Vicious Circle (59 page)

He reached the corner and flattened himself against the wall. He was breathing lightly but could feel his heart pumping like a well-tuned racing motor. As he glanced around the corner of the wall his vision was as bright and focussed as a gun sight.

Very little had changed in the minutes since he had last seen it; Johnny was still standing on top of the Rover with his hands on his hips. Around the vehicle were clustered the motley horde of militiamen and juvenile whores. Most of them were staring perplexedly towards where they had seen the Condor disappear behind the warehouse. Some of the Thai toys were still dancing and clapping their hands, but one of the semi-naked girls was leaning against the side of the Rover and copiously vomiting up the liquor she had been fed.

The machine gunners in the redoubt had left their weapons and clambered up the wall to peer over the sandbags in his direction. However, what attracted Hector’s full attention instantly was the bizarre figure of Carl Bannock still balancing on top of the wall. He was no longer dancing, but unlike all the others his back was half turned to Hector, and he was shouting at Johnny Congo.

‘What the hell is that stupid mothering arsehole, Yuri Volkov, playing at now?’ he yelled.

He was totally unaware of Hector’s gaze upon him. The range was less than fifty yards. In his hands Hector held one of the sweetest little firearms he had ever fired. Before him was the cleanest shot that the fickle gods of war had ever presented to Hector. The man he had come to kill was completely at his mercy.

There was only one consideration preventing him from doing so. He wanted to be looking into Carl’s eyes as he died. He wanted to smell the rancid odour of overwhelming terror on his dying breath. He wanted the last thing Carl ever heard to be the name of the woman Hector had loved. He wanted to whisper Hazel’s name in his ear at the final moment so that Carl would carry it with him into the flames of hell.

While he hesitated, the moment was passing. He began to lift the weapon, but suddenly Johnny Congo bellowed in a voice of thunder, ‘Get down off that wall, Carl, you stupid prick. This is a trap. It isn’t Yuri in that freaking plane. It’s Hector Cross.’ His feral instincts were so critically tuned that Johnny Congo had smelled the danger.

Carl did not react at once to the warning; he remained transfixed. The opportunity was still there for Hector, but now it was fleeting. Swiftly but smoothly he brought up the gun and fired a five-round burst. The recoil was so light that through the magnification of the optical lens he could watch his bullets strike.

He had aimed at Carl’s legs to anchor him, but not to kill him. Two of his bullets missed. He saw one kick up a tiny puff of dust way out near the perimeter fence. The second missed shot caught the sick Thai woman in the background as she leaned heaving with nausea against the side of the Rover. It must have hit her in the head for she went down as though a trapdoor had opened under her feet.

The other three bullets all hit Carl where Hector had aimed. One went into the ankle joint of his bare left foot. Judging by the angle of entry Hector knew that it had shattered the complex of metatarsal bones where they hinged with the descending fibula and tibia bones. The other two bullets went marginally higher as the gun rode up in Hector’s hands with the recoil. Carl’s legs were directly in line with each other, so when the bullets passed through the left leg they went on to strike the right one behind it, breaking bones in both.

Simultaneously his legs folded up under him and he went over backwards. He tumbled down the far wall of the redoubt and out of Hector’s sight.

Just as swiftly Johnny Congo disappeared from the roof of the white vehicle, but he had jumped. Hector could still hear his voice roaring orders at Sam Ngewenyama in Swahili. Hector had been fluent in that language since childhood. He understood that Johnny was ordering Sam and his men to catch the Thai whores and use them as a screen to deter the attackers.

*

Under cover of the walls of the sandbagged redoubt Johnny ran forward to where Carl Bannock was writhing in a puddle of his own blood on the hardstanding of the runway.

‘My legs!’ Carl whimpered. ‘Oh God help me. Both my legs are broken.’ Then his voice changed to a wail of terror. ‘Johnny! Please help me. Where are you, Johnny?’

‘I am right here with you, Carl baby.’ Johnny stooped over him and lifted him against his chest like an infant. Carl squealed again as his shattered legs twisted and swung loosely, bone grinding on shattered bone chips. Johnny ran with him back to the Rover.

