Silent Predator

by Tony Park

  Bernard hobbled three steps towards Tom as he got out of the Volkswagen and put his arms around him and hugged him.

  ‘My god, Tom. I never thought I’d see another Englishman again.’ Tom felt the sting of hot tears on his cheek. They were Bernard’s, not his, though he felt a lump rise in his throat. Bernard was wearing a pair of garish board shorts and a golfing shirt with the name of the resort embroidered on the left breast.

  ‘Sarel Bezuidenhout,’ the big white man said as Tom eased himself away from Bernard. They shook hands and Tom introduced Sannie to Sarel.

  ‘Was that you chasing us in the bush, in the gunfight?’ Bernard asked Tom.

  Tom nodded.

  ‘Bloody good show, Tom. Too bad the bastards got away, but I can’t tell you how good that felt, to know someone was coming after us. Did you get any of them?’

  ‘Two,’ Tom confirmed.

  ‘Arseholes. Have you got a spare pistol with you?’ Bernard looked to Tom and then Sannie.

  ‘I’ve got a two-two in the bar for monkeys and a nine-mil for the human thieves,’ Sarel said in heavily accented English. ‘I come with you.’

  Sannie held up a hand. ‘Look, this is not my decision to make, but I think we at least need a plan.’

  Tom agreed and suggested they all get inside. He had already spoken to Shuttleworth on the drive to the coastal lodge and had been told in no uncertain terms that he was expressly forbidden from launching any ad hoc rescue mission.

  He had, however, told Shuttleworth that he was going to find the terrorists’ lair and get ‘eyes-on’ the target to confirm they were still there; his superior had not argued with this commonsense suggestion. ‘Just don’t go charging in there by yourself. You know the terrorists will kill Greeves as soon as they think someone is coming in.’

  On the short drive in the old four-by-four down one steep sand dune and up another, Bernard filled Tom in on his discussions with the coordinator of the rescue mission, Major Jonathan Fraser.

  ‘Turns out I know him,’ Bernard said. ‘I worked with him and his chaps when he was a captain a couple of years ago, before I left the navy. Landed him on a coast somewhere in the Middle East. Good man. A hard bastard.’

  Bernard had hand-drawn a map of the layout of the house where he had been imprisoned and faxed it from Sarel’s bar to the operations base at Hoedspruit. Bernard said that from his description of the surrounding area and the distance he had run – he’d had the presence of mind to count his paces as he ran through the water – Sarel had been able to identify the property.

  ‘It’s the only old house in the area for five kilometres. Used to belong to a Portuguese cattle farmer in the old days. It’s been empty since I came here three years ago. Good place for a hideout. Only accessible by four-by-four for three kays in – that’s why no one has developed it as a resort.’

  Tom nodded.

  ‘Fraser’s calling back in thirty minutes with an outline plan. He said that if you were here, he wanted you in on the conversation,’ Bernard said to Tom.

  Sarel navigated the Nissan around a tight bend and up yet another dune until they arrived outside his timber-clad bar. They all followed the owner up a flight of steps that creaked and groaned under his enormous weight. There was a verandah out front overlooking the inky, calm Indian Ocean. Inside, the bar smelled warm and musty, the building still holding some of the day’s heat. Sarel switched on the lights and turned on the ceiling fans. He also pressed a button on a remote control and a television high on a wall in the corner furthest from the bar came to life.

  ‘How long would it take us to get to the old farmhouse to check it out?’ Tom asked Sarel.

  The Afrikaner scratched his beard. ‘Thirty minutes if you walk along the beach, ten if we take the quad bikes. Tide is going out now, so we can make it on the bikes.’

  ‘And from the beach?’

  ‘Another ten minutes’ walk.’

  ‘Sannie,’ Tom said, ‘you stay here with Bernard and wait for Fraser’s call. Tell him I’ve gone to check the place out. The best plan in the world is no good if they’ve already left the house.’

  Sannie looked doubtful. ‘Perhaps I should come with you.’

  ‘They’ve got a US Navy FA-18 on its way to do a reconnaissance flight,’ Bernard said. ‘Fraser reckoned it would be overhead within forty minutes of his last call, which was fifteen minutes ago.’

