11
The chopper was flying northeast out of Tete, following the Zambezi upstream towards the Cahora Bassa dam. At first the river flowed calm and wide, a mile from bank to bank at some points. But then the gradient steepened, the river narrowed, and the force of water within it increased. The valley became deeper and the hills on either side of the river closed in, becoming first bluffs then cliffs that plunged hundreds of feet down to boiling, frothing rapids whose surface disappeared from time to time beneath a fine mist of spray. The helicopter had been flying high above the river, but now it swooped down, plunging between the precipitous rockfaces of the gorge: a metallic dragonfly skimming the surface of the river, swooping right and left as it followed the twists and turns of its course.
Carver wanted his approach to be as fast and discreet as possible and the unpopulated, inaccessible ravine provided a route that led directly to his target out of sight of prying eyes. It also threatened a far greater danger of death en route. One flick of a rotor-blade against the valley walls, one touch of the landing gear against an outcrop of rock and he, Morrison and the pilot would all be sent spinning to their graves. But he had ridden plenty of helicopters at absurdly low levels en route to missions whose odds were near suicidal. It was not so much that he felt no fear, simply that he had learned to park it in a distant, sealed-off area of his mind, while his conscious thought was directed to the job in hand.
Beside him, Flattie Morrison’s cigarette was clamped at one end of a crocodile smile that was even wider and toothier than usual.
‘This is the life, hey?’ Morrison shouted over the clatter of the rotors, made even louder by the echoes resounding off the rock walls on either side. ‘Feels like old times! F*ck, man, the closer I get to the Reaper, the more I feel alive. You know what I’m talking about?’
Carver said nothing, but he couldn’t argue. There was nothing on earth so charged with pure adrenalin as the excitement that came with the risk of oblivion. But that too had to be kept in check, every ounce of nervous energy reserved for the moment when it was most needed.
‘Yeah, you know all right,’ said Morrison. He looked at his watch. ‘Not long now till we get there. You want to check anything, go through the plan again, this is the time to do it.’
They went over the timeline of the next nine hours one more time. The success of the mission depended on perfect coordination: the simultaneous arrival of two elements at a given point, timed to the last second.
‘OK,’ said Morrison, once the details had been confirmed. ‘One last thing: if anything goes wrong and you need an emergency evac, just get on the comms and say “Flattie”. Whisper it, shout it, f*cking yodel it, doesn’t matter, we’ll be on our way. But one thing you should consider. We will be parked at an LZ just across the river. It will take us eight minutes to reach the extraction point, and I don’t have to tell you, eight minutes is a f*ck of a long time if you’re getting your arse shot off in a firefight. So think about that before you call, hey? Right, now we must get out of here before we hit the dam like a bug on a windscreen.’
No sooner had Morrison spoken than the helicopter lurched upwards and hurtled up the cliff-face, past the bare rock towards the luscious carpet of greenery at its summit. Then they were escaping the grasp of the gorge, and for a second Carver caught a glimpse up ahead of the mighty Cahora Bassa dam, whose five-hundred-and-sixty-feet-high concrete walls held back the Zambezi, confining the river within a man-made lake more than a hundred and eighty miles long. Then the pilot swung left over a range of hills, skimming the trees as closely as he had the water, before dropping again and bringing the chopper in to land at the centre of a minuscule clearing with the precision of an experienced big-city driver squeezing into a tiny parking space.
‘Out you get!’ shouted Morrison as the helicopter’s skids kissed the ground.
Carver jumped down, holding the Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine gun he had specified, and a kitbag was thrown after him.
Morrison gave him a thumbs-up and then the helicopter rose and sped away over the trees.
‘Mr Carver!’
Carver turned at the sound of the voice and saw a tall African man in faded blue trousers and a loose, short-sleeved white shirt gesturing at him to follow.
‘My name is Justus Iluko, but everyone just calls me Justus,’ said the man when Carver had caught up. ‘Come with me, please. I work for Captain Morrison. I fought with him in the war of liberation,’ he added, by way of explanation.
‘On the same side?’ Carver asked.
Justus laughed. ‘Oh yes! All the soldiers were black in our company. Just the officers and NCOs were white. Some of them … pah!’ He shook his head dismissively. ‘But Captain Morrison, he was square with us. He never made any man do anything he would not do himself. We trusted him and we followed him, you know?’
Carver nodded.
‘Mr Klerk, too,’ said Justus. ‘He was a mighty warrior. When he fought, no one could defeat him!’
