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Authors: Paul Christopher

BOOK: The Templar Legion
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Holliday and Eddie began to fire, the AK making its distinctive death rattle and the
Fidelito
sounding like fifty noisy doors slamming.
“Brand ambroster!”
Loki yelled. At fifty yards each of the huge ballistas found its mark, ripping into the Zodiacs and their occupants, sinking thirty-five of the rubber boats. The heavy packs worn by most of the men dragged them under the black water to drown. Crocodiles slid silently from their perches on the riverbanks to slaughter the rest. The few Zodiacs managing to escape the initial barrage were slammed into by the
Sea Dragon
and crushed under her hull. A very few soldiers still in the water were finished off by dozens of blowguns on board.
“
Adios
, pioneers,” Eddie whispered, jacking the empty magazine out of the shotgun.
Loki called out the order, the oars dipped and
Sea Dragon
turned in toward shore.
 
At first it seemed like a rout. There hadn’t been a single survivor at the airport and Lanz hadn’t lost a man, but he was worried. According to Zodiacs A and B, the two inflatables waiting with the amphibians, everything had proceeded on schedule right up to the time the other half of Lanz’s force was supposed to land and make its way inland to the compound. There had been a few garbled messages, some scattered gunfire and then a single transmission about a Viking dragon that no one understood.
By the time Lanz and his men reached the compound it was clear that all hell was breaking loose. A few crazed townspeople were talking about ghosts and silent death, and instead of having to break through the compound with mortar fire, as they’d expected, the entire compound simply threw open the gates and asked to be taken prisoner, something Lanz hadn’t been prepared for.
He discovered Kolingba asleep in his bed, obviously drugged, and without any orders from Matheson he simply handcuffed the snoring dictator to his bedpost.
He tried to radio Nagoupandé’s party, which was being helicoptered in from Maiduguri in northeastern Nigeria, but so far he hadn’t been able to raise them. In the end he simply let the garrison go, collecting all their weapons first, then posted pickets and sat back and waited for Matheson and the new dictator of Kukuanaland to arrive.
By five a.m. there was still no sign of the two hundred men coming in from the river, and their mysterious absence was starting to make his own men nervous. They were beginning to talk about pulling back to the airport, which was not a good sign.
Half an hour later the first reports of mysterious deaths began to reach Lanz in the compound, where he was busily digging the rest of the cash out of Kolingba’s office wall and stashing it in his senior officers’ packs as a bonus. Pickets and guards around the square were turning up dead, unwounded except for something that looked like an oversized blowgun dart. At first Lanz didn’t believe it, but one of the few men left outside the compound brought one to him.
“What do you think, Pierre?” Lanz asked, turning to his old friend and colleague Laframboise.
“My honest opinion, Konrad?”
“As always.”
“This is your ghost, Limbani. I sent a patrol down to the river, six men. Two came back—one babbling and feverish from some kind of blowgun dart that had grazed his leg through his trousers, the other one talking about a dragon boat like the Vikings once used.”
“That’s insane,” said Lanz.
“They say there’s a Viking ship on the river and our Zodiac teams have vanished. They say there are ghost walkers, griots and sorcerers in masks, killing our men with darts, and there you are.” He pointed to the dart on what had once been Kolingba’s desk.
“What do you suggest?”
“How much money did you find in that wall? Twenty, thirty million?”
“Something like that.”
“Then we get out while we can, what’s left of us. We make a flag of truce and march out of this compound and hope we aren’t murdered as we go.”
“Matheson? Nagoupandé?”
“It’s their bed; let them lie in it.”
 
