“Thank you again Professor and please pass on my sincere gratitude to your team.”
“Thank you Mr President and goodbye.”
As the professor made his way back to the disaster site and his team, Smith excused himself and called Beaumont.
“Hello,” answered Beaumont instantly.
“Hi. NASA have just given us an update. They’ve found no evidence of any meteorite at the site.”
“Hmm, looks like our Mr Kennedy may face some interesting questions,” sniggered Beaumont more to himself than to Smith.
“Anything else?” he asked on a more serious note.
“Not yet. But things are moving quickly, we’re probably a couple of hours ahead of schedule. My guys have confirmed that samples of explosive residue have already been recovered and it’ll be a matter of hours for the test results to be confirmed. After that, things should move very quickly.”
“Excellent. Keep me up to date.”
Beaumont ended the call and checked the time, it was only 3.00 a.m. Things were moving very quickly. In fact, perhaps a little too quickly. If anybody looked too closely at response times, they might realise that things were just a little too neat. The exercise involving both the US Army Engineers and the Equatorial Guinean Army had been arranged with a little less notice than would be expected. In fact, it was unprecedented how quickly it had been arranged, to the extent that the unit had been airlifted rather than shipped. This had caused chaos with transport planes of food and ammunition scheduled for front line troops and had resulted in critical shortages. Questions had been asked but fortunately Beaumont had been able to quash them before they were escalated to the Joint Chiefs Office. The Joint Chiefs Office was Beaumont’s only weak spot. It was headed up by a General Powers, whose formal title was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was the boss of all the US armed services, squeaky clean and completely incorruptible and unfortunately for Beaumont, the most respected man to have held the position.
He simply had to go. And very, very soon. He had been timetabled to be taken care of the following month but Beaumont now decided that he could not afford to wait, the schedule would have to change.
Beaumont fired up his laptop and accessed the emergency contact list for the government’s key personnel. The list was continually updated and recorded the exact whereabouts of the Government’s top 200 staff. Selecting the ‘Armed Forces’ tag, a list of names appeared, headed by General Powers. Beaumont double clicked on the General’s name and waited for his diary to appear.
As he waited, he wondered how they would do it. General Powers was not going to be the easiest target, a battle hardened war hero with an incredibly loyal team of bodyguards. Beaumont was going to have to use his very best men. As the page came up, Beaumont smiled. This was a very good day, General Powers was at a conference in South Africa and Beaumont had his very best men not far away.
He dialled the number and the phone answered.
“Jones speaking,” answered the man.
“Hi, it’s me, I’ve got a job for you.”
“What?”
Beaumont explained what needed to be done.
“Not a problem, we can be there in less than four hours.”
“Good, call me when it’s done.”
They ended the call. Jones was Beaumont’s man in the Committee’s army and he and his team had carried out the majority of the assassinations over the previous year. The Committee’s army had four Commanders, Smith, Jones, Johnson and Williams. Whoever had attributed their pseudonyms had not spent long, they were the four most common names in America.
Smith was the most senior of the four Commanders and normally reported directly to The Chairman of the Committee. He made Beaumont nervous. Although Beaumont had appreciated The Chairman seconding his best team to him, he felt he could never fully trust Smith. In addition, Smith was perhaps a little too honourable and Beaumont was unsure as to whether he would have accepted the mission to assassinate General Powers.
Jones, on the other hand, was just happy to be busy. He was disappointed not to have been involved in the Equatorial Guinea mission. However, Beaumont had pacified him by explaining that he needed him available to handle other missions. As back up to Smith, Beaumont had stationed Jones in nearby Congo with a team of men. It seemed that his prudence was about to pay off. The only man with the power to ask too many questions would be dead before the week-end was over.
Chapter 18
Tom looked at Lela warily.
“What the hell do you mean practice?”
Lela didn’t answer, she just stood up and walked towards Yuri. Tom didn’t know what to do, should he follow? He couldn’t just let Lela walk over to them alone. But then what could he do? He’d probably get in her way. But then he didn’t want to look like a coward, so he got up and followed her anyway.
“What are you doing?” he whispered in her ear as he caught up with her.
“Don’t worry, I’m just going to have some fun.”
The twinkle in her eye had turned rather wicked.
“Oh God,” said Tom, he knew that look.
“Just stay behind me, out of my way, OK,” said Lela. Her fun tone disappeared as she saw Yuri push a new first year to the ground because he had dared to be in front of him in the queue.
Tom dropped back a step and then fell back another step for good measure as he noticed Lela’s demeanour change again.
Lela approached Yuri who was still blissfully unaware of her presence. Lela stopped when she reached the First Year student on the floor behind Yuri and helped him up. Tom could not help but notice how small Lela looked in comparison to the first year let alone Yuri who towered over them both. Lela was very small or as his mother said, petite.
Lela checked round to see where Tom was. He knew what was coming and took a third step back.
Lela was right behind Yuri who was too busy piling his plate with food to notice her. She took a step to her left, tipped her right shoulder down and barged into Yuri, her shoulder crashing into his back as she stepped forward. Yuri’s plate fell, emptying its contents down his front and an audible wince could be heard as he stifled a scream.
Silence fell across the restaurant. Yuri had not moved, baked beans were dripping from his hoody, some had even managed to get into his pocket. His trousers were soaking wet.
“Oh, sorry about that,” said Lela.
On hearing her voice, a disorientated Yuri realised what had happened to him. He spun around.
“What the hell…” He dropped his gaze to see who had done this to him and saw two huge brown eyes staring up at him. He knew those eyes very well.
“Oh hi Yuri, I didn’t see you there, sorreee, ” she said, changing her tone from cute to very ugly.
The last time they had met, Lela had got the better of him but things were going to be very different this year.
“What do you think you’re doing?” said Yuri moving closer to Lela who didn’t flinch. “Your fancy moves don’t impress me anymore,” he added.
From the corner of her eye, Lela was monitoring the movements of his new gang members. As Yuri moved closer to her, she noted the oriental ones were well trained, their eyes moved well and their posture was good. She might even get some decent practice this year. She turned her attention back to Yuri, having not even bothered to register what he had said, although she had sensed every movement of his body.
She curled her nose up as Yuri got closer.
“Euoouh, what is that smell? Yuri you really should get that potty training sorted or wear the nappies, the toilets are over there,” she shouted across the restaurant pointing to the toilets.