Sam Ngewenyama’s thugs chased down and rounded up most of the Thai whores, although a few escaped and raced away terrified and screaming amongst the airport buildings. The thugs dragged those they had captured back towards the vehicles. Twisting their arms up behind their backs, they forced them to face outwards towards Hector’s men.

*

As soon as Carl dropped out of sight behind the redoubt wall, Hector ran forward followed closely by Paul Stowe and the rest of the White Team. Hector came around the corner of the redoubt wall, and found Johnny with Carl in his arms and his gang bunched up around him in full retreat back towards the three parked vehicles, dragging their struggling hostages with them.

Johnny Congo’s conscripts were all men of the Nilotic family of tribes. They were by their very origins taller than most other human beings. They disdained any man less than six feet in height as a stunted dwarf. They towered head and shoulders over the tiny oriental hostages behind whom they were trying to take shelter. They were also screening Johnny Congo and the body he was carrying back to the Range Rover.

‘Go for head shots!’ Hector snapped at Paul. ‘Keep your aim high, and try not to hit the little yellow buggers.’

In the centre of the retreating line Sam Ngewenyama was the tallest of them all. Hector locked eyes with him and Sam saw the little B&T submachine gun in Hector’s hands coming up. He tried to get in the first shot, swinging up the heavy rifle in one hand. The AK-47 is notorious for its tendency to ride up in automatic mode. This is almost impossible to control with a single hand. To exacerbate Sam’s predicament the naked ladyboy that he was trying to subdue with his other hand pulled Sam off balance at the critical moment. His first burst kicked up dust around Hector’s feet without touching him. A fraction of a second later Hector replied with a single shot that struck Sam in his forehead, a half-inch above the bridge of his nose. He went down in a tangle of lanky arms and legs.

Without lowering his weapon Hector swept it along the line of retreating militia. He fired three more single shots in quick succession, aiming at their exposed heads. As each shot cracked out one of the militia dropped, kicking and twitching convulsively.

The shortest man amongst them was at the end of their line furthest from Hector. His flat uncouth features were scarred by smallpox. The little yellow girl he was holding as a shield broke out of his grip and raced away, leaving both his hands free for a clean shot. He managed to get off a lucky burst with his AK. The Cross Bow men flanking Paul Stowe were both hit and they went down.

Hector swivelled and fired through the gap they had left. Scarface dropped his rifle and walked backwards, clutching his throat with both hands. Then he fell on his back still clutching his throat. Hector switched his attention to the thugs in front of him. He got off a short burst before the weapon fired its last round. He released the empty magazine, but before he could load a fresh one the line of militiamen confronting him disintegrated and scattered.

Most of them ran straight into Paddy’s Black Team as they charged around the far side of the warehouse buildings. Hector smiled grimly at the success of his pincer movement and left the survivors for Paddy to deal with.

He switched all his attention back to the two men he had come to kill. He saw that behind the screen of his retreating men Johnny had run with Carl in his arms to the Rover, carrying him around the far side of it. He threw him into the back seat, then he darted to the driver’s side to get behind the wheel.

Hector tried to get a clear shot at him. But now the residents of the barracks behind the warehouse, panicked by the shouting and the gunfire, came swarming out of the building like ants from a nest being attacked by killer wasps. Paddy’s men came up hard behind them, driving them to wilder abandon, until they ran headlong into the thugs and the terrified Thai whores trying to escape from Hector’s team. This throng of humanity swept across Hector’s front, between him and his target, foiling Hector’s aim.

Hector ran forward, shoving hysterical tribeswomen and their squalling brats out of his way, but he saw that he was not going to be able to prevent Johnny escaping in the Rover.

Johnny already had the door open and as he ducked his head to climb into the cab Hector shouldered to one side a black woman with an infant strapped to her back. Then he let fly with the machine pistol. He emptied a full magazine at Johnny. He saw his bullets splatter against the side of the Rover, starring the glass of the windows and dimpling the paintwork. But the devil’s luck held true. Johnny was behind the wheel and unscathed when the gun in Hector’s hands clicked on an empty chamber.

Johnny gunned the engine, spinning the wheels in the dirt and throwing up dust. When the heavily lugged tyres bit the Rover shot away down the road towards the airport gates.

