4. Gray Retribution

by Alan McDermott

  ‘Sir, we have just escaped from Malundi. Armed insurgents attacked a village and my men launched a rescue mission. We were hoping you could offer our sick and wounded medical assistance and sanctuary, sir.’

  ‘And what were you doing in Malundi?’

  Gray explained his role in the security industry and the team’s remit across the border, though he embellished the truth by saying that they’d all been there for months. It wouldn’t do for this man to know they’d illegally entered the country and killed hundreds of men as part of a rescue mission. Their passports would have painted a different picture of events, but as all documentation had gone down with the plane, that base was covered.

  The officer spoke in his native language to the patrol commander, who verified that there were indeed several civilians and a few wounded among the party they’d come across.

  ‘My men have taken them to the hospital, Mr Gray. Their wounds will be treated and the rest will be found temporary accommodation until they can return to their own country.’ The colonel paused, looking along the line of men. ‘However, medical supplies are hard to come by, and when we can find them, there is always a price to pay.’

  Gray got the message—if you want me to take care of the injured, it’s going to cost you—and he didn’t imagine it would be the same price as an NHS prescription.

  ‘Sir, I’m afraid we have nothing of value to offer you.’

  That didn’t please the officer, who barked an instruction. The patrol leader disappeared and returned with a bag containing the items that had been confiscated at the road side. The colonel rummaged through, picking out objects at random. He took a fancy to Gray’s satellite phone, along with a few Samsungs and Nokias.

  ‘This might pay for the medicine,’ he said, dropping the items back inside the bag, ‘but we will need more for their recuperation. They will have to be fed and housed until they can return to their homeland, will they not?’

  Gray nodded, but didn’t know what more they could offer. Their combined possessions consisted of the clothes on their backs, everything else having gone into the bag hours earlier.

  ‘I can arrange to have a payment sent to you,’ Gray offered. ‘More than enough to cover the cost of their rehabilitation.’

  The officer smiled and handed the bag to Gray. ‘Make the call.’

  Gray hadn’t seen that coming. ‘I meant when we got back home,’ he said. ‘No-one I know has the authority to access my accounts.’

  ‘Not even your wife?’ The colonel asked, looking at the wedding band on Gray’s left hand.

  Gray sighed. The last thing he wanted to do was worry Vick with his problem. His plan had been to pretend it had all gone smoothly and put the matter behind them, and that wasn’t going to happen if she knew he was being held to ransom.

  ‘She’s away on holiday,’ he lied. ‘She won’t have access to my business account.’

  ‘Then call a friend and ask them to lend you the money. Otherwise, I will have to assume that my captain was correct when he suggested you might be mercenaries.’

  The smile was gone, signalling an end to negotiations. Gray fished in the bag for his satellite phone, wondering who he could contact to wire the money. His solicitor was the obvious choice.

  As he prepared to start typing the number into the handset, he asked the colonel, ‘Which account do you want it to be transferred into?’

  ‘I’m a lowly soldier, Mr Gray. I have no need for bank accounts. Just have twenty thousand dollars delivered here.’

  Gray was stunned when he heard the amount. He’d been expecting to pay a thousand at the most, and immediately deduced that the colonel planned to line his own pockets first. In fact, it was more likely that he would keep the lot, without a single cent being spent on the injured. That said, they’d done all they could for the villagers, and his priority had shifted to getting his men home. If that meant playing along, so be it.

  It also meant he couldn’t ask Ryan Amos for help. The amount wouldn’t have been a problem, but asking his solicitor to venture into the African heartland was out of the question. That left just one option, and Gray dialled the number from memory.

  ‘Hi, Andrew.’

  ‘Tom! How’re you doing?’

  ‘Not so good, mate.’ Gray explained the situation, leaving out anything incriminating due to the close proximity of the colonel.

  ‘That’s a tough ask.’

  ‘I know, but something tells me we’re going nowhere until the money arrives.’

  Gray glanced at the officer, whose smile confirmed his suspicions.

