While the others chatted, Bowman closed his eyes. He tried not to think about his family, or the mission. Eventually the faces of his dead wife and daughter faded away. In the empty blackness of his opioid-numbed mind, Bowman found a brief respite from his torment, and he settled into a fitful sleep.
*
They touched down in Libreville five hours later. Ten o’clock in the evening in Gabon. The team snatched up their C8s and deplaned from the jet with the other passengers. They left their personal luggage on the Gulfstream. There was no point taking any non-essential kit with them to Karatandu. They were going into a potential firefight. Mobility and speed would be crucial. Better to keep their individual loads as light as possible. They could collect their holdalls later, once the coup had been successfully crushed and the crew got the all-clear to return the president to his country.
A couple of officials in shiny suits greeted Seguma at the foot of the airstairs. They guided the president and the two diplomats towards a waiting Lincoln Town Car. At the same time, Mallet and the rest of the team circled round to the rear of the Gulfstream to unload their kit. A Short SC.7 Skyvan twin turboprop aircraft was parked on the tarmac seven metres away from the Gulfstream. A sturdy short-distance load-lifter. Ugly but reliable. The Karatandu national flag was affixed to the fuselage and the tailfin. One of the president’s private aircraft, Bowman guessed. A portly loadie in a Karatandan army uniform stood beside the lowered ramp.
As the Gulfstream engines wound down the co-pilot hurried over and opened the rear cargo hold. Webb crawled inside the space, the other soldiers formed a chain and they began transferring the kit from the back of the jet to the Skyvan: the mortar assembly and sights, the Gimpys, the .50 cal rifle, the AWC sniper rifle, the boxes of ammo and shells, the grenades, the Claymore satchels. Like pass-the-parcel. But with deadly hardware instead of birthday presents. They piled everything in the middle of the Skyvan’s boxcar-shaped cabin. The loadie secured the ammo crates with netting, Mallet gave him a thumbs-up to confirm that everything had been loaded into the hold, and then the team hurried over from the Gulfstream.
As they approached the rear loading ramp, Mallet’s phone buzzed. He stopped short as he read through a stream of incoming text messages.
‘What’s the news?’ Loader shouted above the high-pitched whine of the jet engines.
‘Confirmation from Six,’ Mallet said. ‘They’ve established comms with the military base at Marafeni airport.’
‘And?’
‘Everything’s arranged. The escort is waiting for us on the ground with our transport. We’ll be ready to roll out of the gates as soon as we get off the plane.’
‘How many guys in the escort?’
‘A platoon. Fourteen blokes.’
‘Should be enough to deal with any bullshit we might encounter along the way. Checkpoints, roadblocks, rioters.’
Mallet nodded. ‘We should get to the palace for midnight.’
‘If it goes smoothly,’ Bowman added.
‘No reason it won’t.’
‘What about those SF teams coming in?’ Casey asked.
‘The SFSG and SBS guys are en route to Libya now. Due to land at around eleven o’clock our time. They’ll link up with D Squadron and take off around midnight. Which is one o’clock their time. Looks like they’ll reach Marafeni at around six o’clock tomorrow morning.’
‘Any word on the coup?’
‘Nothing yet.’
‘Have they spoken to Mike?’ asked Bowman.
Mallet shook his head slowly. ‘He’s offline.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Six reached out to him half an hour ago for another update. They’re still waiting to hear back. Once they’ve spoken to him, they’ll let us know.’
‘Might be a blackout,’ Loader suggested. ‘Power shortages are a fact of life in Karatandu. If it’s out, the mobile phone network will be down. Or maybe he’s just busy arranging the perimeter defence.’
‘Or it could mean something else,’ Bowman said.
‘The last time Six checked in with Mike, the capital was fairly quiet. We’ve got no reason to think the situation has changed.’
‘If the rebels are moving in early, Mike will be in the shit.’
‘We’ve got no proof of that,’ Mallet snapped. ‘The plan stays the same. We’ll get in, get the family and guard them until the strike force gets in. Then we can go home and celebrate. Or in Tiny’s case, get plastered and spend the night wondering what it must feel like to be over five foot tall and attractive to women.’
‘Sod off, John.’
They ascended the loading ramp and strapped themselves into the seats on either side of the cabin, their C8 rifles placed across their laps and the rucksack filled with emergency kit between Mallet’s feet. The tailgate closed, the twin engines hummed. The Skyvan taxied across the runway, catapulted forward, and suddenly they were climbing into the murky night.
No way back now.
Sixty minutes later, they landed in Karatandu.
Twenty
A hot breath of wind hushed across the runway, thrusting through Bowman’s hair as he stepped off the loading ramp. Shortly after eleven o’clock at night in Karatandu. The western coast of Central Africa. The heat was oppressive, like being smothered in a hot towel. The air was thick with the smell of hard rain, mixing with the potent tang of jet fuel and the faint whiff of woodsmoke. Apricot lights shimmered in the impermeable darkness beyond the airport perimeter. To the north of the tarmac stand, a hundred and fifty metres away from the Skyvan, stood a decrepit terminal building. A sign was draped above the entrance: WELCOME TO KARATANDU, THE NEW HOPE OF AFRICA.
The rest of the team glided down the ramp as a pair of soldiers marched quickly over from a tented encampment behind a chain-link fence, to the east of the
