Assassin (The Billionaire Series) (32 page)

“Sniper Five come in.” Sniper Five was covering the villa and
would assist Team Three.

“Yes Sir,” said Sniper Five immediately. He was the closest to
them, only a couple of hundred yards up a small hill which offered the best
view of the villa.

“Have Snipers One to Four reported difficulties with radios?”

“No Sir th…” Williams heard a distinct thud through his
headphones as Sniper Five stopped talking and his line went dead.

He checked his video feeds, they were fine.

“Driver! Move us up the road a mile,” shouted Williams, “and
make it quick.” Sniper Five had been very close. If he had just been taken out,
Williams was not hanging around to find out if he was next.

The small truck bounced down the road and Williams watched the
video feeds. He noticed them bouncing also, but realised it wasn’t from the
truck moving, it was his lieutenants’ heads moving quickly. What the hell was
happening?

“Teams check in!”

Nothing. He checked the feeds. They were still again.

“Teams check in!”

Nothing.

***

One islander had been sent to deal with the snipers. Saki had
watched them as they set up earlier in the evening. Papa and two islanders took
the UK Prime Minister, Kano and Kisho took the Australian Prime Minister while
Saki and the other islander watched the villa. Saki had supplied everybody with
Tonfas, traditional baton-style sticks with handles two thirds of the way down
the shaft. Police batons were a modern derivation of these ancient weapons.

Each of Saki’s groups were also kitted with small
communicators. Once they got word the snipers were down, they would begin to
take out the teams. The plan was to be as quick and as quiet as possible. Saki
was conscious of the army of bodyguards filling the hotel, all of varying
levels of professionalism and ability. They could very easily and quickly have
a bloodbath on their hands.

As they received confirmation
 
that the snipers were down, they moved
in.

***

Team One was ready and waiting for the Go command. The
lieutenant watched from the edge of the small wooded area where he and his men
waited. The guards in front of them would be taken out at any moment. The door
they were guarding led directly to the UK Prime Minister’s room. There were
only four more guards inside, if his guys were quiet enough, they wouldn’t even
have to fight their way back out. His watch glowed 4.44 a.m., he would get the
Go any second now. With his eyes fixed on the scene in front of him, he raised
his hand and readied his men.

***

Papa watched as the leader raised his hand to ready his team,
that was Papa’s signal to go.
 

***

The lieutenant had to blink to see if his eyes were deceiving
him as a man materialised next to him. He had just appeared from behind the
tree. He heard some noises behind him but nothing else after the baton struck
him on the side of the head.

***

Papa made a noise similar to a small bird, that was the signal
for the other two men to move in. The three stepped out from their camouflaged
positions in amongst Team One. Saki had seen the leader pay particular
attention to two wooded areas which is exactly where he had set up the
ambushes. Papa could see the look of confusion on the three soldiers’ faces as
he now stood in front of them. The look turned to fear as Papa set to work with
the Tonfas. Before they had a chance to react, Papa spun the Tonfas into the
side of two of their heads and delivered a double blow with the ends of the
Tonfas to the soldier who was unfortunate enough to be in the middle of the
three. The other two islanders dealt similar blows to their three and four-man
teams respectively.

Papa couldn’t help himself, he noticed the camera on the top
of the lieutenant’s helmet. He bent down and gave the camera a big smile before
whacking it with his Tonfa.

***

  
Team One’s
screen showed a set of beaming white teeth, somebody was smiling at him. What
the hell are they playing at, thought Williams. However, he realised that
nobody was fooling around when the wooden shaft came towards him at high speed.
The screen went blank and then snowy.

Williams checked the other two screens, they were still on.

***

Kano and Kisho had a similar situation to Papa, a small wooded
area in which to hide. The soldiers had come in amongst them and had actually
stepped on Kisho twice. On the ready signal, they had moved in. The Tonfas were
a blur as they cracked off one soldier and hit another before spinning back to
hit another. With five soldiers, the likelihood of at least one soldier getting
to their gun was dramatically increased. Afterall, the soldiers were highly
trained professionals in their own right. It was therefore a testament to Kisho
and Kano that not one soldier had the chance to think about shooting back such
was the speed they moved through the team.

They too noticed the camera on the lieutenant but didn’t throw
Williams a smile, they just knocked it out of commission.

***

As Williams saw the second camera blink out of action, he
began to think that a mile may not be far enough away.

“Just keep driving, head to the airport and quick!”

***

Saki did not have the luxury of knowing where the third team
would come from. It had not been one of Williams’ initial targets. So Saki had
to guess where they would position themselves for the final assault. He had
guessed right as he watched the soldiers crawl through the Spa. It was adjacent
to the villa and offered a very private entrance, out of view of the main hotel
and numerous bodyguards. Saki wanted to protect the villa himself. These men
were there to kill his babies and he would stop them.

He watched the man ready his team, giving them the signal to
prepare themselves to slaughter defenceless children. Saki stepped out of his
hiding spot, he hadn’t alerted the other islander before he did so. He wanted
as many of these guys to himself. With each spin and thrust of the Tonfa,
another limb cracked as Saki, like a maelstrom, waded through the soldiers. The
only person quick enough to react to his speed and power was the other islander
joining the fray just in time to take care of two soldiers. Each soldier was to
be hit once, knocked unconscious before being tied up and left for the local
police to deal with once the islanders had gone.

Saki had doubled the blows ensuring each of the soldiers who
had threatened his babies would remember that night for a very long time. The
first blow had deliberately broken a kneecap, shattered an elbow or destroyed a
pelvis and the second blow had knocked the men unconscious before they could
even react to the pain.

***

Williams had only travelled another 100 yards before the third
camera was knocked out.

