The Watchman (35 page)

For a few seconds there was no response. The Somali boat continued on its course, the men still waving their rifles, although the shooting had stopped. The Lynx held its position, edging backwards to follow the boat's course, the pilot doing a superb job of holding it steady. I imagined the count-down going on in his head and waited for the spurt of a missile leaving its pod. Would they, wouldn't they?

I found myself hoping they would. This shit had gone on long enough.

Finally the pirates saw sense. The helmsman waved his arm and the boat's nose dipped and turned, immediately losing way, the members of the crew grabbing the sides to hold their balance. As soon as it was pointing away, a heavy spray burst out from the stern and the twin engines powered them on a wide curving course to follow the other two craft to the north.

Seconds later, they were mere dots in the distance and the Lynx was hovering alongside us, the crew member in the doorway grinning and signalling for me to slow and stop.

I smiled back and cut the engine. I'd never been so pleased to obey an order in my life.

The pleasure was short-lived. As they sent down a crewman with a stretcher and winched Tober gently on board, eager hands pulling him inside the fuselage, I happened to glance back at the smoke rising near Kamboni. Something about it looked wrong. At first I couldn't figure out what it was. I'd seen lots of smoke from many war zones and scenes of destruction. And this didn't look right.

Then it hit me.

It had dispersed too quickly. It was now little more than a wisp of grey drifting lazily along the shoreline. Yet I was remembering all those rocket-propelled grenades Tober and I had seen stacked up inside and outside the villa. If a drone strike had hit that lot, the explosion would have been bigger, the smoke darker and longer-lasting as the fabric of the building continued to burn long after the initial bang.

But there was none of that.

It was a miss. Musa was made of Teflon.

I heard a whistle and looked up. The winch was coming down again, this time with a harness for me. The crewman guiding it was signalling for me to get it on fast so they could get out of the area.

I waved it away and signalled that I was going back to land.

This wasn't finished yet.

T
om Vale walked up the steps into the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, and was met as usual by a Marine guard, immaculately ironed and polished. He'd been in this building several times before, but still felt as if he were stepping into a magic kingdom.

He blamed Hollywood.

‘Mr Vale, sir,' the man said briskly, handing him a visitor's badge. ‘Mr Scheider said you were coming and to take you right up. If you would follow me, sir.' He swivelled sharply on his heels and stiff-legged away, leading Vale without delay through the internal security screens and up to the second floor.

They stopped at a doorway at the end of a long corridor, and the marine knocked and asked Vale to go inside. He found himself in a long room with a conference table complete with two communications consoles, a tray of juices and a line of empty chairs. A huge flat-screen monitor bracketed by two US flags dominated the end wall.

‘Tom.' Scheider greeted him and indicated a younger man. ‘You know Dale Wishaw, I believe?'

Vale shook hands and murmured a greeting. Why he was here was a mystery. A surprise invitation had been waiting for him on arrival at the office, and intrigued by the air of urgency, he had immediately called for a car to bring him here. The car was one of the tangible signs of his new, albeit temporary role in MI6 following Colin Moresby's resignation. He had felt little sympathy for the man's abrupt departure, and no hesitation in assuming the position of special operations director while the department was being reformed.

Coffee was served and Scheider complimented him on his new role. ‘Sorry to be so guarded about the reason for this invitation, Tom. I wanted to keep the spread of information strictly limited. You'll soon see why.' He put down his cup and nodded to Wishaw.

The younger man picked up a remote, indicated the monitor on the wall and said, ‘Private showing, Tom, just for you. If news of this got out we'd have them queuing down the hallway three deep and that guy Portman would be a Hollywood legend.'

‘Who?' Vale stared over his coffee cup and the American flushed.

‘Quite.' Scheider threw Wishaw an unhappy look. ‘Run the footage.'

The image on the screen was hazy at first, a jumble of shadows and shades of grey, reminding Vale of the first unflattering pictures of the moon so many years before. This looked like water but he couldn't be certain.

