by Wilbur Smith
Bitterly Hector realized how cunning Congo had been. If he had killed the girl outright, Hector could have ignored her. But wounded, she demanded his attention.
“Nolan! Deal with her,” Cross shouted. He looked at the girl, and spoke in Spanish. “You want to live? Then do exactly what he says.” Then he glanced at Schrager. “Schrager! On me.” He was already running as he barked one more order, “Jones! Get to Paddy’s car. Go!”
Congo had less than ten seconds’ start. But if Cross couldn’t get to him before he reached the garage, it might as well be ten hours. Cross ran into the passage that led to the kitchen. It was pitch black. He pulled out his phone and turned on the torch. Another two seconds lost. Ahead of him he heard a crashing sound.
Now he ran: down the corridor, left through the swing doors and into the kitchen. Cross saw four staff: two chefs and two in maid’s uniforms standing in a terrified huddle to one side of the room. Now he knew what sound he’d heard. Congo had pulled down a rack of metal shelves that had been stacked with pots and pans. There was a clear way through the chaos to the far end of the kitchen, but it was slow. More time lost.
Cross kept moving. He heard a burst of muttered expletives behind him as Schrager trod on an upturned pan, but ignored it and kept moving. On the far side of the kitchen the passage forked: one way, right, to the servants’ quarters; the other, left, to the staircase that led down to the garage. Cross turned left and was almost at the top of the stairs when he heard running footsteps at the bottom.
There were three flights of stairs, arranged in a zig-zag. Cross didn’t bother running, he just jumped each flight, landing on the levels, spinning around in a one-eighty then leaping down the next flight. He landed at the bottom of the stairs, stumbled and fell on to the bare concrete floor of the small lobby between the stairs and the door to the garage.
As Cross hit the floor, driving the air out of his lungs, the door above his head was shredded by an extended deafening burst of close-range submachine-gun fire that ripped through the air at precisely the level where Cross would have been if he’d been standing. Schrager jumped right into the blizzard of steel and aluminum rounds that reduced his ribs to kindling, snapped every bone in his arms and pulped his head into a shapeless, faceless pink and crimson blob in the instant before he dropped down beside Cross, stone dead.
Cross ignored the corpse beside him. His mind was on the bullets that had hit it. They had been fired by a weapon that could not sustain more than two seconds’ fire without running out of ammo, which meant that Congo almost certainly had to change the magazine, which in turn gave Cross the time he needed to get up on to his hands and knees, hurl himself at the door, crash through it and then go straight into a roll that took him away from the center of the door and the line along which Congo would be aiming, once he’d reloaded.
Cross ended the roll in a low, crouching position. His gun was in his hand and he swung it through an arc, looking for Congo. But there was no sign of him. The garage was huge, with spaces for at least twenty cars, most of them filled. Cross’s ears were still ringing with the sound of the gunfire. He couldn’t hear Congo as he ran, bent low beneath the roof lines of the vehicles to either side of him.
Then suddenly there was the whirring sound of an engine starting up, bright white Xenon headlights bloomed directly opposite him, dazzling him, disorienting him, and then the lights grew even brighter, and he was aware of them bearing down on him. Cross fired four fast shots, aiming between and slightly above the retina-searing blaze of light; then he threw himself out of the way as two-and-a-half tons of supercharged V8 Range Rover roared past him and out on to the ramp.
He stood up, placed his hands on his knees and panted for breath. Now it was down to Paddy O’Quinn and Tommy Jones in the gray Toyota Corolla.
Johnny Congo cut the Range Rover’s lights as soon as he hit the ramp that led up from the garage to the Chateau Congo forecourt. They’d served their purpose by dazzling Hector Cross, but from now on they’d only mark his position for his pursuers. As he burst out of the gate of the property and turned hard left on to the road downhill, leading back into the city, he saw a pair of lights appear in his rearview mirror. Congo took the first right and looked again: they were still there.
