"Lean on me and we"ll get you to your chair."
She did, reluctantly. Her toe still throbbed mightily as she sat down. "I sometimes get a reaction to bee stings."
"No need to sound so embarra.s.sed. You are only human, Sonja."
He was making fun of her, and that made her angry.
Stirling looked into her eyes. "I"m not making fun of you, Sonja."
How, she wondered, had he known what she was thinking? She wanted to look away from him, but she found herself looking into his face, still youthful, still full of innocence. He"d lived a good life, devoting himself to the environment and wildlife he loved. He was handsome and sweet and she had to put her anger aside and make sure he was ready to kill.
The pilot, Swanevelder, pointed at the cl.u.s.ter of flat-roofed buildings ahead. "Wilfriedstein. Don"t blink or you"ll miss it."
Irina raised her binoculars to her eyes. It was the first town they had come to, and unless Brand and Allchurch and the others had cleverly hidden in a dry riverbed or ravine, this was where they would be heading. The blood they"d seen on the sand told her Brand"s group had at least one person wounded, so they would be looking for a doctor.
"The fuel station is near the castle bed and breakfast," Swanevelder said. "If they"re still here, that"s where they"ll be, or if they"ve pa.s.sed through someone down there will know. There"s not so much through traffic that three vehicles full of white people wouldn"t be remembered."
"We will set down in any case," Irina said. "Circle the castle."
"Roger."
The pilot brought the Bell over the town then executed a wide turn. Irina lowered the binoculars and picked out the orderly, angular walls of the castle ahead amid the more ramshackle later developments. It was also the only green s.p.a.ce in town, surrounded by tall palms and with little chequers of watered lawn. First, though, they pa.s.sed over the filling station, which was so small Irina didn"t notice it until Swanevelder pointed out the above-ground fuel tanks.
"I can"t see any vehicles there," she said.
They carried on, over the short dirt road between the pumps and the station. "Nothing in the castle"s car park, either," Swanevelder said.
Irina was about to concur when she saw the irregular shapes at the gateway to the fort. "No, wait. Look, a vehicle is parked in the gate of the castle and two inside the courtyard. That must be them no tourists would park like that."
Swanevelder nodded. "They"ve used their trucks to block the entrance. Looks like they"re getting ready for a siege."
"And we are about to give them one. Though it"ll be the quickest siege in the history of warfare." Irina looked over her shoulder to her marine troops. "Lock and load," she said in Russian. "Prepare for battle."
"How do we do this?" the pilot asked.
Irina looked back into the cargo area and motioned for Mikhail to put on the spare set of intercom headphones. When he had them on he gave her a thumbs-up. "Swanevelder, you land by the filling station. Mikhail, you"re in charge of the ground force. Close on the fort, disable their vehicles. I will use the helicopter to command and control and I"ll use the Dragunov to take out as many of them as I can, or at least make sure they keep their heads down. They will have posted people on the roof of the castle that"s what I would have done. But they"ll soon move inside once I start firing. I"ll give you cover while you rush the front. Do not burn any of the vehicles I want all that rhino horn intact."
"Understood," Mikhail said.
Brand was striding down the dirt road from the castle to the filling station, just a couple of hundred metres away.
He"d only pretended to agree to let Sonja be on the outside; she needed to be with her daughter. Brand tried to convince himself that it had nothing to do with an urge to keep her safe, but seeing her distracted by Stirling had sent a jolt of relief through him and given him the chance to head off.
He heard the deep thwap-thwap of a helicopter"s blades. He sidestepped off the road and dived for cover in the shade at the base of a palm tree. The chopper circled overhead.
When the aircraft had its rear to him he got up and sprinted through the trees and the rubbish at the side of the road to the filling station hut. The attendant was still sitting on a plastic chair out the front.
"I"d clear out if I were you, sister," he said to her.
She looked at his rifle, and then up to the sky, nodded, got up, and walked away towards the cl.u.s.ter of shops that pa.s.sed for the town of Wilfriedstein. Brand watched the helicopter continue in its arc. The logical place for it to land would be right here, on the road. The castle hotel"s car park was too tight, he reckoned, and surrounded by trees, but here it was a little more open. He needed to take out as many of them as he could as they were getting off the helicopter. But how? He had no explosives, no rocket-propelled grenades and no anti-aircraft missiles; besides, he was unwilling to shoot down the helicopter in case the pilot was an innocent. There was even a slim chance that it could be the medical evacuation aircraft, though it would have put down by now if it was.
Sonja would have to stay in the castle now, which was one consolation. Brand felt better being outside, on the move. Sonja would do as good a job as he in organising the garrison, and she would be close to her daughter.