  Tom checked his watch. ‘High tech stuff is okay, but someone needs to get in on the ground and suss things out.’

  ‘Then let me come too,’ Bernard said.

  Tom looked down at the bloody scuff marks on the timber floor of the bar. ‘Stay here and rest, Bernard. You’ll need to be here to talk Fraser through the layout of the house again. He’ll want to know it inside out and back to front, and he’ll have more questions for you.’

  Bernard looked down at the floor. Tom could seen he was emotionally and physically spent, though he, like Tom, obviously felt he couldn’t rest until Greeves was safe.

  ‘I’ll be back in less than an hour. After that there’ll be a role for all of us in this rescue. Sarel, I’ve no right to ask you for your help, but . . .’

  The Afrikaner reached under his wide wood-topped bar and pulled out a nine-millimetre automatic pistol. It looked like a toy in his huge hands as he pulled back the slide and chambered a round. ‘We go now,’ he said, stuffing the weapon in the waistband of his shorts.

  ‘Tom,’ Sannie said as he turned to leave.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Be careful.’

  *

  The exhaustion and feelings of hopelessness that had started to cripple him in the stultifying heat of the camping ground at Xai Xai had disappeared, replaced with a continuous transfusion of pure adrenaline. Tom revved the throttle of the four-wheel-drive quad bike and followed Sarel down the steep incline of the sand dune.

  The still-wet sand left in the wake of the receding tide felt as solid as concrete when they turned onto it and Tom gunned the bike to catch up with Sarel, whose curly hair looked even wilder as he accelerated.

  So as not to alarm the occupants with the sound of engines so late in the night, they would leave the bikes a couple of hundred metres from the base of the dune where the track led to the old farmhouse. Sarel pulled his quad into the moon shadow cast by a tall dune and Tom parked behind him.

  ‘It’s about one kay from here. We go this way,’ he whispered, pointing upwards.

  ‘No, I go that way,’ Tom said, shaking his head. ‘Just give me the directions.’

  Sarel looked as though he was about to argue, but Tom told him, ‘If you hear gunfire, get back and tell the others. Take Sannie back to the main road and tell her to set up a roadblock. If you want to use your gun then, be my guest, as I’ll already be dead.’

  Sarel smiled. ‘Walk up the track for two hundred metres and you’ll see the farmhouse on the top of the next dune back from the ocean.’

  Tom climbed the sandy pathway. He kept to one side, close to the cover of the low bushes that covered the dune.

  Near the top of the dune he found a little-used side track leading off to one side and decided to take that rather than sticking to the main route. His luck was in. The detour took him to the top but allowed him to stay in cover. He thought the path must have once been a shortcut used by farm workers or fishermen. He crouched when he saw a light.

  As his eyes adjusted he made out the angular form of the old Portuguese farmhouse. The light in one of the windows was weak. At first he thought it was from a lantern, but as he crept closer he saw that a curtain had been drawn across the window and the light was shining through it. A shadow flickered on the fabric, as someone passed between the source and the drape. Tom dropped to one knee again and nestled into some bushes.

  His spirits soared – they were still in there. But then a piercing scream made him catch his breath. It was a shriek of pain the likes of which he’d never heard before, despite all the fights he’d seen and been involved in as
a copper. ‘Bastards,’ he whispered. They were torturing Greeves. Perhaps they were trying to find out if Bernard had spoken to him before he left.

  Tom risked moving a little closer and his every instinct told him to rush the place now, kick the bloody door in and nail the swine who were abusing a defenceless human being. He took a deep breath and forced his pulse rate down. Shuttleworth had not only given him a direct order, he’d been right about it.

  From behind the trunk of a tree that stood nearly as tall as he was, Tom saw moonlight playing off the windscreen of a Toyota pick-up that had a canopy covering its rear compartment. The vehicle description had been spot on. He considered moving in and disabling the pick-up, but checking his watch told him he needed to be getting back with the updated information asap. He comforted himself with Sarel’s advice that it was four kilometres of hard driving through sand in and out of the farmhouse. The US Navy jet would be overhead soon, and if they got word that the abductors were leaving, Tom and Sannie could head them off before they reached the main road. He winced as he heard another screech from inside, then quickly retraced his steps back over the dune and down to the water’s edge.

