Murray McDonald - Assassin

“I can’t explain it, nothing else makes sense. Their boat had every conceivable detector, no person or boat could have got within half a mile of them without them knowing. If Jones had been attacked he would have told me.”

The Chairman hung up on Beaumont. He had begun to remember the story from the year before about the hostage situation at schools around the world and the unexplained release of the students. The rumours afterwards were that ninja type men had freed the students with amazing displays of martial arts.

He tried to call Williams. His phone was off. They must be launching the attack. He was too late. Perhaps he was just being silly. They were Beaumont’s scare stories. But what if they weren’t? Williams and his men would be slaughtered.

The villa was lovely with the main feature being the living area which opened onto a spectacular Roman-style pool. Nobody, however, took any notice of the surroundings. Tom had put the news on the moment they entered the house and all sat either glued to the screen or comforting Zach. The news of his father’s shooting was the major news story on every channel. The story suggested he had disturbed burglars and although wounded, had managed to kill both intruders.

Zach contacted his mother immediately. She had been desperately trying to get hold of him and seemed more concerned about his whereabouts than his father’s condition. He finally discovered that his father was in a drug induced coma to speed healing, some new thing they were trying. None of the injuries were bad and he’d be fine in a couple of weeks.

“Burglars my ass. I ask you, who burgles a house with two Military Police cars sitting outside it?” asked Zach rhetorically as another news reporter proposed the scenario.

“Thank God you warned him he might be a target. It was lucky he had his gun to hand.”

“Yes I warned him but the gun is always there, he even sleeps with his slippers on. He’s always telling me you can never be too prepared. My mum moved into the spare room, she’s been petrified for years that he’ll blow her head off in his sleep.”

“So what did he do about being a target?” asked Tom.

“Nothing, he just said whoever tries to kill him had better have a big set of balls and a damn good aim. They’d only get one chance.”

“Seems he was right,” replied Tristan as he watched the body bags of the ‘burglars’ being removed from Zach’s house.

“He’ll have to be careful now though, I don’t think they’ll…” Lela stopped mid sentence, the colour draining from her face. Her mouth making as if to scream but nothing came out. Everyone was so busy trying to see if she was OK, that they failed to notice what was frightening the life out of her.

“Lela! Lela! Look at me! What’s wrong?”

Tom didn’t know what to do, one minute she was sitting talking, the next she couldn’t speak and was struggling for breath.

Lela tried to speak but the vision through the window had caused her to go into shock. Her mind could not compute what her eyes were seeing. It just didn’t make sense. Why would nobody look round. They were all just staring at her, she had to get them to look round. They must look and explain it to her or tell her she was dreaming. They had to look!

“Lela! You’re really scaring me now! What’s wrong, talk to me please!!” Tom was on the verge of tears, he didn’t know what to do or what was wrong with her.

A tap tap on the window caught most of their attention bar Tom’s who was too worried about Lela.

“Tom! Tom! Please turn around and look at the door to the pool?” said Tristan sounding, as though he were asking Tom to look at a mad axe man.

“What?…” Tom turned round and realised what was wrong. Standing in the full glare of the spotlights and directly in front of Lela was Saki.

“Is it really him?” asked Lela, tears were now streaming down her face. If other people saw him as well, it might be real.

“Yes, it is. It’s Saki,” replied Tom gently, as tears began to roll down his cheeks.

Lela jumped and ran to the door, unlocked it and threw her arms around her father. He hugged her and tears welled in his eyes. Tom joined them and the three hugged. Saki spoke before Tom had a chance to ask.

“Your parents are fine, they’re out there on the Tylanni. Explanations will have to wait, we’ve got visitors coming.”

Papa, who had been in the kitchen and had missed everything, nearly knocked them all flying as he rushed across the room to join in the hug.

“Papa. We have trouble coming.”

Saki disengaged himself from Tom and Lela and began to explain what they needed to do. He quickly organised the islanders and split them into three teams. Within a few minutes, the three groups had disappeared into the night.

Lela, Zach, Tristan and Tom were left with strict instructions to stay upstairs in the master bedroom, under no circumstances were they to leave the room.

Lela punched Tom in the arm.

“Hey! What was that for?” he said rubbing the top of his arm.

“You knew! I saw the look on your face, you weren’t that surprised when you saw him.”

“I didn’t! I just thought it might be possible, remember the text I got from my dad?”

“Yeah, the weird one that made them sound guilty?”

“Yeah and the numbers, well it turns out that the numbers, when you type them out in text, say we’ll be back. Daniel phoned me just before we landed. His guys worked it out, seems it had even their master code cracker beat until one of their kids said try it as a text rather than numbers. That, combined with the please forgive us and the Tylanni being renamed The Beautiful lady, made things come together.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Lela was hurt that he had kept it from her.

“And if I was wrong and got your hopes up?” he responded.

“True…God I can’t believe it! They’re alive!” she shook Tom as she said it. The worry that she was dreaming was slowly disappearing. It was real, they were back.

The three teams made their way through the grounds towards their targets. Team One towards the UK Prime Minister, Team Two towards the Australian Prime Minister and Team Three to the villa to deal with the kids and their acquaintances. It was slow going. With fifty three heads of government, the teams had a lot of security to avoid or dispose of.

The grounds were vast, over 320 acres. Williams was worried about the time it would take them to find their final positions, three areas offering excellent cover and close enough to their targets. He checked his watch as his three teams radioed in to confirm they had arrived and were in position, it was 4.42 a.m. Perfect, he thought, three minutes early.

Williams sat over a mile away with the back-up team. He was watching everything as it happened through video feeds from cameras attached to his lieutenants’ helmets. He watched carefully as each lieutenant scanned the scene in front of them for him. Teams One and Two had four and five guards to deal with respectively, Team Three had a clear run to the villa.

“Snipers One and Two come in,” he radioed to the snipers who covered the south end of the Hotel. They would be able to knock out the four guards for Team One.

“Snipers One and Two come in,” he repeated. He looked towards the high ground where they were, it was over half a mile away and dark, he couldn’t see a thing.

“Sniper Three and Four come in,” he said, trying the snipers who covered the North end and would knock out the guards for Team Two. Nothing.

Williams looked again into the distance where they should be. Again, it was dark, there was nothing to see.