Bodyguard: Ambush (Book 3) (8 page)

‘Business,’ replied Mr Grey.

‘And what business might that
be?’

‘Wildlife photographer.’

The officer’s eyes narrowed.
‘Where’s your camera?’

‘In my bag.’

‘Search him,’ he mumbled,
jutting his chin in a command to the guard.

Mr Grey allowed the man to frisk him. His
pockets were turned out and his car keys and a slim black wallet deposited on the desk.
The official leant forward and inspected the wallet as the guard rummaged through the
rucksack.

‘For the record, I note you have one
hundred dollars in here,’ he said.

‘Two hundred,’ Mr Grey
corrected.

‘No, one hundred,’ stated the
official, extracting five twenty-dollar bills and slipping them into his shirt
pocket.

‘I must have been mistaken,’
said Mr Grey with a thin smile.

The border guard pulled out an SLR digital
camera with telephoto lens and held it up for the official to see.

‘As I said, wildlife
photographer,’ repeated Mr Grey.

At that moment the guard from outside
entered the
shack. Looking directly at the
official, he shook his head once. ‘Nothing in the vehicle.’

Not even attempting to hide his
disappointment, the official reluctantly opened a drawer and produced a rubber stamp and
ink pad. After a protracted and unnecessary examination of the passport, he inked the
stamp and was about to authorize entry when the taller guard fumbled and dropped the
camera. It hit the floor, the telephoto lens snapping off and rolling to a stop at the
foot of the desk. Concealed within the casing was a large pinkish rock.

Mr Grey silently cursed the guard’s
clumsiness. It would likely cost the man his life.

Tutting his disapproval, the official set
aside his rubber stamp.

‘I can explain,’ said Mr Grey,
his eyes hardening.

‘No need,’ replied the official,
bending down to pick up the precious rock and examining it with avaricious delight.
‘Arrest him.’

The tall guard seized Mr Grey’s arms.
But a trained assassin isn’t easy to restrain. A single reverse headbutt to the
face fractured the guard’s nose. A spinning elbow strike to the temple rendered
him unconscious. And, as he crumpled, a sharp violent twist to the head snapped his
neck.

The other guard went for his gun. Grasping
the barrel, Mr Grey wrenched the weapon up and round, spinning it so fast that the
man’s finger broke in the trigger guard. A single knife-hand strike to the throat
crushed the windpipe, cutting off any cry of pain and suffocating the guard even as he
writhed on the floor.

In a wild panic, the
official snatched up his machete and swung the fearsome blade at Mr Grey’s head.
With lightning reflexes, Mr Grey ducked and simultaneously pulled at the metal buckle of
his belt. It came loose to reveal a hidden blade. Before the official could swing again,
the assassin leapt across the desk and drove the sharpened point into the man’s
throat. The official’s eyes bulged in agonized shock. The machete clattered to the
ground, the cigarette tumbling from the man’s quivering lips. As he bled like a
stuck pig, his carotid artery severed, Mr Grey let the official slump into the dirt at
his feet.

In less than ten seconds, the three men were
dead.

With disconcerting calmness, Mr Grey
retrieved the diamond, his passport, rucksack, camera, car keys, wallet and money the
official had stolen, including the ten-dollar bribe in the border guard’s pocket.
That done, he took the kerosene lamp from the beam and smashed it on the floor. Oil
splattered across the corpses, upon which flies were already settling. Then retrieving
the still-smouldering cigarette, Mr Grey tossed it on to the kerosene and the bodies
went up in flames. When anyone eventually reported the men’s deaths, it would be
assumed a rogue band of militia had attacked the border post.

As the stench of scorched flesh filled the
room, Mr Grey made to leave. Almost as an afterthought, he stopped, opened the small
ink-pad on the desk and stamped his passport before strolling out of the burning
building.

‘Are you
really
a
bodyguard?’

Connor nodded as he washed down the bitter
aftertaste of his malaria tablets with a swig of bottled water.

Henri’s eyes widened in awe and he
rocked back in his airline seat. ‘
C’est trop cool!
’

The small yet luxurious eight-seated Cessna
plane banked left as they flew over dense jungle towards Ruvubu National Park. The
African sun gleamed golden off the aircraft’s wings and the sky was as blue as
pure sapphire. Below, the steamy green tangle of trees pulsated with heat and life.
Connor could scarcely believe that twenty-four hours earlier he’d been stationed
in cold, grey snowy Wales. But after an eleven-hour flight from Heathrow via Brussels
he’d landed in the surprisingly sedate and swelteringly hot airport of Bujumbura,
Burundi’s capital city. There, he’d joined the Barbier family for their
connecting flight to the safari lodge.

Henri leant forward. ‘Do you have a
gun?’ he whispered, keeping his voice low so that his parents in the front-row
seats wouldn’t hear.

Connor laughed out
loud, thinking of the trouble he’d have had getting one through airport security
at Heathrow, even if he had been allowed to carry a gun. ‘No,’ he
replied.

Henri frowned in evident disappointment.
‘So how will you protect us?’

‘By staying alert for danger, then
avoiding it.’

‘
Mais que ferais-tu si tu ne peux
pas l’éviter?
’ asked Amber, who was reclined in one of the
Cessna’s cream leather seats.

Connor looked across the narrow aisle at
her. Far prettier than her photo had given her credit for, Amber was also more frosty
than her flame-red hair suggested. She had either forgotten that he couldn’t speak
her language, or was being deliberately awkward for some reason.