“Fine!” He nodded. His blood was up. “We know just how to deal with you,” he whispered.
From the moment that Congo and Carl Bannock had first arrived in Caracas, they’d started planning what to do if they ever had to leave it in a hurry. Anything could happen. A new, less sympathetic government might be elected, or just seize power: Latin American countries had a history of revolutions and military coups, so that was always a possibility. The U.S. government might decide that they wanted Congo back in custody badly enough to make their pursuit of him more aggressive. Or a fellow criminal might just decide to take them out for business reasons: if the word got out about the money they were making from coltan and blood diamonds it would be enough to tempt a saint, let alone a sociopath.
Having spent many years at Huntsville, first observing the obvious inadequacies of the wardens who guarded him and then learning how to control them by a brutally effective system of bribes and threats, Congo took it for granted that the men guarding him and Carl were equally unreliable and open to persuasion by his enemies. So Congo had devised a complex series of exit strategies. His recent experience in Kazundu, where he and Carl had been caught napping by Hector Cross’s airborne military assault, followed by Carl’s death and his own narrow escape from execution, had only deepened Congo’s determination not to leave anything to chance. He’d gone back over his plans in exhaustive detail, making sure that all his escape routes, within the house itself and beyond, were still operable, with weapons cached throughout the building so that everything he needed would be available to him, no matter how extreme the circumstances.
Even so, Congo had spent enough time playing football and fighting in the Marines to know that it didn’t matter how good the coach’s playbook might be, or how thoroughly a mission was planned, there were always times when the unexpected happened, a whole new kind of shit hit the fan, the play broke down and you just had to improvise your way out of trouble with the resources that were available. So when he was caught unawares, with no firearm within reach, he’d grabbed the knife in one hand and the woman in the other and taken it from there. Not killing her, that had been a nice touch. He wouldn’t have thought of it if he hadn’t recognized Cross’s voice and known that he was too pussy to just let a bitch bleed to death without doing something to save her. So that was the second time Cross had paid for being soft: seemed like the honky asshole just hadn’t learned his lesson.
Had it killed him, though? That’s what Congo wanted to know. He’d heard two sets of footsteps coming after him, but only one man came through the door into the garage. Someone had been shredded by his two-second burst from the FN P90 Personal Defense Weapon that had been waiting for him just inside the door and no one could survive that, no matter how much body armor they were wearing. Congo almost hoped Cross had been the survivor. Killing him blind on the far side of a closed door would not give him much satisfaction. He wanted to see Cross die in front of him and he wanted to make the process as slow and painful as possible. However, right now Congo had his own survival to think about.
Once outside the Chateau Congo grounds, his black Range Rover, which boasted dechromed black wheels, fenders, radiator grill and running boards, simply melded into the darkness around it. Knowing the roads as well as he did, Congo was able to drive with his foot flat on the accelerator, even without lights, making turns so late that the driver pursuing him had to slam on the brakes, losing valuable momentum and falling far enough behind that Congo was able to turn off the road on to a heavily shaded stretch of driveway that led to a pair of gates set back from the road without being seen. He cut the engine and watched as the chasing car raced past, waited fifteen seconds for it to disappear around the next bend and then pulled back on t
o the road and drove off in the opposite direction.
Now Congo was heading for his safe house, which was an apartment above a fried-chicken restaurant in a working-class area of the city. The apartment looked to all the world like just another dirty, badly maintained, down-at-heel fleapit. But while Congo had done nothing at all to improve its appearance, he had installed steel doors and bulletproof windows. Amid all the jumble of TV aerials on top of the building, he’d installed dishes providing him with satellite phone and internet access. He’d worked out escape routes from the front, rear and over the neighboring rooftops. And if he ever got hungry, he could always count on plenty of fried chicken.