  ‘Well, the government won’t fund it, and I can only raise half of that myself. Is there anyone who can provide the rest?’

  ‘The money isn’t the issue,’ Gray said, ‘it’s getting it here. It has to be a cash deal.’

  He told Harvey to contact Ryan Amos for the money, and asked if Harvey could arrange delivery.

  ‘I can ask Kyle Ackerman,’ Harvey said. ‘You remember him?’

  ‘From Durban? Sure, I know Kyle. How soon do you think he could be here?’

  ‘I’ll have to check. Can I call you back on this number?’

  Gray assured him he could, and asked Harvey to keep an ear to the ground regarding Malundi. He then dropped another bomb.

  ‘We lost our passports. Any chance of getting us replacements?’

  ‘Jesus, you don’t do things by half measures, do you?’

  Gray felt sheepish, but Harvey agreed to arrange for temporary travel papers. After giving the names of the team members, Gray thanked him and hung up, handing the phone back to the colonel.

  ‘Arrangements are being made,’ he said. ‘They will call back once everything is in place. Can you please let them know where to deliver it?’

  ‘Of course. In the meantime, please re-join your men.’

  Gray started back, but hesitated and turned. ‘We haven’t eaten for a couple of days. I was wondering if you could spare some food and water.’

  The officer pointed to the corner of the courtyard. ‘There is a well over there,’ he said. ‘As for food, I will send someone to the market when your money arrives.’

  Without waiting for a response, he turned and walked back inside, leaving Gray with an empty feeling.

  He knew it wasn’t just a product of his hunger.

  Andrew Harvey put the phone down and wondered how many more times Tom was going to spring these surprises on him. Barely forty-eight hours after promising to take a purely observational role, Gray was now virtually captive in a foreign nation, and Harvey could feel an international incident brewing. He should really kick this upstairs, he knew, but there were several in the hierarchy who were waiting for Gray to make exactly this kind of mistake so that they could hang him out to dry. Gray certainly hadn’t made many friends in the upper echelons of power with his crusade two years earlier, and there were plenty who would love to see him rot in an African prison.

  Harvey decided that until Gray’s name was mentioned in any official dispatches, he would deal with it on the quiet. He looked up the contact details for Kyle Ackerman. They’d been introduced in South Africa a year earlier, when the ex-marine had been instrumental in saving the lives of Gray, Vick, Sonny and Smart. Ackerman worked out of the UK Trade & Investment department in Pretoria, and had stepped into the shoes of Dennis Owen, who had been shot and wounded during the rescue attempt.

  Despite having the title of Senior Advisor, Ackerman was a British Intelligence operative, though with a more limited area of responsibility than Harvey’s. Ackerman’s cover allowed him access to the major companies in the region under the pretence of helping forge trade ties with Britain, but his real job was to dig deep and uncover information not found in annual reports. The British government had been scarred by dealings with companies purporting to be legitimate, only to be embarrassed as ties to groups such as Al-Qaeda and German neo-Nazi groups were uncovered by investigative journalists. It was Ackerman’s job to follow every thread
and ensure there were no skeletons. Every company had to be whiter than white before Ackerman would recommend them to the trade and industry secretary back in the UK.

  ‘Kyle,’ he said, when the call was answered. ‘It’s Andrew Harvey.’

  ‘Andrew! What can I do for you? Not looking for another truckload of fugitives, I hope?’

  ‘No, not this time. At least, we know where they are, but I need someone to drive up country and make an exchange.’

  Ackerman was intrigued, and Harvey laid out the bones of the mission, including the need to process some travel documents for the team.

  ‘Tom certainly has a way of finding trouble,’ Ackerman noted.

  ‘You don’t know the half of it. If I can arrange for the money to be transferred to you this morning, when can you get up there?’

  Ackerman checked his schedule. ‘I’m swamped until five this afternoon, but I can shift tomorrow’s meetings and travel up this evening.’

