by Wilbur Smith
‘I think she is simply gorgeous. May I hold her?’
‘She may wet you. If she does, take it as a sign of love. She pees on me all the time.’
‘I’ll take the risk.’ Jo held out her arms. Catherine regarded her solemnly for a moment, then made up her mind.
‘Man!’ she said and went willingly into Jo’s embrace.
‘Man?’ Hector asked incredulously. ‘Did she ever get that one wrong!’
‘It’s her new word.’ Bonnie rushed to the defence of her charge. ‘She calls everybody that she likes Man.’
Dave Imbiss came forward to greet Hector and as they shook hands Hector told him, ‘Things are breaking, Dave. I want you with Paddy and Nazzy in the cinema right away.’
Hector led his main team to the cinema. Jo carried Catherine with her, and Catherine took the opportunity to explore the inside of Jo’s nostrils with her finger.
When they were all settled Hector plugged the flash drive into the computer, and the first page of Jo’s novella flashed up on the screen.
‘“Karl Pieter Kurtmeyer: The Poisoned Seed”. What the hell this is, Hector?’ Nastiya demanded.
‘Read it, Nazzy. All of you read it. Jo and I are taking Catherine to the beach for a swim. We will be back before dark to answer your questions, and to start the ball rolling.’
*
When Hector and Jo returned they went directly to the cinema and Hector opened the door quietly. The three of them in the seats were so engrossed that for a while they did not realize the two of them were standing watching them.
Nastiya said, ‘Come on, Paddy. Read quicker. I want to find out the end.’ Then suddenly she realized that she was being watched and she twisted round on the bench.
‘Hector, is this the truth what is happening in the book, or just another bad joke of yours?’
‘It’s the truth, Nazzy. Even I would never joke about something like this.’
‘Our baby! Our little Cathy! First we must stop them, both of these animals, before they can do this to our baby.’
‘That is why we are all here,’ Hector agreed. Both Paddy and Dave Imbiss were watching Hector. Their expressions were hard and cold.
‘This Kazundu Castle…’ Paddy cut in. ‘Tell us about it. Are Carl and Johnny Congo still holed up there?’
‘Have you finished reading Jo’s story?’ Hector avoided the question.
‘Not yet,’ Paddy admitted. ‘Just a few pages to go.’
‘Finish it. Jo and I are going to take a shower to get off the sea salt and sand. We will be back very shortly. In the meantime ring through to the kitchen, get Chef to rustle up a mess of food and a couple of gallons of coffee. We are going to be up late tonight.’
Half an hour later when they returned to the cinema they found an array of enormous silver platters heaped with sandwiches on the rostrum table. The room was redolent of the coffee in the silver urn.
‘Have you finished reading the whole story?’ Hector demanded of Paddy as they stood around the table wolfing sandwiches and swilling coffee.
‘It’s pretty fierce stuff,’ Paddy said.
As soon as they had finished eating and the plates were cleared away, Paddy locked the door, and they settled back in the tiered seats. Jo fussed with the projector, connecting her laptop computer to it and focussing the beam on the screen on the back wall of the auditorium. Hector prowled back and forth across the stage.
‘Okay, people. We all know now why we are going in.’ There was a murmur of assent. ‘This is a hunt-and-kill mission. No questions asked and no prisoners taken. We are going in to cancel Carl Bannock and Johnny Congo. We go in fast and come out just as fast. Are we all clear on that?’ Again there was tacit agreement.
‘Paddy has already asked the first question. Are the targets still in the castle on the hill? The answer is that as of forty minutes ago they were there.’
All three of them looked dubious, and Paddy spoke on their behalf. ‘Forty minutes ago? That’s pretty fast. The castle is almost three thousand miles from where we are now, so how can you be so sure so quickly? Come on, Hector, you don’t expect us to believe in your new supernatural powers.’
‘Jo is running a surveillance asset named Emma Purdom. She phoned in forty minutes ago while we were returning from the beach; she asked the question. The answer is that Carl and Johnny are still in the castle.’
They all turned and looked at Jo with dawning respect.
‘Jo set up this asset?’ Nastiya demanded.
‘Jo found it and turned it on,’ Hector confirmed.
