Jungle Kill (8 page)

Ngola was dressed in camouflage fatigues with army boots. On one hip was a handgun in a holster; on his other hip hung a machete.

The armed guards had stepped back to form a circle round Adwana and the two other bound men, who cowered on the ground. Ngola glared down at
the men, and then shouted a question at them.

‘What’s he saying?’ asked Nelson.

‘He wants to know what happened to his cousin and the others.’

Adwana said something, obviously making an appeal, but Ngola cut it short by hitting Adwana across the face with the back of his hand and snapping something back at him.

‘Adwana said he doesn’t know,’ Mitch translated. ‘He says they found the jeep in the jungle and brought it back to their village. Ngola says he’s lying.’

Ngola waved his fist threateningly at Adwana, and then fired off a burst of angry questions. Once again, Adwana appealed, but Ngola just kicked him in the ribs, making him double over in pain.

‘Ngola wants to know where the Yankee soldiers are,’ Mitch said. ‘Adwana says he doesn’t know any Yankee soldiers.’

Ngola snapped out an order, and his armed men hauled the three prisoners to their feet and dragged
them to a group of trees. They tied each prisoner to one of the trees. Then Ngola pulled his handgun from his holster and stood in front of Adwana, shouting at him and pointing the gun directly at Adwana’s face. Desperately, Adwana pulled at the ropes holding him to the tree trunk, shaking his head and begging. Even without Mitch translating it was obvious that Adwana was denying everything.

Ngola glared at him, and then suddenly turned towards the man tied to the tree next to Adwana, aimed his gun, and fired twice.

The sound of the two gunshots echoed through the jungle. The men of Delta Unit watched from their hiding place in angry silence as the villager Ngola had just killed slumped lifeless from the ropes that held him to the tree trunk. Blood dripped down from his body. Ngola’s first shot had taken him in the chest, the second in the head.

Two Moons raised his rifle and aimed it at Ngola, but Nelson put his hand on the barrel and pushed it down, shaking his head.

‘Not yet,’ he whispered.

‘Those people helped us!’ snapped Two Moons.

‘Our mission is to rescue Mwanga,’ Nelson reminded him.

‘We can shoot Ngola right now and rescue him!’ insisted Two Moons.

‘And take unnecessary casualties because the rest of his gang will know we’re here?’ countered Nelson. ‘We can’t fire-fight our way into a defended building like that. Not six against thirty. We’ve got to be clever about it.’

Two Moons scowled, then nodded. He knew Nelson was right, as did the rest of Delta Unit.

Ngola thrust the barrel of his gun into Adwana’s face and shouted angrily at him again. Adwana looked terrified, but he shook his head, his voice desperate and pleading. Ngola smashed the gun into Adwana’s face and blood poured from his nose and on to his torn shirt.

Then Ngola turned on his heel and stomped angrily back to the hotel. The unit didn’t need Mitch’s translation to understand that Ngola had been giving Adwana a warning: tell us what we want to know, or you and the other man will die as well. Two of the guards followed Ngola into the hotel.
The rest of his men stayed outside, laughing and jeering at Adwana and the other prisoner.

As they watched the bandits jeering, all of the men of Delta Unit had to fight the urge to burst out of their hiding place in the jungle and settle this issue once and for all. But freeing the two villagers wasn’t their primary aim.

‘Think they’ll kill them?’ asked Gaz.

‘Not yet,’ said Nelson. ‘Alive, they’re useful. Dead, they won’t be able to give Ngola the information he wants.’

‘From what I heard Ngola shouting at Adwana, he’s going to let the night soften them up,’ said Mitch. ‘Spending the night in the dark, with the bad magic and the dead body of his friend next to him is bound to terrify Adwana. Ngola thinks that he will be ready to talk by morning and, if he doesn’t, he’ll kill one of them.’

‘Looks like our timetable’s being set for us,’ said Nelson. ‘Tomorrow, if Ngola gets his way, either the guys with the money turn up to buy Mwanga’s
freedom, or someone else turns up to have him killed. And also tomorrow morning Ngola plans to kill one of those two people who helped us, which we can’t let happen.’

‘So we go in tonight,’ said Tug.

Nelson nodded. ‘We go in tonight.’