Hector ran to the nearer of the two abandoned amphibious landing craft. He scrambled up the steel boarding ladder onto the boat-deck of this great ungainly machine. Then he ran forward to the pilot’s seat in the armoured turret in the bows. With a quick lift of relief he saw that the key was in the ignition switch on the control panel. The powerful diesel engine was still hot and it fired at the first kick. Then it throbbed rhythmically, blowing blue smoke through the elevated exhaust pipe above his head.

Behind him Paul Stowe had led his men up the ladder onto the deck. Hector saw that there were four of them missing, but he had known that casualties were inevitable. He put it out of his mind and jumped up on the driver’s seat, waving his arms and yelling at Paddy and Nastiya. They saw him and brought their team at a run, shoving the bewildered black women and children out of their path.

Behind them the remnants of Johnny’s routed forces were in full retreat. Most of them had thrown away their weapons and were running for the cover of the jungle. There was only one gateway on that side of the airfield and they jammed the opening in a struggling mass. The range was much too far for the little machine pistol to throw with any accuracy. Nevertheless Hector fired a full magazine at them to help them on their way. He aimed high to compensate for the distance. He saw none of them drop, but there was a sharp increase in their efforts to escape and the volume of their screaming.

Paddy was the first of his team up the ladder and into the landing craft. He shouted at Hector, ‘What happened to Johnny and his lover boy? Where did the bastards go to?’

‘That’s them there!’ Hector shouted back at him, and he pointed ahead at the gate in the perimeter fence just as the white Rover sped through it. ‘Hurry it up, for Chrissake. They are getting clean away from us.’

There were three of Paddy’s men still clinging to the steel boarding ladder when Hector engaged the gears and drove away down the road towards the airport gates. He had seen Dave Imbiss leading his team at a brisk trot up the far side of the runway, heading for the warehouse and barracks. When Hector came abreast of them he swerved off the road, brought the landing craft to a halt and stood up in the control turret. He looked back and saw that Bernie had already started to taxi the Condor towards the laager. He shouted across the runway at Dave.

‘Get back there and stand guard over the Condor, until we get back. We are chasing Johnny up there.’ He pointed up at the castle. Dave waved and shouted an acknowledgement.

Hector dropped back into the driver’s seat, and then he accelerated out through the gates and took the landing craft onto the road leading up to the castle. Ahead of them he saw the dust of the white Rover. It was already more than halfway to the summit.

Cautiously Paddy, Nastiya and Paul made their way forward, clinging to the grab handles as the deck lurched and bounced under them. They clustered behind Hector. The speedometer on the dashboard was reading a reckless forty miles an hour, much too fast for this lumbering behemoth on the narrow twisting track. Nobody protested. They hung on grimly.

‘How many casualties did you take, Paddy?’ Hector demanded without taking his eyes off the road.

‘We had three men down,’ Paddy replied. ‘There was a bastard behind us in the barracks with an AK. He let us pass and then he opened on us from behind.’

‘But, I cancelled him out.’ Nastiya’s expression was serenely satisfied. ‘And none of our casualties are fatal. They are all walkers. I sent them back to the plane.’

‘Good girl, Nazzy,’ Hector commended her, and then he glanced over his shoulder at Paul Stowe. ‘How steep was our butcher’s bill, Paul?’

‘Higher than Paddy’s, I’m sorry to say, sir,’ Paul replied. ‘Four of our boys went down. One is certainly a goner, maybe two of them.’

Hector ducked down lower in the control turret as a burst of AK-47 fire rattled against the bodywork of the vehicle. The others flung themselves down on the deck and huddled under the shelter of the armoured sides.

‘Where the hell did that come from?’ Hector demanded.

‘There is a bunch of goons up there on the castle battlements,’ Paddy replied. ‘This old bus should be impervious to small-arms fire. But just pray that they haven’t got an RPG or a couple of fifty-calibre cannon up there.’

‘I’ll leave the praying to you. I never touch the stuff when I’m driving.’ Hector kept his eyes on the road as he broadsided the craft around the next turn in a cloud of dust and loose gravel.

‘The way you drive the goons don’t need an RPG, Hector Cross,’ Nastiya told him severely. She crammed her Kevlar helmet down over her blonde curls with one hand and clung to Paddy’s shoulder with the other. As always they were using this frivolous banter to mask their essential terror.