Tom Cain - Dictator

‘Nah man, there is still a ridge of hills between us and you. It’ll be a couple of minutes before we can establish visual contact.’

‘OK, well, when you get over the hills, you should see the fire from Justus’s van.’

Morrison’s laughter, filled with the savage glee coursing through him at the promise of combat, cackled in Carver’s earpiece. ‘What? You fucked up his precious Kombi? Ah shit, that must be one unhappy munt.’

‘He’s fine. So’s the girl. Now listen, there’s a cluster of small buildings approximately one hundred and twenty metres northeast of the burning van. That’s where we are. The closer you can get to that the better. There’s a lighting pole by the corner of the pitch. Your pilot doesn’t want to get his disc anywhere near that. Other than that, nothing to worry about.’

‘Apart from all the buggers trying to kill us, you mean.’

‘Yeah, apart from them.’

The helicopter wasn’t the only thing being drawn towards the fire. The men running from the village, whose numbers had swollen as news of the night’s excitement spread, picked up their pace as they followed the route of the two vehicles off the main road and down towards the warehouse. Some of them were shouting. A couple fired their guns in the air.

The noise distracted Killaman, just as he was issuing orders to his men. He was not happy to see what was coming towards him. The last thing he needed was an ill-disciplined rabble getting in the way and complicating an operation that was already difficult enough as it was. Then he saw the silhouette of the grenade-launcher. That changed everything.

‘Stop!’ he shouted, bringing the village men to a halt just short of the flaming VW. He pointed at the man with the RPG. ‘You! Come here. I have special need of you.’

The man stepped forward, a huge grin across his face, proudly carrying the weapon that had long been his pride and joy.

‘The rest of you form a line right across the football pitch over there. All the way across, evenly spaced.’

Killaman motioned to Silent Death to organize them.

‘You will proceed at walking pace down the pitch,’ he said once the line had been formed. ‘The rest of us will follow you. You will look very carefully for any sign of the white girl and the men who took her. Do not be alarmed if one of you is shot. That will simply demonstrate that we are getting close.’

It was a clear night with the moon almost full. Carver had Justus’s thermal-imaging binoculars slung round his neck, but he did not need them to spot the men coming down the football pitch, making progress with the sluggish inexorability of zombies.

The building where he, Justus and Zalika were holed up consisted of one main changing room with slatted wooden benches pressed up against the walls along the longest sides. At one end, crude breezeblock partitions had been used to create a rank-smelling toilet cubicle and a shower area whose rusted shower-heads and dusty tiled floor suggested it had long been unused. There were no windows, just a simple skylight to provide illumination, with half the glass missing from its panes. The only access came from a single doorway, directly opposite the shower, accessed via a porch recessed into the building.

Carver had left the other two inside and was now crouched in the porch. It gave him just enough cover to be able to observe what was happening out on the playing field without giving away his own position. Soon, though, the enemy would be on him.

There was a crackle in his earpiece, followed by Morrison’s voice: ‘With you in about a minute. We have a visual on the van. Looks like you’ve got company.’

‘Are you armed? Can you give me any suppressing fire?’

‘Oh ja, don’t you worry about that.’

Carver could hear the faint sound of the approaching chopper now. He raised the binoculars to his face and swept as much of the horizon as he could manage without exposing himself to sight. It took two passes before he spotted the helicopter, coming towards him at tree-skimming height over open country beyond the far side of the pitch. The course would bring it directly over the stand at right angles to the direction in which the line of men was going, but slightly behind it. Carver could see exactly what Morrison had in mind. He was going to run along the line, getting a clear shot at every single one of them.

By the time the chopper arrived, though, it might be too late. The nearest men were barely twenty metres away from the shack now. In a matter of seconds they would be on him. It was time to adjust the odds a little bit more in his favour.

Carver could not afford to waste a single round. He aimed at the man at the nearest end of the line and fired a single shot. The bullet hit its target in the right temple and exploded out of the back of his head. Before he had even hit the ground, Carver had traversed and fired at the second target a further ten metres away. It took two rounds to put him down, and the time wasted by the second of those shots allowed man number three to shout out in warning and fling himself to the ground as another bullet fizzed through the air where his body had been. The man had not seen Carver, but just from the way his comrades had been killed he had a general idea of where the shots must have come from. He also had a gun.

He emptied an entire magazine blazing away at the cluster of buildings by the side of the pitch.

Carver ducked back inside the porch.

The helicopter sounded louder in the distance. Very soon it would be over the field. Now all he had to do was make sure that he, Justus and, most importantly, Zalika were still alive when it got there.

Carver’s movement caught Killaman’s eye. He did not panic. He had come there to watch a football match a couple of days earlier and knew the layout of the ground and its buildings. Nor was he going to be forced into anything hasty or ill-considered by the sound of the helicopter engine. He had already factored that element into his calculations.

Lying on the ground, he summoned Silent Death to drag himself across the dirt towards him, then explained what he wanted. ‘They are in the building nearest us, the home changing room. See it?’

Silent Death followed his commander’s pointing finger and nodded.

‘Good,’ said Killaman. ‘So this is what you must do.’

A few seconds later, Killaman’s ragtag platoon started blazing away at Carver’s position again, forcing him to stay hidden as Silent Death rose from the ground and padded away, body bent almost double, jogging off the side of the football pitch and making a sweeping flanking movement round the back of the buildings.

In the changing room, Justus was trying to keep Zalika Stratten from descending into total nervous collapse. Her whole body was shaking, and though she seemed to be trying to speak between her sobs, it was impossible to make out what she was saying.

‘It’s all right, Miss,’ he kept repeating. ‘Not long now. Soon have you out of here.’

If this had been his own daughter, he would have wrapped her in his arms and stroked her hair to calm her. But he did not dare do that now. Just the touch of a man could send this girl over the brink.

There was a reason Silent Death had acquired his name. Even among men who took great pride in their ability to melt into the scenery, move undetected and attack without warning, his talents stood out. Tonight, however, his prey had no means of seeing him, and with so many gunshots and the ever-increasing clatter of a helicopter engine to cover them, a herd of elephants could have walked up to the building unheard. Carver, positioned in the porch, had no idea that one of the enemy was just a few feet behind him, moving round the back of the shack and climbing with feline agility up its wall.