Predator

by Wilbur Smith

  “Got it!” For the first time, Bendick sounded interested, enthusiastic even, about the way the call was going.

  “There you go, that was me. I just gave you fifty mill—boom! Consider that a proof of funds. Now, when we gonna meet? I wanna tell you how we make billions.”

  Hector Cross came to his feet with a genuine smile of welcome when he saw the maître d’ escort Bobbi Franklin across the crowded restaurant to their table. Not only was her face even more elegantly beautiful without her glasses, she had the figure to match, and unless she made a habit of going to work in little black dresses, heels and pearls, she’d bothered to change for dinner. That was a most promising sign.

  They got the business out of the way before the meal was served. Cross told her about the threat he believed the Bannock operation in Angola was facing, and how the information had come into his possession.

  “Is there any chance da Cunha was bullshitting?” Bobbi asked. “Guys will say almost anything to impress an attractive woman.”

  “She said, speaking from years of experience . . .”

  Bobbi laughed. “Hey! I thought we were keeping it strictly business until the food arrived! But thank you for the compliment, anyway . . .”

  “You’re welcome, and no, I think he meant it. Da Cunha believed that Maria Denisova represented some seriously wealthy, powerful individuals. He wouldn’t have wanted to make enemies of them by giving false information. The question is, what can anyone do about it?”

  “Well, we can talk to the Angolan government and ask them to redouble their security efforts. I can have a word with our friends in Langley, see if they can take a real close look at Mateus da Cunha, but he has French citizenship and our European allies have become very sensitive indeed about us conducting intelligence operations against their nationals.”

  “How about the military? Can we get any naval protection?”

  “It’s tough. We’re facing multiple threats in the Middle East, South-East Asia, Eastern Europe, and this is happening after years of defense cuts. If you had information about a specific threat, at a particular location on a given date, that might be enough to prompt some action at the Pentagon. But if all you know is that something may happen, somewhere at some point, well, that’s not going to do it.”

  “So what you’re basically saying is that we’re going to be on our own.”

  “Sounds like it.” She took a sip of wine while Cross digested what she had said and then added, “I hope you’re not going to blame the messenger.”

  “No, I’m not going to blame the messenger for being so honest, I’m going to ask her to do what she can, just to make people aware of the threat. And then I’m going to say: Forget about Cabinda, and oil, and threats of violence. Tell me about yourself.”

  The rest of the dinner was pure pleasure. Bobbi Franklin was bright, full of humor and as genuinely interested in him as he was in her. For the first time in a very long while, he was able to relax, forget about the cloud of violence and danger that seemed to be permanently looming over him and just enjoy the company of a woman who mixed brains, beauty and sheer niceness in apparently perfect proportions.

  When the meal was over, she allowed him to escort her back to her apartment, but left him with just a kiss, albeit a very pleasurable and lingering one at the door.

  “I like my men to work just a little bit to get what they want, even if I want it too,” she said.

  “I’m not afraid of hard work,” he said. “But I won’t be able to do much for you for a while: not till this Cabinda business is sorted one way or another.”

  “I understand. But you know where to find me in future. And I’m not planning on moving.”

  In the morning Cross flew from Washington to Houston. In his Bannock Oil office he gave John Bigelow a more detailed version of the briefing he had provided Bobbi Franklin.

  “I wanted us to meet face-to-face and in private because I need to give you my considered, professional opinion,” Cross told him. “Bearing in mind the losses that the sinking of the Noatak have already inflicted on the company, and the irreparable damage that could be caused if we suffer a similar loss at Magna Grande, I believe that we should scale down and even cease operations in Angolan waters until the precise threat facing them has been identified, analyzed and dealt with.”

  “That’s out of the question,” Bigelow said. “We have to go ahead with Magna Grande and it has to be a success.”

  “Respectfully, I disagree,” Cross said. “The revenues from Abu Zara are still rock-solid. If we scale back costs across the board, live within our means and just let the wounds from Alaska heal, we can still survive.”

