Bodyguard: Ambush (Book 3) (17 page)

Cresting a hill, he indicated the small
plateau they were heading for. As the convoy dropped down into a dried-out riverbed as
wide as a four-lane motorway, its treelined banks forming steep slopes on either side,
Buju held up his hand for them to stop again. He dismounted from the bonnet seat and
walked over to a patch of sandy ground. Crouching, he inspected the earth.

‘What’s Buju spotted now?’
whispered Amber.

‘I’m
not sure,’ replied Gunner, switching off the engine.

Behind, the other five Land Rovers –
transporting Laurent and Cerise, the president and his guard, and the ministers and
their wives – switched off their engines too and waited. After a minute or so, Buju
beckoned Gunner to join him. Clambering out of the driver’s seat, he went over and
began studying the ground with the tracker.

The vehicle now stationary, the muggy heat
of the late afternoon pressed in on Connor and the others. Batting away the ever-present
flies, Connor looked up into the cloudless sky and saw a vulture hovering overhead. For
a moment he imagined himself the prey and felt a chill run down his spine.

‘What do you think they’ve
found?’ asked Amber.

‘Lion tracks?’ suggested Henri
optimistically.

‘Maybe leopard,’ said Connor,
scanning the surroundings as Henri’s eyes widened at the thought.

The rest of the convoy was strung out along
the broad riverbed, the rear vehicle a good distance back, still on the bank. Laurent
and Cerise were listening intently to their ranger, who was pointing out a striking
red-and-yellow bird in the branch of a tree. The driver in the president’s vehicle
was craning his neck, wondering what the hold-up was, while the Burundian ministers and
their wives in the other 4x4s appeared hot and bored.

For some reason Connor’s sixth sense
began twitching. All around seemed unnaturally still. Maybe the presence of the vulture
had spooked him. Or maybe it was because they were in the sweltering hollow of a
riverbed. But he
couldn’t hear any
birdsong; even the insects had stopped chirping. Connor knew from what Gunner had told
him that when the bush went quiet, it was a sure sign that a predator was about.

He scanned the clumps of tall grasses, dense
scrub and nearby trees for movement or anything unusual, but his eyes weren’t
trained to spot the telltale signs of hidden wildlife, a skill that would be second
nature to Buju or Gunner. Then a glint of reflected light at the base of a bush caught
his eye. Retrieving his binoculars from Henri, Connor focused the lens on the
undergrowth and his breath stopped dead in his throat. A pair of eyes, cold and
calculating, stared right back at him.

Connor saw intelligence in those eyes. And
in that instant he knew they were all in grave danger.

‘What have you seen?’ asked Henri
excitedly.

All of a sudden a lone impala bolted from
behind a clump of tall grasses. At the same time a short sharp
crack
punctured
the still silence. Pivoting in his seat, Connor spotted the president’s driver
slumped over his wheel. For a moment Connor thought he was just resting, then he noticed
the splatter of fresh blood on the Land Rover’s windscreen. A second later the
president’s 4x4 rattled as if being pelted by hail.

‘GET DOWN!’ yelled Connor,
shoving Henri into the footwell of their vehicle and throwing his Go-bag on top of him,
its body-armour panel acting as a shield.

The ferocious roar of heavy gunfire filled
the air and Amber screamed, frozen where she was like a startled deer. Realizing she had
‘brain fade’, Connor threw himself into the driver’s seat and forcibly
pushed Amber’s head down just as their windscreen shattered under a strafing of
bullets, glass raining down on them.

‘
What’s
happening?
’ cried Amber, her whole body trembling as Connor tried to shield
her.

‘It’s
an ambush,’ said Connor.

He risked raising his head for a moment to
take stock of the situation. From the banks on either side, the black barrels of a dozen
AK47s protruded from the bushes, their muzzles flaring with gunfire. President Bagaza
was cowering in his vehicle, his presidential guard all but decimated. His personal
bodyguard lay across him, a bullet through the head, while two other guards hung limp
out of the doors, their blood dripping into the sand. The unit of soldiers in the
back-up vehicle were firing indiscriminately at their hidden adversary, pulling the
trigger with panic rather than accuracy. Only their driver seemed to have his wits about
him as he restarted his engine, floored the accelerator and raced to rescue the
president.

As more bullets peppered their own vehicle,
Connor recalled Jody’s number one rule in an ambush situation:
always keep
moving.

Buju and Gunner were nowhere to be seen, so
it was down to him to get them out of the kill zone. Twisting the keys in the ignition,
Connor heard the engine turn over but fail to start. He tried again. It spluttered then
died. Connor cursed but waited a moment, afraid of flooding the engine. Hearing a shrill
whoosh
, he braced himself as a rocket-propelled grenade screeched overhead.
A second later, the finance minister’s Land Rover exploded in a ball of flames.
Their own vehicle rocked with the force of the blast.

‘Mama! Papa!’ screamed Amber,
rising up from the footwell.

Connor pushed her
back down. ‘It wasn’t
their
car,’ he shouted, trying the
ignition once more.

The stench of burning diesel now filled the
air and a column of black smoke billowed into the sky. Third time lucky, the engine
kicked into life.

‘Stay down,’ Connor instructed
Amber and Henri as he sat up and grabbed the steering wheel. He went to put the Land
Rover into gear and found the door handle instead. Only then did it dawn on him that the
vehicle was a left-hand drive. In Britain it was the other way round. Battling the
mental confusion of using his right hand on the gear stick, he crunched the Land Rover
into first gear and floored the accelerator. The tyres kicked up dirt, then gained
traction and shot forward. Laurent and Cerise’s Land Rover was already ahead of
them, the driver hunkered down low as he sought to escape the lethal ambush.

