Vicious Circle (58 page)

Bernie dropped his wing flaps to reduce the Condor’s airspeed and Nella helped him ease back on the throttle handles between the seats. Between them they lowered the aircraft gently onto the red dirt surface of the landing strip, and as soon as she settled they threw the engines into reverse thrust and applied the wheel brakes to bleed the speed off her.

The thrust of the mighty engines ripped a dense and swirling cloud of red dust from the surface of the runway behind the Condor.

‘Now hear me, Dave!’ Hector spoke over the internal PA system. ‘We are eight hundred metres from your drop-off.’ He read the distances from the boards that stood along the left-hand side of the runway as they flashed by. ‘Five hundred metres, three hundred metres…’ Dave Imbiss and his Red Team had already left their seats and gone back into the cargo hold. Now they were poised tensely at the head of the rear ramp.

‘As soon as the ramp goes down don’t wait for my order, Dave, just go for broke!’ Hector’s voice was raised sharply. They roared over the last two hundred metres towards the armed redoubt from which the twin barrels of the machine guns were trained upon them like the eyes of an executioner. Bernie was gauging the distance to travel with an expert eye.

For a moment Hector thought he had misjudged it, and that they were going to crash into the wall of sandbags at sixty miles an hour. He braced himself and locked his fingers onto the arms of the seats.

At the last moment Bernie pushed the starboard engines of the Condor to full power; at the same time Nella flung the port engines into full reverse thrust. Simultaneously they both stood on the left-hand brake pedals. The condor spun into a violent 180-degree turn and came to a juddering halt with the exhaust nozzles of her four jet engines pointed at the machine-gun emplacement from a distance of only one hundred metres.

For a count of ten seconds Bernie and Nella kept the engines howling at full power, but at the same time they prevented the Condor from moving forward by locking on full wheel brakes. The entire fuselage of the Condor lurched and bucked like a wild animal in a trap, protesting this intolerably harsh treatment. The speed of the gases emitted by her engine nozzles far exceeded that of any tornado; it rocketed up towards the speed of sound. It blew the first row of sandbags off the top of the redoubt wall. The exhaust gases picked up the sand and loose gravel from the surface of the runway and fired it back like tiny bullets into the faces of the gunners peering through the embrasures in the wall of sandbags. It blinded them instantly, scoring their eyeballs, sand-blasting their eyelids and the skin of their faces. Then it hurled their heavy weapons back into their faces, killing or maiming most of them. Their slack bodies were hurled backwards across the interior of the redoubt to smash into the rear wall.

‘Shut down power!’ Hector shouted at Bernie above the thunder of the jet engines, and he slapped the shoulders of the pilots to reinforce the order. The engines’ roar dropped to a gentle whisper and the Condor ceased her wild gyrations.

‘Open the rear ramp!’ Hector’s voice was loud in the comparative silence. ‘Red Team! Go! Go! Go!’ The orders were superfluous, but in the heat of the moment he shouted them anyway.

The belly of the Condor cleared the ground by a mere four feet, so the exit ramp did not have far to drop before it hit the ground, and Dave Imbiss led his twelve-man team sprinting down the ramp and across the open ground to the redoubt. They swarmed over the top of the wall and were into the redoubt with the speed and agility of a troop of hungry monkeys climbing a banana tree. Their orders from Hector were to take no prisoners and to leave no live enemy in their rear, but to do it quietly. They found little resistance inside the redoubt.

The gunners and their loaders were blinded and out of the fight. Most of them were already completely quiescent, scattered around the interior of the redoubt like the rag dolls of naughty child. A few were rolling about on the sandy floor, wailing in agony and cupping their ruined faces in their hands. A karate chop with the blade of the hand was sufficient to silence them permanently. However, one of the enemy broke from cover behind the stack of ammunition crates where he had escaped the main rush of exhaust gases through the embrasures.

He reached the narrow doorway in the rear of the redoubt. Dave Imbiss raised the heavy trench knife he was carrying in his right hand. He swung it back over his shoulder, then he whipped his whole upper body into the throw. The ten-inch blade made one and a half revolutions in flight before it struck the running man between the shoulder blades. He lost direction and ran into the wall of sandbags. He slid slowly down the wall, trying to reach over his shoulders with both hands to grip the knife hilt. He coughed once and a spurt of blood hosed from his mouth onto the sandbag in front of his face. His hands dropped to his sides and he doubled up on his knees with his forehead pressed to the floor as if in prayer.