Congo parked the Range Rover at a reserved space in a downtown car park. He unclipped an interior door panel beside the driver’s seat, reached into the hidden storage well and removed a waterproof plastic pouch. It contained the IDs and money that had been in his safe-deposit box in Zurich, plus other bearer bonds and documentation that he’d had waiting for him at the villa. Now in possession of everything he needed to get anywhere in the world, Congo took a bus to within a half mile of the safe house and walked the rest of the way. Over the next twenty-four hours, he’d select one of a number of possible combinations of boat and plane that would take him across 180 miles of Caribbean water to the island of Curaçao in the Dutch West Indies, or a short distance further to its neighbor Aruba. Both islands possessed international airports open to scheduled and private flights and were thus ideal jumping-off points for the longest stage of his journey. Congo knew exactly where he was heading and what he would do when he arrived there. The only issues left to be determined were exactly how he’d make the journey, and what identity he would adopt along the way.
Back at the villa, Cross had just got back to his feet when the sound of Dave Imbiss’s voice on the radio cut through the ringing in his ears caused by the burst of FN fire that had taken Schrager down.
“The Caracas police have had a report of gunfire in your neighborhood. I don’t get the feeling that they’re taking it too seriously, but a squad car’s been despatched to check the property out. Get out or bluff it out, those are your two options,” Dave told him.
“How long have I got?”
“Five minutes tops. But call it four minutes: three to be safe.”
Cross was on the move at once, running out of the garage and back the way he’d come, straight past Schrager’s remains. There were blood spatters all over the wall and fragments of balaclava, hair, skull and brains smearing the floor and the stairs. Cross ignored him: forget the dead; the only ones that mattered now were the living. He spoke into his mike once again: “Nolan, how’s the girl?”
“I’ve given her a morphine ampoule and that’s calmed her. I’m getting a bandage on her now, but she’s still bleeding heavily. Needs a doctor, that’s for sure. Did you get the bastard?”
“No. He reached the garage before we could cut him off. Schrager is down. I’m on my way back up to you.”
By the time he got to the kitchen it was empty. The servants must have heard the gunfire and scarpered. In the living room, Nolan was taping up a bandage that was wrapped around the stabbed girl’s waist. “It’s not safe for you here, understand?” He told her in Spanish, and she nodded mutely.
Cross turned back to Nolan. “Take her down to the garage. Get the biggest motor you can find. There should be keys somewhere. If not, just take it the old-fashioned way. She goes on the back seat. We will drop her wherever she wants. Schrager stays where he is. Got it?”
“Yes, boss.”
Cross started the stopwatch on his phone. He wanted to know, to the second, how much time he was using. There was just one thing he needed to do before they left. If he couldn’t get Congo he wanted one of his communications devices. He’d already scanned the living room to see whether Congo had left a laptop, tablet or phone there, but could see no sign of either. There was an office marked on the plan, on the far side of the hall. Cross was on his way there when Imbiss came on the air again: “The cops are getting closer. Less than three minutes. You need to get out.”
“Got it.”
Cross went into the office, turned on the light. He could see a desk, but it was bare. Congo had to have a laptop, or an iPad; everyone did. Where the hell would he use it? Cross thought about his own routine. Since he’d been living alone, he seemed to turn off his laptop, last thing at night, the way he always used to turn off his bedside light. Maybe Congo was the same. His bedroom was upstairs. Cross looked at his watch: thirty-eight seconds gone.
He took the stairs at a run, expecting at any moment to hear the sound of an approaching siren. When he got to Congo’s bedroom, the light was already on. Cross didn’t think anything of it. Congo was the kind of guy who’d leave lights on everywhere. He could afford the electricity bill easily enough and he wasn’t going to lie awake at nights worrying about global warming, either. Cross swept his eyes around the room. The bedclothes were strewn all over the place and he caught the sight of blood on the crumpled bottom sheet. He didn’t see anything he was looking for, though, and there wasn’t time to start searching cupboards and drawers. He was about to leave when he heard a sound from across the room. The doors to what looked like a walk-in wardrobe were open and Cross was certain someone was inside. He raised his gun, walked soundlessly across the room to the wardrobe, paused behind one of the doors and then stepped into the wardrobe.