His chest went tight as he realized what he was seeing.

Sensing Vale's thoughts, Scheider signalled for Wishaw to pause the film. ‘What you're about to see,' he said, ‘is camera footage of a Hellfire strike fired from a Reaper MQ-9 drone over the coast of Somalia.' He smiled grimly. ‘I think you know the coordinates so I won't bore you with the details. The missiles are totally self-destruct, so nobody gets to send any coded parts to a technical lab and find out where it was made.' He nodded at Wishaw to continue.

The film showed the ground racing by as if being pulled on a rail. Then the camera steadied and locked on a central point, the focus becoming sharper, more real. The image now showed solid terrain, with recognizable trees and shrubs around the faint line of a road or track. Moments later the man-made lines of a building appeared, trembling momentarily before growing, almost filling the screen. A vehicle – Vale guessed a pickup truck – stood nearby. Men, too, some standing still, others moving around slowly, unhurried.

Totally unaware, he reflected, of what was coming their way.

‘Knock, knock,' Scheider said softly as the target area was magnified, trembling again as the camera lens picked up the image and fed in more detail. Then a flickering, lightning-fast movement showed to one side of the screen and a vast dust cloud rose upwards and outwards, obliterating the square shape, the truck and the men. A delayed flash spread out from north of centre as the Hellfire found its target.

‘Nice shot.' Scheider tapped his desk. ‘Let's hope Musa was home to enjoy the visit.'

‘Amen to that,' Vale murmured, and asked for a copy of the footage, to which Scheider agreed. He wanted to check the results for himself. Not that he distrusted the Americans; they had done what he had been unable to achieve, which was to place a missile right down Yusuf Musa's scheming throat. But he'd known deadly enemies escape certain death before, in spite of incontrovertible evidence, and this was one man he was determined not to allow off the hook.

He put down his cup and wondered if this was a dry office. As early as it was, he was suddenly in need of something stronger.

When he returned to his office, he learned that Portman had not boarded the Lynx with Tober, but had instead returned to land, for reasons unknown.

W
aiting for a target to present itself is the hardest part of making a kill. It requires patience and stamina in equal measure, and a fair degree of luck.

At least the conditions were ideal – at least, as ideal as I could wish. A friendly breeze was coming off the ocean, light but not excessive, bringing with it the smell of salt and a promise of warm air. The few clouds in evidence were tufts of cotton wool, high in the sky and inoffensive, strung out across the Indian Ocean in silent decoration.

Down on the beach area to my front, the sand was dotted with small birds, burrowing for breakfast and snatching at bits of debris brought in by the tide, tossing them aside in disgust before going on to the next piece of flotsam.

I checked once more that the ghillie net was securely in place and that nothing had slipped from the overhead covering of camouflage I'd put in place during the night when I'd arrived and dug in. Then I took a sip of water. Dehydration can be a killer.

A movement caught my eye, and I felt a flutter of tension in my gut. Tension is OK. As long as it doesn't take over the motor senses and induce the shakes – or the opposite and just as bad – paralysis. I relaxed as a white pelican cruised by, effortlessly elegant as it followed the waterline and used the air currents to keep it aloft, a gentle giant among the smaller birds in the region.

It reminded me of Piet and his beloved Daisy, now waiting several clicks inland, checking fences while waiting for my call. Not quite so elegant as the pelican, but just as confident when off the ground.

More movement, this time land-based. I checked the scope on the AK and watched as a group of figures appeared. They were about three hundred metres away and walking down the beach from the villa, moving over the damaged area of sand and debris thrown up by the Hellfires. Vectoring in too low and taking out a large area of dunes right in front of the building, they had thrown up, according to Vale, a misleading image which had convinced analysts that the building and everyone in it was toast.

Vale, though, like me, had found otherwise. The villa had survived and the pirates were still in place, now reinforced with extra men and boats and no doubt counting on the strike's failure as an omen for the future.

