Susan screamed out in terror as she heard Maggot’s neck snap and he dropped to the floor. He was dead.
Marcus sagged to his knees and bent over Maggot’s body. He was breathing heavily with the tortured sound of someone who has almost been choked to death. He had slumped so far down that his forehead almost rested on his friend’s body, weakened by the terrific fight he had put up against him. There was the look of deep sadness and shock in his eyes when he finally lifted his head and looked down at the man who had been his friend. He dropped back on to his heels, tears falling freely down his face.
Susan sat up knelt beside him. Then she put her arms around him very tenderly. She didn’t know what to say, she could only try to understand what it must have been like for Marcus.
He turned his face towards her and looked into her eyes. She could see the pain deep inside him. She then reached forward and kissed him gently on the side of his cheek.
‘Very touching,’ a voice boomed out.
They both looked up immediately, startled. Standing near to the short passage from the front door was Milan Janov. He had a machine pistol in his hand and he was aiming it at the two of them.
‘Now you are both going to die. Then I will kill Abdul.’
He raised the gun and a shattering blast of gunfire filled the corridor.
Susan screamed and clutched her ears as Marcus instinctively pulled her to him and sought the dubious cover of the floor.
Janov seemed to burst open as bullet after bullet shredded his body, lifting it high and slamming him against the wall. He was dead before he slithered down the wall to sit, lifeless in a pool of his own blood.
David stepped into the hallway, the AK47 smoking in his hand. He looked at Janov, then down the passage to Marcus and Susan. He said nothing, then walked up to them and looked down at Maggot’s dead body. He reached down and lifted Maggot’s hand, looking at the joint where Maggot’s finger should have been. He nodded and let it drop.
‘Where did you come from?’ Marcus asked him.
David simply lifted his head in the direction of the room where he had been sleeping.
‘I climbed out of the window.’ He looked down at Maggot again. ‘You know, I remembered his voice. He said something before he shot me in the head. I knew then I had to get out because he would have killed us all.’ He turned and looked over at Janov. ‘I nearly ran into him.’
‘Lucky you didn’t,’ Marcus commented, ‘otherwise we would have all been dead now.’
‘What about Abdul?’ David asked. ‘What are we going to do with him?’
Marcus got to his feet. ‘Take him with us,’ he said. ‘Cavendish can do what he wants then.’ He put his arm round David and Susan. ‘Time we went home,’ he said. ‘I think we deserve it.’
TWENTY FOUR
Cavendish followed McCain out of Base Headquarters and clambered into the military officer’s Chevrolet. The dawn sky was now well lit by the rising sun, painting its glorious colours across the entire horizon. McCain gunned the Chevrolet into life and drove the relatively short distance to the MQ Reaper Flight.
The pilotless drone was remotely controlled from a very nondescript looking trailer. It stood on its jacks, its wheels clear of the ground. It had no windows so presented a very unprepossessing sight. Its silhouette against the backdrop of the dawn sky simply showed it up as nothing more than a rectangular box on wheels. It was an absurd notion that such an inanimate object could wreak devastation on its unsuspecting victims.
There was also an air conditioning rig, its huge tubes connected to the control trailer. At the end of the trailer was a short flight of steps. There was another trailer close by, coupled to a generator which hummed quietly beside it.
McCain brought the Chevrolet to a halt in a small parking lot, alongside other military vehicles and jumped out. Cavendish followed him as he bounded up the steps and pulled open the door. McCain waited until Cavendish was inside before pulling the door closed behind him.
The lighting inside the control room was subdued. A narrow strip of floor ran down towards the far end forming a narrow passage, and on each side of that were rack upon rack of electronic control equipment.
The far end opened up into a tee shape, the bar of which was the Reaper drone control desk. At a little below head height were two screens, each one showing a different topography of the ground over which the Reaper was flying.
Two men were sitting at the controls. Cavendish knew that the officer on the left was flying the Reaper. The officer on the right was the sensor control officer, responsible for target detection and target lock.
There was another man at the end, sitting on a kind of jump seat. It wasn’t until Cavendish got closer that he recognised the CIA man, Randy Hudson.
Marcus asked the others if they were OK; they both said they were, but Susan insisted that she took care of Marcus’s injuries. Marcus wasn’t aware that he had any, but Susan led him away to the room that served as a kitchen and told him to wait there. She then picked up a bowl and went outside in search of water.
David was shaking like a leaf, but he had a terrific smile on his face. The trembling was simply a reaction to the death of Janov, and the fact that he had been responsible for it. The shaking didn’t bother him, but he wasn’t keen on the idea that he had killed somebody although he did realise it had been a case of kill or be killed.
He went along to the room where Abdul had been tied up. He sat on the end of the bed opposite, the one he had slept in, and laid the AK47 down beside him.
‘This is where it ends,’ he told Abdul, speaking in Farsi. ‘I expect we will be taking you with us, but what happens then, I have no idea.’
Abdul couldn’t reply because he was still gagged. David realised this and leaned across the space between the two beds and pulled the gag from Abdul’s mouth.
‘What happened out there?’ Abdul asked, lifting his chin towards the door.
David told him.
‘So you killed Janov?’ Abdul said to him. He leaned back against the wall. ‘It is for the better,’ he mumbled. Then he pushed himself up away from the wall. ‘When will we be leaving?’
David made a gesture, lifting his shoulders. ‘I don’t know. But I think we’ll probably leave within the next twenty minutes or so.’ He pointed towards the other end of the house. ‘Susan is fixing Marcus’s wounds. When they’ve finished, we’ll go.’
Hudson turned when he heard the sound of footsteps. As soon as he saw Cavendish, he stiffened. Cavendish walked up to him and stopped.
‘Good morning Hudson. Why am I not surprised to see you here?’
Hudson regarded Cavendish in the half-light with a contemptuous stare. ‘I’m here on business, Cavendish. What are you doing here?’
Cavendish sniffed. ‘I hope I’m here to stop you and your dirty little games,’ he told him.
Hudson bridled at the remark. ‘You’re not on your own ground, Cavendish, so have a care what you say.’
‘Why?’ Cavendish replied. ‘Will I get the same as last night?’
Hudson shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Of course you haven’t, but why are you not surprised to see me here I wonder?’
Just then the sensor operator called out two co- ordinates. Chuck Berry, who was sitting in the pilot’s seat responded by repeating the co-ordinates and operated the controls to bring the Reaper on to a different heading.
Cavendish glanced over Berry’s head and saw the map displayed on the screen. Berry looked up at him.