But that still left Ling as a threat. With fifteen metres of open ground between them, she couldn’t miss her target. Connor realized he was in a no-win situation. Whether they ran or stayed put, one or both of them would be shot down.
Then Connor had an idea. Kicking off the bin’s brakes, he grabbed Amir and shoved the huge container with his shoulder.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ cried Amir as the wheeled bin began rolling down the path towards the Range Rover and Connor pushed him ahead in order to stay covered.
‘Getting rid of the garbage,’ replied Connor with a grin as the bin resounded with the furious impact of Ling’s paintballs. The bin was picking up speed now and Connor and Amir had to sprint alongside it to stay shielded from Ling’s assault. Then the bin struck the wall and came to a dead stop. Having lost their only cover, the two of them made a final mad dash for the Range Rover.
Paintballs peppered the bonnet and windscreen as Connor wrenched the back door open and shoved Amir inside. Connor dived in after, landing on top of him in the footwell.
‘GO! GO! GO!’ he screamed at the driver.
Flooring the accelerator, the driver sped away from the kill zone.
Connor allowed himself a quiet smile of satisfaction. Against all the odds, he’d done it. He’d saved his Principal. Then Amir turned to him and the smile was wiped from his face. Planted squarely in the right eye of Amir’s goggles was the red splat of an exploded paintball.
‘How come you got hit?’ Connor exclaimed, clambering into the passenger seat and thumping the armrest in frustration. ‘I had you covered on all sides.’
Amir tenderly peeled off his safety goggles and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Originally from Delhi, Amir was a slender boy with an angular face, bright eyes and a slick of black hair. ‘I wish you had protected me. That really hurt.’
The driver brought the Range Rover to a halt and glanced over her shoulder at them. Jody, a former SO14 Royal Protection Officer, was one of their instructors at the Buddyguard Training Headquarters in Wales. Kitted out in a black-and-red tracksuit, her dark brown hair bunched in a ponytail, she looked more like a personal fitness trainer than a bodyguard. But that was the point. Few people ever suspected women to be part of a close protection team and that gave them the edge.
‘Exercise over, Connor – your Principal’s definitely dead,’ she said, arching a slim eyebrow in amusement at Amir’s paint-splattered face. Then her expression hardened. ‘If that had been a soft-nosed sniper bullet, Amir would be headless now.’
‘That wouldn’t be such a bad thing,’ remarked Charley, who sat in the front passenger seat. ‘He doesn’t use it much anyway,’ she added in her sun-soaked Californian tones, shooting him a wink.
Amir’s mouth fell open in exaggerated offence. ‘Hey! You can be the Principal next time.’
Staring out of the passenger window, Charley sighed to herself. ‘If only …’
As Jody spun the Range Rover round, Connor caught sight of Charley’s reflection in the glass. Her sky-blue eyes had lost their sparkle and her usual confidence appeared to have faltered for a moment.
‘Nothing to stop you being the shooter next time,’ Connor suggested.
In the window, he saw Charley brush aside a loose strand of blonde hair and her smile return.
‘That would be unfair,’ she replied, her reflected eyes meeting his and narrowing in challenge. ‘You wouldn’t last ten seconds.’
Connor laughed. He didn’t doubt it. Despite the difficulties she faced, Charley was a girl of many talents: a former Quiksilver Junior Surfing Champion, she was also a skilful martial artist, as well as fluent in Mandarin. For all Connor knew she was probably an elite markswoman too!
Jody parked in front of the disused warehouse and ordered Connor and Amir out, as the other members of Alpha team gathered for the training debrief. Marc, a lean boy with bleached blond hair who’d been filming the training exercise for class assessment, patted Connor sympathetically on the back. ‘Quelle malchance! You were almost home free.’
Opening the door for Charley, Connor shrugged at his French friend. ‘Yep, almost.’
‘Almost is no good for a bodyguard,’ Ling pointed out, hefting a gun that looked huge against her tiny sleek figure. Her oval face was framed by a bob of jet-black hair and a silver piercing glinted on one side of her elfin nose.
