The Dust Will Never Settle (6 page)

She knew she needed to sit down and talk with Chance. So many unsaid, unfinished things hung between them.

Wandering minds get people killed, she remembered. Too many people had drilled that into her. She focused on the mission and checked the deployment again.

Chance was one of the five MI6 agents there, the one controlling the four snipers ranged around the house. She thought it was a clever deployment and congratulated herself mentally since she was the designated Operational Commander for this mission and it had been her plan.

The target house was a dilapidated bungalow on the outskirts of Kinshasa, the capital of Congo. Known until 1997 as Zaire, Congo was the third largest country in Africa by area and the fourth most populated. Torn apart by warfare since its inception, the vast land had made no progress, and was one of the poorest countries in the world. Estimates were that about 1,250 people died daily due to war and related causes like hunger and malnutrition.

In better times, the bungalow, with its red tiled roof, would have housed some high-ranking Belgian official. But most of the tiles had fallen or were broken, leaving ugly gaps in the roof, like missing teeth. Now it was occupied by a handful of Lord’s Resistance Army terrorists.

The LRA, despite its grand name, was a small ragtag group of about one hundred men, women and adolescents, who usually operated in Congo’s northeastern province of Orientale. The group had come to the attention of MI6 because it had kidnapped the British ambassador and his wife, and was now holding the couple hostage for a large ransom and for the freedom of their colleagues in Congo jails. The kidnapping had been a stroke of luck for the LRA and the result of sublime stupidity on the part of the ambassador, who had disregarded basic security procedures.

And now we’re in this hellhole to bail out the idiot and his wife.

Ruby’s fingers instinctively checked the weapons load to make sure it was set on single-shot fire mode. Her feet began to flex inside her black, rubber-soled, lace-up loafers, getting ready to run towards the target. Her fingers checked the weapon’s magazine again.

The door to the bungalow opened and two men emerged. Both were young, one barely out of his teens. Both toted AK-47 automatics. Cheap and easily available, this was the weapon of choice of Terror Central. They halted on the porch, surveying the area.

The porch ran right around the house. It was surrounded by an unkempt garden that ended in a six-feet-high wall, which, like the rest of the bungalow, was also in disrepair. Beyond it ran the road on which Ruby and her teams were deployed. The road was bereft of traffic. A short distance away, a handful of children played, their occasional shouts of laughter blowing in the wind.

‘Bloody amateurs,’ Mark said, noting that the scouts had their rifles casually slung on their shoulders and not in the half port position, so they could swing into action instantly, should the need arise.

Ruby nodded in agreement. This was no place for amateurs.

The two kidnapper scouts did not venture onto the road. Even if they had, it was unlikely that they would have spotted the two concealed cars, one on either side of the road. The vehicles on the other three sides of the bungalow were also safely tucked away.

Breathless minutes ticked away as the two scouts completed their half-hearted security scan. Then the younger one went back inside, again with that same casual swagger. It was another minute before he emerged with two more gunmen, also barely out of their teens. The new pair held their rifles in battle positions and appeared more alert.

They would die first. She was certain that Chance, controlling the snipers, would ensure that. It would be operationally expedient to do so.

A portly Caucasian man came out next. He had his arm around a short, plump Caucasian woman. From her halting gait and how the man supported her, she seemed to be sick. Or wounded, Ruby noted.

‘That’s our man,’ Ruby muttered as she recognized the ambassador. No one replied. Everyone was now readying for action. They knew the signal would be coming any second.

Eight more gunmen emerged. And a couple of gunwomen too. They arrayed themselves around the hostages and moved towards a yellow minibus parked outside the gate. A handful seemed alert, but none was very careful. Sure, no one would have known where they were had it not been for one of their lot who had turned Judas for the silver thrown at him by MI6. Ruby wondered which one of them it was.

Would he live to enjoy the loot?

‘Now!’ Ruby half-whispered as the LRA gunmen and the hostages stopped near the minibus, trying to pre-empt Mission Control. Once they got into the vehicle, the job would become much more difficult.

‘Sun down.’

The code word cracked out of the radio.

A scant second later, the sharp crackle of the team’s sniper rifles rang out and four kidnappers fell.

Four down. Eight to go.

That was the last thought in Ruby’s head as she levered open the door and flew out, holding the gun in her left hand, which was not her master hand but that did not bother her, She had trained herself long ago to marksman standards with both hands.

She had barely exited the Toyota when a battered maroon van turned the corner and began to nose its way down the pot-holed road.

At the same time, three women on foot came around the bend to the left; they hit the road metres away from the terror cluster.

Ruby cursed under her breath. Collateral damage would not go down well on her record.

She was on her third stride when the first shot left her weapon. Though almost flying, her shot did not miss. Beside her, Mark’s weapon spat lead a millisecond later. Another kidnapper fell.

The team’s sniper rifles crashed out again. More terrorists fell.

The ambassador had dropped to the ground, dragging his wife down with him.

The terrorists’ lack of training was evident. They were firing blindly before they had even registered their targets.

Ruby and her team raced in.

The maroon van, seeing all hell break loose ahead, screeched to a halt and began reversing as fast as it could. The three women were huddled on one side of the road in a screaming cluster. One went silent as a passing bullet found her. The screams from the other two grew louder, but they were lost in the thunder of gunfire and screams of the dying.

By the time Ruby fired her third shot, all twelve terrorists were down. A thirty-something man and one of the younger women lay writhing on the ground. She shot both of them, putting a bullet through each head, as she weaved past them to the ambassador.

