‘Can you pay for the hubcap, sah?’ the driver called out.
‘Yes. Go!’ Chandos shouted as he looked back in time to see a pair of headlights turn into the side road. He couldn’t tell if it was the red sedan but it had to be.
There were several more hard accelerations through suburban streets followed by equally hard braking and violent turns. Another hubcap was sacrificed during that period. The driver conducted a series of perilous overtakes and one particularly nerve-wrenching journey the wrong way down a narrow one-way street, where he forced a cyclist off his bike.
The taxi driver abruptly pulled the car to a halt and turned in his seat with a broad grin. Chandos had been hanging onto the seat belts like a charioteer and was surprised by the sudden stop.
‘We’re here, sah.’
Chandos looked out of the window to see the Chinese restaurant and the entrance to its car park. He looked back through the rear window to see the street behind empty. He thrust the second hundred-dollar bill into the man’s hand. ‘Well done. Can you keep it up for a few more streets? Here’s another hundred for that, and another for the hubcaps.’
‘Yes, sah,’ the driver said, taking the money and then gripping the wheel as he waited for Chandos to get out. Chandos grabbed his bag, quickly climbed out of the taxi and slammed the door shut. The vehicle’s wheels screeched as the driver hit the gas and the car pulled off down the street.
Chandos hurried to the restaurant and went inside. He walked through the dining room, nodding hello to the hostess, and went out the other side and into the car park. He didn’t want to wait and see if the red sedan passed the restaurant. If he could see it, someone inside might see him. It was best to press on to his next objective.
It was immediately obvious why the place had been chosen. The car park had armed security to protect its customers from being mugged as they walked to their vehicles. He spotted the blue Honda Civic easily enough and walked over to it and reached under the front nearside fender. The keys were on the wheel.
He opened the driver’s door and climbed in, closing the door. There was no time to recover from the taxi ride. He reached into the passenger footwell and found a backpack. He pulled it out. Placed it on the seat. Opened it.
The first thing he saw was the barrel of a gun. He looked around outside. The security guard was thirty metres away, standing by the entrance. Another guard stood in the middle of the car park, looking towards the entrance. Neither was paying Chandos any attention.
He removed the weapon, a submachine gun. An old Sterling, in fact. He hadn’t seen one of those in thirty-five years. It looked in good nick, with an extension he had not seen before. A suppressor. It wouldn’t make the weapon completely silent but it would be much quieter than normal. There were three full magazines, each holding thirty rounds. He put them to one side.
He pulled out an envelope. Inside it were some instructions and directions to two places. One was in the city, the other at the docks. The latter included the name of a ship and its captain. The last item was a plastic bundle secured by tape. Firm. Heavy. A metre-long tail coming from it. A fuse. A lighter had been conveniently taped to the bag.
He took a closer look at the directions to the address, which included a diagram of a street. A house had been highlighted. Bullfrog had delivered everything he’d asked for. He felt a sudden pang of nerves at the prospect of what he was about to do. He hadn’t done a job anywhere near as audacious as this in his career. But then again, he’d been an officer. The men did all that sort of stuff. Planning it was one thing. Doing it was something completely different. He believed he was up to the task, but he lacked the real experience. This was right up Stratton’s street, he thought. He told himself just to think like him.
A knock on the window almost gave him a heart attack. Chandos snapped his head round to look through the glass, as he shoved the bundle back into the backpack.
It was one of the security guards. Grinning at him.
Chandos wound down the window.
‘Are you OK, sah?’ the man asked.
‘Yes. Fine, thanks.’
‘Are you having a trouble starting your car?’ The guard was still smiling, his grin seemed to be a fixture.
‘No. I’m just leaving. Thanks very much,’ Chandos said, making an effort to smile broadly back at him.
‘OK, sah. If you have trouble starting your car, just let me know and I will help you.’
‘You’re very kind. Thank you.’