  “And what will the shareholders say if the best I can promise them is lower revenues and profits? I’ve already got that vulture Bendick writing public letters accusing me of incompetence.”

  “Speaking as both a director of Bannock Oil and the father of a girl whose entire fortune is dependent on the prosperity of Bannock Oil and the long-term strength of its shares, I’d say forget about Aram bloody Bendick. The man’s a bloodsucker, but he can’t destroy this company. Mateus da Cunha can, particularly if he’s being bankrolled by Johnny Congo.”

  “But why would Congo want to destroy Bannock?” Bigelow asked. “He’s Carl Bannock’s buddy and as much of a disgusting lowlife as Carl is, he lives off the proceeds of Bannock Oil, too. So what interest would he have in hurting his own livelihood? Look, I appreciate you coming to talk to me, Heck. You think we face a threat, and I hear you. But you’re the best goddamn security chief I ever met in my life and I trust you and your guys to do a great job, keeping our investment in Magna Grande safe. You just head out to Africa and do what you do best. We’re going to extract billions of gallons of oil, the shares are going to go nowhere but up, Bendick’s ass is going to get the kicking it deserves and you, my friend, will get the thanks of a very grateful corporation.”

  Well, at least I tried, Cross told himself as he headed back to his hotel. His next stop was Caracas. And now he realized that the hit on Johnny Congo wasn’t just a matter of personal revenge. The future of Bannock Oil could hang on removing the threat that Congo posed.

  It was just past midnight in Caracas, Venezuela, as a gray Toyota Corolla paused for a moment about 500 meters from the entrance to the Villa Kazundu and Tommy Jones, all in black, just as Cross had specified, slipped out of the passenger seat on to the roadside. There were no other cars to be seen or heard and the neighborhood where the villa was located boasted few streetlights, for the men who owned the properties behind the high walls and thick hedges valued their privacy more than road safety—they paid their chauffeurs to worry about that. So it was easy for Jones to slip across the road and on to the dirt track that ran uphill on to the bare terrain beyond the final row of houses. He turned and jogged along the hillside, parallel to the road, until he reached the vantage point, first established by Guillermo Valencia, where one could look down on to the Villa Kazundu and its grounds. Jones then lay down, his head pointing downhill, and removed a state-of-the-art thermal-imaging camera from a thigh pouch. He turned it on, checked that the Bluetooth link to the transmitter on his belt was working, lifted the camera’s viewfinder to his right eye and began scanning the property. One after another two human shapes appeared in shades of white and gray against the darker background of the foliage around them: the security guards patrolling the grounds. Jones spoke in little more than a whisper.

  “Are you seeing this, boss?”

  “Crystal clear,” Cross replied. “How about you, Dave?”

  “It’s all good here,” came Imbiss’s reassuring voice from London. “I’ve hacked into the villa’s camera and alarm systems and am ready to disable them on your command. The entry code on the front door keypad has been changed to zero-zero-zero-zero. Thought I’d keep it simple for you.”

  “My tiny mind and I thank you for that. Do you have any readings from inside the house, Jones?”

  The camera panned
across to the villa itself. It was sensitive enough to penetrate basic domestic brickwork, but the three figures that now appeared on the screen were little more than vague, pale gray blobs. “Reckon that’s the master bedroom, boss,” said Jones.

  “Good,” said Cross. “Let’s hope the master stays there, preferably asleep. We go at oh-three-hundred, as planned. Keep me updated if anything changes between now and then.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  The rented Toyota, with Paddy at the wheel made another pass along the road, barely pausing as Hector, Nolan and Schrager got out and ran to the point on the Villa Kazundu’s perimeter where the three of them would go over the wall. Each man had been assigned a specific guard and knew exactly where to find him. They were all dressed in black and wore latex gloves to prevent them from leaving fingerprints. Hector ordered Nolan and Schrager to inject an ampoule of Rob Noble’s patent concoction into their guard’s neck, allowing enough time for him to become incapacitated. Next, they were to take the guards’ handguns: these would be used to shoot Congo, giving the police no connection between the murder weapons and the assailants. Third: rendezvous by the main entrance to the house. Then the real fun would begin.

