Bodyguard: Ambush (Book 3) (16 page)

Connor glanced back into the lodge’s
lounge area where Henri was playing a game on his phone and Amber was reading a book.
‘Only the youngest got a good look. He’s a little shocked but otherwise
fine. Cub One kept her distance. I think the parents are more upset than them, the
mother in particular. But Cub Two is already asking when the next outing will
be.’

‘And when is it?’

‘Tomorrow: a sunset safari. The
tourism minister suggested we spend the day enjoying the pool before heading
out.’

‘Well, let’s hope this next
trip’s a little less eventful. By the way, I’ve pulled some information on
the snake you mentioned.’

Connor felt his stomach tighten. And, by the
grave look on Charley’s face, he had every reason to be concerned.

‘Black Mamba is the nickname for the
notorious rebel fighter, General Pascal,’ revealed Charley. ‘Born in
Burundi, he began his fighting days aged sixteen, alternating between being a rebel and
a soldier both in his own country and the Democratic Republic of Congo. At the age of
eighteen he joined the FDD – Forces pour la Défense de la Démocratie – but deserted them
a few years later to wage war on behalf of the Union of Congolese Patriots. Eventually
he founded his own rebel group, the ANL – Armée Nationale de la Liberté – who gained
infamy almost overnight for killing three hundred refugees in a United
Nations camp on the Burundian border. Most of the victims
were women, children and babies, beaten with sticks, shot dead or burnt alive in their
shelters.’

Connor sat down heavily in one of the
reception’s leather armchairs. ‘He sounds like a monster.’

‘That’s barely scraping the
surface,’ sighed Charley. ‘His group attacked the capital Bujumbura, leaving
three hundred dead and twenty thousand people displaced. He sparked a rebellion that led
to several massacres amounting to genocide, and it set back the peace process by several
years before the ANL were defeated and pushed back into the Congo. Responsible for
countless atrocities, the Black Mamba has also been indicted by the International
Criminal Court for recruiting child soldiers.’

‘Children?’ said Connor, almost
unable to believe what he was hearing. ‘Kids like us?’

Charley nodded solemnly. ‘His tactic
was to abduct them and force them to kill their own parents. Those who refused were
beaten to death. Those who obeyed had sacrificed all ties to home and family. With
nothing to go back to, their new family became the ANL.’

‘But why children?’

‘Because children are easier to
condition and brainwash,’ replied Charley. ‘Also, child soldiers don’t
eat as much food as an adult, don’t need paying and have an underdeveloped sense
of danger, so are easier to send into the line of fire.’

Connor was struck by some of the parallels
to their own situation. But
he
hadn’t been forced to become a
bodyguard. And he’d been trained to
save lives, not kill and murder.

‘That’s why General Pascal was
nicknamed the Black Mamba,’ continued Charley, ‘for being the most dangerous
and poisonous “snake” in Africa. He is a ruthless and evil man. Or I should
say,
was
. All reports indicate the general died in the Congo two years ago.
However, there’s no hard proof. That’s why I’m recommending to Colonel
Black, based on the concerns of the ministers you overheard, that we up the threat
status of Operation Lionheart to Category Two.’

The significance was not lost on Connor. In
operational terms, this meant the threat was considered real and could conceivably
happen.

‘Keep a close watch over the Cubs,
Connor … and stay safe. You’re in wild country.’

Connor slapped at a mosquito on his neck.
‘Don’t I know it,’ he muttered, pulling his hand away to see a smear
of his own blood.

The full moon, bright in the coal-black sky,
silhouetted the skeletal acacia tree atop Dead Man’s Hill, and cast a ghostly
sheen on the valley below. Like discarded trash, clusters of men and boys were curled up
beneath the scant shelter of ripped tarpaulins, each and every one of them too exhausted
to care that their beds consisted of little more than rocks and dirt. In the darkness at
the edge of the makeshift camp, a handful of rebel soldiers kept watch – not for danger
but for any worker attempting to escape.

A little further upstream, General Pascal
paced outside the entrance to his tent, sipping from a bottle of hard liquor, a
satellite phone clamped to his ear. Blaze sat nearby, sharpening his machete while
listening to gangsta rap on a pair of oversized headphones. Beneath the spluttering
light of a kerosene lamp, No Mercy played cards with Dredd and two other boy soldiers,
Hornet and Scarface, the rickety makeshift table threatening to collapse as the
dog-eared cards were slammed down with gambling zeal.

‘I win,’ declared Hornet,
reaching forward to claim the cash.

Dredd clamped a hand
over the winnings. ‘No, you cheated!’

‘You want to argue with me?’
said Hornet, standing up to his full height and flexing his formidable muscles.

With a scowl, Dredd pulled back his hand and
began dealing afresh as Hornet sat down and counted his prize money.

‘Let them come,’ said General
Pascal into his phone. There was a pause as he listened. ‘Don’t fret.
We’ve the firepower, and more is on the way. Besides, it will be all over by
tomorrow.’

Ending the call, the general turned to
Blaze, who lifted one ear of his headphones away, music blasting out.

‘A unit of government soldiers has
been sent to search this area,’ explained the general. ‘So from dawn I want
scouting patrols in all sectors. Understood?’

Blaze nodded and glanced over at No Mercy
and the others. ‘You hear that, boys?’

They all saluted in acknowledgement, then
resumed their game. But they’d barely gone a round when a bloodcurdling scream
echoed through the valley, followed by shouts of panic.

