Retribution

FIFTY-THREE

Kassim sensed his time was nearly up.

He was stuck in a side room of the library, away from where the meeting was being held. He now realized that he had an impossible task. He’d been waiting for an opportunity to move along the corridor towards the main hall, but there were too many guards around. All he needed was access to the entrance and a clear field of fire, and his job would be complete. Not as telling or shocking as he had managed with the others, but that was a matter of fate. The one thing he’d been counting on was that none of the guards would dare open fire among such a crowd; the carnage among the press and government officials would never be lived down.

But instinct told him his presence had been discovered.

He moved towards the door and heard the clatter of footsteps in the distance, and closer to, the cold click-clack of weapons being cocked. The sound bounced along the walls of the corridor, making his already stretched nerves jump alarmingly. There was no shouting, no sound of panic. But they knew he was here.

Word had gone out.

Kassim slipped out of the room with an armful of books. This could work to his advantage. He ventured along the corridor and peered round the corner just as two armed guards stationed themselves at the doorway to the basement. He ducked back and hurried to the washroom, where he stopped and listened outside the door. He could just pick out the echo of heavy footsteps pacing up and down inside.

Taking a deep breath, Kassim opened the door — and found himself face to face with a uniformed military policeman.

‘Who’re you?’ the MP asked, just as Kassim dropped the books he was carrying and thrust the Browning into the man’s stomach below his body armour. He pulled the trigger and felt the gun jump in his hand, the suppressed shot muffled further against the other’s body.

The MP staggered backwards and fell, blood spreading across his stomach. Kassim stuffed the gun in his pocket, locked the door, then bent and dragged the body across to the furthermost cubicle, where he heaved it on to the seat. Then he knelt between the dead man’s legs and ripped away the zebra-tape on the floor sealing the rim of an inspection hatch. He could already hear shouts coming from out in the corridor, and commands for the building to be evacuated and sealed off.

The hatch cover came away, revealing a narrow concrete shaft carrying waste and oil pipes for the heating system, with just enough space for a man to crawl along. It ran off in two directions, one to the rest of the building, the other towards the basement.

Someone banged on the washroom door and called out a name. Kassim cursed and dropped into the hole head first. He’d been intending to take the guard’s clothes, but it was too late. He began to pull himself along the shaft, scraping the skin of his elbows and knees as he brushed over the coarse cement bottom. He muttered a prayer, scrabbling desperately to propel himself to safety and ignoring the confines of the shaft, reliving nightmares of childhood in a small cave, hiding from his friends in a boyish game gone wrong.

But this was no game.

He heard a crash follow him down the shaft as the washroom door was kicked in, and redoubled his efforts. Already he could imagine a gun being poked down the shaft, a hail of bullets burning towards him.

He felt the shaft tilt downwards, and let gravity help his progress until he reached a dead end and the touch of soft, damp fabric on the floor of the shaft. It was the blanket he’d dried himself with earlier. He stopped and took a deep breath, then reached backwards and took the Browning from his pocket. One opportunity was all he had. If they were ready for him, he would die right here, in this suffocating little hole with barely room to curl up and meet his maker.

In the basement, the soldier who had earlier been guarding the door stood over the open hatch leading to the outside, where the man named Kassim had come in. He heard a faint sound behind him, and walked back through the connecting chambers. Probably one of the others, come to relieve him-

The grey uniform coats on the wall seemed to explode outwards, and a small metal door appeared, revealing a black hole where there should have been none. A figure tumbled into the basement, the dull glint of metal in his hand, and the guard felt a sick helplessness as he realized his own weapon was pointing away and it was too late to do anything but watch.

Kassim smashed the guard across the side of the face with the Browning. The man fell in a heap and Kassim leapt on him and dragged him out of sight of the stairs towards the open hatch in the floor. He quickly stripped him of his clothes and armoured vest, then took off his own clothes and dressed in the guard’s uniform. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but good enough. He dumped the unconscious guard down the hatch and threw the cover in on top of him.

At the top of the stairs he checked the mechanism of the guard’s submachine gun. It was loaded and ready. He placed his ear to the door. Heard shouted orders echoing along the corridor, and beyond that, the noise of a helicopter’s engines gathering power.

Kleeman was leaving!

‘He’s gone down the shaft!’ The MP who had broken down the washroom door levered himself up from the hatch in the toilet cubicle. Two of his colleagues had pulled the other soldier out and were checking for signs of life, but to no avail.

Harry walked in and looked at the hole. ‘Where does it lead?’

The MP pointed off towards the rear of the building. ‘Back that way. But it may change direction. . it’s too dark to see.’

Harry nodded. ‘Dump something heavy in there to seal it off.’ He beckoned to Rik. ‘Come on — I want to stick close to Kleeman.’

They could already hear a helicopter’s engines winding up to maximum pitch, and shouts as the CP team began to hustle Kleeman through the mass of journalists towards the main entrance.

Suddenly more cries echoed along the corridor, followed by the sound of a shot.

‘He’s down in the basement. . heading for the outside!’

Harry ran along the passageway and saw two soldiers disappearing down the stairs. Another was running towards the front, presumably to cut round the outside to where the tunnel came out.

‘Kleeman’s on board.’ Captain Rekker appeared, signalling to Harry. ‘We’re lifting off any — who the hell was that?’ He was staring at the soldier disappearing through the entrance. ‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘He’s not one of ours!’

A volley of shots rang out, flat and puny against the thudding noise of the helicopter’s engines. Harry ran towards the main doors and barged aside a group of journalists, his MP5 held aloft. A sick feeling was already building in the pit of his stomach.

Kassim had outwitted them after all.

A windstorm of noise and movement hit them in the face as the rotors of a French military Super Cougar 725 blasted them with dust and debris. A UN policeman lay sprawled a few yards from the front entrance, and three of the CP team were bunched in a heap close by the helicopter’s main door, their weapons scattered. Elsewhere other soldiers and police had all dived for cover.

‘Where’s Kleeman?’ Harry asked a stunned guard.

The man pointed towards the helicopter. ‘In there. A guy started firing as he came out the door. They didn’t stand a chance!’

As if to confirm the guard’s words, two men appeared in the opening to the helicopter’s fuselage. One was Kleeman, looking stunned; the other, standing behind him, wore combat gear and an armoured vest. It was Kassim, calmly staring out at the dramatic scene.

Kassim ducked back and pointed his submachine gun at the loadmaster. He was holding Anton Kleeman by the throat and felt unnerved by what he’d just seen. Two more men in combat uniform had emerged from the library entrance, and he recognized Tate and, alongside him, the younger man he’d seen with him in the airport hotel near Fort Benning.

They’d been following him all along!

He felt a ripple of anger and was tempted to open fire. But he decided against it; he might need to conserve ammunition. Instead, he tapped the loadmaster on the head with the tip of the gun barrel and pointed upwards. The man swallowed hard, then flicked his intercom mouthpiece into place and gave instructions to the pilot.

The lumbering craft, capable of carrying up to thirty people, seemed to sink on its haunches for a moment, before gathering itself and lifting off the ground with a renewed down-blast of air, leaving the security guards on the ground staring helplessly into the sky.