clear, unobstructed view of the lad.
Henry thought he saw the twitch of a smile in the corner of the Asian’s mouth. His head rose slightly and he looked at Henry across the gap that separated them.
Several cars hurtled past in the fast lane.
Henry spotted something in the young man’s right fist. It looked like the top of a pen. Henry knew exactly what it was. A button. A detonator. Attached to a bomb that was strapped to his chest.
Henry had been here once before, face to face with a suicide bomber. Last time, in the backstreets of Accrington, he’d been lucky. A mis-connection meant the device failed to explode. Since that moment, Henry knew he never wanted to be in that position again. He knew he would not be so lucky next time. This time.
The young man raised his right hand.
Several things happened.
Henry screamed, ‘TAKE HIM DOWN!’ to the firearms officers.
The young man shouted something, words that were blocked by the wind, but Henry knew he was saying that Allah was great.
The firearms officer on the other side of the car stepped sideways, raised and aimed the Glock, bringing it up into the point of an isosceles triangle formed with his locked arms.
The young man lifted his thumb in a gesture designed to show that he was now going to press the detonator in his hand, blow himself up and whoever else he could take with him.
Henry cringed and cowered away, as though turning his back to the situation would protect him from a bomb blast.
SEVEN
Steve Flynn was looking at one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen in his life. He adjusted the peak of his tatty baseball cap to reduce the relentless glare of the African sun in his eyes, squinted and did a dreamy double-take just to make sure. But there was no doubt about it, even from this distance. The young woman was something special.
Flynn was in the cockpit of the sportfishing boat Faye2, carefully manoeuvring her backwards into the tight mooring space alongside Ray Boone’s boat, Shell, when the woman appeared on the shaky wooden quayside, walking from the direction of Boone’s houseboat tethered in the next creek. Just for a moment Flynn lost concentration and almost scraped Boone’s older boat, a mistake that would have left him more red-faced than he already was. Flynn was proud of the way he handled boats.
Boone himself emerged from the galley and glanced sideways at Flynn as he passed him at the wheel. Boone winked smugly and said, ‘Spotted her, huh?’ and continued out on to the rear deck. Flynn’s eyebrows arched. He reversed the last few inches into position and Boone stepped ashore with the mooring ropes, looping them over two wooden stanchions. He then walked towards the beautiful woman, said a couple of words into her ear and embraced her gently. Her face widened into a wonderful smile, and she then gazed lovingly at the old hound dog that was Ray Boone. She said something softly to him, her green eyes sparkling shyly.
Flynn killed Faye2 ’s Volvo engines and the boat he’d come to love over the past eighteen months became silent, rocking gently in the river current. He slid off the pilot’s seat, walked out on to the deck and rolled the narrow gangplank across to the quayside. He then stood there with his hands on his hips waiting for Boone to tear his attention away from this stunning woman and remember he had a guest to attend to.
Finally Boone looked at Flynn, a broad, proud smile across his weather-ravaged features, an expression that knocked about ten years off his grizzled face.
‘Hey, pal — permission to come ashore,’ he called, and gestured to Flynn.
Flynn shot across eagerly to meet Boone’s lady, the one he’d had an earful about over the last six hours. He had started to believe she was actually either a figment of Boone’s tropical-sunshine-addled imagination or something far worse — a wizened old hag who Flynn would have to pretend was as beautiful as described.
But no. Boone, the old time crim, had come up trumps and was not fantasizing, as evidenced by the slender female who now stood alongside him with one arm draped intimately around the older man’s thickening waist.
Boone beamed and announced, ‘Flynn — meet Michelle, love of my sordid life and saviour of my soul, after whom my boat is named and who is also a great sportfisher and sailor.’
Flynn’s right hand extended and she shook it with a soft hand of her own, blessing Flynn with a magical welcoming smile that gripped his heart then slam-dunked it right down through the hoop.
‘Welcome to the Gambia, Steve,’ she said in a lilting West African accent, the words almost singing from her lips. ‘Boone has told me all about you. He called you a complete bastard,’ she said innocently. Boone’s crooked smile stayed firm as Flynn gave him a sardonic glance. ‘But,’ she laughed and added, ‘as honest as the day, fair and firm. At least that’s what he wanted me to say.’
Flynn chuckled. ‘He’s been too generous in his praise.’
Michelle extracted her long fingers from Flynn’s over-tight grip and said, ‘I’m pleased to meet you.’
‘Likewise,’ Flynn said. ‘Ray’s told me all about you — but being a man who can’t string too many words together, he has completely and inadequately failed to describe how lovely you are.’
‘Thank you.’ Michelle lowered her eyes demurely at the compliment and looked slightly discomfited by it. Flynn also felt a bit awkward. He was actually a man of few words, most of them usually short and to the point. Complimenting did not come naturally to him — unless he was trying his seduction techniques — but somehow Michelle’s radiant ambience had made him gibber like a jerk, he realized.
He smiled simply at her and gave a shrug. He certainly wasn’t trying to seduce this woman, not just because she and Boone were an item, and Boone was an old foe-turned-friend, but because Boone would probably have killed him outright for chancing his arm. That kind of thought always made Flynn hesitate.
Boone coughed. ‘OK guys, end of the BS.’
‘I have a wonderful spicy chicken casserole for the evening meal,’ Michelle announced. ‘All breast,’ she added cheekily, ‘with sweet potatoes and ice-cold local beer.’
‘Jul-Brew?’ Flynn asked. She nodded and his mouth watered at the prospect. He loved its taste. His stomach gurgled hungrily at the thought of a decent meal. He and Boone had grazed on sandwiches, crisps, cola and strong coffee all day on the boat and he was famished, his body yearning for proper food.
But the rub was that however hungry you might be, or ill, or whatever, the boat came first. Flynn said, ‘I’m really hungry, but I’ll clean her and the equipment first if that’s OK?’ He jerked a thumb at Faye2. ‘Then I’ll clean myself, too.’ He said to Boone, ‘Ray, you get on and I’ll do it. Be about an hour if that’s OK?’
‘You sure, pal?’
Flynn had spotted the exchange of lustful looks between Boone and Michelle. From Boone’s boasting, Flynn was fully aware of the full-on sexual nature of this relationship and Flynn guessed it would be a good move on his part to let the two of them get it out of their system before the evening meal.
‘Certain.’
Boone gave him that smug wink again. Flynn watched as the two lovers sloped away, draped around each other like teenagers, Boone with a hand firmly gripping one of Michelle’s buttocks. Flynn readjusted his cap again, smiled slightly enviously, then took the three strides back across on to Faye ’s deck.
There was the accumulated debris of a long sea journey and then a six hour fishing trip for tarpon to clear up. Flynn liked to keep the boat spotless and was intensely proud of the way he cared for Faye2 and the fishing tackle, so he got to work.
He hosed down the decks, vacuumed and dusted the small galley, lounge and stateroom. He cleaned the rods of any salt and fish debris, all of which took longer than an hour, by which time the sun had dropped in the sky, then dramatically hovered hugely over the horizon before disappearing. A hot, sultry night had fallen over the Gambia River.
Flynn, sweating heavily, was desperate for that beer. Still, he took the time to grab a quick shower and shampoo, applied a manly underarm spray, then mosquito repellent, a wicked combination that he hoped would defeat even the most determined insect invader. He changed into his beloved Keith Richards T-shirt, a pair of three-quarter length pants and flip-flops. From the fridge he grabbed the box of chocolates he’d been keeping there.
