‘Now,’ he said. ‘Let’s go to war.’

  Thirty-three

  0831 hours.

  The landing RV was thirty-five kilometres due south and east of Moroni, the capital of Grande Comore, and the journey north took the three pickups along a stretch of worn tarmac flanked by thick walls of mangroves and coconut palms. Shafts of sunlight poked like spear tips through the canopy. Bald was behind the steering wheel of the lead pickup, Pretorius beside him in the front. Deet was somehow crammed into the back seat with Stegman. With six soldiers jammed into the second pickup and a further four guys in the third pickup. Six men would seize the radio station, while the others, under Pretorius, would take the palace. Bald hoped to fuck that was going to be enough manpower.

  As they headed west the coast gradually slid out of the horizon. The shoreline was black and angry. Grey clouds pressed down over the Indian Ocean, carrying the threat of hard rain. Waves swelled on the water, absorbing energy before hurling themselves at the shore and pounding the rocks. A tropical storm was brewing.

  With the speedometer showing 130 kilometres per hour, the pickup juddered violently as they bounced over potholes deep as bomb craters. Bald gripped the steering wheel, his stomach knotted with tension.

  This is it, he thought. It’s about to get noisy.

  A Colt Commando rested on his lap. They were short of equipment and ammo. Bald himself had only had two clips of 5.56x45mm ammo – forty rounds in total – to see him through the attack. Something else was bothering him, though, besides the lack of kit. How Pretorius had managed to fund his coup? There were the stacks of equipment and weapons he’d seen back at the camp in Somalia. Then there were the six pickups waiting for them at the RV, the Zodiac boats used by the second detachment to land on the island. Where was the money coming from? He thought that Pretorius might have paid for the op himself, but dismissed the idea almost immediately. Pretorius had been blackballed by the Circuit for years. He wouldn’t have access to the kind of readies needed for such a large-scale op.

  Bald closed his eyes for a micro-second. He was physically and mentally wiped. It had been, what, four days since he’d had a proper night’s kip or a decent meal? A snatched hour of sleep here and there, coupled with a refuelling process that had consisted of knocking back a bottle of Famous Grouse. He was running on fumes. He wouldn’t be able to last much longer. Just see this through, the voice in his head urged. Whatever it takes to get through today.

  His eyes opened wide at the angry trill of a mobile. Pretorius fished the phone out of the pocket of his trousers, a rugged-looking thing in a hard shell. A JCB Toughphone Sitemaster. That old saying about owners looking like their dogs? Nowadays that was true for people and their phones, thought Bald. The JCB was like Pretorius. Durable, military-certified and hard as nails. Pretorius checked the screen, and Bald caught sight of the caller ID.

  Charles Grealish.

  He did a double-take, panic flushing through his body. Grealish. Christ. He hadn’t heard that name in twenty years. Not since the botched job in Northern Ireland when he’d rescued Avery Chance from the Nutting Squad. Back then Grealish had been the director of operations for MI5 in the province. He’d threatened to have Bald RTU’d from the Regiment after ignoring orders, guaranteeing himself a place for life in the Scot’s black book of people who had it coming.

  Bald touched a hand to his temple. His migraine had flared up again. Brutally this time. What the fuck did Grealish have to do with Pretorius? Ghosts from the past screamed in his ears. Pretorius must have seen the confusion written large across his face, because he explained, ‘Grealish, he’s my business partner.’

  ‘Partner?’ Bald repeated. His lips were numb.

  Pretorius nodded. ‘He used to be a big deal in Whitehall. He had some, ah, personal problems. A jumped-before-he-was-pushed deal. Our paths crossed on the Circuit, and he’s been funding me ever since.’

  The phone vibrated, demanding to be answered. Pretorius continued.

  ‘It’s a useful arrangement. Grealish supplies me with the means to eject governments. After the dust has settled, he swoops in and secures favourable contracts for real estate at rock-bottom prices.’

  Bald said, ‘That’s why he’s fronting the cash for the Comoros?’

  Pretorius nodded. ‘Soon as I take over, he’ll show up with a bunch of contracts stuffed in his briefcase, all waiting just for signatures.’

  ‘But I thought the island was dirt-poor.’

