Silent Predator (30 page)

‘Cheetah six, this is Dagger, send locstat, over,’ Fraser said into the radio.

The slowest elements, though potentially the most vital, were his South African National Defence Force Oryx helicopters. There were three of them inbound from across the border and Fraser wanted to know exactly where they were. On board two of them were a dozen of his men, in two teams of six. Each team included a pair of snipers. These teams would be his blocking force. They would rappel from the helicopters a kilometre in from the main sealed road, the EN1, and take up blocking positions in the sand dunes to the west of the target farmhouse. If the terrorists were indeed packing up – his greatest fear at the moment – then the soldiers on those helicopters would stop them from escaping and do their best to free Greeves. If it came to that, Fraser was pessimistic about their chances. His snipers might be able to take out the driver of the getaway vehicle and the front passenger, but that still potentially left one other trigger man who might very well have a pistol at Greeves’s temple. One bullet was all it took to turn historic success into abject failure. The only small consolation was that once those helicopters disgorged his men onto the sand, no X-rays were getting out of Mozambique alive.

‘Dagger, this is Cheetah six,’ came the South African-accented reply. ‘We’ve made good time and are five minutes from the DZ. Your men are keen – already on their ropes, over.’

‘Roger, Cheetah six. Good work. Let me know when they’re on the ground.’

Fraser checked his diver’s watch and allowed himself a small smile. It was almost time for him to leave the C-17. He beckoned to Warrant Officer Class Two Peter ‘Chalky’ White, the squadron sergeant major, and held up both hands to indicate ten minutes’ warning. Fraser switched channels and said to the C-17’s crew, ‘We go in ten, gentlemen.’

He felt the aircraft start to bank. It was a rush, the amount of power at his fingertips, a high Fraser was sure no drug could match. Single malt whisky was the only mind-altering substance he allowed himself, and by god, he would be giving it a nudge when they were back in South Africa later in the day. No matter what happened next.

‘Dagger, this is zero-alpha, over,’ said a Welsh voice through the headphones.

‘Go, Taff.’ Sergeant Hugh Carlisle was one of his signalmen and well known to him after Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, hence the informality in Fraser’s reply. The pug-nosed, tattooed veteran was manning an array of radios, satellite phones and cell phones back at Hoedspruit. Taffy Carlisle was keeping their military and political masters in the UK informed about the progress of the operation, and providing a relay of communications from the two police officers on the beach in Mozambique, who were using the sat-phone Bernard Joyce had stolen from the X-rays.

‘Plod’s in position, Dagger. Vehicle on the beach is ready to turn its headlights on when you need it.
Uncle Tom Cobbly and all in London want to know what’s happening.’

Fraser smiled again. Some at regimental HQ would frown on his decision to accompany the assault teams, rather than stay back and direct the operation from Hoedspruit, but he knew that once the shooting started he wanted to be there. If he failed he would be crucified as an irresponsible glory hound. It was, he reckoned, worth the risk. ‘Roger, Taff. Keep up the good work.’ If it did all go to shit in the next hour the policeman on the ground would take the biggest fall. He was the one who lost his man in the first place.

‘Dagger, this is Cheetah six. Your boys need a new stamp in their passports. They are on the ground. Repeat, all are on the ground, safe, over.’

Fraser acknowledged the South African’s call. The two helicopters which had carried the troops in would now rendezvous with the third, which was groaning under the weight of several two-hundred-litre drums of aviation gas and a portable pump. The three birds would land on a village soccer pitch ten kilometres from the target and refuel. No doubt they’d be fending off some curious bystanders. At the end of the operation – whichever way it went – the helicopters were their ride back to South Africa. The whole assault team plus Greeves and Joyce and the police officers wouldn’t fit on the three birds, so there would be more than one wave. ‘Roger, Cheetah. See you in a little while.’

Fraser switched to the C-17’s internal frequency and confirmed with the pilot of the massive jet transport that they were over the drop zone.

‘Circling now,’ the RAF squadron leader confirmed. ‘Ready when you are, Jonathan.’

‘Well, I’d best be getting ready then. See you back in sunny South Africa.’

