Carte Blanche Part 34

'We are aware that a Serbian group is claiming credit for the attack and I can a.s.sure you that police here in Yorkshire, the Metropolitan Police in London and Security Service investigators are giving this attack the highest priority-'

With the silent tap of a b.u.t.ton, Hydt blackened the screen.

'One of your people there?' Huang snapped. 'He had a change of heart and warned them!'

'You said we could trust everyone!' the German observed coldly, glaring at Hydt.

The partnership was fraying.

Hydt's eyes slipped to Dunne, on whose face the fractional emotion was gone; the Irishman was concentrating an engineer calmly a.n.a.lysing a malfunction. As the partners argued heatedly among themselves Bond took the chance to move to the door.

He was halfway to freedom when it burst open. A security guard squinted at him and pointed a finger. 'Him. He's the one.'

'What?' Hydt demanded.

'We found Chenzira and Miss Barnes tied up in her room. He'd been knocked unconscious but as he came to he saw that man reach into Miss Barnes's purse and take something out. A small radio, he thought. That man spoke to someone on it.'

Hydt frowned, trying to make sense of this. Yet the look on Dunne's face revealed that he'd almost been expecting a betrayal from Gene Theron. At a glance from the engineer, the ma.s.sive security man in the black suit drew his gun and pointed it directly at Bond's chest.

59.

So the guard in Jessica's office had woken sooner than Bond had antic.i.p.ated . . . and had seen what had happened after he'd tied her up: he had retrieved from her handbag the other items Gregory Lamb had delivered, along with the inhaler, yesterday morning.

The reason Bond had asked Jessica such insensitive questions when they were parked near her house yesterday was to upset, distract and, ideally, to make her cry so that he could take her handbag to find a tissue . . . and to slip into a side pocket the items Sanu Hirani had provided yesterday via Lamb. Among them was the miniature satellite phone, the size of a thick pen. Since the double fence around Green Way made it impossible to hide the instrument in the gra.s.s or bushes just inside the perimeter and since Bond knew Jessica was coming back today, he'd decided to hide it in her bag, knowing she'd walk through the metal detector undisturbed.

'Give it to me,' Hydt ordered.

Bond reached into his pocket and dug it out. Hydt examined it, then dropped and crushed it beneath his heel. 'Who are you? Who are you working for?'

Bond shook his head.

No longer calm, Hydt gazed at the angry faces of his partners, who were asking furiously what steps had been taken to shield their ident.i.ties. They wanted their mobile phones. Mathebula demanded his gun.

Dunne studied Bond in the way he might a misfiring engine. He spoke softly, as if to himself: 'You had to be the one in Serbia. And at the army base in March.' His brow beneath the blond fringe furrowed. 'How did you escape? . . . How?' He didn't seem to want an answer; he wasn't speaking to anyone but himself. 'And Midlands Disposal wasn't involved. That was a cover for your surveillance there. Then here, the killing fields . . .' His voice ebbed. A look approaching admiration tinted his face, as perhaps he decided Bond was an engineer in his own right, a man who also drafted clever blueprints.

He said to Hydt, 'He has contacts in the UK it's the only way they could have evacuated the university in time. He's with some British security agency. But he would've been working with somebody here. London will have to call Pretoria, though, and we've got enough people in our pocket to stall for a time.' He said to one of the guards, 'Get the remaining workers out of the plant. Keep only security. Hit the toxic-spill alarm. Marshal everyone into the car park. That'll jam things up nicely if SAPS or NIA decides to pay us a visit.'

The guard walked to an intercom and gave the instructions. An alarm blared and an announcement rattled from the public-address system in various languages.

'And him?' Huang asked, nodding to Bond.

'Oh,' Dunne said matter of factly, as if it were understood. He looked at the security man. 'Kill him and get the body into a furnace.'

The huge man was equally blase as he stepped forward, aiming his Glock pistol with care.

'Please, no!' Bond cried and lifted a hand imploringly.

A natural gesture under the circ.u.mstances.

So the guard was surprised by the swirling black razor knife that Bond had pitched towards his face. This was the final item in Hirani's CARE package, hidden in Jessica's bag.

Bond had not been able to adjust his distance for knife throwing, at which he was not particularly proficient anyway, but he'd flung it more as a distraction. The security man, though, swatted away the spiralling weapon and the honed edge cut his hand deeply. Before he recovered or anyone else could react, Bond moved in, twisted his wrist back and relieved him of his gun, which he fired into the guard's fat leg, to make sure that the weapon was ready to shoot and to disable him further. As Dunne and the other armed guard drew their weapons and began firing, Bond rolled through the door.

The corridor was empty. Slamming the door shut, he sprinted twenty yards and took cover behind, ironically, a green recycling bin.

The door to the conference room opened cautiously. The second armed guard eased out, narrow eyes scanning. Bond saw no reason to kill the young man so he shot him near the elbow. He dropped to the floor, screaming.

