Jacob grunted. “I’ve been thinking about that. General Delta is going to know everything Clark did, so Delta is going after our hostage, we have no choice but to assume that as fact. It means Delta is the one we have to track until we catch the dealer who knows where this scientist woman is and if General Delta finds her first we’ll never get her back, Boko Haram must have her, it’s what Clark assumed.”
“Delta is going to go north again as soon as he can,” I said. “He’ll be moving towards their territory.”
“Not if he thinks he can make a deal with Boko Haram through their intermediaries here. For all we know there’s going to be an auction for this woman because she has knowledge that can end entire parts of the human race,” Jacob replied.
He had a point. A man like General Delta didn’t let something like fear of government forces prevent him from perusing something he wanted. The knowledge residing in a Porton Down scientist being captured as a human target was almost as dangerous as one of their damned viruses escaping. This scientist, Dilras Begum, would be worth a great deal on the open market even if Delta couldn’t use her himself. It would raise his profile, perhaps even make the DRC’s Government cede control.
“He has one hell of a head start on us, Jacob.”
Jacob rested his hands on his weapon, the movement so familiar it made my heart constrict, like a love-struck fool. “We have to remove her from the table. Where would Delta go to feel safe? He’ll send men after the target and if the target is a broker for Boko Haram then the target will simply sell to Delta and isn’t in any immediate danger. They’ll want to strike a deal.”
“Unless Delta won’t pay the price,” I said.
“Worst case scenario Delta ends up with the geneticist either way, so we make him our new mission objective,” Jacob said, sorting the priorities out.
I nodded. “We report to Brant, tell her about Clark, she can report to the local police. I want my name kept out of this.”
Jacob frowned. “Why? I would have thought you’d work on having a positive relationship with the police.”
“Once this gets back to Whitehall and if my name is attached to the police report the Security Services will come after me again. I can’t afford to be on their radar. The target on my back is too large,” I said.
“At some point I want that explained to me, Mac.”
“At some point I will explain, let’s just get out of here.” I gave the body one more look and a mental ‘fuck you’ farewell.
11
By the time we left the warehouse Lydia and Brant were outside, parked near my truck. “Sitrep, gentlemen,” Brant said, leaning against the car with her MP5K in her relaxed hands.
“Clark is dead. You probably don’t want the details and he’d have talked,” Jacob said.
“Shit. Delta knows where to find Dilras Begum,” Brant said.
“Yep, we’re going to find General Delta now,” I said.
Brant pulled a face, a pensive pissed off expression. “I’m going to have to report this to Whitehall which means explaining what Unit 12 are doing on an unsanctioned mission the SAS were supposed to be dealing with. MI6 aren’t my favourite playmates right now.” She hung her head for a moment, rallying her resources. “Fine, go find Delta. We’ll report this to the embassy, keep Whitehall out of the loop for as long as possible. If Clark is dirty –”
“Was, ma’am,” I pointed out quietly.
“As you say, Sergeant. Was dirty, then who knows what else he told Delta. Right, new mission, find Delta, find the broker that may or may not exist. Keep the broker alive, take Delta out. I don’t want a general in the DRC having the information Clark knew. Do we know how long he’s been dead?” Brant asked.
Jacob did some fast calculations. “Bearing in mind the weather conditions I’d say less than an hour. The torture went on for a while, but we don’t know when Delta found Clark.”
“Clark could have given them anything,” Brant muttered. “Fuck.”
I had a moment of imagining the woman’s brain sifting the vast network of information she held to accommodate this latest twist in the game of politics she was forced to play as a senior ranking officer in a covert unit of SIS.
“We need to go, Colonel,” I said, dragging her back to the present.
“Of course. Keep me updated and try not to get yourselves killed. I need Lydia with me.”
“Roger that,” Jacob said, already heading for the truck.
When we climbed in, I took the wheel. “How do you want to proceed?” he asked.
