The Watchman (19 page)

I launched myself at him.

He heard me coming and tried to step back, but too late. I slammed into him and used my bodyweight to force him to the ground, slapping my hand across his mouth. He was strong, and struggled like a wildcat, trying to wrench his head away and call for help. I could feel his saliva coating my fingers, threatening to lose my hold on him, so I changed my grip and jammed my forearm down hard across his throat to cut off any sound. Then I thrust the Ka-bar in under his ribs, towards the heart.

He struggled briefly for a few seconds, the life draining out of him. Then he went limp and lay still.

It had taken only seconds but I knew my time was up. The other guard would be back soon. I tipped the body over the wall of the waste pit. He was all skin and sinew and weighed very little, and I lowered him as far as I could, then let him go. He dropped into whatever lay at the bottom with barely a sound.

I dropped his rifle in after him. Hopefully, if they found him, it would look as if he'd stumbled in the dark and fallen in.

I
woke after sunrise and lay still, tuning in, adjusting to the sounds and feel of a new day and thinking briefly about the man I'd killed. It had been him or me, a simple trade-off, but I knew it would be with me for a long while yet.

I forced the thoughts away and listened to birds calling somewhere behind me, and the faint hiss of the ocean to the front. It was a strange contrast. I rolled over and checked the villa. It looked out of place along this stretch of coast with its thatched huts and palm trees, and anywhere else it would have been a harmless, if decrepit dwelling long past its use-by date.

Only now I knew better.

I watched for a full ten minutes, wary of moving in case a guard was awake and watching. Nothing moved, which told me they probably weren't expecting company anytime soon, so I slid back down into my hole and dropped some iodine tablets into the bottle of water I'd bought from Madar. I gave it a shake, hoping it would be enough to counter any local contamination.

My sat phone gave a soft buzz. It was Piet.

‘How's it going, man?'

‘I'm good. Seen anything?'

‘That Skytruck from yesterday – it's back in the area.' He sounded pissed off. ‘Nearly took me out, coming in out of nowhere at less than five-hundred feet. Soon as I get back to Malindi, I'm reporting him to air traffic for flight violation. If he thinks I didn't get his registration, the asshole, he's got a surprise coming.'

‘Can you hold off on that for a few hours?' I wasn't worried about some bush pilot getting into trouble for illegally overflying the border; but if the Kenyans decided to look into it immediately, which was a possibility with their troops in the area to the north, it could screw with the SIS meeting and put lives in danger. ‘I could use the registration, though.'

‘Yeah, no sweat.' He read out the number. ‘I'll leave it until this evening. Take care and keep your head down. I'll be in the area for a while yet, keeping an eye on things.' He clicked off and I switched on the hearing device and tuned in. Nothing at first, then I picked up a mumble of voices speaking in Somali and the clatter of movement. Early morning stuff, slow and sleep-heavy. No English voices, though.

I checked through the scope. Two guards patrolling, looking like they'd been up all night. One of them stopped by the waste pit and stared at the ground around it, but didn't check inside. Then he stared off towards the beach for a moment before shaking his head and continuing his patrol. It looked like the guard had been posted as a runner.

I called Vale. He sounded as if he hadn't slept much, either. ‘Our people failed to report in as scheduled yesterday evening,' he explained without preamble. ‘Moresby received a text from Pryce early in the morning, saying they were leaving Nairobi, but he's heard nothing since then.'

‘They're here at the villa,' I told him. ‘I'm monitoring talk in the building but haven't picked up anything useful yet.' I mentioned what Madar had said about Musa coming in by sea, and gave him the number of the Skytruck. It was up to him what he did with the information.

‘Good. I'm not sure what I can do with this without revealing your presence, but I'll talk to the Americans. They might be able to spot the plane's movements on their cameras.' He hesitated. ‘Did you say you've bugged the villa?'

‘Yes. Thanks to the wonders of the open market in hi-tech gadgets.'

