As they hurried back up the shallow hillside, Beth stared up at the semi-tractor King had parked in the middle of the road. The distant roar of all-out war drowned out all other sounds, floating over the top of the nearby compound’s perimeter walls.
‘Did you steal that?’ she said.
‘No, I ordered it online a few weeks ago. Planned with the dealership to pick it up in Afgooye.’
Despite everything, she smirked. He’d run the risk of falling horrifically flat with the attempt to distract her from the chaos of the last few moments, but he nodded quietly in satisfaction.
Then the smile vanished from her face as she turned toward the source of non-stop gunfire. ‘What the hell’s going on in there?’
‘World War Three, it sounds like.’
‘Because of you?’
King shrugged. ‘Somewhat. My trouble with Reed gave these men the opportunity to launch an attack. They must have been lying in wait for weeks, trying to find an opening.’
‘They’re al-Shabaab,’ Beth said. ‘At least, the men who attacked me were.’
‘Then the rest of them are too,’ King said, putting the pieces together. ‘The complex is a goldmine — that much is obvious. These militants must have been roaming around for weeks or months. They sensed profits, but it was heavily fortified until Reed ran an ultra-class haul truck through the front gate.’
‘A haul truck?’ Beth said. ‘Like in mines?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What’s he doing with one of those?’
‘It was the only reason he came here. I got the feeling they were about to hand it over to him before I crashed the party. He ended up having to take it by force — he killed a small army of hired guns trying to protect it. Six or seven men, minimum. He’d embedded himself into the trade route over time by killing off dock workers at the port. There was no-one along the chain to tell these people otherwise. They just assumed he was part of the process.’
‘What’s in the truck?’
‘We’ll find out when we catch up to him.’
King vaulted up onto the driver’s step and swung into the cabin, dropping into the indentation that the previous owner had battered into the seat through years of use. Beth skirted around the hood of the semi-tractor and climbed into the passenger seat. When they swung each of the cabin’s doors shut in turn, silence fell over them. They had the opportunity to breathe, to pause, to process.
King sat still for less than a minute before the pain from his accumulated injuries began to throb into existence.
He bowed his forehead to the top of the steering wheel for a single moment, composing himself. Then he sat up straight and wiped blood off his upper lip. ‘We need to keep moving. I’m going to crash if we stay still. I can’t think about this right now.’
‘What do you mean?’ Beth said, then her gaze wandered over to the extent of his wounds. She gasped, recoiling. ‘Oh, Jesus. You need a doctor.’
‘Not yet.’
‘King…’
‘I said not yet. I go to a doctor, Reed gets away.’
‘He already got away.’
‘He’s driving a truck the size of an office complex. He’s not going anywhere fast. We can catch him.’
‘You said that he planned to pick the truck up regardless?’
‘Yeah.’
‘So he’s obviously got a contingency plan in place to switch the payload over to a smaller vehicle. You don’t think he would have thought that through?’
‘He didn’t expect to be pursued.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ Beth said, suddenly serious. ‘You think he would drive a truck that size all the way to the coast? He’d be setting himself up for a dozen separate ambushes.’
‘Why do you think he’s headed for the coast?’
Beth shrugged. ‘Intuition. Where else is he going to go? The airports are out of the question. Many of them are discreet but there’ll be a nation-wide search for this guy if he really did make off with an invaluable haul. That complex is at the heart of all this — they’d control the airports. He’ll leave on a ship.’
‘How’s he going to get a ship?’
‘Like I said, I feel like he’s already planned all of this. I feel like we’re clutching at straws.’
‘Well, then, if you’re so sure,’ King said, slotting the truck into gear. It lurched off the mark, rumbling away from the compound — which by this point had descended into total madness. ‘We’d better get a move on.’
‘We can stop him,’ Beth repeated. ‘If he needs to switch vehicles it’ll slow him down.’
‘Maybe,’ King said, sensing that her mind had wandered from the terrifying encounter in the ditch. ‘Now, in the meantime — what the hell are you doing here?’
36
‘Everything changed,’ she said, her voice low — King wondered if the shock was setting in. ‘As soon as you left, we got reinforcements. The timing was uncanny.’
‘What?’ King said, taken aback. ‘When?’
‘Thirty minutes after you drove off, a fresh group of Force Recon Marines rolled in. ’
‘The timeline doesn’t make any sense.’
She nodded. ‘It didn’t to me either. I asked them what the hell was going on. They told me they were in the middle of a “Deployment Phase” on a warship in the North Atlantic. Orders came down the pipeline and they were whisked straight here after one of our own requested immediate assistance.’
King paused. ‘Huh…?’
‘Johnson called them in. As soon as we heard you were on your way, he must have made the call. He didn’t trust you — and apparently, your division is fresh enough that there was a serious breakdown in communication. The Navy sent over a fresh batch on the next cargo plane. They weren’t happy about it, apparently. Our presence in-country is supposed to be low-profile. But Johnson wanted his own men — familiar faces — around him while trying to deal with Reed. Nothing about the situation made sense to him, so he was trying to handle things on his own.’
‘So they’ve got the place on lockdown?’
Beth nodded. ‘They’re handling the investigation. They grilled me on everything I knew, and then they left me alone. It gave me time to think, and I realised I was the only one who knew you were out here. It’s my responsibility to bring you back. So I told them I’d received direct orders to retrieve “critically important personnel” and set off. They must have thought I was talking about the peacekeepers. We were officially there in the first place as Personal Security Detail, after all. They must have thought I was just doing my job. And I don’t think they had the heart to tell me to sit tight, after what had happened to the rest of my team. They let me go about my business.’
‘Did you tell them about me?’
She shook her head. ‘I still don’t know exactly who or what you are. I decided to leave it be — they didn’t have any knowledge of you when they arrived. Actually, they were flabbergasted that they were the first ones to be called in.’
‘For good reason,’ King said. ‘It would seem like there’s disarray in the upper echelon if they don’t know I exist. No-one had responded to an urgent situation except them.’
‘You came to recruit Reed, didn’t you?’ Beth said. ‘That’s why no-one knows.’
King paused. ‘There’s no point denying it.’
‘Did you expect this?’
‘Never.’
‘Which is why you’re so determined to stop him.’
‘I have to prove myself capable. And it’s slightly personal, too.’