‘Yeah,’ Richie agreed in his thick Irish accent. ‘It’s like almost jumping out of the way of a train. You still get hit.’ He fired off a couple of paintballs at the abandoned bin for effect.
‘Cease fire!’ scolded Jody, as she brought out Charley’s wheelchair from the Range Rover’s boot. ‘Not everyone’s wearing safety goggles.’
‘Sorry, Miss,’ Richie replied. He offered an apologetic grin, his braces catching the sunlight like a diamond-toothed rapper. ‘Just celebrating our victory.’
Charley slid nimbly into her chair and joined the rest of them. But Connor noticed there was still one person missing from the team.
‘BULLSEYE!’ shouted Jason, suddenly dropping down from the fire escape of the building opposite. He strode over with his paintball gun slung across his shoulder like Rambo. Muscular for his age, with a thickset jaw and tousled dark hair, Connor wouldn’t be surprised if his Aussie teammate actually thought he was Rambo.
‘I should change sides and become an assassin,’ said Jason, high-fiving Richie and Ling.
‘You kill me,’ cooed Ling, her half-moon eyes twinkling mischievously as she dead-punched him on the arm in return. ‘Or at least … you could try!’
‘You were on the roof?’ challenged Connor. ‘I thought there were only two shooters in this exercise.’
Jason shrugged. ‘Sorry to disappoint you.’
‘But that’s unfair,’ said Connor, turning to Jody for an explanation. ‘Everyone else just had two.’
‘As a bodyguard, you can’t presume anything,’ she replied. ‘Threats can come from all directions and can be any number. That’s why you need to have eyes in the back of your head.’
She addressed the rest of Alpha team. ‘Under the stress of a combat situation, your body floods with adrenalin and stress hormones. While this benefits your strength and ability to react, one of the negative effects is “tunnel vision”. You lose your peripheral sight and only focus on the danger in front of you. As Connor’s just experienced, that can lead to fatal mistakes.’
Connor gave a dismayed sigh. He hadn’t looked up once during the exercise. This was his fourth failed test in a row. Given his poor performance, he was seriously beginning to question his abilities as a bodyguard.
‘Don’t look so glum,’ said Marc. ‘The refuse bin was a clever idea. I got it all on video. It was hilarious!’
‘And effective,’ Ling admitted begrudgingly. ‘I wasted all my ammo trying to hit you.’
‘But the bin wouldn’t have protected them from real bullets,’ Jason was quick to point out.
‘An unseen target is harder to hit,’ countered Charley. ‘It was a good distraction.’
Jody nodded in agreement. ‘That’s very true. Connor’s tactic would have increased their chances of survival. However –’ she pointed to the paint-smeared Range Rover – ‘since he didn’t protect his Principal, it’s his job to clean the car.’
‘Mr Gibb! Mr Gibb! Are these accusations true?’
‘No comment,’ mumbled the Australian Minister for Resources and Energy, as he fought his way through the pack of reporters. A camera was thrust in his haggard face, its flash half-blinding him. He pushed it angrily away.
‘Do you intend to resign?’ shouted another reporter.
‘How much money did you make from the deal?’
‘No comment,’ spat Harry Gibb, reaching the glass doors and squeezing through to the air-conditioned safety of the Canberra governmental building. The security guards kept the press pack at bay as Harry scuttled across the polished marble floor towards the lift. He jabbed a podgy finger at the Call button a
nd a moment later a ping signalled the doors sliding open.
‘Harry!’ called a familiar voice from behind him.
The senator’s tone was sharp. But Harry, pretending not to have heard his colleague, entered the lift and thumbed the Close-doors button. The senator increased his pace but was a second too late and the metal doors clanged shut in his face.
As the elevator rose steadily, Harry took the brief moment of peace to slick down his thinning windswept hair and adjust his tie. He was breathless and could feel patches of sweat seeping through his shirt. At the fifth floor he exited. A potbellied man, whose suits always failed to fit him, Harry strode through the open-plan office with as much dignity and authority as he could muster. He knew everyone would have heard the news by now. He was a marked man. But he refused to show it.
As he approached his own office, his secretary rose to greet him. She sheepishly offered him that day’s correspondence, but he dismissed it with an irritated wave of his hand.