Carver followed Justus through the trees to a dirt track on which an ancient VW van was parked. He climbed up into the passenger seat. Justus got in the driver’s side and set off.
‘I knew Miss Zalika too, when she was just a little baby girl. When the war ended, before he started his own businesses, Mr Klerk got me a job as a game warden on the Stratten Reserve. I was only there for three years, but I remember Miss Zalika being born. We were all given the day off and plenty of beer to drink!’ Justus laughed at the memory. ‘Sometimes Mrs Stratten took her children for picnics and one of us drove them out on to the reserve and watched over them in case any lions or other dangerous animals came, but they never did. Those were good days. No more war, everyone with so much hope for the future …’
His voice trailed away, and for a while the only noise came from the VW as it lurched and rattled along the potholed track. Justus looked around, then nodded as he spotted a familiar landmark. ‘Just thirty minutes and we will be in Chitongo.’
‘Has Morrison briefed you on the plan of action for tonight?’ Carver asked.
‘Of course. The captain is a very thorough man. He always told us about the importance of proper preparations. He does not like to leave anything to chance.’
Five minutes’ worth of intensive questioning proved that Justus was right. Morrison might have his problems, to put it mildly, but he still retained the organizational skills that had made him a company commander whose men trusted him to lead them into action and out the other side. Meanwhile, Justus was evidently the kind of reliable, level-headed fighting man who made any officer’s life a lot simpler. That didn’t make tonight’s mission any less difficult, but at least it tilted the chances of success marginally in their favour.
Once he had satisfied himself that he was in good hands, Carver leaned back in his chair and looked around. Hanging from the rearview mirror were a string of beads, a St Christopher medal and a photograph of a laughing woman with her arms round two small children, a boy and a girl, both in their neat white school shirts.
‘Your family?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Justus, the warmth of his smile conveying the love, pride and happiness he felt. ‘That is my wife Nyasha, who has blessed me with her affection for twelve years now, and my son Canaan – he is eight – and my daughter Farayi, who is six.’
‘They look like great kids. You’re a lucky man.’
‘Yes, I am very, very lucky. Do you have a family, Mr Carver?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘So you have never found the right woman to take as your wife?’
Carver grimaced. ‘A couple of times I thought I had. Never quite worked out.’
‘That is sad,’ said Justus, shaking his head. ‘To have a good woman who gives him strong, healthy children is the greatest satisfaction a man can have. You know, sometimes when I am tired from working too long, or the jobs I must undertake do not please me, I ask myself, “Why do I do this?” Then I look at that picture and I know. I do it for them.’
‘So where do you live?’
‘I have a small farm, about twenty miles from Buweku. The country there is very beautiful: rolling hills, so green that my cattle grow as fat as hippos, and with earth so rich that all you have to do is throw seed upon the ground and any crop will grow. I am building a house there. Soon it will be finished. Then I will go to my wife and say, “I have given you many rooms. Now you give me more children to fill them all!” ’
Carver laughed along with Justus, admiring but also envying the straightforward convictions by which he seemed to lead his life. Carver would probably earn more from this one night’s work than Justus could hope to make in his entire life. But that didn’t make him richer in the things that really mattered.
He brushed the thought from his mind as if swatting an irritating fly. He had more immediate problems to worry about than his lack of women or kids.
Justus, too, was getting back to business. He pulled the car up by the side of the road and said, ‘We are getting close to Chitongo and it is most important that no one sees you arrive.’ He turned in his seat and looked towards the rear of the vehicle. ‘Please lie on the floor at the back, Mr Carver. I have provided a blanket to cover you.’
‘OK.’
A minute later they were on the move again, Samuel Carver huddling under an ancient tartan picnic blanket as he was driven into battle.
12
Zalika Stratten had long since lost track of where she was. She thought she’d heard voices a couple of days ago talking in Portuguese. That suggested she might be somewhere in Mozambique. Beyond that, though, this was just another bare mattress shoved into the corner of another room, with another uncovered bucket to squat over. The windows were boarded over and the door in the centre of the wall opposite her mattress was locked, with a guard permanently stationed outside. There was no bulb at the end of the wire that hung from the ceiling. The only light came from the cracks between the planks nailed to the window frame.
Zalika’s feet were chained together, just far enough apart that she could shuffle across her room, but too close to allow her to walk properly, let alone run. Her jeans and shoes had been taken away and all she had to wear now were the T-shirt and underwear she’d been wearing when she was captured.
