” The fuck does that mean?’
Another pause. Static hissed and fizzed down the line. Difficult to hear anything above the incessant crack of gunfire, the screams of dying men. ‘Liam says he has no experience of flying a Herc.’
No response from Pretorius.
Deet went on, ‘I can handle the take-off by myself, sir. But it’s going to take time. Everything will have to be done manually.’
Pretorius stiffened his jaw and glanced at Bald. Weird. The guy’s face showed no flicker of surprise about Priest blagging it. Something moved inside Bald. He knows, he thought. He knows about Liam.
Maybe he knows about me too.
‘Whatever you need to do to get us airborne,’ Pretorius told Deet, ‘do it.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The PMC chief swung back to Bald. The soldiers occupying the sangar at the eastern end of the runway began to retreat under a hail of lead. They were almost out of time. Another minute, Bald figured, and the cowboys would have seized the airport.
Pretorius said, ‘You ready, Jimmy?’
Bald grinned. ‘Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back?’
A rush of excitement hit Bald – the hot thrill of going into a combat with a brother-in-arms. He hadn’t felt it since the days he’d fought alongside Joe Gardner in the Afghan. He’d forgotten how good it felt. That sense of being unstoppable. ‘Gods walking among men,’ Pretorius had said. He was a born soldier, thought Bald. Would’ve made a first-class operator in the Regiment. He watched the chief fill his lungs before shouting across his shoulder at Moses. ‘Covering fire!’
The soldier sprang up from behind the sangar and brought his Colt Commando to bear on the cowboys. A crack thundered across the runway as he discharged the first shot, a glimmer of white light illuminated the sandbags and Pretorius roared, ‘Now!’ as he bolted forward.
Then Bald started to sprint towards the technical.
Twenty-nine
0423 hours.
Bald raced after Pretorius. Muscles pumping, sweat gushing down his back, his breathing ragged as he tucked his head close to his chest. Gunfire erupted at his six o’clock. Rounds flecked the ground a few inches to his left. He kept running. Twenty-five metres to the technical. Another grouping of shots landed at his six. Close. He ran on, the shrill shriek of the bullets cannoning off the asphalt piercing his ears. A short stride ahead of him Pretorius zigzagged towards the vehicle as another flurry of rounds landed wide of their target.
Twenty metres to the technical.
Don’t stop, the voice in Bald’s head urged.
Fifteen metres to go. Bald glanced past his shoulder and clocked Moses fifteen metres back at the sangar, elbows propped like a spider’s legs on the sandbags as he fired round after round at the cowboys. Smoke seethed out of the rifle’s muzzle, accompanied by a steady rhythm of retorts. Sounded like the sky was cracking its knuckles. The cowboys were pinned down behind the anti-blast blocks. Then Bald heard a metallic clack and a cold wave hit him as he realized Moses was out of ammo. In the next instant the cowboys sprang up from cover with their SCARs drawn and Bald swung his gaze north.
‘GET THE FUCK DOWN!’
He dived at Pretorius, tackling him to the ground as bullets zipped past the spot where he’d just been standing and slammed into the side of the technical, throwing up sparks, sounding like a bunch of hammers banging against a lead pipe. Pretorius glanced at the technical; then at Bald. The look on his face was a mixture of shock and disbelief – the look of a man who had been inches from death. He struggled to form words. Bald rolled off him and rapidly arced his Colt Commando towards the cowboys. He let off a wild three-round burst in the hope of buying a precious second or two. It worked: the cowboys scattered. Now Bald wheeled around and dashed towards the technical, Pretorius scraping himself off the ground to his left.