Bond knew they would have called for back-up so he stood up and continued his flight. As he ran he dropped out the magazine and glanced at it. Ten rounds left. Nine millimetre, 110 grain, full-metal jacket. Light rounds, and with the copper jacketing they'd have less stopping power than a hollow point but they'd shoot flat and fast.

He shoved the magazine back in.

Ten rounds.

Always count . . .

But before he got far, there was a huge snap near his head and the nearly simultaneous boom of a rifle from a side corridor. He saw two men in security-guard khaki approaching, holding Bushmaster a.s.sault rifles. Bond fired twice, missing, but giving himself enough cover to kick in the door to the office beside him and run into the cluttered works.p.a.ce. No one was inside. A fusillade from the .223 slugs tore up the jamb, wall and door.

Eight rounds left.

The two guards seemed to know what they were about ex-army, he guessed. Deafened by the shots, he couldn't hear voices, but from the shadows in the corridor, he got the impression that the men had joined up with others, perhaps Dunne among them. He sensed, too, they were about to make a dynamic entry, all of them at once, fanning out, going high and low, right and left. Bond would have no chance against a formation like that.

The shadows moved closer.

Only one move was possible and not a very clever or subtle one. Bond flung a chair through the window and leapt after it, sprawling on the ground six feet below. He landed hard, but with nothing sprained or broken, and sprinted into the Green Way facility, now deserted of workers.

Again he turned towards his pursuers and dropped to the ground, under cover of a detached bulldozer blade sitting near Resurrection Row. He aimed back at the window and a nearby door.

Eight rounds left, eight rounds, eight . . .

He put a bit of pressure on the sensitive trigger, waiting, waiting. Controlling his breathing as best he could.

But the guards weren't going to fall for a trap. The shattered window remained empty. That meant they were heading outside by other exits. Their intention, of course, was to flank him. Which they now did and very effectively too. At the south end of the building Dunne and two Green Way guards sprinted to cover behind some lorries.

Instinctively Bond glanced the other way and saw the two guards who'd fired on him in the corridor. They were moving in from the north. They too went to cover, behind a yellow-and-green digger.

The bulldozer blade protected him from a.s.sault only from the west, and the hostiles weren't coming from that direction but from the poles. Bond rolled away just as one of the men started to fire from the north the Bushmaster was a short but frighteningly accurate weapon. The bullets thudded into the ground and clanged loudly against the bulldozer's yoke and Bond was pelted with searing shards of lead and copper from the fracturing slugs.

With Bond pinned down by the two in the north, the other team, Dunne leading, moved in closer from the opposite direction. Bond lifted his head slightly to scan for a target. But before he could paint one of his attackers, they moved on, finding cover among the many piles of rubbish, oil drums and equipment. Bond scanned again but couldn't spot them.

Suddenly earth exploded all around him as both groups caught him in a crossfire, the slugs finding homes closer and closer to where he huddled in a dip in the ground. The men to the north vanished behind a low hill, presumably intending to crest it, where they'd have a perfect vantage-point from which to snipe at him.

Bond had to leave his position immediately. He turned and crawled as quickly as he could through gra.s.s and weeds, east, deeper into the grounds, feeling the chill of absolute vulnerability. The hill was behind him and to the left and he knew the two shooters would soon be at the top, targeting him.

He tried to picture their progress. Fifteen feet from the top, ten, five? Bond imagined them easing slowly up to the hillock, then aiming at him.

Now, he told himself.

But he waited five harrowing seconds more, just to be sure. It seemed like hours. He then rolled on to his back and lifted his pistol over his feet.

One guard was indeed standing on top of the rise, painting a target, his partner crouching beside him.

Bond squeezed the trigger once, then shifted his aim to the right and fired again.

The standing man gripped his chest and went down hard, tumbling to the base of the hill. The Bushmaster slid after him. The other guard had rolled away, unhurt.

Six rounds left. Six.

Four hostiles remaining.

As Dunne and the others peppered his location with rounds, Bond rolled between oil drums in a tall stand of gra.s.s, studying his surroundings. His only chance of escape was through the front entrance, a hundred feet away. The pedestrian walkway was open. But a lot of unprotected ground separated him from it. Dunne and his two guards would have a good shooting position, as would the remaining guard still at the top of the hill to the north. He could- A rapid barrage erupted. Bond kept his face pressed into the dusty ground until there was a pause. Surveying the scene and the positions of the shooters, he rose fast and started to sprint to an anaemic tree at its foot there was some decent cover: oil drums and the carca.s.ses of engines and transmissions. He ran flat out. But halfway to his destination he stopped abruptly and spun round. One of the guards with Dunne a.s.sumed he was going to continue running and had stood tall, leading with his rifle to fire in front of Bond so the bullets would meet him a few yards further on. It hadn't occurred to him that Bond was running solely to force a target to present; the double tap of Bond's 9-millimetre rounds took the guard down. As the others ducked, he kept running and made it to the tree, then beyond that to a small mound of rubbish. Fifty feet from the gate. A series of shots from Dunne's position forced him to roll into a patch of low vegetation.

Four rounds.

Three hostiles.

He could make it to the gate in ten seconds but that would mean five of full exposure.

