Dictator

21

Carver’s movement caught Killaman’s eye. He did not panic. He had come there to watch a football match a couple of days earlier and knew the layout of the ground and its buildings. Nor was he going to be forced into anything hasty or ill-considered by the sound of the helicopter engine. He had already factored that element into his calculations.

Lying on the ground, he summoned Silent Death to drag himself across the dirt towards him, then explained what he wanted. ‘They are in the building nearest us, the home changing room. See it?’

Silent Death followed his commander’s pointing finger and nodded.

‘Good,’ said Killaman. ‘So this is what you must do.’

A few seconds later, Killaman’s ragtag platoon started blazing away at Carver’s position again, forcing him to stay hidden as Silent Death rose from the ground and padded away, body bent almost double, jogging off the side of the football pitch and making a sweeping flanking movement round the back of the buildings.

In the changing room, Justus was trying to keep Zalika Stratten from descending into total nervous collapse. Her whole body was shaking, and though she seemed to be trying to speak between her sobs, it was impossible to make out what she was saying.

‘It’s all right, Miss,’ he kept repeating. ‘Not long now. Soon have you out of here.’

If this had been his own daughter, he would have wrapped her in his arms and stroked her hair to calm her. But he did not dare do that now. Just the touch of a man could send this girl over the brink.

There was a reason Silent Death had acquired his name. Even among men who took great pride in their ability to melt into the scenery, move undetected and attack without warning, his talents stood out. Tonight, however, his prey had no means of seeing him, and with so many gunshots and the ever-increasing clatter of a helicopter engine to cover them, a herd of elephants could have walked up to the building unheard. Carver, positioned in the porch, had no idea that one of the enemy was just a few feet behind him, moving round the back of the shack and climbing with feline agility up its wall.

Silent Death reached the roof and looked down through the skylight into the changing room. He pulled the pin from the grenade Killaman had given him and dropped it through the broken glass, on to the concrete floor of the changing room. Then he slid to the edge of the roof and jumped back down to the ground.

‘Grenade!’ shouted Justus as the metal sphere, not much bigger than a cricket ball, skittered across the concrete.

He grabbed Zalika, all previous inhibitions dropped in an instant.

Justus knew he had less than four seconds to save their lives. But faced with mortal danger, the mind has a remarkable ability to slow the passage of time, and it seemed to Justus that he had an age in which to consider his options.

He saw at once that the grenade was intended not to kill them – Zalika was too valuable for that – but to drive them out into the open, where she could be recaptured. There was no point trying to throw the grenade back out through the skylight. The risk of missing the gap in the broken glass was too great.

That left only one option.

With one hand clinging to his gun and the other wrapped round Zalika, Justus ran for the shower cubicle. He took three quick strides and then dived, throwing them both through the gap in the breezeblock partition. The air was driven from his lungs as they hit the tiled floor. Gasping for breath, Justus rolled away from the opening, still clinging on to the girl.

The grenade exploded, filling the empty changing room with white-hot shards of shrapnel that destroyed the wooden bench and cut into the breezeblock walls like a million deadly wasp stings.

The shower room was sheltered from the worst of the blast. Even so, it left Justus deafened and dazed. His mind, so sharp and fast just seconds before, now seemed incapable of functioning at all, and his eyesight was dulled by the thick cloud of choking dust that filled the air.

Outside, Silent Death scampered back up the wall of the building and contemplated the hole where the skylight had been before the grenade blew it away. Watching out for the ragged, saw-like edges of the shredded corrugated iron, he clambered across the roof and slipped noiselessly down through the hole into the fog of dust.

Justus did not hear him come. He simply saw the outline of a gun-barrel emerging through the dust by the entrance to the shower, followed by a man’s arm. Operating now on pure fighting instinct, without any conscious thought Justus wrenched his shotgun free from the weight of Zalika’s body, raised it one-handed and fired.

The concentrated blast of a twelve-gauge cartridge ripped Silent Death’s left hand clean away, taking his AK-47 with it. Now he was not so silent. He screamed in pain, though the high-pitched cry of agony was little more than a whisper to Justus’s battered eardrums.

Justus scrambled to his feet, pumped another round into the chamber of his gun and stepped over to the gap in the breezeblock partition. Through the slowly clearing cloud of dust he could see Silent Death bent over, his right hand clinging to a ragged stump of arm from which a geyser of blood was pumping.

Justus put him out of his misery with a second round that hit Silent Death in the chest, lifted him off his feet and flung him against the wall like a doll thrown by an angry child.

From outside there came the sound of another detonation, followed by the angry chatter of small-arms fire.

Justus hurried back to find Zalika slowly rising from the floor. He could see her eyes widen as she spotted the severed hand, still clinging to its weapon, lying on the floor. He got down on his haunches and looked directly at her.

‘Are you hurt?’ he asked.

Zalika shook her head.

‘Good.’

Justus helped her to her feet and led her back into the ruined changing room. In the faint moonlight there was no colour anywhere, just a ghost world of black and grey. Zalika’s hand went to her mouth at the sight of the intruder: his lolling head; his staring sightless eyes; the dark gaping hole that had been punched into his body.

The two of them made their way towards the door.

Justus opened it a fraction and peered out through the crack, expecting to see Carver waiting for him in the porch.

There was no one there.

Somewhere out in the darkness a man was screaming. Not far away a blazing flare was belching crimson smoke across the field. The helicopter’s approach was getting louder with every second.

But Samuel Carver had gone.