“There’s a chance Delta knows who I am, but Clark thought you were dead, so I think you should be a buyer the target wanted to sell to and I’m acting as security.” I drove back into the traffic of the city and headed towards the N1 again.
“Where are we going?” Jacob asked.
“Matété, it’s not the kind of district the tourists go and visit. There’s a nightclub there General Delta frequents,” I said, the tension in me rising with each rotation of the truck’s wheels.
“You know of this nightclub how?” Jacob asked, giving me the side-eye.
I chuckled. “Yeah, lots of girls, and every service imaginable is on sale, including drugs but as we both know, girls don’t seem to be my thing.”
“Just checking,” he mumbled.
“I never took you for the jealous type,” I said, watching him as the traffic lights caught us again.
His eyes caught the light and turned a soft caramel. “Just don’t like the thought of you playing elsewhere. Never have.”
I laughed, this possessive streak coming out of the blue. “Jacob, you’re being a dick. You know perfectly well there’s never been anyone in my life but you and we’ve only just kissed. It’s not like I move fast in the romantic department.” I reached out and took his hand, the first intimate gesture we’d shared for several hours and it made my skin tingle. “I know about it because my job means I have to know about it. I had a police contact who gave me a rundown of all the places in Kinshasa I needed to be aware of if I wanted to remain in one piece.”
“And this is one of those places?” Jacob asked.
“It’s at the top of the list,” I said. “Not the place you want to go if you’re white unless you fancy finding a new and interesting way of committing suicide or have a great deal of money that you like spending on bad things.”
“And I’m supposed to be a human trafficker going in there?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“Shouldn’t I be wearing a suit?”
“Nope.”
“This is the kind of place our CO used to warn us about isn’t it?”
“Oh yes.”
“Fucking hell.”
I grinned. “It’ll be fun. I get to be the muscle.”
“And I get to make sure they don’t slice our ears off to wear as a necklace,” he muttered.
“That’s not Delta’s way,” I said, “he’s more likely to take your balls.”
“Don’t remind me,” Jacob muttered, probably thinking about Clark’s balls.
I needed to be in the streets behind the Mosquée Al-taqwa so cut through the traffic, making Jacob swear. Traffic laws belonged to cities other than Kinshasa. We parked up and I left the engine running so we could take advantage of the air conditioning.
“Right, we need a plan,” I said. “That’s the club.” I pointed to the gaudy entrance ahead of us on the other side of the road about 50 metres from our current location.
“Will it be open during the day?” Jacob asked.
“For the right price it’ll be open all day, every day. It’s not just a nightclub and Delta’s not the only bad boy who uses the place to do business. It’s something like neutral territory.”
Jacob swivelled in his seat and watched the entrance. “So, we go in, ask for Delta and just offer to give him the money for the woman if he can get her back from Boko Haram?”
“No, I think we go in and offer to act as his emissary to some very big hi
tters in the arms race,” I said.
“What?”
“We need the geneticist’s location but to get the location we need to find your target. He might or might not be there. So we make the general show us to him or the other way around, and perhaps he’ll play us off against each other. The man Boko Haram uses to trade prisoners only has power because of his contacts. If we have more contacts, more money, Boko Haram will want to deal with us and so will the general.”
“Or take our balls for earrings,” Jacob muttered. He reached into the back seat and hauled the large bag of weapons into the front.
“There is always that possibility, though I plan to keep your balls where they are right now.”
Jacob snorted. “It’s not much of a plan, Mac. I’d like to think we might stand a chance of going home.”
“We don’t really have much choice.”
“It’s hardly the seven ‘Ps’.”
I shrugged. “We don’t have time or the facilities for a full plan or preparation.”
“Which means we’re going to have piss-poor performance.” Jacob spoke with his eyes on the target building and despite his words I knew he had ideas bubbling away in that hind-brain of his, it always worked overtime.
“If it goes noisy, we just grab what int we can and get out. I’m not killing Delta unless it’s easy,” I said. “We can find him later if necessary.”