Brand looked around him for a suitable spot with enough cover and concealment. Then from inside the hut he heard a distinct click and a whirring noise. The motor on the air compressor outside the hut burst into its puttering song, bringing the pressure back up to a useable level. The electricity in Wilfriedstein had just come back on.
He darted across to the pumps under their simple metal awning. Fortunately they were the old style that didn"t require the operator to use a security tag to get them going. Brand pulled out the nozzle from the petrol pump, reset the meter, and pulled on the lever. The pump clattered to life and fuel jetted from the nozzle. He flicked the catch on the handle that would allow the attendant to leave the pump running while he or she was checking the oil or cleaning a windscreen.
Brand surveyed the land around him. Running alongside the road that led to the castle was a depression, a natural or hand-dug drain for the little rain this part of Namibia could expect during the wet summer. Brand pulled the pump"s nozzle as far as the black rubber hose would allow and set the handpiece in the ground, with the spout facing along the ditch, towards the fort. The chopper was coming around again.
Brand ran back across the road to the attendant"s hut. He tried the handle, but it was locked. He flicked the safety catch on his AK-47 to fire and shot the lock off with a single round and kicked open the door. Inside he found a one-litre gla.s.s c.o.ke bottle and a rag. He returned to the pump, filled the bottle and soaked the rag in petrol, then ran down the road and crossed over once more. He took up a position fifty metres towards the hotel, behind a stout palm tree.
The helicopter pilot swooped around then aligned his machine with the course of the road. He came in, flaring the nose up to bleed off speed, his tail rotor dipping close to the ground. Brand slitted his eyes against the wall of grit, gra.s.s, sand and twigs that the big rotors washed towards him. The sliding rear cargo doors opened and he could see that the interior was crowded with men dressed in green fatigues. Each seemed to have a rifle.
As the skids touched the ground the men inside started piling out. Each took two or three steps then hit the ground on his belly. These were trained military men, Brand realised. Another person, slightly built, perhaps even a woman, opened the co-pilot"s door, jumped out, and then got back into the empty rear compartment. As soon as that was done, just seconds after touchdown, the Bell helicopter was lifting off, nose down as it climbed away.
The men who had deplaned were on their feet now, moving, no doubt looking for the nearest cover. Brand knew the drill they were following he"d learned it himself. They would run for no more than three seconds, not enough time for a sniper to draw a bead on them, then hit the deck and crawl to a piece of cover. They would work in pairs, one covering his buddy while the other got up and repeated the basic manoeuvre.
They were all moving now, though, to get off the exposed piece of road where the chopper had just dropped them. Brand thumbed the safety catch on his AK-47 to automatic and squeezed the trigger. A man yelled something in Russian and Brand guessed that one of the ten rounds in the long burst had hit its mark as one of the green-clad figures stumbled and pitched forward.
The rest of them, Brand saw, had done exactly as he hoped. The man who had yelled out had presumably identified the fire as coming from ahead and to the right of them. The troops had broken left and were seeking cover on the opposite side of the road to him. Brand put down his rifle and picked up the bottle filled with petrol. He took out his Zippo, lit the petrol-soaked rag stuffed in the neck, stood and threw the Molotov c.o.c.ktail across the road, aiming for the fuel-filled ditch.
Brand"s movement and the fiery arc of the burning wick attracted the attention of at least one, maybe two, of the Russian gunmen. Bullets slammed into the trunk of the palm and whizzed over Brand"s head as he dived again for cover. The fusillade was stopped, however, when the bottle struck the ground and burst into flames with a thump and a whoosh. The Molotov had missed the ditch, but the fire spread through the dry gra.s.s within seconds and the fuel-filled drain erupted into a wall of fire. Two gunmen stood, their uniforms ablaze. They ran, screaming, trying to escape their terrible pain. Level-headed comrades stood and tackled the men to the ground and rolled them in the sand. Men yelled to each other and in the confusion, Brand stood again, fired another long burst at the Russians to keep their heads down, and fell back towards the fort, running as fast as he could, parallel to the road.
Sonja watched Brand"s escapades from the roof of the castle, through binoculars. "That"s three out of action at least; two men on fire and another wounded on the road."
"He did well," Stirling said.
Sonja looked at him. "He did. But this is a long way from over. Alex, Professor, Matthew," she called to the other men on the roof, "get ready to put down some covering fire. Here comes Brand!"
When the electricity had come back on Sonja had sent Alex to call the police on the hotel telephone, but before he could get through, the power had cut out again. They were still very much alone.
Hudson was running to them, but the Russians were emerging from the smoke and flames of the gra.s.s fire Brand had started, advancing on the castle in a ragged extended line formation.
"Wait until they get closer, or until they start firing on Brand before you open fire," Sonja told them. Stirling was down on one knee, his rifle pointed between the fort"s stone crenellations.
