Dead Centre

1

Both of us were sweltering inside our pepper-pots once more. We were hidden behind a couple of upturned skiffs on the beach next to the harbour. The stone pier was a continuation of the road that came down from the court-house square. It jutted out to sea for about a hundred metres, and then did a dog-leg to our left and continued for another fifty. The stonework was crumbling badly. Maybe that was why no boats were moored anywhere near it.

From where we were, the court-house was at the top of the road on the right. The compound was to the right of that. A small alleyway divided them. The long shadows cast by the buildings behind us were fading fast. Awaale still had his mobile stuck to the blue material covering his ear.

He looked at me and shook his head. ‘Still nothing.’

The fucker. I knew Erasto’s skiffs were out there, in the dead ground behind the cargo ships. We’d watched them come along the coast and take cover about two hours ago. They also had a mobile-phone signal. Awaale had been chatting to them regularly, giving his orders for the attack like the true leader he was.

Now they were silent, just like Anna. I’d tried her twice since the first beach call. All I’d got was the Arabic pre-record. The message was so fast and loud it sounded like she was giving me a bollocking.

I checked my iPhone as adhan kicked off from the mosque’s speaker system. It was four minutes past six. It wouldn’t be long before igama, the second call to line up for Maghrib. We needed to be on target by then.

This wasn’t good. The skiff crews should be answering their mobiles. Awaale needed to give them the order to move into the harbour. They should be on their way in by now. Erasto was getting enough fucking cash. Or maybe he thought there was more where that came from, and all he had to do was bide his time.

There were five skiffs, but I had no idea how many crew between them. Awaale said it was going to be no problem, he’d got it sorted. They were supposed to come from the other side of the cargo ships and hold position beyond the stretch harbour wall that ran parallel to the beach, covered from view and from fire. Those boats were our way out.

We’d RV with them down there. We’d get on board, have one final brief, and arrange the fire support group. Awaale liked the phrase ‘fire support group’. He’d been saying it all day, shoving it in between the Somali waffle as he spoke to the crews on his mobile.

The fire support group would stay with the skiffs, to protect them and cover our move back down the road from the square. Awaale would take the rest of the crew with him. This assault group would split into two. One would pound the court-house with RPGs, machine-guns, everything they had, killing anyone running out of it and any AS who decided to leg it from the mosques and back up their mates. As that kicked off, Awaale would take me and the rest of his guys around the back of the court-house, along the dividing alleyway and into the compound. The locals would be at prayers. The one rule was: no zapping civilians. Apart from anything else, we’d be in enough shit if we were captured without having that hanging round our necks.

There had to be AS in the court-house, even at prayer time. And the prisoners next door had to be guarded. I’d seen six hard men in the compound an hour ago, sitting in the shade while the prisoners found shelter where they could. The new lot were the group of four we’d passed in the street earlier this morning, headed up by the tall Pakistani.

All I was going to do was scream into the compound and tell everybody to take cover before Awaale’s team got busy with the RPGs. The crew’s orders were then to kill any AS they saw, while I went and dragged the five of them out. Simple as that.

I’d steer them behind the court-house while Awaale kept giving us fire support — and then we’d get our heads down and leg it along the road to the skiffs. Awaale and his crew would then withdraw, and we were off. In and out in ten minutes.

That was if the fuckers answered Awaale’s call.

2

Adhan was still being called. The muezzins’ wails drifted from minarets all over town.

I nudged Awaale. ‘Try again. If there’s nothing, we’re on our own.’

I gripped the AK under my burqa. Even if these fuckers let me down, at least it looked like BB was in the mood for a fight. And if Ant and Dec had two brain cells between them, they’d throw their lot in with us as well for their own survival. I’d worry about what to do with them once we were out of this shit. If they didn’t want to help, that wasn’t a problem. I’d just do what I was there to do.

Now igama was being called. Time to cut away from Awaale.

I pointed at the upturned skiffs. ‘I’ll meet you back here. Try and get one of these fucking things into the water. If you can’t, we’ll chuck a left and get back down the beach. We’ll just have to take our chances.’

His mobile rang.

I dropped back to my knees. ‘I told you to turn that fucking thing off.’ I poked his shoulder with my finger. ‘Keep it on vibrate. We’re not supposed to be here, are we? We should be praying.’

‘Sorry, Mr Nick.’

He answered the mobile with a voice that was a lot quieter than the ring. I could tell by his tone that he wasn’t getting any good news. The arc lamps in the square made the place look like a football stadium. I could just about make out the shape of his pepper-pot head in the ambient light as he stared at me through the mesh.

‘Erasto … He wants more money. He wants four million.’

‘He can have three. And I want an answer, yes or no, right now. If he delays this deal, it isn’t worth a thing. It’s going to be too late because they’ll be dead. Tell him three million, yes or no. I’ve no time to fuck about.’

He put his hands up. ‘Yes, yes, yes.’

Erasto must have heard me. I fucking hoped so. Awaale mumbled into the phone as I got back to my feet. He brought it down from his ear, and I saw the screen light dim.

‘He’s thinking.’

I leant closer to him, keeping my voice low. ‘Well, while he’s thinking, they’ll be dying. I’m going up there now. He’s fucking playing me, isn’t he?’

The pepper-pot nodded, almost imperceptibly. ‘You were expecting that, no? This is business. I heard your call today.’

‘If you still think this is business, Awaale, you’re missing the point. There are two kinds of people up in that compound: my friends, and your enemies. He’s not going to get more money out of me, so fuck the lot of you.’

I heard a shout from where the road met the harbour wall. A male voice, and angry. An AS fighter strode towards us, yelling the same word, over and over. I didn’t know what it was, but didn’t need Awaale to translate. We were in the shit and getting a bollocking, big-time.

AK slung over his shoulder, he gesticulated furiously at us as he moved closer. We stayed on our knees, kept our heads low, acting subservient. The AS kicked sand at us. I hoped he was just asking why the fuck we weren’t at prayers.

Awaale mumbled something in a high-pitched voice. It was pathetic. He shouldn’t have done it. Luckily the AS was too busy shouting and kicking sand to be able to hear. We tumbled to our feet, but kept submissive. Awaale started to walk away, back along the beach. I followed.

I glanced back. The AS picked up a couple of rocks and came after us, still yelling abuse. He hurled one of his freshly gathered missiles towards us. It missed me but hit Awaale square between his bony shoulder-blades. It must have hurt like fuck. I heard a grunt, then felt a kick on my left thigh. His sandal made contact first with the AK under the burqa. The magazine rattled. The sound was unmistakable. And I knew he would have felt the solid wooden stock.

He unslung his own weapon and stepped back. I started to raise my AK, but I knew I was a nanosecond behind the curve.

Awaale rushed past me, hand held high in the air. He brought the rock down hard on top of the AS warrior’s head.

The AS went down. Awaale dropped to his knees in the sand and the rock rose and fell again and again and again.

Awaale’s mobile started to ring.

The screen glowed in the sand. I picked it up.

‘Erasto? It’s Nick. Si o no? Si o no?’

Awaale stood over what was left of the AS, fighting for breath. He dropped the rock, knelt briefly beside the body and wiped his bloodied hand on the dead man’s shemagh.

I passed him the mobile. There was about fifteen seconds of waffle. He pulled off the head of his pepper-pot and threw it on the ground. ‘Erasto says yes.’

He began to fish his rings out of his pockets to put them back where they belonged.

I grabbed him with my spare hand, making sure I kept the other on the weapon. ‘Mate, I’m going now. By the time Erasto’s lads get here and you’ve sorted them out, we might have run out of time. If they do make it, remember this: the crew looking after the skiffs, the fire support group, they must not fire at anything coming up or down the road that leads to the harbour wall. Do you get that?’

‘Yes, Mr Nick. I know. They know.’

‘Tell them to fire left and right, if AS are following us. They can drop anything that moves left or right of us, but not down the middle.’

‘Yes, of course. No problem. Trust me. It will be a great victory.’

‘Good. Now keep the fucking noise down, and put your mobile on vibrate. Remember the diagram in the sand. Even if I’m too late to lift them, you must still come up, you must still support me. The fire support group down by the skiffs, they will still support you. All clear?’

‘Yes, Mr Nick. I have everything under control. We’re going to kill many, many al-Shabab.’

‘First we will rescue my friends. Killing al-Shabab is a bonus. You’ll be able to tell your war stories, but only if you keep your head. This is a rescue mission. This is the reason we’re here.’

‘Yes, yes. I remember. No problem, Mr Nick.’

His mobile vibrated. He answered. I didn’t wait to find out who it was. If Erasto had changed his mind, well, fuck him. I had to get up to the compound. With or without the crew, it was happening.

I skirted the body in the sand. The harbour wall was soon behind me. I faced the road that ran uphill. The light in the square sat like a glowing bubble in the inky black sky. Shadows danced in the dust. Bodies milled around. The faithful had finished their prayers.

I picked up my pace, the weapon back under the burqa, firmly by my side.

My iPhone vibrated in my pocket.

Fucking Awaale. He could really pick his moment.

I ducked into a doorway and pulled it from my pocket.

My eyes stared through the mesh towards the bodies at the top of the road. They were no more than a hundred metres away.

I muttered into the mouthpiece, ‘Just get on with it, for fuck’s sake.’

‘Nick? It’s me, Jules.’

‘It’s OK. I’ve found them. I—’

‘No, no. It’s not that, Nick. It’s Anna. She’s been shot.’

3

I leant heavily against the planks that made up the door. For a split second I felt nothing. Then a wave of dread surged through me.

‘How bad?’

‘Not sure yet. She’s on a casualty boat out of Misrata. They’re taking her to Benghazi. To the hospital at Al-Jaraa.’

‘They?’

‘The French. Benghazi is as far as it’s safe for her to be moved.’

‘I can’t do anything, mate. Can—’

‘Nick — stop. I’ll take care of it. She just wanted you to know.’

‘She called you?’

‘She didn’t want to worry you while you’re on the ground. Where are you now?’

‘Merca.’

I cut off. I couldn’t do anything about her at the moment. All I could do was try to speed things up this end. Get it done, and get north.

I headed towards the square. The arc lamps were blinding. Centre stage, above the holes, more spotlights strung along the fence made sure the punters wouldn’t miss any part of the drama.

The gates were open. I couldn’t see anyone in the compound. All I could see were four old wooden wheelbarrows beside the holes. They were full of rocks the size of cricket balls, all ready to go. It didn’t matter where my three were. They’d be coming out here any minute to face their punishment.

Crowds of people kept spilling out of the mosques. There were a lot of women dressed like me. There was no cheering; no raised voices. It was all very sombre. Only the madrasah kids, a hundred or so of the little fuckers, were getting sparked up. The mullahs were busy herding them towards the ringside. Even the two old guys we’d stepped aside for this morning had dragged their kids along for the show. Everyone else seemed almost scared.

I eased my way through the heaving mass, careful not to clip anyone I passed with the AK. I needed to be up close and personal, just like the blind kids. Bodies steamed around me. Flies and mosquitoes buzzed around the lights.

I got as near to the gate as I could. My eyes drilled into the compound. AKs slung over their chests, AS hard men herded us with thin, whippy sticks. We moved like a shoal of fish as the square continued to fill.

The door opened into the compound. A gasp rippled through the crowd.

Two AS brought out one of the three Somali men I’d seen hiding from the sun this morning. Behind him, another two AS, one of them the Pakistani, hefted a wooden table.

A guy in a white skull-cap and ginger beard appeared. A murmur spread through the crowd. This guy was feared. He followed the procession towards the gate.

The Somali wasn’t happy. He kept shaking his head, his hands joined in supplication. If he was expecting sympathy from Skullcap, he was about to be seriously disappointed. The AS turned him back, shoving him on with bunched fists. They halted him just short of the holes. The table was put in front of him.

Skull-cap was dressed in a brown dish-dash and cotton trouser combo, with a pair of rubber flip-flops. His ginger beard rested on the black-and-white check shemagh wrapped around his neck. A machete dangled from his waist. He was young, no more than early thirties. Smooth-skinned. Really hard eyes that glinted in the harsh light. Pupils dilated. He shouted at the crowd, pointing at the trembling wreck who’d been selected as the warm-up act.

There was no ceremony. The Pakistani forced the Somali’s exposed arm onto the tabletop. Skull-cap drew his machete, raised it high and brought it down. The blade took off the Somali’s hand and half his forearm. The Pakistani released his prisoner and he fell to the ground, at first numb with shock, then screaming with pain. The arm rolled off the other side of the table and fell onto the sand.

Skull-cap bent down and picked up the severed limb by the thumb. He held it up to the crowd as the clothes-stealer was led away towards the school. The kids parted like the Red Sea for Moses. They stared open-mouthed at the mess that was left of his stump and the blood it dripped into the dust.

The oldest of the mullahs, stern and grey, slapped the miserable offender across the head with his shoe. He then beat the sole across his back as he was dragged towards the school. This lad was going to be taught the error of his ways, Wahhabi style, before he received any medical treatment — if he ever did.

The other mullahs sorted out the kids and herded them back into the pack for the main event.

4

Skull-cap screamed and shouted as the Pakistani led his AS team back inside. He wasn’t shouting to them, but to the crowd. He pointed at us, then jabbed his finger skywards. His words were rapid and aggressive.

A different kind of murmur swept through the crowd as the two Somali couples were led out. This time it was disapproval. Some hissed.

All four moved very slowly. They didn’t have to be pushed. Their heads were down. They’d given up hope. The women had their heads covered but their faces showing. As they made their way through the compound they displayed no emotion, not even fear. They were led to where Skull-cap waited by the bloodstained table.

I couldn’t believe they wouldn’t at least try to run. They stood in front of their allotted holes, heads down, eyes half closed against the light.

Still screaming at the crowd at the top of his voice, Skull-cap thrust his hand under the chin of each prisoner, lifting the head for all to see.

As he passed each victim and moved on to the next, the Pakistani pushed them into the holes. They had to kneel, with only their head and the tops of their shoulders showing above ground.

A group of young guys arrived from nowhere at the front of the crowd. They wore the same kind of headgear as the boss, and black-and-white shemaghs. Their eyes burnt with zeal. They shovelled sand into the holes to hold the bodies firm. The two women cracked. Both burst into tears. The men rocked back and forth in prayer. The youths shovelled faster to pack them in.

The four AS big dogs headed back inside the building.

My chest heaved. I couldn’t help it. My breath quickened. I tried to control it. My skin broke into a sweat. My whole body felt like it was going to burst.

Anna filled my head. I was going to lose the only two women I cared for in the space of the same night.

Where the fuck was Awaale?

The Pakistani led Tracy out. She carried Stefan in her arms. His head was on her shoulder, his legs wrapped around her, her arms wrapped around him. She was struggling to carry him. Both of them shielded their eyes from the bright lights, as they started the long walk.

It took all three of the other al-Shabab to bring BB out.

Skull-cap shrieked, pointing at these evil people coming towards us like they were Satan come to Merca.

BB’s eyes darted around. He was trying to suss out what was going on. It dawned on me. They didn’t know what the fuck was happening. Otherwise he would have tried something by now. The three of them were dead men walking. What had they got to lose?

They reached the gates. The old school mullah walked up to Tracy and grabbed Stefan. The boy was his now. But Tracy had other ideas.

She pulled back her child and uttered a long, heart-wrenching cry that silenced the crowd. The women around me moaned quietly. Hands went up to mouths as Stefan hollered out for his mother. His arms clung tightly around her neck as Tracy tried to break the old mullah’s grip.

Skull-cap brandished his blood-covered machete at her and yelled to the crowd.

BB didn’t move a muscle to help her. He did exactly what he should have done. He looked around, taking everything in, wondering what the fuck he was going to do with the information.

BB then saw the four getting buried, and the two empty holes, and knew precisely what was about to happen.

I moved forward from the crowd, pushing up the burqa so I could get the weapon into my shoulder.

5

The Pakistani swung to face the crowd. He would have seen straight away why they were screaming and who they were running from.

As I got the weapon into the shoulder I pushed the selector all the way down to single shot. The Pakistani fixed his eyes on me. I had both eyes open, focused on the foresight. The Pakistani pushed BB out of the way to get his own weapon up but he was too slow. My weapon kicked and he went down. I’d got him with one round into the chest.

The noise around me faded the further the crowd dispersed. Then I heard gunfire. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from or where it was going. Tracy was just metres away now. Stefan had disappeared.

One of the other AS big dogs was bringing his AK up but BB had grabbed the Pakistani’s weapon and gave him a three-round burst. He helped himself to a chest harness full of mags.

‘Tracy! Tracy! Here — with me! It’s Nick! It’s Nick!’

BB was still firing. He took on the other AS to my right.

‘It’s Nick!’

Tracy couldn’t compute.

‘It’s Nick!’

BB looked round. He got it.