‘Later,’ he muttered, conscious of the uncomfortable silence that had descended over the workplace.
Shutting his office door behind him, he dropped his briefcase and slumped into his high-backed leather chair. Rubbing his bloodshot eyes, he let out a troubled sigh. For a moment, he allowed himself to believe that he’d escaped the political storm threatening to engulf him. Then, on opening his eyes, he was confronted by an edition of the Australian Daily on his desk. His hangdog face was plastered across the front page. The headline ran: MINISTER FOR MINES LINES HIS OWN POCKETS WITH GOLD.
Harry glared at the offending words, a vein throbbing in his temple.
His phone rang, demanding his attention. He ignored it.
As he stared at the accusing newspaper, Harry suddenly felt his chest tighten. He scrambled in his jacket pocket for his heart pills. At the same time, he wrenched open his desk drawer and pulled out a slim silver hip flask ‘kept for emergencies’. Shaking several of his beta-blocker heart pills into his open palm, Harry washed them down with a stiff measure of whisky. He coughed at the harsh kick of alcohol. His doctor had warned him to stay off the booze. But today he didn’t care.
Leaning back in his chair, Harry waited for his chest pain to pass. As the angina slowly subsided, his anger began to rise again.
‘Damn that interfering snake!’ he snarled, slamming his palm on the mahogany desk and sending the newspaper flying across the floor.
His mind swirled with furious thoughts. Just because Sterling owned the Australian Daily and virtually every other national newspaper, that didn’t give him the right to meddle in his affairs. It wasn’t as if the media magnate’s hands were squeaky clean. How many times had that slippery fish managed to escape prosecution for tax avoidance, illegal takeovers and business scandals? Sterling was at least as corrupt as he was, if not more so!
Harry took another swig of whisky. He was a victim of Sterling’s need for scandalous headlines. The target of an overzealous smear campaign simply to sell more newspapers. But Harry Gibb hadn’t got this far in political office without knowing how to protect his own interests. And he certainly wouldn’t roll over and die without a fight.
He was a survivor. He would do whatever it took to save himself.
The sun shone brightly. The crowd cheered. American flags and pennants fluttered wildly. Connor stood at the edge of the podium scanning the joyous crowd as the US President delivered his speech. ‘I prayed for a miracle and one was delivered …’
The western end of the National Mall was overflowing with the smiling faces of men, women and children, all gathered to celebrate the President’s daughter’s safe return.
But Connor wasn’t celebrating. He was looking for a face. The face of a killer.
It was like searching for a hornet in a hive of bees. The assassin would blend in, become the grey person in the crowd. And that made everyone a potential suspect … Then Connor’s eyes honed in on the barrel of a gun, protruding between a boy and his younger sister. The President beckoned for his daughter, Alicia, to join him. The gun sights tracked her as she stepped on to the stage. The siblings continued to flourish their flags, oblivious to the lethal weapon between them. Connor screamed at the Secret Service agents stationed by the barrier. But none heard him above the roar of the crowd.
In desperation Connor rushed on to the stage. But gravity seemed to weigh him down. The harder he ran, the slower he went. He cried out a warning. Turning, Alicia gave him a bemused look.
A noise as loud as a thunder-crack punctured the cheers. Connor thought he could see the actual bullet emerge from the gun barrel. He dived into its line of fire. But the deadly bullet whizzed past, missing him by a fraction. He landed in a useless heap on the stage as Alicia gazed down in shock at the blood-red stain blossoming over her crisp white dress.
‘NO!’ cried Connor, watching her crumple slowly to the ground …
‘Connor! Connor! Are you all right?’
Shaken by the shoulder, Connor blinked, for a moment disorientated. The room was swallowed in darkness, just a rectangle of muted light spilling across his bedroom floor from the open doorway.
‘You were crying out,’ said Charley, who sat beside his bed in her wheelchair, her face half in shadow. She took away her hand from his shoulder. ‘I hope you didn’t mind me checking on you.’
Connor sat up and rubbed his eyes. ‘No … not at all … I was just dreaming.’
‘Sounded more like a nightmare to me.’
