“See for yourself,” Lea said.
Men carrying MP5s and Milkor BXPs burst into the giant lobby and immediately took up position behind the rocks at the base of the waterfall. Lea and Ryan moved toward them while Camacho and Kim provided cover. Lea ran toward their position and fired on them with her weapon.
The closest of them turned and aimed his gun, a look of terror on his young face. He moved to fire but Lea struck first, landing two in his chest and one in his forehead. “Maybe you can hunt defenseless animals, laddo, but I’m a different story.”
“Woah.” Ryan slammed down beside her. “You get out the wrong side of bed this morning or something?”
“Yes.”
Camacho fired on a man at the top of the waterfall, striking him in the head. He tumbled down over the edge of the falls and crashed down into the lake at the base, disappearing in the swirling foam. Ryan was closest and ran over to the dead man, snatching a belt of grenades from him.
The four of them ran from the lobby, pausing only for Ryan to hurl one of the grenades into the base of the waterfall. The explosion filled the space with smoke and flames and blew out the containing wall around the raised lake at the base of the waterfall. Thousands of gallons of water burst out through the broken brick and started to flood the lobby.
“That way!” Lea said.
A fire door behind the reception desk led to a service corridor, at the end of which was a staff elevator. Kim opened the doors and they bundled inside with the sound of Kruger’s men screaming and shouting back in the lobby. One of them reached the other end of the service corridor and lifted an automatic rifle into the aim.
“Doors!” Camacho shouted.
Kim hit the button while Ryan and Lea opened fire on the man through the ever-narrowing gap. He returned fire, his bullets pinging off the elevator’s stainless-steel doors and some entering inside and raking up the inside wall.
When the doors slammed shut, Kim blew out a deep breath. “That was too close.”
The doors opened at the subterranean level where the facility’s vehicles were parked. Lea turned and fired on the control panel, disabling the elevator, then turned and saw a sprawling parking lot. Due to the park’s extremely remote location, most of the staff and guests flew in and out but there was still a good handful of vehicles to choose from, mostly used for moving around the enormous compound or even the main park itself.
Camacho’s eyes soon alighted on a white Mercedes AMG G63 with black stripes designed to resemble a zebra’s markings. The luxury super-SUV would normally be filled with rich men in big hats being chauffeured out to hunt big game, but today the former CIA man had another use for it.
They ran closer. Printed on the side in a red rectangle were the words KRUGER WILDLIFE & GAME RESERVE. Camacho ran to the driver’s door and punched the air when he saw the keys in the ignition.
“This is our baby.”
“Everyone in!” Lea yelled. Her ploy to disable the elevator had worked, but Kruger’s men had simply diverted to the service stairs beside the elevator shaft. They poured out of the double doors with guns blazing, shooting up anything that moved in the parking lot.
“John McClane wouldn’t take any of this shit in Die Hard,” Camacho said with a sigh.
“I love his Homefries,” Ryan said.
Kim was confused. “What the fuck are you two talking about?”
Ryan said nothing, but blew out the rear window of the Merc SUV with his handgun before picking off two of Kruger’s men. He saw Venter now, reaching the bottom of the concrete steps and emerging into the parking level’s yellow strip lights.
Lea climbed into the back and slammed down into the seat beside Ryan. The luxury interior of the G63 included a chunky console between the two rear seats and she was able to raise one knee onto it to get a better view out of the shattered back window.
“Venter!” she said.
Ryan was aiming at him. “The one and only and he’s mine.”
She watched him gently squeeze the trigger but the bullet went high as they tumbled forward. Camacho had stamped on the accelerator and flung him off his balance. The Merc lurched forward in a cloud of burnt rubber smoke and spinning wheels that filled the entire garage with an ear-piercing squealing noise.
“Dammit, Jack!” Lea said. “Ry nearly had Venter.”
“Company employees are welcome to use the suggestion box,” he shouted from the front, ducking quickly to the right as a bullet punctured his window and traced past his head. It blew another perfect hole in the opposite window beside Kim Taylor who screamed loudly before spinning around and scanning for the gunman.
“They’re everywhere!”
Ryan flicked a panicked glance over his shoulder. “And they’re never going to stop until they have the sword back!”
Camacho reversed at high-speed in the underground car park, smoke spewing from the wheel arches as the rubber tires spun on the polished concrete. Spinning the steering wheel hard to the right, he flung the vehicle around in a tight arc, changed into drive and stamped on the gas.
The underground parking lot filled with the sound of tires squealing as Camacho weaved the SUV in between the support pillars and hit the exit ramp. Bullets chased them all the way outside and when they emerged from the subterranean parking area it was into a soft African twilight. The intense heat and glare of earlier in the day had dissipated now and night was rapidly approaching.
Camacho pushed the Merc as hard as it would go as he steered it around to the left and followed the signs for the helipad, praying there was a chopper there. They got there seconds later and found their prayers had been answered. A nice, new helicopter was sitting beside Blankov’s private jet. The jet offered a much faster way out of the nightmare but none of them knew how to fly it.
The former CIA man skidded the SUV to a halt a few meters from the chopper. “We’ll have to destroy the jet when we’re airborne. Everyone out!”
With the sword in the bag under Ryan’s arm, they clambered out of the SUV and jumped into the chopper. Camacho made some instant pre-flight checks and then fired up the engine. As the rotors started to whir, a team of Athanatoi and some of Kruger’s commandos appeared at the top of the car park ramp and opened fire on them.
Camacho lifted the chopper into the Transvaal dusk and rotated it to the side to allow Ryan and Kim to return fire on the enemy. They took cover behind a low concrete wall which marked the perimeter between the complex and the car park, giving Lea time to fire on the jet with the MP5.
With the chopper’s rotors noisily whirring overhead, she leaned out into the downdraft and swept the powerful machine pistol up and down the wings, puncturing the aluminum as if it were foil. The jet fuel sparked and ignited and blew the private plane into a terrifying ball of fire.
“Get us outta here, Jack!”
Camacho spun the chopper and increased speed, swooping low over the complex as he steered around to the south. “Goodbye, assholes.”
Lea twisted in her seat to see Blankov running out of the complex and staring at his aircraft, now no more than a black burning skeleton. The cloud of thick, choking smoke was the thickest she had ever seen. She high-fived Kim and Camacho set a course for home.
With the day long-gone, the exhausted four-strong team sat on the veranda running around the front of a large villa north of Pretoria. Set in the middle of a wildlife sanctuary owned by old friends of Danny Devlin from his South Africa days, they all agreed it was the safest place any of them could be right now.
The brother and sister owners of the property, Isaac and Lily Elsey, were away in France on business, but they had answered Danny’s call for help in a heartbeat and now the place was theirs for as long as they wanted it.