I grabbed hold of Tracy and pulled off my burqa at the same time. I wanted to get her into the shelter of the wall. Rounds rained in from the right of the compound.

She was rooted to the spot; confused; scared.

‘Nick …?’

‘Come on.’

I grabbed hold of her and began dragging her into cover. BB was changing mags. I got eye-to-eye with him and he started closing in. I pulled her down on her knees, so that her head was below the parapet. The crowd was still scattering in all directions. They didn’t know which way to run. The fire was coming from the court-house. They could get a lead on us pretty much anywhere they liked if we tried to make a break for it across the open ground.

BB took up position alongside us and knelt with the AK.

Tracy tried to pull away from me. ‘Stefan! I must get Stefan!’

She pointed frantically at the madrasah. ‘Stefan!’ She tried to crawl past me.

Everything was total confusion but her screams were louder than the crowd’s.

I looked over the wall. Skull-cap was on the veranda of the main building with the others, weapon up. They were shouting, more in anger than in fright. They’d been done out of a good day’s stoning.

To our right, the Somali women scrabbled to get out of the dirt. The lads accused of shagging them were well and truly gone.

The skull-caps on the veranda popped in and out of the doors like Swiss cuckoos, firing indiscriminately at anything that moved. A burqa’d figure took a hit at the edge of the square and tumbled into the dust.

A burst stitched along the wall the other side of us. 7.62 is a big-calibre round. The sound of at least a dozen of them thumping into the block-work nine inches from our heads was deafening. I felt the tremors.

I pushed Tracy down flat and crouched over her as BB got his AK over the wall and gave it bursts towards the court-house.

I jumped up, my legs astride Tracy’s back, and put some rounds down towards the veranda.

Still no sign of Awaale.

I yelled across at BB, ‘They’re going to be all over us. Take her down to the beach, turn left, get out of the town. We’ll RV somehow. I’ve got a skiff there waiting. Just get out of the town. You’ll see me moving along the beach. I’m going to go and get Stefan.’

More rounds slammed into the far side of the wall. Tracy sobbed into the dust. ‘My baby … my baby …’

We jumped back down.

‘Fuck, Nick — did you come on your own? Whatever. Thank fuck …’ He slapped a hand on my shoulder.

I shook my head. ‘I thought I’d brought backup, mate. But the fuckers seem to have left us to it.’

I grabbed another look over the wall. A cloud of grey smoke erupted from a corner of the compound and the back blast kicked up a storm of sand. The sustainer motor kicked in and the round screamed towards us.

‘RPG!’

We ducked. But it wasn’t coming for us. Chunks of breezeblock and rendering blasted in all directions from the court-house. Debris rained down on us like hailstones.

Screams, shouts and the rattle of automatic fire came from the far side of the madrasah.

6

‘BB, listen in! That’s my backup. We’re RVing with them down at the harbour. They’ve got boats. Make sure they take you down the road, right of the court-house. You’ve got to stay on the road.’

Rounds zinged in all directions as chaotic and drugged-up shouts and screams echoed around the square. Tracer bounced off the ground and whizzed into the sky. A machine-gun opened up somewhere the other side of the obelisk. More shouts and screams; then a couple of lines of a rap song and taunts from the crew aimed at the court-house. Above it all I heard, ‘Mr Nick! Mr Nick!’

Awaale and his crew charged up the alley between the court-house and the compound like the Seventh Cavalry. Muzzle flashes flickered at the windows of another building maybe 150 metres away. BB loosed off a couple of short bursts in return.

‘Over here, mate! On me! On me! Awaale!’

The rounds were hurtling in from everywhere and everyone. Tracer zapped into and out of the court-house and from the buildings surrounding the square. We lay in the dust. I kept Tracy covered. Partly to protect her, partly because she kept trying to get up and run.

Awaale arrived alongside us with half a dozen of his crew. Their teeth glistened with khat juice. They were totally off their tits. They squatted and bounced, fired a couple of bursts, squatted and bounced, fired a couple more, not really caring who they hit.

Awaale gobbed off into his radio, probably creating even more chaos.

I put my mouth to Tracy’s ear. ‘It’s OK. I’ll get him.’ I kept my voice level. ‘You go with BB. These lads will look after you, OK? I’ll get him, I promise.’

She twisted her head. I could see the fear in her red, tear-filled eyes.

BB cut in: ‘Yep, no problem. I’ll take care of her. I’ll keep her with me.’

She didn’t want to leave her son. ‘Nick — no!’

‘Stefan will be OK. I’m going to go and get him. Awaale!’

The fucker was only about three metres away but he still wasn’t answering me. He was too busy shouting at everyone else on his radio.

‘Awaale!’

Screams and howls came from the crews both sides of the court-house as they revved up. An RPG kicked off to our right and flew straight down the middle of the square. It shaved the obelisk and slammed into a building fifty metres further on. There was a bright orange flash and lumps of concrete flew into the air.

‘Awaale!’

‘Yes, Mr Nick!’

‘Let’s take them down to the harbour. Remember, only on the road, dead centre. Let’s go!’

I grabbed BB. ‘Take her now, with these lads. I’ll get Stefan and we’ll RV at the boats. Awaale!’

The fucker had evaporated again.

Two technicals came screaming towards us from the direction we’d taken this morning. The guns’ heavy reports reverberated above the rest of the shit around us. Tracer zoomed over our heads. Some hit the obelisk.

‘Awaale!’

‘Yes, OK, I am here, Mr Nick!’

He stepped out of the gloom. He was soaked with sweat. His hands glinted with jewellery. Any passing Black Hawk wouldn’t have stood a chance while he was in this mood.

‘Get some fire down on those fucking technicals!’

‘It’s no problem, Mr Nick. It’s my crew. They landed in the wrong place so they took the AS technicals. This is very good, Mr Nick. This is a great victory.’

‘No, it fucking ain’t great! You’ve got to control them, mate.’

On cue, their tracer kicked into the compound building. Some of it scudded into the shallow graves the girls had finally pulled themselves out of. If they hadn’t, they would have been history.

‘You got fucking rounds going all over the place. Control them! Get the fucking technicals here, get this lot on board, and let’s get them down to the boats. I’m going to go and get the boy. He’s in the madrasah.’

Awaale waffled into his radio. His crew ran about laughing manically, firing, shouting.

I got up. ‘BB, take Tracy. Now. Get her on the technicals as soon as they come over.’

Tracy struggled to her knees. ‘No, Nick — no …’

‘Tracy, it’s OK. Stefan will be just fine.’ I pointed to Awaale. ‘You’re going to get the other two white lads out of there as well, remember. Erasto wants to kill them.’

‘No problems, Mr Nick. We’ll take care of them.’

The technicals came bouncing across the square, all guns blazing. If they’d heard Awaale tell them to stop firing, they weren’t taking any notice. As they bounced, tracer arced over the court-house. It was probably landing in the sea or zapping our own boats. Some of it scudded off the dirt and ricocheted into random buildings.

I pushed Tracy down once more. ‘Awaale!’

He was busy shouting orders. An RPG kicked off from fuck knew where.

We couldn’t move.

7

As the wagons came closer I caught sight of the gunner’s star-shaped, white-framed sun-gigs. The sun had gone down hours ago, but that didn’t bother him. And the driver, for fuck’s sake, was on his mobile. He looked like he was larging it with a blow-by-blow account for the benefit of the girls back home.

BB was out of ammunition. I threw him my day sack with the spare mags. I turned and shouted to one of the crew. I wanted the pistol he had tucked into the back of his jeans. He lay in the dust by the gate, firing at the completely strike-marked court-house. He gave me a big, khat-stained grin. ‘Fifty dollar!’

‘Fuck off! Give me the weapon!’

He shrugged and shouted to his mate the other side of the gate. They both laughed. Another RPG kicked off, this time from AS. It was way off. It almost went into orbit.

The kid with the pistol finally relented. He didn’t even check safety before he threw it. As it sailed through the air I could see it was a Makarov, and so old there was no parkerization anywhere near it. I caught it and pulled back the top slide. A brass case was already in the chamber. I pressed the mag-release catch. It dropped into my hand. The mag was full.

BB was now crouched over Tracy to protect her. He held her head down, trying to calm her.

Awaale and four of his crew peeled off and ran towards the compound building. They were going for Ant and Dec. Awaale was in the middle of the gang, still shouting into his radio as if he was controlling this shit. The technicals banged out 12.7 at every muzzle flash within reach. It didn’t seem to matter who was on the receiving end.

I got up and started running for the madrasah, head down, fast as I could. I reached the massive wooden doors. They were open. I stopped, looked and listened. Nothing. I walked into the hallway. Yellow low-current strip-lights hung from the ceilings. The plaster was pitted. What had probably once been colonial Italy’s pride and joy was now close to a ruin. Dark wooden doors led off it, left and right.

The sound of firing was muffled. The whoops of excitement and fear were mumbles. I ventured into the high-ceilinged building. If this place was a school, there was nothing to suggest it. There were no children’s drawings pinned to the walls; nothing to show children used the place at all.

The door of the first room I came to was open. Looking down the corridor, I could see a lot of the others were closed. This one was full of low desks. They were just inches from the floor, their tops at a reading angle. Each desk had a little cushion.

I crossed the corridor to the room opposite. The hinges were on the right. I put my ear to the wood but couldn’t hear anybody on the other side. I eased it open. The weak light from the strips was enough to show me the room was empty. I went down to the next. My sand-crusted socks rasped on the wooden floor.

This door had a spy-hole bored through it. There was a long bolt at the top. It looked like the schoolrooms doubled as cells; or maybe the kids weren’t allowed out until they’d learnt today’s chunk of the Good Book. I put my ear to the wood again and went in.

Nothing.

I moved along the corridor, now just checking the spy-holes left and right.

I could hear a voice. An old man’s voice, like tyres on gravel. It was coming from the room beyond the next one. The door was ajar.

I moved very slowly, my shoulder skimming the wall. As I got closer, the voice became stronger. I lowered myself to my knees, then flat on my stomach. I inched my head towards the gap between door and frame.

The mullah had a small knife against Stefan’s right eye. It looked like it came from a kitchen. He held it with his left arm around his throat so the flat of the blade rested on the little boy’s cheek. His right hand covered the kid’s mouth.

The old guy sat in a chair behind a desk. He had the boy in front of him as cover.

Stefan was a mini Frank, except that I’d never seen Frank with that expression on his face. The small boy was petrified. His brown eyes were wide with terror.

I got up and moved forward, the weapon down by my side.

‘Do you speak English? Come on, let the little one go. Let Stefan go, yeah?’

I spoke more with my eyes than my mouth. He barked something in dialect, and then he started shouting. He didn’t want me to get any closer.

I stopped, keeping eye-to-eye. That was always the most important thing.

I looked at him, almost begging. ‘Mate, you’re not going to get out of here. Help yourself. Give me the boy.’

I held out my left hand. ‘Let me have him. Please.’

I even gave him a bit of a smile.

Stefan’s shoulders heaved as he sobbed into the mullah’s palm. The old man leant forward, his beard draped over the boy’s face. He shouted at me big-time.

My eyes bored into his.

‘Mr Nick! Mr Nick!’

It sounded like Awaale was at the main entrance.

I moved my weapon to one side. ‘Look, mate, it’s OK.’ I didn’t want to get this lad sparked up. I took a step towards him.

The mullah’s eyes darted from me to the door I’d come through. He was unsure. He was getting worried.

‘Mr Nick! We’ve got to leave!’

I could hear flip-flops and the sound of running feet.

Awaale was at the door. I could hear him behind me.

‘Mr Nick!’

The old guy’s eyes went back to mine. They were no longer tense; no longer unsure. He knew he was fucked. I kept mine focused on his head, brought the weapon up, jamming it into my left hand as he raised his knife, ready to ram it into Stefan’s chest.

Stefan screamed. The old guy gripped his hair and pulled back his head.

I took first pressure on the trigger of the Makarov, my eyes glued to a point just above the muzzle. I caught a glimpse of cheekbone and moved the pistol until I had the clear and focused foresight dead centre of the face. The rear sight was out of focus, just as it should be. The first pad of my forefinger squeezed the trigger a couple of millimetres until I felt first pressure.

Stefan struggled. The knife quivered in the air.

I shut Awaale and every ounce of background noise out of my head.

The old guy yelled at me. I could see the veins in his temple swell, and spit fly from his lips.

Then he raised the knife a fraction more to get full force behind it.

His head and beard were fuzzy. My foresight was clear. I brought it up, just above his left eye, and took second pressure. The knife began to plunge. The pistol kicked in my hands and the old guy’s face imploded.

He dropped like liquid. The knife clattered on the wooden floor. The boy followed it under the table, screaming, out of control, curling up like a small, threatened animal.

I ran towards him. ‘It’s OK, Stefan. It’s OK …’

I had to yank him out from under the table. I scooped him up and made him face me, encouraged him to wrap his legs around my waist.

‘My name is Nick.’

Awaale was gobbing off behind me.

‘Shut the fuck up!’

‘We’ve got to go, Mr Nick.’

I got eye-to-eye with Stefan. ‘My name is Nick and I’m going to take you to your mum, OK?’

He wasn’t listening. He was totally freaked out. I was just one more monster in his nightmare. He was going to need a lot of help. But if his brain was wired the same way as his dad’s, he’d probably survive.

‘Come on, shall we go and see your mum?’

I turned to Awaale. Four of his crew had piled into the room. I started walking towards the door.

‘Mr Nick, you’re a lucky man! That was one lucky shot!’

I couldn’t be arsed to explain. ‘Yeah, yeah. Let’s get out. Where are Tracy and BB?’

A stream of gobbing off poured out of his radio. He put his hands up. ‘They’re OK. Come. We must join them.’

I held Stefan into me as tightly as I could.

‘Mummy … Mummy … I want Mummy …’

I did my best to soothe him as we headed towards the gang-fuck outside.

8

The technicals had gone from the compound. So had Tracy and BB. And there was definitely shit on down by the harbour. Tracer swirled into the sky above it from behind the court-house.

Awaale had already reached the obelisk and was standing there as if he had fifty layers of Kevlar, back and front.

‘Mr Nick, come on — we are waiting.’

I passed two of his crew kneeling in the open. They were giggling and arguing between themselves at the same time as they tried to load an RPG. Automatic fire still came from the fringes of the square.

Stefan clung to me, his legs trying to cut off the circulation in my waist. I gripped him tight with my left arm. Just as we passed the stoning holes the RPG cracked off behind us. The crew had fucked up. A split second later it smashed into the obelisk. The pressure wave hurled me to the ground. My ears were still ringing as I staggered to my feet in a cloud of sand and mortar dust.

‘It’s OK, Stefan. We’re all right. We’re nearly there. Nearly with your mummy.’

Maybe the lads hadn’t fucked up. Maybe they’d been aiming at the obelisk. Who knew? There were peals of laughter as they legged it towards us. I wondered if Awaale had enjoyed the joke. I gripped my hands under Stefan’s thighs so I could get my feet pounding across the open ground.

Bodies lay all over the place. AS, crew or crowd, it was hard to make out one from the other. Skull-cap’s body was draped over the railing of the veranda. Most of the arc lamps had been shot away. The dark liquid pooling beneath him glistened in the light of those that remained.

I pushed Stefan’s head into my shoulder. He didn’t have to see that shit. He’d had enough drama to be going on with.

I followed Awaale. My throat was so dry it felt like I’d been swallowing sand. It was a long time since I’d had fluids. I was dehydrating.

We turned left between the court-house and the compound and then went right. At its far end, the alleyway intersected with the harbour road. I’d just turned into it when I saw a rocket trail at the bottom of the hill. It was heading our way.

‘RPG! RPG!’

I ducked back into the alleyway as the grenade screamed past us, less than a metre above the ground. It hit somewhere the other side of the court-house and exploded.

‘Not far now. It won’t be long.’

Stefan didn’t say a word. He gripped me harder. He buried his head deeper into my shoulder to get away from this nightmare.

I stuck my head round the corner and yelled, ‘Awaale! Where are you? Get them to stop! Not down the road! Not down the road!’

The RPG team who’d demolished the obelisk loaded up again, giggling with excitement, then ran out into the road to return fire towards the harbour.

‘No! No! No! That’s your crew! Awaale!’

I could hear his radio in a doorway further down.

‘It’s OK, Mr Nick, come on.’

He sauntered into the middle of the road, waving me on, as if I was holding up proceedings. ‘Come on, Mr Nick.’

‘Tell these lads to can it. No one’s to fire down or up the road.’

‘It’s OK.’

We’d gone no more than ten paces down the hill when the RPG kicked off behind us, heading back towards the square. I was buffeted by the shockwave, then the hot back blast washed over me. My nose filled with the acrid smell of cordite and spent propellant. My eardrums zinged.

Ahead of us, muzzle flashes flickered the length of the harbour wall. Miraculously, the tracer headed left and right and over us.

