NO EASY WAY OUT a gripping action-packed thriller (Johnny Silver Thriller Book 4)

by PAUL BENNETT

  No Easy

  Way Out

  A gripping, action-packed thriller

  Paul Bennett

  Johnny Silver Thriller 4

  Revised edition 2020

  Joffe Books, London

  www.joffebooks.com

  First published in Great Britain in 2015

  © Paul Bennett 2015, 2020

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is British English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this. The right of Paul Bennett to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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  ISBN: 978-1-78931-616-2

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Epilogue

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  Prologue

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  Rwanda, Central Africa — A lifetime ago

  It would be an easy job, they had said. But we’d heard that before. No fighting, they said. Definitely no fighting. Just turn our raw troops from an undisciplined rabble into an efficient fighting unit. That’s all we ask.

  We had taken the contract — well, we had nothing else to do at the time and our money was running low. Six weeks in the sun shouting at young kids seemed like it was made for us. The only problem was that we didn’t know who were the good guys and who were the baddies, which was an important thing for us. We were trained killers, but we had morals and only liked — well, I suppose you couldn’t say liked — killing the bad guys. Keeps your conscience clear. Helps you go to sleep at night and look at yourself in the mirror with pride when you are shaving in the morning.

  We were working for the Tutsis, exiled from Rwanda a generation ago and now wanting to reclaim their homeland. Most were in Uganda, who supported them and supplied the necessary weapons. We had to turn them into soldiers. We means the five of us: me, Johnny Silver, leader and trained in the Israeli army; Bull, a six-foot-six Jamaican with a shaved head; Pieter, from South Africa, blond, tanned and irresistible to the ladies, which got us into regular trouble with cuckolded husbands or boyfriends; Red, a half-Comanche Texan, who was the fastest driver in the world, though not anywhere near the safest; and Stanislav — Stan the Man, Stan the Plan — our tactician from Poland. We’d been a team now for five years or so, and when something works you don’t fix it. We stuck together and supported each other, even unto death. That’s the kind of friends everyone should have.

  The encampment was a few miles south of the Ugandan border between the road to Ruhengeri to the west and that to Gatuna to the south and then down to the capital, Kigali. It was pretty basic, tents and latrines, water from huge plastic storage containers, thick scrubland all around to deter any deserters, and a watch tower to shoot those who had thought better of being a hero. The one thing they had was plenty of weapons: Kalashnikov assault rifles, Glock handguns, grenades, but not much in the way of light or heavy artillery except one grenade launcher. This was going to be a war that would be fought close up and personal: a whites-of-your-eyes job. It would need a lot of courage as well as skill. We could supply the latter, but could do nothing to engender the former.

  It was demoralising work. The only thing the trainee soldiers wanted to do was wield a Kalashnikov and spray bullets into the air to show what big men they were. We told them that one day those wasted bullets might have saved their lives. They didn’t listen to us. More fools them. It was like they thought the war was a computer game where you could press a button and move one step back and try again. In war there were no second chances.

  It was hard getting and retaining their attention. We started with some drill, marching and so on to get them acting as a team and used to obeying commands. Then we went through all the basics like breaking down, cleaning their weapons and reassembling them, how to change the aim of the rifles to take account of wind direction and speed or firing uphill or down. We also did a lot of close-quarter work with and without a knife or bayonet. We instilled some discipline into them, but how long that would last in a battle we dreaded to think.

  What made it worse was that they were a nice bunch. We made some good friends among the trainees. But, in the final analysis, they were farm labourers and shopkeepers and pen pushers and students — they weren’t cut out for this job. As the training went on, our only hope was that the opposition — the Hutus who dominated the country and its government — was just as ill-suited for fighting as our men.

  We were four weeks into our contract, and their training, when duty called. I was summoned to the tent of the commanding officer, who had as much experience of battle as Captain Mainwaring and was twice as funny. He had heard from the scouts he had sent out that the enemy was on the move. If they made it to a crucial intersection of roads they would have effectively blocked off our advance to the south and the capital. We would then have to retreat back to Uganda and all the organisation and training would have been for nothing. There was a chance though, and that is where I came in. He told me to pick twenty of the best men. Their task was to buy a few hours for the main body of our troops to get organised to march. They had to hold the crossroads until the reinforcements came, swooping from the north down on the enemy. It was a plan with a lot of holes. Picking twenty of the best men was the first problem. There were no stars among the recruits — they were all, as men, as raw as sashimi. Would they have the courage to stand against a superior force until the cavalry arrived or would they simply turn tail and run? The CO dismissed all my doubts with a wave of the hand. Told me it was an order, so get on with it unless we wanted to quit.

