Kill Four Page 15

  “Where did he get it?”

  “I don’t know. I think Russia. We are meeting the delivery guys in Springbok.”

  I leaned forward and pointed at him. “With a yield of two kilotons, that bomb will flatten everything in a radius of two miles. The blast damage and radiation will go well beyond that. It will wipe out the town of Goodhouse and probably kill the inhabitants of Steinkopf into the bargain!”

  “You’re not thinking.”

  “I am thinking, goddammit! I’m thinking about the men, women and children who will be killed by this device!”

  He held up a hand, then closed his fist but for one finger. “One, the plateau between the mountains where the reactor is being built is the size of the blast radius, so it will be contained by the mountains. Goodhouse is on the other side of the mountains…”

  “That’s bullshit! What about the contamination to the River Orange?”

  “Let me finish, and focus on what I am telling you, Lacklan. Second, and to answer your question about the river, the blast is gonna be eight or nine hundred feet below ground level, in a bunker designed to contain the heat of a fusion reactor. The whole fuckin’ building is gonna collapse down on that bomb and seal in the radiation.”

  I closed my eyes and shook my head. “Sweet Jesus!”

  “We got to do it, Lacklan! If you are worried about poison and damage, just imagine a world where Omega owns and controls the only source of energy for the whole fuckin’ planet.”

  “We’re talking about a damned atom bomb, Njal! How close do we need to get to the enemy before we become him?”

  “I don’t do philosophy, Lacklan. Omega’s godda be stopped, and I’m going to stop them.”

  “The end justifies the means?”

  “Dude, you sit here and ask existential questions. Meanwhile, I’ll go and stop Omega.”

  “Listen, pal, I just came back from murdering ten men and a woman in the name of this cause…!”

  “You gonna do it or not, Lacklan? Discuss your conscience with Jim, or your fuckin’ therapist. I ain’t cut out for philosophizing. You think it’s wrong, don’t do it. I respect that. But you gotta have the brains to see there is no other way to stop these bastards from building a fuckin’ fusion reactor. You gonna let them do that, or you gonna stop them?”

  I sighed and rubbed my face with my hands. “You’re right.”

  “You said yourself, dude, the only thing with that much power that we can transport quickly is the suitcase bomb. So that’s what we gotta use.”

  I wanted to ask where it would end, how far we had to go to stop the enemy before we became that enemy. Instead, I said, “All right. Where do we pick it up?”

  “Springbok, at the El Dago Restaurant.”

  I stared at him. “The what?”

  “What can I tell you? This is South Africa.”

  “Who are our contacts?”

  “Two Russian backpackers. We get into conversation with them, offer them a ride to the airport. They catch their flight and leave us with the backpack.”

  “Rusians. Russian Mafia.”

  “I don’t know, man, but it ain’t the kind of thing you can go shopping for and say, ‘oh, I’m not gonna buy my atom bomb from the Russians because their packaging kills polar bears,’ you know what I’m saying?”

  “Back off, Njal.”

  “So gimme a break with the moral angst, will you? You think I enjoy this shit? It’s tough, but we gotta do it.”

  “When do they arrive?”

  “Tomorrow, lunch time. We be there at one.”

  “So how do we get the damned thing into the building site?”

  He shrugged. “I have some ideas, but I was chilling, taking some sun, you know, waiting for you to get back. You the soldier, right? I’m just the fuckin’ Norwegian bastard.” He grinned.

  I sighed. “OK, you fucking Norwegian bastard, you made your point. Now pay attention and learn. This is Introducing Nuclear Devices into Fusion Reactors, one-oh-one.”

  “We gonna use the thirty pounds of C4, the RPGs and those TEA rockets, right?”

  “You know it. We go in tomorrow night. We take the Land Rover and we approach around the rocks along the river. We take the device, the C4, grenades, rockets—the whole lot, plus two gallons of gasoline. We leave the device at the foot of the western face of the rocks above Goodhouse, then we take fifteen pounds of C4 each and the gas, we mine the site office and the buildings surrounding it and we strategically position the gasoline. We use cell phone activated remote detonators.