9

As we neared the beach I could see the two technicals. They were now weapon free. Awaale stood on the wall. His radio was going ape-shit. All I could hear was whoops and shouts and jibber-jabber.

‘Come, Mr Nick, come.’

There were no more rounds heading our way from the town. The lads here were having a good cabbie.

‘Two skiffs left, just for us.’

He jumped on board the first with the two lads who had stayed with it.

‘Where’s Tracy? Where’s the boy’s mother?’

The rest of Awaale’s crew clambered into the one behind. They were still on cloud nine. Mobiles went off. Lighters were struck and cigarettes lit. I heard the hiss of bottles being opened.

‘Awaale. Look at me.’

He wasn’t on receive. He was stuck on transmit, gobbing off to anyone within earshot.

‘Awaale!’ I finally got his attention. ‘Where is the boy’s mother?’

‘They’ve gone in the other skiff. No problem.’

‘You sure she’s safely aboard?’

‘Yes, of course. We need them safe. She’s with the man.’

‘What about the other two white guys? Are they on board as well?’

‘They’re on another boat. Erasto wants them most of all.’

I passed Stefan to him. Awaale’s face creased into a huge grin. ‘Hello, big man.’

I didn’t know if it was what he said or the scary Twilight smile that made Stefan scream, but his little arms swung back towards me. ‘Mummy! I want my mummy!’

Awaale patted his head and handed him back. ‘Not long now. We’ll see her soon.’

The engines revved and we headed into the darkness as the RPG team behind us kicked off one last round. Judging by the laughter, it was just for the fun of it. It made contact with one of the low-level buildings lining the beach.

I took the middle bench. Stefan sat on my knee, legs over one side but face buried in my chest.

I turned back towards Awaale. He wasn’t too thrilled to be back at sea. He sat to the right of the outboard, arse on the floor, knees up.

‘Awaale, good one, mate.’ The lad at the tiller revved the engine to fight the surf, so I had to shout. ‘Really good one. Now, can we hook this boy up with his mum? I want to get them together before the airport.’

Awaale curled up into a ball. ‘They’re out there somewhere. It’s no problem.’

‘We’re not there yet, mate. Make sure your guys know to keep the lights to the left. We need to go north. Let’s keep everyone together. Control them, mate.’

Awaale heaved himself up and gobbed off into the radio. Six different voices tried to answer at once. I left him to it and pulled out my iPhone. I had one voicemail message.

‘Good evening, Mr Stone, Henry here. Just calling again about that apartment of yours. Could you please give me a ring when convenient? Thank you.’

I felt a bit sorry for Henry. Commission on £150K was never going to make his day, but four per cent of fuck-all was a bit of a choker. I called Frank.

Two rings.

‘Yes?’

‘Good news. I have Stefan with me. Tracy’s in another boat. We’re—’

‘Is he hurt?’

‘No. He’s traumatized, but physically he’s OK.’

‘Can I speak to him?’

I put the iPhone to Stefan’s ear. ‘It’s Daddy.’

He looked up. He didn’t believe me but he took the phone with both hands. ‘Papa! Papa!’

There was a chorus of oohs and aahs around the boat before he started gobbing off in Russian. He almost fell over his words as he raced to get them out.

They spoke for a couple of minutes while Awaale bollocked somebody for something over his radio. The two crew members in the bow were on their mobiles, sucking teeth, flicking fingers.

We’d left the lights of Merca behind us. There was no sign of land. No sign even of the other skiffs as we bounced out of the last of the surf and started to ride the heavier swell.

10

Seven or eight tracer streamed up into the sky. We heard the liberated 12.7’s heavy report a second later.

‘There she is, Mr Nick. The little one’s mother.’

Our boat turned in the direction of a second burst. The propeller left the water for a second as the skiff wallowed in the swell and the outboard went into overdrive.

Stefan held the iPhone to my face. ‘Papa wants to talk to you.’

‘Everything is ready at the airport. How long until you get there?’

‘We’ve been linking up again. I’m not sure where we are. But I’m guessing a couple of hours, maybe three.’

‘Very good, Nick. There will be transport waiting at Malindi airport. The pilot has the details.’

‘I’ll call you before we take off.’

There was a momentary silence.

‘Nick, thank you. Thank you very, very much.’

‘Don’t thank me yet. We’re still bobbing up and down in the middle of nowhere.’

There was another tracer burst. Stefan hugged me. I looked down at him. ‘It’s OK, mate. It’s just telling us where your mummy is.’

Frank barked, ‘What’s happening?’

‘Everything’s fine. They’re just showing us where Tracy is. She’s on another skiff. Would you like to talk with her when we meet up?’

That was a no-brainer. ‘She and I will talk later. Nick, I know you’re not safe yet — I understand that — but I do thank you.’

‘No drama. We’ll talk soon, OK?’

I slid the iPhone back into my pocket. We were closing on the other skiff. They treated us to another fireworks display even though we were only about ten metres away. The 12.7’s muzzle flash strobed the passengers. BB was down by the engine. Pissed-off was written all over his face. ‘Stop that fucking racket, you cunts! They’re on fucking top of us!’

Stefan gripped me even harder.

I hadn’t noticed it before in the frenzy, but he stank. He absolutely reeked. I supposed we all did.

‘Your mummy’s right there. You’re going to see her soon, yeah?’

He nodded into my chest. ‘Mummy?’

‘Yes. Not long now. Look.’ I pointed at the dark shape bobbing in the swell about five metres away.

The two lads in the bow got off their mobiles and grabbed the side of the other boat. We levelled off. Tracy was already leaning towards us, her arms outstretched. ‘Stefan!’

He almost wriggled out of my arms. ‘Let me help you, mate. It’s a bit late for a swim.’ The last thing I wanted was him falling between the two boats.

The 12.7 from the technical was hanging off the bow of Tracy’s boat. It was clearly Star-gigs’s turn at the trigger. He couldn’t have been happier if it was a giant marlin. There were empty shell cases all over the deck.

I hoisted the boy over the side. Tracy grabbed him and almost fell backwards into her boat. Star-gigs steadied her and eased them both back onto the centre bench.

They were soon stuck together like glue, crying into each other’s hair. She pulled back and stroked his cheek. ‘It’s OK, darling.’ Then, as Star-gigs fired up his lighter and lit something that smelt stronger than a cigarette, I saw her face in the darkness.

‘Nick …’

She tried to say more but her sobs were suddenly the noisiest thing in this part of the ocean.

BB had had enough of this shit. ‘Listen, those other two cunts are out there somewhere. How are we supposed to find them?’

I turned back to Awaale. He was on his mobile. ‘Mr Nick, is everything OK at the airport? The money?’

‘All ready to go. But where are the other two?’

He didn’t answer. He got busy with his mobile instead. And he wasn’t a happy bunny.

‘Awaale, you have got the other two, haven’t you?’

BB scuttled across the deck towards me. ‘What’s up?’

‘The other two lads. I think they’re Georgians. They speak English? You get anything out of them?’

He shook his head. ‘We weren’t allowed to talk. But so what?’

He stank as bad as Stefan did.

‘We’re going to find out for Frank who they are, then hand them over to these lads. We think they killed the clan boss’s brother.’

I left out the bit about Jan. Now wasn’t the time for Tracy to learn about that. She had enough shit to deal with.

11

Awaale finished his call. ‘OK. We split up now.’ He gobbed off to the crew and they pushed us apart.

Erasto was smart. It was probably why he was about to become even richer. These three weren’t coming ashore until Awaale had confirmed the money was at Mog airport and the deal was in the bag.

I could still hear mother and child sobbing to each other as their skiff was swallowed by the darkness.

‘Tracy! It’s OK. We’re all going to the airport. A plane is waiting. We’ll be back together soon. Just a couple more hours. I’ve got to go ahead and make sure everything’s good when we get there. BB will look after you.’

BB grunted. ‘My fucking name is Justin.’

We headed out to sea as Star-gigs continued his love affair with the 12.7.

Awaale sparked up his radio and a dozen different voices jibber-jabbered back.

Another line of tracer peppered the sky behind us.

‘You see, Mr Nick? Everybody will be together soon. But we have to make sure the money is there first. Me, I trust you with my life. But Erasto — he doesn’t know you like I do.’

I didn’t bother turning back. ‘Mate, the money will be there. But I’d feel a lot happier if we knew where Nadif’s killers were. Have you made contact?’

He had to shout as we picked up speed. ‘Do not worry, Mr Nick. I’m not worried. I’m not worried about a thing. We know the sea. I’m happy. I’m a great commander. Everybody is talking about me. Everybody knows about the attack. Even Lucky Justice will hear about it very soon.’ He nodded. ‘Yes sirree.’

One of the crew was hunched below the bow, out of the wind. He talked excitedly into his mobile.

I moved closer to Awaale. ‘That is fantastic news, mate, but remember — success breeds enemies. Just be careful now you’re big-time. Some people don’t like to be upstaged. You know what I mean?’

We bounced about on the waves. I didn’t have a clue if we were pointed in the right direction.

He thought about what I’d said and eventually nodded. ‘You’re right. But I’m Somalian. We know these things. Erasto will not be pleased. Once he has the money, he’ll try to have me killed. But I’ll be quicker than him. My father will give me advice. Everybody loves me for the great fighter I am, just like my father before me. Thank you, Nick.’

I smiled politely. I was getting a lot of thank-yous tonight. That always meant a drama was just around the corner.

12

These guys started life as fishermen. I shouldn’t have doubted their prowess at sea. Two hours later I began to see the lights of the city over the bow. We were coming in from the east. I didn’t have a clue how far out to sea we’d had to divert during the RV with Tracy, but that didn’t matter now. All that did was that her skiff made it back too. Ant and Dec’s? I still had no idea.

Awaale perked up now he could see land. He had spent most of the time curled up on the deck holding his stomach. ‘I told you so. You don’t have to worry about anything, Mr Nick. Everybody is now safe.’

We started to approach the airport. The runway was lit up like a UFO landing pad. We headed for the bit sticking out into the ocean. As we got closer, I spotted two technicals. The crews looked excited to see us. Their new conquering hero was home. There was change in the air.

Awaale got on his radio. Then he hauled his mobile out. ‘You see, Mr Nick? Everybody loves me.’

We pulled the skiffs into the beach. The sting of salt water reminded me that, after a day in my socks, my feet had taken some serious cuts.

The technical driver shouted down at us through the glare of his own main beams. He thought he was helping, but he was just killing our night vision. Blinded, we felt our way up the rock and clambered onto the runway.

We scrambled into the back of the technical, dodging the 12.7’s dangling ammo belt, and set off between the twin lines of landing lights that seemed to converge as they headed for the terminal.

The driver stuck his head out of the window and shouted to Awaale, who was sitting directly behind the cab on the flatbed. Awaale leant forward and treated him to a blow-by-blow account — complete with ‘boom, boom, boom’ sound effects. Then he leant even further so he could deliver a high-five. The accelerator pedal never left the floor. It was like the guy was trying to take off. All around me, the boys were back on their mobiles, spinning more shit.

Down-lighters in the roof space made the newly painted terminal building look like it was suspended in its own star system. A Cessna Cargomaster stood in front of it, a weapons-mounted technical alongside. Further down the apron were a couple of closed-down Yemeni airliners.

Another technical had parked up a hundred metres beyond them. The Toyota’s headlamps were aimed at a nearby Skyvan. Winner of the Ugliest Plane in the World Award for the last thirty years running, it was basically a train carriage with a tail ramp to freefall out of, a wing and an engine slapped on each side. The twin props had chugged about all over the world since the 1980s, and this must have been one of the originals; the H tail rudders were held together with gaffer tape.

Awaale pointed at the wagon by the Cargomaster. ‘Erasto. He’s here for the money. I do not want to disappoint him, Mr Nick.’

‘Nor do I, mate. Nor do I. But what about Erasto? Will he disappoint me?’

He looked at me from the other side of the flatbed. The 12.7’s barrel cut a line between us. Finally he put his hands up and shrugged. ‘I’m not in his head.’

I pushed the cold steel barrel skywards to clear the obstruction between us and leant across the back of the cab. I wanted Awaale to hear every word of what I was about to say. ‘The other two white guys, the boy and the woman, they’re important. They’re important to someone who can come up with that sort of cash straight away. If this all goes wrong, he’s told me that he will declare war on you, on you all. Now that’s going to fuck up your future, big-time. And you’ve got enough on your plate already. Lucky Justice is not a big fan, and now you’ve got AS on your arse as well. We’ve got to make this run very smoothly, mate. For both our sakes.’

Fuck it. Things had moved on too far to hide the fact there was a lot of cash flying about, and managing Erasto’s expectations had gone completely out of the window. But solving one problem will always present you with another.

‘Mr Nick — there’ll be no problems from me. Trust me.’

‘You’ve got family in the US, right? You’ve got to be careful, mate, because my man can get to them. But all he wants is his family back. He gets what he wants, and you get what you want, and everybody’s happy. Yeah?’

Awaale nodded. ‘I understand, Mr Nick. But you don’t need to tell me these things. You’re my friend.’

‘You’re my friend as well, mate. But let’s not fuck up now that we’re so close to the finish, OK?’

Awaale smiled and leant back. The wind ruffled his hair. I still only trusted him as far as I could throw him. It wasn’t as if we were old schoolmates. We slowed. We were almost at the terminal.

Awaale leant back towards me, hand up at the side of his mouth like we were co-conspirators. ‘Mr Nick, my money … I will need it to pay for loyalty from my crew when I take over the clan.’

‘One thing at a time, mate. Let’s get in the air before you go and conquer Mogadishu.’

He smiled, and thought for a bit. ‘I’ll give it some time. I’ll let Erasto kill those two guys, of course. I’ll give him that satisfaction.’

13

The second technical faced the Cargomaster head on, its 12.7 aimed at the airframe. We pulled up alongside it. The third one drove across from the Skyvan. Bob Marley sang louder and louder the closer it rolled. Its headlights cast shadows around the Cargomaster; with no windows in the hold area, all I could see was Joe sitting in the left seat. I tried to signal that everything was OK. His head turned behind the Perspex. I couldn’t be sure he’d noticed.

The Bob Marley fan jumped out of the driver’s seat with a wad of US dollars. He passed it through the cigarette smoke billowing from the rear window of the other double cab.

‘Come, Mr Nick, come. We’ll go and talk with Erasto.’

We followed the same route as the dollars. Erasto was settled in the centre of the bench seat, his arms up along the rear.

Awaale waffled away and Erasto nodded slowly. But he wasn’t happy. He pointed his cigarette at the Cessna and gobbed off.

Awaale turned back to me. ‘Erasto says that the men in the plane, they will not let him count the money. They say they will burn it if we attack or try to come aboard. The money was in— Wait a minute, please, Mr Nick.’ He asked the boss to clarify something before turning back to me. ‘They told him the money was in “De-Arab” bags?’

‘Deniable bags, mate. They’ll torch everything in them. It’s to stop cash and valuable documents being stolen.’

Awaale looked offended. ‘Erasto wants you to talk to them. Tell them that the money must be counted before he’ll let anyone else come ashore. As soon as he has the money, Mr Nick, no problems — in they come.’

For all I knew, Erasto might have set out with other ideas. As he drove to the airport, he might have been thinking of ways to have his cake and eat it.

I nodded, turned, and headed for the Cessna as Bob sang about being a buffalo soldier. The guy draped around the 12.7 in the back of Erasto’s wagon joined in with the chorus.

Joe leant over and opened the cockpit door. He had his AK on his lap.

I climbed up. In the dim lights, I saw Mr Lover Man — on his mobile — and Genghis in the hold. They were dressed for war in green fatigues and Kevlar body armour. Mr Lover Man had a black set, Genghis a green one. They’d inserted both front and back plates. They clutched M4 assault rifles with telescopic butts, firing handles on the stocks, and the shorter eleven-inch barrel for close-quarter work. No eastern shit for Frank’s lads, only state-of-the-art USA. Most telling of all, the magazine pouches on their armour sets were well worn. They’d done this shit before. They looked like they’d been born into it.

At their feet were two black nylon holdalls. Thick steel wires protruded from them, with ring-pulls at the end. Mr Lover Man and his mate had also come prepared. There were six-packs of two-litre water bottles; a Bergen-sized medical kit; big plastic zip bags holding spare saline drips and field dressings. Other bags held mountains of chapattis and bananas. There was milk in plastic one-litre containers.

Joe was his normal politically correct self. ‘Fucking flip-flops, man. I told you, don’t fucking trust them. They would have had the money — and us — if it wasn’t for these two in the back. They were going to take the fuckers on. All you people are mad, man. You’re fucking mad.’

It looked as if Erasto had had other plans, and these two lads had fucked them up.

Mr Lover Man came forward to study the technicals through the Perspex. He waffled in Russian on his mobile.

