Kill Four

by Blake Banner

  She sighed again. “Look, Lacklan, I just want to run my business. I don’t need all this…”

  I held up both hands. “OK, but I didn’t do anything other than spend the day sightseeing in Port Elizabeth, and yesterday I went shopping in George. That is the extent of my culpability, so give me a break, Janine.”

  She nodded and spread her hands. “OK, you’re right. I’m sorry. I overreacted.”

  I pointed at the bathroom. “I’m going to have a shower. Let me take you to dinner this evening. We’ll have a nice time, we won’t talk about van Dreiver or any of that shit. We’ll talk about you and me and what sights you’re going to take me to see tomorrow.”

  She smiled. “One of these days I have to get back to work, you know. People will start talking.”

  “Let them talk. By the way…” I pointed at my back. “I have a spot I just can’t reach with the loofah. Do you think…?”

  She started laughing and stood. She stepped toward me, reaching for my face with both her hands when her phone rang. A hot twist of anxiety burned in my belly. I said, “Don’t answer it.”

  She made a face and shrugged. “I have a business to run, Lacklan.” Before I could stop her, she had it to her ear. “Yeah… Hey, Winny, what’s up?”

  She was quiet for a long time. I sat in the armchair, looking at the floor, thinking, trying to map out a plan in my head. She sank slowly onto the sofa, staring at me, still listening to the phone. After a moment, her eyes narrowed. “Shot with a bow?”

  After a while, she thanked him for letting her know and hung up. We sat for a while staring at each other. Finally, she said, “You’re a murdering bastard. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t call the cops right now.”

  I snorted and raised my eyebrows. “Well, if I am a murdering bastard, that’s one reason right there.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “No, Janine, I am not threatening you. What did Winny tell you?”

  “You know full damn well what he told me.”

  I nodded, stood and took the phone from her hands. She watched me then, go and lock the door from the inside and return to my seat.

  “He told you that George da Silva had been shot with an arrow, that both his bodyguards were also killed, and that five of his men were killed while pursuing the assassin. He told you that the assassin got away and nobody got a look at him.”

  “So it was you.”

  “Did he tell you anything else?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like what happened just before da Silva was killed.”

  “What happened?”

  I pulled my Sig from my waistband, found uncle Winny’s number and handed her the phone. “Please bear in mind, Janine, that in the last twenty-four hours I have killed ten people, and one of them was a woman. Call him and ask him to tell you everything that happened just before da Silva was killed. If you try to raise the alarm, or if you call somebody else, I won’t kill you, but I will shoot the phone out of your hands, and we will have a big problem. Understood?”

  She stared at me for a long time, her eyes bright with rage. Then she nodded and after a moment pressed call.

  “Uncle Winny, it’s me, Janine. Listen, don’t ask any questions, just tell me something. What happened immediately before da Silva was killed?”

  I could hear the excited drone of his voice. I saw her eyebrows come together. Her eyes narrowed. “He did what?”

  She listened for a long while. Then, eventually, she told him goodbye again and hung up. I gave her a moment before I spoke. “He was going to hunt him like an animal. They all were. He was kicking and beating him, chasing him around the camp, and you know why? Because he offered him champagne while he was grabbing a girl’s ass. He beat him to the ground, kicked him, called him a pig and an animal, took a bow and ordered his entourage to take bows and they were going to hunt that man and kill him, for sport, because he offered da Silva champagne while he was grabbing a girl’s ass. That is the kind of man he was. That is the kind of people they are.”

  “They? Who?”

  “They are part of an organization, Janine, a club, a syndicate—call it what you like. My father was a member. I am not going to tell you anything about them. If they believe you know about them, they will kill you, but you have to believe me, Janine. These are very bad people. And the best thing you can do is forget all about me, about them, about this whole affair. You had fun for a couple of days with Mr. Richard Sinclair, and he went back to England, to whatever it was he did there. You do not want to get involved in this—and Janine? You really don’t want van Dreiver’s friends coming around asking you about Lacklan Walker.”

  She sat in silence for a long time, staring at me. Finally, she shook her head. “You can’t just go through life murdering people because you disapprove of the things they do.”

  I gave my head a little sideways twist. “Would it help if I told you I worked for the TAIA?”

  “The what?”

  “The Trans-Atlantic Intelligence Agency.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “And you never will, but have you ever wondered if the English speaking nations like Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and South Africa cooperate on special operations?”

  “No.”

  “Well, they do.”

  “So these murders were authorized?”

  “Would that make you feel better?”

  She thought about it and after a moment sighed and stood. “I need to get back to work.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Nothing. I am going to get on with running my business. I don’t want anything to do with you or your filthy operation. I want you out of my resort by tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be gone tonight.”

  She moved to the door and stopped. “Are you going to go after Ruud and Jelle?”

  I shook my head. “They were never the target.”

  “You’re going—leaving?”

  “I’ll be gone tonight, Janine, I told you.” I paused. “But, Janine? If you call anyone, I will know. Don’t get involved. These are not people you should be protecting.”

  I threw her the keys. She caught them and unlocked the door, then paused before stepping out. “Go back to America, Lacklan. I never want to see you again. You disgust me. You all do, all of you. Just leave.”