  “Now, here is the smart bit. Before we detonate them, we detonate one small charge on the southeastern side of the fence, enough to blow a hole in it. Ten seconds later, we detonate the rest. All hell breaks loose along the eastern side of the site, the buildings start burning and we sprint like hell for the hole in the fence. That gets us into the site. From there on in, it’s up to you to get us to the chamber. You have a map?”

  He nodded. “On my cell. But it is simple. There are two high-speed elevators. We plant the bomb in the chamber and then we need to get out.”

  “OK, so we when we arrive, we plant a charge at thirty yards from where we leave the Land Rovers. When we’re leaving, we blow a hole in the fence and that’s how we get out.”

  “OK, cool. Now tell me why you want to go in on the southeastern side.”

  I nodded. “Because it’s the most direct route to the entrance to the building, and it’s close to where we’ll be setting the charges to start the fire, so we don’t have to waste a lot of time running back and forth.”

  “OK. Makes sense.”

  “So, this afternoon we buy the paint for the Audi and we change the plates. After we plant the device, we get the hell out of here, take the Land Rover to where we have left the Audi, and head for the border with Namibia.”

  “OK, it’s a plan. Now you need to sleep. I’ll call you in two hours and we go into Steinkopf to get the paint. We also need sticking tape and paper, or plastic sacks, to cover the windshield and the chrome.”

  I nodded, then smiled. “OK, Njal. Tomorrow night we’ll be on our way home.”

  He smiled, but I could see that his eyes were worried. “You gonna hold it together till then?”

  “Don’t be stupid. You know I will.”

  “Sure.”

  * * *

  I slept like the dead for two hours. At two fifteen PM, Njal woke me and we drove into Steinkopf. There we found the only mechanic in town. Attached to his workshop was a kind of glorified hardware store-cum-car parts shop. The owner watched us with steady, curious eyes as we bought all the stuff we needed, including the large refuse sacks, rolls of masking tape and two dozen cans of white spray paint. It was the kind of attention we didn’t need, but there was nothing we could do about it. All we could hope for was that nobody would come asking questions, at least until after we were across the border.

  When we were done, we drove back, taking a different route across the desert toward the rocks, to avoid leaving too many fresh tracks in the same place. When we got back, we spent the rest of the afternoon masking the windshield and the chrome and spraying the car into a nondescript color that, with a bit of luck, nobody would notice.

  After a couple of hours or three, when it was done, I told Njal, “We drive as far as Angola, then we decide.”

  “Decide what?”

  “It’s about five thousand miles from here to Morocco. Do we drive? Or do we risk getting a flight? Or is there another option?”

  “I agree, we decide that tomorrow or the day after. But first we call Jim, maybe he can arrange an extraction.”

  “I have a contact in Cameroon if we need it, but that’s still six hundred miles from the north of Angola, and well over a thousand from Namibia—and a good two thousand miles from where we are now.” I sighed and shook my head. “We need to be aware, Njal. This isn’t like the operations we did in Europe and South America, or even back home in L.A. There we crippled them financially. We b
roke them and they couldn’t come back at us. But that’s not what we’re doing here. We’ve cut off the head, and we are destroying their reactor, but their corporate infrastructure and their finances remain intact. The body is capable of growing another head. Somebody will take over, and there will be people hunting for us. Not only that, Africa is their stamping ground and they will know how and where to look.”

  I stared at him while he poked a cigarette in his mouth and lit up, then threw me the pack. I caught it and said, “They’ll deduce where we crossed. They’ll check what vehicles went over during the relevant hours. They’ll narrow it down to a handful of cars, one of them will be the Audi, and they will go after those cars systematically until they find us.”

  He took a long drag and spoke as the smoke emanated from his mouth. “So we get to Namibia. We abandon the car in the desert, we go to ground and we call Jim on the number he gave us.”

  I shook my head. “Jim is powerful, but there is a limit to what he can do. He can’t send in an army to get us.”

  He snorted. “He can get hold of a tactical nuclear device!”

  “Which he bought from Russian contacts. He pays and they deliver. The Russians have resources for that. It’s not the same as organizing an extraction from a foreign country. You need some kind of local infrastructure for that.”

  “So, what?”