Joe eyed me. ‘You look shite, man. Where are your shoes? Did the flip-flops fucking steal them as well? Where’s the other three? We were told you’d got them. Where are they? I want to get out of here, man. It’s a fucking nightmare.’

‘They’re on their way, mate.’ I got eye-to-eye with Mr Lover Man in the dimmed cockpit lights. ‘Tell Frank they want to count the cash before they let Tracy, Stefan and Justin come ashore. Tell him it’s under control. Once you’ve done that, get off the mobile — we’ve got work to do.’

I glanced back into the hold. ‘You speak English?’ Genghis shook his head and slowly stretched out his legs. This lad was so laid back he literally was almost horizontal.

Mr Lover Man closed down and gave me a nod. ‘We’re ready. I don’t trust that old man.’

‘Nor do I, mate. I’m going to bring one of them over. We get him to count the cash, then we hold tight until everyone is delivered. They hold us tight, we hold the money tight. Those bags in the back, they really have deniable devices installed?’

Mr Lover Man waffled to Genghis. He unzipped the bags to reveal the shrink-wrapped bundles of hundred-dollar bills. Two black plastic containers, about twenty centimetres square, sat on top of them. Thick steel wire protruded from the corner of each. There were two in each bag, in case one didn’t kick off.

Frank probably used them all the time to make sure no fucker got hold of any information he didn’t want to share. After all, knowledge is power. If the ring-pull was triggered, the incendiary devices were detonated. The agent was magnesium. It burnt with unbelievable intensity. The problem, especially with two of them in each bag, was that they’d keep on burning — and take out the plane as well.

Mr Lover Man was certainly in no mood for compromise. Even if he was, his deep growl wouldn’t make it sound that way. He was as cold and clear as his boss.

‘If they try to fuck with us, we will burn the cash.’

14

Joe wasn’t impressed. ‘Fuck, man — I just want to get my aircraft out of here, with everybody on board.’

Mr Lover Man had gone back to join Genghis. Joe turned and pointed to the two of them. ‘Man, we’ve got things in our fucking toolbox, man, apart from you fucking hammers. We all need to keep our heads together, man.’

Joe didn’t realize that these two had got their heads together. If they had to fight, they didn’t give a fuck how it turned out.

Joe turned back into the cockpit. ‘For fuck’s sake, man. Get that flip-flop on board and get him counting, let’s get on with it.’

‘Yep, in a minute, mate. Everybody listen in — here’s the plan. The guy comes on board and he counts the cash. Make sure that he sees the deniable packs. He goes back to the old guy and gives him the OK. If it then goes wrong, and they go for the cash, we come out fighting. We go for his wagon and take it to the end of the runway. There’s a boat there. We head out and we look for the other skiffs. We crack on until daylight, and we keep on looking. That’s all we can do.’

I waited while Mr Lover Man translated for Genghis, then I opened the door. ‘You got that, Joe?’ I stuck a leg out. ‘Bet you’re glad I didn’t take your AK now, eh?’

‘Yeah, but what about my fucking aircraft, man?’

‘It’s going to burn to the ground if those bags kick off. So you’d better hope there are no fuck-ups.’

He nodded, but wasn’t too convinced.

I now had both feet on the concrete. ‘Awaale!’ I beckoned him over. ‘Come here, mate. Get counting.’

He nodded. Anybody would be willing to get their hands on that amount of money, even if it was only to count it.

‘Go on, mate, get inside.’

I opened the door and followed him in. He headed left into the hold. I got back into the right-hand seat and closed the door.

The bags were opened and Awaale started counting.

I motioned to Genghis for some water and food.

It’s surprising how small a million dollars looks in hundred-dollar bills. It normally comes in shrink-wrapped bundles, about twenty centimetres high. Six of them are a million, and weigh about ten kilos.

The first two litres of liquid didn’t even touch the sides. I crammed bread and bananas into my mouth as fast as I could, then started hiccuping so badly I had to wash it all down with another bottle.

Awaale thought he was going to get some too, but Mr Lover Man just gave him a big growl. ‘No eating. Just counting.’

Awaale had done this before. He picked up the bundles and made sure they were the same height. He sliced through the shrink-wrap with his thumbnail to expose the notes along each wad, making sure no one had substituted ones for hundred-dollar bills.

Mr Lover Man and Genghis looked on with contempt.

I mumbled, through a mouthful of bread, ‘The extra, have you got it?’

Mr Lover Man gobbed off to Genghis. He fished a bundle out of his map pocket and made to throw it to me.

‘No, no. Not me.’ I pointed at Awaale. ‘It’s for him.’

The cash was lobbed over with the same contempt. It hit Awaale hard on the shoulder. He didn’t care. It went into his waistband. He sucked in his skinny stomach so it wouldn’t show, and pulled his minging shirt over the top of the package. He swivelled to face me. ‘Thank you, Mr Nick.’

Another thank-you. I wished they’d stop.

It wasn’t long before he was satisfied on both counts: Erasto’s money, and his and his dad’s. He was still on his knees. ‘Everything’s good.’

‘OK, go and tell Erasto. Tell him the deniable packs really exist. Then what happens?’

‘It’s easy. Erasto will tell me to call the boats in. You will be reunited.’ He turned to the other two and gave them a smile. They looked as unimpressed as Joe.

‘You sure you can trust this fucking flip-flop? Listen, man, there’s a lot of cash there. These two action men in the back kick off, we’re all in deep shit.’

I kept my eyes on Awaale. He’d turned back to me, still on his knees.

‘Awaale, as soon as we have everybody here inside the aircraft and we are taxiing to the runway, these two will hand over the cash. It gets thrown out the door to you, OK?’

He nodded. ‘No problem, Mr Nick.’

‘But remember, if anything goes wrong, these two lads will be gunning for you and Erasto. They won’t give a fuck, mate, and I won’t be able to stop them. Remember what I said, about a war? There’ll be many more than these two coming if there’s a fuck-up.’

Awaale got onto his feet. He had to stoop so his head didn’t bang on the aircraft ceiling. ‘Mr Nick, no problem. But remember, Erasto wants the other two white guys.’

‘Yeah, but only after I’ve finished with them.’

Mr Lover Man waffled to Genghis, and that was one part of the deal they both liked.

Genghis opened the cargo hold’s shutter door and Awaale was almost thrown out onto the pan. He checked his shirt to make sure his money was safely in place.

I stayed where I was. Mr Lover Man and Genghis kept themselves to the sides of the airframe so they remained in cover. They mumbled away in Russian, weapons in the shoulder, standing by to see what Erasto was going to do now there really was three million just metres away; three million that would go up in smoke if he tried to take it. I hoped he was thinking the best thing to do was just make the deal.

I heard M4 safety catches coming off. It was followed by one click of Joe’s safety lever, to auto.

Mobiles rang outside. Bob Marley gave it large about guiltiness. The two in the back mumbled quietly again.

‘Remember, lads — you get the fire down. I’ll go for the vehicle.’

Awaale walked to the double cab of Erasto’s technical as I got back into the right seat.

The music changed suddenly from reggae to Arabic wailing. I could see Awaale leaning through the window, waffling away. Eventually he nodded and came back towards me. He wasn’t looking happy. He had his hands up in an exaggerated shrug.

‘Wait … wait. Not until they kick off first.’

I opened the cockpit door until there was just enough of a gap for him to talk through.

‘Mr Nick, we have a problem. Erasto says it isn’t enough.’

I leant down. ‘What? What the fuck are you on about? That was the deal, Awaale. You know that was the deal.’

The two lads in the back bristled as Mr Lover Man translated.

The growl was almost a roar. ‘We go now, we go now!’

Awaale shook his head wildly. ‘Wait, wait!’ He knew what was coming. ‘Everything is good, it’s the tax — it’s the airport tax. Erasto says you must pay the tax.’

Joe almost blew the windows out with his reply. ‘For fuck’s sake, man, you want another three hundred fucking dollars?’

Awaale looked at him as if it was the most reasonable request in the world. ‘Yes. You must pay your taxes.’

As Mr Lover Man translated, I couldn’t do anything but laugh. Awaale joined in, and then they all did.

15

The laughter stopped as Joe passed the envelope and Awaale stood there and counted its contents.

‘Are you going to call the skiffs in now, mate, or what?’

Awaale turned back and waved the envelope towards the technicals. The headlights on Erasto’s flashed. Awaale got on his mobile. The exchange was short and sharp. ‘It’s OK, of course, Mr Nick. The boats are coming now. You see, everything is good.’ He flicked his fingers.

I started to get out of the aircraft.

‘Yep, mate, it’s all good. I want to come with you, and these lads are going to stay here with the money, all right?’

He was already on his way to the technicals. I leant back into the aircraft once I had both feet on the tarmac. ‘Listen in, lads. The deal is, I have ten minutes with the two Georgians, or whoever the fuck they are. But I don’t want to be on the ground any longer than we need to. What do you reckon?’

I looked at the ones who understood English. They nodded.

‘We fuck off the moment everybody’s on board. I’m not sure what these fuckers are going to do. They might still try to take us, and go for another round of cash. It would certainly cross my mind.

‘But I’ve got places to go as soon as this shit is over. I need to get away as fast as I can. So I’m now going down to the technicals. I’ll collect the two white guys and grip ’em. At the same time, the others should be coming back to you. Then we just get the fuck out of here — agreed?’

Joe didn’t take long to cast his vote. ‘Fucking A, man.’

Mr Lover Man translated. He and Genghis both gave it the nod. ‘What if they don’t speak English? What are you going to do then?’

‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.’

Awaale had climbed back onto the flatbed. He was standing beside the 12.7. ‘Mr Nick, come, come!’ He had to shout to make himself heard above the music.

I ran over and climbed on board. I stood the other side of the cannon and held on to it for support.

Erasto’s technical stayed where it was. Smoke still billowed out of the rear windows.

We headed off down the runway, music blaring, lights on full beam. The blast of air was just what I needed. I was fucked. Awaale was grinning like a psychopath as he checked the cash was still secure under his shirt. ‘We’re nearly there, Mr Nick. One day you will come to Minneapolis and visit my father. I’ll come too. I’ll call you, yes?’

‘Yep, that would be great, mate.’

He was a good lad, but I didn’t plan to get mixed up with the guy who’d shot down the Black Hawk any time soon. That was, if the legend was true, of course. Every man and his Somali dog would want to claim that hit.

‘Awaale, mate. Bring the two white guys up first.’ I had to shout into the wind. ‘They are there, aren’t they?’

His eyes rolled as if I’d asked yet another stupid question.

‘Good. I want to get them in this wagon for the drive back. The rest can follow. Just make sure you get those two white guys in here first.’

‘No problem, Mr Nick. I want them in the back with us, too. I’ll be the one to hand them over to Erasto. It will be a great moment for me. What do you think? Do you think it will be great for me?’

‘I think it’ll be absolutely fucking brilliant. After all, everybody loves you now, don’t they?’

‘Yes, they do, Mr Nick — they do!’

He sank down behind the cab to make the call. Tracy and me, we’d have the gratitude-fest on the plane to Malindi. For now, I still had work to do.

16

We stopped at the end of the runway and I jumped off the wagon. Music blasted. Awaale shouted into his mobile and gave noisy high-fives to anyone within reach. The wagon’s crew were still yelling at each other excitedly about the attack.

I hobbled away from them until all I could hear was the pounding surf. I got out the iPhone and dialled. I just got the mad Arab woman again. I tried Jules. Voicemail. But he’d left me a message.

‘She’s OK. The Brits are sending a warship, the Cumberland, to Benghazi to evac UK nationals. No idea when it will get there but I’m trying to get her on board and out of the city soon as. Stand by.’

‘Mr Nick, they’re here, they’re here! Mr Nick, they’re here!’

I turned back. Awaale jumped off the wagon. Ant and Dec were being frogmarched along the edge of the tarmac. Awaale yelled, and they were steered towards the back of our technical.

I joined them as fast as I could. Fuck, my feet were sore. ‘Mate, let’s get them on board and take them down to the sea, yeah?’ If these lads understood English, I wanted them to think the worst. ‘Off the runway, down by the rocks.’

Ant and Dec sat against the back of the cab, their arses on the flatbed. There was no fear in their eyes. They accepted they were about to die. Once that happens, it’s like a massive weight being lifted. Every minute you’re still alive becomes a bonus.

The wagon lurched along the strip. My arm hooked round the 12.7 stand for stability, I squatted in front of them. Their heads lolled with the motion of the vehicle. The runway lights became like strobes as we sped past them.

‘You two,’ I shouted above the engine noise. ‘You speak English?’ I jabbed their chests hard. I wanted to be sure they knew the score.

They looked back at me through bloodshot eyes. Both had growth on their chins, and hair on end after hours at sea. I probably looked exactly the same.

I made eye-to-eye with each of them in turn. I wanted to make sure they recognized me. I wanted to see if there was any reaction.

‘OK — if you understand me or not, I don’t give a shit. But these lads here, they want you bad. The guy you killed in Bristol? Their boss’s brother. And you killed a woman. The woman you were with in the AS compound? That was her sister. Both of you have fucked up big-time.’

There was a glimmer of understanding in their eyes. These fuckers knew exactly what I was talking about.

We bounced off the tarmac. Their heads bounced left and right as the wagon negotiated the rubble-strewn terrain.

‘So, lads — you’ve got to tell me where you come from, who you work for. I’ll see what I can do for you. Otherwise, you’re fucked. They’ll make sure it ain’t quick, believe me.’

I kept eye-to-eye, switching between them, making sure they took every word on board.

We juddered to a standstill.

The surf pounded against the rocks below us.

All I got from them was the same look Mr Lover Man and Genghis had given Awaale in the back of Joe’s Cessna.

The other technical passed us on the runway, packed with bodies. Tracy was wrapped around Stefan. BB stood behind the cab, one hand gripping the 12.7.

I had to get this bit done quickly.

I stood up.

‘OK, then, fuck you.’

I jumped over the side.

‘Awaale, let’s get them on the ground and stripped. Get their kit off.’

He issued a string of orders. I heard ‘Erasto’ a couple of times. The crew’s reaction was to kick and slap the two Georgians off the back of the wagon.

They fell into the dust. Even the driver jumped out to help deliver the message. The Somali boys pulled off the Georgians’ jeans and shirts and tugged at their boots.

‘I want them stripped totally. Everything off.’

Awaale and his mates laid into them like a pack of wild dogs attacking two antelope. Ant and Dec tried to curl up in the cloud of dust that billowed up around them.

17

I let them get on with it for a couple of minutes.

‘All right, let’s have a look at them.’

Awaale didn’t answer. He was somewhere in the mêlée.

I moved forward. They carried on slapping, punching, raining down rifle butts.

‘Awaale, where the fuck are you?’

No reply.

‘Awaale!’

He emerged out of the darkness. A layer of dust clung to his sweat-covered face.

‘Enough, mate. You’re handing them over to Erasto, remember?’

His eyes were glazed, as if he was drunk or high.

‘Awaale, come on, mate, switch on.’

Behind him, the crew kept pounding into Ant and Dec. These lads really did have a different mindset.

I grabbed Awaale’s arms. ‘Get them to stop. I want these fuckers alive. You’re the main man, remember? You’ve got to step back from this shit and see the bigger picture. Awaale? You listening to me?’

He showed signs of rejoining Planet Earth. His eyes started to focus. ‘Yes, yes, of course, Mr Nick. Of course.’

He turned and re-entered the dust cloud, gobbing off as he went. He pushed and pulled the crew off the wounded animals. He had to slap a couple of the boys to make them get out of the way, bollocking them as if he’d had nothing to do with it.

Ant and Dec’s grazed and soon-to-be badly bruised bodies were curled up into balls. They looked as though someone had set about them with a cheese-grater.

They coughed and spluttered into the dust. Their tattoos glistened with blood and sweat. They were the normal snakes-wrapped-around-daggers stuff. Plus a couple of tribal tats, all that shit. It was the ones that had writing round them that I was interested in. Ant’s was a mermaid with tits. Dec’s was a fox. The writing beneath them looked like a row of twisted paperclips, like some sort of elaborate Far Eastern script. But having done some stuff in the Tbilisi neighbourhood, I knew exactly what it was. It was Mkhedruli, the Georgian alphabet.

I still had no boots on. My Timberlands had stayed behind in the AS compound, along with my day sack. But I kicked into them anyway. I wanted to get their attention.

‘Who sent you?’

Nothing.

‘If you don’t help me, these lads will keep on going until you do.’

Ant spat a mixture of saliva and blood into the dust, and maybe a couple of teeth as well. ‘Fuck you. Fuck all you bitches.’

Dec had a mouthful of the same, but he aimed it at me. It sprayed across the calf of my jeans. I turned back to the vehicle. Awaale was looking down the runway. I slapped him on the shoulder.

‘You OK, mate?’