  It wasn’t as soon as Harvey would have liked, but short of flying over in person, there was little he could do. He confirmed the receiving bank account and promised to have the money in there by lunchtime, so that Ackerman could send someone out to withdraw it from the bank in preparation for his journey north.

  ‘I’ll get back to you later with the exact location of the meet,’ he told Kyle, then hung up. His next call was to Gray’s solicitor, Ryan Amos. He’d met the man a couple of times, once at one of Vick’s dinner parties, and he was a likeable man, if a little short on conversation. After reaching Amos’s secretary, Harvey was put on hold for a few seconds before the familiar voice came onto the line. Harvey gave a quick rundown of the situation and asked if he could accommodate Tom’s request. Amos was only too happy to help, and once Harvey recited the account in Pretoria, he promised to have the money wired immediately.

  After hanging up, Harvey put in a call to the Africa desk and asked for all recent developments in Malundi to be sent to his screen, then called Tom back. The phone was answered by a stranger.

  ‘Can I speak to Tom Gray, please?’

  ‘Who is speaking?’

  ‘Andrew Harvey. I’m calling about the . . . delivery he arranged.’

  The voice started rattling off instructions for the drop, but Harvey interrupted him.

  ‘I want to speak to Tom first.’

  ‘You can speak to him when the money arrives, not before.’

  ‘Then it looks like we have a standoff,’ Harvey said. ‘Either I speak to Tom Gray, or the deal’s off.’

  Harvey held his breath, hoping he hadn’t just condemned Gray and his team to an impromptu firing squad, but he had a feeling their captor wanted the money more than the satisfaction of offing some foreigners.

  ‘Wait!’

  It was over a minute before he heard Tom’s voice.

  ‘Andrew, please tell me you’ve got good news.’

  ‘Kyle will be setting off at five local time,’ Harvey said. ‘I don’t know when he’ll get there, but he’ll have the money and your temporary passports.’

  ‘Any chance you could ask him to grab a few pizzas on the way? We’re starving and these guys refuse to feed us. We’ve also got a boy who’s cramping up and may need medical attention. He said he was given something to smoke, and it looks like he’s going cold turkey.’

  ‘I’ll let Kyle know,’ Harvey promised. ‘Just keep your head down, don’t do anything stupid and we’ll have you out of there as soon as possible. Now, let me have a word with this guy.’

  Gray handed the phone over.

  ‘You’ve spoken to him,’ the voice said. ‘When will the money be here?’

  ‘In the next twenty-four hours. In the meantime, I want you to ensure they’re not mistreated, and that means feeding them and offering any medical attention they require.’

  ‘We are a poor nation, Mr Harvey. We can’t waste food and medicine on every armed transient we come across, especially if they’re in the country illegally.’

  ‘They’ve explained their reasons for being in your country. They put their lives on the line to save civilians, and I think they deserve some respect for that.’

  ‘You can show them all the respect you want when they get back home,’ the voice said. ‘Now take down these instructions, or your friends might be here for a long time.’

  Harvey realised he wasn’t going to change the man’s mind, and jotted down the details. Once he’d read them back, the call was abruptly terminated.

  There wasn’t much more he could do for Gray, and he wondered once again if he should inform his superiors about the incident. Word was sure to spread that British soldiers had been active in the region, and it would only need a little digging to come up with some names. Any further investigation would certainly reveal his involvement, and he had no real excuses for acting outside of his authority.

  He opened a document and began typing up a report, which he saved to his hard drive. He would eventually have to pass it up the chain, but decided to wait until Ackerman had confirmation that they were in his custody before sending it to his boss.

  In the meantime, he would also prepare a nice surprise for Tom’s captor.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Thursday 10 October 2013

  Night had already rolled in by the time Kyle Ackerman navigated the bus towards the old fort. Armed guards approached as he pulled up at the gates and he leaned out of the window to state his business. One of the guards climbed aboard and walked the length of the bus. Then, satisfied that it wasn’t a Trojan horse, he instructed the other to open the gates.

