Assassin (The Billionaire Series) (6 page)

“Consider it done. Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

As Smith replaced the receiver, he heard the phone ring next
door in the Guinean Presidential office. A few seconds later the President’s
booming voice exploded.

“How dare you speak to me like this! Who do you think you
are?”

Obviously, Beaumont was being true to his word and whatever he
was saying soon took effect as
 
the
Guinean President’s initial anger tailed off and turned to fear. The next thing
he said was in much softer tone.
 

“Yes, I understand and please accept my apologies. Of course
we’ll do whatever you wish.”

Smith turned to his deputy and indicated it was time to go.
They had less than two hours to prepare for that night’s mission. The missile
was still experimental and it was imperative that everything was done precisely
or there was no telling where the damn thing would go. He had begged for another
way to carry out the mission but Beaumont had been insistent, it had to be done
by using the new missile.

Chapter 10

Donald, Rachel and Saki relaxed as the enormous plane lifted
off from Glasgow. Alba One was more like an apartment with wings than an
airplane. No expense had been spared. Donald joked that the only difference
between the plane and home was the view from the windows. Their first stop on
their whistle-stop tour of Africa was Gabon in Western Africa which would take
just over 9 hours.

***

Less than an hour behind Alba One,
 
the significantly smaller but no less
luxurious Tom One had taken off. Its journey was significantly longer and would
take over 12 hours.

“I want to make a small detour, if you don’t mind Kisho,” said
Tom an hour into the flight.

“It’s your plane, where do you want to go?”

“You’ll see, but don’t worry, it’ll only add about 15 minutes
to the flight.”

“Whatever, as long as you don’t burn lots of fuel, it should
be fine,” replied Kisho.

Tom entered the additional flight instructions and contacted
Air Traffic Control to request permission for his new destination. Permission
was granted and Tom hit the accept button for the new course, resulting in an
almost indiscernible turn to the right. The plane also began to drop from its
fifty thousand feet cruising height and began to slow.

“I’m intrigued,” said Kisho. “It looks as though we’re heading
towards the South of France.”

“You’ll see,” was all Tom would say.

Twenty minutes later, the plane began to level out. They were
flying at just over 300 mph and were a mere two thousand feet above the French
countryside.

The cockpit door flew open.

“What’s wrong?” asked Kano. “Where are we going?”

“We’re just doing a little detour,” replied Tom looking
around. “Lela, come and see!”

“See what?” she asked as she walked into the flight deck. Lela
recognised where they were and began to smile, she knew exactly where they were
heading.

“What are you smiling at?” asked Kisho as he watched his
little cousin’s face light up.

“You’ll see soon enough,” was all she would say.

Kano and Kisho watched as they cruised along the favoured
playground for the rich and famous. Cannes, Antibes, Nice, they looked
spectacular as they flew by.

“Now watch very carefully,” said Tom pointing ahead to the
left.

“What are we looking for?” said the twins, increasingly
frustrated.

“You’ll see,” replied Lela with a huge grin but the grin began
to disappear as Monaco appeared below them.

“Tom, what’s going on?” she asked.

“I don’t know, she should be there,” he replied.

Kano and Kisho looked at each other wondering who ‘she’ was.
Finally they asked “Who’s ‘she’?”

Tom and Lela ignored them, scouring the view of Monaco harbour
below them.

“Who is ‘she’?” repeated Kisho.

“Tylanni,” replied an agitated Lela.

“What do you mean Tylanni?” asked an exasperated Kisho, it was
like pulling teeth. “Will somebody just tell me what the hell is going on?”

“You know I got this plane for my birthday, well Lela and my
mum got a pretty spectacular present too. They’d always wanted a boat and this
year they got one as a joint birthday present, it’s supposed to be here in its
berth.”

“Maybe we just missed it?”

“Trust me, if it were there we would have seen it,” said Lela.

Rachel and Lela’s birthday present had been a massive surprise
in more ways than one. Their birthdays were within a week of each other and
coincided with the start of the summer holidays. The family had boarded the
plane as normal for their holiday to Penaraja. However, a minor fault developed
in the plane which resulted in an unscheduled stop in Nice. Of course, nothing
was really unscheduled. On arrival at Nice, a helicopter whisked them down to
Monaco to spend the night in the Presidential suite of the Hotel de Paris.
After dinner on their exclusive balcony, a spectacular firework display lit up
the sky, at the end of which a particular ship, anchored in the port, was lit
up in a blaze of floodlights. Two pairs of binoculars were produced and given
to Rachel and Lela. Sitting in the Monaco port was the most magnificent yacht.
It was not the largest boat but was certainly one of the sleekest and Donald
assured them was the fastest. Rachel and Lela both began to cry as they read
the name on the bow of the ship, ‘Tylanni’, named in memory of Lela’s late
mother. They immediately went down to the port and spent the following week
cruising around the Med before returning to Alba One and resuming their trip to
Penaraja.

“You would definitely have seen her from up here,” said Tom.
“She’s over 350 feet long. In fact if you look below us now, that’s the
Carinthia VII which is 320 feet long. Tylanni looks similar only sleeker and 50
feet longer.”

“That’s enormous,” said Kano.

“Well she’s certainly not invisible, where the hell is she?”
exclaimed Tom. “Lela are you sure she wasn’t going anywhere?”

“Positive. In fact, your dad mentioned she needed some work to
be done and would not be able to leave port for a month.”

“Very strange, very, very strange,” mumbled Tom to himself.

“Unless you want to land here, I suggest we get back on course
soon or we we’ll have to land to refuel,” said Kisho.

Tom looked at Lela.

“What do you want to do?”

“There’s not a lot we can do, I’ll send your dad a message and
see what he says. I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation.” Lela tried to
be positive.