  I called my four friends together and we sat under the shade of a tree at the edge of what we were using as a parade ground. It was very hot and humid. Our shirts stuck to our backs with sweat. We passed round a bottle of water and stared across to where the recruits were sticking
bayonets into improvised dummies made out of sandbags.

  I relayed the order. They liked it as much as I did, which was zero.

  ‘Hell,’ Bull said. ‘You might as well put nooses round their necks and hang them from this tree. It’s a suicide mission.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Red. ‘I’ve got to know these guys. Sure wouldn’t want to pick twenty of these friends to give up their lives in a lost cause.’

  Pieter nodded. Stan was thoughtful. He looked at me questioningly. ‘There is an alternative,’ I said.

  Now Stan nodded and all the others looked at me questioningly.

  ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ Bull said.

  ‘Reckon so,’ I said.

  ‘Then let’s give them a fighting chance,’ said Red.

  * * *

  We picked our twenty men and set off at ‘quick time’ — four paces walking followed by four paces running — but it still took two hours to get to the crossroads. There was a dilapidated and disused single-storey farm building built of dried mud with a thatch roof of intertwined sticks of some sort. Inside there were two rooms and a small kitchen area. There was the mildewed remains of a meal on a table as if the occupants had had to make a hasty retreat. The farmhouse was surrounded by mud walls five feet high, broken in several places, but it was as good a place as any to make a stand. There were two weak points. The roof, if set on fire, would collapse, bringing down flaming wood on anyone inside. We couldn’t take that risk, so any defence had to be from outside. The other weakness was the double gate at the front. It was wooden and not thick enough to withstand a charge, probably not even thick enough to stop a bullet from an assault rifle.

  We let the men rest and looked at the roads running to the farm. If the general’s information was right, they would come at us from the westerly road directly opposite rather than the one from the south that was on our left. Both roads had scrub on either side and that would provide some cover for an attack. We would have the element of surprise, so had to make the most of it.

  We selected eight of the fastest men and explained the plan for the first phase of our defence of the crossroads. We spread them out at a hundred-yard intervals, one on each side of the road, starting four hundred yards away. They were armed with their Kalashnikovs and grenades. When the enemy was in range of the furthest pair, they would throw the grenades, spray bullets into the confusion and then drop back to the farmhouse, a pair at a time as the advance progressed. We would follow with grenades from the launcher set up inside the front gates. This would give us greater range as the men were falling back. The idea was to do as much damage as possible in order to make the enemy think twice about advancing. We were playing for time, that’s all, time for the main body of our rag-tag army to join us: against a full-frontal attack we stood no chance. This had all the signs of a re-enactment of the Alamo.

  Stan had worked out our best firing positions and we started to spread the remaining men around. Stan and Bull went to the left, Pieter and Red to the right, and me slap bang in the middle behind the gate where I had the best, if not the safest, view of the enemy’s movements. Then we waited, which was always the worst time.

  Bull sat down with his back to the wall and legs spread out. He lowered his head, closed his eyes and looked like he was going to sleep. It was an act performed for the men — keep cool guys, nothing to worry about. Inside, he was totally alert for the smallest sound that signalled danger. Stan went round the perimeter cutting grooves with a knife, marking out to the inch where the assault rifles had to be set to provide the overall best field of fire. Pieter sat down and took out a little black book, flicking through it, sometimes nodding, sometimes grinning, sometimes both at the same time. Red peered over the wall and looked into the distance with his hawk-like vision. He would be the first to spot any movement.

  But it was the sound that alerted us first. A low rumble.

  Bull and Pieter jumped up and Stan woke those men who had been dozing. The five of us gathered by the gates.

  ‘Good sign,’ Bull said. ‘What’s that?’ said Pieter.

  ‘Ain’t got no rhythm,’ said Bull. ‘They’re not marching in step, otherwise the sound would have a rhythm — left, right, left, right, one, two, one, two. They’re not marching, they’re shuffling along.’

  ‘Maybe their troops are as raw as ours,’ I said.

  ‘Or even worse,’ Bull said. ‘They didn’t have us to train them, after all.’

  Some of the men became uneasy. They looked around as if thinking of the best exit route.

  ‘Stand your ground,’ I shouted. ‘If anyone runs, I’ll shoot them myself. We can do this. Reinforcements will soon be here.’