“But Brant –”
“Isn’t here and we are. Delta’s going to be surrounded by well trained and heavily armed men. These guys aren’t just gangsters playing soldier, they are soldiers and we won’t be allowed guns,” I said, plucking a SIG from Jacob’s paws. “We take the Glocks, know we are likely to lose them, and we use our brains not our brawn.”
Jacob grunted. “Sure, easy, I just wish we had the rest of the team as back-up.”
“Me too, fella,” I said. “Me too.”
We studied the neon bright exterior in silence. A large brick-built place which might date from the end of French rule in the country. It certainly had the shabby elegance of a once mighty colonial haunt and this area of the city would have been an outlying village in the rich jungle and farmland of the original township. The colonnades now sported flashing lights entwined around the dirty plasterwork and bright signs declared in English and French that the girls were the best in the city. It reminded me of the worst of Soho or Amsterdam on a bleak and shabby day after some hideous world-shattering catastrophe.
I could almost predict the smell. Crack pipes, tobacco, sex, sweat, heavy cologne and perfume and the sweet smell of dope riding along on a hazy wave mingling with everything else. As night began to fall, we’d seen enough people arrive and leave to have some idea of the door security, so we tucked our Glocks into the backs of our jeans and went in search of trouble.
“You really do bring me to all the best places,” Jacob muttered as we walked up the street.
“Wait until you see what I have planned for a second date,” I murmured in return.
He chuckled and walked up the eight steps to the front door. A vast swathe of black skin covered in a t-shirt so tight and bright white I had to blink several times to prevent my retinas from detaching, stepped in front of us.
“What you want in here, white boy?” the booming French rolled around us and made me, at six-two, feel like a weasel in the claws of an eagle. The arms could barely cross over the vast chest. This man might appear to the uninitiated a threat equal to Hercules but one short sprint, a kick to his knee and the bugger would go down and stay there. Too many power shakes, testosterone and weights.
“I am here to see General Delta,” Jacob replied in flawless French.
The dark brown eyes narrowed. “He has no business with white boys.”
“I suggest you ask if he wants to do business. He is the power in the Congo, right? I am seeking the man who can offer me a real deal for what I want to buy and for who I represent, right?” Jacob asked. His eyes were harder than iron forged in the depths of Hell. In all the years I’d worked with Jacob I’d never seen this version. This was the man I glimpsed when he first arrived in my city, the one I hadn’t worked with in the last 3 years. What had the Regiment done to him that I didn’t know about?
I didn’t watch Jacob any more than necessary. I kept my eyes on our surroundings. The heaving noise of some modern musical horror boomed over us, effectively silencing one of my senses. The lighting in there wouldn’t help the other one either. I could already see the strobing white flashes and the prickle at the base of my skull warned me memories of conflict zones were surfacing from where I tried to drown them.
Flashing lights and loud noises didn’t help the mind of an old soldier. They weren’t helping Jacob either, evidenced by his index finger twitching with wild abandon as if squeezing the trigger on his assault rifle.
The bouncer sucked air between his teeth. “Wait here,” he growled in French before retreating to a small cubby hole near the front door to the club.
“Fuck that,” Jacob muttered, stalking off into the club.
“What?” I asked. “Wait.” I strode after him.
The bouncer shouted but we were swallowed by the crowd. A heaving, sweating mass of limbs and libido. Women, who looked like they’d been rolled over by a glitter ball or six, touted for business, their dark toned skin shining in the flashing coloured lights. The men, some gangster style, some in suits more expensive than my house, many non-African, were in the business of finding the right fleshy glitter girl. The room stank of everything I feared and when the bouncer heaved into view in my peripheral vision, I grabbed Jacob and pushed him behind me.
“Hey,” he snapped out.
“Bodyguard,” I reminded him. I placed my hand on the butt of my Glock secreted under my shirt and took a ready stance. Left hand out to force the bull to stop and body twisted to the side making a smaller target.