Down at the water's edge, two of Musa's skiffs were anchored in the shallows, long black slugs against the blue sea and white sand. Their on-board shelters were up and ready to go, and I figured they would soon be heading out to the Gulf in search of prey.

Nothing had changed. It's what pirates do.

The two men in the lead were easy enough to identify. Musa, tall and arrogant, clan chieftain, al-Shabaab member and a man with a deep hatred of the west. And with him, Xasan, chubby fixer, go-between and suck-up with an abiding love of money and the ability to talk a good talk while managing to avoid risking his own skin.

The two men walking behind them carried AK-47s, but looking bored by the regular morning walk Musa made them take just so he could have them watch his back. According to drone footage they followed the same route out along the beach and back twice a day, invariably at the same times. It showed the amazing arrogance of the man, assuming himself to be beyond the reach of any punishment just because his enemies had tried once and failed.

I zeroed in on Xasan. He was lagging a half-step behind Musa, walking with the great man but obviously not his equal. He didn't look any happier than the guards and appeared to be finding it difficult to walk on the sand, which I put down to his soft build and lack of exercise. I hoped he was suffering as much as he looked. He wore a loose robe with a simple belt around his large gut, and looked more like a comic figure from a Disney film than the extremist he really was. But soft as he appeared, he was no less dangerous in his way than the man he was following.

Musa, on the other hand, looked ready for the day. He was dressed as I'd seen him the very first time on this same stretch of beach, climbing out of his boat and striding up to the villa: in a traditional
kameez
under a waistcoat, with a small skullcap on his head. The belt of shells across his chest and a cell phone in a pouch completed his attire. As always, he walked like a man on a mission, head high and chest out, and I wondered how much of it was for his own benefit rather than for his followers.

I stretched out in the shallow trench I'd dug myself, bracing my toes against the dried roots of an ancient palm tree that had seen better days. It had lost its crown, but cast enough of a shadow to give me ample cover against the sun. The ghillie net and a layer of crackly palm fronds did the rest, making me invisible from all but the closest observation.

I checked the beach to the south, beyond the villa and the fishermen's huts of Dhalib, and further, the town of Kamboni, which was just out of my line of sight. A distant clutch of boats lay moored at the water's edge, the building heat haze already making them shimmer and bob about. There was no sign of other movement, though, which was good.

I bent back to the scope and the targets leapt into view. The two guards had veered off towards the water, and I guessed they had been told to go check out the boats. After what I'd done to the previous three, I was surprised they didn't have a twenty-four-hour armed lookout posted. But maybe Musa was as guilty as anyone would be in this remote and deserted spot of that simple belief: that lightning couldn't possibly strike more than once.

Don't believe it, pal.

In spite of the guards walking away, Musa hadn't relaxed his pace, and was clearly intent on covering some ground before getting down to the business of the day. Maybe it was some kind of zen thing; preparing himself by focussing on exercise and isolation, and clearing his mind ready for making plans. Although with the fat man slopping along behind him and puffing like an old horse, I doubted it could have been very peaceful.

I checked the suppressor was good, and flicked off a stray fragment of leaf that had fallen on to the barrel. I could take my time; get it right.

I'd spoken to Vale twice since coming back. He hadn't been happy with my plan, but wasn't in a position to argue. What he had done was provide me with the latest intel from camera drones, courtesy of his friends in the CIA, and get Piet on stand-by for a pickup.

‘If you clicked your fingers,' he'd told me, sounding faintly envious, ‘you'd have most of the Basement joining you on this job – and they'd do it for free. Tober's got a lot of friends who all figure they owe you for pulling him out.'

‘Nice of them. I left a man once before; I won't do it again. How is Tober?'

‘He's fine. Restless, but fine. Pryce says hi, too.' I knew he was desperate to ask questions but it would have to wait. I said I'd be in touch and signed off.

The two guards were coming back from inspecting the boats. But they weren't watching Musa, as they should have been doing; they were staring up at the top of the beach and the area beyond.