Connor followed close behind, forcing the
Land Rover into second gear and keeping to the driver’s tyre tracks. With the
steep banks corralling them in, they had no choice but to head upstream. The worst of
the firefight was still concentrated on the president’s vehicle and his remaining
guard. But, just as Connor dared hope they might make their escape, the front tyres of
the Barbiers’ Land Rover were shot out. The driver lost control, hitting the bank,
and the vehicle flipped over. It crashed directly into their path. Connor wrenched the
steering wheel hard left. They swerved, barely missing the upturned Land Rover and
almost overturning themselves. In the back, Henri squealed as he was flung from one side
of the footwell to the other.

‘Do you
actually
know how to drive?’ shouted Amber, clinging on for dear
life, unable to see the chaos unfolding.

Connor nodded. ‘Sure, passed my test
last week.’

But that knowledge didn’t seem to
reassure her. He was about to slam on the brakes and return for her parents when a
gunman in faded army fatigues rushed out from behind a tree, an AK47 targeted on their
vehicle.

Connor realized it would be a death sentence
if he stopped. Ducking behind the dashboard, he accelerated hard. The gunman stood his
ground, emptying his magazine into the charging Land Rover. Over the roar of the engine,
Connor could hear the impact of bullets pinging off the steel bullbar at the front. As
the 4x4 picked up speed, the gap between them and the gunman rapidly closed and for one
horrible moment Connor thought the man wasn’t going to move. Then, with death
almost upon him, he leapt aside. But too late. Connor heard a heavy
thunk
as
the Land Rover’s bullbar caught his trailing leg. In the side mirror, he saw the
man writhing on the ground, alive but out of action. He also glimpsed the
Barbiers’ vehicle, smoke rising from the engine compartment. There was no sign of
life from its occupants.

Connor kept his foot flat to the floor,
telling himself that his priority was Amber and Henri. Not their parents. He hated
having to make such a ruthless decision, but he knew if he turned back now they’d
all be slaughtered.

Rounding a bend and leaving the carnage
behind, Connor spotted a route up the bank and headed for it. He was concentrating so
hard on driving that he failed to
notice the
deep trench running from one bank to the other. Only at the last second did he slam on
the brakes and the Land Rover came skidding to a halt just short of the ditch.

His heart thudding in his chest, Connor
desperately searched for another way out. But with its steep treelined banks the
riverbed made the perfect choke-point for an ambush. Once the trap had been sprung,
there was no escape.

Gunmen rushed out to surround the Land Rover.
But Connor refused to surrender without a fight. With the engine revved to the max, he
threw the gearstick into reverse – almost getting fifth by accident – and sped away from
the trench. It was a desperate decision to head back into the kill zone. But it was his
only option.

The gunmen opened fire and bullets thudded
into the retreating Land Rover.

‘You’re going the wrong
way!’ yelled Amber, her face pale, blood trickling from a cut to her cheek.

‘Just taking a little detour,’
he explained. ‘Hold on, you two!’

Taking his foot off the pedal, he spun the
steering wheel hard right and yanked on the handbrake. The Land Rover went into a spin.
But Connor’s planned J-turn quickly turned into a disaster. Driving on dirt rather
than tarmac, the 4x4’s tyres weren’t as slick and the vehicle only pivoted
halfway before stopping abruptly. The Land Rover keeled over like a ship capsizing in a
storm as Connor and his two Principals clung to anything they could grab. For one
terrifying moment the vehicle threatened to
flip on to its side. Then it lost momentum and righted itself, landing on all four
wheels with a bone-jarring crunch.

Shaken but unhurt, Connor released the
handbrake and spun the wheel the opposite way. As he fought to turn the Land Rover fully
round in the unforgiving sand, the gunmen bore down on them. More rounds peppered the
bodywork, shattering the wing mirror and shredding one of the headrests. As they drew
closer, Connor got his first good look at their attackers and was shocked to see some
were boys his age. One lad in a black bandana, hefting an oversized assault rifle, was
firing with wild abandon into their vehicle as if he was playing a video game.

The glazed, deadened look in the boy’s
eyes was even more disturbing, spurring Connor to get the hell out of there. With a
crunch of gears, they shot off along the riverbed and back round the bend. As they raced
past the Barbiers’ upturned Land Rover, Amber poked her head up and desperately
searched for her parents. The vehicle was now on fire, tendrils of flame and smoke
licking the undercarriage. The roof was half-crushed, blocking their view of the rear
compartment. When Connor caught a glimpse of a bloodied lifeless arm hanging from the
driver’s window, he held out little hope for Laurent or Cerise. Their park ranger
was sprawled a few metres from the wreckage. He’d survived the crash, but not the
bullets through his chest.

Connor drove on and Amber slumped back into
the footwell. Ahead he saw that President Bagaza had been evacuated to the back-up
vehicle, the only functioning
Land Rover
left apart from their own. But he and his guards were under heavy fire. And, with little
cover to protect them, they were being slaughtered. Bodies lay everywhere, the dry
riverbed now flowing freely with their blood.

Connor dared not stop. His only goal was the
dirt road the convoy had come in on. Passing the blazing twisted shell of Minister
Mossi’s Land Rover, he tried not to look at the burning bodies inside. The other
Burundian ministers, who’d been at the rear of the convoy, weren’t anywhere
to be seen and Connor prayed they’d somehow escaped this bloodbath. All of a
sudden the ground in front of their Land Rover erupted as a rocket-propelled grenade
shot past and detonated. Rocks and debris rained down, red dust obliterating all
visibility. Driving blind, Connor instinctively swerved, narrowly avoiding the smoking
crater before bursting out the other side. Then they were tearing up the bank and
leaving the sound of gunfire behind.