The fact was, I’d been thinking along the same lines. If I couldn’t get Pryce and Tober out in one piece, the least I could do was to take the initiative away from Musa; unable to get his sick piece of propaganda, it would at least snatch a part of his plans out of his reach.
I gathered together what I needed. Waiting for developments was no longer an option; I had to take the offensive while I still could. And from what Vale had said, help was too far off to do any good. Musa was firing up his men to a fever pitch, no doubt with tales of honour and revenge and a strike against the infidels, with great rewards in heaven awaiting those who assisted him. Once he got them to a certain point, there would be no going back.
I had no doubt now that this must have been his plan all along. The offer through Xasan of negotiations for the release of hostages had been an elaborate ploy. He might not have known that two of the hostages he was already holding were UN personnel, but he knew well enough the value of luring in two members of a top western intelligence agency, one of them a woman, to use as propaganda material. And the extreme nature of the demand had worked; it had played Moresby and his colleagues into thinking Musa was some kind of desperate paranoid, so who should be surprised?
With Musa and Xasan gone, the guards had soon got tired of patrolling and settled down together at the side of the villa. That was fine by me. Laziness was good. I slipped out of my hide, this time taking the AK and the Vektor, with the C-4 strips and triggers in my backpack and the detonators in my pocket. I was loaded down more than I liked, but I’d coped with heavier supplies before. Right now I needed firepower in case things got sticky and I got cut off from my hide.
I by-passed the building by a wide margin and headed for the boxes on the beach. I got to them without seeing any guards and set about helping myself to more supplies.
I assembled two of the explosive packs and placed them under the boxes, then moved out and placed two more halfway down the beach under some old netting and cork floats. The charges were bigger than I needed, but I was looking for as big a bang as I could get. I wasn’t aiming for wholesale slaughter, but to disorientate.
I still had the three packs I’d taken first time round, and these I’d reduced in size. I grabbed three more detonators and triggers and added them to my backpack for later.
Next I made my way to the skiffs. These were a problem; they offered a means of escape, but also a means for Musa and his men to move about — and I wanted to avoid that. But since I couldn’t use them immediately, I had to look on them as a liability.
I tested the direction of the breeze. It was light and heading offshore. I took a risk that it wouldn’t change and opened one of the fuel containers. I splashed some of the contents around the bottom of each skiff and over the engines. The aroma was powerful up this close, but I was hoping none of the guards around the house had a good sense of smell.
The skiffs were too far apart for me to light them all in one go; the moment I showed a flame the game would be up. So I placed a full-size explosive pack in the middle skiff and soaked the sand between it and its neighbours with fuel. I was trusting to luck that the flame from the explosion would move across each side and complete the job.
I threw the empty fuel container aside and jogged back up the beach, and found the track leading towards Dhalib and Kamboni. I picked a point two hundred metres from the villa and laid two more small charges, then made for higher ground above my hide from where I could watch the party. It was too dark to see much detail, but I knew my field of fire was clear, and I was only a short run from the front door of the house. I made sure I had sufficient cover in case of random intruders, then laid out the remote triggers in a row and waited.
I gave it an hour. The few men left in the house would have been left buzzing by Musa’s passionate rhetoric, and I needed them to get it out of their system and go to sleep. The last thing I needed right now was a revved-up sentry with heightened nerves and an itchy trigger finger.
When the time came I selected a remote from the row in front of me. Took a deep breath and pressed the button on the side.
Nothing happened.
Forty-Six
For a split second my gut went cold. Damn. What had I done wrong? Had I missed a safety switch somewhere?
Then it happened. The explosion down near the waterline was impressively big. It lit up the beach for a brief second, the flare of light bouncing away across the surface of the sea in the background. The central skiff took off, breaking in half as the bottom was blown out of it, the two ends folding in on themselves. I caught a snapshot glimpse of plastic containers going into the air, then one of the containers carrying fuel exploded in a ball of flame and orange smoke, showering down on everything within a thirty-metre radius. Everything went dark again for a nano-second before another flash came, this time as the fuel-soaked sand around the skiff on the left ignited and burst into flames, followed quickly by the third boat going up like a pyrotechnician’s dream.
The two guards outside the villa came awake and began running around and screaming at their colleagues inside. One of them let off a couple of rounds in the general direction of the water, then did the same off to one side, and I guessed the play of light and shadow had fooled him into thinking they were under concerted attack from the sea.
The men inside burst out of the door and raced towards the side of the property overlooking the beach, also firing off random shots into the darkness. I couldn’t see them all clearly, but I estimated there were four or five. No problem; them I could handle.
What I couldn’t be sure of was how many remained on guard inside, nor what their reaction would be if they assumed they were under attack. Their orders might have been to kill the two prisoners.
I was going to have to move fast.
The men outside were doing what I had expected of them: heading down on to the beach to investigate. In the flickering light coming from the burning skiffs, I counted four, bunched together, rifles at the ready, moving cautiously and ready to jump at the first sound. I was glad I wasn’t part of their number; the last thing you need in a group under attack is for one of your colleagues to start shooting wildly.
They reached the burning boats and ran around excitedly, but there was little they could do to stop the destruction. The middle skiff was in pieces and the other two were already beyond help and burning fiercely.
After another fuel container exploded with the heat and shot into the night sky, one of the men seemed to take control and they backed off and hurried up the beach, chattering away angrily.
I waited for them to reach the point where I estimated the old netting to be, then picked up the next trigger and pressed the button.
This time there was no delay. The explosion lit up the villa and caught three of the men with the full blast, knocking the fourth on to his back.
I didn’t wait to see what happened next; I already had the AK to my shoulder and was sighting on the two guards who had stayed close to the villa. I fired twice, placing my shots carefully. Then a third.
Both men went down.
Another man appeared out of the shadows and ran around, searching desperately for the source of the shooting. With no sound from the suppressed AK to fasten on, and with the noise of the explosions still ringing in his ears, he must have been thoroughly disorientated. Then he turned and ran towards the building, screaming wildly at somebody inside.
I felt the hairs on my neck stand up. I didn’t understand a word he’d said, but the implication was as clear as crystal.