Sonja heard the deep ba.s.s thump of the helicopter again and looked up to see it approaching them. "Stay close to the walls everyone. Keep your heads down."
The helicopter slowed, however, and settled into a hover. Sonja heard the pop-pop of shots, partly m.u.f.fled by the chopper"s engines, and saw two puffs of dust erupt just ahead of Brand"s pumping legs. He zigged left then zagged right, but the next two shots were even closer. Brand sprinted to the mud-brick building and barrelled his way through the closed door, splintering the timbers with his shoulder. Sonja raised her AK-47 and fired a burst at the helicopter, but if her shots pa.s.sed close they had no effect.
"Everyone," Sonja called, "two aimed shots at the helicopter. Fire!"
The rifles on the roof all swung towards the aircraft, and the volley of deliberate fire must have either had some impact or whizzed close enough for the pilot to take evasive action. He tilted his machine and dipped away.
Brand emerged from the hut and ran towards them. Sonja noticed one of the Russians stop and raise his rifle, aiming at Brand. She fired two quick shots at the man and he moved to cover behind a palm tree. "Run, Hudson!"
"What do you think I"m doing?" he yelled back.
Bullets smacked into the rendered walls of the castle, dislodging sheets of plaster, and Sonja and the others on the roof popped out from behind their stone walls to return fire. "Keep moving along the wall, on your hands and knees, under cover," Sonja said. "Don"t let them draw a bead on you."
Brand came running up the steps from the courtyard to the roof of the building. Below them the fire from the Russians eased off, but was soon directed elsewhere. Sonja heard the ping of bullets striking metal. Brand turned and ran to the wall above the entrance to the courtyard and peeked over the edge. "They"re shooting the s.h.i.t out of the trucks. Tyres are going down and the engines are taking fire. They"re closing off our means of escape."
"Select your targets," Sonja called. The Russians had gone to ground and were concentrating their fire for the time being on the trucks, but she knew they would rush the castle soon. "Wait until they"re between fifty and a hundred metres out. Aim for the centre of the body. Don"t miss."
"Chopper"s moving behind us," Brand called.
"Scheisse!" Alex yelled as a bullet smacked into the wall next to him.
"Are you hit?" Sonja asked.
Brand rushed to the younger man, who was lying on his back, his face white. Another round slapped into the roof of the castle by Alex"s feet as Brand knelt by him. "Talk to me, boy, you OK?"
Alex held up his arm and Brand saw the hole in his shirt. A bullet had pa.s.sed through the fabric of Alex"s sleeve. "It missed you. You"re fine. s.h.i.t." Two more rounds bracketed them. Brand turned on his knee and fired a burst of three rounds towards the helicopter, which hovered, side on, about two hundred metres from them.
The shooter temporarily switched targets, putting five or six quick rounds into the engine area of the Amarok parked in the courtyard. It fitted with the strategy of trying to bottle them into the castle.
"Someone up there"s a good shot. We"re sitting ducks here," Brand called to Sonja.
As if to reinforce the point Sonja was forced to drop to her belly in the lee of a wall when two rounds searched for her. "Agreed. We"ve got to take this downstairs."
"They"re coming!" Sutton yelled. He held his AK-47 over his head, firing blindly over the stone wall at the men below who had begun advancing.
"Don"t waste your ammo," Brand chided the professor.
"Five of them down there, on the move," Stirling reported.
Brand grabbed Alex by the arm and hoisted him to his feet, but directed his instructions at all four men. "Get downstairs, find a window and start shooting."
Sonja fired at the helicopter and the pilot moved off to change position. She used the break in suppressive fire from above to rest her rifle on the wall and take aim at the advancing force. She found a man, tracked him as he moved and waited for him to find cover behind a palm tree. Sonja watched the man who"d been closest to him. When he dropped to one knee behind a low wall, Sonja knew the first man would get up. She aimed to the left of the tree. The man had held his rifle in his right hand, so he would come out from around the tree on that same side, she was sure of it. As the man emerged Sonja squeezed the trigger. The round took the man in the chest and pitched him backwards.
Sutton had led the charge downstairs, followed by Alex, Stirling and Matthew. Just Brand was left on the roof, with Sonja. He, too, took aim at an advancing Russian, and fired, but missed. The helicopter was settling into a new position. Sonja saw the figure sitting in the back and the long barrel of a rifle, probably a Dragunov or similar, she thought, coming to bear. "Come on, let"s go," she said to Brand.
Brand ran down the stairs, and when Sonja was halfway down she turned and scanned the skies for the helicopter. Temporarily denied any targets the pilot had returned to the drop-off point by the filling station and landed. Sonja crept back up onto the roof. Below her the defenders were trading bullets with the advancing Russians, who seemed to have gone to ground. Sonja put down her AK-47 and looked through her binoculars. The pilot sat in the helicopter, its rotors still turning, but the pa.s.senger who had been firing at them got out and went to the side of the road, to the burned gra.s.s, where the three earlier casualties were lying.