  She closed the door and I watched her through the window, walking away down the path.

  I had no time to feel regret. I got dressed, packed my stuff and returned to the Audi in the parking lot, where I stowed it in the trunk. I pushed into reception. Janine was not there. I paid my bill and left.

  I drove fast up through the winding, wooded roads of Knysna and turned west onto the N2. I followed it, closing on a hundred MPH as far as the turn off for the village of Goukamma. There I slowed, making the tires complain, and turned down the dirt track toward the small cluster of multicolored houses where I had rented the boat the day before.

  I found my friend sitting on the small, wooden stoop of a pink, wooden house and walked over to him. The sun was setting in the west and its light looked burnished on the waves, on the sand and on the pink walls of the building. Gulls were crying out over the sea, and a sudden chill touched the air.

  I stopped in front of him, offered him a cigarette and he took it without saying anything. I sat next to him on the step, poked a Camel in my mouth and we both lit up with my old, battered, brass Zippo. I inhaled deep and released the smoke through my nose. “I need a place to leave my car till I can collect it, later tonight.”

  He grinned and nodded a few times. “You can leave it back of my house. We can put some big fishing nets over it. Nobody will see it.”

  I flicked ash and asked him, “You ever go fishing at night?”

  He laughed, showing all his tombstones. “Why do I want to go fishing at night, when I can be in bed with my wife?”

  I smiled. “That’s a good question. Maybe the fish you cat
ch at night could be worth more money than the ones you catch by day.”

  “How much more?”

  We talked a while longer, then I went and smeared mud and dust over the plates of the Audi and tucked it in close behind my friend’s wooden house. After that, we draped folded fishing nets over it, piled whatever junk we could find on top of them, and by the time we were done, night was closing in and it was pretty much invisible.

  Then I handed him five hundred bucks, which was about seven thousand Rand, and told him, “I just need one more thing from you.”

  “Man, you have a very complicated life. What you want now?”

  “I need a shave, and a ride into Knysna.”

  “You just come from Knysna.”

  “Yeah. I need to go back.”

  He sighed, shook his head and led me to a shack beside where we had concealed my car. He hauled open the door and inside, he had a beaten up, old Toyota truck sitting among huge fishing nets hung from the ceiling. “I get you a razor and some water. Where you want to go in Knysna?”

  Half an hour later, he dropped me just outside the town, near the Premier Hotel, and a stone’s throw from the beach. I walked quickly, with my collar up, and slipped in, down the winding footpaths through the Dylan Thomas Resort. By that time of the evening, most of the villas and cabins were empty because the residents were either out for the night or at the restaurant. Even so, I stayed in among the shadows cast by the tall pines, and found my way down to the beach. The moon was not up yet and it was very dark. The only light was from the stars, and the glimmering streetlamps and windows, barely visible through the trees. It was silent too, apart from the sigh and wash of the small waves.

  I crossed the cool sand and, after a couple of minutes with my Swiss Army knife, opened the padlock on Janine’s swimming gear shed. I slipped in, grabbed a couple of full air bottles, a mask and some flippers, and stripped down to my bathing shorts.

  Then I double-bagged my clothes and boots in plastic and tied the bag to my weights belt. Two minutes later I was sinking silently into the dark water, moving out to the deep channel that would lead me, without being seen, to Ruud van Dreiver’s pier on the far side of the lagoon.

  Swimming at night, without lights, is a surreal experience. You are enveloped and enclosed by wet darkness, all you can hear is the sound of your own breathing in your ears, and your only sense of direction is from the luminous compass on your wrist, which tells you to swim on, into the blind liquid blackness.

  Time passed with no sense of progress or movement, other than the wash of liquid over my skin, and the gentle, occasional thud of my bag of clothes against my leg.

  After fifteen minutes, I rose slowly to the surface and looked around. It was good to feel the cool air on my face. Less than a hundred yards away, I could see the faintly luminous foam of the waves breaking gently against the shore, at the foot of the black mass of the headland where van Dreiver had his mansion. Another minute and I could see the dark bulk of the landing jetty where two launches were moored, creaking and thudding softly in the swell coming in from the mouth of the lagoon.

  I swam in close, took a hold of the sodden, slightly slimy wood, and hauled myself up onto the pier. There I slipped off the swimming gear and hid it in the stern of one of the launches. I dried myself off with my shirt, dressed, slipped my Sig in my waistband and started to make my way along the pier to dry land.

  Then I froze and shrank down to the wooden boards. There was a shadow moving at the base of the cliff ahead. I lay on my belly, slipped my piece from my belt and held it in both hands, waiting. A flashlight came on and started to sweep the pier. I didn’t hesitate. I double tapped an inch above the light. I heard a soft, “Oh, God…” and the light dropped to the ground. I pushed up and sprinted to where the guy had fallen.