Chandos wound up the window and shoved the key into the ignition. He turned it and the engine fired. It sounded in good condition. He looked for the guard, who was already behind the vehicle and waving for him to reverse.
He followed the man’s directions and then headed for the exit, where the other guard raised the barrier and waved him farewell. He returned the wave and turned out of the car park and onto the road, immediately looking into the rear-view mirror. He saw some kind of vehicle far down the street. It was stopped. He couldn’t identify its colour in the poor light. He accelerated away to a junction.
He turned the corner to join a line of slow-moving traffic. He looked back for the car again. It didn’t appear to be moving. Maybe it wasn’t the red sedan. As he drove he looked in every direction for signs of the car. He couldn’t see any. He exhaled deeply and sat back. Told himself to relax. He was towards the next and penultimate phase. He needed to compose himself.
His thoughts went to Stratton again. Would his old protégé pick up the baton and run with it? He hoped he would. But he couldn’t be sure, of course. Stratton would quickly get an inkling as to how dangerous a game it was. The problem would be for him to find a good enough reason to risk his life. It wouldn’t be an official mission. He would have little or no support. And probably no thanks for his efforts if he were to die trying. It might even be the opposite. Chandos wondered if, in Stratton’s position, he’d do it, based on what he knew and his experience of the game. He didn’t think he would. The thought didn’t make him feel any better. But there was always Bullfrog. Bullfrog would work some charm on Stratton.
He consulted the map and checked the street ahead. A kilometre to go. The street he was in was bustling. There were more people on the road than vehicles, crossing and walking down the sides, flitting through the headlights, selling and begging to the slow-moving traffic. Everything was grimy, the buildings dirty and poorly constructed. He saw several fires either side of the street, used for cooking or providing warmth for the homeless. The people were poorly dressed, in dirty clothes, yet most looked as if they had places to be. Those who noticed Chandos gave him a double take. A white driver in Lagos was not unheard of, although it was unusual. But a white man always had money. And white people were usually buyers of whatever they were selling. Crap, most of it, thought Chandos. Bought out of fear or charity. He wished the car had tinted glass.
He saw a break in the traffic, pulled into the gap and turned down a side street. Five minutes later he was driving through a quiet, dark neighbourhood and slowing as he made his way along a deserted street. There were few lights on in the dwellings. Cables, electrical or phone wires, hung in tangled bunches, sometimes hanging down between them. He was looking for a particular house.
He watched a couple of men walk down the street. Talking together. They paid his car no attention. There were a few cars parked. All were dirty. Battered. Chandos pulled in behind one of them and killed the motor.
He sat still. The street was mostly silent. A sound now and then. A howl from somewhere. He looked over at a large detached house across the road, bigger than the others. Alleyways running down both sides. Lights were on in some of the windows. He saw movement past a window in an upstairs room.
He wound down the window to hear better and got a nose full of rotting garbage. It smelled like sewage. The warm stinking air felt thick enough to cut with a knife. He could pick out sounds in the mixture. Music, distant traffic, car horns. A cry went up somewhere. Or perhaps it was laught
er.
Chandos checked the description of the house once again. The location was right. It was the one. An Islamic headquarters. An al-Qaeda operations cell in the heart of Lagos. It was ideal. Precisely what he wanted. He removed his jacket and put it on the back seat. He took his laptop from his bag. There was evidence on it that experts might find. The rest he’d leave. Especially his passport and return air ticket to London. That had to be found. He climbed out of the car with the laptop and looked up and down the street. A couple of people were walking along the pavement from the far end towards him. They seemed innocent enough.
He closed the door and went to the sidewalk. There was an opening into a storm drain beneath the pavement. Grey, stinking water flowed down the side of the road and into it. He crouched down and pushed the laptop into the opening. When he let it go, it fell into the drain and out of sight. It would only be found if they dug up the pavement. But it would be unreadable within minutes.