  The first grenades went off, followed by two burst from the rifles, and the two men ran for their lives. There was a moment’s silence and then the tramping sound came again. Not deterred yet, huh? Let’s see what you can take.

  I loaded the grenade launcher as the second set of hand grenades exploded. There was a longer burst of fire from the Kalashnikovs this time, as if the two men felt safer and they could take more time. As they were running back I launched the first grenade way over their heads and deep into the advancing column. The remaining four men threw their hand grenades and started back. I kept firing grenades one after another into the column until there was none remaining. Still they kept coming.

  They were a couple of hundred yards away now and they marched through a mist of dust from the road and swirling smoke from the grenades. We lined up our assault rifles on Stan’s positions and prepared to fire.

  ‘Wait!’ I shouted. ‘Wait until you hear me fire and then give them everything you have.’

  It seemed like an age for them to get within our effective range. I could see the expressions on their faces as they got close enough. I fired short bursts from the rifle, trying to conserve ammunition in case the battle went to the wire. As we fired, the front row went down, but the second file stepped over them. They went down and the next row stepped over them, too. Hell, they were taking a lot of damage and still advancing. Must have been more afraid of someone in command behind them than of us. It didn’t look good. They weren’t getting the message.

  They were close enough now for me to smell their sweat, which came in a cloud carried on the breeze. I fired in long bursts now, cutting them down in numbers too big to count. Spent shells from the bullets flew into the air around me. I changed clips of ammunition and kept up a constant hammering in the centre of the column. There were just so many of them and if this went on we would soon run out of ammunition for the assault rifles and be left only with our handguns.

  They were returning fire now. Bullets thwacked into the mud wall and were absorbed by it. I saw out of the corner of my eye one of our men fall back with his face a mess of bone and blood. The enemy started to fan out in an encircling movement. If they got behind us there would be no hope. Too few men to defend all four walls.

  ‘Get their flanks!’ Bull shouted.

  He took aim and fired a complete burst at their right flank, exhausting his magazine of thirty-three bullets in one go. No matter how many we killed there always seemed to be more to take their place.

  The air was filled with smoke from the guns and our view was almost obscured. The men fired blindly into the gunpowder mist and pinned their hopes on hitting a target.

  Men were falling down behind me. It would soon be over. We would be overrun and left to whatever the fickle god of fate had in store for us. Rumour had it that it would be better to die in battle than be taken prisoner and be given a long, lingering and painful death.

  I was out of ammo. I threw the rifle to the ground and drew out my Glock. No more spraying bullets, it had to be well-chosen targets one at a time from now on. I looked to my right at Bull. He threw his rifle over his shoulder and drew his gun. He shook his head. How did we get into this mess, he seemed to be saying.

  A bullet hit the wall inches from my face. I fired back and took the culprit down. I
started to try to pick out their officers — destroy the chain of command. Maybe then they would turn and run. I took down someone with a better uniform, assuming he would be an officer. Nothing seemed to make any difference. I looked round and saw Pieter draw a knife. He was out of bullets for the Glock as well as the Kalashnikov.

  They were yards away now and it would soon be hand-to-hand fighting for us. I wiped the sweat from my eyes and fired my last bullet. There was no sense of satisfaction in seeing the man go down. It was the same story: one goes down and another takes his place. Our surviving men turned tail and ran back to the rear of the farmhouse in a bid to escape. It wouldn’t do them any good. They would be hunted down and killed, if they were lucky. I threw the gate open, hoping that I could entice some of their soldiers in, overpower them and take their weapons.

  One came through, and I hit him with a punch to the stomach. While he was down I plunged my knife deep into his stomach and ran it across, disembowelling him. I picked up his rifle and threw it at Bull. He caught it deftly and moved to my side at the gate.

  They were piling in now, and Bull with rifle and I with knife couldn’t kill them fast enough. I looked around and saw the others locked in close-quarter combat. Soon it would be over. A rash move getting the result it deserved.

  Then a whistle blew loud and clear in three long blasts. The soldiers stopped advancing and turned round and ran back. What the hell was going on? And then I knew. Bastards.

  We gathered together by the gate; the five of us and ten remaining soldiers, some wounded.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Red asked. ‘I don’t understand. Why did they run when another couple of minutes and they would have killed us all?’

  ‘We were bait,’ I said. ‘A diversion. We bought the time for our main force to cut across the scrub and attack from the rear. In the grand scheme of things we were expendable.’