Colonel Kariuki turned over to watch the carnage of his carefully laid plans. Maybe all was not lost.
"Who is your leader?" he asked loudly. His body gushed with pain, but he could not let them know he was hurting.
"Who is your leader?" he bellowed this time.
A small man with a full beard and nearly white hair came out of the car carrying his pistol and nodded. "I am Kinadi, the leader of this squad of patriot soldiers. Who are you?"
"I am Colonel Jomo Kariuki, the second in command of the New Republican Army of Kenya. I sit at the right hand of our leader, General Umar Maleceia."
The man in front of him wore no uniform. He had the white shirt and dark pants of the peasant farmer of the hills. The man laughed, fired the pistol three times in the air, and laughed again.
"Maleceia is a syphilitic idiot. I knew him before he went into the Army. He's a stupid lout with more guts than brains. I was his sergeant his first time in the Army. If you run with him, I should shoot you now."
"I left him. His regime is falling apart. I was on my way to Tanzania."
"Doubt if you'll get much farther."
"Can we speak in private?" the colonel asked. He lowered his voice so only the leader could hear. "It could be well worth your time."
Kinadi motioned three of his men away. He kept the pistol aimed at the Army man. "So, talk."
"At this point I can do you a lot of good. I can make you a quite wealthy man. None of your group needs to know. Let them have the food and the weapons, and you stay here with me. We will change the two tires. I have two spares. Then we will drive to the nearest village, where I will present you with more than a hundred thousand shillings."
"You have money hidden in the car," the robber said. "Why don't I just kill you and take all of the money you have?"
"Because then you'll have to split it evenly with six or eight men, and you'll wind up with a pittance. This way you'll have more cash than you have ever seen in your lifetime."
"True. But if you will give me a hundred thousand, you must have three times that much. Why don't I want to take it all?"
"You'll have to share it with your band. No one will get much. There may be some fights, some killings, jealousies. It happens in the best groups of mere men."
"You have a good point, Colonel. By the way, this is a fine little pistol, a twenty-two caliber I believe." He turned and shot the colonel in the right leg.
"Bastard!" Colonel Kariuki brayed in pain and fury. He beat down the waves of agony. "Why did you shoot me? We were negotiating. I can make you rich."
The bandit leader nodded. "True, Colonel. All true." Then he shot the colonel in the left knee.
Colonel Kariuki screamed until he passed out.
"Tear the car apart," Kinadi ordered. "But don't damage it. Take everything out that will move, the goods, the seats, everything. There may be a surprise in there somewhere."
There was.
The men had taken out the front seats, and then lifted the rear seat to pull it out. A pair of furious Hinds montane vipers struck out repeatedly, shooting venom into two of the men, who wailed and reeled back, sucking at the fang marks to pull the poison from their systems.
Two other men clubbed the vipers to death and carried them deep into the brush.
Colonel Kariuki came to consciousness with the shock of the water that hit him in the face. "What? Oh, God. Why… why are you shooting me? I offered half of the money to you."
"Where is the money hidden, my colonel?" the leader asked.
"What money?"
The leader shot him in the left shoulder with the snarling little .22-caliber. Colonel Kariuki jolted backward, but didn't fall over this time. The pain billowed around him. He felt as if he were in a giant metal barrel and someone kept banging it with a steel hammer. "Where is the money, old man?"
"Money. If I tell you, will you let me go with my car?"
"Sure, sure we will. Why not? What good are you to us without your money?"
"G. It's a deal, a bargain. See, good men can come to reasonable arrangements. The money's in a compartment under the rear seat. It looks like the gas tank, but it comes right out and is hinged. Take it out carefully so you don't rupture the real gas tank directly below it."
The leader motioned, and three men cautiously looked in where the rear seat had been. One more snake darted out, but was clubbed before it could strike.
One of the men yelped, and tugged, and the metal box came loose and moved forward. They lugged it out carefully.
"Damn heavy," one of the men said.
The metal box was eight inches deep, two feet wide, and nearly three feet long. They brought it out and put it on the ground beside the leader. He called the men over, and then counted them.
"Is everyone here? I want no mistakes if this is valuable and we split it. Seven of us, rights Including the two snakebit ones who are still alive." He laughed. "Don't worry, the little viper is vicious, but not all that deadly."
He reached down, undid a hasp at each end, and lifted up the hinged top.
The men gasped. In the moonlight they could see that the box was filled with money. One section had banded stacks of hundred-dollar U.S. bills. Another had banded stacks of thousand-shilling notes. Half of the chest was filled with South African gold pieces.
The leader of the band hit Kariuki in a shot-up knee, setting off a series of wailing screams.
"Can the bills be traced? Are the numbers recorded anywhere as stolen? They're all new and in order."
Colonel Kariuki knew then that he would not live out the night. He screamed at them that of course they were stolen.
"Yes, the numbers are with every police in the world. All stolen, and you'll never spend a dollar or a shilling."
The leader laughed at him. "Old man, you wouldn't have kept them if they had been recorded. What did you do before you were a colonel with the killers down in Nairobi?"
The colonel didn't answer.
The leader hit him again in a wounded knee, and Kariuki bleated in surging waves of pain that made him nauseous. When he could talk again, he realized he was still alive. Maybe he could still get through this and get away.
"Before I went with the Army, I was the Minister of Finance and Administrator of Foreign Aid. I… I helped myself to some of the foreign aid. It was never missed."
"About what I figured." The leader turned away from the Army man. He pointed to three of his men. "You three start dividing it up into seven equal piles. We'll all be rich tonight. But don't damage the mother vehicle. It's mine. The rest of the goods we split equally. Any arguments?" There were none.
Colonel Kariuki had some hope. He called to the leader.
"Now, Mr. Kinadi, I gave you what you wanted. Will you help me into the village where I can get some medical aid? It's the right thing to do."
The leader looked down at the colonel and asked him to repeat what he had said. When he heard it, Kinadi shrugged and turned away. Then in one swift movement he spun back and shot the colonel three times in the chest. After Kariuki fell to the ground, Kinadi shot him twice in the head to make sure.
24
The SEALs had eaten a big breakfast and loaded up on carbohydrates. In the ready room, they were suiting up and making final checks on their weapons and the quantities of ammunition each man wanted to take over the minimum.
Murdock and DeWitt double-checked each of their men. DeWitt was one SEAL short with Yates still in sick bay. He would make do.
By 0130 they had assembled on the flight deck near where a Seahawk chopper was getting a final preflight check. Five minutes later they boarded the craft, fitting in around the rig's normal supply of weapons minus the heavy Mk 46 torpedoes. They settled in for the rest of the preflight check.