‘Just a pretty decoration your new lady isn’t,’ Nastiya said. ‘Welcome to the team, Jo Stanley,’ and Jo looked up from the projector and smiled her thanks.
‘Hey, Jo! You have impressed Nazzy. That’s not easy to do,’ Hector told her. ‘Are you ready to run your little show for us?’
‘All set,’ Jo replied. ‘Give me the word.’
‘Hold on a moment, please,’ Hector said and then he turned to the others. ‘First off, we need to make sure that you are able to identify the targets on sight and to recognize the sound of their voices. Jo is going to start with Carl Bannock. You know a great deal about Carl from Jo’s story. So just to recap, then. Carl is an academic; a product of a good prep school and Princeton. He is smart and tricky. He is a financial genius. He is good-looking, polished and suave. He is bisexual and kinky. In particular he is a pathological sadist and a paedophile. He is a psychopath: no conscience; no pity and no remorse. He is a megalomaniac. Only one thing matters to Carl Bannock and that is Carl Bannock. Always bear in mind what he did to his own mother and sisters. You know what his plans are for Catherine Cayla.’
The room went suddenly tense at the reference to their child, and Nastiya’s eyes were cold blue slits. Hector looked back at Jo. ‘Thank you, Jo. You can start the show now.’
She dimmed the overhead lights and started the projector. The tape that she had prepared ran for a little under ten minutes. It began with footage from the Bannock family archives that Ronnie Bunter had taken from his files. It showed Carl as a Princeton undergraduate. This was followed by footage of Carl running, walking and playing golf and tennis so they could study his movements. Then there were short clips of Carl addressing the shareholders at the annual general meeting of the Bannock Oil Corporation, being interviewed on TV and in conversation with his friends. From there it cut to the courthouse scene of Carl’s trial with him weeping and pleading for forgiveness. It ended with a few short clips from the concealed surveillance cameras in the castle on the hill. Emma Purdom had spliced these together for Jo. These were mostly clips of Carl and Johnny in conversation, but included brief and graphic scenes of Carl indulging in sexual congress with Johnny Congo and various other male, female and transvestite partners.
When the tape ended and Jo turned the lights up, Hector said, ‘Well, now you should all be able to recognize Carl Bannock even from a distance or if he is wearing a disguise, or if he is without pants. Do you have any questions?’
‘He is a snake, a poisonous snake,’ Nastiya said. ‘He is disgusting. He is the most repulsive thing I have ever seen.’
‘That is not a question, Nazzy.’
‘Okay, here is my question,’ Nastiya agreed. ‘Do we cancel him as soon as we can get a bead on him, or do we grab him so you can talk to him first?’
‘Use your discretion, Nazzy. If there is the slightest chance that he is about to get clean away then take him down, and shoot to kill. However, if you can grab him, then I would be extremely grateful if you could bring him to me for a short farewell chat.’
‘Hazel was a fine lady and her daughter is adorable. I want to be there when you are pointing out to Carl Bannock the error of his ways,’ Paddy said without a smile.
‘Are there any more questions or comments?’ Hector looked around. ‘If not we can go on to consider Johnny Congo. Here is another interesting and unusual subject.’
‘I want to have a good look at this o
ne,’ Nastiya spoke up. ‘I want to make up my mind which one of them I hate the most. I want they should no more think about messing with our baby.’
‘Jo, you heard the lady. Please, can you show Johnny Congo to us?’
The opening sequence was of Johnny Congo as a US Marine sergeant being decorated with the Silver Star for valour in the Mekong River delta of Vietnam by his commanding general, while his company paraded behind them.
‘No doubt about it that Congo is completely fearless,’ Hector commented. ‘He did two tours of duty in the US Marines. As you see he was decorated for courage and received an honourable discharge from the military with the rank of sergeant major. When he returned to civilian life he turned to the only role for which he was truly qualified and which gave him real pleasure; this was killing people. He became a hired gun; professional hit man. Like Carl, he is a psychopath and a sadist. Unlike Carl, he is a foul-mouthed brute, but do not for one moment underestimate him. He is possessed of innate animal cunning. You all know a great deal about him from Jo’s descriptions. But I am going to remind you of some of the most important things to remember about him. Johnny has an omnivorous sexual appetite. Carl is his long-term sexual partner but the two of them copulate with all and sundry. Johnny Congo is immensely physically powerful and a fearsome adversary. Like a mad dog he should be shot at a distance, and not engaged at close quarters.’
