Andrew Britton - The Exile

“Flores!” Kealey shouted.

The Honduran stirred but didn’t respond.

“Flores, wake up! Come on, wake the fuck up! We’ve got to move! Flores! ”

The driver wasn’t responding. Movement in his peripheral vision caught Kealey’s attention, and he turned his head to the right. Through the window behind the driver’s seat, directly above the prone figure of Jacob Zuma, Kealey could see two of the SAPS officers who had ambushed them. The Africans had closed to within 20 feet of the Land Cruiser. Both men had their assault rifles up in a firing stance, and one was shouting something that Kealey couldn’t decipher through the glass. The muzzles flashed, and the glass in the driver’s side door turned opaque. The sound of the shots followed a split second later, and even inside the vehicle, they were loud enough to prompt another panicked cry from the president’s chief of staff.

Kealey resumed shouting at Flores as the SAPS officers continued to fire on the vehicle, expending their 30-round magazines in a matter of seconds. Most of the rounds seemed to hit Flores’s window, which was partially pushed in from the force of the incoming fire. Kealey could see that it wouldn’t hold up for much longer, and he realized what their assailants were trying to do. By focusing their fire on that one part of the vehicle, they would be able to defeat the reinforced glass much faster than they would with sporadic fire to all the windows. It was a sound strategy, and it also offered the best chance of stopping the Toyota dead in its tracks, as the truck obviously wouldn’t be going anywhere once the driver was killed.

They were quickly running out of options, and there was no time left to think it over. Operating purely on instinct, Kealey grabbed Flores’s left shoulder and jerked him back in the seat. The Honduran’s head bounced off the headrest, but he stayed upright, the muscles in his face working as he tried to return from the brink of consciousness. Leaning over him, Kealey put the muzzle of his FNC to the driver’s side window and squeezed the trigger. A single round tore through the one-way resistant glass, penetrating the single flexible layer of Makroclear polycarbonate sheeting.

The muzzle blast was impossibly loud inside the Land Cruiser, and it worked where shouting had not. Flores came awake with a start, his eyes snapping open, his arms flying up in a purely defensive gesture. Before he could do anything else, Kealey jammed the muzzle of his rifle into the small hole he had shot through the glass, then twisted the barrel from side to side to work it through the tiny gap. When he had it all the way through, he leaned to the left, his shoulder pressed hard against the steering wheel, which was positioned on the right-hand side of the vehicle. He was unable to see his target’s specific position due to the damage the window had sustained, but aiming in the police officers’ general direction, he fired half a dozen rounds in rapid succession. By the time he squeezed the trigger for the last time, he was temporarily deafened by the force of the muzzle blast in the confined space.

He pulled back, jerking the barrel of the FNC free of the window. Flores was shouting at him, his face twisted in rage, pain, and confusion, but Kealey couldn’t hear a word he was saying. Pointing through the front windshield, he shouted for the other man to drive. As if to emphasize his point, the driver’s side window was suddenly hit with another burst of automatic fire, and Flores immediately slammed the truck into gear. It was more an instinctive reaction than a direct adherence to orders, but Kealey didn’t care. All that mattered was that they were moving out of the kill zone.

The front windshield was one of the few windows still intact, giving Kealey a good view of the road ahead. As the ringing in his ears began to subside, he pointed to an upcoming side street and shouted for Flores to turn. Incredibly, the Honduran actually followed the order, spinning the wheel hard to the right.

As the vehicle swerved, Kealey twisted in his seat to look through the rear window on the driver’s side. The top half of the window was clouded from the impact of incoming fire, but beneath that he could see the police officers running back to the Land Rovers, both of which had accelerated up to the officers’ position. Kealey was disappointed to see that he hadn’t managed to get lucky with one of his rounds. All four of the men outside the vehicles were still moving, though one appeared to be running with a lopsided gait, his free hand pressed to his left upper thigh, his dark face contorted in pain. As he watched them move, Kealey realized that they had fanned out to approach the Toyota. It was a smart tactical maneuver, as it made them less susceptible to incoming fire, but it also meant they had farther to go to get back to their own vehicles. Flores’s fast departure had given them a short head start, but they didn’t have more than twelve seconds lead time, and Kealey knew they would have to use it wisely.

They finished making the turn, and the view of the men abruptly gave way to a redbrick wall. The road they had turned onto was more like an alley than a side street. There was no sidewalk, and residential buildings rose up on either side, the walls crowding in on the narrow street. The asphalt was strewn with litter, discarded pallets of rotting wood, and other assorted debris, all of which served to impede their progress. There were pedestrians, as well, and as the Land Cruiser raced down the alley-Flores leaning on the horn the entire time-they pushed themselves flat against the walls to avoid the speeding SUV.

Flores was shouting questions, demanding some kind of explanation, but Kealey wasn’t listening. His eyes were fixed on the road ahead. The point where the alley fed into the next street was partially blocked by the front end of an illegally parked car, and more vehicles were lined up on the far side of the street, parked bumper to bumper. He shot a glance at the rearview mirror, saw that it was still tilted down, and adjusted it quickly. The moment he did so, he saw the first of the two Land Rovers turning into the alley. The rear windows were down, and men were leaning bodily out the windows, trying to draw a bead on the lead vehicle. A few shots rang out. None of the rounds came close to striking the Land Cruiser, but even so, Kealey knew that they wouldn’t stop coming. By attacking Jacob Zuma’s motorcade, they had staked not only their careers but also their lives on the assassination attempt, and David Joubert was not in a position to protect them if they failed.

That last part was an assumption on Kealey’s part, but there was no question that they were completely loyal to their former chief. Whoever had planned the ambush had clearly decided that the only way to secure Joubert’s freedom was to kill Zuma, and given the prevailing attitude in the South African republic, Kealey decided it was a decent plan. With Zuma out of the way, his successor might be inclined to simply terminate the courtroom proceedings, or perhaps let them play out as a show of due process at work, and only then declare leniency once a verdict was reached.

A decent plan, yes. But it would succeed only if the policemen managed to get to his principal, and Kealey had no intention whatsoever of letting that happen.

Unfortunately, shaking them was easier said than done. The most obvious strategy would be to get to the government building in Marshalltown, but they would still be exposed as they moved from the truck to the building. The local police stations were also out, for obvious reasons. He knew there were probably better options, but the men chasing them undoubtedly knew the city better than he did, and he couldn’t afford to prolong the chase. Looking through the windshield, Kealey let his gaze linger on the illegally parked Peugeot at the end of the alley. With no time left to consider, he made his decision.