  Ackerman drove through them and into the courtyard, where he saw a few dozen men lounging against one wall, most of them asleep. As he climbed down from the conveyance, the first face to jump out at him was Gray’s, but before he could walk over to greet him, a trio emerged from one of the buildings and made their way towards the bus.

  ‘You have the money?’ the one with the scrambled egg on his epaulettes asked.

  Ackerman walked to the rear of the bus and opened the engine compartment. A metal briefcase was strapped to the inside door. He extricated the case and handed it over.

  ‘Just a little precaution,’ he said, ‘in case I got stopped along the way.’

  ‘A wise decision,’ the colonel said, opening the case and thumbing the bundles of twenty-dollar bills. ‘This country can be dangerous for those travelling alone.’

  Ackerman motioned for Gray to join him, but the colonel held up a hand.

  ‘Not so fast,’ he smiled, a toothy grin devoid of warmth. ‘Someone with such easy access to money might be useful to have around.’

  Ackerman had expected something like this. Having spent over five years on the continent, experience told him that not everyone could be taken on their word. Certain traits were easily recognised, with greed amongst the most common. This man, who’d demanded twenty grand for basic medical supplies, fell into that bracket.

  ‘I think you should reconsider,’ Ackerman said, his voice steady despite the precarious situation. ‘The person you spoke to yesterday works for British Intelligence, and these men are his close friends.’ He checked his watch. ‘I spoke to him ten minutes ago to say I was here, and if I don’t call back in the next sixteen minutes, he will be on the phone to President Lwami. I’m sure your leader would be interested to know why four heavily armed Apache helicopters are roaring through his airspace and heading for this location. Mr Harvey will explain that not only did you hold British citizens hostage, you also demanded that money.’ Ackerman pointed to the case. ‘Now, you can either keep the cash and enjoy it, or hold us for another quarter of an hour and see who gets you first: the British, or your own president.’

  The colonel’s smile disappeared, indicating to Ackerman that he’d guessed right when he’d assumed the man was working for his own benefit rather than the country as a whole. Now, Ackerman hoped, the colonel could acquiesce without losing too much face, given that none of his companions likely spoke English
. In truth, the colonel had no other option, apart from losing his life in one of several uninviting ways.

  The colonel turned and walked towards the building, barking an order as he went. Guards ordered the prisoners to their feet and pushed them towards the waiting vehicle, while Ackerman shouted after the departing officer, who turned once again to face him.

  ‘Don’t forget the wounded and the other civilians. We expect them to make it back home safely. If they don’t . . . . ’

  He put his hand to his ear in the universal phone-call signal, then turned to join the others as they made their way onto the bus. By the time everyone was on board there was barely room to breathe, with half a dozen forced to stand in the aisle.

  Kyle took the wheel and reversed out of the fort, pointing the bus towards the road out of town, with Gray sitting next to him in the jump seat.

  ‘Good to see you again, Tom.’

  ‘You, too,’ Gray said, ‘though I wish it was under different circumstances. Did Andrew mention food?’

  Ackerman nodded, and told Gray to lift the floor panel behind the driver’s seat. Inside there was a variety of tinned meats and several loaves of bread, along with a couple of can openers. Gray started passing them down the bus, saving a tin of Spam for himself. A cooler contained three dozen beers, and although the heat had got to them, the bottles were emptied in no time.

  ‘Where are we heading?’ Gray asked with a full mouth.

  ‘Pretoria,’ Ackerman told him. ‘Your travel documents will be ready when we get there. I tried to rush them through, but without an official request it takes time.’

  ‘What about the others? How will they get back to Malundi?’

  ‘We’re stopping off on the way,’ Ackerman said. ‘Andrew told me that the fighting has stopped. One minute there were a couple of thousand hostiles poised on the outskirts, the next, nothing.’

  ‘They pulled out? Why?’

  ‘No-one knows,’ Ackerman grinned, ‘but they think it might have had something to do with a horde of hairy-arsed Brits slaughtering everyone in sight.’