Scott Mariani 2-book Collection: Star of Africa, The Devil’s Kingdom. Scott Mariani

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ a fabulously rich man. All the while letting not a living soul, least of all Jean-Pierre Khosa, know what he was really carrying. Piece of cake.

      But for all its dangers and complexities, it had been the most beautiful plan. This had been the Big One that Pender had spent his life ready and willing to do anything to make happen. After surviving twenty-four years in the private military contractor business, he wanted out before his well ran dry or he met a bullet. At age fifty-five, with thirty more years of life expectancy, he’d literally wept with joy that such unbelievable good fortune could have fallen into his lap. He could walk away from the whole shitty world, the richest fugitive in history. Another new identity with passport and driver’s licence to match, a nose job to alter his appearance a little, a high-rolling lifestyle of fast cars and beautiful women and casinos and more money than he could hope to spend if he lived to be a hundred, no matter how hard he tried. That was the intoxicatingly wonderful future he’d envisaged.

      He’d been so close to the finish line that he could taste the Martini cocktails, feel the soft white warm sand between his toes and hear the giggles of the adoring bikini-clad girls.

      And now everything was suddenly falling apart. Pender could actually visualise his plans cracking and raining to the floor in pieces like fragmented china.

      He could already have been out of here, if fucking Khosa hadn’t insisted on personally staying aboard the cargo ship until his guys finished off the last of the crew and sorted out the mysterious engine and power failure, instead of taking straight off in the fishing boat as first agreed. They were wasting time. What Khosa did with the ship was his business; Pender had been hopping with impatience to get on with his own. He’d been so disgusted with the circus up on the bridge that he’d wandered down to the empty mess room to find some coffee. And now look what had happened! Who let some young whippersnapper of a sailor go running amok like that? Pender couldn’t believe that he’d survived decades of warfare and dodged bullets everywhere from Angola to Libya, only to get cold-cocked by some kid with a flashlight.

      Now Pender was compelled to remain aboard until he got back what was his. He’d tear the vessel apart with his own bare hands if he had to.

      Furious, still clutching his splitting head, he stormed up onto the bridge to marshal a few men to come help him find that little shit who’d clobbered him, take back what he’d stolen and then disembowel the bastard. About eight Africans were scratching their heads around the dead instruments of the conning station, debating in flurries of their own language what switch they could press or lever to pull to restore the power. Until they could figure out what had caused the shutdown, the ship was going nowhere.

      ‘Maybe if you assholes didn’t butcher everyone on sight,’ thought Pender – the man who’d murdered the captain and mates – ‘then you might have a clue how to sail the ship.’

      He was about to start yelling at them in fury when he saw the formidable figure of Jean-Pierre Khosa standing by the windows, casually lighting up another of his giant Cohibas. Standing with him was his right-hand man, Zolani Tembe, tall and muscular and apparently made of granite. Tembe wore ammunition belts the way Los Angeles rappers wore gold chains. His personal weapon was an M60 machine gun that was never out of his huge hands. A long, curved machete was stuck crossways in his belt.

      Pender swallowed and tried to play it cool. Only a very foolish man would vent his anger to the General’s face. Pender had no wish to end up as chopped shark bait.

      ‘You, you and you,’ he said, jabbing a finger at three Africans who didn’t seem to be doing much. ‘Come with me.’

      ‘What do you want them for?’ Khosa said, in that deep, calm voice of his. Whenever he spoke, it was always with great deliberation, as if he considered every syllable in advance.

      ‘I’ve been robbed.’ Pender held up his left arm with the empty case dangling from it. ‘One of the crew is running around loose, and he took my papers.’

      Khosa’s mutilated brow distorted into an even deeper frown. ‘Why would he do this?’

      ‘How the hell do I know what some illiterate deckhand would want with them? Use them to wipe his ass with, for all I know. That’s not the point. I have to have them.’

      Khosa roared with amusement amid a cloud of cigar smoke. Then, turning to the puzzled gang at the conning station, he dropped the smile and laid a big hand on the dead electronic consoles. ‘The problem is not with the equipment. The crew have done this. They are controlling the ship from the engine room. That is where we will find them. And that is where you will find your paper thief, messenger boy,’ he added for Pender’s benefit. He motioned at Zolani Tembe. ‘Gather the men and find this engine room. We must get this ship working.’

      ‘And the crew?’ Tembe said.

      ‘Bring them to me. We will take the ones that we can sell or use, and kill the rest.’

       Chapter 19

      The first of many urgent calls that day had an instantly positive outcome. The octogenarian billionaire Auguste Kaprisky was overjoyed by the chance to repay what he saw as his debt to Monsieur Hope for saving his life. His greatest fear, he told Ben on the phone, had been that Ben would never ask. Without any hesitation and not a single question about why it was needed, Kaprisky granted them full and free use of his private jet. The aircraft was kept in its own hangar at Le Mans Arnage airport, just a few kilometres from Kaprisky’s estate, and he maintained two pilots on full-time salary, ready to fly at a moment’s notice. The weather forecast was looking dicey, but they’d taken off in worse.

      The old man upgraded his plane every couple of years. His latest acquisition, he proudly declared, was a brand new Gulfstream G650ER, capable of covering thirteen thousand kilometres at a stretch, travelling at a steady Mach .85 with up to nineteen passengers on board.

      ‘That’s more than plenty,’ Ben said. ‘I can’t thank you enough, Auguste.’

      ‘Anything for you, my friend. I mean it.’

      Jeff was on his iPhone, cancelling clients and calling in the security firm they employed to look after Le Val when there was nobody around. With time so short, the rest of the plan was going to have to come together en route.

      Kaprisky had additionally offered to send his personal Bell 407 helicopter up to Le Val to collect them, but Ben had declined, thinking he could make slightly better time by road in the Alpina. While Jeff was making the last of the calls, Ben and Tuesday set about transferring equipment from the armoury to the back of the car.

      ‘I got to spend a little time with Jude while he was here,’ Tuesday said, a little awkwardly, searching for the right words. ‘I like him. I’m really sorry, you know?’

      ‘He’s not dead yet,’ Ben said.

      Le Val’s armoury room was buried beneath several feet of reinforced concrete, with an armoured steel door and hi-tech security system. It housed scores of military-grade weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition, all painstakingly licensed by the authorities, itemised down to the last round and wrapped in enough red tape to tie up the French navy. One or two items stored down there, however, had never been registered officially, so that they could be set aside for a rainy day and never traced if things went awry or the guns had to be ditched. Over the years Ben had ‘collected’ four MP5 submachine guns and an assortment of shotguns, rifles and pistols whose serial СКАЧАТЬ