  ‘They’re still there,’ he said to Sarel. ‘Let’s move.’

  Tom sat his mobile phone on the bar and pressed the loudspeaker button so that by crowding around the device he, Bernard, Sannie and Sarel could all hear Major Jonathan Fraser’s voice tinnily coming through.

  Fraser was dialling in from Hoedspruit, and the Defence Secretary and other senior military officers and bureaucrats were on the secure link-up from the Cabinet Office briefing rooms in Downing Street. Nicknamed COBRA, this was the government’s emergency response nerve centre.

  Despite the presence of his superiors on the conference call, the major was running the virtual meeting. ‘Well done for getting eyes-on, Tom, but the FA-18 has already confirmed the same information – in a bit more detail.’

  Tom tried to ignore Fraser’s condescending tone and held his tongue as the SAS man continued.

  ‘The Hornet’s FLIR – that’s Forward Looking Infra-red camera to the civilians among us – picked up the heat signatures of four people in the house. One was stationary in a room – presumably, Mr Greeves still chained to his bed – and three X-rays moving about the house, quite briskly, according to the pilot.’

  Sannie mouthed the word ‘X-rays’.

  ‘Bad guys,’ Tom whispered in explanation.

  The major continued, ‘My concern is that they may be preparing to leave the house. This calls for a fast direct action. As we speak, the C-17’s engines are warming up and my men are enplaning. We will be in the air within minutes of the end of this briefing, so listen in and keep any further questions until the end.’

  19

  The plan, such as it was, had more holes in it than a poster of Saddam Hussein on the day after the invasion of Baghdad. Jonathan Fraser had been in the smoking, shell-shocked city that day and had seen a tyrant fall. He’d also been back twice to a war that seemingly had no end. He knew that the best of intentions, the finest of plans, sometimes backfired.

  The other old military adage, Fraser recalled as he listened to the pilots of the C-17 chatting through the cans – the headphones he wore in the spare seat on the cockpit deck – was that no plan survived the first shot or the first ten minutes.

  Despite his ingrained pessimism, something he proudly attributed to his Scottish heritage, the plan was as sound as anyone could have hoped for in the circumstances.

  ‘Dagger, this is Gunsmoke,’ came a Texan drawl through the headset. Lieutenant Junior Grade Pete ‘Frenchy’ Dubois was straight out of central casting, Fraser thought. The young American FA-18 pilot had a spiky gelled crew-cut and the chiselled looks of a Hollywood movie star.

  ‘Gunsmoke, this is Dagger, over,’ Fraser replied, keying his radio switch. Fraser had transferred control of the operation from Hoedspruit to the C-17 as soon as they were airborne. They were now orbiting at fifteen thousand feet over the Indian Ocean, just off the town of Xai Xai on the Mozambican coast, waiting for the last of the assets at Fraser’s disposal to get into position.

  ‘Dagger, I confirm target is still in position, no change. One soul down and hogtied, the other three moving around like they’re on speed, over.’

  Fraser smiled to himself. The American’s laconic patter barely concealed his excitement. Fraser, too, was keyed. If he pulled this one off, it would be the biggest coup in the regiment’s long list of honours since Princes Gate, when counter-terrorist troopers had stormed the Iranian Embassy in London and liberated the hostages held there. Much of the SAS’s wartime and peacetime operations was so secret that few members of the British public knew of the elite force’s exploits – at least, in between sensationalist tell-all books by disaffected former members – but if this op was a success there would be media coverage and analysis of it for months to come. As much as he usually voiced contempt for former soldiers who wrote books about their time in SAS, Fraser thought he might try his own hand at writing after this one. He hadn’t joined the army for the money but he had a weather eye on retirement. He might get the CO’s slot if they saved Greeves’s life, but if he didn’t a million quid in publishing royalties and newspaper extracts would be a good consolation prize. ‘Roger, Gunsmoke.’

  ‘Cheetah six, this is Dagger, send locstat over,’ Fraser said into the radio.

