Weapon of Vengeance (6 page)

Her words and how they were delivered created tension in the room. Mohite's face displayed increased hostility. Even Chance looked uncomfortable. Ravinder masked his irritation; though he had half a mind to remind her that with Pakistan as a neighbor, terror strikes on Indian cities were something they expected almost every day.

Minutes later the meeting broke up. Not on a great note.

*   *   *

The A9 highway from Colombo to Vavuniya got worse and worse. Ruby saw little cultivation on either side of the road. Brown stubble predominated. Barring an odd civilian vehicle and more frequent army trucks, there was little traffic.

Lounging in the rear sear, Mark had again dozed off. Though tired, Ruby was wide awake, her mind boiling with thoughts that would not let her sleep.

The sight of soldiers and their surroundings felt strangely familiar to Ruby. Then she knew why. The bleakness was so similar to what she had recently encountered in the Congo.

Again her mind flew back … to the last time Mark and she had operated together. That day too, they had been in a similar vehicle.

*   *   *

Ruby folded the newspaper she'd been speed-reading and let it fall to the floor of the five-door, eight-seat Toyota Alphard. The engine was running so the air conditioner could beat back some of the stifling Congo heat. She threw a glance at the house across the street before checking her watch again. Only an hour had bled away. It felt like longer. Tired of sitting still, Ruby shifted, trying to make herself more comfortable.

“The wait is always a bitch,” Mark, sitting beside her, murmured; as usual he didn't miss a thing.

“It is these bloody vests,” Ruby muttered, trying to wipe away the sweat that was making it stick to her skin.

“Yeah! But I'd rather be hot than not have these babies when there's lead flying around.”

Ruby was about to reply when her Motorola, a frequency-hopping piece of work, crackled to life.

“They are coming out now.” Mission Control had a clipped and calm voice. It was very upper crust, very British.

The words unleashed a jolt of adrenaline in Ruby. Her spine straightened. Her brain craved more oxygen. Hands grabbed up her weapon.

Like Mark, she was carrying a 5.56
×
45mm NATO, thirty-round Heckler & Koch G36K. She loved its heft; a lightweight and low-maintenance weapon, it was constructed almost entirely of tough carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer. Its barrels had been exchanged to give it a carbine profile, making it more useful for close-quarters use, where long-range accuracy was not a requisite. The fight ahead was likely to be up close and personal. And bloody.

“Nitpickers?” Mission Control again, asking and alerting them simultaneously. The code word showed MC's kinky sense of humor.

“Ready to nitpick.” Chance Spillman's voice carried the undercurrent of a man readying for action. Despite its tautness, it ignited a storm of feelings in Ruby. Desire. Regret. Confusion. The nagging feeling of something left unfinished, unresolved.

How in hell did Chance manage to slip past the guard and get to me … to the real person behind the façade I maintain?
Ruby had always worked to ensure no one ever got under her skin. She had always kept her heart secure, merely allowing the body to fulfill its needs with casual, meaningless flings.
Despite that, Chance managed to touch my heart. Damn! It does not matter. He did … now I have to deal with it … the why is no longer relevant … What do I do now? I want him back in my life, but …

“He is the enemy, Ruby.” Her mother's voice tugged at her. Rehana had been miffed when Ruby told her she was moving in with Chance. “You are forgetting your purpose. He will never understand or accept what our people have suffered.”

“But I love him, Mom.”

“More than your people? More than our cause? You are ready to throw everything away … everything that we suffered to ensure you are trained and ready when the time comes for you to act.”

Unsure, conflicted, Ruby had faltered. Love, a deep caring and wanting she had never experienced before, pulled her to Chance. Love for her mother and her cause pulled her away from him. It had torn her apart. Not allowing her to commit and yet trying to cling to him.

She knew she needed to sit down and talk with Chance. Something they had not been good at doing even when living together. So many unsaid, unfinished things still hanging between them. Chance had to be aware of them too. Yet, of late, it was he who was avoiding talking, something that had been her choice earlier.