The pilots waved to him as he took off his headphones and the navigator reached over to shake his hand. ‘Good luck,’ the man roared over the whine of the aircraft’s engines. Fraser did his best to smile, and climbed down the stairs from the cockpit into the belly of the flying whale.

Around him was a sea of busy yet ordered activity. His men checked each other’s free-fall parachute rigs, oxygen masks and altimeters, and the weapons and diving fins that were secured beneath their parachute straps. Chalky White hefted his boss’s parachute rig and Fraser slid his arms into the harness. White continued to help him rig up with his weapon – an MP-5 – life vest, oxygen, flippers and helmet.

The cargo hold was illuminated by red lights set in the high ceiling, which bathed the men and their cargo in an alien spaceship glow. The men looked like automatons as they shuffled towards the tail of their mother ship.

Tied down to the floor, near the hinge of the giant ramp which would open shortly, were three Zodiac inflatable boats, deflated and packed into separate containers each about the size of a large washing machine. A parachute sat atop each of the PLFs, which stood for ‘parachute load follow’. Fraser and his men would do just that, follow each of the deflated boats to the ocean below once the RAF loadmasters on board the C-17 had dispatched them over the ramp. Once in
the water the boats would be reinflated with bottles of compressed air, and Fraser and the other seventeen men in the main assault force would get the outboards fired up and race in towards the beach, three kilometres from the landing point. The C-17, Fraser knew, was now flying at twelve thousand feet, out of sight and virtually out of hearing of anyone on the ground. If the terrorists did happen to hear the faint, far-off whine of jet engines they would mistake the bird for a passenger aircraft. There was no chance of anyone on shore seeing the men or the compact boats exiting.

‘Five minutes,’ one of the loadmasters yelled, holding up an open hand and waving it in front of all the SAS men he could see. Those who saw him passed on the signal, but the sudden draught of air and the switching on of red jump lights on either side of the lowering ramp told them all it was nearly time.

Fraser loved parachuting – which helped in his line of business, as he had made over five hundred jumps – but for once it was excitement and the fear of what awaited on the ground that preoccupied him, not the ride down. Chalky gave him a thumbs-up, as if to reassure him all would be fine. Fraser nodded and returned the gesture.

The boats rolled over the edge of the ramp. ‘Green on. GO!’

Tom and Sannie huddled at the base of the sand dune which marked the start of the trail up to the farmhouse. They had followed Fraser’s instructions and were not overlooking the target, as Tom would have
preferred. He was anxious to be up there now, keeping an eye on the dwelling and its occupants.

‘You know he’s right,’ Sannie whispered, not for the first time. ‘If we were seen now, that could be disastrous for your Mr Greeves. Also, Fraser’s right to be concerned about his own men. If one of his snipers with their night-sights saw you pop your head over the top of a sandhill he might pot you.’

Tom nodded. She was right, of course. Fraser was right, of course. But that didn’t make him feel any better. For all they knew, the terrorists could be getting ready to cut their losses – literally – and videoing Greeves’s beheading while he and Sannie sat on the beach like a couple of lovers out for a bit of midnight nookie. He checked his watch. It was two minutes to four. Super soldier Fraser and his men were in the water now, according to the sergeant back at Hoedspruit, and should be hitting the beach any minute. Under the plan, Tom and Sannie were to guide the SAS troopers up the trail to the house once they arrived.

A kilometre north of them, out of range of the shooting, was Sarel’s old four-by-four, parked on the edge of the water, its headlights on full beam pointing out to sea. Bernard was in the vehicle, under Sarel’s watchful eye. The lights served two purposes. One, in case Fraser’s GPS coordinates were out, the twin beams would give him a visual fix on the approximate location of the target – though he would know to land a kilometre to the left of them; and two, the headlights were aimed at an angle, pointing towards a gap in the reef that protected Paradise Cove’s beach from the ocean’s swell. The tide was still fairly high,
though it had started to turn. Low tide was not until six fifty-five in the morning, but there was still a risk that one of Fraser’s rubber boats could be holed if it skimmed the top of the rocky reef.