He didn't have much choice, though. He would soon be flanked. But then, looking for the enemy, he saw movement through a gap in two tall piles of construction debris. Low on the ground, barely visible through stands of gra.s.s, three heads were close together. The surviving guard from the north had joined Dunne and the man with him. They didn't notice they were exposed to Bond and seemed to be whispering urgently, as if planning their strategy.

All three men were in his field of fire.

It wasn't an impossible shot by any means, though with the light rounds and an unfamiliar gun, Bond was at a disadvantage.

Still, he couldn't let the opportunity pa.s.s. He had to act now. At any moment they'd realise they were vulnerable and go to cover.

Lying p.r.o.ne, Bond aimed the boxy pistol. In compet.i.tive shooting, you're never conscious of pulling the trigger. Accuracy is about controlling your breathing and keeping your arm and body completely still, with the sights of your weapon resting steadily on the target. Your trigger finger slowly tightens until the gun discharges, seemingly of its own accord; the most talented shooters are always somewhat surprised when their weapons fire.

Under these circ.u.mstances, the second and third shots would have to come more quickly, of course. But the first was meant for Dunne, and Bond was going to be sure he didn't miss.

And he didn't.

One powerful crack, then two others in succession.

In shooting, as in golf, you usually know the instant the missile leaves your control whether you've aimed well or badly. And the fast, shiny rounds struck exactly where they were aimed, as Bond had known they would.

Except, he now realised to his dismay, accuracy wasn't the issue. He'd hit what he'd aimed at, which turned out not to be his enemies at all, but a large piece of shiny chrome that one of the men the Irishman, of course must have found in a nearby skip and set up at an angle to reflect their images and draw Bond's fire. The reflective metal tumbled to the ground.

Dammit . . .

The man who thinks of everything . . .

Instantly the men split up, as Dunne would have instructed, and moved into position, now that Bond had helpfully revealed his exact location.

Two ran to Bond's right, to secure the gate, and Dunne to the left.

One round left. One round.

They didn't know he was nearly out of ammunition, though they soon would.

He was trapped, his only cover a low pile of cardboard and books. They were moving in a circle round him, Dunne in one direction, the other two guards together in another. Soon he'd be in a crossfire again, with no effective protection.

He decided his only chance was to give them a reason not to kill him. He'd tell them he had information to help them get away or offer them a huge sum of money. Anything to stall. He called, 'I'm out!' then stood, flinging the gun away, lifting his hands.

The two guards to the right peered out. Seeing that he was unarmed, they cautiously came closer, crouching. 'Don't move!' one called. 'Keep your hands in the air.' Their muzzles were aimed directly at him.

Then, from nearby, a voice said, 'What the h.e.l.l are you doing? We don't need a b.l.o.o.d.y prisoner. Kill him.' The intonation was, of course, Irish.

60.

The guards looked at each other and apparently decided to share the glory of murdering the man who had brought down Gehenna and killed several of their fellow workers.

They both raised their black weapons to their shoulders.

But just as Bond was about to dive to the ground in a hopeless bid to avoid the slugs, there was a crash behind him. A white van had ploughed through the gate, sending chain-link and razor wire flying. Now the vehicle skidded to a stop and the doors opened. A tall man in a suit, wearing body armour under his jacket, leapt out and began firing at the two guards.

It was Kwalene Nkosi, nervous and tense, but standing his ground.

The guards returned fire, though only to cover their retreat east, deeper into the Green Way facility. They disappeared into the brush. Bond glimpsed Dunne, who was surveying the situation calmly. He turned and sprinted in the same direction as the guards.

Bond picked up the weapon he'd been using and ran to the police vehicle. Bheka Jordaan climbed out and stood beside Nkosi, who was looking around for more targets. Gregory Lamb peered out and stepped cautiously to the ground. He carried a large 1911 Colt .45.

'You decided to come to the party after all,' Bond said to her.

'I thought it wouldn't hurt to drive here with some other officers. While we were waiting nearby up the road I heard gunshots. I suspected poaching, which is a crime. That was sufficient cause to enter the premises.'

She didn't seem to be joking. He wondered if she had prepared the lines for her superiors. If so, she needed to work on her delivery, Bond decided.

Jordaan said, 'I brought a small team with me. Sergeant Mbalula and some other officers are securing the main building.'

Bond told her, 'Hydt's in there or was. His three partners too. I'd a.s.sume they're armed by now. There'll be other guards.' He explained where the hostiles had been and gave a rough geography of the headquarters. Jessica's office, too. He added that the older woman had helped him; she would not be a threat.

At a nod from the captain, Nkosi, keeping low, started for the building.

Jordaan sighed. 'We had trouble getting back-up. Hydt's being protected by somebody in Pretoria. But I called a friend in the Recces our special-forces brigade. A team is on its way. They aren't so much concerned about politics; they look for any excuse to fight. But it'll be twenty or thirty minutes before they arrive.'

Suddenly Gregory Lamb stiffened. Crouching low, he lumbered south, towards a stand of trees. 'I'll flank them.'