  Pretorius rolled his eyes. ‘Think about it, John. Grealish takes the land, develops a bunch of luxury hotels and beach resorts. Then all he has to do is wait for the country to settle down and the tourists to show up. Fast forward a few years and he’s sitting on a bunch of resorts each worth millions.’

  Bald took all this in and tried to compose his features as Pretorius finally took the call. A voice crackled at the other end of the line. Bald tried hard but with the noise of the engine he couldn’t make out what was being said. Then the line went quiet.

  ‘We’re in,’ Pretorius replied.

  He paused again. It was Grealish’s turn to speak. Bald glanced at the dashboard. The built-in GPS navigation system put them a kilometre south of Moroni. Which meant there were four minutes to go until it all kicked off.

  After a few seconds Pretorius said, ‘We took a good few casualties back at the airfield. But it could have been worse. If it hadn’t been for one of the new guys, we’d never have made it out of there alive. You should be thanking him, not me.’

  Grealish said something. This was driving Bald mad. He made an extra effort to cut out the background noise, focus on his voice. No good. Pretorius had the Sitemaster pressed tight to his ear.

  ‘John Bald,’ he said. ‘Why?’

  Grealish said something else. There was a cold pause as Pretorius listened to what the former MI5 man had to say. Then he glanced quickly at Bald. His expression was passive, so Bald couldn’t get a reading on it. Does he know? he wondered. Has Grealish told him I’m working for the Firm? Maybe, he thought, Grealish is out of the loop, doesn’t know a thing about my mission. But no. The old-boy network was a permanent feature of Whitehall, former directors talking in low voices with their successors in the gentlemen’s clubs of St James’s. Bald tensed up, acutely aware that his life hung in the balance. No one said a word for several seconds.

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ Pretorius said at last. ‘When this thing is over.’

  He killed the call, shoved the Sitemaster back into his pocket. Stared impassively at the road. If Grealish had spilled the beans, Pretorius wasn’t showing any sign of it. Maybe he doesn’t know, thought Bald. And then they were rolling into town and there was no more time to worry.

  They travelled north on Boulevard Karthala, passing dilapidated slums. The roads were narrow and unpaved and Bald had to slow to ninety per. The town was a warren of ramshackle huts and crumbling mosques whose minarets jutted above a sea of corrugated-metal roofs. Plastic bin bags filled with rubbish were piled high at the side of the road.

  The locals took little notice of them at first. They were a mix of African and Arab and Malay. Some were dark-skinned with heavy features; others’ faces were more chiselled, with skin the colour of tea, the centuries of foreign conquest evident in their blood. Toothless old men rocked back and forth on rickety wooden chairs outside slum dwellings. Women trudged past the pickups, some lugging wicker baskets filled with mangoes, others carrying bunches of bananas on their heads. Barefoot children in rags played tag in the streets. A normal person might see this and feel guilty. But Bald looked at the grinding poverty around him and just felt glad to be the ‘three Ws’: white, Western and working.

  A shout went up from the side of the road. Bald swung his gaze across. Saw a kid in a ragged pair of shorts pointing at Stegman and Deet in the back, their rifle barrels visible through the side window. ‘Gun, gun, gun!’ the kid yelled, sounding the alarm. People immediately stopped what they were doing. Kids fled indoors at the call of their anxious mothers, abandoning their worn footballs. Women ditched their baskets of fruit, spilling mangoes across the road which were then crushed by the pickups. It was like watching a well-rehearsed fire drill. To Bald it seemed as if the people had lived through enough coups and didn’t want any part of it. Better to stay indoors and wait for the dust to settle than get caught in the crossfire. Fair play – if he was in their shoes and saw a bunch of armed men roll into town, he’d be thinking the same thing.

  By the time the Amaroks were half a click south of the Palais de Beit-Salam, the streets were virtually deserted.

  ‘Pull over,’ Pretorius said.

  Bald hit the brakes. The two other drivers pulled up a couple of metres to his rear. Six metres ahead of the convoy stood a rundown three-storey building with the words ‘Office de la Radio et de la TÉlÉvision des Comores’ emblazoned above the door. Pretorius gripped the Beretta 92 in his lap and turned to Bald.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘As I’ll ever be.’