General Pascal discarded his whisky bottle
and grabbed his gun. Abandoning their card game, No Mercy and the others raced after the
general and Blaze to the source of the cries. They found the enslaved workers huddled
together, their eyes wide and fearful as they stared into the pitch-black interior of
the jungle.

‘What happened?’ demanded
General Pascal, sweeping the undergrowth with his Glock pistol.

‘The idiots
just started screaming,’ replied one boy soldier with a shrug.

Blaze backhanded the boy. ‘You were
supposed to be keeping watch!’

As the boy nursed his split lip, a rake-thin
worker stammered, ‘It-it … took him.’

‘Who?’ demanded General
Pascal.

‘Jonas,’ replied the worker.

‘No,
not
the man,’ spat
the general in disgust. ‘The attacker. Did you see who it was?’

The worker shook his head, but another
proclaimed, ‘It was an evil spirit. A skin walker!’

A spasm of fear rippled like a wave through
both workers and soldiers alike.

‘This valley is cursed,’ wailed
a voice.

Others started moaning softly to themselves
as the panic began to spread.

‘It was no evil spirit,’
corrected an elderly man, his voice low and reverential. ‘It was a leopard. The
largest I’ve ever seen.’

He pointed a gnarled finger to some rocks
and then a tree. Shimmering in the moonlight, a trail of slick blood was the only
evidence of the prisoner’s disappearance.

‘A man-eater!’ General Pascal
breathed in awe.

All eyes went to the jungle, the
supernatural fear of spirits hardening into an instinctive terror of the wild. A big cat
with a taste for human flesh prowling their valley meant no one was safe.

‘This is a bad omen,’ muttered
Dredd.

‘No! This is
a
good
omen,’ corrected General Pascal with a smile as white as bleached
bone. ‘The leopard is by far the most cunning of killers.’

Crouching down, the general dipped his index
finger into the blood of the leopard’s victim, then daubed the sign of the cross
in red on his forehead.

‘Blood has been let. But not from one
of our soldiers, for we are the chosen ones,’ he declared, now painting upon the
brows of No Mercy, Dredd, Hornet and his other foot soldiers. ‘For we are the
hunters, not the hunted.’

‘Dusk is one of the best times to spot
predators,’ Gunner explained to Amber, Henri and Connor as he drove with the
safari convoy towards a ridge in the distance.

Although sunset was still a couple of hours
off, the lateafternoon light was already transforming the savannah into a bronzed
mythical landscape. The red-rich earth seemed to glow with warmth and the Ruvubu River
flowed like molten gold through the sweeping expanse of the national park. As the convoy
bumped and weaved its way across the rolling landscape, Buju, strapped into his bonnet
seat, drew his young passengers’ attention to many of the wondrous sights
surrounding them: a parade of elephants lumbering towards a watering-hole, their
enormous ears flapping like great sails; impalas and antelopes leaping into the air as
if dancing for joy; towers of giraffes striding regally between clumps of acacia trees;
and a mighty herd of black buffalo, their hooves dredging up clouds of red dust as they
thundered away from the approaching Land Rovers.

Although the mood at the start of the safari
had been a
little more subdued than the
previous occasions, the discovery of the dead body still on everyone’s minds, the
Eden-like wonders of the park soon pushed aside any sombre thoughts. In awe at the sheer
diversity of wildlife, Amber eagerly snapped away with her camera while Henri searched
the savannah for lions on the hunt, desperate to see a real kill in action. Even Connor
had his smartphone out, filming some of the more impressive animals to show the rest of
Alpha team, back in cold snowy Wales, what they were missing.

‘Look! A cheetah!’ said Gunner,
slowing the Land Rover and bringing the convoy to a halt.

Buju was pointing into the near distance
where a distinctive black-spotted form was slinking through the long grasses towards a
herd of antelope. Totally oblivious to the predator stalking them, the antelopes
continued to graze contentedly in the golden sunlight. Suddenly the cheetah burst from
its hiding-place in an explosion of speed. The antelopes scattered in panic. Weaving and
zigzagging, its tail whipping this way and that, the cheetah bore down on its chosen
prey – a young buck. The antelope switched direction again and again, trying to shake
off its pursuer, but despite its valiant efforts the cheetah was faster and more agile.
It knocked down the buck with a swipe of its claws, then pounced on its throat. The
antelope struggled in its vice-like grip, but was soon suffocated.

‘That was awesome!’ Henri
exclaimed, grinning from ear to ear.

Amber glanced over her shoulder at her
brother in the back seat beside Connor. ‘Satisfied now?’

Henri nodded
excitedly. ‘That was about the
best
thing I’ve seen in my whole
life. I can’t wait for a lion kill.’

Amber sighed. ‘Haven’t you seen
enough killing and dead bodies for one holiday?’

‘Are you kidding?’ replied
Henri, using Connor’s binoculars to watch the cat devour its kill.

She gave him a despairing look before
returning to face the front.

‘It’s just part of the circle of
life, Amber,’ said Gunner. ‘Life and death go hand in hand in Africa.’
He paused, staring off into the distance, before continuing: ‘More often than not,
a cheetah will fail in its attack. It may be the fastest land animal in the world, but
it tires quickly.’

‘How fast can a cheetah run?’
asked Connor.

‘Up to seventy miles an hour in around
three seconds. That’s quicker than most sports cars.’

Connor was astonished. With the
‘show’ over, the convoy set off again.

Keeping one hand on the wheel, Gunner leant
over to Amber. ‘I think the sunset will be more to your liking. The viewpoint
we’re going to is a photographer’s dream.’