They gave her two meals a day, feeding her on a basic diet of maize-meal porridge, with an occasional treat of salty, bony fried fish, or a meat stew that consisted of a couple of lumps of indeterminate gristle adrift in a plateful of grease. From time to time she’d be handed a small plastic basin filled with cold water and a bar of gritty pale-grey soap with which to wash herself. She did her best but her hair was matted and greasy, there were black rings of dirt beneath her fingernails and she was permanently damp and prickly with sweat.
Just as airline passengers getting off a long-distance flight have no idea how disgusting the air onboard smells to ground-crew getting on, so Zalika’s senses had long since become accustomed to the rank odours of sweat, urine, excrement and stale food that hung in the airless atmosphere of her solitary cell.
Yet Mabeki himself seemed not to care about her plight. She barely recognized her brother’s smiling, impeccably mannered friend in the fierce, embittered ideologue who from time to time came into her room. He paced up and down, his voice ranging from a sinister, low-pitched calm to rabid fury while she huddled on her mattress, as defensive as a curled hedgehog, her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped round them.
This was virtually the only human contact left in Zalika Stratten’s life: her meals and bucket were delivered and removed in total silence by guards who ignored any attempt of hers to make conversation.
In the near-darkness, Mabeki was as insubstantial as a wraith. Only his words seemed real. Again and again he repeated the arguments that justified his actions, building up a portrait of her father and family, layer by layer, that flatly contradicted everything she had ever believed.
‘Richard Stratten was an oppressor, an imperialist. How can it be right for one man to have so much land, so much money, so much power when countless millions have so little? How can it be right for the white man to give the orders, while the black man can only say, “Yes, boss! No, boss!” and do his bidding?’
‘But my father was a good boss,’ she argued. ‘All our workers had running water and electric power.’
‘There is no such thing as a good boss,’ Mabeki spat back. ‘There are only the rulers and the oppressed. You talk about running water and power as though they were luxuries for which the workers should be grateful. They are basic human rights. And running water means more than a tap in every village. Power means more than a few bare lightbulbs.’
‘What about your father? Isaac did not think Dad was a bad man. He was devoted to him.’
‘Is that what you think? Then you are a fool. Your eyes have been closed all your life. Do you imagine that my father came back to our meagre hovel, with its four bare walls of breezeblock and its corrugated iron roof, and felt affection for a man who lived in mansions built on land that our ancestors ruled as kings? Do you think he was grateful when your father declared that he would pay for my education? That money was made from land stolen from its rightful owners – stolen by the white man from the black!
‘And tell me, Zalika, since your father was such a fine man: what did he do for all the workers on his farms and his game reserves who suffered from HIV? Did he get them treatment, the latest drugs? No, they were worked until the disease became so bad that they could not work any more. Then they were dismissed and left to die, while new workers were hired in their place.’
Some days Mabeki updated her on the latest development in the negotiations he was conducting from his satellite phone with the hostage rescue consultants brought in by Wendell Klerk. ‘Your uncle does not wish to spend any of his money to free you,’ he said one time. ‘You could be at his house in Cape Town right now, or in London, or on his country estate, or even sunbathing at his place in the Bahamas if he had simply paid what I asked. Do you want to know what price I put on your head?’
‘No,’ said Zalika, trying to sound as though she meant it.
‘It was five million dollars, US. That is roughly one-tenth of one per cent of Mr Klerk’s estimated personal assets. It is a fraction of what he paid to get rid of his last wife, the beauty queen, after just three years of marriage. What was she, Miss Austria?’
‘Czech Republic,’ said Zalika, before she could stop herself.
‘Thirty million he gave her to go away, or so the newspapers said. And all I want is five. Not for myself, but for my people. This money will be used to dig wells and buy tractors, medicines, solar electricity panels, schoolbooks, pencils. It will do far more good working for Africa than it ever could in Mr Klerk’s bank account, and yet … and yet, he will not pay it. He tells his people to bargain with me, to drive the price down. He threatens to walk away and leave you to your fate. I am sorry, Zalika, but he does not think you are worth saving.’
For his part, Moses Mabeki looked forward to his conversations with Zalika Stratten with keen anticipation. He derived great pleasure from seeing her humbled, stripped of all comforts, breathing the stench of her own filth. He enjoyed this daily proof of his newfound power almost as much as he had enjoyed giving the order to shoot Zalika’s brother dead; or pouring diesel fuel down a funnel into her father’s throat until it drowned him; or giving her mother to his men to do with as they pleased; or even the exultant moment when he faced his feeble, lickspittle father and took a machete to the treacherous body with which he had so willingly served the Stratten family. Hearing the pain and bafflement in Zalika’s voice when he had told her those lies about his father – that, too, had been something to relish. But what he was planning to do later this very night … well, that, he thought, he might enjoy even more.