What goes around comes around.
The thought discomfited her. Ruby pushed it away.
Wandering minds get people killed
. Too many people had drilled that into her. She focused on the mission and checked the deployment again.

Chance was one of the five MI6 agents here, the one controlling the four snipers ranged around the house. She thought it was a clever deployment.

Ruby rewarded herself with a proud grin; she was the designated Operational Commander for this mission, and it had been her plan.

The target house was a sad-looking, dilapidated bungalow on the outskirts of Kinshasa, the capital of Congo, known until 1997 as Zaire; the third-largest country in Africa by area and the fourth most populous. Torn apart by warfare since its inception, the vast land had made no progress, and was one of the poorest countries in the world. Estimates were that even today about 1,250 people died daily due to war and related causes, like hunger and malnutrition.

In better times, the bungalow, with its red-tiled roof, would have housed some high-ranking Belgian official. However, most of the tiles had fallen or broken, leaving ugly gaps, like missing teeth. Now it was occupied by a handful of Lord's Resistance Army terrorists … kidnappers, actually.

Ruby knew the LRA, despite its grand-sounding name, was a small group of about one hundred men, women, and adolescents, who usually operated in Congo's northeastern province of Orientale. The group had come to the attention of MI6 because it had managed to lay hands on the British ambassador and his wife, and were now holding the couple hostage for a large ransom and for freedom for their thuggish colleagues languishing in Congo jails. The kidnap had been pure luck (for the LRA) and sublime stupidity (by the ambassador, who had disregarded basic security).

And now we're in this hellhole to bail out the nerd and his wife.

Ruby's fingers instinctively checked her weapon's load and confirmed it was set on single-shot fire mode, since the semiauto- or auto-fire mode would not bode well for the health of the kidnap victims. Her feet began to flex inside her black, rubber-soled, lace-ups, getting ready to fly toward the target. Her fingers checked the weapon's magazine again; the only visible sign of her insecurity.

Up ahead, the door with peeling paint opened and two men tentatively emerged. Both young; the one in front barely out of his teens. Both were toting AK-47 automatics; not surprising. Cheap and easily available, it was the weapon of choice of Terror Central. They halted on the porch, surveying the area outside.

The porch ran right around the house. Beyond it was the so-called garden, mostly overgrown grass. The garden ended in a six-foot-high wall, which like the rest of the bungalow was also in disrepair. Beyond it ran the road on which Ruby and her team were deployed. The road was bereft of traffic. In the distance, half a klick away, a handful of children were playing, and occasional shouts of laughter carried with the wind. In closed, air-conditioned cars, none of the agents or paramilitaries heard them. The two terrorists must have heard them, since the children held their attention for a moment before they shifted their attention elsewhere.

“Bloody amateurs!” Mark snickered, the G36K almost lost in his huge hands, noting that the scouts had their rifles slung on their shoulders and not carried in the half-port position, so they could swing into action instantly, should the need arise. And the need was going to arise. Soon.

Ruby nodded agreement; no place for amateurs.

The two kidnappers did not venture out to the road, something any scout worth his salt would have done. Even if they had, unlikely they would have spotted the two concealed cars, one on either side of the road. The vehicles on the other three sides of the bungalow were also safely tucked away.

It was several minutes before the two scouts were satisfied. Then the younger one went back inside; again with that same casual gait. Another minute ticked away before he emerged again. Following were two more gunmen, also barely out of their teens, but this pair held their rifles in battle positions and appeared more alert.

They will die first
. She was certain that Chance would ensure that; it was the expedient thing to do.

Following this pair came a short, portly Caucasian man, standing out whitely among the blacks. He had his arm around an equally short but slightly built Caucasian woman. Judging by her halting gait and how the man supported her, she seemed to be sick.
Or wounded
. Ruby noted.

“That's our man,” Ruby breathed as she recognized the ambassador. No one replied. Each was now readying for action. They knew the signal would be coming any second. Nerves drew tauter. Breathing began to even out, as precombat jitters settled down.