‘Christ, you're a tricky bugger.' He sounded almost impressed. ‘The bodyguard's name is Doug Tober, by the way. He's ex-Special Boat Service.'

‘Good.' Being ex-SBS carried no guarantees that they would get out of the situation they had been placed in, but it did mean Tober was of the calibre to think fast if the situation arose. I just hoped he wouldn't have to.

Vale said goodbye and clicked off and I went back to watching the villa and listening to the audio. There was no sign of anybody leaving to meet up with the Skytruck, and I wondered if it had been told to stay away. At one point Madar came out with food for the two guards. I held my breath as he looked my way for a moment before going back inside. I hoped he wasn't having second thoughts about telling his colleagues about me. If he did, I was cooked.

I studied the terrain around me through the scope, and thought about the area inland. I hadn't seen anywhere better than this on my way into town, but I figured it would be good to have a fall-back position in case things got hairy. Having a large empty space to hide in gave me only a slight advantage if they came looking for me; I'd be able to use the cover of dead ground, and if they got too close, I'd see them coming. But once blown, I'd be out in the open with only that large empty space to run to.

The sun came up and the heat settled on the ground like a heavy woollen blanket. It brought flies and other bugs, and I sipped water in between squirting military-grade insect repellant around me. It was guaranteed aroma-free and had been developed especially for forward observers in hostile territories where alien fragrances would be instantly noted. I hoped the manufacturers had got genuine Department of Defence approval, otherwise I was going to have a bunch of Somali gunmen sniffing around my hide like dogs on heat.

Even the guards began to look lethargic, and I tried not to look beyond the villa at the ocean, where birds resembling gannets were swooping and diving into the clear blue water. Above my head a couple of birds I thought might be drongos flitted about in the branches, and I wished them a long and pleasant stay. Anything that smacked to the guards of normality was fine by me.

Still no recognizable talk from the bug on the house, just a lot of chatter in Somali and the sounds of a bunch of men talking about stuff. Occasionally I heard a drumming sound in the background, but it was impossible to determine what it was.

But I did recognize the sounds of weapons being dismantled and cleaned. Some things sound the same in every language.

It was close to midday when things got busy.

Everything had been quiet for a while, and even the birds had gone to lunch, when I heard engines coming from the direction of Kamboni. I checked my cover and pulled the ghillie around my head and shoulders, and waited to see what was happening.

From inside the house I could hear a babble of voices, and Xasan trying to get some order.

Moments later, two pickups skidded to a stop near the villa. They were full of armed men toting AKs, some wearing bandoliers of ammunition slung across their chests. Something told me they weren't here on a casual outing.

Some of the men inside wandered out to meet them, and they all exchanged greetings and hugs like long-lost pals. Xasan showed his fat face but stayed in the background like a kid who hadn't been invited to the party.

There was a lot of talk, with much gesticulating from Xasan's men towards the area around the building. I took this to be about the missing guard. But it clearly didn't interest the newcomers much, and they soon piled back into the pickups and roared off back the way they had come.

A short while later, as everyone was settling down, a Kenyan military transport plane flew over. The sight of it had the guards and some of the other men running around like chickens, shouting at each other and pointing their rifles at the sky. I watched through the scope as the plane flew out to sea and banked to the right, before making its way back inland and disappearing from sight.

At that point one of the guards decided he'd had enough excitement and decided to take a pee in the waste pit.

He stood there doing his thing and eyeing the scenery, then finally he did what all guys do in these circumstances: he looked down to check nothing important had dropped off.

Then he began shouting.

It took them ten minutes of arguing and gesticulating before they found a way of getting the dead man out of the pit. It involved two lengths of wood and some rope, and nobody seemed too keen on handling the body or the muck it was covered in. They eventually managed to spill it on to the ground, where they stood and yakked over it at length as if it might suddenly spring back to life.

Xasan played no part in the proceedings, but he made it pretty clear what he thought: that some idiots can't walk in a straight line without tripping over their feet. He eventually waved a hand in disgust and waddled away, leaving them to it.

