‘Inside!’ Pretorius cried, staggering to his feet. ‘Fucking go!’

  After unloading two final rounds from the NSV, its muzzle red-hot now, Bald vaulted off the flatbed and hit the ground running. He bombed up the steps and reached the door as Deet emerged from the lobby. Deet chucked him an FN FAL rifle liberated from one of the dead soldiers inside the palace and helped Pretorius to his feet under an unrelenting hail of lead.

  Bald swung around to face the enemy as he grappled with the FAL. He had no experience of the FN variant, but he’d used the L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle derivative manufactured by the British Army plenty of times on the Circuit. The only difference between the SLR and the FN FAL was the muzzle. The assemblies were basically identical and his hands automatically felt for the grip and operated the trigger mechanism without his even having to think about it. The three-round burst shot up a soldier tearing towards the steps. He fell back as if he’d slipped on black ice.

  Deet followed up with a quick burst from his secondary weapon, the Taurus Raging Bull wrist-breaker. Shot a soldier in the groin. The guy made an ‘O’ with his mouth and shivered speechlessly, as if stunned by the pain. He gaped down at his disintegrated manhood. Stringy threads of his balls dangled between his legs. The man cupped his hands to them and sank to his knees.

  Deet took a bullet to the ankle as he led Pretorius and the President back inside the building. He didn’t stop. Kept moving. Bald emptied a last three-round burst at the soldiers swarming over the compound. Stegman was waiting in the lobby. He pulled the firing pin from a grenade and tossed it through the crack in the door into the crowd of soldiers advancing towards them. Then he slammed the door shut. Frantic shouts from outside were quickly followed by an earth-shuddering thud as the grenade detonated. Fragments showered like hailstones against the door. Quiet descended on the garden. It wouldn’t last for long, Bald knew. No sign of the other backup. Guy must have taken a hit during the firefight, he guessed.

  Pretorius rounded on the President. ‘You must know a way out of here.’

  The President shook his head nervously. Pretorius gripped him by the throat and thrust the pistol muzzle into his face. In the back of his head Bald knew they were running out of time. Any second now a bunch of soldiers would come crashing through the door.

  ‘Think again,’ Pretorius said. ‘If we don’t kill you, the Colonel’s men will.’

  ‘My helicopter,’ the President replied hastily, pointing to the stairs at the back of the lobby. ‘It’s on the roof. A Eurocopter. I use it to fly to my hunting lodge in Mozambique.’

  ‘Why didn’t you take the chopper when you fled earlier?’

  ‘The Colonel killed my pilot when his men attacked. I don’t know how to fly myself.’

  Pretorius looked to Deet. ‘Can you fly that thing?’

  Deet thought for a moment. ‘A Eurocopter?’ He shrugged. ‘No problem.’

  ‘Then let’s go.’

  Pretorius turned back to the President. ‘How long to get to Mozambique?’

  ‘Less than an hour.’

  Shouts came from outside, getting louder as the soldiers neared the door. ‘Move,’ Pretorius said, starting to bundle the President towards the stairs, twelve metres away. He glanced at Bald, then Stegman. ‘Cover us. Once the chopper’s ready to go, make your way to the rooftop.’

  ‘Roger that,’ Bald said.

  Pretorius moved freely, seemingly oblivious to the blood pouring out of the trauma wound on his left shoulder. His camo jacket was soaked through. Bald watched Pretorius, Deet and the President disappear from view as they hurried up the stairs. Then he swung back to Stegman – and found himself staring down the barrel of a Colt Commando.

  Stegman said, ‘This is where you and me part ways, sunshine.’

  Bald stood his ground. A quick glance at the palace door ten metres back. The shouts were super-loud now. The soldiers were practically breathing down their necks. Seconds to spare until they blitzed through the door. Bald slid his eyes back to Stegman, his mind racing. Trying to think of something – anything – to stop the South African from blasting a hole in his face.

  ‘You can’t kill me,’ he said.

  Stegman smirked. ‘The fuck I can’t.’

  ‘I’m with the Firm,’ Bald said slowly and clearly.

  It worked. Stegman didn’t blow his brains out. He kept his finger on the trigger but the smirk disintegrated and in the next moment he pulled three faces for the price of one: disbelief, puzzlement, curiosity. Then he shook his head fiercely. ‘Bullshit. If that was true, Mr Pretorius would’ve killed you back at the RV. The other one, Priest: he was with the Brits.’