  The slowest elements, though potentially the most vital, were his South African National Defence Force Oryx helicopters. There were three of them inbound from across the border and Fraser wanted to know exactly where they were. On board two of them were a dozen of his men, in two teams of six. Each team included a pair of snipers. These teams would be his blocking force. They would rappel from the helicopters a kilometre in from the main sealed road, the EN1, and take up blocking positions in the sand dunes to the west of the target farmhouse. If the terrorists were indeed packing up – his greatest fear at the moment – then the soldiers on those helicopters would stop them from escaping and do their best to free Greeves. If it came to that, Fraser was pessimistic about their chances. His snipers might be able to take out the driver of the getaway vehicle and the front passenger, but that still potentially left one other trigger man who might very well have a pistol at Greeves’s temple. One bullet was all it took to turn historic success into abject failure. The only, small, consolation was that once those helicopters disgorged his men onto the sand, no X-rays were getting out of Mozambique alive.

  ‘Dagger, this is Cheetah six,’ came the South African-accented reply. ‘We’ve made good time and are five minutes from the DZ. Your men are keen – already on their ropes, over.’

  ‘Roger, Cheetah six. Good work. Let me know when they’re on the ground.’

  Fraser checked his diver’s watch and allowed himself a small smile. It was almost time for him to leave the C-17. He beckoned to Warrant Officer Class Two Peter ‘Chalky’ White, the squadron sergeant major, and held up both hands to indicate ten minutes’ warning. Fraser switched channels and said to the C-17’s crew, ‘We go in ten, gentlemen.’

  He felt the aircraft start to bank. It was a rush, the amount of power at his fingertips, a high Fraser was sure no drug could match. Single malt whisky was the only mind-altering substance he allowed himself, and by god, he would be giving it a nudge when they were back in South Africa later in the day. No matter what happened next.

  ‘Dagger, this is zero-alpha, over,’ said a Welsh voice through the headphones.

  ‘Go, Taff.’ Sergeant Hugh Carlisle was one of his signalmen and well known to him after Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, hence the informality in Fraser’s reply. The pug-nosed, tattooed veteran was manning an array of radios, satellite phones and cell phones back at Hoedspruit. Taffy Carlisle was keeping their military and political masters in the UK informed about the progress of the operation, and providing a relay of communications from the two police officers on the beach in Mozambique, who were using the sat-phone B
ernard Joyce had stolen from the X-rays.

  ‘Plod’s in position, Dagger. Vehicle on the beach is ready to turn its headlights on when you need it. Uncle Tom Cobbly and all in London want to know what’s happening.’

  Fraser smiled again. Some at regimental HQ would frown on his decision to accompany the assault teams, rather than stay back and direct the operation from Hoedspruit, but he knew that once the shooting started he wanted to be there. If he failed he would be crucified as an irresponsible glory hound. It was, he reckoned, worth the risk. ‘Roger, Taff. Keep up the good work.’ If it did all go to shit in the next hour the policeman on the ground would take the biggest fall. He was the one who lost his man in the first place.

  ‘Dagger, this is Cheetah six. Your boys need a new stamp in their passports. They are on the ground. Repeat, all are on the ground, safe, over.’

  Fraser acknowledged the South African’s call. The two helicopters which had carried the troops in would now rendezvous with the third, which was groaning under the weight of several two-hundred-litre drums of aviation gas and a portable pump. The three birds would land on a village soccer pitch ten kilometres from the target and refuel. No doubt they’d be fending off some curious bystanders. At the end of the operation – whichever way it went – the helicopters were their ride back to South Africa. The whole assault team plus Greeves and Joyce and the police officers wouldn’t fit on the three birds, so there would be more than one wave. ‘Roger, Cheetah. See you in a little while.’

  Fraser switched to the C-17’s internal frequency and confirmed with the pilot of the massive jet transport that they were over the drop zone.

  ‘Circling now,’ the RAF squadron leader confirmed. ‘Ready when you are, Jonathan.’

  ‘Well, I’d best be getting ready then. See you back in sunny South Africa.’

  The pilots waved to him as he took off his headphones and the navigator reached over to shake his hand. ‘Good luck,’ the man roared over the whine of the aircraft’s engines. Fraser did his best to smile, and climbed down the stairs from the cockpit into the belly of the flying whale.