The tape of Johnny ended with sequences put together by Emma Purdom from the hidden cameras in the castle on the hill. When the screen went blank and Jo turned up the lights Hector went on. ‘Okay, you have all had a good look at our quarry. Now Jo will show you the hunting ground. We are expecting to find Johnny and Carl in or close to the castle and we might have to hunt them down within the walls. The castle is a large and rambling building. It is over three hundred years old and was built by Arabic stonemasons for the Sultan of Oman. It is a sprawling warren of hundreds of rooms. From the cellars and dungeons below to the towers and minarets on high it is a maze in which a stranger can very soon become completely lost. Jo will begin with photographs of the exterior.’
These photographs were all taken by professionals and were impressive. The backdrops of the lake and forest-covered mountains were magnificent. Jo ran through them quickly.
‘Okay, that’s the tourist commercial, but now we have something many times more valuable. Jo has managed to get her hands on up-to-date architects’ drawings and blueprints of the castle interior.’
The first plan flashed up on the screen. It showed the layout of the dungeons beneath the castle walls.
Paddy became so excited that he pounded his knee with his fist. ‘This is better than a winning lottery ticket. I am forced to admit that I was not very happy with the idea of following up blind through a labyrinth in which we could run into an ambush at every turn.’
‘Where on earth did you get these from, Jo?’ Dave Imbiss was as delighted as Paddy. ‘You have probably saved our lives. I mean that literally.’
‘Just remember what Maggie Thatcher said: when the going gets really tough send a woman in to do the job.’ Nastiya joined in the chorus of approval. ‘Luckily you men have now got another female on the team.’
Hector raised his voice to regain their attention. ‘Jo has prepared a separate set of blueprints for each of you.’ He glanced down at the notebook he was holding open in his left hand. ‘Okay, so we now know our targets, and we know where we expect to find them. Now we must decide on how we are going to get into Kazundu. This is a tricky one. It’s not an easy country to reach.’ He nodded at Jo. She manipulated the projector to display a large-scale map of the area on the screen. Hector went on speaking.
‘To the east of it lies Lake Tanganyika, like a gigantic moat. It’s over thirty miles wide. Crossing it by some kind of vessel from the Tanzanian side is not really an inviting option. There’s a saying: “Africa is an empty land with a pair of eyes watching from behind every bush”. Johnny Congo is sure to have agents on the Tanzanian side. He would know we were coming before we pushed off from the eastern shore, and we would have to land on the Kazundian side of the lake under fire.’
‘Can we go in from the west, through the Democratic Republic of the Congo?’ Dave Imbiss asked, and Hector shook his head.
‘That would mean an approach march of at least five hundred miles through dense jungle and across large rivers. There are virtually no roads. The tribal warlords who control that part of the country are all Johnny’s staunch friends and business allies. He is the sales outlet for their conflict minerals. We wouldn’t get very far.’
‘So, it seems the only way in is by air. We will have to parachute in. That’s no problem, then.’ Paddy shrugged.
‘Good Irish thinking,’ Hector commended him. ‘That’s great for the entry. But how do we exit after we have done the job? We have already heard that it would be impossible to get out of Kazundu on foot.’
‘The drop plane would land to pick us up,’ said Paddy, defending his ideas. ‘The same way Johnny did it originally.’
‘Johnny wasn’t on a hunt-and-kill raid, as we will be. He did not have to get control of the airport to have an escape route. He was there to waste Justin and take up permanent residence,’ Hector pointed out. ‘Anyway, this is a different situation. King Justin’s army was a music-hall joke, a small bunch of palookas with no ammunition in rifles they didn’t know how to shoot. Now Johnny’s gang is made up of well-equipped men who he has hand-picked and trained with the help of Sam Ngewenyama. Both Johnny and Sam are military veterans. We can only land forty or fifty men at a time. Andrew Moorcroft, who was on the ground in Kazundu, estimates that Johnny has a couple of hundred trained men. We are up against pros; not a single palooka amongst them. What is more, we will be heavily outnumbered.’