Having exhausted the extent of his French in
the brief and mumbled intro he’d learnt by rote for their first meeting, Connor
wished he had Bugsy’s translation app to hand, but his smartphone was switched off
for the flight. With an apologetic smile, he replied, ‘I’m … sorry. What did
you say?’

‘I said, but what if you can’t
avoid the danger?’ repeated Amber in English graced with a soft French accent.

‘Then we’ll A-C-E it out of
there.’

She raised a slender eyebrow in puzzlement.
‘
A-C-E?
’

Connor was so familiar with the jargon that
Alpha team used on a daily basis that he forgot others didn’t know the terms.
‘It’s the course of action I’ll take to keep you safe. I’ll
first
assess
the threat, whatever it may be: a shout, a gunshot, or something
that raises my suspicions. Then I’ll
counter
the danger – either by shielding you or
eliminating the threat itself – before we
escape
the kill zone.’

‘So, as our bodyguard, if someone
tried to shoot my sister –’ a playful grin sneaked across Henri’s face as he
formed a gun with his fingers and took aim at Amber – ‘would you dive in front of
the bullet to save her?’

Connor felt a dull ghost-like throb of pain
along the scar on his thigh where he’d been shot protecting the daughter of the
president of the USA. ‘If I have to, yes. But with the right security measures in
place it won’t come to that.’

Henri looked suitably impressed as he fired
off several imaginary shots.

Amber pushed aside her brother’s
finger gun in annoyance. ‘Papa says Africa is dangerous and that’s why we
need a bodyguard. But we’re not to tell anyone who you really are. Why is that?
Surely it would be better if people
knew
we were being protected.’

Connor shook his head. ‘Buddyguard
works on the principle that the best bodyguard is the one nobody notices.’

‘So, are you the
best
?’
asked Amber.

Her piercing green eyes seemed to challenge
him, and Connor, still unsure why she was giving him a hard time, was careful how he
answered. ‘Well, I’ll certainly do my best to –’

‘This is your captain speaking,’
a voice crackled on the intercom, interrupting their conversation. ‘We’re
now flying over the national park. If you look to your right you’ll see the Ruvubu
River, after which this park is named. And to your left, our destination and your
residence for the next
week, Ruvubu Lodge.
We’ll be landing in a few minutes. The runway is a little bumpy, so please fasten
your seat belts.’

As everyone strapped themselves in, Connor
peered out of the window. Below, the jungle had thinned out into grassy savannah bounded
by hills and craggy peaks. He couldn’t see the lodge from his side, but the river
was clearly visible, a wide meandering stretch of ruddy waterway that divided the park
in two.

‘
Regardez! Regardez!
’
Henri cried, pointing excitedly at the ground. ‘
Des éléphants!
’

Connor followed his line of sight and
spotted a parade of elephants, with two babies in tow, ambling towards the river. A herd
of impala – too numerous to count – grazed in the golden afternoon sun, and zebra and
giraffe dotted the landscape. There was no sign of human habitation as far as the eye
could see. No towns. No villages. No roads, aside from a few dirt tracks that threaded
through the bush like dried-out veins.

Taking all this in, Connor realized that
they truly were landing in the heart of Africa.

As Connor disembarked from the plane on to
the makeshift runway – no more than a dusty strip of cleared land – he felt as if
he’d stepped into a blazing furnace. The sudden temperature rise from the
air-conditioned cocoon of the Cessna to the intense heat of Africa was almost
overwhelming. The sun was so dazzling in the burnished sky that he was forced to squint,
and the earth was such a deep red it looked sunburnt. Breathing in the oven-hot air,
Connor was hit by the heavy scent of dried grass and wild animals, a rich earthy smell
that was distinctly African.

Shading his eyes, Connor scanned the
surrounding area for potential threats. Any nearby wildlife had been frightened off by
the noise of the plane. It was just open savannah with a scattering of large flat-top
trees. A mile to the north the land rose into a ridge, upon which was Ruvubu Lodge,
commanding panoramic views of the entire plain.

Two brand-new 4x4 Land Rovers were waiting
to escort the ambassador’s family and their luggage up the hillside to the lodge.
Climbing aboard the rear vehicle with Amber and Henri, Connor was glad of the breeze as
they sped
along the dirt track. So too it
seemed was Amber, who paused in fanning herself with her sunhat.

‘
Est-ce qu’il fait toujours
aussi chaud?
’ she asked the driver.

Connor hurriedly switched on his smartphone,
launched Bugsy’s translation app and secretly fitted his wireless earpiece. French
was Burundi’s second official language after Kirundi, the country’s native
tongue. And, if he was going to effectively protect Amber and Henri, he needed to
understand what was being said at all times.

‘
Excusez-moi, madame?
’
replied the driver as they bumped and lurched their way up the potholed track.

Amber repeated her question. After a couple
of seconds’ delay, Connor heard through his earpiece: ‘Is it always this
hot?’

‘Only during the daytime,’ the
driver replied with a broad grin.

‘Well, that’s a relief!’
Amber laughed, amused by the man’s answer.

A few minutes later, their Land Rover pulled
up in front of the lodge’s grand timber-framed entrance. Several porters rushed to
take their bags as they clambered out.

‘
Bienvenue, Ambassadeur Barbier.
Quel plaisir de vous revoir. Comment s’est passé votre voyage?
’

After a pause, Connor heard in his ear:
‘Welcome, Ambassador Barbier. It is so good to see you again. How was your
journey?’

Connor was taken aback at the
smartphone’s almost instantaneous translation. Although the programmed
voice was a little robotic, with a bit of
concentration he could follow the conversation virtually in real time. It was as if he
held a
Star Trek
Universal Translator in his hand.