Sonja studied the person. The build was too slight to be a man"s. The woman had left her rifle in the helicopter. She went to the p.r.o.ne figures. One of the men who had been burned was still alive. He reached up to the woman with a blackened hand and smouldering clothing. She reached behind her, and Sonja wondered whether she had a first-aid kit on her belt until she saw the pistol in her hand.
Sonja watched, transfixed, as the woman fired a shot into the man"s head. His body convulsed. She moved, methodically, to the next man and then the third, dispatching each of them in the same way. Sonja couldn"t tell if the men had been conscious or not. She swallowed hard. She was no stranger to death, but these people were all on the same side. The woman looked up towards the castle, and Sonja adjusted the focus so that she could better see the face of this cold-blooded killer.
The features were instantly familiar, the high, broad cheekbones, the full, wide mouth. And there was something about the woman"s defiant stare, as if she were searching out Sonja herself, knowing she would be watching, and deliberately challenging her with a look.
"Irina Aleksandrova." Sonja lowered the binoculars, blinked, then raised them again. The woman was still looking up at her.
Irina was in charge. The pieces dropped into place and Sonja realised how ready she had been to misread the information she and Ross had gathered. Irina was not a hooker, nor a bystander to organised crime. She"d had a regular thing with the Vietnamese gangster, Tran, but it was not for s.e.x, or not s.e.x alone. The gunman in the helicopter that had targeted them at the archaeological dig site had talked of being contracted by Russians. Irina was not an innocent p.a.w.n, she was the head of a crime syndicate; she hadn"t been killed in Vietnam because she"d been running the whole operation from the beginning. In Sonja"s mind, if Irina was in bed, in a business and literal sense, with Tran, then that also made her an accessory to Sam"s death.
Sonja reached for her rifle but by the time she was back in a firing position Irina had returned to the helicopter and it was lifting off. In anger, Sonja fired a burst of three rounds at the chopper, but it was long range for the AK-47 and she doubted her bullets found their mark. If they did, they did nothing to slow the pilot or the machine, which headed straight towards her as soon as it was off the ground.
Irina must have switched from her sniper"s rifle to an a.s.sault weapon, because as the helicopter"s shadow swept over her just as she reached the bottom of the stairs, Sonja was chased inside the castle by a long burst of automatic gunfire.
"I know who"s in charge of the Russians," Sonja breathed as she entered the bar and restaurant area, which was thick with cordite smoke.
"Does it matter right now?" Brand asked.
"It"s a woman by the name of Irina Aleksandrova. She wants me dead, and she was part of the operation that was cornering the market in rhino horn in Vietnam the same crew ultimately responsible for Sam"s death. I had her for a while, in Saigon; I was using her for information."
"So that was you in Vietnam who killed the rhino horn kingpin."
"Tran Van Ngo, yes. That woman was his business partner."
"I take it you didn"t part as besties," Brand said as he reloaded and c.o.c.ked his weapon.
Sonja checked her own ammunition. "You could say that. By the way, good work down there by the filling station, even though I told you I was going to do that. What"s the status?"
"The a.s.sault"s stalled. We"re about evenly matched now, and they know they"ll take losses as they cross the open ground out there to the fort. I suspect they"ll try to outflank us, use the shooter in the chopper to keep us indoors."
"We need to take out the chopper," Stirling said.
"Easier said than done," Brand said.
"They"re coming again!" Alex called.
Emma was by his side now as they all returned their focus to their windows. The Russian ground troops were trying to advance. Brand took aim and fired and saw the man drop, though he couldn"t tell if he"d hit him, wounded him, or just scared him.
Bullets shattered gla.s.s and ricocheted around the walls of the bar and restaurant. Pictures and gla.s.ses were smashed. Natangwe groaned from his place on the leather couch.
"Maybe we can call a truce," Stirling said. "They have men wounded; maybe we can negotiate with them."
"Negotiate with them? I just watched Irina execute her three wounded men. She"s not going to do a deal with us, Stirling. If we can"t hold out until some cops or someone else show up she"s going to try to kill us all. But I won"t let that happen."
Brand took two shots at a moving man, then looked to her. "What have you got in mind?"
"They want that f.u.c.king rhino horn, so I"m going to get rid of it."
"No!" Stirling said.
She glared at him. "Yes. I hate that stuff, Stirling. It caused Sam"s death it"s caused too many deaths. I don"t care what it"s worth, now or in the future."
He stood there, and Brand could see his mind turning over. "Yes, you"re right."
"Hudson, Irina"s going to try to stop me if she thinks I"m going to destroy the trucks."
Brand nodded. "Roger that. We need a diversion."