He turned. ‘Yes, Mr Nick. I must control myself. I’m a leader now, the main man, yes?’

‘That’s right, mate. You must be able to turn that shit off — keep a clear head when it’s decision time.’

He nodded. ‘Yes, Mr Nick. Thank you. Yes, I will. I will.’

‘All right. Let’s get these fuckers back on the wagon. I’m done.’

I’d learnt enough. Now the other technical was at the aircraft, we needed to move.

I watched Awaale get the crew sorted. They dragged Ant and Dec to the flatbed and threw them onboard. We jumped up behind them. The driver ground the gears and we lurched off towards a quick exit out of there.

18

Back at the terminal, Mr Lover Man and Genghis weren’t giving Erasto time to think about what he might do next. They were both out of the Cessna with a bag over one shoulder, weapons up.

Mr Lover Man was shouting. Whatever it was about, it meant nothing to the crews around the two technicals. They looked jumpy and brandished their weapons left, right and centre. One lad even brought his RPG into the aim. Another swung the 12.7 on its mount.

Tracy and Stefan were waiting forward of Erasto’s wagon, just off to the right, twenty metres or so from the aircraft.

This was the bit I fucking hated on these jobs. In all the excitement, just one trigger-finger exerting a tad too much pressure was all it took to fuck the whole thing up.

BB shouted back at Mr Lover Man, like they were in some kind of High Noon stand-off.

We came to a halt behind Erasto’s technical. BB was still bawling out Mr Lover Man. Now I could hear him. ‘They don’t fucking speak English, you twat! Just give them the cash — give them the fucking cash now.’

Mr Lover Man and Genghis stood their ground, M4s still in the shoulder. These guys were chilled. Their expressions hadn’t changed the whole time I’d known them.

Now we were closer, I could see the wires snaking out of the bags. Each of Frank’s boys had the bottom three fingers of his pistol hand through the ring-pulls, with his trigger-finger free. They were ready to drop the bag and pull, then take casualties before they became one.

Joe was still in the left-hand seat. The electrics started to wind up, blanketing the area with their high-pitched whine.

Mr Lover Man’s eyes never left the crews. They bounced from man to man, checking where their hands and weapons were. He shouted loudly over the engine noise: ‘Put down your weapons!’ The crews screamed back and did nothing, still off their tits.

Genghis and Mr Lover Man stood their ground, one each side of the cargo-hold doors. Mr Lover Man spotted me. ‘Get the money-counter to tell them to stand down. We’ll all get onto the plane. We’ll throw the cash out as we taxi. No hostages, no deal. Tell him.’

BB’s head swung between us as he took all this in. It was only as he turned back to me that I noticed he now had Stefan. ‘We take the Georgians with us. We can’t leave them with these fucking animals.’

I stared back at him. I’d had enough of this fucker already. ‘Shut the fuck up or I’ll get one of these animals to stick a fucking rifle butt in your face. Shut it. Everyone fucking — calm — down …’

Awaale was at Erasto’s window. I walked over to him. The boss man was sitting precisely where I’d last seen him, not showing the slightest concern as he sparked up his two-hundredth Marlboro of the day.

‘Awaale, tell Erasto we have the two white guys for him. Tell him that we’ll now do the one-for-one swap. The money comes to him as the hostages come to us, OK? And then he can have the two lads in the back, and do with them what he feels like. Tell him that.’

‘No problem, Mr Nick. We’ve done this many, many times. You know, you must tell your guys to cool it.’

‘Mate, they’re not my guys, so that ain’t going to happen, is it? Tell Erasto that as soon as he gets the money he leaves with his crew. Tell him he’s to take two technicals with him, which just leaves your wagon, the two white guys, and your lads looking after them. All right? So that means everything’s calm, everything’s good, we can all relax, and you can make sure we get away. But right now, let’s all keep fingers off triggers, yeah?’

Awaale turned away from the window. ‘OK, Mr Nick.’ He gave it the full John Wayne. ‘Let’s do it.’

As I followed him towards the Cessna, Awaale started chatting like we were off to the pub for a pint. ‘So, I’ll give you my father’s number. We’ll all meet up in Minneapolis.’ He leant towards me and went back into conspiratorial mode. ‘Once I have taken over the clan I will then visit my father and tell him to come home. But, first, you’ll join us in Minneapolis, won’t you?’

‘Yep, no drama, mate. But we have to get out of here now, OK?’

I looked ahead at Joe and drew my index finger across my throat to signal that he should kill the engine.

We needed calm. No loud noises; no props turning; no fingers on triggers. We’d get the exchange done nicely and quietly and then we’d fuck off. If it did go noisy, at least we’d be doing it from a steadier platform.

Joe got the message. The electrics started winding down.

Awaale carried on talking. ‘Mr Nick, please, all is good.’ He swivelled and began walking backwards, talking coolly to his crews and motioning for them to lower their weapons.

‘That’s good, mate. It’s high time your lads took their chill pills.’

I could hear another aircraft’s electrics winding down in the distance. I peered into the gloom at the bricklike silhouette of the Skyvan.

‘Awaale — who the fuck are they?’

‘Just guys waiting to pick someone up, I suppose. Like you are doing, Mr Nick. It happens all the time.’

We now stood equidistant between the Cessna and the technicals. ‘OK, everyone, listen in!’ I felt like I was trying to marshal a school trip. ‘Everyone’s getting a bit too sparked up so we’re going to have a change of plan. This is what’s going to happen. I’m going to get the bags and bring them back here, to where we are standing right now. Have we got that so far?’

Awaale translated for his crews and Mr Lover Man mumbled away at Genghis. Frank’s lads still kept their weapons in the shoulder, no matter what the other fuckers were doing. The crews now had theirs down, held by the magazines or slung over their shoulders. A couple lit up. Another two even got on their mobiles again.

‘OK, once I start walking back with the bags, BB, Stefan and Tracy come over and meet me here. Has everybody got that? Awaale, make sure these people understand what’s going on. Shout at them, mate. I don’t want to leave any room for doubt.’

I spun round to Mr Lover Man. ‘Your friend getting this?’

He muttered something to Genghis and nodded.

Awaale went into Alexander the Great mode, rallying his troops while another cloud of cigarette smoke drifted from the back of Erasto’s technical.

BB couldn’t help himself. ‘Nick, you’ve got to fucking grip these boys. We—’

‘BB! Shut — the — fuck — up!’

The crews fidgeted. The shouting was making them uneasy. Awaale kept giving them commands, but it was turning back into an argument.

I raised my hands again and slowly brought them down, as if that was going to steady the situation the way Awaale had. ‘Everybody stay calm. Keep your weapons down.’

I turned and pointed at Mr Lover Man and Genghis. ‘That’s you as well. Fingers off triggers, lads.’

One fucking slip and this all went to rat-shit.

19

I gave it about fifteen seconds after Awaale had stopped, everybody had calmed a little and AKs were lowered. ‘OK, I’m going to start walking … now.’

I moved towards the money and lifted each bag in turn, one over the right shoulder, one over the left, making a point of hooking a finger through each of the ring-pulls. I looked at Awaale, and then at everybody else, to make sure we were all on the same page. ‘OK, let’s get walking.’

I took the first few paces towards Awaale, making sure I could see the other three coming towards me.

We all converged beside Awaale. I bent at the knees and placed the bags on the tarmac. I kept my fingers threaded through the ring-pulls.

Awaale unzipped each bag in turn and checked their contents.

‘Nothing’s changed, mate. Check the wrappers — look at where you sliced them with your thumbnail.’

‘It’s all there, Mr Nick. We trust you. It’s all there.’

I let go of the ring-pulls and tucked them inside the bags.

‘OK, mate, now you start heading to Erasto, nice and slow, nice and controlled, and then you get your crews out of here.’

‘No problem, Mr Nick, no problem.’ He lifted the bags and we both turned to go our separate ways.

‘Tracy, BB — nice and slow towards the aircraft, when I say. Tracy, don’t cross in front of the lads. Keep well to the right of them.’

If it went to rat-shit I didn’t want her in the way of their arcs of fire.

I pointed at Lover Man and Genghis. ‘We’re coming towards you.’

Five or six paces from the Cessna I turned to see the back door of Erasto’s technical open and Awaale passing over the bags. The first technical started to roll the moment the door closed again. Bob Marley filled the air once more.

Erasto’s wagon followed, but stopped level with Awaale’s. Erasto wanted to have a good look at the two Georgians. They were still on their arses on the flatbed, bollock naked, backs against the cab. The two crew guarding them laughed and pointed. Erasto’s vehicle moved off.

Mr Lover Man screamed at Joe, ‘The engine, let’s go, let’s go!’ He leant through the cargo-hold door, laid his M4 on the floor and turned to help Tracy.

Tracy ignored him and ran straight for me.

‘Nick, thank you, thank you, thank you.’ As the electrics wound up once more, she threw her arms around my neck and planted kisses all over my face. Her own was one big scabby grin.

‘Nick, thank you, thank you …’ The prop began to turn. Her words were now almost drowned by the engine.

She hugged me tighter, pulling me down so her chin rested on my right shoulder.

Awaale was waiting to exchange contact details and say goodbye but he stood back to let Tracy show her love and appreciation. Maybe he thought it was going to be his turn next. Everybody did love him so.

Her tone changed the instant her lips were at my ear. ‘BB is working with the two Georgians. That plane is theirs, Nick. They want Stefan, but he says he will kill him if I tell you. They want my baby. Please help us … Please …’

The navigation lights strobed under the fuselage. Everything unfolded around me like a series of rapid-sequence still photographs.

The Skyvan’s props were turning.

Stefan’s little legs were a blur as he struggled to get back to his mother.

BB’s eyes were fixed on the Skyvan.

‘Nick, please do something …’

Genghis was looking into the hold of the Cargomaster.

Now BB was moving.

Gripping Stefan tightly in front of him, he ran hard into Genghis’s back, using the boy as a battering ram. Genghis stumbled and fell.

BB grabbed Mr Lover Man’s M4 from the doorway and jammed the short barrel into the back of Stefan’s head. His shouts were almost lost in the prop-wash but their message was clear. ‘Stand still, everybody. No fucker move!’

The boy’s clothing was flattened against BB by the force of the propeller. BB moved out of its way.

The M4 barrel was firmly jammed into the base of Stefan’s skull.

20

Genghis quickly recovered, weapon back up, but BB kept moving away from the aircraft, making any shot Genghis might take a whole lot harder.

Tracy screamed and lunged towards her son. ‘My baby! My baby!’

I gripped her. I shouted to Genghis above the blast of the turboprop. ‘No fire! Don’t fire!’

He might be able to hit him, but he couldn’t guarantee that BB didn’t have enough pressure on his trigger to take the boy out with him. I had no doubt that he would. BB might be an arsehole, but he knew exactly what he was doing. If he was in a corner and going to die anyway, he wouldn’t give a fuck.

If I screwed this up and the boy got killed, Frank’s lads weren’t going to give a fuck about us — or anyone else they opened up on as they made their exit.

Mr Lover Man jumped out and I pushed Tracy towards him. ‘Take her. And tell your mate not to fire!’

I could see no other way of sorting out this shit. It was going to create more drama, but at least the boy would stay alive. Drama I could get to grips with. Dead kids — all I could do was bag them up and take them back to where they’d come from.

I made a move towards BB. Now I was closer I could make sense of his yells. ‘Get these fucking animals off the technical now. Get them off. I want them off — now!’

I turned to comply. Awaale was manning the 12.7.

It pointed our way.

I threw up my hands. ‘No, Awaale. No!’

His hand moved to the cocking handle.

‘No! Don’t fucking fire!’

The Skyvan rolled towards the runway with its ramp down. Its red interior lights glowed on the tarmac behind it. Its twin props whirled. I kept waving my arms like a madman at anyone with a weapon. ‘No firing! No firing!’

Everywhere I looked, there were too many fingers on triggers.

BB kept edging towards the technicals. ‘Get ’em out. Get ’em out!’

I shouted and motioned to Awaale to leave the wagon, but he wasn’t going anywhere. He had the biggest gun and he was going to use it if he wanted to. I took a pace forward and put myself between them, pointing at BB and bellowing, ‘Wait there, fucking wait there — I’ll sort it out.’

BB was almost foaming at the mouth. ‘Fucking do it. Get that technical. I’ll fucking drop this boy. You know I’ll do it.’

He’d be fucked if he did, but I had no doubt that he would. I held both hands out as if I was trying to stop two lots of traffic. I broke into a run towards the technical. The two covering the Georgians had their AKs pointing here, there and everywhere, screaming at Awaale, desperate to know what he wanted them to do.

Still manning the 12.7, Awaale couldn’t make sense of any of this. He could no longer feel the love. I reached the side of the wagon. He stared down at me.

‘Forget it. Let him take them.’

‘But this will look very bad, Mr Nick. My men … I am going to be their leader …’

‘That’s right, mate. But I’m going to beg, make it look good for you. You tell them later that you decided to let them go, for the boy’s sake. All good leaders must show wisdom and kindness, mate. The boy …’

I got down on my knees, hands together.

‘Please, Awaale, please.’

He liked the reaction from the two crew beside him.

‘But why does he want that child?’

‘Because everything is about the boy, Awaale. The man with the money, the powerful man — that is his son. Just leave the wagon, Awaale. We must keep the boy safe. We don’t need any more drama from the father, believe me. I told you, he can reach anywhere he wants …’

BB was still going ape-shit, but staying static. He knew this was his best option for now.

The two Georgians, still naked and against the back of the cab, began to taste freedom. They gave me a smirk. Dec gobbed at me as I got to my feet. It hit me on my right shoulder. I wanted to reach over and throttle the fucker, but that would have to wait. ‘Awaale, let it go. Fuck ’em.’

The Skyvan had reached the end of the runway.

‘And fuck Erasto. You’ll just have to take over tonight, won’t you?’

He was still struggling to compute. I had to scream like a drill sergeant to get through to him. ‘Give — them — the — wagon!’

His face crumpled. He almost looked hurt. I took a deep breath, forced myself to be calm. ‘Please, Awaale … Please …’

He thought about it.

Finally, achingly slowly, he waved an arm at the two crew to debus. The lads jumped off, and he followed.

Ant and Dec got to their feet. The driver was out. Ant vaulted over the side and took the wheel. BB reversed towards the wagon, muzzle still glued to the back of Stefan’s head.

The rest of us shuffled backwards towards the Cargomaster. Mr Lover Man shouted, ‘Tracy, no! No!’

Like a banshee, she zoomed past me.

Her body convulsed with sobs as she ran. ‘Take me, take me! Not my baby, please!’

I bellowed, ‘Tracy, stand still. Stand still!’

But she didn’t. Of course she didn’t.

BB threw the boy onto the flatbed with Dec and swung round to face the threat. Tracy hurled herself at him. He used her own momentum to fling her to the ground. As he climbed on board, she came back at him. He tried to kick her off but she clung on. The wagon started to move. She slipped and for a second it looked as if she was going to fall, but with a desperate lunge she managed to grab the sill of the flatbed. Her feet dragged along the tarmac.

She gripped the sill and tried to swing her legs onto the back of the wagon.

Dec handed the boy back to BB and took the M4. He moved to the edge and stamped on Tracy’s fingers.

Ant swung the wheel from side to side.

Tracy managed to hook a knee over the edge of the flatbed and held on grimly, but her grip was loosening. The force of the seesawing technical was becoming too much for her. Dec took aim with the M4 and gave her a round. Her limbs flailed as she cartwheeled into the ground.

The technical roared towards the Skyvan. BB held onto Stefan like a vice, the boy’s face into his shoulder. Dec banged on the cab roof to get Ant to drive faster, then swivelled and gave a burst with the M4 in our general direction. Everybody ducked. I kept eye-to-eye with Genghis. ‘No. We don’t want anything to hit the boy.’

He got it. He understood. At last.

Tracy lay very still. The wound in her gut glistened. She panted for breath. Supporting her neck, I lifted her gently and leant back to take the weight. Her leg dangled over my right forearm.

‘Nick … My baby … My baby …’ Every word hurt.

‘It’s OK,’ I murmured. ‘It’s all going to be OK …’

Tracy kept trying to talk.

‘Stop … It’s all right. We’ll get him back, I promise. We’ll get him back …’

Her head fell across my arm. ‘I’ve been so stupid, Nick … I’ve been so … stupid … My baby …’

Mr Lover Man helped me lift her carefully into the Cargomaster’s hold. He and Genghis ripped open the medical kit to grip her.

Awaale was at the door, hand outstretched. I grabbed it.

‘Listen, mate, good luck to your clan. We’ve got to go. But you know what? We are friends. We really are friends.’

His face creased into a huge grin. ‘Yes, of course, Mr Nick,’ he shouted in my ear as the prop revved big-time. ‘Of course, I know it. America, we meet at my father’s house.’