The girl was there. She’d put on a T-shirt—one of Congo’s presumably, for it was so big that it looked like a dress on her—but nothing else; and she had a holdall in one hand, but she wasn’t filling it with clothes. Instead she was holding a great fistful of gold and diamond jewelry: necklaces, bracelets, watches—men’s and women’s alike. There was a wall safe behind her, its door hanging open. She gave a startled little squeak when she turned and saw Cross pointing a gun at her, but then straightened up, squared her shoulders and glared at him, defiantly.
“We earned it, what he did to us.” She paused, waiting to see how Cross would react.
Cross nodded. “OK.” He lowered the gun, looked at the watch. One minute, nineteen seconds. The voice in his ear sounded again.
“A minute before they get there.”
“Did he have a computer, a phone, anything like that?” he asked.
The girl nodded. “An iPad. Look by the bed.”
“Go down again to the garage. Wait there. We will give you a ride into town. . . wherever you want to go.” She nodded again, then picked up the holdall and headed for the door.
Hector found the iPad where she had told him it would be.
As he ran back down the stairs to the garage a car horn bleeped ahead of him, followed by a quick flash of headlights. Nolan had found and been able to start another black Range Rover. Hector ran toward it, and saw the girl waiting beside it.
“Get in the back!” Cross ordered her. Then he spoke on the radio to Dave Imbiss again. “Which way are the cops coming, Dave?”
“Up the hill, approaching the house from the left, as you leave the gates. So turn right and pray to God you can be out of sight before they get there.”
“Right at the gates,” Cross said to Nolan.
“If we beat them to it,” Nolan muttered.
The twin sheets of solid steel were looming before them. Cross prayed that the car had some kind of transponder that would make the gates open automatically, but they were getting closer and closer and still nothing was happening. The Range Rover slowed as Nolan hit the brakes.
“Keep going!” Cross barked.
“But, boss . . .”
“I said give it the gun, damn you!”
Nolan took his foot off the brakes, inhaled sharply, muttered, “Here goes nothing,” and hit the gas. The Range Rover surged forward. The gates were filling the windscreen, a gleaming metal wall, closer and closer still.
And then, when even Cross was bracing himself for the impact, they slid open and the Range Rover raced through, almost scraping i
ts paintwork against the bare steel on each side of the chassis. Nolan spun the wheel right and the car surged up the ramp and around the bend. Cross had been watching the rear mirror all the way, but he saw no sign of a police car’s flashing lights. He relaxed, slumped back in the passenger seat and only then realized that he’d not heard from Paddy O’Quinn.
“Paddy, are you there? Do you have a tail on Congo?”
“Sorry, Heck, the bastard was driving a black car along unlit roads without his lights on. We had him and then . . .” O’Quinn sighed. “We didn’t have him any more.”
“Damn! Well, keep looking and let me know if you get even a sniff of him.”
Cross closed his eyes and gathered his thoughts. The primary aim of the mission had failed and he’d lost a good man, one with a wife and kids at home, which made it even worse. Congo had escaped and all Cross had to show for his night’s work was Congo’s iPad.
When they dropped the wounded girl on the outskirts of the city she limped away without another word, and without looking back.
The police arrived at the property belonging to Juan Tumbo just as the steel gate to the underground garage slid the final few centimeters back into the closed position. They were unable to enter the property, or to rouse any of the security guards or other employees. They could, however, hear the distant sound of dance music coming from the house. When they checked with their station commander they were told that although the house, like all the others in the neighborhood, was equipped with security cameras, alarm systems and panic buttons, none of them had been sounded. Nor had there been any further reports of gunfire. If a weapon had been discharged, the chances were that it was the owner, fooling around or trying to impress a woman.