  Pretorius grinned. ‘We’ll debus here.’

  Bald slid out from behind the wheel. A blast of salty air hit him like a slap from a jilted lover. The air was greased with the smell of damp rock and the stench of rotten fish. Pretorius hopped out and a moment later Deet and Stegman joined them. The ten soldiers debussed from the two other pickups: six from the second, four from the third. Clips were inserted into mag feeds, sights were adjusted. Equipment checked. Bald felt a hot wave of adrenalin rush through his veins. He was never more alive than in the last few seconds prior to an op. He was in a heightened mental state, everything was somehow sharper – as if he was wearing a pair of hi-def glasses. He filled his lungs. No going back now. It was do or die. And that was just the way Bald liked it. At his side, Pretorius exuded an almost supernatural calm.

  Six soldiers beelined towards the radio station. Pretorius broke into a jog and the remainder of his team – Bald, Stegman, Deet and the four soldiers from the third pickup – pushed north towards the Palais de Beit-Salam. Eight men with rifles in their hands and blood on their minds. There was an eerie quiet in the streets, thought Bald as he ran after Pretorius, a dull ache in his leg muscles as if they had been wrapped in barbed wire. There were no vehicles on the roads, he noticed. No kids playing in the streets. There was only the whoosh of breeze fluttering across the island, the rustle of palm leaves. It seemed as if the entire city was holding its breath. The few locals in sight ducked into their houses or darted into alleyways leading deep into the slum districts. It was almost as if they sensed what was about to go down.

  They had run for just ten metres when Bald heard men shouting at his six. He looked back over his shoulder. Saw two security guards charging out of the radio station to confront the soldiers, reaching for their holstered pistols. They walked straight into a hail of bullets. The militiamen opened fire simultaneously. Half a dozen rounds belched from their rifles in a staccato burst and cut down the guards. Blood sprayed through the air in dizzying arcs and splashed the glass doors of the building. Spent shell cases cascaded on the tarmac. There was a clatter as the two pistols dropped to the ground. The guards quickly joined them.

  It’s begun, thought Bald.

  ‘John! Get a move on, for fuck’s sakes.’

  He spun around. Pretorius and his gang had upped the pace and were twenty metres ahead of him. Bald sprinted after them, the shrill shattering of glass and the crack of rifle rounds sounding at his back, every nerve ending in his body screaming with pain and exhaustion.

  Three hundred metres to the north Bald could see a left turn off Boulevard Karthala with a petrol station on the corner. The palace was just sixty metres down that road. Almost there, Bald told himself. Keep going a little longer.

  He heard a woman shrieking close by. He glanced back at the radio station and saw the soldiers herding employees out of the reception area and forcing them to their knees in the street. One of the soldiers was dragging a heavily pregnant woman out into the street. She tried to break free of his grip. In a fit of rage the soldier booted the woman in the small of her back and sent her tumbling to the ground. She tried to crawl away but the soldier kicked her onto her back and raised his rifle’s stock above his head as if preparing to smash her face in. The woman instinctively lifted her hands to protect her head. But he brought the stock crashing down on her bump, and the woman bent double in agony, her terrified screams echoing through the street. Then the soldier started stomping on her belly in a frenzied attack, as if he was trying to put out a bush fire. After the third or fourth blow, the woman stopped screaming and her arms fell limp by her side. Blood oozed out from between her legs.

  Pretorius was losing the plot and they hadn’t even ousted the government yet, thought Bald.

  And he’s taking you down with him.

  He tried to shrug off the thought and pushed on. Two hundred and fifty metres to the petrol station now. Almost there. He buried the pain and the doubts swirling behind his eyeballs and upped the pace. Gunshots and wails chorused in the distance behind him. Bald kept his eyes fixed ahead. A semi-naked child no older than three or four years old stood abandoned at the side of the road, tears streaming down his face as he cried out for his mother. Bald ignored him too. Focused solely on the mission, and the riches that would be waiting for him at the other end. He drew alongside Pretorius. Two hundred metres to the petrol station.

