Truthseekers (14 page)

“How are we going to get out?” David whispered in Abbey’s ear. She simply smiled back, went to the cinema screen and pushed a very discreet switch on the side of the screen. It rolled back to uncover a passageway, a little over two metres wide, totally secluded behind what was seemingly a home cinema extravaganza.

“You certainly are one interesting girl, Miss Bec,” David said as Abbey ushered them into the space behind the screen. Dimly lit with what would almost be called black lighting, Abbey smiled and patted him on the behind as he went past. She seemed to find the sexiness in any situation.

She clicked the screen closed behind them and then she spoke up so they could all hear.

“Team, this is no amateur squad. They have breached a very secure perimeter. They are well organised. I would suggest Navy Seal types, hopefully only five or seven of them. They will surely find this place, but we have some forethought on our side. This passage goes both north and south. We will head south; to go north is a dead end in fifty metres. We will head south. My father planned this well for just such occasions. I will keep you safe, but you boys will probably have to shoot someone and you don’t want to piss them off by wounding them. I need you to think of this as a video game, nothing more.”

“All those years of gaming may come in handy,” chirped Rocko

At that moment they heard a loud crack and a thump.

“Quick, they are at the door to the situation room.” said Abbey.

The team moved swiftly down the corridor. As they did so they heard a greater explosion behind them. The thump echoed in the passageway. The assault team had breached the outer door. Soon they would be in the passageway.

After only five metres the south passageway, which was literally plastered to hide what exactly it was made from, cut sharp left. This left passageway went for another fifty metres dead straight. It was too long to lob hand-grenades, yet being caught there would be suicide. David wondered as he trotted along why the hell Abbey’s father would build this. After twenty metres he realised.

The passageway actually started to thin. It was not at first noticeable due to clever design and the use of the lighting and mirrors. In fact as they reached it, they realised that there was an alcove on each side of the passageway that went back in a further recess. Cut into the metal sides of the corridor on each side were holes at different levels, obviously to sight weapons through at the enemy. The recesses were deep enough that even if a grenade were lobbed you could protect yourself behind a second wall, almost a V shape on either side. It was well thought out.

“Quick now, you boys on that side, and I’ll keep Stacey with me. Remember they will be suited up and have vests, so take the legs first, and whatever you do, do not fire until I say the word.”

Abbey literally threw Stacey, who was carrying the laptops in a backpack, behind the second wall and immediately got into her ready position. Rocko took a high hole on the other side and David the low hole lying down on one knee.

Inside the situation room Red Leader as he was known had breached the outer wall. He was a twenty-year veteran mercenary, who had stolen from all sorts of important people and with his band of renegade elite troops had built a nice business acting on behalf of all sorts of dictators, wealthy individuals, oil and pharmaceutical companies since leaving the Australian special forces under a cloud over eight years ago. He had a perfect success record and the team based in Mozambique lived the high life on the beach when they weren’t doing the devil’s work, inflicting pain and stress somewhere across the continent.

He had brought seven men on this journey, scrambling to Cape Town in just a few hours after a call from his intermediary. He had read the dossier on Abigail Beckingsale on the flight, studied the plans of the expansive home in Camps Bay that he had obtained through his web of resources and knew she would be armed and dangerous. He had taken five men inside and positioned his two snipers, one in a van with a passenger and the other on a small ridge above the house. They had taken care of Abbey’s security outside and were now on watch for any counter. He had breached the situation room, shown as a home theatre
on the plan, but he knew she had the jump. His team had already shot several blankets and pillows upstairs. She had anticipated them.

“Search the room, they have been here recently,” he said in a broad accent that identified him as being brought up hard on a cattle farm north of the tropic of Capricorn in Queensland.

He had seen the blankets and pillows David and the team had slept on. His team immediately found the remains of an arsenal. It was a good one, he thought, eyeing a nice M16 for his own use. Come back for it later, he thought.

His team scoured the room while he watched. He knew there was another entrance and then one of the members found it.

“There’s a switch on this screen, Skip.”