“Faster, just get us the hell off this island!” he screamed to
the driver.

***

As his launch left the shore, Saki dialled the hotel and
reported three separate disturbances. Within minutes, the grounds of the hotel
were lit up and swarming with police and bodyguards who took into custody a
large group of heavily armed, semi-conscious soldiers already bound and ready
for prison. Each was missing a tooth and had on them a small photo of the UK
and Australian PMs. which none of them could explain under questioning.

The three lieutenants, however, had not been left behind with
their men. They were tied up and taken to the launch for transportation to The
Beautiful Lady where they would be answering questions. Thanks to Tom’s
information, their cyanide teeth were removed.

Chapter 83

It had been a very emotional reunion. The launch had sped them
out to The Beautiful Lady, anchored just around the coast and out of sight of
the villa. Tom and Lela jumped off the launch and into Donald and Rachel’s arms
before it had even stopped. Apologies and tears filled the next half hour as
the five Kennedys moved into a private study to be on their own.

Once everyone had calmed down, Donald began to explain what
they had been doing.

“Before we left for Africa, Saki and I knew that we were being
set up. It was not until we got to Africa that we realised how badly. We
weren’t just being framed, we were going to be murdered. It was only thanks to
Tom and Lela that we survived. When we left Guinea, we flew low level over
Africa and landed in the middle of the night, in complete darkness, on
Desroches Island, part of the Seychelles. We’d arranged for the Tylanni to meet
us there, once she’d been given a complete make-over and change of name. We’d
always planned to disappear but not to die in the process. We knew we needed to
hide out and we knew that we would be arrested for the assassinations on our
return.

Donald paused and looked at his wide-eyed audience who wanted
to know more. He continued.

“The plan was that Jim would then take off and after a short
while, climb to a normal cruising height and head home. He would claim that we
had never boarded the plane and didn’t know where we were. We didn’t expect him
to crash. That was a massive shock. Poor Jim, he was a good man. Anyway, we
realised that the plane crash wasn’t a complete waste. We were reported dead,
so it covered our tracks. It broke our hearts to think how you must have been
feeling.”

Rachel burst into tears again, it had been the hardest few
weeks of her life. Tom then explained that the crash was no accident and that
the moment Jim had reached 12,000 feet, he was doomed. Donald had not known
this nor even thought that the crash had been anything other than an accident.
He was visibly shaken by the news at how close they had been to dying.

Donald then explained that they had continued to work through
the evidence and clues which he and Saki had amassed. They worked out who the
next targets would be and began to make their way to Barbados. Saki, however,
insisted on going via Peru because he knew that Tom and Lela were going to
Machu Picchu. He guessed that if they were going to try to kidnap or murder Tom
or Lela, that’s where they would access them most easily.

As the information sank in, Lela blurted out that it must have
been Saki who saved Tom from the sniper. Tom and Rachel looked at each other in
horror, neither had known anything about it.

That final revelation brought them back to where they were
now, having just saved the UK and Australian Prime Ministers.

Tom took over at that point to update his parents and Saki on
the intelligence they had and on how Lela had been kidnapped and had escaped.
Tom could see that Papa was in trouble. The look on Saki’s face when he heard about
Lela’s capture did not hide his feelings which would keep for the time being.
Tom went on to explain about Operations Sandy and David and how they had led
them to Barbados but that David was still evading them. He kept thinking Camp
David but there were over 150 Marines guarding that, never mind the Secret
Service.

Chapter 84

It was 5.00 a.m. when Beaumont’s phone rang. It was The
Chairman.

“Hello,” answered Beaumont tentatively. He was expecting the
call asking him to go down to let his executioners in.

“Operation Sandy failed. Williams couldn’t pull it off. They
really are a bunch of tricky bastards. You’re back on, you’ve one last chance.
Operation David and don’t mess it up.” The phone went dead.

Beaumont had never wished for a Committee operation to fail
but thanks to Operation Sandy, The Chairman’s baby, he was to live another day.

He jumped out of bed, pulled out the plans and within five
minutes was up to speed. Two minutes later, he was barking orders down the
phone. He was back!

He checked General Powers’ condition, he was stable and
definitely out of the picture for the very near future. It was imperative that
he remain so for the following few days. He was the only one who could stop
Operation David.

He called Williams and told him what he wanted him to do.

Chapter 85

“So where next?” Tom asked his father, everyone else had gone
to bed.

“No idea. This is where our all info led us. Beyond this we’re
stuck unless one of those guys talks,” replied Donald pointing to the lower
deck where Saki and Papa were ‘talking’ to the lieutenants.

Saki joined them in the main cabin.

“Nothing. Those guys know nothing. They believe they’re
members of a secret multi-national army and work for something like the UN,
sorting out major international incidents.”

“Did you try the latex gloves technique?” asked Tom. Donald
stared at him. “The what?” he asked.

“Yep, worked a treat. That’s when they told us about the
multi-national army. Trust me nobody is better at the latex glove trick than Papa.
He even had me terrified,” said Saki

“What the hell is this? Some kind of barbaric torture thing?”
asked Donald.

Tom explained the technique to Donald as Papa entered the
cabin. He had locked the lieutenants up and joined them to discuss tactics.

The four carefully sifted through the information they had, to
try to work out what to do next. They were struggling, finding nothing but
dead-ends.

Tom’s phone rang. It was Daniel. Donald had told Tom and Lela
to keep their reappearance secret. Tom put the phone on speaker.

“Hi Daniel.”

“Hi Tom, sounds like you guys have been busy. The
assassination attempts at the Sandy Lane are all over the news down here. Well
done! Suggestions are already being made about your dad’s innocence, it won’t
belong before his name’s cleared.”