Tom Cain - Dictator

One of the men next to Justus said, ‘Cover your ears.’

The man turned in his seat and pointed his gun back down the road. Then he fired a single thunderous shot and the rear wind-screen simply vanished as if it had never been. He rotated his head to ease his neck muscles, settled over the sights of his gun and pressed the trigger. As the noise crashed round the four-by-four, the drum magazine rotated, cartridges were spewed from the side of the gun and a gigantic hammer of flying lead hit the leading police car and obliterated it.

Justus had fought in a long and bloody war. He had witnessed more slaughter and destruction than any human being should have to face. But he had never seen anything like that before.

The police car seemed to stop dead in the road. The car behind went skidding into its rear. A policeman got out of the passenger seat and ran away with his hands in the air.

The gunman let him go. He stopped firing and slipped back down into his seat.

‘Damn!’ he said. ‘That was fun!’

Half a mile up the road, the downtown area gave way to a district of low-rise industrial units, warehouses and open lots. The two four-by-fours pulled into a gated builder’s yard on the corner of an intersection. Parkes’s men spilled out and greeted one another with high fives and whoops of triumph. Justus ran straight to his children.

Carver let them be for a few seconds – enough time for Justus to be certain that his kids were unharmed – then put a hand on his old comrade’s shoulder and said, ‘I need a word.’

‘Of course, of course!’ replied Justus. ‘I cannot believe that you came for us. I do not know how I can thank you.’

Carver grimaced. ‘Well, that’s the trouble. I do.’

‘Anything, just say it.’

‘I need you to let Canaan and Farayi go with Sonny Parkes over there. He’s going to get them safely out of the country. I know you want to go with them. If you say that’s what you’re going to do, I’ll understand. But I really need your help.’

The exuberance left Justus like the light from a bulb. ‘What do you want?’

‘Mabeki has Zalika Stratten again. I know, it’s like some kind of sick joke: losing her once is a misfortune, twice looks like carelessness. And I was careless. It’s my fault. But the fact is he’s got her, she’s in danger, and without you I have no chance of getting her back.’

Justus did not waste time even pretending to reassure Carver. He got straight to the point: ‘Where is she?’

‘I think he’s taken her to the old Stratten Reserve. In fact I’m sure he has.’

‘But you do not know?’

‘Not for certain, no.’

‘And you need me because…?’

‘You can guide me in and out. We need to get to the house unobserved, then make a run for the border.’

‘It’s been a long, long time since I worked there. A lot has changed, I’m sure.’

‘Maybe, but you still know more about the place than any of us. And the land itself hasn’t changed. Look, I know this is a huge ask. But I’m not expecting you to get involved in any close combat. It’s not right to risk your life that way.’

‘So you want me to come with you, but you deny me the chance to fight?’

It took Carver half a second to spot the trace of humour in Justus’s voice.

‘So you’ll do it?’

‘Of course. I am in your debt, it is what I must do. And not just because of you. It is because of men like Mabeki that my beautiful Nyasha, the love of my life, is dead. For her sake, I must have my revenge.’

‘You sure? Your children have lost their mother. I don’t want them to lose their father, too.’

‘They are almost grown now, ready to make their own lives, whether I am with them or not. Better that they should have the memory of a hero than the presence of a coward.’

‘Then you’d better go and tell them that now. They’ll be on their way to the border in a couple of minutes. If all goes well, they’ll be waiting for us when we get Zalika out. One way or the other, it’ll all be settled tonight.’

Justus nodded and walked back to his son and daughter, passing Sonny Parkes, who was walking over to Carver.

‘He agree?’ Parkes asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘And it’s just going to be the two of you? Because if you want me or any of my guys to tag along…’

‘Thanks, but I’d rather you looked after the kids, make sure they get out of the country alive. I paid for their educations. I don’t want my money wasted.’

Parkes smiled knowingly. ‘Ja, that must be it. Don’t worry, bro, we’ll get them out in one piece. You decided on weapons? I’ve still got a couple of unused drums of ammo for an AA-12, if you want it.’

‘No thanks. For this kind of job I need precision more than power.’

‘Agreed, but I thought I’d ask, just in case the little demonstration back there made you change your mind. Anyway, I got you two M4 carbines with US Special Forces modifications: noise-suppressor kits and three thirty-round mags apiece. That’s what we use on operations like this and we like the results. I got you an M11, too. I heard on the grapevine that’s your handgun of choice. With a suppressor, of course.’

Carver nodded. ‘Thanks.’ The M11 was the US designation for the Sig Sauer P226. ‘I always feel cosier with one of them around.’

‘For me, what I like best is a good knife,’ said Parkes. ‘A nine-inch Bowie blade, black carbon steel, preferably. I assumed you and Mr Iluko would feel the same way. You may need them.’

Carver grimaced at the thought of a knife slicing through an exposed throat. There were few more horribly intimate ways to kill a man. But Parkes was right: there were also few more effective ways of silently eliminating one’s enemy.

‘The kit’s all in that Defender over there,’ said Parkes, nodding in the direction of a dusty olive-green Land Rover. It’s got a full tank of gas and an extra jerrycan in case you need it. Believe it or not, that gas was much harder to come by than your weapons. Anyway, I’ve got you water, rations, and there’s a winch fitted to the front bumper in case you need to pull yourself out of trouble.’

‘Looks like you thought of everything.’

‘Well, that’s my boss’s niece you’re going after. Nothing but the best, eh?’

‘I appreciate it. Thanks.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ said Parkes. ‘Well, I’d better get going. We’ve got a plane to catch.’

He turned to go, then paused for a second.

‘Hey, Carver… good luck.’

‘Thanks,’ said Carver, ‘but actually there is one thing you forgot.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Beer, a cold one. It had better be waiting when I get across the border tonight.’

‘Count on it,’ said Parkes.

Parkes, his men and the two Iluko kids crammed into a Toyota Previa people carrier with blacked-out passenger windows, slipped out of a side gate of the builder’s yard and joined the traffic heading out of town at the start of the afternoon rush-hour. It took a while to get on to the two-lane ribbon of cracked and potholed tarmac that constituted the main route to the South African border, and even then the going was slow. More than ninety minutes had passed before the driver took a right turn on to a much more basic dirt track that snaked away into the flat, featureless expanse of the bush.

A few minutes later, the De Havilland Twin Otter took off from Buweku airport without any passengers aboard. Barely ten minutes into its flight, less than fifty miles from Buweku, the pilot radioed the control tower, reporting multiple systems malfunctions. He said he would attempt to make an immediate forced landing and requested information about nearby landing strips.