  ‘This is what it feels like to be alive,’ Pretorius said grandly. ‘Whoever said one man can’t change the world was full of shit. Give me a bunch of savages, a stack of Colt Commandos and a couple of technicals, I’m invincible.’

  Bald gulped for air. His chest was burning. Sweat slicked down his forehead and stung his eyes. Pretorius wasn’t even short of breath.

  ‘Slotting civvies,’ Bald gasped. ‘What the fuck for?’

  ‘A necessary evil, John. Today we put the fear of god into the natives. Tomorrow every man, woman and child on this island will be worshipping us. Gods among men.’

  Bald was flagging. He couldn’t keep up the pace. Pretorius breezed ahead. A hundred and fifty metres to the petrol station. At that instant a beggar jumped out in front of Bald. A shrivelled old man with a face like petrified wood. He cupped his bony hands in front of his chin, his eyes pleading. The rest of the soldiers were racing ahead. Bald slammed the butt of his Colt Commando into the beggar’s stomach. The old man jackknifed. Air escaped from his slack mouth like a punctured tyre. Bald elbowed him aside and ran on.

  Pretorius suddenly halted. So did the rest of the team. A sound carried across the street. Bald heard it clearly above the distant cracks of gunfire to the south. The distinct roar of an engine being revved, the nails-on-a-chalkboard screech of rubber on tarmac. Bald caught up with the soldiers as a car surged into view from the road to the left of the petrol station. The road leading to the palace. The car was a Lincoln, the kind of stretched-out, jet-black motor used to ferry presidents around at G8 summits. Must be doing 120 k per, Bald figured. The Lincoln slowed momentarily as it hung a left at the petrol station. Then it started bulleting away northwards down the main road.

  ‘Shit!’ said Pretorius. Bald glanced at him. His eyes were small as knife points. His lips barely parted as he spoke. ‘That’s the President’s car. He’s getting away.’

  Thirty-four

  0901 hours.

  At that speed, Bald knew the Lincoln would be three hundred metres clear of their position in another two seconds max. Three hundred metres was the threshold of the maximum effective range of the Colt Commando. Which meant he had two or three seconds to save the op. Bald was able to process all this information instantly because he possessed superior military intelligence – an ability to shut out physical and mental stress, process the situation and formulate a plan on the spot. It was why he’d been able to survive brutal firefights in some of the most desperate corners of the world. And now it was why he brought his rifle to bear a split second ahead of the other soldiers, tucking the stock tight to his right shoulder and wrapping his hand around the rubberized grip. With his left hand clasping the STANAG clip on the underside of the receiver and his cheek resting on the receiver, Bald filled his muscles with oxygen and sighted the Lincoln through the rear aperture and front sighting post. Two hundred and eighty metres. Almost out of range. He focused on the left-rear tyre. Squeezed the trigger.

  A white-hot flame licked out of the barrel. He felt the kick of the recoil. His eyes were locked on the Lincoln. He saw sparks flying as a round ricocheted off the number plate.

  Fuck!

  Three hundred metres.

  You’re losing him.

  The Lincoln was shrinking from view. Bald didn’t panic. It was a natural thing, panic, and in the Regiment you learned to shut out emotions. To compartmentalize them. You cordoned off a space in the back of your brain and shoved all your thoughts and anxieties into it. You listened only to the feeling in your muscles, the instinct in your guts and the training voice inside your head. Everything else was just white noise. He calmly lowered his aim a quarter of an inch and zeroed the sights on the tyre.

  Distance, three hundred and forty metres.

  It was worse than a long shot. At this range, it was barely even a shot.

  He pulled the trigger anyway. A second shot exploded out of the barrel. There was a momentary pause as Bald feared he had missed again. And then he saw the Lincoln sagging on its left side and veering towards the side of the road. He’d struck it. He put the celebrations on ice and swivelled his weapon across to the other tyre. Gave the trigger another satisfying pull. The tyre exploded. The Lincoln swerved to the right, then the left, as the driver fought to regain control. Then it banked sharply again to the right and crashed into an office building beyond the petrol station, the front of the car crumpling like an empty Coke can being stamped on. Smoke puffed out from under the twisted bonnet. Bald lowered his Colt Commando, a warm feeling flowing through his body.