Tony Park - Silent Predator

‘That’s not true, I’m afraid,’ Janet replied.

He felt his fear for Sannie and her children rising, burning, inside him.

‘You must believe me. I didn’t tell her all my suspicions, just in case something like this happened. I knew the odds were against me. She can’t prove anything. You’ll get away with it. Kill me and no one will know. I’ll just disappear. Please believe me, Janet. I was bluffing, you know, about the letter to the investigator and the press.’

Janet shrugged. ‘I thought you might be. She was given a warning, Tom, which she has failed to heed. She knows, all right.’

Tom shook his head. They had an insider. He felt a fool now, even as he learned he’d been right. He’d exposed Sannie and her family. ‘Sannie has two small children. Don’t leave them without a mother.’ He thought he saw a moment of doubt cross her face, a slight softening. He was wrong.

‘They’re all together right now. You’re right about not leaving the children without a mother.’

‘We’ll wait for Nick to get here.’

‘Janet,’ Greeves said. ‘Tell Pervez to back off. I’m no threat to you.’

‘Oh, yes you are,’ she said. ‘You’re a threat to everything I have. But it’ll be quite interesting, letting your bodyguard decide whether you should live or not. Pervez?’

The Pakistani shifted his gaze, from down the rifle’s short barrel at Greeves, across to Janet. ‘Yes?’

‘I’ll cover these two. Get Wessels on the phone.’

Sannie ushered the children into the hallway of the house in Boksburg. ‘Henk?’ She heard the captain’s mobile phone ring, then his muted voice as he answered it.

She paused in the doorway of the kitchen. Wessels had his back turned to her and was nodding as he spoke. ‘ Ja, I understand.’ He ended the call.

‘Henk, we’re going. Do you want to take us, or can the uniformed guys give us a lift?’

‘Sannie, it’s not safe for you to go. I’ve just had a call from the team watching your home. There’s a car that’s cruised past three times. The guys on duty are lying low inside and have called for back-up. We should wait here, just until it’s safe. This skurk is still on the loose.’

‘Then we’ll go to headquarters — anywhere but here. I don’t want to stay here.’

‘I’m going to send the guys from outside — they’ll get to your place quicker than the nearest patrol car. I want you here, with me, where I can keep an eye on you and the kids.’

‘Come on, man. This doesn’t make sense.’ Ilana tugged on her pants leg. ‘Wait a minute, baby. We’ll find a hotel, Henk. I’m not staying in this bloody dump.’

Wessels held up his hands, palms out. ‘Sannie, please. I know this is a difficult time for you, but why don’t you just go into the kitchen and make a cup of tea or something? We’re stretched thin and there’s a kidnapper on the loose. I can’t chauffeur you and the kids around just now. And, like I said, I want to make sure you’re safe.’

‘Well…’

‘That’s better. I’ll just go and tell the uniformed guys.’

‘Come on,’ Sannie said to Ilana and Christo. ‘Let’s see if there’s any food in this place.’

‘I’m pleased you’re here, Mom,’ Christo said, opening the refrigerator in the kitchen.

Through the window in the front lounge room Sannie could see Henk talking to the uniformed policeman. The man glanced inside, shrugged and then walked off, down the garden path, to where his comrade was getting into the white police bakkie.

Sannie thought the kids were holding up remarkably well, given that they’d been abducted — it seemed they hadn’t initially thought Carney was a bad person, despite all she’d drummed into their heads about not going anywhere with strangers. But, according to Henk, there had been a shoot-out and the man guarding them had been killed. ‘Did the gunshots scare you, my boy?’

Christo looked up at her, his faced screwed up in puzzlement. ‘What gunshots, Mom? I didn’t hear any.’

Tom looked around the verandah. Greeves was sitting on the edge of his chair, nervously looking at Janet. Every time he tried to speak she cut him off midsentence.

Janet looked calm and resolved. Khan had just told Wessels that the Englishman knew everything, so they could not afford to leave any witnesses, anywhere. Tom hadn’t met Sannie’s boss in person, but he could only presume that if this was an order to get rid of her — and her children — then the Wessels in question was her superior. Khan was right-handed, and had slung his AK 47 over his right shoulder, with his hand on the pistol grip. He had worked the buttons of the cell phone with his left hand and Tom had noted the difficulty of the manoeuvre. As Tom expected, when it came time to finish the call, Khan had to look down at the satellite phone and search for the end-call button.

Khan was off to his left, about four paces away and behind him, and Greeves was in front of him, also slightly to his left. Janet was to their right, perhaps six metres distant.

Janet looked at Khan and said, ‘Well?’

Both were distracted. Tom knew he had only one chance, and that Khan, armed with the rapid-firing military weapon, posed the greatest danger. He turned and ran at a crouch, bounding across the short distance between him and the Pakistani. As he drew alongside the wide-eyed Greeves he flung out his right hand. The flames on the two candles on the low coffee table, the only artificial light on the verandah, were already flickering with the sudden displacement of air, and they flew into Greeves’s lap as Tom knocked the table over. Greeves yelped like a frightened child as the hot wax spattered through his trousers.

Tom heard Janet’s silenced pistol cough twice as he hit Khan in a rugby tackle. He grabbed the startled man around the midriff and turned him as his charge pitched both of them over, so that the other man fell on top of him. He felt the doctor’s body flinch and stiffen as a two-two slug entered him somewhere. Tom had gambled that the small-calibre bullet wouldn’t penetrate through to him, and he must have been right because he felt no pain.

Khan was still alive, though, and he thrashed in pain and rage, landing a hard blow in Tom’s ribs with his elbow.

Tom had studied videos of street fights, caught on security cameras, mostly in the States, and he knew that the only way to survive in a brawl like this was to unleash uncontrolled aggression. He reached around with one hand and gouged his fingers into Khan’s eyeballs. He balled the other into a fist and slammed it twice, hard, into the man’s kidneys. Khan relinquished control of the rifle’s pistol grip to try to tear Tom’s hand from his eyes. Tom seized his chance, grabbing it himself, even though the weapon was still hanging from Khan’s shoulder.

In his peripheral vision he saw Greeves scuttling away, like a crab, crawling on all fours, but stopping to pick up Tom’s discarded pistol. Janet was firing now, and Tom heard a bullet ricochet off the tiles, close enough to his head for a chip of stone to slice into his cheek.

Tom pulled the trigger, hoping Khan would have been undisciplined enough to have the safety set to fire. He was right. The selector was on full automatic and the long burst of eight or more rounds punched holes in the roof and shattered one of the front windows. Janet Greeves turned and ran back into the house.

Khan’s breathing was ragged, and Tom could feel the strength oozing from the wounded man. Mercilessly, he punched him hard again in the stomach and rolled out from under him, unhooking the rifle in the process. Khan reached up a hand, but Tom ignored him. In the split seconds before the rage in him subsided, Tom hovered the end of the barrel near the doctor’s head and curled his finger around the trigger.