Human instincts could never be entirely suppressed, though.
‘Later,’ King muttered. ‘Not here.’
‘Damn shame,’ Beth muttered back.
King turned his eyes back to the road, and noticed a faint plume of dust rising off the land a couple of miles down the track, emanating from the same stretch of terrain that housed the coastline. It had materialised seemingly out of nowhere while he’d been preoccupied with Beth. As the dust rose higher in the thick dawn air, he grimaced.
‘What’s that?’ Beth said, noticing it simultaneously.
‘Exactly what I hoped it wouldn’t be.’
‘Coming towards us?’
‘Yes.’
‘That looks like more than one vehicle.’
‘Looks like a convoy.’
‘You think Reed sent them?’
‘Only one way to find out.’
She glanced across at him. ‘We’re not going to stay here and wait for them to arrive, are we?’
King paused momentarily, deep in thought. ‘I’m guessing it’s every hired gun from El Hur heading our way. I know Reed planned this out, but I don’t think he ever anticipated getting pursued all the way to a coastal village. I doubt it’s a literal army. Maybe a few men. A dozen at best. I can’t imagine it being more than that. There’s thousands of places across Somalia that thugs-for-hire can get better work.’
‘Maybe they knew what Reed’s payload is. He’d pay them plenty to take some time out of their schedule and wait at a fishing village.’
King shook his head. ‘I doubt he told anyone. I doubt they know now. He’s not going to wave a billion dollars around in a country like this. He’d get his head sawed off for five digits less. These men won’t have allegiance.’
They both stared hard at the approaching plume. ‘How long do you think we have?’
‘Five minutes,’ King guessed. ‘It’s off-road terrain, and uphill. Enough time to try something.’
‘What do you have in mind?’
‘We can’t hide the truck,’ King said, looking out each window in turn. ‘Nothing around here for miles. And we’d only make it a few dozen feet off the trail before the tyres exploded.’
‘So we wait here?’
Even though she was attempting to disguise the natural panic that leeched out of one’s bones in an encounter like this, King could hear it in her wavering tone. The same symptoms raced through him, quickening his pulse and drawing sweat from his palms. He honed in on the dust trail, laser-focused. At this point, he could begin to make out the shape of the distant vehicles. There were at least three.
‘This is a last-ditch effort,’ he said, vocalising his thoughts. ‘Reed just needs enough time to get his cash from the truck to a work boat. Then it’s a short trip out to any of the container ships hovering out there.’ He paused, squinting as he scrutinised the Indian Ocean sprawling out before them. There were a number of black pinpoints dotted across the pale blue water, each of which represented a distant craft large enough to house a thousand of the containers he’d spotted at the Port of Mogadishu. ‘He’s buying time. He didn’t expect us to make it this far. He was confident he’d pick us off sooner.’
‘You’re getting all this from a trail of dust?’ Beth said, quizzical.
‘Most of it’s pure speculation. But I think if we get past this, we’ll find Reed wide open.’
‘Reed on his own is enough of a problem.’
‘It’s better if these guys are out of the equation.’
‘So what do we do?’
King turned to her, studying the expression on her face.
‘How good is your acting?’ he said.
Her face lit up with realisation as she connected the dots. ‘Good enough.’
King nodded once. Grimacing in preparation for what came next, he shoved a hand into the duffel bag at Beth’s feet and came out with a short tactical combat knife with a serrated edge.
He contorted his mouth into a hard line, raised the tip of the blade to his upper arm, and sliced open the skin across his bicep with a single pull.
41
The stage had been set.
The convoy arrived in an adrenalin-fuelled screech of tyres, all parties charged with the tantalising prospect of murder in exchange for funds. Burrowed into the undergrowth a few feet off the trail, entirely invisible to anyone who didn’t feel the need to scour the surroundings with a magnifying glass, Jason King wondered if they had been paid upfront. He imagined Reed would be using these vital minutes to load up a work boat and set off for a distant container ship, which meant the arriving Somali thugs would have been handed their sizeable payment before the man set off.
Which meant they were carrying out Reed’s request for the sheer thrill of the hunt. King could see it in their eyes as they piled out of the pick-up trucks, boxing the motionless tractor unit in despite the fact that it wasn’t going anywhere.
King had killed the truck’s engine moments previously.
As the convoy of mercenaries leapt out of their cabins and formed a rudimentary semi-circle around the truck, they shut down their own vehicles in turn, allowing the sounds of nature to envelop the scene. The men were quiet, hopped up on adrenalin but focused on the task at hand.
There weren’t many natural sounds on this hillside.
King could hear his heart thumping in his ears as he scrutinised the party. He counted eight men spread across three vehicles, all armed in some capacity but few wielding automatic weapons.
A party of thuggish brutes willing to trek all the way out to El Hur for some work didn’t have the largest budget in the country for their gear. He glimpsed a pair of AK-47s spread between the entire eight-man crew — the rest held a combination of machetes, clubs, or semi-automatic pistols.
Right then and there, King confirmed his initial theory.
Reed was simply using these men as a distraction.
King paused briefly to consider his options.
He conjured up the mental image of gunning down eight men in an unexpected bloodbath, and it set off a dark twinge in the pit of his gut. The idea didn’t entice him — he would do it if the situation demanded it, but nothing about it would carry pleasant feelings.
These men were born and raised Somalians — a tough life in itself. They were skinny and gaunt and hopped up on some cocktail of off-brand hard drugs. He could see it in the way their gazes jerked to the tractor unit, surrounding it, swarming it, their lips smacking at the thought of the dope they could buy with Reed’s generous payment.
King had the Kalashnikov AK-47 resting on a small, smooth rock in front of his pronated form.
He was ready.
But he needed the subconscious command.
Whether that came from youthful naivety or a strong moral compass, he needed the eight-man gang of barbarians to prove they deserved to die. It was something primal, something instinctive. He had been granted full discretion to act as he pleased on the battlefield, and he was determined not to lose his humanity on his second operation. It might have seemed ridiculous to a more hardened soldier, but King wouldn’t have made it this far if he’d simply tried to fit in with the rest of the pack.
It was part of the reason why he’d implemented Beth in his plan.
One of the thugs — clutching his own AK-47 at the ready — stepped up onto the driver’s step and hurled open the door of the truck. He aimed his barrel into the cabin and King’s heart leapt into his mouth — for a brief moment he thought the man might unload his weapon then and there, leaving no room for King to act. But the guy hesitated, his eyes widening, a sick grin spreading across his mouth, revealing a set of gums sporting a handful of rotting teeth.