Empire of Gold

The brick of C-4 plastic explosive detonated.

27

In the vault, de Quesada pushed a button on the remote, and watched the image of the bridge – and the twelve people on it – vanish in a flash of light. An explosion rattled the building. He smiled. ‘Now that’s what I call client service.’

He pulled a cord on the back wall. Another concealed doorway opened, revealing a rocky passage descending steeply into the island’s heart. He started down it. Below, the sound of waves echoed through a large enclosed space.

Eddie and Nina raised their heads. The bridge had been obliterated, only truncated stumps left at each end. The two power poles rocked, the cable flapping between them like a skipping rope.

Of the people on the bridge, nothing remained but a red tint to the drifting smoke.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Eddie gasped. Half the assault force had been wiped out in a single blow.

And the other half was under attack. Crackles of automatic gunfire came from the island. Nina shrieked and ducked again as bullets thwacked the vegetation around them.

‘It’s suppressing fire,’ Eddie realised. The drug lord’s men were trying to force the surviving SWAT members to stay down while they escaped.

Probst, with three members of his team by the trucks, had reached the same conclusion. ‘Sniper unit!’ he shouted into his radio. ‘Take out the boats!’

Further along the cliff, beyond the broken bridge, two more men lay in the concealment of a bush, their monstrous Barrett M82 rifles on bipods before them. While the huge weapons were generally used in a sniper role, they were also often applied to anti-materiel tasks; a single .50-calibre round could destroy the engine of any unarmoured vehicle, and quite a few armoured ones.

The snipers already had targets. A jetty, reached by a zigzag path down the island’s less steep seaward side, had three speedboats moored along it. The first man targeted the outboard motor of the boat closest to shore. Even with the waves causing the vessel to bob in the water, at a range of less than three hundred metres it was a simple shot. ‘Firing,’ he said, warning his companion to brace himself as he pulled the trigger.

A burst of flame eight feet long exploded from the Barrett’s muzzle. Looking back through his scope, the sniper saw a hole through the engine wide enough to see blue water. The speedboat wasn’t going anywhere.

His companion lined up the next shot . . .

A new sound over the bursts of fire from the house – a low, flat whoosh—

They looked round – and an RPG-7 round struck the cliff between them, tearing both men apart.

Eddie grimly watched the RPG’s smoke trail drift away. The snipers’ first shot had revealed their position, and de Quesada’s men had responded with immediate overkill.

‘Keep down,’ he told Nina, crawling through the bushes to Kit and Probst. ‘They got your snipers,’ he told the Interpol officers, who reacted with shock. ‘They’ll be going for the boats.’

‘I’ll tell the Coast Guard to intercept,’ said Kit, going to one of the group’s Ford Expedition SUVs.

‘How far away are they?’ Eddie asked.

‘There’s a cutter three kilometres off the coast.’ The Indian began speaking into the radio.

‘Why the fuck are they so far out?’

‘We didn’t want to alert de Quesada,’ said Probst in disgust. ‘For all the good that did.’ He turned to the other men. ‘We have to make sure nobody gets away. Get the rest and go along the cliffs. But keep spread out – they might have another rocket.’

‘Anything I can do?’ Eddie asked as the team moved off.

‘I’m not sure there is even anything we can do,’ the German replied, following his men.

‘Great,’ Eddie muttered. He checked the trucks in the hope of finding a spare weapon, but found only the now worthless tear-gas launchers.

Kit finished his radio call. ‘The Coast Guard are on their way.’

‘How long?’

‘Six or seven minutes before they’re close enough to take any kind of action.’ He drew a pistol. ‘Stay here with Nina. I’ll be with Walther.’

‘Be careful, okay?’ said Eddie.

A humourless smile. ‘I’m not wearing body armour. I will be very careful!’ He hurried after Probst.

Eddie watched them go, frustrated. There had to be something he could do. But with the bridge destroyed, there was no way on or off the island except by boat . . .

Something about that troubled him, but he wasn’t entirely sure why. He returned to Nina. ‘Have you seen anything?’

She shook her head. ‘After that rocket fired, all the guys at this end took off.’

‘Going for the boats.’ He considered that. ‘Which . . . doesn’t make any fucking sense.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘This de Quesada blew up the bridge deliberately, so the only way to escape is by boat – but the path down