  ‘I sold your boss a lie,’ Bald pressed on, his voice wired with urgency. ‘I’m working for the Firm. They sent me here to take out Pretorius. He’s out of control. If you kill me, you’ll be automatically bumped to the top of the Firm’s most wanted list. That’s cast-iron, that.’

  Stegman shook his head again. Firmly this time. ‘This can’t be true,’ he said. His voice was distant now. ‘You can’t be with Six. My handler would’ve told me.’

  ‘Handler?’

  Stegman tensed his grip on the rifle. ‘I’m with the Company.’

  Something like a fist slogged Bald in the guts. The cold sensation on his neck turned to ice, stabbing his flesh and needling his spine. He was dimly conscious of soldiers congregating at the door, his heart thumping like a fist against his chest wall as if in tune with the footsteps.

  The Company. He means the CIA.

  Stegman is CIA.

  Thirty-eight

  0954 hours.

  The door flew open and four soldiers crashed into the lobby. Bald put his confusion on ice and centred his FAL rifle on them. Stegman did a one-eighty, dropped to a knee and hefted up his rifle in a swift but controlled blur. The two men each let off a three-round burst and hosed down the soldiers with a hot spray of 7.62x51mm lead. They went down in a big pile in front of the open door. Bald squeezed off another burst and a fifth soldier fell in the doorway, screaming as he reached down to his shattered ankle. Stegman finished the guy off with a neat burst to the head. His brains splashed across the magnolia wall. Bald heard the heavy clomp of boots on stone as more soldiers raced up the steps.

  ‘We have to fall back,’ Stegman said.

  ‘To the chopper,’ Bald said. ‘I’ll lead, you cover.’

  ‘Long as you don’t put a bullet in me.’ Only half-joking.

  Cunt, thought Bald as Stegman fired another three-round burst through the doorway, forcing the soldiers back into cover. As Bald wheeled away from the door he heard the sound of breaking glass coming from the rooms to east and west of the lobby. The soldiers were storming the palace from every conceivable angle now, intending to attack Bald and Stegman on three separate fronts. If that happened, it’d all be over. Bald pounded across the lobby with renewed energy and determination. He glanced back at Stegman as he emptied another burst at the doorway and launched up the stairs. Suddenly the air was filled with a terrific whup-whup-whup, accompanied by a high-pitched drone. The Euro copter’s engine was firing up.

  ‘Hurry,’ Stegman boomed. ‘We don’t have much time.’

  Bald looked back. Stegman was a metre behind him. Fifteen metres back a soldier steamed through the front door and immediately lost his footing on the puddle of blood greasing the floor. Bald let him have it with a quick burst, put the brakes on the Comorians’ advance. Then he spun around and hurried to the first-floor landing. Reached it in four long, quick strides. Stegman unloaded a final burst, sending four soldiers dispersing around the lobby in search of cover. He cleared the last two treads and joined Bald as more soldiers flooded into the lobby from the rooms to either side.

  Turning on his heel, Bald darted down the corridor, past a conference room, making for a door at the end of the corridor, twelve metres ahead. The door had been left open and a gloomy staircase led up to the roof. He kept up the pace, conscious of the noise of soldiers amassing on the floor below. He and Stegman had a head start on them, and he hoped to fuck it would be enough to allow him to get on the chopper and bug the hell out of this bloody island.

  Stegman hurried along at his shoulder. Bald said without looking at him, ‘You can’t be with the CIA. You’re not even American, for fuck’s sake.’

  ‘The Company recruited me,’ Stegman replied. His face was covered in sweat. ‘A case officer met me in Jo’burg. Told me they needed a local asset to do the job, someone who could pass themselves off as a PMC. By then I’d been out of the game for a few years, but when this case officer told me about the rand on offer, I jumped at the chance.’

  Bald flashed Stegman a quizzical look. ‘They ordered you to kill Pretorius too?’ Thinking, why would the CIA and MI6 both send assets into the field to take the guy down, and not tell each other about it?

  Six metres from the stairs, Stegman said, ‘That was the original plan.’

  Bald shot him a look. ‘But the mission got fucked up,’ Stegman went on. ‘Pretorius kidnapped the case officer. I couldn’t get rid of Pretorius until I secured her release.’

