The two guards were coming back from inspecting the boats. But they weren’t watching Musa, as they should have been doing; they were staring up at the top of the beach and the area beyond.
Right where I was lying in wait.
I wondered if something had given me away. One of the men stopped walking and plucked at his shirt, producing a small pair of binoculars. He held them to his eyes and began scanning the area.
I knew I’d run out of time. Work on guard duty long enough and you get a feel for when something isn’t right. It doesn’t have to be obvious, like a person standing out of place or a strange vehicle parked where it shouldn’t be, or even the absence of birds, which I was guessing was the case right now. It could be something in the air, a feeling that made the hairs move on the back of the neck.
Some call it instinct.
I stayed absolutely still, aware in my peripheral vision of Musa and the fat man moving along the beach. I mentally crossed my fingers. If Musa picked up on his guards’ concerns, he’d have the phone out and the rest of his men heading on down here in an instant, armed and looking for bear.
Which would leave me no way out.
Seventy
I’d gone over this several times since coming back ashore and hiding out, waiting for that blinding flash that tells you when a plan is a going to end badly and should be aborted.
So far, though, other than deciding I should have stuck with a less dangerous line of work, no flash had occurred. Instead the plan seemed to sit looking back at me as if daring me to duck out. During that time I’d been talking to Vale and learned that Musa and his men were far from done, and had been very active since the drone strike. One craft had already picked up a Dutch-registered yacht that had sailed too close to the coast, taking three family members hostage and killing the captain; another had attempted getting alongside a tanker, only to find a group of armed sub-contractors out of London waiting for them; while a third had raided a small coastal trader, killing five of the crew before scuttling the ship as not worthy of their time. This same crew was believed to have then got close enough to a passing tanker that had slowed down to discharge waste and attached a bomb to the hull before pulling away and using a remote to detonate the device. The device had worked, but resulted in minimal damage.
As Vale had concluded, it had probably been a first attempt. Next time they might get lucky.
So far, there had been no attempts at curbing their actions by the Kenyans, who already had their hands full to the north of here. Incursions by al-Shabaab into Mogadishu, where several bombs had been set off, had pulled in their resources, and chasing after pirates was a very much secondary task. But it was only a matter of time before they did what Musa had been planning, and the results would be catastrophic.
That, and knowing Musa was still alive had been enough to convince me to go ahead.
I eased off the safety and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. I felt calm, my heartbeat steady, and the conditions were ideal, with minimal breeze and no obstacles in front of me. I had done this before and knew the drill.
The man with the binoculars was now staring right at me, and had probably seen the tip of the suppressor move, even fractionally, against the background of dried foliage. His mouth dropped open and he started to speak.
I squeezed the trigger, dropping him with my first shot.
The second man had been standing slightly ahead of him, eying an area to my left, his rifle held by his side, beginning to relax when he saw no obvious threat. Against the soft hiss of the sea, all he would have heard to tell him something was wrong was the slap of the bullet hitting his colleague in the chest. But the sound would have been sufficiently out of place to put him on the alert.
Sure enough, the moment his colleague fell backwards, he began to move, bringing up his rifle ready to start spraying the scenery, Somali-style.
It took two shots this time, but he went down without a sound, without touching the trigger.
I swivelled to my left, picking up Xasan in the scope. The sun flashed off his spectacles as he turned his head inland, his lower lip open in horror when he saw the two men down. There was also a flash of gold on his hand, a reminder that he was simply here for the money and nothing else. I had earlier reminded myself that it was Xasan who had coolly lured Angela Pryce and Doug Tober here with a non-existent plan to talk. While some of the blame lay with Moresby and his colleagues for giving it the go-ahead, it was Xasan who had stood to make money out of the deaths of the two SIS people, by way of his initial fee and by arranging sales of the execution DVD on the side. He was that kind of operator.
I aimed for the main body mass. In these conditions and the size of the target, it was hard to miss. My shot knocked off his spectacles and he flopped over like a big wet fish. He tried to get up, flapping his arms and honking, and made it on to his side. He was made of tougher stuff than I’d thought, or maybe his fat helped absorb the shock of the bullet. Not for long.
I gave him another shot and he lay down and died.
Musa turned and looked at where Xasan lay. When he saw his two guards were down, too, he looked up the beach, his mouth working while scrabbling for his phone. He must have been freaking out. Having someone drop right close to you, but hearing no shot, is a weird thing to witness. You might hear the impact of the shell, depending on ambient sounds; you might hear a cry or a sudden exhalation of breath as it leaves the body. Without further information, your brain tells you somebody has fallen down for no good reason.
I centred on Musa. He seemed to be having trouble processing the thoughts rushing into his head while trying to focus on hitting the right buttons on his phone. Perhaps multi-tasking wasn’t his strong point.
I helped him rationalize.
My first bullet slammed into the leather cartridge belt across his chest. He staggered under the impact and dropped the phone, but managed to stay on his feet. He lowered his chin and I thought he was looking for the phone; then I realised he was staring down at his chest where the bullet had struck.
Moments later something unearthly happened. His body shook and he threw his arms out wide, and there was a bright flash of light as his chest seemed to catch fire. A split-second later a puff of smoke formed an almost perfect halo around him as one of the shells went off.
It didn’t end there. There was a crack as a second shell exploded, the bullet tearing upwards and taking away the lower part of Musa’s face and lifting off his skullcap along with part of his head.
I watched as his body remained upright for a second. Then his knees got the message and his lifeless shell collapsed. This time, not so elegant.
I listened for signs of alarm from the villa. The bullets going off on Musa’s chest had made a sharp crackling noise, but nothing like the full sound you’d get from a normal gunshot.
Job over. It was time to go.
I shrugged aside the covering of dried palm leaves and slung the ghillie net and rifle over my shoulder. Then I walked out of Somalia and back across the border.
The Watchman Page 28