  I thought about it. “We take the plates from the other Land Rover too. It’s still parked up in Springbok. We buy more spray paint. As soon as we’re over the border, we drive into the desert and find a place to lie up. Then we change the plates again and repaint the car. We bury the old plates, the paint tins—everything—and move on.”

  “We need new IDs.”

  “I know, Jim should have thought of that. But it’s too late, that’s not an option now. We’re going to have to improvise. Maybe we can charter a yacht in Namibia and sail to Morocco.”

  He puffed out his cheeks. “That’s shit, man.”

  “This is what they drummed into us in the Regiment, Njal. Plans need to be thorough. Plans made on the go like this one are dangerous plans. We came in without an extraction strategy.” I shrugged. “Now we’re stuck. That’s as close to suicide as you can get without putting a gun in your mouth.”

  He sighed and nodded. “OK. So we cross, change the plates and paint the car, drive north as far as Windhoek, then go west to the coast, find a nice port town with tourists, yachts, all that shit. There we charter a yacht.” He pulled out his cell and started to look. After a moment, he said, “Maybe Walvis Bay, directly west of Windhoek. It’s got a nice harbor, big port.”

  I nodded. “It’s our best chance. If Omega are looking for us, they’ll be focusing on borders and airports.”

  “We hope.”

  “Yeah, we hope.” I shrugged again. “Like I said, it’s our best hope.”

  FIFTEEN

  Springbok might have been a town in some remote part of Arizona, or New Mexico. It looked like the kind of town Stephen King might have written about, positioned on the edge of a trans-dimensional portal to hell. We approached on the N7, from the north. There is no simple way off the N7 into Springbok, it’s like the engineers who built the road didn’t want to go there, so we ended up taking a long detour through the desert on a track called Inry Street, which eventually took us into town.

  The town was stark, desolate, with low buildings widely spaced on broad, largely empty streets. We didn’t see many people, and those we did see looked like they wanted to be somewhere else. There was a listless, hopeless feeling which hung like an invisible pall over the town. After Inry Street, we turned into Luckhoff Street, which made Njal snort.

  “It is more like Fuckoff Street.”

  “That what passes for subtlety in Norway?”

  “Luckhoff.”

  I did a bad imitation of his accent. “I know one choke. Luckhoff is sounding like fuck off. Dat is funny.”

  “Right, because Americans are real subtle. You know all about irony, right?”

  “Mine axe vonts to heff one meeninkful exchange off ideas mit you.”

  “Yuh, you funny. And you accent is German, not Norwegian.”

  “Mine axe vonts to get inside your head.”

  “Funny.”

  Finally, we turned down Lodge Street and into Voortrekker Street. El Dago was on the bend. I pulled over, parked and we swung down from the cab. The restaurant was a red brick cube with eight steps up to a glass door, and a small, crude terrace on the left. We climbed the steps and pushed inside. It was plain and unremarkable, with red gingham tablecloths, wooden floors and a counter at the end with a smiling woman behind it. A couple of the tables were occupied by people who looked indefinably local. They glanced at us when we came in, then carried on with their food. But the two guys sitting by the window watched us carefully as we looked around. They were big, lean and had a predatory alertness about their eyes. I noticed beside their table, up against the wall, there was a large rucksack. The guy sitting next to it was in his mid twenties, with short blond hair and pale blue eyes: a true Russ. The guy opposite him was shorter, swarthy, with dark hair and Slavic features.

  We took the table next to theirs and the waitress approached us, smiling, and asked what we’d have.

  Njal picked up the menu, but I said, “We’ll have a couple of ostrich burgers, and a couple of beers.”

  She went away. We talked for a few minutes, then Njal looked over at the two guys, who had returned to their food and were talking quietly in Russian. He gestured at the rucksack.

  “You been far?”

  The blond guy studied him a moment before answering. “Here and there. Is good visiting places you don’t know. You are from South Africa?”

  “Germany. You been to Cape Town?”

  He nodded. “Cape Town, Jo’burg, Pretoria.”

  “Cool. Where to next?”

  “Now we go home. We need get to airport.”

  “Yuh? Where you flying to?”

  “We fly to Jo’burg, then London, then Moscow.”