  Jaime Palacios had been manning the gatehouse for five hours, three more to go. This was the job reserved for the senior operative on the shift: partly because the gatehouse guard had to greet people going in and out of the property; partly because he also had to watch the bank of mini-screens that displayed the views from the security cameras; and partly because he could spend the whole shift sitting down, instead of walking around the grounds. Since there had never been the slightest threat to the villa or its occupants, this was about the easiest work a man could get, and thus much prized by all the agency’s longest-serving men.

  Palacios had drunk a little rum, watched porn on his Samsung Galaxy TV, picked his nose, scratched his backside and occasionally contacted the two other men who were working the night shift with him, ostensibly for an update on the security situation, but mostly just for a few seconds’ conversation. He had not worked with either of his colleagues before. They were both new to the agency, unlike Palacios who’d been coming up to the Villa Kazundu for almost six years, on and off. In that time, he’d seen some pretty crazy things happening there. He knew for sure that Señor Tumbo and his maricón boyfriend had powerful friends and that they liked to be entertained by men, women and anything in-between: the freaks he’d seen pass through these gates looked wilder than any stars of any porno he’d ever seen. He hadn’t been up to the property since Señor Tumbo had been living there alone, but he’d heard stories of wild orgies, to which the security guards like him had been invited and given their pick of the girls to enjoy.

  Nothing like that had ever happened to Palacios, so he had to make do with the low-grade filth he downloaded from the internet. At that moment he was so absorbed with it that he had not noticed the CCTV screens going blank, or the black-clad figure slipping silently through the open gatehouse door and coming up behind him. He hardly even felt the prick of a needle going into his neck.

  For a few seconds, Palacios struggled against the powerful hands that covered his mouth to prevent him crying out and held him tightly to his chair, but then his head began to swim and he dropped into a state of deep unconsciousness.

  Jones had warned Hector about Johnny Congo’s change of location within the building, which had been revealed both by the concentration of blobs on the thermal imager’s viewfinder and the music coming from the living room.

  “It sounds like he has the usual females keeping him company.”

  “I don’t want any collateral damage,” Hector told his men. “No one fires without a clear line of sight on Congo. If you can, grab a girl each and get her out of the way. Leave Congo to me.” He waited for their nods of acknowledgement, then said, “OK, then, let’s do it.”

  Cross led Nolan and Schrager across the forecourt and up the steps to the front door. The code that Dave Imbiss had changed worked. They were in.

  The room in which Congo was sequestered with the girls was across from the entrance hall, to the right. The door to the room was ajar. Cross moved silently to the door and slipped a mirror on a telescopic handle out of his leg pocket. He squatted down on his haunches, extended the handle until the mirror was just beyond the edge of the door, about a meter off the floor, and studied the image it revealed.

  He had a view of the back of a leather sofa and beyond it the torsos of two girls, dancing with one another, their bodies pressed together in a blatantly sexual bump-and-grind routine. At first Hector could not work out Congo’s exact position, until he saw the top of his head, the skin almost the precise shade of deep, dark brown as the leather on which he was sitting. His scalp was protruding an inch or so above the top of the sofa.

  But from this angle Hector’s view was partially obstructed. He couldn’t see the girl’s faces, or get any more of a sense of the room as a whole unless he tilted the mirror upward. But if he did that there was a strong chance of catching the light from the ceiling and alerting the quarry to his presence. Silently he signaled to his men: indicating that Nolan should move to his right and Schrager to his left. Then he raised his fingers and counted down: three—two—one—go!