The bouncer stopped as my silent instruction had requested. “You were not given permission.”
I didn’t speak.
Jacob said, “But I assume we have permission now?”
The guard scowled. “Follow me.”
Jacob stepped around me and I followed, eyes working the room and trying to block out the noise. I could see violence written in hard eyes, hard mouths, tense bodies, all around us and not just the men. These were not good people and I realised I’d softened in the years I’d been out of the Regiment. Working for the museum, with good men and their families, had taken the brutal edges off me. I could still operate as an elite soldier, but I didn’t feel it any longer. I was acting on years of training, but it didn’t touch the instincts I’d had before.
Jacob, however, he moved through the crowd without hesitation. He gave them the impression he belonged in this circle of Hell. The coiled violence inside him made the air vibrate in his presence and when he met the eyes of dangerous men, they were the ones who looked away first. I followed in the wake of a true predator.
12
We were led through a red curtain and I muttered in English, “You know we could be heading for an execution, right?”
Jacob grinned. “At least I would be able to kill someone for murdering my people.”
I fell silent. Is this what had happened to me before he came into my life, disrupting my only true love up to that point, the Regiment? Had I been this hard before he arrived? Had Jacob softened me, enabling me to return to the human race when I’d left the army?
There were strong reasons for me to pull the operation. Jacob was not stable. We were being provoked into actions that were reckless and we were operating in-country without back-up because someone had killed the back-up. I watched Jacob’s back, strong, straight, tight, waves of eager violence coming off him.
A woman, dark skin slick, long nails vivid scarlet, along with the thick lipstick, pushed off the wall of the narrow passageway we walked down and draped herself over Jacob’s left shoulder with a soft murmur in his ear.
He took her wrist with ten
der care, looked her in the eyes and smiled. “I am sorry but no,” he said in soft French. “You are a beautiful woman, but women are not my thing.”
Her eyes widened and I watched disgust flash through them. Jacob’s smile twisted, and he shook his head. “Everyone is a fucking critic.”
The bouncer led us through another doorway. The stink of crack pipes and unwashed bodies hit me before I reached the threshold and Jacob paused, his discomfort as plain as mine.
We crossed the threshold and found a vast room full of sofas, large soft chairs and a bar. Nude women walked about in heels high enough to end a man’s life if used as a weapon and men leered at them, pulling at the decorative chains around their waists. Some of the women were draped over some of the men, while they sampled the wares. These were bottles of bourbon, white power, sticky lumps of tar and crystals. I saw pills scattered amongst them along with pistols. Both Jacob and I were still armed which surprised me but considering the company if things went noisy, we were fucked with or without the guns.
The sunlight, fading now, shimmered through large windows that were open to the breeze but shuttered, casting heavy shadows through the smoke-filled air. It stank of ganga now we were further into the room. Most of the men wore combat fatigues, some actual army but most fashion equivalents and many had ditched their shirts. The walls were once white but now held that horrible sticky yellow of nicotine, and wall hangings were everywhere, which must look great if you were high.
The bouncer we followed walked behind a leather sofa containing the man you knew was in charge. The sun shone on thick muscles, shoulders the size of a prize-winning ox and a neck to match. His dark skin came littered with scars and lots of gold, possibly Jacob’s body weight in gold. Then there were the diamonds.
The big man tilted his head to listen to the bouncer while watching Jacob. He sucked on his teeth and I watched the room. The men surrounding the general were professional soldiers and we were in a space free of drugs even if bottles of beer covered the surfaces. Women seemed to be everywhere, many with glassy stares and my heart ached for the waste of such beauty. One though caught my gaze, her eyes were bright, responsive and despite looking no different to the other women, if covered in more clothes, she vibrated something... an awareness lacking in many of those around her, both the men and the women. A spike of worry tripped my brain and she found herself on the ‘watch’ list of possible dangers.
Ultimate Sanction Page 9