  “Man, that’s a long journey. Is your pack heavy?”

  “Is heavy, man. We like to get rid of it.”

  The waitress came over with the burgers and the beer. She set them down, I paid her and picked up my bun. “We’ll give you a ride to the airport. What time is your flight?”

  He gave me the dead-eye for a moment, then looked at Njal. Njal nodded. “Sure, we give you a ride. We got the Land Rover outside.”

  “Flight is in couple of hours. I am Gregor, this is Vlad.”

  Njal leaned over and gave Gregor a complicated handshake that involved at least five different ways of gripping each other’s fists, then sat back. “I’m Peter, this is Bob. We travellin’ around, looking for work.”

  I finished my burger in a couple of large mouthfuls, then drained my beer. Njal looked at me curiously. There was something nagging at me and I couldn’t pinpoint it. The other customers were ignoring us. So was the waitress, but I couldn’t have been more uncomfortable if my chair had been on fire. I looked at Njal.

  “OK, let’s go.”

  He looked at his food and his drink, then at me. “You in a hurry?”

  “Yeah, I’m in a hurry. Let’s go.”

  Vlad muttered something at his pal. Gregor looked from me to Njal. “You gonna give us ride to airport, right?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  I said, “Yeah, we’ll give you a ride, but we need to go now.”

  There was some sighing. Njal drained his glass, picked up his burger and stood. The two Russians stood and Vlad shouldered the hundred and ten backpack like it weighed a couple of pounds. He was obviously the muscle of the outfit.

  I stepped out and moved to the Land Rover, scanning the street up and down. I couldn’t see anything that looked wrong, but I still felt it. Njal and the Russians followed down the eight steps and crossed the sidewalk. As they approached, I pointed to the back of the truck.

  “Put your rucksack in b
ack. Vlad, you ride up front with me. Gregor, you ride in back with Peter.”

  He frowned at me. “Is there problem?”

  I held his eye for a second. “Not if you don’t make one.”

  He drew down the corners of his mouth and shook his head. “We don’t make a problem, man. We cool.”

  “So get in the back with Peter.”Vlad slung the rucksack in the back, then climbed in beside me up front. Njal and Gregor climbed in the back and the doors slammed. I fired up the big diesel, did a ‘U’ and followed Voortrekker up the hill, under the N7 flyover and out into the desert along the N14, toward the airfield. As we left the last few houses behind us and wound into the arid hills dotted with gnarled shrubs and rocks, Gregor spoke up and I knew suddenly what it was that had been troubling me.

  “I got message from back home. Pakhan say we need change the arrangement.”

  I glanced at him in the mirror. He was watching the back of my head. Njal was staring out the window. I said:

  “Change?”

  “Price gone up. Is big risk, bringing package here. Value of package gone up. So price must go up also.”

  I took my eyes off him and looked at the road ahead. “How much?”

  “Two hundred fifty thousand U.S. dollar.”

  “You’re out of your mind. You think we have that kind of cash on an operation like this?”

  “You make call. Your commander make transfer. I give you bank details.”

  I sighed like he was a pain in my ass, but I had no choice and glanced in the mirror again. Njal was still looking out at the desert.

  “This is your department, Pete. Can we do it?”

  He didn’t answer for a moment. Then he made a big show of pulling his cigarettes from his pocket and lighting up. “We don’t got much choice, right? We need go back to camp.” He looked at Gregor and his face wasn’t friendly. “You gonna miss your flight.”

  “Yeah, is OK. We change flight.”

  Njal looked at me in the mirror. “OK, we go back to camp.”

  I turned at the intersection with Kokerboom Road and looped back onto the N7, headed north. Then I hit the gas. There was hot anger welling in my gut, and it was turning to an ice-cold rage. We passed the village of O’Kiep on the right and then we were out in the wilderness, twenty-five miles from Steinkopf. Soon after that, we came to a turning on the right of the road, a dirt track that wound up into the hills. It was barely wide enough for the truck, but I slowed and took the turning. It was as good a place as any for what we had to do. Vlad was looking worried and turned to Gregor. He said something in Russian and Gregor said, “Where your camp is?”