  There was a broad gravel esplanade which looked like a makeshift parking lot, and to the left a broad track that seemed to wind its way up toward the house. In the middle of the esplanade there was the dark bulk of a human body, and a couple of feet from it a flashlight illuminating the form, casting a long, inky shadow behind it. Beside the body, still clutched in his hand, was an AK-47. I kept my Sig trained on the fallen man, knelt with one knee on his back and felt for a pulse in his neck. He was dead. I rolled him over and saw he had a radio in his pocket with the microphone clipped to his lapel.

  I switched off his flashlight, shouldered the assault rifle and moved into the shadow of the cliff. I listened for a good two minutes. There was no sound. That meant that security was going to be concentrated around the house. This guy had been detailed to watch the jetty and call in any unusual activity. I hadn’t heard the crackle of his radio, so there was a chance they didn’t know I was coming.

  I moved to the start of the track, where it curved around and started to climb toward the mansion, keeping to the undergrowth by the side of the road. I climbed for about a minute without seeing anything, then, as the road started to level out, I saw why. As I had suspected, he had concentrated all his security around the house.

  The top of the headland was largely flat. The path I had been following curved onto a large esplanade and then snaked right and opened out into a broad driveway at the front of the house: a large, colonial, Georgian mansion with a colonnade at the front, and broad steps leading up to the door. To the right, surrounded by pines and cypresses, there was a lawn with a swimming pool, and at the back I could make out what looked like a couple of tennis courts. Everywhere there were trees, evergreen hedges and rose gardens.

  The front steps and portico, the pool, and the tennis courts at the back were all illuminated with spotlights, and in the glow of those lights I could see two armed guards on the front door, two guards patrolling the side of the house, and a patrol of five guys making the rounds of the pool and the gardens. I figured there would be a very similar set up at the back of the house and on the far side. I was looking at eighteen to twenty guys before I even got inside. Putting it bluntly, I was as screwed as a two dollar whore during shore leave.

  THIRTEEN

  When you are badly outnumbered by your enemy, you have two options: retreat to a stronger position, or kill your enemy to even up the numbers.

  I wasn’t about to retreat.

  I dropped and crawled, inching my way along the side of the path into the cover of some evergreen bushes. Ahead of me, about thirty feet away, I had a hedge. Beyond that laid the pool, set among lawns and trees, and ahead and to the left I had the driveway and the house, maybe three times that distance. Along the near wall of the house, on the ground floor, I could see two large sets of French windows, with light filtering out onto the lawn.

  I remained motionless for an hour, observing the movements of the guards and the patrols. The guards at the front by the door remained stationary, the guards at the side of the house paced back and forth, sometimes facing each other, sometimes with their backs to each other, while the patrol made the rounds of the drive at the front of the house, the pool area and the tennis courts at the back, then started the return journey. Each round trip took them a little more than twenty minutes.

  I watched them leave the third time and crouch-ran to the hedge. It was no more than four feet high and I vaulted it easily and landed silently in the shadows, then belly-crawled around the edge until I was level with the nearest guard by the side of the house.

  In their pacing back and forth, there was a period of about twenty to twenty-five seconds, as they paced away from each other toward the corners of the house, when the guards had their backs to each other. What I was going to attempt was practically suicidal, but I had no other option, and I was pretty much resigned by then to not making it back from this operation.

  I crawled to the gap in the fence where the gate to the pool stood, and waited for the guards to meet at the middle point of the wall. They turned their backs to each other and then began their return journey to the corners. When they were about six paces apart, I stood, vaulted the gate and sprinted sil
ently toward the guard on my left. I slipped my hand over his mouth and rammed the knife in through the side of his neck, cutting into his jugular vein and his carotid artery, and slicing out through his windpipe. I didn’t bother to lower him carefully to the ground. Instead I dropped him, turned and threw the knife. The other guard was turning to see what the bustle was and the blade thudded home through his sternum.

  I now had about fifteen minutes to work with. I recovered my knife and ran to the lighted window near the back of the house. I flattened myself against the wall and peered in. It was a drawing room. There was a fire burning in a large, marble fireplace. There were antique sofas and a couple of antique armchairs drawn up around the fire. Sitting in them, I could see three men and a woman seated, drinking and talking. I recognized two of the men as Ruud and Jelle, but I had no idea who the other man and the woman were.

  Suddenly, in that moment, for no reason I could identify, I became intensely and violently aware that I had no time to waste. I was up against maybe thirty men armed with assault rifles and there was no way I was going to pull this off. It was up to Njal to destroy the reactor, alone. And it was up to me to deliver what might be Omega’s final death blow, even if it meant that I died doing it.

  I stepped out of the shadows and put two 9mm rounds through the latch on the French windows. Then I smashed my foot into it and stepped into the room. I looked left and right. There was nobody else in the room. Ruud and his son were on their feet, shouting. The woman had jumped up and was screaming. The third guy was watching me curiously. I ignored him and took aim at Ruud, but before I could squeeze the trigger, behind him, the doors burst open and two guys in suits burst in.

  I fired over Ruud’s shoulder; two double taps and the guards went down. By that time Ruud, his son and the two guests were running for the door, still shouting and screaming. I should have sprayed them with the AK-47 and mowed them down. I took the weapon and aimed it. But I couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger. The man and the woman were not Omega, and I would not murder them. I cursed violently and went in pursuit.