‘Slow down,’ Killaman ordered him. The commander leaned out through the passenger window, almost like a dog sniffing the air. He pulled his head back inside the cab and nodded. ‘Yes, the warehouse. They are there. Follow them.’
Silent Death turned off the main road and drove down a short incline towards the warehouse.
‘Stop!’ snapped Killaman.
Up ahead, both men could see the VW parked by the warehouse. There did not appear to be anyone in it.
‘Right,’ he went on. ‘Let us make these drunken apes earn their money.’
He got out and faced the men in the back of the truck. ‘I need two volunteers,’ he said. Then he pointed at two of them in quick succession. ‘You and you. Check out the van.’ Killaman illustrated his orders with hand signals, to ensure that there could be no possibility of misunderstanding.
Both men glanced across the expanse of open road between them and the van. There was no cover at all aside from the wooden poles that supported the lights round the football pitch or carried power cables to the lights and the warehouse. The poles were very slender and at least fifteen metres apart. The men looked back at Killaman, eyes wide.
He grinned. ‘So you lose your enthusiasm. OK, no money for you. I will choose someone else.’
The men immediately leaped down from the Hilux and set off nervously down the road.
‘Make sure that the van is always between you and the open door,’ Killaman called after them. ‘If there is anyone inside the warehouse, they will not be able to shoot you. If anyone fires from the van, we will cover you.’
The men seemed to take heart. As Killaman and his remaining troops took up positions behind the Hilux and those with weapons aimed them towards the VW, the two unwilling volunteers jogged more purposefully to the first pole. There was no response from the van. The men emerged from behind the pole and started running again. Still nothing.
When they had got to within twenty metres of the van without any sign of hostile activity, the men relaxed. They stopped running and dodging and just walked straight towards the VW, their guns held diagonally across their bodies, ready to be used in an instant if required.
Ironically, their comrades left behind at the Hilux now became more tense. It was bad enough thinking that two of their number might be killed. Even worse, however, was the possibility that they might survive and be the first to get to the woman and the bounty she would earn them.
The driver’s door was nearest to the two men’s line of march. They walked right up to it. One of them pressed his face to the glass and tried to peer into the interior of the van. He put his hand to the handle and tugged. It was unlocked.
Back at the Hilux, Killaman suddenly realized what was about to happen. He shouted, ‘Do not…’
Before he could finish the sentence, the car door had swung open. There was a length of fishing line, invisible in the darkness, inside the VW. One end was tied to the inside door handle. The other end was attached to the pin of one of Carver’s grenades, which was jammed against the runners beneath the passenger seat. As the door moved, the line pulled tight and the pin was tugged out of the grenade.
‘… open the door!’
Killaman’s voice drowned out the faint chink of the pin hitting the metal sill at the bottom of the door. The two men jostled each other in their eagerness to get inside the vehicle. One of them said ‘Hey!’ in protest at being pushed out of the way.
And then their voices and their lives were obliterated by the deafening blast of the grenade that blew them both to pieces and sent shrapnel from the grenade, fragments of the VW and minced human body parts back up the way they’d come, rattling and splattering against the side of the Hilux and scaring the hell out of the men cowering behind it.
‘Get up, you cowards!’ Killaman screamed. ‘You gutless sons of jackals and hyenas! Follow me!’
He walked towards the burning VW, not looking round, trusting in his own powers of command as Silent Death and the other men traipsed after him.
The flames were casting an orange glow across the dirty white walls of the warehouse. Killaman walked straight past the VW and up to the warehouse door. There he stopped. He put out a hand behind him, palm up, stopping his men in their tracks. They looked on with a mix of fear and curiosity as Killaman got down on his haunches, looked very carefully at the opening, and then smiled.
In the light from the fire, the nylon filament stretched from the door to the warehouse wall was clearly visible. Killaman understood exactly how the booby-trap had been rigged; he had done it often enough himself. The grenade would be by the wall somewhere.
He gently raised his left hand and took hold of the line, close to the door. He pulled it taut, towards the wall, lessening the tension on the pin of the grenade. Then he reached into his trouser pocket and took out the black handle of a flick-knife that had served him well in many a bar and backstreet fight. He pressed the switch and a vicious six-inch blade sprang from the handle.
Killaman cut the fishing line between his hand and the door. He let go of the line and swung the door fully open. There was a light switch on the wall near him. When he turned it on, the empty warehouse was fully illuminated. And so was the grenade just inside the entrance, tied to a sand-filled firebucket with the same kind of fishing line that had linked its pin to the door.
Killaman took the grenade, then turned back to his men.
‘There is no one here,’ he said.
He looked around, trying to sense where the girl and her rescuers might have gone. His eyes caught a glint of flickering amber caused by the firelight playing on the crossbar of the nearest goal. Killaman thought about the football pitch. It suddenly struck him why anyone needing a speedy extraction would head in its direction.
He was grinning when he spoke again to his men: ‘But they are not far away.’
20
In the darkness of the concrete changing room, Carver spoke over his communications system. ‘Where are you, Morrison?’
‘Ten clicks out from you, a little over three minutes’ flying time. Can you give us your exact position?’
‘We’re by the football pitch, as planned. Did you see the explosion just now?’
‘Nah man, there is still a ridge of hills between us and you. It’ll be a couple of minutes before we can establish visual contact.’
‘OK, well, when you get over the hills, you should see the fire from Justus’s van.’
Morrison’s laughter, filled with the savage glee coursing through him at the promise of combat, cackled in Carver’s earpiece. ‘What? You fucked up his precious Kombi? Ah shit, that must be one unhappy munt.’
‘He’s fine. So’s the girl. Now listen, there’s a cluster of small buildings approximately one hundred and twenty metres northeast of the burning van. That’s where we are. The closer you can get to that the better. There’s a lighting pole by the corner of the pitch. Your pilot doesn’t want to get his disc anywhere near that. Other than that, nothing to worry about.’
‘Apart from all the buggers trying to kill us, you mean.’
‘Yeah, apart from them.’
The helicopter wasn’t the only thing being drawn towards the fire. The men running from the village, whose numbers had swollen as news of the night’s excitement spread, picked up their pace as they followed the route of the two vehicles off the main road and down towards the warehouse. Some of them were shouting. A couple fired their guns in the air.
The noise distracted Killaman, just as he was issuing orders to his men. He was not happy to see what was coming towards him. The last thing he needed was an ill-disciplined rabble getting in the way and complicating an operation that was already difficult enough as it was. Then he saw the silhouette of the grenade-launcher. That changed everything.
‘Stop!’ he shouted, bringing the village men to a halt just short of the flaming VW. He pointed at the man with the RPG. ‘You! Come here. I have special need of you.’