you’ve got. You hear me?? Kill them all and quick,” he demanded before hanging up.
The Chairman then hit a speed dial button. The phone answered. He didn’t wait for a hello before screaming down the phone.
“BEAUMONT START TALKING AND DON’T GIVE ME ANY BULLSHIT!!! I AM SO NOT IN THE MOOD. WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED!!!!”
Chapter 78
Williams sat with three of his lieutenants. The operation had just changed dramatically. The initial operation was to have involved an attack on a convoy due to take the UK and Australian Prime Ministers to a cricket match the following day in Bridgetown. They now had to assault the hotel which meant penetrating two suites, each containing a PM and the villa containing Tom and his entourage.
Three target zones, three teams of ten, five snipers and five men waiting as back-up should they be needed. They would hit the three locations simultaneously and with overwhelming force. In order to make the most of the darkness, the teams had to rush, sunrise was a 5.51 a.m. Williams wanted to go in at 4.45 a.m. and be gone long before the first rays of sunlight.
Williams organised his men brilliantly and with ten minutes to spare, everybody was on station and ready to go. He checked in with his lieutenants and got their good-to-go responses.
A few seconds later, he gave the signal to the snipers. Four guards at the entrance to the hotel dropped before his eyes, each killed instantly with head shots. As the bodies slumped to the floor, the three teams were up and running.
A man, dressed in black, watched from the bushes as the three teams had formed up. Three targets he thought. He had to hand it to them, they were very good. They had reacted quickly to the surprise guests and altered their plans accordingly. He had been as surprised as they had when the limo turned up and disgorged its passengers. How did they know where to come? But he didn’t have much time, there were too many, he needed help and fast.
Chapter 79
The Chairman listened to Beaumont whine on pitifully for ten minutes. He was bored.
“Stop,” he commanded. “Enough, so what you’re saying is that Jones had her but that she somehow she got away and he’s dead?”
“Yes.”
“OK. I didn’t like the sneaky little turd but he was a damn good soldier. Just what the hell are we up against?”
Beaumont could see a chink of hope, he may not be dead just yet.
“I’m trying to work that out. They had her on a boat in the middle of the ocean. Ten men and her.”
“You’re sure?”
“Definitely. But one thing sticks in my mind. There’s a note in the file, written by that Reaper guy, the guy the President used last year. He made reference to some fancy martial art the girl and her father practised. He seemed quite impressed by it,” said Beaumont.
“Come on, that girl is fifteen and small for her age. What, she attacked ten grown men?” He pondered the possibility and it seemed extremely unlikely, if not impossible.
“I can’t explain it, nothing else makes sense. Their boat had every conceivable detector, no person or boat could have got within half a mile of them without them knowing. If Jones had been attacked he would have told me.”
The Chairman hung up on Beaumont. He had begun to remember the story from the year before about the hostage situation at schools around the world and the unexplained release of the students. The rumours afterwards were that ninja type men had freed the students with amazing displays of martial arts.
He tried to call Williams. His phone was off. They must be launching the attack. He was too late. Perhaps he was just being silly. They were Beaumont’s scare stories. But what if they weren’t? Williams and his men would be slaughtered.
Chapter 80
The villa was lovely with the main feature being the living area which opened onto a spectacular Roman-style pool. Nobody, however, took any notice of the surroundings. Tom had put the news on the moment they entered the house and all sat either glued to the screen or comforting Zach. The news of his father’s shooting was the major news story on every channel. The story suggested he had disturbed burglars and although wounded, had managed to kill both intruders.
Zach contacted his mother immediately. She had been desperately trying to get hold of him and seemed more concerned about his whereabouts than his father’s condition. He finally discovered that his father was in a drug induced coma to speed healing, some new thing they were trying. None of the injuries were bad and he’d be fine in a couple of weeks.
“Burglars my ass. I ask you, who burgles a house with two Military Police cars sitting outside it?” asked Zach rhetorically as another news reporter proposed the scenario.
“Thank God you warned him he might be a target. It was lucky he had his gun to hand.”
“Yes I warned him but the gun is always there, he even sleeps with his slippers on. He’s always telling me you can never be too prepared. My mum moved into the spare room, she’s been petrified for years that he’ll blow her head off in his sleep.”
“So what did he do about being a target?” asked Tom.
“Nothing, he just said whoever tries to kill him had better have a big set of balls and a damn good aim. They’d only get one chance.”
“Seems he was right,” replied Tristan as he watched the body bags of the ‘burglars’ being removed from Zach’s house.
“He’ll have to be careful now though, I don’t think they’ll…” Lela stopped mid sentence, the colour draining from her face. Her mouth making as if to scream but nothing came out. Everyone was so busy trying to see if she was OK, that they failed to notice what was frightening the life out of her.
Chapter 81
“Lela! Lela! Look at me! What’s wrong?”
Tom didn’t know what to do, one minute she was sitting talking, the next she couldn’t speak and was struggling for breath.
Lela tried to speak but the vision through the window had caused her to go into shock. Her mind could not compute what her eyes were seeing. It just didn’t make sense. Why would nobody look round. They were all just staring at her, she had to get them to look round. They must look and explain it to her or tell her she was dreaming. They had to look!
“Lela! You’re really scaring me now! What’s wrong, talk to me please!!” Tom was on the verge of tears, he didn’t know what to do or what was wrong with her.