Eight more gunmen emerged. Gun women too. This latter lot arrayed themselves around the hostages and moved toward the yellow minibus parked outside the gate. A handful seemed alert, but none were all that careful. Sure, no one would have known where they were if it had not been for one of their lot who had turned Judas for the silver thrown at him by MI6. Of course, it had been a rather big bag. Ruby wondered which, if any, of them it was.

Will he live to enjoy the loot?

“Now!” Ruby half whispered as they stopped near the minibus, trying to second-guess Mission Control, who was located with the sniper facing the main door and would have a bird's-eye view of the bungalow. Once they got into the vehicle, the job would become much more difficult.

“Sundown!”

She was right.

The code word cracked out of the radio. The Controller's voice retained its British cool, stiff upper lip.

A scant second later, the sharp crackle of the team's sniper rifles rang out. The four kidnappers closest to the hostages fell; the two extra-alert ones among them.

Nitpicking had begun.

Four down. Eight to go.

That was the last thought in Ruby's head as she levered open the door and flew out, her weapon in her left hand—which was not her master hand, but that did not bother her, she had long ago trained herself to marksman standards with both hands, just one more of the prices she'd had to pay for being a woman in a man's job.

She had barely exited when a battered maroon van turned the corner and began to nose its way down the potholed road.

At the same time, three women on foot came around the bend to the left; they hit the road just meters away from the terror cluster.

Damn!
Ruby cursed. Collateral damage would not go down well on her record.

She was on her third stride when the first shot left her weapon. Though almost flying, her shot did not miss. Beside her, Mark's weapon spit lead a millisecond later. Another kidnapper fell.

The team's sniper rifles crashed out again. More terrorists fell. The odds were improving. Every inbound agent was firing as fast as they could.

The terrorists still standing had turned to face their attackers and their guns thundered too. So none of their bullets were aimed at the hostages.

Reacting smartly, the ambassador had dropped to the ground, dragging his wife down with him.

The terrorists' lack of training was evident; they were firing blindly before they had even registered their targets.

But there was nothing amateurish about the bullets that zipped past her. However, with hyped-up nerves and the kill-or-be-killed instinct overruling everything, Ruby and her team raced in. No other options; they had to kill before they were killed.

The maroon van, seeing all hell break loose ahead, screeched to a halt and began reversing as fast as the driver could make it go. The three women huddled in a screaming cluster on the dirt. One stopped screaming as a passing bullet found her. The screams of the other two grew louder, but were now no more than a part of the background, as were the gunfire and screams of the dying.

By time Ruby fired her third shot, all twelve terrorists were down. Two, a thirty-something man and one of the younger women, were writhing on the ground, moaning. She shot both of them, putting one bullet through each head as she weaved past to the ambassador.

He was huddled in the dust, his arms wrapped around his wife. She was screaming, an ululating, keening sound that set Ruby's teeth on edge. Controlling the urge to slap her into silence, Ruby reached down to grab him. She did not see the beardless teenager, with blood staining his chest, fallen beside the ambassador, reach for the pistol in his waistband. She became aware of him only when Mark's weapon crackled to life behind her and he died with a sharp, short scream.

Ruby froze.

Damn! That was close.

She cursed herself before throwing a grateful look at Mark. He gave a fleeting half salute as he continued checking the others for signs of life. Another must have been showing some, since Mark's weapon spit again, the shot echoing away in the now silent surroundings.

Ruby hoisted up the ambassador; his wife followed in tow as he clutched her. They hustled toward the Toyota, which had shot forward as soon as the last shot faded away.

The two women passersby huddled down on the road had stopped screaming. Shell-shocked. The playing children had faded away. The maroon van was gone. Barring the thrumming of Toyota engines, the silence was complete. And it felt deafening.

Just eighty-seven seconds had elapsed, and twelve kidnappers had forfeited their lives.