“Yep, I’m sure there is too. Let’s go Kisho.”

Kisho pushed the throttles to full power and the small jet
rocketed back towards its fifty thousand feet cruising altitude and 650mph.
They would land in just over 9 hours.

Donald responded quickly to Lela’s text and explained that he
forgot to mention that the works on Tylanni were being completed in Marseille,
not Monaco. Tom and Lela stared at each other, they knew it was another lie.
Tom used the on-board internet facilities to visit a number of websites to
check out his father’s claim. Like train spotting and plane spotting, mega
yacht spotting had its fanatics who logged the movements of all yachts, in
particular famous ones. At present, Tylanni was the hottest boat on the
yacht-spotter circuit. Everybody wanted to know about her. Her exact
performance and specifications were a closely guarded secret but everybody knew
she was extremely fast, they just didn’t know how fast. From the internet, Tom
discovered that Tylanni had left port three days earlier and had disappeared.
Spotters were discussing predicted destinations but one thing was for sure, she
was not in Marseille and in fact, was last seen heading in the opposite
direction. Tom and Lela decided to keep a close eye on the websites to find out
exactly what was going on.

***

“The coastline you can see to your left is Equatorial Guinea.
We’ll be landing in 30 minutes,” announced the captain over the intercom.

Donald turned to Rachel and Saki but both were sound asleep.
He looked out at the darkened sky which, with little light pollution, looked
stunning. Donald turned to wake Rachel as a shooting star streaked across the
sky. But something wasn’t right. He looked again. It wasn’t a shooting star at
all…
 

Chapter 11

Smith’s helicopter took two hours to reach its destination.
The Committee’s secret army was based in the centre of Equatorial Guinea’s
mainland. Equatorial Guinea was a strange country with its capital located on a
small island off the coast of Cameroon. Smith himself couldn’t quite understand
why they didn’t just move to the mainland but then, having spent the previous
few days with the Guinean President, he didn’t really understand why they did
anything the way they did.

The base was only accessible by air, ensuring complete
secrecy. The nearest road was 50 miles away and the nearest town over 70 miles
away.

“Good evening Sir,” said the Deputy Commander as Smith stepped
out of the helicopter.

“Good evening. Are we ready?”

“Yes Sir.”

“Good, let’s get things moving!” he ordered.

As he gave the order, five men ran to the hangar on their
left, unlocked the doors and disappeared. Two minutes later, a long and strange
looking machine emerged. It looked liked an elongated stealth fighter with wheels.
It was articulated and moved surprisingly fast for its size, zipping across the
compound and coming to a swift stop at Smith’s side. Smith could not get used
to the machine’s ugly and awkward demeanour, it was the only one in existence.
It was completely invisible to radar, heat seeking missiles and just about any
other missile. Its external skin was built from a non-metallic composite which
could withstand a direct hit from a tank and, most amazingly, could change its
colour like a chameleon. Its shape meant that from a distance of anything over
50 metres, the vehicle literally disappeared into the background. Protruding
from the rear stood its main purpose for being, its missile launch system,
containing the experimental Stealth Strike Missile. This missile was designed
to be undetectable in flight and more importantly would leave no trace of its
existence on hitting its target. It was the ultimate fire and deny weapon.

The missile system began to rise as the weapon readied itself
to fire. Once in position, Smith checked his watch and looked across to his
firing team, it was nearly time. At any moment they would be notified that the
target was ready.

“Are we ready gentlemen?” he asked.

“Yes Sir, we’re locked on the target and ready to fire.”

“Excellent.”

His phone buzzed, he answered the call, said nothing and hung
up.

“Fire,” he said calmly.

The missile slowly lifted from the tube and smoothly made its
way into the night sky in almost complete silence. A long tube covered the
exhaust area meaning that only those directly under it could see the flames
firing its climb into the sky. It slowly made its way to 5,000 feet at which
point its main system ignited producing a flash of light as the missile
accelerated to over Mach 5. It was the first time Smith had witnessed a launch
of this missile and he was impressed. Not only was it barely visible, it was
inaudible and the delay in acceleration meant that the characteristic boom of a
missile launch simply didn’t happen.

The missile continued on a trajectory which would take it into
the inner atmosphere where its warhead would bend for a fraction of a second
allowing the propulsion portion of the weapon to power it into a downward
track. This was the most crucial stage. If successful, the propulsion system would
continue ever upwards and burn away in the earth’s outer atmosphere. In the
meantime, the warhead would power downwards, picking up more and more speed.
During its downward journey, the outer core of the missile would also burn off
leaving only the new and undetectable core of the warhead to complete its
deadly mission.

After the missile had left its launcher, it soon disappeared
from view. Smith and his men continued to stare up at the sky. Although they
couldn’t see it, the missile bent and split as intended and the warhead began
its downward course towards its unsuspecting victims. Smith continued to stare
at the sky watching for any sign of the returning warhead. One thing they had
not been able to do was stop the glow of the warhead on its way back down.
Smith supposed that was why it was still experimental, refinements were still
in development. After a minute or so, a shout came from his left.

“There it is! Look towards the coast at 11 o’clock.”

Smith turned his gaze and there it was. It looked like a
shooting star, except that instead of streaking across the sky horizontally, it
was streaking downwards. Smith followed the glow as it fell towards earth and
saw it turn into a bright flash as the missile impacted its target at over Mach
5. Although over a hundred miles away, the ground shook as the explosion ripped
through the ground.

“Direct hit Sir! Perfect!” shouted one of his men.

“Excellent,” said Smith picking up his mobile and pushing the
anonymous dial button. Two seconds later and 6,000 miles away a voice answered.

“Yes?”

“It’s done, perfect hit,” said Smith

“Excellent, well done,” replied a very happy Beaumont.