‘Give me your cell. I’ll get your number off it.’

He threw it up to me, then pointed down the runway. ‘Mr Nick, they’re escaping.’

The Skyvan left the tarmac and lifted over the sea.

‘No, they’re not, mate. No, they’re fucking not.’

21

I shouted to Joe as I closed the shutter, ‘Get airborne! Get up there — follow that fucking thing!’

The Cessna rumbled towards the runway. I climbed over the two front seats to retrieve my headset. I stared out into the darkness. ‘You faster?’

He was at full stretch, pressing buttons, doing pilot shit as he checked left and right of the aircraft. ‘Easy. That Skyvan is a fucking shed, man. But they’ve cut the lights. They know we’re coming. Where would they go?’

‘It’s got to be south. Kenya. Or maybe further. Anything north would be a nightmare. There’s the Arab Spring, civil war, and Yemen hates everyone. Why head into that shit? Don’t worry about it, Joe. Just get up there, start heading south, and I’ll try and find out.’

I checked his watch. We had about half an hour till first light. I looked at him. ‘We’ll find the fuckers, don’t worry.’

We hit the beginning of the strip and the prop screamed up through the revs. I pulled the loadie’s extension lead out of the door pocket and plugged it in.

Headset on, I moved back into the hold. Frank’s lads were working furiously to get drips into her. That meant they’d already plugged any leaks.

Genghis pulled the plasma expander from the trauma kit, a clear plastic half-litre container shaped like a washing-up-liquid bottle. He tore it out of its plastic wrapper and threw that on the ground. He bit off the little cap that kept the neck of the bottle sterile. Fuck hygiene — infections could be sorted out in hospital. He knew what he was doing. Let’s keep her alive so she can get to one.

Mr Lover Man also had his IV set out of its protective plastic coating. He chewed off the cap to the spearhead connector and jabbed it into the self-sealing neck of the bottle. He took out the plug, undid the screw clamp, and watched as the fluid ran through the line. He wasn’t concerned about air bubbles in the line; a small amount didn’t matter — certainly not in these circumstances. I willed him on. Let’s just get the fluid in.

He hung the loop in his mouth to keep the bottle high so its life-saving contents could run freely.

Mr Lover Man shrugged off his body armour. Genghis rolled the soft Kevlar into a pillow and tucked it under her head. I looked down. He’d plastered field dressings to her stomach, beneath her bloodstained T-shirt.

I leant down towards her as Stefan’s two godfathers carried on working on her. I made sure she’d be able to see me before I tried to get her to open her eyes. Her face was screwed up in pain. I stroked her forehead, moving the hair out of the way with one hand and pushing one of the cans off my ear with my other. I had to raise my voice above the prop and engine noise.

‘Tracy? Tracy?’

Nothing. I leant in closer, my mouth to her ear. ‘Tracy?’

Her eyes opened as the aircraft lunged forward and started to thunder down the tarmac. She studied my face. A smile flickered at the corners of her mouth and turned almost immediately into a grimace.

‘Nick, I’m so sorry … I’ve made so many … mistakes … Stefan, my baby …’ Her bottom lip trembled. Tears welled in her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. Her sobs gave her even more pain.

Genghis applied more pressure on her stomach to keep the fluids inside her. She strained against the agony.

‘Tracy, it’s OK. I’m going to get Stefan back. But I need your help …’

She was trying to listen through the tears and the pain and the din and the vibration of the aircraft as we gathered speed along the runway.

She gave a small nod. Her eyes closed. She tried to breathe through her snot-filled nose.

‘Do you know where they’re going? Do you know what country they’re going to?’

Her head turned to one side. She coughed, trying to clear her throat. Her nose was blocked. Her face contorted.

The Cessna lifted off the runway. The engine pitch changed. Mr Lover Man held Tracy steady as the medical gear slid down towards the rear of the aircraft. He grabbed a bottle of water as it rolled past and opened it with his teeth. He tried to see if she could take some through her cracked and blistered lips.

‘Tracy, do you know where they’re taking Stefan?’

She fought to unblock her nose. She tried a drink. It wasn’t working. It made her cough even more.

‘Kenya … They’re going to Kenya … They’re going to … take him to Georgia … Nick … My baby … A hostage again … Nick, what have I done? My baby …’

I stroked her brow some more as Mr Lover Man held her head straight on the body armour. She couldn’t control it herself any more. My fingers found the mike, to make sure Joe got the message. ‘It’s Kenya, mate.’

He came straight back into my headphones. ‘I fucking knew it, man.’

I stroked her forehead again. As the aircraft levelled off, a hand came up and grabbed my wrist.

Her grip was pathetically weak. Her lips trembled. Tears fell. She tried to focus on me. ‘I’m so sorry, Nick … I always mess … everything up … Why do I always make such a mess of everything?’

She fought the agony. Body fluid leaked out faster than the IV set could get it in.

‘No, you don’t. You and Mong — you didn’t mess that up, did you? You made him so happy, Tracy. He always talked about you. He told everyone how much he loved you.’

She gave a weak smile and tried to clear her throat again, but the pain was too much.

Mr Lover Man checked the drips and dressings. He and Genghis mumbled between themselves.

‘I always get it wrong … The only good things … I have … are Mong … and Stefan …’ She started to break down at the thought of what might be happening to him.

‘It’s OK.’ I unclasped her hand from my wrist and held it in mine. I rocked with the motion of the aircraft. ‘We’re going to get him back. He’s not that far away. We’ll be able to see the plane as soon as it’s light. I won’t let you down, Tracy. I promised Mong I’d always look after you. And Stefan’s part of you. So he’s part of that promise, isn’t he?’

She gave a couple of half-nods before coughing and snotting up. Her hand squeezed mine hard.

‘Nick … I want you to understand. I felt so … alone in Frank’s world. He’s a good man … but his work, his family … We could never be together … Not truly … together … Me and Stefan … would always … be kept in a box … I had … to get away …’

She chugged up a mouthful of blood. I shushed her as she fought for air. ‘I don’t need to know. Just rest. Let the guys sort you out. Let’s get Stefan back.’

‘No, Nick … please … I want you to know … BB knew what I was feeling …’

‘The kidnap plan was his, wasn’t it?’

She just about managed a nod. ‘I knew there was no … happily ever after … for us … But once he’d set it up … he had me … exactly where he wanted me … I got cold feet …’

‘But he threatened to betray you to Frank.’

‘Frank … would have taken Stefan … would have kicked me out.’

‘BB arranged the hijack?’

‘He wanted money … He knew the clan … from the old days … He said … Frank would hand over the money … then be told we were all dead …’

I didn’t tell her that BB had always known Frank’s cash, if there was any, would be a bonus. The serious money was coming from Georgia.

She worked hard on a smile.

‘Me and Stefan … We didn’t want Frank’s … money … We were going … to India …’

Her face muscles suddenly relaxed, and I no longer felt the tension in her hand. From the faraway look in her eyes, part of her was already there.

‘On the beach … Maybe … a small restaurant … Just be happy …’

A coughing fit took her away from her dream. I caught Genghis’s eye. For a moment I thought he was going to crack as well. Then the mask of inscrutability was back in place.

‘Frank … he has … so many … enemies …’

BB had taken full advantage of that. His plan must have seemed pretty close to perfect. But he’d fucked up. He hadn’t written al-Shabab into the equation. He hadn’t reckoned with people who didn’t give a shit about the money and the shagging and the shiny red sports cars.

I gripped her hand and stroked her cheek. I tried to wipe away the tears, but they were falling too fast.

‘Tracy, it’s OK. You’re safe now. Just let these lads sort you out.’

I moved the mike out of the way and bent to kiss her gently on the forehead. ‘I’ve got to go now. I’ve got to get Stefan back. It’ll all be OK. He’ll be with you before you know it.’

She struggled to bring my hand to her lips. ‘I know he will … I trust you … Nick … I … always have …’

I smiled at her.

‘You … and Mong … the only men … I ever … trusted …’

She tried to give a smile back.

I let go of her hand and placed it in Genghis’s palm. He gave it the gentlest of squeezes.

22

First light was peeking over the horizon to our left as India’s bright blue sky and sun prepared to visit Africa again.

Joe was far out to sea. I could just about see the coastline on our right as I moved my head level with his.

He locked eyes. ‘How is she?’

‘Not good, mate.’

He nodded slowly, letting whatever that meant to him sink in. He pulled on his sun-gigs. ‘It’s best looking for these fuckers with the sun behind us. Like a fucking dogfight, man.’

‘That’s exactly what it’s going to be.’

I was sure I could see a slight twinkle in his eye behind the shades.

He kept on scanning the area. I joined in, looking for a little dot in hundreds of miles of empty sky.

‘Just one thing, Nick. What happens if my aircraft gets damaged? What the fuck would you do about that, man?’

I turned to face him. There was a big smile on his leathery face. ‘You going to pay me, man? These fucking things cost over a million dollars. Can you believe that shit? I got a fucking big loan on it, man.’

I smiled right back. ‘You won’t have any worries on that score.’

He got back to the business of flying and monitoring the sky ahead of us.

‘Where are the fuel tanks on those Skyvans?’

Both hands came off the controls again as he started to explain with his hands as well as his mouth. It was like I’d opened the encyclopedia at ‘S’.

‘On that fucking thing? Two Garrett turboprop engines, each driving a three-blade, variable-pitch propeller. Fuel in four tanks, in pairs on top of the fuselage between the wing roots. Each pair consisting of one 182-litre tank and one 484-litre mother. Total fuel capacity, 1332 litres. That’s a lot of fucking fuel, man.’

‘What’s its range?’

‘With maximum payload, about eleven hundred klicks. But there’s no maximum in that shed, man.’

‘Their tanks won’t be full unless they refuelled at Mog …’

‘No, man, but we didn’t either, and they might have extra tanks …’ He brought his hands down to make sure I was following all this closely,‘… in the spaces between the fuselage frames on each side, beneath the main tanks. There’s provision for another four hundred litres. But fuck it, man …’ He put his arms up as if he was firing a rifle. ‘You drill that area and you’re going to hit tanks. That’s all you need to know, man.’

I picked up the AK and tapped the mag. ‘You got tracer in this?’

‘No, but you’d better check.’

I grabbed the magazine with my right hand. I pushed the release catch forward with my thumb and released it from its housing. The selector lever, a long spring-loaded arm, was in the upper safe position. I pushed it down to the fully automatic position before pulling back on the cocking handle to check no rounds were in the chamber. I released the handle, fired off the action by pressing the trigger, and replaced the selector lever back to safe.

Tracer are built with a hollow base filled with a pyrotechnic flare material, often phosphorus. In US and NATO standard ammunition, this is usually a mixture of strontium compounds and magnesium that yields a bright red light. Russian and Chinese tracer generates red or green light, using barium salts. Whatever the colour, the point was that it burnt intensely.

I pushed the first round out and used it to start flicking the rest out by the base as the spring forced them forward. I aimed them at the right-hand seat.

I couldn’t remember the flash point or the initiation temperature of Jet A1 fuel but I wasn’t taking any chances and neither was Joe. He kept looking at the rounds as they fell onto the right-hand seat. I didn’t want a big fuck-off firework display. I wanted holes. And the AK 7.62 short would make much bigger ones than Genghis’s M4 5.56.

I got to the last round. They’d all been bog-standard plain ball.

Joe sparked up. He was suddenly in full-fight mode. Very calm. Very precise. No profanity. ‘Got him. Half right of the nose. Maybe a klick ahead. Two hundred metres below us. He’s following the coastline.’

I hit Joe on the shoulder. ‘Well, let’s go get the boy, then.’

‘Fucking right, man.’ There was no smile this time.

I started to move to the rear. Joe came back on my cans. ‘You sure this Mr Big Shot will pay for my aircraft if it gets broken? Tell him, if he doesn’t, I’ll reload that fucking mag and come looking for him.’

My cans filled with his laughter as the prop pitch changed, the aircraft banked to the right and we started to descend.

23

I kicked all the shit further back to clear a space and opened the shutter. A gale rushed in. It was like standing at a station with an express train thundering past. I tried sticking my head out. My face got buffeted like I was in freefall. I couldn’t see through my streaming eyes.

I pulled my head back in. All the wrappers from the field dressings and all other bits of crap were caught in a whirlwind around me.

Mr Lover Man had taken my place between the cockpit seats. He shouted at Joe: he wanted to know what was happening. He followed Joe’s pointing finger to the Skyvan on our right. Then he looked back at Genghis working on Tracy.

I cleared more shit out of the way. I wanted a good stable platform for the weapon.

Mr Lover Man tilted his head so he didn’t bang it on the top of the fuselage and stormed towards me. Joe gave me the heads-up in my cans. ‘He doesn’t like you, man. He’s fucking mad. Those hands are massive. Be careful.’

I came forward to meet him. I wanted metal fuselage between me and the sky in case he got weird and tried to chuck me out.

I pulled one of the cans off my ear. ‘Listen, this is the only way to stop them. We don’t know how much fuel they’ve got. We don’t know if we can outrun them. They might have extra tanks. We don’t know what they’re up to. We don’t know what they’re going to do when we get there. So we’ve got to stop them while we can.’

A big finger jabbed into my chest. ‘You kill Stefan …’ It pressed even harder and his face came closer. ‘I kill you.’

I let him get on with it. Now wasn’t the time. Let him make the threat. If I fucked up, we’d see. I nodded and turned back towards the open door. He was good at jabbing and doing the threats but he wasn’t exactly pushing me out of the way to take the shots himself.

I put the can back on as I reached the howling gap. ‘All sorted. Where the fuck are they?’

I was looking out as best I could, craning my neck beyond the cargo door. All I could see was clear blue sky, and ocean below.

‘They’re still half-right. They’re about half a klick forward and higher.’

‘OK.’

I hauled myself back inside. I braced my back against the fuselage opposite the opening, my knees up and my elbows just inside the creases of the knees so I didn’t have bone on bone. I wanted good firm support for the weapon. Legs pressed together, I got the butt of the AK in my shoulder. As the aircraft bumped and buffeted, I pushed the safety to first click.

I was going to have to be good. The AK was designed to deliver massive firepower by hundreds of thousands of Russians advancing over the plains of Western Europe, brassing up whatever was in their way. The AK is at its best firing short bursts on automatic at ranges below about fifty metres. Beyond that, they go wild.

The calibre of the round was in my favour. The 7.62 was designed to take an enemy down first time and keep him down. If Joe could get me in range, whatever I sent across should punch holes in the Skyvan the size of my fist.

I cocked the weapon and pulled the selector down again, onto single shot. I got back on the mike. ‘Joe, mate, you’ve got to get close and level.’

‘No problem, man. They got any weapons apart from that M4?’

‘We’ll find out soon enough. Make it look like we’re trying to push them towards the land or some shit. I need to find out exactly where the boy is on that thing.’

The revs picked up a notch and I could feel the airframe increase speed. Moments later I saw the Skyvan out of the door. It was forward of us, to the right, and higher in the clear blue sky. We were about a hundred metres away.

‘Get up more, Joe. We need to be at the same level. We need to see through those cockpit windows.’

‘They’ve seen us, Nick.’ Joe’s voice had gone up a notch too. ‘The ramp is coming down.’

24

‘Got it.’

I spotted heads on the ramp as it lowered. I lined up my eye behind the iron sights to check I could clear the left-hand side of the door.

The ramp had gone down halfway. I could see Ant and Dec’s shoulders. They were standing, and they had longs into the shoulder.

I yelled into the mike. ‘Joe! Dive! Dive!’

The engine screamed as we tipped instantly right. I struggled against the Gs as the horizon disappeared. Then I was sliding towards the door. The ocean filled the hole. The sea was rushing up to meet me.

I spread my legs, trying to get my socked feet across the airframe as some kind of brake. Both heels hit the door threshold at the same moment. I started tipping up vertically from the floor.

Joe levelled it out. I dropped back. The air stank of burnt oil. He must have taken the engine near its limits. We surged beneath the Skyvan and out of Ant and Dec’s weapon arcs.

I checked further down the fuselage. Mr Lover Man and Genghis were holding on to Tracy. Genghis lay over her feet. Mr Lover Man was at his shoulder. They must have had their work cut out keeping her in one piece while Joe did his Red Arrows bit.

I checked back through the cargo door. We were low enough to see the sea. The sun beat down on it and bounced back up into the sky. It was almost blinding.

Mr Lover Man shouted. He was glaring at me.

I gave the calm-down sign I’d been using a lot lately. ‘It’s OK, mate.’

Joe wasn’t impressed. ‘They got more than that fucking M4, man. This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to get above him, come right on top of the fucker, crossing the ramp so we can get a good look inside the cockpit. If that ramp keeps open we can still see inside. You got that?’

‘Sounds good to me.’

‘They’re going to be looking for us now. I’m not going to fucking hang about, man. No way. So keep sharp.’