‘OK, I think we can say that this is going to be the situation: most of the bandits have drifted indoors, so it looks like five outside the building on guard, and all the rest inside, with Mwanga,’ said Nelson. ‘Rule one: let’s make this as quiet an assault as we can. There are about twenty-five men inside that building. If we can do this without them realising what’s going on, we should be able to get away without casualties. If we don’t get Mwanga out of here alive, the whole operation has been a waste of time and men.’

The others nodded in agreement.

‘Right,’ said Nelson. ‘Let’s see what we need.’

‘We need to cut the power to the hotel,’ said Tug.

Everybody nodded in agreement. No power meant no lights inside,
so the men of Delta Unit, using night vision, would have an advantage.

‘We take out the generator just before we go in,’ said Nelson. ‘Method?’

‘A quiet explosive charge set off by remote control,’ said Two Moons. ‘That way we’re in control of the timing.’

Benny jerked his thumb towards Adwana and the other villager tied to the trees.

‘They’ve got to be released before we go in,’ he said.

The others nodded in agreement.

‘We’ll need to take out the guards anyway, otherwise they’ll present a problem when we come out,’ said Mitch.

‘Silent strike,’ added Nelson. ‘Silenced single-shot rifle, knife, wire, whatever.’ He pointed to the sketch plan. ‘OK, the guards are taken care of. Adwana and the other villager are released. The generator’s knocked out. Two men stay outside the building as back-up – that’ll be Benny and Two
Moons – while the four of us go in.’

Benny and Two Moons nodded.

‘While you’re outside you’ll disable all the vehicles except two. I suggest you also plant plastic explosives on the other vehicles so that when we drive off you can blow them up. That way there’ll be no noise while the actual operation’s going on; just a load of big bangs as we leave.’

Two Moons grunted in agreement.

‘We’ll be using two vehicles for our getaway,’ continued Nelson. ‘We know the jeep the bandits used to bring Adwana here works and has fuel, and so does the other vehicle they turned up in. So I suggest those are the ones we take.

‘Four of us go inside the building. Two men control the top of the stairs at ground level, making sure that the area is kept clear. That’ll be Tug and Gaz. OK?’

Tug and Gaz nodded.

‘Me and Mitch go down to the basement, find Mwanga and get him out. While all that’s going on,
Benny and Two Moons start up the two vehicles so they’re ready for us to jump on when we come out with Mwanga. Any questions?’

‘Yes,’ said Mitch. ‘Although it’s more of a concern than a question. The generator.’

‘What about it?’ asked Tug.

‘Trust me, in this country those generators are always breaking down.’

‘So?’ asked Benny.

Nelson cursed. ‘Damn!’ he said. ‘Good thinking, Mitch!’

Gaz frowned, puzzled. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’m not the brightest penny in the box …’

‘Torches!’ explained Nelson with a groan. ‘If the generator keeps breaking down, they’ll have powerful torches ready.’

‘And our night-vision goggles will be more of a hindrance than a help,’ added Two Moons.

Bright light from a torch was the worst enemy of night-vision goggles. Even the smallest torch blinded anyone wearing night vision.

Two Moons turned to Mitch and grinned. ‘Yeah! Good thinking, Mitch.’

‘You’d all have made the connection,’ said Mitch, shrugging.

‘But only when someone started pumping bullets into us while we’re blind,’ Two Moons grunted.

‘OK, so either we make sure the bandits don’t suddenly start waving torches at us, or we go in without night vision, just ambient light,’ said Nelson.

‘We could lock them up,’ suggested Gaz. He pointed to the receivers, which were still picking up sound and vision. ‘It looks to me that quite a few of them are in the rooms we bugged.’

‘And how do we lock them up?’ asked Mitch.

Gaz grinned, produced his small pack of burglar tools and opened it. ‘Lock-picks, pal. They can be used to lock a door as well as unlock it.’

Benny looked doubtful. ‘It’s risky,’ he said. ‘For one thing, we don’t know if any of the doors still have locks on them, let alone whether they’ll actually work.’

‘It’s worth a try,’ said Nelson.

‘If we can’t lock the bandits in, we’ll use flash bangs,’ said Tug.

Flash bangs were stun grenades that produced intense white light and an incredibly loud noise when they exploded.

Nelson looked doubtful. Everyone knew what he was thinking. The noise would alert Ngola and the other guards, and once that happened it would be an open fire-fight inside the hotel.

‘OK,’ said Nelson. ‘Flash bangs are a back-up. But only use them if you have to. That’s it. Anything else?’