He opened the Civic’s passenger door and took out the backpack. Pulled it onto his back. He tucked two of the machine-gun magazines into his pockets and held the gun in his hand. Memories of holding such a weapon all those years ago came back to him. The Sterling was one of the first weapons he’d ever fired as a Royal Marine officer recruit. At that time it had been nothing more than an introduction to various weapons in use in the regular Marines. A familiarisation with a basic weapon built during the Second World War that little could go wrong with.
He eased back the breech against its large, heavy spring and locked it into place with a clunk. He took one of the curved magazines and eased it into its housing. It clicked home. He tugged on it to be sure it was firmly in place. He didn’t apply the safety catch, and placed his trigger finger along the guard. It was ready to fire at a touch. There was nothing safe about what he was about to do.
His confidence came back a little. He needed one more look at the diagram of the house. The sketch was plain enough. There were three floors. He compared the building with the sketch. It was correct. He wouldn’t need to bother with the upper floors. Just the ground floor. The hallway and corridor. The stairs at the end leading down to a cellar. That would be it. Job done.
He stuffed the sketch in his pocket and crossed the road, looking left and right. The people who’d been walking along the street in his direction weren’t far away now. Still walking. Two young men, locals probably.
Chandos stopped to watch them. More importantly, he wanted them to see him. They looked at him, suddenly shocked. It was probably the first time they had seen a white man in this neighbourhood. Then they saw the machine gun he was holding. They stalled, then moved on more quickly, their eyes remaining on Chandos as they hurried past. They carried on down the street without slowing down. A white man in this part of town was vulnerable, a gift to muggers, an easy victim. But a white man with a gun in his hands was all bad news. He was either fearless or insane.
Chandos turned back to the house and walked towards it, reaching the front steps – half a dozen of them leading to a wooden door in need of a paint job. Headlights flashed across the house, startling him. He looked around. A car had turned into the street, its headlights on full beam. It pulled to halt at the corner, about eighty metres away. Its lights went out seconds later. The doors didn’t open.
Chandos stared at it, squinting in an effort to see the car better in the low light, and see inside. The light was so poor he couldn’t accurately tell its colour. It could have been red.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he muttered. The more he concentrated on it, the more the car began to look red. How was it possible? If it was the assassin, how could he possibly know where to find Chandos?
Then it came to him.
Of course. A tracker. It had to be. It was the only way. His bag. His clothes.
But then, if the assassin had got close enough to place a tracker on him, why hadn’t he killed him? No matter, Chandos decided. This was the end of the road. The assassin wouldn’t get to him before he went in the house. And if he wanted to follow, he was more than welcome. Chandos skipped up the steps to the door. A quick glance back at the car revealed the doors still closed.
He reached for the handle. Turned it and pushed a little. It opened. The arrogance of the bastards. No guards, no surveillance, no lock on the door. It would be their undoing. Sounds seeped through to him from inside. He pushed the door open wide enough to step in. A dim light glowed at the far end of the corridor. He closed the door behind him quietly and looked for a lock. There was a key in the door. He turned it and heard the gentle clunk as the bolt slid into position.
Sounds came from above and along the corridor. Music and voices. There were four doors on either side. One at the far end that he knew led down to the cellar. That’s where he was headed. He levelled the machine gun, pointing the barrel straight ahead. He took a step forward and the floorboard groaned, making him pause. Bugger it, he said to himself. He put all his weight on it and it creaked loudly. He moved forward another step. The next one creaked just as loudly.
The sound of footsteps on a wooden floor came from his right. Inside a room. Someone was coming to the door just ahead of him. He aimed the gun at the door as it opened. A man stood there, his eyes wide at the sight of Chandos and the gun pointing at him. Chandos didn’t hesitate. Everyone in the building was dross, al-Qaeda scum. Killers of the innocent for their own Neanderthal reasons. Nine/eleven back at you.