13
They were keeping Zalika Stratten on the top floor of a two-storey building – one of the few in the village – that occupied the northeast corner of a crossing where two dirt roads intersected. In the classic fashion of a colonial African building, a ground-floor colonnade ran along the main facade and round the corner facing the road, providing shelter for passers-by. Above it on the first floor ran a covered open-air walkway, with a waist-high balustrade for the building’s occupants. The ground floor was occupied at one end by a shebeen – an illegal bar, whose clientele neither asked nor answered questions about one another’s business – and a half-empty excuse for a local store at the other. Upstairs there were three very basic apartments, all now occupied by Mabeki and his men. A stairway bisected the front of the building, connecting one walkway with the other.
Justus had installed himself in a derelict building directly across the street, having given the family who occupied it ten US dollars – almost certainly more than they could expect to earn in a month – to let him use it as an observation post.
Shortly after midnight, three hours before the operation was due to begin, Justus was scanning the target building’s facade with a pair of military-specification thermal-imaging binoculars. They reacted to temperature rather than light so that hot-spots showed up in colours that ranged from a warm red through orange and yellow to white-hot. A human body glowed white on a cold night at close range. If the line of sight was clear, visual identification of individuals was possible at ranges of a mile or more. But through the walls of the room in which Zalika was being held, people showed up as little more than vague orange blurs. That was enough, though, to allow Justus to discern Zalika’s body, lying on her mattress, just as it had enabled him to detect the man who had brought her evening meal. When, shortly afterwards, she had got up to use the bucket, he had turned his imager away to check the other apartments.
Now Justus was checking in with Carver, who was lying flat on the roof of a garage directly behind the target building. He was dressed in black, with a black balaclava hiding his face, and had melted into the shadows beneath the second-storey wall behind which Zalika was being held. It rose windowless for ten feet above him, its surface covered with a faded, crumbling painting of a giant Coca-Cola bottle.
The night air was filled with music, the raucous voices of hard-drinking men and the shrieks and laughter of the working girls coming from the shebeen. Carver had to put his finger to his earpiece as Justus spoke to hear his words distinctly.
‘Mabeki brought five of his men with him into Mozambique,’ Justus said. ‘Three of them are downstairs in the shebeen right now. One of the other two is in the inner hallway of the apartment, outside Miss Stratten’s room. The other is on duty as a sentry on the walkway. There is one figure in the adjacent apartment. I believe this is Mabeki. He … wait, he is moving. He is leaving the apartment and I think he is going to the room where Miss Stratten is held. Yes, he is entering it. Now he is going to the bed. Miss Stratten must have woken. She is sitting up. Mabeki is doing something down at her feet. Oh, I see, he is loosening her chain. Maybe he is about to move her.’
On the garage roof, Carver tensed, sensing that all his carefully calibrated plans were about to be rendered irrelevant. Well, he was used to that. He just had to work out when to go in, and – even more important – when to call Morrison. Whatever happened, he aimed to be in and out of the building in under sixty seconds. That left seven long minutes before the chopper arrived. He had to find a way to buy time. Then he heard Justus’s voice in his earpiece again.
‘No, he is not moving her. He is bending over her. Now he is on the bed. Oh no, he is on top of her. She has raised her hands. I think she is trying to fight him, but …’
‘Flattie!’ hissed Carver.
‘We’d already fired up the engine,’ said Morrison. ‘On our way.’
‘Mr Carver, this is very bad,’ said Justus.
‘Yeah, I get it,’ Carver replied. ‘Now listen, I need you to distract the sentry on the walkway. I don’t care what you do, just make sure all his attention is focused on you. Got that?’
‘OK …’
Carver stood up, quickly flexed his neck, shoulder and back muscles, then picked up a length of nylon rope attached to a grappling hook that he had placed beside him on the roof. He stepped back, threw the hook over the top of the wall above him and tugged on the rope until the hook caught on the roof parapet. It took him a matter of seconds to abseil up the painted Coke bottle and over the parapet on to the flat roof above. His MP5 submachine gun, fitted with a noise suppressor, was slung across his back. He also carried a knife, three grenades and a pair of black nylon pouches strapped to his hips. In them were two fifteen-round magazines, a powerful torch, an emergency flare in case he needed to mark his position for an incoming chopper, some nylon fishing wire and a basic first-aid kit.
