Star of Africa

Chapter 19

The first of many urgent calls that day had an instantly positive outcome. The octogenarian billionaire Auguste Kaprisky was overjoyed by the chance to repay what he saw as his debt to Monsieur Hope for saving his life. His greatest fear, he told Ben on the phone, had been that Ben would never ask. Without any hesitation and not a single question about why it was needed, Kaprisky granted them full and free use of his private jet. The aircraft was kept in its own hangar at Le Mans Arnage airport, just a few kilometres from Kaprisky’s estate, and he maintained two pilots on full-time salary, ready to fly at a moment’s notice. The weather forecast was looking dicey, but they’d taken off in worse.

The old man upgraded his plane every couple of years. His latest acquisition, he proudly declared, was a brand new Gulfstream G650ER, capable of covering thirteen thousand kilometres at a stretch, travelling at a steady Mach.85 with up to nineteen passengers on board.

‘That’s more than plenty,’ Ben said. ‘I can’t thank you enough, Auguste.’

‘Anything for you, my friend. I mean it.’

Jeff was on his iPhone, cancelling clients and calling in the security firm they employed to look after Le Val when there was nobody around. With time so short, the rest of the plan was going to have to come together en route.

Kaprisky had additionally offered to send his personal Bell 407 helicopter up to Le Val to collect them, but Ben had declined, thinking he could make slightly better time by road in the Alpina. While Jeff was making the last of the calls, Ben and Tuesday set about transferring equipment from the armoury to the back of the car.

‘I got to spend a little time with Jude while he was here,’ Tuesday said, a little awkwardly, searching for the right words. ‘I like him. I’m really sorry, you know?’

‘He’s not dead yet,’ Ben said.

Le Val’s armoury room was buried beneath several feet of reinforced concrete, with an armoured steel door and hi-tech security system. It housed scores of military-grade weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition, all painstakingly licensed by the authorities, itemised down to the last round and wrapped in enough red tape to tie up the French navy. One or two items stored down there, however, had never been registered officially, so that they could be set aside for a rainy day and never traced if things went awry or the guns had to be ditched. Over the years Ben had ‘collected’ four MP5 submachine guns and an assortment of shotguns, rifles and pistols whose serial numbers were unlisted. It was the pick of those that would be travelling with them to Africa.

Ben was still unsure about the wisdom of bringing Tuesday Fletcher along. The young guy had proved his worth as a soldier, no doubt about that, but he was an unknown quantity. ‘How’s that leg?’ Ben asked him as they hauled the gear up from the armoury.

‘Never better,’ Tuesday replied, grabbing another case of ammo.

‘This isn’t going be a walk in the park. I don’t want to be responsible for you if it goes south.’

‘I get it,’ Tuesday said with a frown. ‘Just because I was invalided out of the service, you think I’m not fit for this, yeah? You worry about Jude. I’ll worry about my leg. I won’t let you down.’ He paused. ‘It’s an honour working with you, man. You’re a legend.’

‘I’m just a person like anybody else,’ Ben said, wishing Tuesday would shut up.

‘Seriously. I heard stuff some of the older guys still talk about. Like the thing in Basra in 2003. That was the bollocks. I mean, forget the Iranian Embassy siege, right? Who dares wins.’

Ben put down the heavy kit bag he was carrying towards the car and turned to glare at him. ‘What you’ve heard is bullshit. You want to know what your glorious SAS were really doing in Basra? Setting up false-flag bombing targets against civilians to create PR spin for the war on terror. Killing innocent people so that puppet leaders in the West could wave their bloody flags on TV and get re-elected. That’s what we were doing. It’s why I disobeyed orders and almost got myself court-martialled. It’s also one of the main reasons I quit the regiment and never looked back. So you can stuff your “legend”. Don’t ever call me that again, okay? If you want to come, come. Just try not to get killed out there. I’ve enough crap to deal with already.’

Tuesday looked as if he’d been gut-punched. His smile vanished and he fell silent. When Ben’s anger died down, he felt bad for having lashed out at the younger guy and thought about saying so, but didn’t.

Minutes later, they were throwing hastily packed personal belongings into the back of the car and piling in after them. Jeff sat up front next to Ben, still talking on his iPhone, and Tuesday clambered in the back. Ben fired up the engine, popped the clutch and scattered gravel as the BMW took off.

It was 3.16 p.m.