‘Once we’re away, where do we meet up?’ asked Tug.

‘Somewhere along the line,’ said Nelson. ‘Keep on the main road. We’ll find each other.’

‘And getting out of the country?’ asked Benny. ‘We’ve already said we can’t trust anyone. Not even our own side.’

Nelson nodded thoughtfully. ‘I’m working on that,’
he said.

‘Will you have finished working on it by the time we go in?’ asked Benny.

Nelson grinned. ‘Maybe. Maybe not,’ he said. ‘But hopefully it’ll be sorted by the time we need to get out of the country.’

Darkness fell.

Delta Unit lay ready in the long grass, equipped for a night assault: black Kevlar body-armour, full-face balaclavas beneath their protective helmets, night-vision goggles ready to be slipped over their faces, assault rifles with silencers and laser sights.

The three bandits guarding the front had given up any pretence of being a military fighting force and were sitting on the ground playing dice and drinking from bottles. The labels on the bottles looked as if they were half torn off.

‘Some kind of local hooch,’ whispered Mitch. ‘If we’re lucky, the guys inside will be drinking it as well. A few bottles of that and they won’t be able to walk, let alone hold a gun.’

‘Benny and Two Moons, you take out the guards at the back and prepare the generator as we planned,’ said Nelson. ‘Me, Tug and Gaz will take the guards at the front. Mitch, you’d better be the one who frees Adwana and tells him what’s going on. We don’t want him freaking out and giving the game away.’

Benny and Two Moons slipped into the darkness, heading for the back of the hotel.

Mitch slid along the ground towards the trees where Adwana and the other villager hung slumped from the ropes that tied them. Suddenly he stopped. The three bandits had stood up and were stumbling towards the prisoners, shouting and jeering.

Mitch now saw that Adwana and the other villager were still conscious. He could see the fear in their eyes as the bandits approached. These bandits were dangerous at the best of times. Drunk, they would be out of control, and Justis Ngola’s order to keep the prisoners alive easily forgotten.

‘We’ve got a problem,’ Mitch whispered into his helmet microphone.

‘We got it,’ he heard Nelson’s voice say confidently in his ear.

The three bandits were in front of Adwana now, lurching and jabbering insults. Then one of the bandits pulled a pistol from the holster at his hip and levelled it at the other villager. The villager strained at his ropes and twisted, fear and panic on his face.

The three bandits laughed.

Then Mitch heard three
phhtt!
sounds going off so close together they sounded like one shot.

The three bandits jerked like puppets on string; and then they crumpled to the ground.

Immediately Mitch ran from his cover to where Adwana and the other
villager were tied, his knife already in his hand. He began cutting at the ropes. At the same time he whispered urgently for the two men to keep quiet.

‘Say nothing!’ he said.

He cut the ropes and Adwana and the other man sank to the ground. Mitch reached down to help them, but they were already pushing themselves up.

‘We’re going to rescue Mwanga,’ Mitch told them. ‘You can wait and travel with us, or you can go now.’

‘We go now,’ Adwana murmered.

‘But what about the magic in the jungle?’ asked Mitch.

Adwana shuddered. ‘Better the magic in the jungle than the devils in there!’ he said, casting a fearful look at the building.

Nelson, Gaz and Tug joined Mitch. Adwana nodded at them, muttered something and then stumbled off into the jungle.

‘What did he say?’ asked Nelson.

‘He thanked us,’ said Mitch. ‘And wished us good luck.’

Benny and Two Moons materialised near them.

‘The guards at the back are out of action,’ said Benny. ‘The generator’s ready to blow.’

‘Good,’ said Nelson. ‘Wait till we’re at the main entrance, then do it. As soon as we see the lights go out, we go in.’

Nelson, Mitch, Tug and Gaz stood in pairs at either side of the main entrance, assault rifles ready.

Mitch could see Benny crouched near one of the old vehicles. He guessed he was already fixing plastic explosive to it, most likely by one of the axles so that when it blew the wheel would come off and break the axle, making any immediate repair to get it going impossible.

Two Moons had slipped out of sight round the side of the hotel to set off the charges at the generator. From inside there were the sounds of men shouting, arguing, chattering, even some singing. It was a party of sorts. Maybe the bandits were already celebrating the money they expected to get as ransom for Mwanga.