 
When the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter made a pinpoint landing in the center of what had been the Fourandao garrison compound at six thirty a.m., there wasn’t a soul in sight. Brigadier General Francois Nagoupandé, dressed in full uniform, and Sir James Matheson climbed out of the helicopter accompanied by eight heavily armed members of Blackhawk Security as bodyguards.
Papers fluttered in the wind, including several dozen American hundred-dollar bills. Several dead bodies littered the ground, but there wasn’t a living human being anywhere.
“Find out what the bloody hell is going on!” Matheson snarled at the Blackhawk Security force. The men ran off in various directions to search the buildings. A moment later one returned.
“Yes?” Matheson snapped.
“There’s a big fat guy in there asleep, or maybe drugged. He’s handcuffed to his bed.”
“Ah,” said Nagoupandé. “Show me,” he said to the man. They went back into the main building. A moment later there was a single shot.
Nagoupandé reappeared, slipping his Colt .45 back into its holster on his web belt. He had blood spray across the lower part of his face and across the front of his jacket. “The king is dead.”
“Long live the king,” said a voice from the blasted front gates of the compound. Limbani appeared with Holliday on one side and Eddie on the other. Behind them were Jean-Luc Saint-Sylvestre and a half dozen uniformed members of the Kukuanaland secret police. Seeing Limbani, Nagoupandé struggled to drag his gun from its holster. Saint-Sylvestre beat him to it.
“Do something!” Nagoupandé screamed at Matheson.
“I only deal with winners, I’m afraid,” said Matheson smoothly. “Who that is remains to be seen.”
Limbani stepped forward, looking up at the infuriated man in the brigadier general’s uniform. “You look very foolish, Francois. The English have a word for it—popinjay, isn’t that correct, Sir James?”
“You know who I am?” Matheson said, impressed.
“Of course.” Limbani nodded, resting his hand on Saint-Sylvestre’s shoulder. “My nephew has told me a great deal about you and what you wish to do to my country.”
“Your nephew?” Matheson said, dazed. Horribly a number of things clicked into place and the man visibly sagged.
“On his mother’s side.”
Nagoupandé began to scream, his fists clenched like a child having a tantrum. “It’s not your country, Limbani; it’s my country! I am the president of Kukuanaland !”
“No, you’re not,” said Saint-Sylvestre, putting the muzzle of his Glock against Nagoupandé’s forehead. He pulled the trigger, and Nagoupandé slid to the ground like a deflating balloon.
“So,” said Matheson, trying to put some heartiness back into his voice. “Presumably it will be you I’ll be dealing with, Dr. Limbani.”
“No,” said Limbani, “you’ll be dealing with my minister of resources, who is also my foreign minister and who is, by chance, my nephew.
“The first thing you’re going to do,” Limbani continued, “is get back in your helicopter, taking your nasty little friends with you. The next thing you will do after arriving back in England is establish something called the Kukuanaland National Trust, a nongovernmental organization headed up by my friend Colonel Holliday here, as well as his cousin Miss Peggy Blackstock and her husband, Dr. Rafi Wanounou.”
“The purpose of the trust is to develop ideas for utilizing the three-hundred-million-pound endowment you will give the trust for the betterment of the people of Kukuanaland, especially where it regards such things as infrastructure and education. Should you prefer not to establish the trust my nephew can take all of the concrete antitrust and war-crimes information he has on you personally as well as a number of your employees and disperse it throughout the world press as he sees fit. Then perhaps we shall discuss your rare earths; agreed?”
“I’ll be in touch,” said Matheson coldly, his face an angry mask. Without another word he waved the bodyguards back onto the helicopter, followed them aboard and slammed the door shut. The group in the compound stepped back as the rotors began to whir, and a moment later the Black Hawk lifted off the ground, tilted away and disappeared into the morning sky.
“His nephew?” Holliday said to Saint-Sylvestre.
“A spy in the house of love, I believe it’s called.” The secret policeman shrugged his shoulders. “He needed someone on his side to even the odds a little.”
Holliday toed the rumpled body of Nagoupandé, sprawled on the ground and bleeding into the hard-packed earth. “We should get this cleaned up.”
“And after we do,” said Peggy, “I do believe it’s going to be a very nice day.”
“Always the optimist,” said Rafi, smiling fondly at his wife.
Peggy stared at the body on the ground. She shrugged. “Beats the alternative.”
EPILOGUE
 
Eddie and Holliday stayed with Peggy and Rafi for almost three months. It was fall by the time they left Kukuanaland, flown out to Khartoum by the inimitable Mutwakil “Donny” Osman on his rattletrap Catalina. Neither man knew where they were going or what the future held, but the few hours as warriors for a cause again had shaken both men deeply, arousing some strange wanderlust that they both thought it was unlikely they’d be able to satisfy. One thing was sure enough: Holliday wanted to go back to the States for a while, maybe consider teaching again, and even though Eddie could probably get refugee status, especially with Holliday’s sanction, the Cuban was still Cuban enough not to want to give up his passport. He told Holliday what he’d been saying for years, even though he knew it was a lie—“Maybe when Fidel is gone, maybe then it will be better.”
They sat in the very new glass-and-white-marble departure lounge at Khartoum International Airport drinking complimentary coffee and waiting for their flights, Holliday’s to New York via Paris and Eddie’s to the Amazon via a half dozen stops along the way.
“You really think you’ll find work there?” Holliday asked.
“It’s a river, and I’m a river pilot,
mi amigo
. It’s what I do.”
“I’m wondering now if we should have stayed a little while longer with Limbani and his people. You’ve got to admit, it was fascinating.”
“But not for us, Doc,” said Eddie. “It is Peggy and Rafi’s passion, not ours. There’s enough to keep them there for years, maybe for the rest of their lives.”
“Maybe we’re getting too old for passion,” said Holliday.
“Saying that is the
beso de la muerte
,” said Eddie. “The kiss of death.”
“These old bones are starting to ache.” Holliday shrugged. “Maybe I should just retire.”
“Pah!” Eddie snorted. “You are only as old as you think.”
“And I think I’m pretty damn old!” Holliday laughed.
A tall, very distinguished-looking man had been hovering close to their seats in the lounge for the last few minutes and Holliday was wondering when he’d make his move for a few coins or bills. From the neck up he looked like a university professor, right down to the wire glasses and the badly knotted tie. The rest of him was on the slide, a cheap blue suit half a century out of style, frayed at the pockets lap and cuffs. The shoes might have been made of cardboard.
Finally he stepped forward. “Excuse me,” he said, speaking to Eddie in heavily accented English. “I think you are Cuban?”
“Sí
.
”
Eddie nodded.
“I speak very little Spanish. Do you perhaps speak Russian?”
“Da
.
”
The Cuban nodded.
“Otlichno!”
The man beamed happily. Holliday presumed it meant
good
, or
excellent
. The man began to babble away at breakneck speed, plucking at Eddie’s sleeve and finally drawing him a few feet away and muttering softly into his ear, then gave him a small slip of paper, folding it into Eddie’s hand. At first Eddie seemed confused but eventually he shrugged, patted the man on the shoulder and went back to sit beside Holliday. The Russian-speaking gentleman peered at them anxiously.

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