He pulled the trigger. He heard a heavy clunk a millisecond before bullets spat from the end of the suppressor. Sparks and flashes. The loudest sound was the metal breech block repeatedly hitting the breech face. He had aimed for the centre of the man’s mass when he fired. The natural pull of the weapon caused the barrel to rise up and to the right. The first bullet went into his stomach and then diagonally up to his left shoulder, six inches apart. Chandos released the trigger and the weapon ceased.
The man dropped back to the floor, dead when he hit it. A shout came from inside the room, a woman’s shout, more like a scream. Chandos stepped quickly into the doorway and saw two more men and a woman, one of the men getting to his feet. The other two sat on a couch. He didn’t distinguish between male and female. That was a bygone age of chivalry. He squeezed the trigger. Rounds flew into them, starting from the man on the left, through the man on the couch and into the woman. Chandos didn’t release the trigger, and brought the weapon back to the left to hit all of them again. The man on his feet dropped to the floor. The others went instantly limp. All were dead. The weapon went silent. The magazine had run out of bullets.
He tried to pull the magazine out but it wouldn’t release. He began to panic, then realised he wasn’t pushing down the release button hard enough. He pushed it forcefully and the magazine popped out and fell from his hand to clatter across the hallway floor. He ripped another from his pocket and slammed it home. Snatched back the breech block and quickly aimed along the corridor, ready once again. His jaw clenched. ‘Come on, scum,’ he muttered. ‘I’m starting to like this.’
No one was coming. He moved along the corridor to the cellar door at the end, passing a flight of stairs that led to the floors above. The cellar door was wide open. Stairs led down into darkness. He looked up the stairs, also in darkness. Sounds filtered down. Voices. A TV perhaps. His information had warned that there could be as many as thirty people in the house at any one time. Possibly more.
The sound of movement came from above. A creak. Maybe on the stairs. He stepped through the cellar doorway and went down into darkness. The stairs were made of concrete and were soundless. He put a hand out in front of him, afraid of banging his head. The hand found a wall. The stairs turned a corner. He touched another surface – a door. Halfway down he found a handle, turned it. The door opened. He felt around the sides near the frame and found a switch. He flicked it down and a red bulb glowed instantly inside the room.
It was a storeroom. Lots of boxes with black stencilled lettering. Some were open. Weapons were everywhere, some
wrapped in grease paper. Boxes of hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenades, mortar shells, belts of linked machine-gun bullets, and plastic explosives. Stacks of C4. Exactly what he wanted. Also bags of fertiliser and gallons of diesel fuel. Enough to manufacture thousands of pounds of Anfo – low explosives. It was the mother lode.
Chandos put down the weapon, removed his backpack and opened the top. He pulled out the plastic lump with the long fuse, ripped off the lighter and ignited a flame. He touched it to the end of the fuse. The fuse crackled to life. He checked his watch. The second hand was at the top of the hour. He didn’t know too much about explosives but all members of the SBS had carried out a basic course on the subject. He guessed that the fuse gave him about a minute before it would burn down to the detonator and ignite it. Which in turn would set off the explosives. And which in turn would detonate the contents of the room. He had seen the devastation caused by a 500kg bomb. There must have been two or three times that amount in this room. It would be hard to imagine any of the building left standing after the explosion.
He put the bundle on top of the stack of plastic explosives. Picked up his gun and looked up the stairs. He thought he could hear voices above the sizzle of the burning fuse. He gripped the weapon and made his way up. As he neared the top, a figure passed the cellar door. Whoever it was had not paused to look down the stairs.
He stepped through the doorway into the corridor. Movement to his right. He swivelled and saw a man and fired. Several rounds hit him in his chest and he fell back, a pistol clattering from his dead hand onto the floor. Chandos turned towards the back door at the opposite end of the corridor from where he’d entered the building. His exit, hopefully. People started coming down the stairs. He fired up at them, spraying the walls and the stairs. He heard a shriek. Someone fired a gun down at him, the sound deafening.
Assassin (John Stratton) Page 8