‘Shit!’ Dave Imbiss said quietly but vehemently.
‘Indeed,’ Hector agreed. ‘A big smelly lump of it. Andrew has also told us that Johnny Congo is fully aware that the airfield is his Achilles heel. He exploited it himself to get his men in. So what he has done is build a heavily sandbagged redoubt at each end of the runway. Set in embrasures in the walls are batteries of fifty-calibre heavy machine guns. No uninvited or unwelcome aircraft can land or take off without being raked by MG fire from both fore and aft, even before its wheels touch or leave the ground.’
They considered the proposition with expressions of cold distaste, until Jo Stanley broke the silence at last. ‘Unless, of course, it is Carl’s own Antonov Condor,’ Jo said gently.
‘Of course!’ Hector agreed dismissively. ‘But we are not going to be in his Condor, are we?’
‘No, we are not,’ Jo agreed demurely. ‘Unless, of course, you hijack it for us.’
A solemn silence followed this statement. Nastiya broke it with a whoop of laughter. ‘Look at their faces, Jo. They have run fresh out of smart-arse masculine replies. Come on, boys. What have you got to say to the lady?’
‘Goodness gracious me, Jo Stanley!’ Hector shook his head in mock disbelief. ‘I knew you were bright, but I didn’t realize that you are bright enough to light up the sky.’
‘Hector Cross!’ Jo tried to keep a straight face as she replied. ‘Don’t you dare hijack my terms of speech. Why don’t you rather go and hijack an aircraft?’
*
It took two more days of intensive planning before Hector was satisfied with the logistics for the assault on Kazundu.
‘The Condor will only be able to carry a safe limit of eighty-four fully equipped men and sufficient fuel for a round flight from Abu Zara to Kazundu and return,’ Hector had decided. ‘I estimate we will need a force of around fifty. What is the present strength of Cross Bow Security, Paddy? How many men can we field, right now?’
‘We are short of about fifteen or so,’ Paddy admitted, and glanced across at Dave Imbiss. ‘Am I right, Davie?’
‘Here in Abu Zara we are shy of sixteen men. But I can fly reinforcements in from our other oilfields in South America and Asia.
Give me five or six days, and I can have the full complement assembled and ready to go on the airstrip of the Zara Number Thirteen concession.’
‘Get cracking right away, Dave,’ Hector ordered him, and then turned back to the others. ‘Once we have landed at Kazundu airport and overwhelmed the men in the two forts that guard it, we will have control. We will leave the Condor under the protection of the guns in the northern fort. That is the one closest to the castle on the hill.’
‘It’s not a good idea to park it in the open,’ Paddy advised. ‘There is going to be a lot of incendiary bullets and shrapnel flying about. Just a single hit from one of those and the Condor goes up. Boom!’
‘No!’ Hector held up his hand. ‘I don’t have pictures of it, but Emma Purdom has recorded conversation of Carl and Johnny discussing the building of some type of laager to protect the Condor when it is on the ground. It seems as though the floor of the bunker is well below ground level with an entry ramp at each end. The sides of the bunker are screened by walls of sandbags. Once the Condor taxies down the ramp, it is immune from small arms and RPG fire. Only problem is that this laager is situated well away from the main buildings where we will be disembarking. Our pilot will only be able to get the Condor under cover when we are clear.’
He looked around at their faces. ‘Any more questions?’ They shook their heads, and Hector went on. ‘I am assuming that we will have to go after our targets in the castle. I am going to leave twelve men to hold each of the forts on the airfield. Their firepower will be enhanced by the captured heavy machine guns that Johnny Congo has mounted there. I am going to leave Dave in command of these contingents to cover and protect the airfield from counterattack.’
At this stage Hector was presented with an unforeseen problem. It had never occurred to him that Jo Stanley would be any part of the strike team. She was not a trained warrior like the others. To his mind Jo’s place would be in the safety of Abu Zara, possibly helping Bonnie to take care of Catherine Cayla. Now suddenly Jo spoke out in a stronger and more assertive tone than she usually used to express herself.