“I almost forgot, one thing before you leave,” said O’Reilly as he rifled through a file on his desk. “It would appear that the man you detained and handed over to the police in the Philippines has escaped.”
Mitchell raised an eyebrow. “What happened, sir?”
“An investigation is still ongoing, but it would appear that he somehow managed to bribe some guards and made his getaway sometime during the night last week.”
“He didn’t seem too happy with me and Nate. We’ll have to add him to our database of people we’ve managed to piss off recently.”
Mitchell shook O’Reilly’s hand and with a promise to call tomorrow to let him know how the date went, Mitchell left the office. He was almost past Tammy Spencer’s desk when a troubled look on her face caught his eye.
“Ryan, it’s truly awful,” said Spencer, her voice choking with sorrow.
“What’s wrong, Tammy?” asked Mitchell
“It’s Russia again. Someone set off a series of car bombs at several apartment buildings. CNN is reporting that there could be hundreds, if not thousands of dead and injured.”
Mitchell looked at the images of devastation on the TV and felt a sudden chill crawl down his spine. His instincts told him it was about to get a lot worse, although he could not predict that it would soon involve him as well.
7
The sky turned dark as a storm began rolling in off the Indian Ocean.
Out to sea, looking like a flock of malevolent prehistoric birds, six large dark shapes dropped from the leaden clouds, diving straight towards the churning gray seas below. Straightening out barely fifty meters above the waves, the helicopters switched off their running lights one by one; darkness quickly enveloped them.
Sohn Gun-Woo briefly looked down and studied his instrument panel for the thousandth time since taking off. Having spent countless hours over the past ten years flying at night wearing night vision goggles, for Sohn Gun-Woo it now seemed as natural to him as breathing.
A former North Korean Army Major, Sohn was a natural at flying the ungainly-looking Russian made MI-18 Hip helicopter. Outside it had started to rain, dropping visibility to a few hundred meters, but that was not Sohn’s biggest concern. Looking left and right over his shoulders, he was relieved to see that his wingmen, two additional MI-8s, were flying close by in a tight V-formation with his own craft in the lead. Sohn knew flying this fast and close was dangerous to try during the day. However, at night wearing NVGs, it could be a sure-fire recipe for disaster. One small error by any one of the pilots and they would all crash into one another and end up as a flaming ball of wreckage plummeting towards the Indian Ocean. Flying in such a tight formation required nerves of steel and had taken weeks of practice to perfect. His co-pilot, a former Ethiopian Air Force pilot, interrupted his thoughts and spoke over the intercom to say that they were now ten minutes out from their objective. Sohn acknowledged the information and casually dipped the nose of his helicopter. As one, the formation dove closer to the waves to avoid detection as they crossed over into South African territory.
Flying barely one hundred meters behind the three troop-carrying helicopters were two additional empty MI-8s and one massive Hind-D attack helicopter, a monstrous Soviet-era helicopter that looked more like a medieval dragon than the sleeker attack helicopters used throughout the West. The Hind-D was armed with a 12.7mm machine gun under the nose cone; mounted on its small wings were four 57mm rocket pods, two on either side. Finally, on each wingtip were several AT-6 Spiral anti-tank missiles just in case the assault force ran into anything larger than a truck on their objective. It truly was a machine made for killing.
Sohn reached down and flipped a switch on his instrument panel. In the back of the helicopter’s spacious cabin, a red light came on, warning his passengers to prepare for landing. So far, it had gone as planned, but now Sohn felt his stomach tighten as he grew nervous. Looking towards the horizon, Sohn searched the deteriorating night sky for an indication, any indication, of their planned landing zone.
Nestled between two hills was an insignificant farming community of barely one hundred souls. Many of the local farmers had lived there for generations, making a good living by raising and selling cattle. A few kilometers south of the village was a small isolated ranch that had been abandoned by its original owner. About five years ago, a quiet stranger from Johannesburg bought the ranch and had it completely refurbished.
The front door to the home opened. Jan Dornberg, a balding man with a large belly that hung over his belt, stepped onto the front porch of the old-fashioned looking wooden farmhouse. He felt the cool night air on his face. The smell of rain was in the air; he knew that it would not be long before it stormed. Calmly looking down at his watch, he saw that he barely had five minutes before the planned arrival of the helicopters. A former member of the South African Special Forces, Dornberg was not what he appeared to be. To the local farmers of the tiny village of Georgetown, he was a simple but reclusive farmer who never bothered his neighbors and they in turn never paid much attention to him.
Inside, he felt nothing, nothing at all at the horrific act he was about to do. His beloved wife of twenty years had been murdered during a home invasion in Durban nearly eight years ago. Ever since then, Dornberg had been shuffled around from one unimportant desk job to another. That was until five years ago, when he ended up on the farm as a glorified night watchman. Approaching mandatory retirement, Dornberg had become an alcoholic and had slowly grown more and more disenchanted with his lot in the world. Unexpectedly, a mysterious and beautiful brown-eyed stranger approached him one day. The stranger asked him about making five million dollars to betray the country that no longer gave a damn about him. He never once hesitated.
Trying to act casually, he walked over to where two men were idly standing in front of his farmhouse smoking cigars and laughing about something. Dornberg suspected they were talking about him; his blood started to boil. Damned ingrates. He knew from experience that both men, who were security personnel, carried semi-automatic pistols hidden carefully under their scruffy blue work clothes. Dornberg silently cursed his luck. Once a month, like clockwork, an inspection team disguised as farmhands came up from Johannesburg to check on the security of the farm and its hidden cache. He thought he had it all worked out to the minute, but these troublesome men had come barely one week after the last team had visited, thoroughly screwing up his plan. As he walked towards the unsuspecting men, using the shadows, Dornberg calmly drew his silenced South African made Vektor 9mm pistol from inside his bulky dark-green jacket. Keeping the pistol discreetly hidden behind his back, Dornberg, with a pleasant smile on his face, waved at the two unwary guards. They simply nodded in recognition and turned their backs on him to continue their conversation as the first flash of jagged silver lightning ripped across the darkened sky, sending eerily-shaped shadows dancing across the vast open plain.
His mouth dry with fear, he could feel his heart jackhammering away inside his chest. Dornberg closed the distance, quickly looking around to make sure no one else was watching. He brought his pistol up and in rapid succession, fired off two bullets into the skulls of the guards, killing them both instantly. Dornberg had never killed a man before. Looking down at the dead bodies, a cold sweat wrapped itself around his body. He struggled to keep himself from throwing up. Taking a deep breath to calm his fraying nerves, Dornberg strode over, kicked the bodies to make sure they were dead and then dragged the lifeless bodies behind some nearby bushes. Satisfied that no one would see the corpses until it was all over, Dornberg strolled back calmly towards the farmhouse. When he did not hear any alarms coming from the small command post hidden deep below the building, Dornberg knew that he had pulled it off. Now all he had to do was wait for his accomplices to arrive.