Keeping his head down, he padded across to the front of the building and peered over the parapet down to the street. Justus was standing by the side of the road with a bottle in his hand, trying to strike up a conversation with the sentry. They were speaking in an African dialect, but Carver had no trouble getting the wheedling, drunken tone of what Justus was saying or the annoyance in the sentry’s voice. Perfect.
He moved to the side of the building, away from the point where the two men were talking, and climbed back over the parapet on to a narrow ledge that ran all the way round the facade of the building, providing additional shelter for the walkway below. Carver crouched down, placed his hands on the ledge and then lowered his legs and body over the side till he was hanging by his fingertips, suspended outside the walkway. A single lightbulb provided enough illumination for him to look all along it, straight towards the sentry who was now leaning on the balustrade, gesticulating at Justus down below.
Carver rested his feet against the balustrade, pushed them away and then swung them back towards the walkway, letting go of the ledge above and dropping over the balustrade, down on to the floor. He landed noiselessly on rubber-soled boots, swung his weapon up to his shoulder and put two bullets through the sentry’s head before the man even knew he was there.
Having checked that the sentry was dead, Carver smashed the light with the stock of his gun, plunging the walkway into darkness. Then he peered over the balustrade and signalled to Justus to get the van and drive it round the side of the building. The Malemban nodded and ran off.
For a moment, the noise from the shebeen dipped and Carver could hear a muffled female scream coming from inside the building. Carver prided himself on his ability to remain calm and dispassionate, but there was a difference between being professional and being a robot. The sound of that voice awoke a primal male instinct in him to defend and avenge a female in distress.
There was a door from the walkway into the apartment where Zalika Stratten was being held. Carver kicked it open and advanced into the building, his gun raised and ready to fire.
14
Moses Mabeki had planned on taking his time. This was a self-indulgence to be savoured. Then he heard the crash of the outside door slamming open and the jolt of shock and fear that flooded his nervous system made sex the last thing on his mind. He rolled off Zalika and, all but sightless in the darkness of the room, scrabbled on the floor for his trousers and the Chinese-made Norinco pistol that he’d jammed into one of the pockets. His fingers tried to extract the gun from the fabric wrapped round it and finally, after an eternity of fumbling, it was in his right hand.
Mabeki heard a shout of alarm from the guard in the hall. It was suddenly cut short, ending in a strangled cry of pain followed by the thud of a body slumping against the door to the room. Somebody was out there, he realized. They were willing to kill. And he was next.
Still kneeling on the floor, Mabeki fired three rounds in the rough direction of the door, the sound of the shots almost deafening in the small, echoing room. Behind him, Zalika was raising herself on her elbows. Mabeki didn’t want her crying for help. He turned back to the mattress and gave the girl a hard backhanded slap to the face. She whimpered in pain.
‘Quiet!’ he whispered. ‘Not a sound!’
He could just about see the outline of her nodding head. There was a sniff as she tried to control her tears, then Mabeki heard a scraping sound as the body was dragged from the door by the unseen predator.
He shot again, twice more. This time there was a wordless shout from beyond the door and more stumbling footsteps, followed by the sound of a body against a hard surface. Whoever was out there had been hit, but how badly?
Mabeki needed to find out, but he wasn’t leaving the safety of the room with just his gun to protect him. Zalika Stratten would be his shield. He got to his feet, then, still holding the gun in his right hand, he bent down and grabbed Zalika with his left, making her wince as he clamped his fingers round the soft flesh of her upper arm.
And then he heard another sound from beyond the door.
15
The bullet that hit Carver as he tried to dodge to one side of the door had struck him a glancing blow beneath his left armpit and spun him across the hallway. There was a lot of blood and it hurt like hell. Every breath ended with the sharp stab of a broken rib. But aside from that, he was still in one piece and more pissed off than ever. The blasts from Mabeki’s gun would surely have been heard down in the shebeen. No matter how drunk they were, his people were bound to investigate.
Carver strode back to the door, the face behind his balaclava clenched in furious determination, and kicked hard. The flimsy door with its rusty hinges and half-rotten wood flew open.
Ahead of him and to the right, Carver could see Mabeki, dimly illuminated by the light from the hallway. He was bending over the mattress, dragging Zalika Stratten to her feet with one hand while holding a gun in the other. He wasn’t wearing any trousers and the sight of his bare legs only underlined the obscenity of what he’d been about to do to the girl.