‘I’m ready.’

‘I’ll be able to check the cockpit as I come in on top of them. That heap of shit couldn’t outrun a fucking wheelbarrow.’

The Cargomaster tipped right, and then we were suddenly climbing at forty-five degrees, gaining height as the engine screamed. Joe hurled the aircraft round in a tight turn. With blue sky and blue sea and no cloud, I had no point of reference with what was happening, apart from my stomach. I had to grab the struts on the side of the fuselage. I moved to the door, grabbed the rear of the frame with my left hand, keeping the weapon down on the floor with my right.

I saw the horizon. Then I caught a glint of silver. Joe completed his manoeuvre and the Skyvan was two hundred feet directly below us. We surged down. I felt the force of several times gravity. The engine was going ape-shit. All the loose crap inside the cargo hold flew around like slow-motion shrapnel. Some got caught in the drag of the door and was sucked out.

I felt the side of my cheek balloon as I tried to look out.

The Skyvan leapt towards us. My eyes felt like they were about to pop out of their sockets. It was like we were doing a kamikaze dive on it until we were fifty feet away, then Joe pulled the airframe left, towards the rear of the target.

He screamed into my cans, ‘The cockpit! He’s in the cockpit!’

We roared past the open ramp. Ant and Dec, still bollock naked, were kneeling on the threshold of the cargo hold. The ramp was the only protection forward of them.

A thin stream of tracer arced its way towards us. The rounds found their mark. Hot metal ripped through the Cargomaster’s floor.

Joe dived still lower.

Suddenly I was looking up at them. They were trying to move forward on the ramp, trying to get some rounds down.

Their tracer really did make it look as if we were in some Second World War dogfight, until we levelled out again, way out of range.

Joe sparked up: ‘The boy is definitely in the cockpit. He’s with that fucker who took him. They’re in the right-hand seat. You see them, Nick?’

‘No.’

‘He’s definitely there. But that’s fucking close to the fuel tanks, man. It’s going to take some fucking good shooting. You up for that shit?’

‘I fucking have to be.’

He laughed far louder than he needed to. ‘You told me you didn’t know how to use the fucking thing. But I had you drilled down as soon as I saw you, man.’

‘Joe, can you come in higher and just slightly to the left, over his left wing? I need a line straight down into the tanks and out the bottom without hitting the boy. Can you do that?’

‘As you say, man — I fucking have to.’

The aircraft started to climb. He held the Cargomaster in a tight bank. I tried to look out of the door. I had no idea where the Skyvan was. The engine screamed. More crap got thrown about. We all held on to whatever we could.

Sunlight leapt at me before the blue sky surrounded me, and then all of a sudden I saw it. The Skyvan was four hundred metres away and much lower.

Joe was on the cans: ‘As soon as they see us they’re going to try and manoeuvre, but fuck ’em. You just get the rounds down, man. Right?’

‘I’ll tell you when.’

I moved the mike out of the way and screamed to Mr Lover Man. ‘Come here! I need you!’

He scrambled towards me. The Skyvan was still below us.

‘I need you as a platform. On the door.’

Mr Lover Man knelt down, arms out, gripping the sides of the frame.

25

I knelt down beside his left arm, using it to support the weapon as I leant against the frame.

I pushed the mike back on. ‘Joe, I’m ready.’

‘Here we go.’

He crabbed neatly across the sky until he was right on top of the Skyvan. I leant forward into Mr Lover Man’s arm, bringing the weapon down, fighting the wind.

The Skyvan was two hundred metres the other side of the sights.

The wind was buffeting our faces big-time, but Mr Lover Man’s expression hadn’t changed. Its message was simple: You kill him, I kill you.

The Skyvan was maybe a hundred metres below us now. The strain showed on Mr Lover Man’s face as he put everything into keeping his body as rigid as he possibly could. He knew how important this platform was.

Joe’s voice came back through the cans: ‘I’m going to drop down and move a little over his left wing. They’ll see us soon enough. You get drilling as soon as you can.’

‘I’m ready.’

We came so close I could identify faces in the cockpit. Stefan was on the right-hand seat, gripped between BB’s legs. BB was shifting continuously, twisting and turning, checking the airspace around them. He looked up. The M4 dug into the boy’s stomach and his mouth opened in a silent shout.

I felt Mr Lover Man’s eyes boring into me, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen. Not yet, anyway. Stefan was too valuable to BB now, and the only leverage he had. The only way the kid was going to get shot at the moment was through bad skills and a wayward 7.62.

The airframe tilted left. I had a clear shot straight down into the tank at about forty degrees.

I fired.

I fired again.

Joe came at me on the cans: ‘Your old friends are right on the ramp.’

I glanced back. Ant and Dec were manoeuvring themselves into a position from which they could fire without hitting their own wing. The weapons in their shoulders wavered as they fought the wind rush.

A tumbling 5.56 round ripped a hole many times its size in the aluminium floor, missing Mr Lover Man’s feet by inches before exiting through the roof.

Mr Lover Man didn’t move a millimetre.

I fired again.

I steadied myself for the next shot. Something had changed down there. The fuselage between the Skyvan’s wing roots was staining as fuel escaped across it.

I fired more rounds into the shed, until I got a big clunk as the working parts moved forward, and then nothing. The mag was empty. Ant and Dec just kept on going.

Joe screamed. ‘Moving! Moving!’

He pulled round in a wide turn.

The Cargomaster threw a sharp left and tilted up. All I could see was sky. Then I caught another glimpse of the cockpit. BB had joined in. He was firing through the side window.

Mr Lover Man and I tumbled back onto the fuselage as the Cargomaster screamed down out of range.

There’d been no sign of Stefan.

Joe was back on the cans: ‘Fuck it, we can’t afford to take rounds, man. We can’t go down before that fucker.’

I looked at the daylight spilling through the holes around me. I was glad he hadn’t seen them yet.

Mr Lover Man looked at me, waiting for an answer.

I shrugged.

Joe bellowed with excitement, ‘They’re heading for the coast, man. You fucking well did it!’

I gave Mr Lover Man the thumbs-up.

He nodded slowly. I moved aside so he could make his way back into the hold.

Genghis screamed up the fuselage at us before he could move a muscle.

26

She looked almost at peace. I thought she even had a smile on her face. I hoped that as she fought to take her last breath she’d known I was going to save her little boy.

I fell back, trying to take it all in. No Mong. No Tracy. Stefan looking down the barrel of a gun. And Anna too. I used to be able to cut away from this shit, but not any more.

Oblivious to what had happened, Joe was almost jumping for joy. ‘Definitely, man! That fucking shed is heading for land, man. You shot that fucker to shit.’

The Cargomaster tilted right, heading low towards the coast. ‘Let’s go see what’s left of them when they dump, eh?’

Mr Lover Man was checking for a signal on his mobile as Genghis went and closed the shutter door. I climbed into the right-hand seat. There was fuck-all else I could do for the moment. There was fuck-all anybody could do.

Tracy was dead. That was it. But we still had a job to do. We had to keep focused on that. I did, anyway.

I didn’t have time to mourn her yet. There was nothing we could have done on the aircraft, and there was nothing that could have saved her in Mog. Stefan was the one I was feeling for right now. He had no mother, and if the cards fell badly, a fucked-up, traumatized life ahead. Or no life at all.

Joe shook his head slowly as he took on board what had happened. ‘Fucking shame, man. But we’ll get the fuckers. Yes, sir.’ He jiggled the controls and the Cargomaster’s wings responded, waggling like they meant business.

The Skyvan was just a smudge in the distance, heading west. It crossed the surf line, then followed its shadow across the scrub and red sand that seemed to go on for ever.

Joe sparked up: ‘He’s looking for a place to put down.’

We were soon over the wasteland ourselves. Joe tapped his sat-nav monitor. ‘Jilib is a fuck of a shit-hole town, about eighty klicks west. They must be trying to dump there. If they can get to Jilib, they can get a vehicle.’ He slapped me on the arm with the back of his hand. ‘You fuckers better be quick when we land, man.’

I looked behind me. Mr Lover Man was gobbing off on his mobile. He saw me turn, waffled some more, then got up.

It looked like he was about to give me the phone. I moved the mike out of the way. ‘Tell him no, not now. Now’s not the time. Cut it. We’ve got work to do.’

Mr Lover Man’s face clouded. He didn’t like the fact his boss was being blanked.

I shifted the mike back into position and pointed to the blob ahead of us. ‘Can you get us down at the same time without those fuckers taking us apart?’

He nodded. ‘When that shed hits the ground it’s going to kick up so much shit they won’t even see their hands in front of their faces. But we’ll have to come in hard. I might lose my landing gear.’

I nodded. ‘Then we’ll just have to hope we don’t have too far to walk.’

Joe’s happy face disappeared. ‘That fucking boss man of yours better fork out for a new airframe, man. I got other jobs after this shit.’

27

My eyes were glued to the Skyvan through the cockpit window as we rode the thermals across the miles of desert.

Joe had asked for a damage report. He muttered even more darkly to himself when he got the news. ‘Fucking shit, man. He really better pay up.’

I looked in vain for another AK mag, then unfastened the emergency box between the seats. Inside, among all the other stuff, were two yellow rectangular plastic containers of Pains Wessex mini flares. Each held nine cartridges and a pen ejector — penjector — fitted with a stainless-steel spring and striker pin. These ones would be red. They were rescue kit. The military used different-coloured ones all the time as signal flares. They normally rocketed to a minimum height of about forty-five metres, depending on the spec, and burnt for six seconds. The small magnesium payload blazed so intensely it could be seen for nine K in daylight and sixteen at night.

I grabbed both packs and shoved them in the waistband of my jeans. I checked that the iPhone hadn’t gone AWOL.

The flares were easy to fire. They had to be, in case your hands were wet and cold and shaking. You got the penjector and twisted it into the thread projected from the flare cylinder as it sat in its case. You pulled back. There was a sucking sound as the cylinder came out of its holder. Then you pulled back the cocking piece, which would compress the spring. When you let go, the firing pin shot into the back of the flare, and off it went with a loud bang. It started burning immediately.

A massive hand appeared between us and pulled the escape axe out of the emergency box. Mr Lover Man also needed a weapon.

Mr Lover Man gave me his thousand-yard stare. It told me that if this ended up as a gang-fuck, the axe was for me. I moved the mike aside. ‘Get your mate up here.’

When Genghis appeared, I moved behind the seats so I was up close to both of them. I pointed to the Skyvan. Its tailgate was still down but we were too far away to see what was happening inside. The point was, we were both much closer to the ground now.

‘Listen in. As soon as they land, so will Joe — right on top of them, while the dust is up. We’ve got to be really quick. Get in there fast and take those fuckers on. Hopefully the ramp’s still going to be down. I don’t know if you can land with it like that, and I really don’t care. We’ll find out when we get there.’

Mr Lover Man translated. Then he turned to me. ‘We will kill them all. Mr Timis wants them all dead. All of them.’

I got it. If I’d zapped Stefan, that included me.

‘I will take care of Stefan. That’s still my job, to get to the boy. OK?’

Both of them understood what I was saying that time.

‘Justin — he’s not going to kill Stefan unless he knows he’s lost. At that point, he won’t give a fuck. So we must let him think he’s got a chance. We let him escape out of the aircraft. If we get in there and corner him, Stefan is dead. Let him run. I know him. I know how he thinks. I’ll get the fucker.’

Mr Lover Man wasn’t happy at all, but fuck him. ‘You want the responsibility of fucking up and getting the boy killed? Do you?’ I poked his chest. ‘I’ll take that fucking responsibility. Just like I did hitting the fuel tanks. Let Justin get out of that fucking aircraft, think that he’s running. I’ll sort him out. Don’t corner him.’

Joe rejoined the party. ‘This is it, man. The fucker’s dumping down. He can’t make it to the town. We’re about twenty klicks short. The moment I get you on the ground, I’m going to fuck off while there’s rounds flying about. That’s if you want an airframe to get you home, man.’ He played about with his instruments, his eyes constantly flicking up to lock onto the Skyvan and the terrain below. ‘Assuming I’ve still got fucking landing gear in five minutes’ time.’

I ripped off the cans and went and started pulling up the shutter. The Cessna descended. Mr Lover Man put his body armour back on and Genghis checked his M4.

He saw me looking at it and the scowl I got in return told me it was staying where it was.

28

The wind rushed in but not with such force now. We were lower and slower. The scrub was no more than two hundred feet below us.

I stuck my head out into the slipstream. The Skyvan was touching down ahead.

The Cargomaster’s engine revved higher as Joe corrected. Mr Lover Man and Genghis watched the action from behind the seats.

Power back. The plane slowed. We hit the final fifty feet.

Frank’s lads moved back with me and took up position in the doorway. A huge dust-cloud erupted and swallowed the Skyvan. Grains of sand pitted my face.

I could see the Skyvan’s wheel-prints in the hard red crust directly beneath us. Joe was making sure he landed on proven ground.

Our wheels touched. Joe braked as the Cargomaster bounced towards the dust-storm.

Mr Lover Man jumped, curling his body, ready to take the hit on his Kevlar. Genghis followed. The Cargomaster was bouncing along at about thirty miles an hour. We’d only been down for two seconds.

Fuck it. Why not? I pulled out the mini-flares, gripped one in each hand, and went for it.

The thump as I hit the ground drove the wind out of me. I rolled into a bush, dropping one of the flare packs. Inch-long needles pierced my skin, but I kept on rolling.

I finally got up, spitting out sand and grit.

Genghis sprinted past me. He disappeared into the dust-storm, weapon at the ready. Mr Lover Man was no more than a metre behind him with the axe.

I retrieved the flare pack and started to leg it after them.

29

Joe revved hard, taking off to the left of the Skyvan. The shed was static, but its engines were still running, still stirring up a maelstrom of red dust. There were shouts from inside. I could hear the signature of 5.56 being fired.

I ran to the right of the cloud, to get ahead of it, and dropped into a dip, panting, trying to get oxygen into me. My feet told me there were needles in them too.

There were more shots inside the Skyvan. The props began to wind down. One of them coughed to a halt.

BB stumbled out of the front of the storm, M4 in hand. No Stefan. Fuck.

I willed my body deeper into the sand.

BB turned and ran back, then reappeared almost immediately, dragging the boy. He threw him over his left shoulder. Weapon in the right hand, he headed west, his back to the sun, kicking up grit as he went. He knew where he was going. Even in this heat and with the weight of the boy, BB could cover the twenty K to Jilib in short order.

He didn’t look back. He knew there was no need to. He just had to make distance.

A couple more rounds went off as the second prop coughed and died and the cloud began to settle.

I set off behind them, keeping to the right, using the cover of the bush as best I could. The Skyvan soon disappeared behind me.

I pulled off the top of one of the mini-flare sets to expose the penjector. I took it out, screwed it onto a flare, and pulled it out with a gentle pop. I kept on running. It was vital that BB didn’t see me. His M4 was accurate to about three hundred metres. The flares weren’t accurate at all.

BB disappeared into a stretch of scrub and heat haze and didn’t come out again. My feet slipped in the sand as I tried to make ground, still using the cover.

BB might be fronting it. Going to ground, staying concealed. We look for him, we lose him, and at last light he moves off.

It was what his training would be telling him to do. And he would have the bottle for it. He might even know I was behind him, and be waiting for me to move into his weapon sights. What’s the point of running if there are people behind you that you can’t shake off? Stop, take me on, kill me, and then keep going.

This wasn’t a frightened animal I was chasing. It was a highly trained ex-SAS trooper with a score to settle and a big cash prize ahead of him.

I moved right of the point where he had become unsighted.

Slowing down now. Throat burning. Head burning. Relentless heat.

I kept low but fast, not daring to lose ground. Within a few seconds, I came to a dried-up watercourse. It was three metres deep and a couple wide after centuries of angry flash floods. I lay down at the wadi’s edge and scanned its bed, left and right. There was no sign. No sign at all. No one had been along here in any direction. He must still be somewhere down on my left.

Feet first, penjector in hand, I slipped slowly down the bank. When I hit the bottom, my left hand supported my right, as if I was holding my Glock. My body became a firing platform. My legs were shoulder-width apart, left foot forward so I turned forty-five degrees to the direction I was heading. I was balanced forward and back, left and right, as I started to move along the wadi.

Only my trigger thumb was free. It was the only thing I allowed to move as I kept the flare ahead of me, in my field of view.

30

Slowly, in bounds, as if I was patrolling, I kept moving, using the wadi as cover. I came to a bend. I stopped and listened before inching round it, weapon up, into the dead ground.

The watercourse twisted and turned, casting shadows, as it headed east towards the sea. The sun was now facing me. It burnt into my face, making it hard to see. I stopped short of another bend, listened again, then carried on, keeping low, hands up in the aim.

