Tony Park - Silent Predator

An ambulance screamed past him and Eugene started his engine again. He accelerated into the vehicle’s dust cloud as it raced down the private access road to Tinga. Eugene was a member of the press following a story — the gloves were off now. He stayed close to the ambulance and tailgated it through the unmanned electric gates that led to the luxury lodge.

Major Jonathan Fraser stood on the Tarmac at RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire. The busy military air transport hub was based in the otherwise peaceful green chequerboard of West Country farmland, a short drive at high speed from the Special Air Service’s home at Hereford, near the Welsh border. He watched as the last of six black Land Rover Discovery vehicles rolled up the rear cargo ramp into the waiting C-17.

The big fat grey aircraft’s jet engines whined at an idling speed. The members of Fraser’s SAS troop filed across the apron to the ramp to await their turn to walk on board. The noon day sun was barely making its presence felt through the whited-out autumn sky.

Fraser wore civilian clothes — blue blazer, tan trousers, oxford button-down collar — they didn’t move about in uniform when on counter-terrorist operations lest they draw any more attention to themselves than a convoy of black four-wheel drives would otherwise have done. The Director of Special Forces, a major general, had been driven straight to Wiltshire from a meeting with the Prime Minister.

‘You know the odds aren’t good, Johnno?’ The major general had been commanding officer of the regiment when Jonathan had been one of his young troop leaders. No one else would get away with calling him that.

It had been Jonathan’s feeling for many years that while the SAS were highly trained in hostage rescue, they were making a mistake common to most fighting forces throughout history — they were training to fight their last big battle. The DSF was right. There was little chance that they would find Greeves alive and, if they did, the terrorists would be well prepared to execute both of their hostages and a good number of the assault force as soon as the direct assault began. The hostage situation at Beslan, in Russia, where Chechens had held a whole school captive, was, in Jonathan’s view, solely an exercise in targeting Russia’s special forces troops. He believed it had never been the intention of the captors to release any of the children under any circumstances, and that the whole operation was geared towards generating terror — in its purest form — and wiping out a good number of trained counter-terrorist soldiers in the process. Britain was still fighting the war on terror with the gloves on. The Yanks were marginally better at it. If they identified three or four al-Qaeda types driving through the desert in someone else’s country they wiped them off the face of the earth with a hellfire missile fired from an unmanned drone. Pre-emptive strikes — that was the way to go, in Jonathan’s view. Get the bastards before they did their dirty deeds, not afterwards. Sadly, Greeves’s execution may have already been filmed for release to the satellite television networks. ‘Yes, sir. Even if we find Greeves and his man they’ll probably kill them before we get near them.’

‘Exactly. Still, they came damn close to catching the culprits this morning. Some poor oaf of a plod who lost Greeves in the first place almost redeemed himself.’

‘ “Almost” doesn’t really cut it in our game, does it, sir?’ He’d read the preliminary intelligence reports and, while he knew little about the copper who had been Greeves’s replacement bodyguard, he had noted with interest that two of the terrorists had been killed in a fire fight in the African bush that morning, while he’d been driving to Lyneham. Perhaps there would be a scent for Jonathan and his hounds to follow after all.

‘You’ve got the boats as well?’

‘Mozambique does have two and a half thousand kilometres of coastline, sir, so if that’s where they are, the boats could come in handy.’

‘You always were a cheeky sod.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The boats were rubber Zodiacs, packed deflated into containers which could be pushed out the back of the C-17 and then reinflated via compressed air cylinders by the troopers who would follow the load out of the aircraft. They could be dropped kilometres offshore, unseen by the enemy, and motor in for an assault. As well as the cargo aircraft taking them to South Africa, Fraser would have air support from the South African National Defence Force in the form of three Oryx helicopters

‘Of course, if you do pull it off, you’ll write yourself into the history books.’

‘It’s just another job, sir.’

‘That’s the spirit, Johnno. Remember, though, it’s Africa, and someone else’s country, won’t you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘One other piece of good news for you, before you leave. Our cousins across the Atlantic have offered what support they can. They’ll retask a satellite to give us imagery if you get an idea of where they’ve holed up. Also, there’s an American carrier in the Indian Ocean at the moment. I’ve asked for an aircraft with FLIR and they’ve offered an FA-18. It’ll be at the South African base at Hoedspruit by the time you get there, OPCON to you.’

That was the best news he’d had so far on this job. Being given operational control of a fast jet equipped with a Forward Looking Infra-red camera from another country’s navy was a good indicator of the magnitude of the operation and the faith his superiors were placing in him. If the terrorists were traced to a fixed base, the jet could fly over at altitude but use its radar to pick up heat signatures of people inside. The aircraft would also be carrying enough bombs and rockets and guns to win a small war.

‘PM’s most upset by this brazen attack, Johnno, as you can imagine. He’s intimated to me that if we’re too late, if Greeves and his flunky are dead, and you still get eyes on the target, then we don’t want to be messing around with arrests and show trials and whatnot.’ The major general raised his eyebrows. ‘So feel free to use your aeroplane to maximum effect. The Yanks won’t mind a bit.’

‘Understood. Better go, sir. Don’t want to miss my flight.’

Sannie had organised for Duncan to drive her to Skukuza rest camp in another Tinga vehicle. Once there, she used her personal credit card to hire a car from the Avis office at the camp’s main reception building.

The only car available was a tiny, bright blue Volkswagen Citi-Golf Chico, a two-door hatchback with a 1.3 litre engine. It was hardly a vehicle to take overland into Mozambique, but she neglected to tell the woman behind the counter that was where she was headed. She wondered, as she signed the paperwork, if she would have any trouble getting the vehicle across the border, since she didn’t own it. No, she told herself. In Africa, a police identification, backed up by some cold, hard cash, could get one past most barriers.

Sitting behind the steering wheel she paused and again asked herself the most obvious question. Why am I doing this? She tried to distil her reasoning, but reason wasn’t her strong suit at the moment. Gut instinct? Tom was morally right to pursue the abductors as quickly and efficiently as possible, despite the legal impediments. But there was more. It shouldn’t be a factor, but she wanted to be with him, helping him. It wasn’t good policing, adrenaline or glory that drove her. Indeed, this might be the end of her career. She shook her head.

It didn’t matter. There was no time to waste. Around her, in the car park outside Kruger’s headquarters, tourists came and went as though nothing was wrong. For South African families Kruger was a haven from the day-to-day worries of crime and the increasingly tough grind of making a living. This terrible thing that had happened to Robert Greeves would be bad news for the park when it hit the media. She drove out the main gates and turned left at the four-way stop.