Mabeki let go of her. His head and shoulders were rising back up and turning towards Carver. He was bringing his pistol to bear.
Carver put his first bullet though Mabeki’s jaw, which exploded, showering Zalika Stratten with blood and fragments of flesh and bone. As the impact sent Mabeki staggering backwards, Carver fired again, hitting him in the upper torso.
Mabeki was thrown to one side. He lay still as the blood, just one more liquid shade of black, pooled round his body and spread across the floor.
The girl started screaming. She was huddled on the bed, shaking uncontrollably. Somehow, her pitiful vulnerability affected Carver far more than the shattered body on the floor.
‘Time to go,’ he said, his voice sounding far harsher than he intended.
She looked up, eyes wide with horror at the sight of the masked, faceless figure looming over her.
‘Come on!’ Carver insisted.
Zalika did not move, just pointed at the body and sobbed, ‘Is he dead?’
‘I certainly hope so,’ Carver replied, holding out a hand. ‘Now, please, get up. We’ve got to get out of here before his mates arrive. Your uncle’s expecting you.’
That seemed to do the trick. Zalika took Carver’s hand and let him pull her up. But then she stiffened, unable to move any further, still transfixed by the sight of Mabeki’s body. Carver tightened his grip on her wrist and started running, dragging her with him, forcing her to follow him out of the room, past the body in the corridor towards the outside walkway.
‘Stay here,’ he mouthed as they reached the door to the walkway.
He let go of Zalika’s hand and inched out into the open. People were starting to spill out of the shebeen on to the street. He could not see them, but he could hear them, just as he heard the sound of heavy boots clattering up the concrete stairs. The silhouette of a heavy-set man appeared a few paces down the walkway and swayed slightly as he took his bearings. Carver dropped him with a single headshot. There were no more footfalls on the steps.
Carver gestured with his cupped left hand, ordering Zalika out on to the walkway. ‘This way,’ he said. ‘Stick tight to the wall.’
He led her away from the two dead men, through the shadows to the side of the building till they reached the place where he’d jumped on to the walkway less than a minute earlier.
A shout came from the street below, followed by more excitable, angry voices. They’d been spotted.
Carver muttered a curse. Then his spirits rose as he heard the coughing and spluttering of the VW van and saw it pull up directly beneath them. Justus got out and dashed to the side of the building. He raised his arms and said, ‘Let her down, I will catch her.’
Carver manhandled the terrified girl to the balustrade and then, wincing as the pain from his cracked rib sliced through him, lifted her up and over it. He let go of her arms and watched as she fell six or seven feet into Justus’s arms. The African buckled under Zalika’s weight, but kept her from hitting the ground.
As he pulled himself and the girl to their feet, Justus turned his head then looked back up at Carver and shouted, ‘Quick, they are coming!’
Carver vaulted over the balustrade and fell to the ground, unable to stifle a sharp cry of pain at the impact. He looked up to see Justus bundling Zalika into the back of the VW and closing the rear passenger door behind her. Beyond them about fifteen or twenty men were rounding the corner of the building, the pitch of their voices rising as they saw the car and its would-be occupants. Their advance slowed as they saw Carver straightening with the gun in his hand. He raised the MP5 to point at the crowd. The men came to a halt, looking at one another as if seeking guidance. None of them appeared to be armed.
Carver heard the sound of Justus starting up the VW behind him. He moved back very slowly towards the vehicle, keeping his eyes and gun fixed on the crowd.
It was the movement that alerted him, an anomalous shift in the pattern of limbs, bodies and faces captured on the edge of his peripheral vision that told him someone was aiming a gun. Carver flicked his eyes to a man in the second rank aiming an AK-47. He was using his companions as cover, assuming Carver would be reluctant to shoot unarmed civilians.
Carver fired anyway, aiming three bursts over the crowd, but keeping the shots as close as he dared to their heads. They scrambled to get out of the way, and their movement was just enough to knock the man with the AK-47 off his aim, sending his first burst harmlessly wide.
Now, though, the stampede worked against Carver, preventing him from getting a clean shot on his target. He fired his last two rounds fractionally high again, just to discourage anyone from getting closer, then dived into the VW as Justus floored the pedal and sent the vehicle moving with surprising speed down the street, away from the men who were now getting to their feet behind them.
‘Kill the lights!’ shouted Carver.
He pulled off his balaclava and stuck a fresh magazine into the MP5 as they raced away into the purple-black night.