“OK boys, be very careful. This woman is nearly as good as we are. Be on your guard.”

The soldier at the screen took out his knife and pried the switch loose, thinking the better of simply pushing the button after Red Leader’s last comment. That was a mistake. The switch was cleverly wired for just such a thing. A small charge in the back of the switch triggered. The responding charge was small enough but surprising enough to throw the soldier back a few metres and remove three of his fingers, leaving bloody stumps and his face covered in blood. Screaming, he hunched over.

Red Leader winced at his soldier’s ignorance. She was smart, this bitch. He would leave his man after quickly attending to him. The man would live, but his career was over, as was his income. He would run out of money, become an alcoholic and eventually die, broke and alone. Red Leader had seen this pattern many times.

The four remaining soldiers literally smashed their way through the panelling behind the screen with the butts of rifles. Soon they were in the passageway. Sizing the directions Red Leader had no choice except to split the remaining four. He took a point man and headed north, the passage that would eventually be a dead end. Another two men headed south, right toward Abbey, David, Rocko and Stacey.

The two foot-soldiers took stock at the first bend, spying the long fifty-metre corridor. They sighted their rifles all the way down, but they did not see the cleverly hidden narrowing or hiding spot of Abbey and the team.

Figuring they may already be at the end of the corridor, one of the men loaded a small stun grenade to his secondary weapon. This grenade would shatter and spread on impact, with shrapnel splintering up to a ten-metre circle on impact. He pointed the gun and fired at the rear wall some fifty metres away. This would stun his opponent and give the second soldier time to make ground; he would then run and fire a second round, past his comrade, peppering the area at the end of the passageway so as not to give time to any survivor to get into position to retaliate. In eight seconds they would be at the end of the passageway, ready for further action or to do hand-to-hand combat.

It was a tried and tested and rehearsed plan, carried out in numerous previous ops. The soldier fired. Rocko felt the whistle of the grenade as it sailed past him at head height four feet to his left. David turned to Abbey across the passage. She did not even flinch. David felt his hair blow back. The missile was deafening on impact and his ears rung.

In the other corridor Red Leader was well advanced, almost to the dead end. There was now over 100 metres separating the two groups. He heard the projectile reverberate though the passage, but this meant nothing. He was on guard for secondary fire.

The two soldiers sprinted up the passageway. It would take just six or seven seconds for them to reach the group. Perhaps they would even notice the walls. The almost black light was now a slight glow from the resulting explosion of the grenade. When the first soldier was just five metres from the group, within one second of reaching them, he started to realise something was wrong. It was almost as if the walls were closing in on him. He couldn’t understand it. Confused, he almost hesitated but in a committed instant it would all be to no avail. He thought he saw a muzzle flash, at least the beginning of it. It was his last thought on this Earth. He took a bullet in the forehead from Abbey’s
Colt 45 that almost removed part of his skull. It was only momentum and size that even kept him in a forward motion, crashing to the floor right next to the entrance to Abbey’s hiding place. She didn’t flinch or even look to him. It was over.

Immediately on hearing the shot, David and Rocko opened fire on the second man. This man was just a couple of yards behind the first and on their side. The soldier seeing in an instant his friend almost beheaded in front of him pivoted right and started to drop to the floor. It was less than a second later and his reaction time couldn’t beat the shots from David and Rocko. David missed completely, yet Rocko’s shot caught the man on his calf muscle and shredded it and bone. At best he would never run again. He fell almost at the entrance to the hiding place. A veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, where he had committed atrocities that saw him never being able to return to his home in the USA, this man had been wounded before. Abbey knew he was not out. As he hit the ground she pushed her leg off the side of her hiding place. Gaining air and making herself a high speed target she literally leveraged herself mid-air over the passage high speed and let a barrage of shots ring true, whilst the soldier simply tried to aim up to hit what he must have thought was a beautiful winged assassin. One of the shots went straight through the cheekbone and tore out his throat and tongue.