Connor hesitated, unsure whether admitting his inner doubts would be regarded as weakness for a buddyguard. Then he realized, of all the members of Alpha team, Charley would be the one to understand most.
‘I keep reliving Alicia’s assassination attempt.’
‘Near-death experiences can do that to you.’ A haunted look entered her eyes but was gone so quickly that Connor could have been mistaken.
‘But in my dream I’m always too late,’ he explained.
‘It was a close call. You got shot. So such anxiety is understandable. But you did save her.’
‘I know, but what if that was just beginner’s luck? I mean, I’ve not passed a single Buddyguard training exercise this last week.’
‘Training is where you’re supposed to make your mistakes,’ she reminded him. ‘Besides, the tests are designed to be tough so that we’re at the top of our game when we’re on an assignment.’
Connor let out a weary sigh. He felt the mounting pressure of his forthcoming mission. The responsibility of protecting another person was overwhelming. ‘But what if next time I don’t react quickly enough?’
Charley gave him a chastening look. ‘You mustn’t allow yourself to think like that. You did protect the President’s daughter when the time came. That should be proof enough you’re up to the job.’
‘Exactly my point. Everyone thinks I’m this hotshot bodyguard. But I’m not. A second later and …’ He faded into silence at the terrible thought.
Charley glanced towards his bedside table where a plastic key fob was propped up against his alarm clock. ‘Listen, it’s in your blood, remember?’ she said softly, directing his gaze to the key fob.
Connor studied the faded photo beneath its scratched surface. His late father, Justin Reeves, stared back at him. Tanned, tough and with the piercing green-blue eyes that Connor had inherited, his father looked every inch the soldier – a man who could be relied upon in even the most dangerous situations.
Connor felt a weight even heavier than responsibility upon his shoulders. ‘I’m not my father,’ he admitted quietly. ‘As much as Colonel Black believes I am, I can’t live up to his name. Dad was Special Forces, I’m Special Nothing.’
Charley’s eyes met his with a fierce intensity. ‘That’s negative thinking. Of course you’re going to fail if that’s your attitude! Listen to me. You can’t measure yourself against a memory.’
Connor was taken aback by her sudden fire. ‘I know. You’re right. It’s just –’
A door creaked ope
n somewhere down the hallway. They weren’t supposed to be in each other’s rooms after ten o’clock at night. Charley eased herself back towards the door. At the threshold, she paused and looked at him.
‘Don’t doubt yourself, Connor. Whenever I question my own abilities, I remember the saying: Whether you think you can, or think you can’t – you’re probably right.’
She shut the door and Connor lay in the darkness, thinking about what she had said. About the power of self-belief. As he closed his eyes, he pictured his father’s face willing him on, like he always had when he was alive.
‘Operation Gemini commences in two weeks,’ announced Colonel Black. ‘I trust you’ve all done your homework.’
The colonel stood, arms behind his back, at the front of Alpha team’s briefing room. His broad shoulders, chiselled jaw and silver-grey crew cut were highlighted by the glow of the projector screen. As founder and commander of the Buddyguard organization, the ex-SAS soldier took a personal interest in every assignment and made certain he attended every operational briefing. On the screen behind him, spinning in 3D, was Buddyguard’s official logo: a silver winged shield.
Connor swiped a finger across his new tablet computer and prepared to take notes. The next few hours would be an onslaught of information from each Alpha team member regarding different aspects of the operation: Principal profile, location intel, threat assessments, security requirements, ‘actions on’ procedures, role assignment and logistical support, to name but a few. Each element was crucial to the success of the mission and all team members were required to have a working knowledge in case of role swaps or last-minute replacements.
Colonel Black stepped aside to allow Charley to the front. As Alpha team’s operations leader and most experienced buddyguard, she always led the briefing.
‘On this assignment, there are two Principals needing our protection,’ she explained, clicking the projector’s handheld remote. A photograph of two young girls, virtually identical in looks, flashed up on the screen. ‘These are the twin daughters of Mr Maddox Sterling, the Australian media mogul and billionaire.’
Bodyguard: Ransom (Book 2) Page 2
