Papa made a noise similar to a small bird, that was the signal for the other two men to move in. The three stepped out from their camouflaged positions in amongst Team One. Saki had seen the leader pay particular attention to two wooded areas which is exactly where he had set up the ambushes. Papa could see the look of confusion on the three soldiers’ faces as he now stood in front of them. The look turned to fear as Papa set to work with the Tonfas. Before they had a chance to react, Papa spun the Tonfas into the side of two of their heads and delivered a double blow with the ends of the Tonfas to the soldier who was unfortunate enough to be in the middle of the three. The other two islanders dealt similar blows to their three and four-man teams respectively.
Papa couldn’t help himself, he noticed the camera on the top of the lieutenant’s helmet. He bent down and gave the camera a big smile before whacking it with his Tonfa.
Team One’s screen showed a set of beaming white teeth, somebody was smiling at him. What the hell are they playing at, thought Williams. However, he realised that nobody was fooling around when the wooden shaft came towards him at high speed. The screen went blank and then snowy.
Williams checked the other two screens, they were still on.
Kano and Kisho had a similar situation to Papa, a small wooded area in which to hide. The soldiers had come in amongst them and had actually stepped on Kisho twice. On the ready signal, they had moved in. The Tonfas were a blur as they cracked off one soldier and hit another before spinning back to hit another. With five soldiers, the likelihood of at least one soldier getting to their gun was dramatically increased. Afterall, the soldiers were highly trained professionals in their own right. It was therefore a testament to Kisho and Kano that not one soldier had the chance to think about shooting back such was the speed they moved through the team.
They too noticed the camera on the lieutenant but didn’t throw Williams a smile, they just knocked it out of commission.
As Williams saw the second camera blink out of action, he began to think that a mile may not be far enough away.
“Just keep driving, head to the airport and quick!”
Saki did not have the luxury of knowing where the third team would come from. It had not been one of Williams’ initial targets. So Saki had to guess where they would position themselves for the final assault. He had guessed right as he watched the soldiers crawl through the Spa. It was adjacent to the villa and offered a very private entrance, out of view of the main hotel and numerous bodyguards. Saki wanted to protect the villa himself. These men were there to kill his babies and he would stop them.
He watched the man ready his team, giving them the signal to prepare themselves to slaughter defenceless children. Saki stepped out of his hiding spot, he hadn’t alerted the other islander before he did so. He wanted as many of these guys to himself. With each spin and thrust of the Tonfa, another limb cracked as Saki, like a maelstrom, waded through the soldiers. The only person quick enough to react to his speed and power was the other islander joining the fray just in time to take care of two soldiers. Each soldier was to be hit once, knocked unconscious before being tied up and left for the local police to deal with once the islanders had gone.
Saki had doubled the blows ensuring each of the soldiers who had threatened his babies would remember that night for a very long time. The first blow had deliberately broken a kneecap, shattered an elbow or destroyed a pelvis and the second blow had knocked the men unconscious before they could even react to the pain.
Williams had only travelled another 100 yards before the third camera was knocked out.
“Faster, just get us the hell off this island!” he screamed to the driver.
As his launch left the shore, Saki dialled the hotel and reported three separate disturbances. Within minutes, the grounds of the hotel were lit up and swarming with police and bodyguards who took into custody a large group of heavily armed, semi-conscious soldiers already bound and ready for prison. Each was missing a tooth and had on them a small photo of the UK and Australian PMs. which none of them could explain under questioning.
The three lieutenants, however, had not been left behind with their men. They were tied up and taken to the launch for transportation to The Beautiful Lady where they would be answering questions. Thanks to Tom’s information, their cyanide teeth were removed.
Chapter 83
It had been a very emotional reunion. The launch had sped them out to The Beautiful Lady, anchored just around the coast and out of sight of the villa. Tom and Lela jumped off the launch and into Donald and Rachel’s arms before it had even stopped. Apologies and tears filled the next half hour as the five Kennedys moved into a private study to be on their own.
Once everyone had calmed down, Donald began to explain what they had been doing.
“Before we left for Africa, Saki and I knew that we were being set up. It was not until we got to Africa that we realised how badly. We weren’t just being framed, we were going to be murdered. It was only thanks to Tom and Lela that we survived. When we left Guinea, we flew low level over Africa and landed in the middle of the night, in complete darkness, on Desroches Island, part of the Seychelles. We’d arranged for the Tylanni to meet us there, once she’d been given a complete make-over and change of name. We’d always planned to disappear but not to die in the process. We knew we needed to hide out and we knew that we would be arrested for the assassinations on our return.
Donald paused and looked at his wide-eyed audience who wanted to know more. He continued.
“The plan was that Jim would then take off and after a short while, climb to a normal cruising height and head home. He would claim that we had never boarded the plane and didn’t know where we were. We didn’t expect him to crash. That was a massive shock. Poor Jim, he was a good man. Anyway, we realised that the plane crash wasn’t a complete waste. We were reported dead, so it covered our tracks. It broke our hearts to think how you must have been feeling.”
Rachel burst into tears again, it had been the hardest few weeks of her life. Tom then explained that the crash was no accident and that the moment Jim had reached 12,000 feet, he was doomed. Donald had not known this nor even thought that the crash had been anything other than an accident. He was visibly shaken by the news at how close they had been to dying.
Donald then explained that they had continued to work through the evidence and clues which he and Saki had amassed. They worked out who the next targets would be and began to make their way to Barbados. Saki, however, insisted on going via Peru because he knew that Tom and Lela were going to Machu Picchu. He guessed that if they were going to try to kidnap or murder Tom or Lela, that’s where they would access them most easily.
As the information sank in, Lela blurted out that it must have been Saki who saved Tom from the sniper. Tom and Rachel looked at each other in horror, neither had known anything about it.
That final revelation brought them back to where they were now, having just saved the UK and Australian Prime Ministers.
Tom took over at that point to update his parents and Saki on the intelligence they had and on how Lela had been kidnapped and had escaped. Tom could see that Papa was in trouble. The look on Saki’s face when he heard about Lela’s capture did not hide his feelings which would keep for the time being. Tom went on to explain about Operations Sandy and David and how they had led them to Barbados but that David was still evading them. He kept thinking Camp David but there were over 150 Marines guarding that, never mind the Secret Service.
Chapter 84