  Hector burst through the open door into the room beyond. But almost immediately his speed faltered, because he’d seen what had previously been hidden from him. This was the mirror hanging over the fireplace. And as Cross saw the mirror, so his prey saw his image in it. With the reflexes of a wild animal Congo sprang instantly from the sofa. He dived across the room and grabbed hold of the nearest of the two naked dancing girls. Twisting her arms up behind her back, he spun the woman around to face Hector Cross, holding her in front of him as a shield. The second woman shrieked when she saw Hector and the pistol he was pointing at her; then she turned and darted away through the open glass doors behind her and vanished into the dark interior of the house. Johnny Congo continued to face Hector, still holding the first blubbering female before him as he backed away toward the open doors through which the other girl had disappeared.

  “Put the girl down!” Cross snarled.

  Congo threw back his head and laughed. “Oh, I recognize that voice. Screw you, Cross, I ain’t putting no one down. But all three of you bastards had better drop those pieces on the floor right away or I slit this bitch’s throat!”

  “Cut her then,” said Cross with feigned indifference. “Go ahead. Do it . . . But if she dies, you die a second later. Believe me, I’ll take that deal.”

  Cross saw the girl’s eyes widen. She’d understood what he was saying. He had not expected that.

  Congo didn’t flinch. “You haven’t got the balls for it. You’d have shot her already if you had. Put the gun down, Cross.” He nodded at Nolan and Schrager: “Them too . . .”

  “That’s not going to happen, Congo.”

  “Then we got ourselves a stand-off, don’t we?”

  All the time Congo was edging backward, getting closer to the open door. As he moved he bobbed and weaved his head, like a boxer evading punches, making himself a harder target to hit. But no matter how much his head might move, Congo’s eyes were locked on to Cross, darting only occasional glances at the other two men. He knew who was the danger man.

  Cross moved with him, standing off five meters from him, meeting Congo’s stare and returning it, holding the pistol out in front of him, two-handed, aiming at a point just above the girl’s forehead. If the shot was clear for even a fraction of a second, he was determined to take it.

  But by now Congo was directly in front of the glass door and barely a pace in front of it. From the plans of the house that Hector had studied he was almost certain the door led to the main kitchens and, beyond that, the servants’ quarters. In that area of the house, the rooms were far smaller and more numerous, linked by a maze of corridors and stairs that ran up toward the bedrooms on the first floor and down toward the garages where he knew there w
ere at least two fast cars and a Suzuki 500-cc motorbike parked.

  That was where Congo was certainly heading. He could run full pelt to the garage and once he was there and in a car, or on the motorbike, he’d be gone, and the last chance Hector would have of stopping him would be Paddy O’Quinn. But Paddy would have a hell of a job to intercept Congo in the darkness. He would have to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.

  So it was up to Hector to stop him now. But Hector was running out of time. He calculated the odds against him. There was only one way of doing it: firing at the girl’s legs. At this range a 9-mm bullet would drill its way right through her and into Congo. The girl had great pins. It would be a crying shame to wreck one of them. But better a bad wound and a lifelong limp than a knife in the throat. And better one wounded hostage than a killer back on the run.

  Hector’s aim never wavered, but in his head he was visualizing the precise moment in which he’d bring it down and fire, shin-high, at the girl. He breathed in and then slowly out. When he reached the fullest point of the next breath, he’d fire.

  Congo was almost inside the frame of the door. It had to be now. Cross started breathing in. Then Congo did the unexpected. He stabbed the girl low down in her back and her scream of agony distracted Hector for an instant. In that brief flicker of time Congo lifted the girl as easily as if she were a rag doll and hurled her at Hector’s head. Hector flinched and his shot was blocked by the girl’s flying body. But now Congo was fully exposed to both Nolan and Schrager.

  They fired together but an instant before the shots rang out Congo somersaulted backward and their shots flew high. They had both been aiming at his head. Congo landed in a perfectly balanced crouch. Immediately he used all the power of his massive legs to throw himself sideways; with the speed and agility of a big wild cat he dived behind the heavy door frame. The back-up shots fired by Nolan and Schrager came a second too late. They smashed clouds of white splinters from the wooden frames. But Johnny Congo was gone. Stunned for a moment by the speed with which it had happened, they heard his footsteps pounding on the concrete stairs as he raced down to the garages on the lower level of the rambling old house.