Dave Imbiss stepped up behind him and placed one booted foot on the back of his neck to steady him while he pulled the blood-smeared blade out of his flesh and wiped it clean on the dead man’s shirt sleeve. At the same time he spoke quietly into the voice-activated mike of the Birkin.

‘This is Red Leader. Target secured.’

It was all over in little more than two minutes from the time they exited the Condor. The runway was three kilometres long. At that distance neither Johnny Congo nor Carl Bannock at the further end had been able to see anything through the dust cloud kicked up by the exhausts, or to hear anything other than the brief thunder of the Condor’s engines at full power.

‘Okay! Initiating Phase Two,’ Hector acknowledged. ‘Dave, spike the guns you have captured and then get your arses down the runway to back us up.’

The MGs mounted in the embrasures were all ex-US Army Browning fifty-calibre weapons that Dave knew intimately. He went down the line swiftly and stripped out the sliding breechblock from each of them. He handed the blocks one at a time to the men with him. They ran with them through the rear entrance of the redoubt and threw them far out into the lake. Once the guns were out of action, Dave formed his men up in open order, and led them at a jog trot down the runway towards the airport building three kilometres away. They had covered less than a quarter of that distance when there was the sudden rattle of small-arms fire ahead of them.

*

The Condor taxied sedately back down the runway towards the main airport building, beside which waited the three parked vehicles and Johnny Congo’s reception committee.

Hector stood well back against the rear bulkhead of the cockpit, crouching behind the pilots where he could not be seen through the windshield of the cockpit. With a pair of binoculars he was scanning the layout of the terminal buildings and the sandbagged redoubt.

‘Okay, I have a positive ID on Johnny Congo. He is the big black brute on the roof of the white vehicle to the right of the redoubt. Dark-blue shirt and cream-coloured chinos. It’s impossible to mistake the swine,’ he spoke into his mike for all his team leaders to hear him. ‘And there is Carl Bannock standing on top of the wall of sandbags above the MG emplacements. He is doing a war dance and waving an automatic rifle over his head. The little bastard is wearing a long red-patterned robe. It looks like a dressing gown. He is barefooted, as though he has just climbed out of bed. He must be totally out of his mind with giggle juice. Just remember all of you that he is mine.’ His tone was fierce. ‘There is a crowd milling around the parked vehicles. It’s difficult to say how many; maybe fifty or sixty or even a hundred of them; all Johnny’s hookers and thugs. His whores are decked out in all sorts of weird gear. Most of them are almost naked and it looks as though a few are totally starkers, letting everything hang out all over the scenery. There is going to be bloody pandemonium when the shooting starts. Don’t be too squeamish about peripheral damage when we engage. Better a few innocent bystanders go down than you let a bogey stay on his feet to take us under fire.’

Jo’s voice sounded in his ear. ‘I didn’t hear that. So help me God, I never heard that!’

Hector frowned, and then went quiet as the Condor neared the end of the runway. The range closed rapidly and he was better able to weigh the odds and to make his final decisions. He started speaking again, well aware that he was the only man aboard, apart from the pilots, who could see what was awaiting them.

‘The layout of this redoubt looks exactly the same as the one Dave has just silenced. They have the same pairs of twin-barrelled fifty-calibre MGs sited in embrasures and pointed at us. The good news is that the sides of the embrasures are too deep to permit the weapons to traverse to either left or right. The bad news is that we don’t have the option of blowing dust into the faces of the gunners. If we try to pull that stunt again, all those goons who are outside the jet blast will throw down a solid sheet of fire on us…’ Hector broke off suddenly as he felt a light touch on his shoulder and he looked around quickly.

Jo stood close behind him. Up until that time he had been unaware that she had left the jump seat in the galley.

‘Hector, listen to me,’ she urged him quietly. ‘Why don’t you use the warehouse building over there as a shield?’ She pointed ahead through the windscreen of the cockpit. ‘If Bernie takes the Condor down the taxi path on the left-hand side of the warehouse we will be hidden from Johnny Congo for as long as it takes to deploy the rest of your assault teams. Johnny will go on believing you are a bunch of juicy little call girls until you come roaring out from behind the warehouse.’