  Her. Unease tightened like a noose around Bald’s chest. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t feel his legs. He looked at Stegman. ‘Imogen?’

  Stegman nodded.

  ‘But back in Kenya – on the boat – you abducted Imogen.’

  ‘I had . . . no choice,’ Stegman replied falteringly. ‘If I didn’t bring her back to the camp – if I went back empty-handed – Pretorius would’ve booted me off the team. And then I’d have no chance of completing the mission. We agreed she’d play along until I had the chance to nail the bastard.’

  Three metres to the stairs. Voices sounded close at their six o’clock. The soldiers were climbing the first staircase. Stegman said, ‘This is what we’re gonna do. First, we shut Pretorius down. Then we’ll find Imogen.’ He paused. Glowered at Bald. ‘And then you owe me an explanation for why you killed Eli.’

  Bald tried to mask his panic. ‘Your partner?’

  ‘An old friend. He was also on the Company payroll.’

  Shit. Bald had a big problem. If Stegman really was working for the CIA, then that meant he was in a position to fatally compromise Bald. All the stuff about siding with Pretorius and turning his back on the Firm, he could explain away as a means to an end. He’d just told Pretorius what he wanted to hear in order to win his confidence and get close enough to kill him.

  Bald’s mind was made up as they approached the stairs.

  He waved Stegman ahead. ‘You first.’

  The agent swept past him and hit the first tread. At the same time Bald hiked up his rifle so that the muzzle was pointed at the middle of Stegman’s back and gave a deft pull of the trigger. Momentarily the grainy stairwell lit up white. Stegman jolted as if he’d been struck from behind with a sledgehammer. He lost his balance and fell to his left, his back slapping wetly against the wall. His face registered shock as his legs gave way and he tumbled to the foot of the stairs. He reached for the Colt Commando; Bald kicked it away. Stegman looked up at him with blood in his mouth and a neat hole in his chest, a look of animal hatred in his eyes.

  ‘Cunt!’ Stegman rasped, blood gurgling in his throat. ‘Son of a cunting bitch.’

  ‘Don’t blame me,’ said Bald. ‘Blame self-preservation.’

  He stepped over the agent and raced to the door at the top of the stairs. He hit the bar and emerged onto the roof. The chopper was a lightweight Eurocopter AS350. Deet was manning the controls. The engine droned, the rotor blades spun superfast. Pretorius was seated in the back, one hand gripping the pistol trained on the President, the other stemming the blood from his shoulder wound. Bald dashed towards the chopper. He climbed in and slumped into the seat next to Pretorius. The PMC chief looked across to the door leading onto the roof and his brow furrowed.

  ‘Where’s Harvey?’ he said icily.

  ‘Took a hit to the chest,’ Bald replied. ‘Nothing I could do for him.’

  Pretorius pounded his thigh in frustration. ‘Get us out of here,’ he said to Deet. ‘Off this fucking island.’

  The drone of the engine picked up, sounded like a hive of angry hornets. The blades whirred. There was a lurch as the chopper pitched forward and left the ground. Then they were rising above the roof at 8.5 metres per second. The maximum effective range of the FN FAL was four hundred metres. It would take the Eurocopter forty-five seconds to climb beyond firing range. They were forty metres off the ground. Still another three hundred and sixty metres until they were safe.

  The door to the stairs flew open. Stegman staggered out, his upper body glistening with blood, his clothes flapping in the strong downdraught from the chopper. He lifted his head to the Eurocopter, shook a fist of raw rage at Bald. He was still shaking it when the first soldier stepped out onto the roof and put a round in his chest. Stegman jolted. His arm lowered slowly, involuntarily. The Eurocopter was now a hundred metres above the palace. Then a hundred and twenty.

  Nine more soldiers fanned out across the roof. They formed a semicircle around Stegman and began emptying rounds into him. Bullets ripped into his limbs and torso, blasting away muscle and bone and tearing off strips of skin. Blood gushed from a dozen exit wounds. Stegman jerked with the impact of each round but somehow remained standing. The Eurocopter was three hundred and fifty metres above the palace by the time the gunfire cut out, the soldiers exchanging looks of disbelief at how Stegman was still on his feet. His bullet-riddled body swayed on the spot, blood pooling between his legs, his face knotted with anguish. At last one of the soldiers stepped forward and capped him with a shot to the back of the head.

