For a few seconds there was no response. The Somali boat continued on its course, the men still waving their rifles, although the shooting had stopped. The Lynx held its position, edging backwards to follow the boat’s course, the pilot doing a superb job of holding it steady. I imagined the count-down going on in his head and waited for the spurt of a missile leaving its pod. Would they, wouldn’t they?
I found myself hoping they would. This shit had gone on long enough.
Finally the pirates saw sense. The helmsman waved his arm and the boat’s nose dipped and turned, immediately losing way, the members of the crew grabbing the sides to hold their balance. As soon as it was pointing away, a heavy spray burst out from the stern and the twin engines powered them on a wide curving course to follow the other two craft to the north.
Seconds later, they were mere dots in the distance and the Lynx was hovering alongside us, the crew member in the doorway grinning and signalling for me to slow and stop.
I smiled back and cut the engine. I’d never been so pleased to obey an order in my life.
The pleasure was short-lived. As they sent down a crewman with a stretcher and winched Tober gently on board, eager hands pulling him inside the fuselage, I happened to glance back at the smoke rising near Kamboni. Something about it looked wrong. At first I couldn’t figure out what it was. I’d seen lots of smoke from many war zones and scenes of destruction. And this didn’t look right.
Then it hit me.
It had dispersed too quickly. It was now little more than a wisp of grey drifting lazily along the shoreline. Yet I was remembering all those rocket-propelled grenades Tober and I had seen stacked up inside and outside the villa. If a drone strike had hit that lot, the explosion would have been bigger, the smoke darker and longer-lasting as the fabric of the building continued to burn long after the initial bang.
But there was none of that.
It was a miss. Musa was made of Teflon.
I heard a whistle and looked up. The winch was coming down again, this time with a harness for me. The crewman guiding it was signalling for me to get it on fast so they could get out of the area.
I waved it away and signalled that I was going back to land.
This wasn’t finished yet.
Sixty-Eight
Tom Vale walked up the steps into the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, and was met as usual by a Marine guard, immaculately ironed and polished. He’d been in this building several times before, but still felt as if he were stepping into a magic kingdom.
He blamed Hollywood.
‘Mr Vale, sir,’ the man said briskly, handing him a visitor’s badge. ‘Mr Scheider said you were coming and to take you right up. If you would follow me, sir.’ He swivelled sharply on his heels and stiff-legged away, leading Vale without delay through the internal security screens and up to the second floor.
They stopped at a doorway at the end of a long corridor, and the marine knocked and asked Vale to go inside. He found himself in a long room with a conference table complete with two communications consoles, a tray of juices and a line of empty chairs. A huge flat-screen monitor bracketed by two US flags dominated the end wall.
‘Tom.’ Scheider greeted him and indicated a younger man. ‘You know Dale Wishaw, I believe?’
Vale shook hands and murmured a greeting. Why he was here was a mystery. A surprise invitation had been waiting for him on arrival at the office, and intrigued by the air of urgency, he had immediately called for a car to bring him here. The car was one of the tangible signs of his new, albeit temporary role in MI6 following Colin Moresby’s resignation. He had felt little sympathy for the man’s abrupt departure, and no hesitation in assuming the position of special operations director while the department was being reformed.
Coffee was served and Scheider complimented him on his new role. ‘Sorry to be so guarded about the reason for this invitation, Tom. I wanted to keep the spread of information strictly limited. You’ll soon see why.’ He put down his cup and nodded to Wishaw.
The younger man picked up a remote, indicated the monitor on the wall and said, ‘Private showing, Tom, just for you. If news of this got out we’d have them queuing down the hallway three deep and that guy Portman would be a Hollywood legend.’
‘Who?’ Vale stared over his coffee cup and the American flushed.
‘Quite.’ Scheider threw Wishaw an unhappy look. ‘Run the footage.’
The image on the screen was hazy at first, a jumble of shadows and shades of grey, reminding Vale of the first unflattering pictures of the moon so many years before. This looked like water but he couldn’t be certain.
His chest went tight as he realized what he was seeing.
Sensing Vale’s thoughts, Scheider signalled for Wishaw to pause the film. ‘What you’re about to see,’ he said, ‘is camera footage of a Hellfire strike fired from a Reaper MQ-9 drone over the coast of Somalia.’ He smiled grimly. ‘I think you know the coordinates so I won’t bore you with the details. The missiles are totally self-destruct, so nobody gets to send any coded parts to a technical lab and find out where it was made.’ He nodded at Wishaw to continue.
The film showed the ground racing by as if being pulled on a rail. Then the camera steadied and locked on a central point, the focus becoming sharper, more real. The image now showed solid terrain, with recognizable trees and shrubs around the faint line of a road or track. Moments later the man-made lines of a building appeared, trembling momentarily before growing, almost filling the screen. A vehicle — Vale guessed a pickup truck — stood nearby. Men, too, some standing still, others moving around slowly, unhurried.
Totally unaware, he reflected, of what was coming their way.
‘Knock, knock,’ Scheider said softly as the target area was magnified, trembling again as the camera lens picked up the image and fed in more detail. Then a flickering, lightning-fast movement showed to one side of the screen and a vast dust cloud rose upwards and outwards, obliterating the square shape, the truck and the men. A delayed flash spread out from north of centre as the Hellfire found its target.
‘Nice shot.’ Scheider tapped his desk. ‘Let’s hope Musa was home to enjoy the visit.’
‘Amen to that,’ Vale murmured, and asked for a copy of the footage, to which Scheider agreed. He wanted to check the results for himself. Not that he distrusted the Americans; they had done what he had been unable to achieve, which was to place a missile right down Yusuf Musa’s scheming throat. But he’d known deadly enemies escape certain death before, in spite of incontrovertible evidence, and this was one man he was determined not to allow off the hook.
He put down his cup and wondered if this was a dry office. As early as it was, he was suddenly in need of something stronger.
When he returned to his office, he learned that Portman had not boarded the Lynx with Tober, but had instead returned to land, for reasons unknown.
Sixty-Nine
Waiting for a target to present itself is the hardest part of making a kill. It requires patience and stamina in equal measure, and a fair degree of luck.
At least the conditions were ideal — at least, as ideal as I could wish. A friendly breeze was coming off the ocean, light but not excessive, bringing with it the smell of salt and a promise of warm air. The few clouds in evidence were tufts of cotton wool, high in the sky and inoffensive, strung out across the Indian Ocean in silent decoration.