I negotiated a left-hander and heard a whisper ahead. I stopped. Leaning towards the sound, left ear pointing towards it, I held my breath so I could hear what the fuck was going on three — maybe even six or seven — metres away.

The whisper became muffled. I could only just hear it.

I dried my right hand in the dust on the side of the wadi then replaced my thumb on the cocking piece. I brought the flare back up into the firing position. Sweat dripped off my forehead and stung my eyes. I shook my head. The sun glared down even more fiercely into my face.

I started to edge round the corner. I could just see BB, sitting beneath an overhang in a stretch of shade, knees up, facing back the way he had come. He had the butt of the M4 in the shoulder, right hand around the pistol grip as he squeezed the forward firing handle between his knees to keep the barrel pointing up to the lip of the wadi. His free hand was around Stefan. He gripped the little boy’s mouth, bringing his head tight against him, to keep him quiet.

I took another pace forwards. I needed to get as close as I could before this went noisy. I thumbed back the cocking piece. Stefan was between us, in the path of a clean shot. He was going to see me first. But that was just fine. I wanted him to see me. I wanted him to start the commotion that would get BB to move, to bring the weapon down and turn it towards me. But not just yet.

I kept the weapon up towards the target, my support hand still wrapped around the dominant one, my shoulder forward so my nose was closer to the target than my toes. My right arm pushed the weapon towards BB as my left exerted rearward pressure, so the platform was rigid.

I kept moving forward, closing in.

Stefan saw me, saw my weapon. He screamed into BB’s hand and struggled to free himself as I approached. Not surprisingly, after the events of the last twelve hours, he didn’t seem to know whether I was friend or foe.

I kept both eyes fixed on the target, dead centre of mass of the two bodies. The flare on the end of the tube came into my vision and became my primary focus. The target and the cocking piece were now just blurs. I focused on the flare with both eyes.

BB’s head swung round as he tried to tighten his grip on the boy. His eyes locked onto me. No surprise; no anger. Just confidence. Knowing what he needed to do. His unmoving stare didn’t leave my centre mass. The rest of his body came round, with the weapon, to align itself with his head. The M4 came up.

He let go of the boy. He needed his left hand to grip the firing handle on the forward stock. As Stefan stumbled and fell, BB’s sights came into his focus.

I kept static, keeping a stable platform for the flare.

I let go of the cocking piece and the flare kicked off with a loud bang. A split second later, a blindingly bright ball of flame was burning into his thigh like molten lava. He stumbled backwards, loosing off a short burst into the side of the gully.

The rounds thumped into the dried mud metres away from me.

31

BB’s screams echoed up and down the narrow channel. The magnesium would consume the flesh until all the oxygen in it was used up. He lay in the dust, his body jerking as he took the pain and the shock of being hit. Flesh sizzled and dense white smoke poured out of the open crater in his leg.

Stefan stood transfixed.

I grabbed him with both hands, pushed him, trembling, up the side of the wadi. ‘Go! Go to your godfathers. Go!’

The sounds coming out of him were pure animal fear. ‘Where? Where?’

‘By the plane. Get up there and you’ll see ’em. Go! They’re waiting for you!’

He got to the lip of the wadi but stayed rooted to the spot, looking down at me. I lobbed a stone at him. ‘Fuck off! Go!’

He turned, screaming Russian. I swung back to BB. The M4’s working parts were to the rear. The mag was empty. He’d pinned his hopes on hitting me with those last few rounds before moving on.

The flare had stopped burning. His agony was clear to see. But he still attempted a smile. ‘It was all about the money, mate. That’s all.’

I unscrewed the empty cylinder from the penjector and screwed down onto a new one. There was another little pop as it slid out of the container.

BB heard it too. His head fell back into the sand. His face contorted with pain. The sun beat down on us. He panted as he tried to keep control of his breathing. He’d want to have the last word. He always had.

My shadow fell across him. He looked up, making sure we had eye-to-eye. ‘You know I never gave a fuck about Tracy. I never gave a fuck about her slapper sister. Or Frank. Any of them. Even the boy. Fuck ’em all.’

I leant down and held the flare inches from his forehead. But he still wasn’t going to beg or try to cut a deal. I knew that.

Through his pain, he did finally manage a smile. ‘Know what? I didn’t even give a fuck about Mong. I let him die. Risk getting myself killed for a bunch of slopes? Fuck that. He wanted to fight, so I let him. Fuck it. Fuck him.’

He looked up at me. ‘Fuck you, too.’

His breath quickened. Sand coated his face.

I got down on my knees. I wanted to get as close to him as possible. I didn’t want him to miss anything that I was about to say and do.

‘Mong wanted to fight to give me time to do the job we were there to do. He was protecting me. That’s what mates do when they’ve spent time being wet, cold and hungry together. Real mates put their lives on the line for each other. We’re members of the same tribe. That’s something you never, ever got.’

I pressed the flare against his temple. He didn’t even flinch.

‘You’re not going to hear me begging. It’s not going to happen.’

I nodded slowly. ‘Yeah, I know.’

He laughed. ‘Better to burn out than fade away, eh?’

‘You’re about to find out.’

I pulled back the cocking piece and let go.

The penjector jumped a little in my hand and I rolled back to see his head already frying. His body jerked about as if he was in an electric chair for the whole six seconds.

I sat in the wadi, not even bothering to move into the shade. I looked at the charred remains of BB’s head. Smoke curled from the entry wound as the last of the magnesium ate down to the bone. It poured out of his closed eyes. The wound in his thigh glistened in the brilliant sunlight.

I kicked off flare after flare into the sky. It was only minutes before Frank’s boys appeared on the bank above me. Stefan was firmly wrapped around Mr Lover Man. He kissed the boy gently, murmured to him; smoothed his hair, shielded him from the sight below.

Genghis was lugging a blue tarpaulin, the sort you find in pound shops. I realized what he had inside it as he slid down to the wadi bed with the bloodstained axe in his hand. It took him three swings to take off BB’s head. It joined Ant’s and Dec’s, and another I supposed must have belonged to the pilot. He spun it closed and slung it back over his shoulder.

He motioned for me to fire more flares. I kicked off another one and followed him up the wadi.

I could hear the Cargomaster up there somewhere but the sun was getting higher so I couldn’t see it. I sat in the sand, loosing off the last two as Mr Lover Man continued to comfort Stefan. Genghis threw the axe into the sand. We all just waited, not wanting to talk, not wanting to celebrate, not wanting to do anything. I was totally fucking drained. Mentally and physically.

The Cargomaster screamed overhead and banked and turned as I started pulling the thorns from my feet.

32

The engine noise was a constant drone in the cargo hold. We were following the coastline, flying low. The lush greenery to the right was Kenya. I was perched between two bundles. Tracy was swathed in a tarpaulin like an Egyptian mummy. The heads were in another. They’d been stowed right at the rear, out of Stefan’s sight.

Genghis was between me and the cockpit. He was either asleep or just lying there, I wasn’t sure. His head lolled on his discarded body armour. The boy was next to Joe, sitting on Mr Lover Man’s lap, being cuddled, cajoled and comforted.

Stefan held a nearly empty bottle of water. Mr Lover Man was fooling about, trying to get him to finish it. He needed to get some liquids down him. There still wasn’t much reaction from the boy at all.

I sat staring at the bundles. Mong dead. Tracy dead. Now even BB. It was as if a part of my life had ended too. Maybe it was meant to be. Anna was the important one now. This situation I knew about; her’s I didn’t. I just hoped we’d be able to pick up where we’d left off.

I pulled the iPhone from my pocket. There wasn’t much power left but there were three bars of signal. To try to find some shelter from the noise, I lay down next to Tracy. It wasn’t much help. Finally, with a finger in my other ear, I called her. No mad Arab women this time, just a long, uninterrupted tone. Maybe the French and Brits had bombed the infrastructure to shit.

I cut off. Then I called Jules and went straight to voicemail. ‘Mate, I’m in Kenya, heading to Anna today. I’ll call when I get some more power on this thing.’

Mr Lover Man turned and shouted at Genghis. The cockpit suddenly became a hive of activity. They both peered out of the pockmarked windscreen and Joe gobbed off to air traffic control.

I got up and moved forward. Mr Lover Man was pointing Stefan’s gaze in the direction of his dad. The G6 couldn’t be missed, even at this distance. The airport was not much more than two tarmac runways, big black scars in the ground that joined each other at a right angle. There were a couple of small buildings and hangars, and light aircraft dotted about. Sunlight flashed on the top left corner of the screen as we began our final approach.

The boy peeped at me over Mr Lover Man’s shoulder. He looked more like Frank by the second. I gave him a smile and a wink but got no reaction. The boy turned, the water bottle still in his hand, and nestled into his godfather’s chest. His hair was plastered with sand.

I looked down at him and realized he was going to be OK. His father loved him; his godfathers loved him. Kids have survived war, famine, even the Holocaust, and still become good, stable people. And, besides, Stefan had something other kids didn’t have. The Frank gene. No doubt even this experience would be turned into an advantage later in life.

I felt a little jealous of him. Both his parents had loved him so much, and Mr Lover Man had given Stefan more cuddles and kisses on the cheek during this trip than I’d ever got in my whole childhood.

The wheels touched down, smooth as silk, and Joe taxied towards the G6 by the junction of the runways.

The boy craned his neck towards the jet. Mr Lover Man took the chance to turn and glance at me. His expression hadn’t changed. Fair one. What the fuck did they care about me? The job was the job. The boy was safe. That was all that mattered.

It wasn’t much of a movie ending, but Frank and the lads had what they wanted more than anything. It was all about the boy.

We stopped behind the G6 and the prop spluttered to a halt. It was a bit of an anti-climax. No bands; no welcoming committee. No mayor to give us the freedom of Malindi.

Joe flung open the cockpit door and climbed straight out to start his inspection. ‘Fucking hell, man. Look at this.’ The Perspex was crazed. The fuselage had a lot of new air-conditioning.

Mr Lover Man left the plane carrying Stefan. I followed Genghis out of the shuttered door. I left them to it and joined Joe. It was very clear that my part in the Frank road show had ended. I just let them get on with it.

Joe pushed a fist into a gash in the aluminium and peeled it back a little more. He peered inside his airframe. ‘What happens now, man? What the fuck’s going on?’

‘I don’t know, mate. All I know is that I’ve got to get to Benghazi.’

His hand shot down to his side as if he’d been given an electric shock. ‘What? You really are fucking crazy, man. Haven’t you had enough of this shit already?’ He nodded towards the hold. ‘Who are they?’

‘Georgians — and a guy who used to be a mate. They wanted the boy. His dad wasn’t on their Christmas-card list, if you know what I mean.’

His hands came up to cover his ears. ‘Don’t want to know any more of that shit, man. Just make sure the dad makes good on my airframe. I’m going to be down the beach very soon, getting some beer and doing fuck-all. While that’s happening, my new machine can be on order. That’s me sorted. What you crazy fuckers do is up to you.’

I heard footsteps behind me. I turned to see Mr Lover Man with Stefan still attached to his hip, and Genghis.

Mr Lover Man kissed the boy on the cheek and murmured to him in Russian. Stefan nodded slowly. Mr Lover Man looked at me. His expression hadn’t changed. He still looked like he wanted that axe in the top of my head.

‘You have given us Stefan back. Now you must hand Mr Timis his son.’

He passed him over to me, and I finally got a smile. ‘Thank you, Nick.’ He nodded and stood aside as Genghis held out a hand. Even he came out with a thickly accented ‘Tank you.’

I finished the handshake and headed for the G6. Stefan rested his chin on my shoulder, looking down at the pan.

As I reached the bottom of the steps, Frank appeared in the doorway. He was still dressed in immaculately creased jeans and a crisply ironed, short-sleeved white shirt, with a pen in the breast pocket. But his face wasn’t in such pristine condition. He was crying.

33

As i started up the steps I whispered into the little boy’s ear, ‘Daddy’s here, Stefan! Look!’

His head lifted and turned. At last there was a smile on the boy’s face too. He struggled to release himself. ‘Papa! Papa!’

We reached the door.

Frank held out his arms and took him from me. They hugged each other hard. Tears streamed down Frank’s cheeks as he kissed his son’s face. ‘Oh, my Stefan …’

Frank carried him into the interior, a feast of white leather La-Z-Boy type seats and sofas and thick-pile carpets. I stayed where I was, just inside the door. Frank walked further into the aircraft. He sat down on a curved settee with his son. They embraced and kissed.

Stefan sparked up in Russian. I didn’t know what he was saying but he was tripping over himself as he raced to explain everything that had happened. I heard, ‘Mama, Mama,’ a couple of times.

Frank wiped the boy’s tears from his cheeks. His own were drenched. He couldn’t control himself.

Soon Frank was talking to him gently in Russian and stroking his face. He made some sort of funny, as you do with kids. It didn’t work.

An older woman emerged from the door nearest the cockpit, set into a wall of varnished walnut veneer. She said a gentle but cheerful hello to the boy and stroked his hair.

Stefan knew her. She led him away by the hand, but not before he got one more kiss on the forehead from his father.

Frank watched him all the way to the bedroom, where his son turned and waved.

His Zenith rattled as he beckoned me into the cabin. ‘Nick, please. Come. Sit.’

My attention stayed for a moment on the bedroom door, and then I joined them.

‘Stefan’s wounds need to be cleaned, Nick. And then she will give him something to help him rest until we get back to Moscow.’

I dropped my arse into the curved sofa opposite him. He wiped his eyes and leant forward. His hand came up and shook mine. ‘Nick, thank you. Thank you.’

He offered me a real glass bottle of water. The cap gave a hiss as I untwisted it. I glanced out of the window as I took a couple of big thirsty gulps. Mr Lover Man and Genghis were transferring the tarpaulin bundles into the hold.

‘What happens to the heads?’

‘They’ll be sent to certain people in Tbilisi. As a gift.’

‘Some gift.’

‘I will make the regime in Tbilisi crumble and my country will be free. Georgia is an enemy of Russia, Nick. An enemy of South Ossetia. There will be violence on the streets of Tbilisi very soon. The people I support and finance will make sure of that. Those heads — they are a gift to those who would try to use my son as a weapon against me.

‘I am treating them to a vision of their future — because soon I will have their heads as well. My mother and my father, they were in their seventies when the Georgians came into my country. They were old, gentle people, no threat to anyone.’

When Georgia launched its military offensive in 2008 to retake the breakaway South Ossetia, about fourteen hundred locals were killed. Frank’s parents must have been among them.

We both went quiet as Tracy’s body was loaded.

There had been anger in his voice when he spoke about his parents, but now sadness replaced the more familiar Terminator look.

‘We’ll bury her in Moscow. Stefan needs to be close to her always.’

Frank suddenly couldn’t meet my eye.

‘What are you going to tell him?’

He shrugged.

‘If it helps, Frank, when I first saw Tracy in Merca, she was stroking his head and singing a nursery rhyme. What about telling him that his mum has gone to heaven to teach the angels to sing “Three Blind Mice”?’

The tears welled up again in Frank’s eyes. I didn’t think they were just for Stefan. A hand came up, trying to push them back into his head rather than wipe them away.

‘Yes, that will be a very good idea. Thank you, Nick.’

My job was done, but I suddenly felt this might be a new beginning, not the end of days. Maybe what I’d told Tracy was true. Stefan was a part of her. And she was a part of Mong. And Mong? Well, Mong was a part of me, always.

I gave Frank a couple of seconds to sort his face out. ‘And what’s going to happen with Stefan now? Is he going to be kept away from your family?’ I nodded over at the bedroom. ‘Kept in a box with a nanny for the rest of his childhood? It wouldn’t be right, would it, Frank?’

The tears had gone and the old Frank, maybe not the real Frank, was coming back. ‘You really have been working very hard to find out about me.’

I nodded. ‘Part of my job, mate.’

He leant in towards me, the eyes now able to fix on mine. ‘Stefan will be part of my family. My wife’s name is Lyubova. It means “love”. She has much of it. She has had to, Nick. I have not always been a good husband. Some of the women, Lyubova has known about — but she has always loved me.’

He pointed a finger at me. ‘She knows nothing of Stefan. But she will, very soon. I will tell her everything. I believe she will embrace my son as her own. I hope she will forgive me. I hope that I may become the husband she has always deserved. So maybe something good has already come out of this.’ He sat back. ‘But enough, Nick. What about you — what do you want? What do you need?’

I sat back too, taking the last of the water down my throat. ‘I think Joe the pilot needs a new aircraft. He’s got more holes in it than my socks.’

Frank looked down and saw the state of my feet. He laughed.

He put his hands up. ‘Of course, that will all be taken care of. But you, Nick — what do you want more than anything in the world?’

That was an easy question to answer.

‘Frank, I want a lift to Benghazi.’

His eyes widened. He laughed again, a deep, warm, sonorous laugh. This was the real Frank, and I liked him.