Le Val to Le Mans Arnage airport and the waiting jet was just over two hundred and sixty kilometres. For the next two hours, Ben concentrated on getting them there in one piece and not attracting unwanted police attention, while Jeff worked the phone and covered pages of a pad in his lap with scrawled notes and numbers.

The sky was darkening as the sun, invisible all day behind a blanket of grey cloud, now began to set. Ben kept his foot down hard while icy rain lashed the Alpina and the wipers worked hard to swat the deluge aside. The road was slick and shiny, too treacherous to be driving so fast. The taillights of other vehicles starred and flared on the wet windscreen as Ben blew past everything in front of him. Lost in his own anxious thoughts and chain-smoking one cigarette after another, he was barely aware of what Jeff was saying over the phone. Every minute felt to him like days. He gripped the wheel and fought to stay focused, telling himself over and over again that Jude was still alive. He was tough and resourceful. He’d hang in there. He’d make it through this.

‘Okay,’ Jeff said, after a series of long calls and internet searches. They were speeding at a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour along the Nationale 13, just past Caen. ‘Here’s what we’ve got so far. The plane is fuelled up and good to go the second we get the gear on board. There won’t be any questions the other end. We wing it to Obbia — that’s the nearest airport to where we need to be. It’s right on the Somali coast, next to the town of Hobyo, ’bout five hundred klicks up from dear old Mog.’

The Somali capital Mogadishu had been the scene of several incidents involving British and US Special Forces over the years, and wasn’t a place much beloved by anyone who’d been remotely involved.

Jeff went on, ‘Le Mans Arnage to Obbia is just a shade over six and a half thousand Ks. I just talked to Adrien, that’s Kaprisky’s pilot, and he reckons at a steady Mach point eight-five, depending on conditions, we’re looking at less than six and a half hours in the air, point to point.’

‘Not counting the hundred and thirty-plus nautical miles east to the ship’s last position,’ Ben reminded him.

‘That’s where it gets trickier. Hobyo isn’t exactly a thriving metropolis, even by African standards. It’s supposed to have a port, but I wouldn’t expect to find much there. So the big question is, how do we get a fast boat from there to take us out the rest of the way? We’ll be lucky if we can find a rusty fishing trawler.’

‘There’s got to be a bigger port where we can charter a speedboat or a fast cabin cruiser,’ Ben said.

‘Yeah, no problem, if we travel from Mombasa. I’ve already checked. World’s your oyster down there. Only problem is, you’re looking at over sixteen hundred kilometres distance. There isn’t a small, fast craft that’ll cover it.’

‘How about the Seychelles? The islands are full of boats, and they’re a little bit closer to where Jude is than Mombasa.’

‘Thought about that already,’ Jeff said. ‘Not much in it, distance-wise. Same problem.’

Ben tossed the stub of his Gauloise through the inch-wide gap in the window and instantly lit another without taking his eyes off the road. His thoughts were rushing faster than the tarmac under the wheels of the speeding Alpina. ‘Remember Chimp Chalmers?’

Jeff looked at Ben. ‘Mate, Chimp Chalmers is a fucking lunatic.’

‘I know he is,’ Ben said. ‘But he might be a useful fucking lunatic. We can’t afford to get picky. Can you get his number?’

‘I can ask around,’ Jeff said reluctantly.

‘Do it.’

‘You don’t want to deal with that bloke. He’s not stable. And he’s a crook.’

‘Do it, Jeff.’

Chaz ‘the Chimp’ Chalmers, named as much for his physical appearance as for his ever-readiness to pull apart with his bare hands anyone who crossed him, had been one of the many who had quit the SF track to pursue a marginally safer and far more lucrative career in international security, and other things. Ben and Jeff hadn’t heard from him in a few years, but rumour had it he’d jobbed around central and east Africa for much of that time, not always on the right side of the law. He was the kind of person who could thrive and make contacts in places most sane men would steer well clear of, which had made him a natural to drift into arms dealing. These days, he was reportedly based in Prague and had built himself up to be the go-to guy for anyone looking to get hold of anything from an ex-Soviet tank or attack helicopter to a Scud missile, delivered to the location of your choice, anywhere in the world, for the right fee. He had connections everywhere, an extensive bag of tricks and a magician’s reputation for being able to pull rabbits out of hats, to order. Something as mundane as arranging a fast boat from Hobyo port should be a cinch for him.

Jeff got straight back on the phone while Ben, stealing a glance at the dashboard clock and wincing at the time, drove faster.