After more talk, three men wrapped the body in an old tarpaulin and took it out of sight, while the others went back inside the house.

Minutes later I heard some banging and shouting through the audio feed, and a very English female voice.

‘
Why have you got us shut in down here?'

Angela Pryce, and she sounded pissed.

The next voice I heard was in heavily accented English. I assumed it was Xasan.

‘You have five minutes to clean yourselves. Then you can eat.'

‘What's happening?' Pryce's voice was hoarse and dry and I guessed they had been locked in somewhere since arriving yesterday. It couldn't have been pleasant with the heat and the rough conditions, and whatever they had been fed would have been cold rations. ‘What was all the shouting about?'

‘Don't ask questions,' Xasan said snappily. ‘If you do not do as I say, Mr Tober will be shot. It is your choice.'

‘Like you ordered the ranger shot down, you mean?'

Piet
.

I grabbed my sat phone and hit the speed dial to call him, thinking Pryce really shouldn't have given away the fact that they had understood Somali. You never, ever let the opposition know you understand more than they think. Once you do that, you've lost whatever small advantage you might have had.

As the phone began ringing at the other end, I heard the distant pops of gunshots drifting in on the air.

T
he shot was a fluke, Piet de Bont figured. Nobody got that good first time, not against a moving target high overhead. It zinged off one of the wheel struts and set off a vibration through the framework, and that was close enough for him.

‘Bastard!' He automatically put the nose down, taking the microlight to starboard while searching below for signs of drifting gun smoke. He'd been shot at enough times by poachers to know the signs, and most were merely a warning to stay away. The poachers knew he was in no position to shoot back. They also knew he had radio contact with his base at the KWS and experience told them that it would take time for an armed patrol to get out here. By then they'd be long gone.

But this was different. There were no poachers in this immediate area so close to the border – he'd already checked. And the sudden appearance of a bullet hole in the fabric of the wing just above his head meant this was no warning. They were shooting for real.

They wanted him dead.

The engine howled as he struggled to lose height fast enough while getting as far away from the shooter as possible. Over-committing and folding everything around him wouldn't do him any good; with over a thousand feet to go he'd be dead. He looked down, checking for signs of a vehicle; the poachers didn't walk in to pursue their trade, but drove in and out, ready to move fast if a patrol showed up.

Nothing. The heat haze was making everything shimmer, and although he thought he caught a glimpse of a pickup at one point, he'd shifted position before he could zero in on it.

He aimed for a point about a kilometre away, dropping as fast as he dared to give the shooter the impression that he was damaged and going in hard. He wasn't too concerned about the hole; the fabric was unlikely to tear unless it got hit on the trailing edge, then it would rip right through. But damage to the frame was more serious. No frame, no flight.

End of game.

As he coasted in above a section of narrow track, he felt his cell phone buzzing in his breast pocket. Not his base, then; they'd have used the radio. Had to be Portman. He focussed on the ground ahead as the wheels clipped some long grass at the side of the track. It was safe to land here and he'd got a fuel and water cache nearby for emergencies. He came to a stop and leapt out, reaching for his rifle. If the shooter decided to come visit and finish him off, he'd be in for a surprise. Piet knew the bush and was expert at using the most minimal of cover as camouflage. After spending a couple of years on border patrol with the South African NDF, dodging poachers, smugglers and groups of armed intruders, often out for a couple of weeks at a time, he could vanish as effectively as any wild game.

He took out his cell phone and rolled beneath the cover of a dried thorn bush.

‘Yeah, what?'

‘You OK? I heard shots.'

‘Yeah, I'm fine. What makes you think they were firing at me?'

Portman relayed the brief conversation he'd overheard in the villa.

Piet muttered an oath. ‘I thought it was poachers. What the hell are these people doing? The moment I get on the radio, they'll have the KWS, army and border patrols all over them.' He took the phone away from his ear for a moment to listen for sounds of an approaching vehicle, but everything was quiet save for the buzz of insects.