  The Eurocopter climbed to four hundred metres above the palace. Some of the soldiers turned their attention from Stegman and started taking pot-shots at the chopper. But it was too high now, and their bullets went well wide of the fuselage. Bald glanced down as Stegman and the soldiers surrounding his body shrank to the size of insects. Then to specks. At last the chopper pitched forward and shot off towards the harbour. Bald breathed a sigh of relief. Yes, he was wicked and callous and cold-blooded. But he had been shaped that way by the world around him. The way he saw it, he was simply giving back what the world had given to him. He saw nothing wrong with what he’d done, because he’d witnessed – and done – much worse in the line of duty. It was no excuse. But Bald wasn’t a man who bothered with excuses. He just did what he had to do in order to survive.

  ‘This should have been mine,’ said Pretorius. He stared at the compound as it shrank into the middle distance. He took a deep breath and snorted, as if expelling his resentment through his nostrils. Then a thought flashed across his features and he turned to the President.

  ‘Why would a coward like you own a hunting lodge on the mainland? You don’t even know how to fire a gun.’

  ‘I – I like the hunt,’ the President said fakely.

  Pretorius jerked forward in his seat, grabbed the President by his collar and thrust his head out of the window. The prayer cap was whipped off his head by the sharp wind and drifted down towards the Indian Ocean.

  ‘The truth, my friend. Or you get to see what it’s like to freefall without a parachute.’

  The President flapped his arms manically. ‘No! Please!’

  Pretorius shunted him further forward so that his upper body was outside the cabin door, his head nearly level with the landing skids.

  ‘Shit!’ he screamed above the battering wind, the steady whoosh of the blades, the mechanical whine of the engine. ‘OK, OK. I – I keep my money there. All fifty million of it. US dollars. Cash.’ He added shrilly, ‘It’s all yours! Take it.’

  Pretorius yanked the President back into the cabin, releasing his grip on his shirt collar. The President fell back in his seat, soothing his neck as he tried to steady his frantic breathing. Pretorius turned to Bald and grinned. ‘What do you say, John? How about the President compensates us for our losses?’

  Bald grinned. ‘Aye, I’m up for that.’

  He smiled to himself as he gazed west out of the cabin window. Out on the horizon there were no clouds. Sunlight glimmered on the sea like a band of gold. Fifty million. He rolled the number around his mouth with his tongue. Not bad. Split three ways, it worked out to a shade under seventeen million each. Pocket shrapnel compared to the money they would have made if they had taken control of the Comoros. But still, a good whack. Enough to get Bald started on that dream of a new life far away from the Firm. He’d made the right call, then. Joining forces with Pretorius, slotting Priest and Stegman. He tried to ignore the migraine nudging at his skull – faint tremors that pulsated through his brain and scratched at the backs of his eyeballs – and turned his thoughts to Mozambique and the prospect of getting seriously minted.

  1053 hours.

  The President was spot-on. The flight from Moroni to the hunting lodge on Mozambique’s east coast took exactly fifty-three minutes. The Eurocopter had a range in excess of 650 kilometres and a cruise speed of 132 knots, equivalent to 244 kilometres an hour. As they neared their destination Deet pitched the chopper into a gentle descent and they swept across the Quirimbas archipelago, paradise islands scattered along the coastline. The Quirimbas National Park straddled the Mozambique coast, a hundred-kilometre stretch of lowland forest and savannah running north to south. The Eurocopter began its descent over the middle of a flat, rugged plain north of the national park, tall elephant grass rippling in a golden wave under the steady thrum of the chopper’s blades. The engine receded to a gentle hum.

  ‘This is the place,’ said Deet.

  Pretorius grabbed the President and shoved him out of the cabin door. He fell onto all fours on the baked earth. Bald, then Pretorius, followed him out as Deet clambered out of the cockpit and established his bearings. Forest to the north. Giant inselbergs rose out of the plain to the west, granite fortresses towering over the wild. Elephant grass whispered in the cool late-morning breeze. At the edge of the plain lay a shallow lake, and the hunting lodge stood at the water’s edge. A porch on stilts afforded a view of the lake. At the back a wooden table and four chairs stood in the shade. It was a good place to stash money, thought Bald. The area was deserted, as far from civilization as you could get. Dundee minus the concrete. It’d take days to journey here by foot from the nearest township. Somewhere in the distance, a lion roared.