Abbey hit the ground reasonably hard but rolled into the same area as David and Rocko crashing into Rocko. She looked into his alert eyes and said: “Imagine seeing you here.” In an instant she had smiled and then ordered the strong Rocko to drag the body up another ten metres in the passage and leave it. She immediately turned and dragged the first man inside her hiding space and repositioned.

Rocko was as strong as an ox. A street fighting half Arab from New Jersey, he had played football as a blocker, as well as ice hockey and lacrosse. His arms were huge and well muscled, his calves like steel and his heart and focus in situations totally aligned and purpose driven.

“Quick – you have about eight seconds,” Abbey noted.

Rocko dumped the second soldier another ten metres up the tunnel and got back into hiding in around seven seconds. It didn’t matter, everything had gone quiet.

Abbey was now back in her original position. Stacey was shaking and trying not to look at the first dead soldier who was almost lying at her feet. Shaking with adrenalin from the ordeal David and Rocko tried to regain composure.

Further back, Red Leader and his point man had made quick time back past the situation room, noticing their comrade had passed out from his injury. “Soft,” thought Red Leader, noting that he should never take on anyone without proven combat experience or who had taken a few knocks in the past. At the corner leading down the passageway they stopped. Red Leader took a mirror and shone it around the corner to establish the situation. In the dim light to which his eyes were accustomed he saw one of his men fallen some thirty or so metres up this passageway. He could not see the second man, nor his adversaries.

Red Leader took a regular grenade from his kit. He would have to throw this to the position of his fallen soldier. He had no illusion that he was alive. He figured on a hiding spot he could not see. As a teenager growing up in Australia he had been a highly regarded cricketer. His ability with a grenade and accuracy was legendary.

He threw the grenade… thirty-five metres. It sailed past the hiding spot and was almost at the dead soldier and it exploded with a huge force. This one nearly knocked David off balance. Immediately he heard Abbey scream and he looked her way. She started with a couple of obscenities and screamed in pain.

“I’ve been hit. Quick they will come – patch me. I can’t use my arm.”

Panicking as soon as he heard the first scream, David turned to Abbey who was winking, smiling and screaming. Rocko had already caught on.

“Jesus, my balls, I’m bleeding. Oh my God no…”

Hearing the cries Red Leader made his move. Driven by rage for his fallen men and the ego of a twenty-year veteran, he was sure he had caused damage and as such misjudged the position. He and his point
man left their secure position and started firing incessantly to clear any chance of retaliation. It did not matter.

Abbey simply unrolled a grenade and flicked it around the corner. The resulting explosion again was deafening and all went quiet. Allowing the smoke to clear for around ten seconds she spied her results.

The point man was unconscious or perhaps dead, face up on the floor in a twisted position. Red Leader had taken a lot of shrapnel, to the legs, face and one arm. His rifle was lying a couple of metres in front of him. Almost totally incapacitated, he was stunned and just starting to come to. Immediately as his awareness returned he started to crawl for his rifle. Abbey simply opened up from her hiding hole and shot him in his other good arm. Writhing from the burn and the bullet that severed his wrist bone he rolled and groaned. Abbey indicated for the group to stay and stepped out to view her work.

“Who are you working for Captain?” she said to the dying man.

“You….” struggling to clear his throat. “You know I cannot tell you. You know I don’t even know. You know how this works.…”

Struggling more, he tried to pull himself up into an upright position so he could spy this woman more clearly. He spat some blood and asked: “Who are you?”

Abbey looked at him firmly and spoke coldly.

“Your saviour, Captain.” And with that she raised her Colt 45 and shot him right between the eyes.

16

“OK everyone, it’s time to move on,” said Abbey now having returned to the group. She noticed that David looked tired and Rocko looked engaged. She thought he had been enjoying the encounter in some weird way.

“David, can you help Stacey? She will be in a little shock. Just head to the end of the corridor and turn left. Wait for me by the door, you’ll see. I will just be a minute. Mind yourselves with the debris down there. That grenade will have made a mess, but this structure is pretty strong. It should be. It’s been here millions of years. We just altered it a little.” And with that she turned and jogged quietly back toward the situation room.