Hector stared at her for a moment, reviling himself silently for not having seen the answer as quickly as she had. ‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘I owe you another one.’ And then he turned back to the pilots.

‘Bernie, you heard the lady! Go straight past the redoubt. Tuck us in behind that warehouse as close as you can get. Then immediately drop the landing ramp. Keep all four engines running, and stand by for a quick turnaround and an emergency getaway if things go haywire.’

Then he spoke quietly into the PA system. ‘Heads up, everybody! We are only minutes away from Go. We are going to park behind the main airport buildings. We will be protected from hostile fire while we disembark. Both White and Black Teams move back to your exit stations, now!’

He patted Bernie and Nella on their shoulders. ‘There is the secure laager for the Condor.’ He pointed it out to them. ‘Get this old bus into it just as soon as we are clear. Now I am off. Bye-bye! Sit tight! We’ll be back.’

‘Happy hunting, Hector,’ Nella replied and he turned and left the cockpit. He paused only to embrace Jo Stanley and kiss her parted lips. Then he whispered into her mouth, ‘I adore you, but for once please do what I ask. Stay here and don’t come after me. It’s a dangerous world out there. I need you to be with me for another fifty years or so.’

He left her and ran back through the empty passenger cabin. His men had already moved back to their places at the rear exit ramp. He followed them through the open pressure door into the cavernous cargo hold. Paddy’s Black Team was drawn up on the starboard side of the hold. Paul had the White Team on the port side.

As Hector hurried down between the ranks towards the rear of the hold he was checking his equipment for the last time.

He wore a camouflage flak-jacket of Kevlar body armour and a helmet of the same material. Both of these were resistant to multiple hits from NATO-standard small arms. In the MOLLE pockets attached to his jacket by Velcro fastening he carried two M84 flash-bang stun grenades and twenty spare magazines each containing forty rounds of 9mm parabellum ammunition for his submachine gun. In the front fastening of the jacket was a tiny hidden pocket. It was just large enough to contain one of the Hypnos knock-down hypodermic syringes from Dave Imbiss’s arsenal of dirty tricks.

He carried a Brügger & Thomet MP9 submachine gun as his main weapon. He loved it for its small size, light weight, quick handling and superb accuracy. With a flick of the thumb he was able to change from single shot to nine hundred rounds per minute cyclic rate of fire. Despite its short barrel the top-mounted optic sight allowed him to be certain of hitting a hen’s egg-size target with four shots out of five at a range of fifty yards, shooting out of hand.

Hector reached the loading ramp where Paddy and Nastiya waited at the head of the Black Team, and he told them quietly, ‘Bernie is going to park us behind the warehouse on the far side of the airport, so initially we will be screened by it from Johnny Congo and his goons. As soon as we disembark we are going to split up. I am going to take my team to the right and come out behind the sandbagged redoubt. You will go the long way round the back of the warehouse and the barracks to get behind them. I will keep them busy on my side until you hit them in the rear. Between us we have to stop them retreating up the hill. At all times bear in mind that we are only here to take Johnny and Carl, not to fight it out to the last man standing. As soon as we have grabbed those two we will get the hell out of here. If we are forced to follow them through the maze of the castle we are going to take casualties.’

‘Perish the thought,’ Paddy grunted.

‘My team will go out first. As soon as we are clear you can disembark.’ Hector punched Paddy’s arm lightly. ‘Break a leg!’ He grinned at him. Paddy grinned back. Both of them were high on the fizz of blood in their veins, the heady excitement of mortal danger that kept bringing them back into the fight.

Hector turned away and went to join Paul Stowe at the head of the White Team on the other side of the hold. The Condor jolted to a standstill so abruptly that they were almost thrown off their feet. The rear loading ramp started to drop, but so torturously slowly that Hector could not contain his impatience.

‘Follow me!’ he snapped at Paul. Then he ran up the moving ramp and dived head-first through the narrow opening. It was an eight foot drop to the ground on the outside. As he fell he flipped his body over to land on his feet like a cat. He absorbed the shock with his legs and then bounded forward towards the corner of the warehouse. He heard his men hitting the ground behind him and pounding after him but he did not spare them a backwards glance.