Tom felt sorry for Bernard. He knew the ex-submariner wanted to get into the fight, but Tom had to agree with Fraser’s assessment that with his injuries he would be more of a liability than an asset. Bernard had pleaded with Fraser over the sat phone that he alone knew the layout of the farmhouse, but Fraser had shot that argument down in flames by pointing to the extremely detailed floor plan Bernard had already provided. Tom, too, had seen the house for himself, so Bernard could not even claim to be the only one who knew its exact location. Sarel had sealed Bernard’s fate by mentioning that he even had a GPS setting for the house as he had once led a four-wheel-drive rally through the dunes for a bunch of South African off-road enthusiasts. To make him feel better, Sarel had given Bernard his nine-millimetre pistol and would drive Bernard to the house once it was secured. There was merit, Tom supposed, in as many of them as possible being armed, just in case there was a terrorist sentry they hadn’t accounted for who might spring out of the bush.

Tom shifted his pistol from his right hand to his left and wiped his palm on his shirt. Once again, he felt Sannie’s touch on his arm. He wondered if she was just a touchy-feely sort of a person, or if she felt something of the attraction for him that he couldn’t deny feeling for her. ‘It’ll be fine, man. Stay cool. Listen, I think I hear the boats.’

*

Chief Inspector Shuttleworth hung up on the Prime Minister of Great Britain and started to pace the concrete floor of the aircraft hangar, behind the SAS communications sergeant seated at a folding table littered with phones, laptops and radios.

He wiped his brow. How the hell could it be hot enough for him to be sweating at four in the morning anywhere in the world? He knew, though, that the heat was not the only cause of his perspiration. He had just had to reassure the Prime Minister that an operation he had no part in planning or executing was going according to plan.

The policy advisor from Number 10 was not going to be fobbed off to a signals corps sergeant when the Prime Minister wanted a first-hand update. She demanded to be put through to the senior man on the ground and the sergeant had gladly beckoned the police officer over. ‘PM’s office,’ he said, but Shuttleworth wasn’t to know that the policy advisor had already switched the phone through to the nation’s leader. Shuttleworth had recognised the voice immediately and cobbled together an account of the operation’s progress so far.

It was unfair, he thought, that he was now established in the PM’s mind as responsible for this affair, when it was clearly a military operation. Surely the Prime Minister must understand the chain of command?
He
, after all, had authorised this action on foreign soil. Shuttleworth thought about Tom Furey. God help him. If Greeves was killed in the assault, the Hereford boys would break speed records in pointing the finger at the Met.

Shuttleworth stood by his earlier defence of Furey to Fraser. What worried him now was that his two best men – Tom and Nick Roberts – were both out of the game. According to Bernard, poor Nick was dead, and Shuttleworth wondered if he had been caught in the sort of honey trap that had clearly taken Tom’s eye off the ball the night before Greeves was abducted. They
were
his best, but there was no doubt they had been found wanting. If it went well, if Greeves was brought out alive, then Tom might have a shot at keeping his job if not his rank.

There were lessons for all of them in this fiasco, but they were also lessons taught in basic training.

The SAS signalman raised a hand in the air, his other pressed to his headset. ‘They’re feet dry,’ he said, indicating the assault force had landed on the beach, ‘in case you want to ring the PM back.’

Shuttleworth grimaced. Perhaps he should call the sergeant’s bluff and call Number 10 back. What harm would there be in the Prime Minister’s office thinking he had a key role in the rescue? In for a penny, in for a pound. He picked up the laminated sheet of paper with all the key phone numbers on it, snatched up the satellite phone he had just been using and rang the number.

‘Downing Street situation room,’ a woman said.

‘Get me the Prime Minister. It’s Chief Inspector Shuttleworth, Metropolitan Police.’

Jonathan Fraser was in the lead boat and the first of the raiders to touch the sands of Mozambique as the
Zodiac shushed its way up the sandy shore. It was a small detail, but one he hoped might be remembered.

He had his MP-5 out and pointed ahead of him as he ran, bent double, towards the dune line. Off to his right the South African had extinguished the lights of his four-wheel drive. There was not another soul to be seen on the beach.

Ahead of him he saw a small light. Furey was using his cigarette lighter. It was like something out of a World War Two movie, but the prearranged signal was effective enough. With Chalky behind him and the rest of the assault force now dragging their boats into the moon shadows in the lee of the dunes, he strode towards the two police officers.