He was huddled in the dust, his arms wrapped around his wife. She was screaming, a ululating, keening sound that set Ruby’s teeth on edge. Controlling the urge to slap her, Ruby reached down to grab him. She did not notice the beardless teenager, fallen beside the ambassador, reach for the pistol in his waistband. She became aware of him only when Mark’s weapon crackled to life behind her and he died with a scream.

Ruby cursed herself, even as she gave Mark a grateful look. He gave a fleeting salute as he continued checking the others for signs of life.

Ruby hoisted up the ambassador. His wife followed in tow as he clutched her. They hustled towards the Toyota, which had raced forward as soon as the sound of the last shot faded away.

The two women on the roadside had stopped screaming. The sound of the playing children had faded away. The maroon van had vanished. Barring the thrumming of Toyota engines, the silence was complete.

Just eighty-seven seconds had elapsed and twelve kidnappers had forfeited their lives.

Score one for the home team, Ruby thought triumphantly as she did a quick visual check and saw that her team was intact. Losing someone always hurt. Nor did it look good on the Operational Commander’s scorecard.

Seconds later the Toyota was racing away with its twin prize safely seat-belted inside. The ambassador’s wife had finally stopped screaming and lapsed into the never-never land of shock but Ruby did not care. She only had to get them back alive.

The Toyota raced past the spot where the children had been playing. Ruby spotted one of them staring open-mouthed from around the corner of a hut. He would have stories to tell for a long time.

Or maybe not
. This was Congo, he was likely to have seen worse.

They had gone half a mile when the other five vehicles caught up. The convoy pelted down the narrow, potholed road.

‘We have them,’ Ruby heard the driver bark into the radio as she replaced the half-empty magazine of her weapon and began to reload. Beside her, Mark was doing the same.

‘Jolly good show,’ Mission Control intoned, his Brit stoicism intact. ‘Extractors inbound.’

Minutes later, the vehicles pulled off the road and ground to a dust-churning halt in a flat, open field. The vehicles drew up in a wide circle. Kevlar-clad agents spilled out and took position behind their vehicles, all facing outwards. Not that they expected trouble, but security drills were what kept them alive.

The dust had yet to settle when three choppers swept in. Two of them headed straight into the secured clearing while the third, its guns ready, started circling overhead in a wide loop, to ensure nothing on ground interfered with the extraction. And, though the agents could not see them, high up in the sky, a sortie of RAF fighters ran a protective Combat Air Patrol (CAP).

The ambassador and his wife were hustled into the first chopper with Ruby’s team. She saw Chance and his sniper team jump into the next one as hers lifted off.

Mission complete!

There were smiles all around.

Ruby leaned back and let the stress drain away. Momentarily, the faces of the downed terrorists flipped through her mind. She shrugged.

The fuckers should have realized what they’d signed up for.
The thought induced a shrug.
They are wrong. I am right. Well… if not right, at least on the good team. Wasn’t that reason enough for me to pull the trigger? Was it?
The thought troubled her only briefly.
Of course, it was. That is all there is to it… nothing to fret about.

Closing her eyes, she shut out the clamouring roar of the rotors.

As the Nissan van halted again, Ruby was startled back to the reality of Sri Lanka.

The man whom Ruby and Mark had travelled halfway across the world to meet was waiting for them outside a seedy hotel in Vavuniya.

Barely five feet tall, the dark-skinned Chanderan was rotund, and like most men Ruby had seen on the streets, wore a checked blue-and-white cotton lungi and a white cotton half-sleeve shirt, its buttons undone almost to the midriff. He proudly led them to the reception desk – a tiny wooden table adorned with a large, well worn guest register and a pink flower vase with plastic flowers in it. Like the table, both the flowers and the vase had seen better days.

‘It is all taken care of,’ he announced grandly. Though afflicted by the typical islander accent, his English was all right. ‘I will wait while you freshen up.’

‘No worries.’ Ruby was in no mood to tarry. ‘Come on up to the room with us.’ She threw a glance at Mark, making it clear that he was to stick with her.

The first-floor room Chanderan led them to had a queen-sized bed in the centre, and a small wooden table and chair near the window overlooking the noisy street. The bed was covered with a flowery, cotton bedspread. A stale smell hung in the air, making it obvious that the room was hired by the hour, and it had been a while since it had seen any housekeeping services. With the three of them in it, the room felt claustrophobic. Mark threw an amused look around. No air conditioner, just an ancient looking fan slowly rotated overhead. Ruby thanked her stars that they were staying just the one night.

‘Our mutual friend said we could depend on you to get us what we need,’ Ruby said to Chanderan once Mark had closed the door.

‘He is most kind. I will try my best.’ There was nothing about him that convinced Ruby that he had been the primary weapons supplier to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE), the terrorist group that had held the island captive for two decades. Of course, with the group now decimated, Chanderan’s business had nose-dived. Ruby had been given these inputs by Yusuf uncle when he had last called her from Dubai.

‘This is what I need.’ Ruby handed over a short list to him. He scanned it, all at once mutating from a bumbling hotel manager to a seasoned arms supplier. Ruby could see why he had survived so long in this deadly trade.

‘The rocket launcher and the rockets will not be a problem.’ Chanderan looked up. ‘The Glocks will take time.’

‘How much time?’

‘At least two weeks. Maybe more. I will need to check. New stuff stopped coming in a while ago, ever since…’ He shrugged.

‘I don’t have that much time.’

‘Maybe I can give you something else in that category?’

‘No.’ Ruby shook her head – the Glock 17s were crucial. With seventeen per cent of it made of high-tech plastic polymers, the Glock 17 was almost undetectable. When passed through a metal detector, unassembled, it required an expert to ascertain its presence. And its seventeen-shot magazine capacity offered a huge advantage. She needed that kind of firepower for the thirteen targets to be taken down. Not to mention the security men between her and the targets.