Candleburn (31 page)

60

Blake followed the fence of the camel pen in a crouching run, using it for soft cover from any potential snipers on the roof or balcony of the main house. Every hundred metres he checked the locations of the guards. By murdering one, he’d created a large enough gap in their surveillance sweep that he had been able to get within a few hundred yards of the barn and falconry buildings without having to kill anyone else.

Unfortunately,
a twist in the layout was combining with the guard ahead being a little slow on his rounds. It placed Blake in danger of being seen if he kept up his current pace.

He
hopped the shoulder high fence and moved along the inside of the camel pen. He sneaked in close to one of the animals and patted its back. As it began to meander away from this stranger in its corral, he used its bulk as a shield.

From
here, he had a better view of the complex.

For
a football pitch-sized area in front of the mansion, the natural rock of the region was hidden by a verdant European garden. It abruptly ended for no apparent reason and the rest of the area stood on stony gravel.

A
tarmac strip ran almost to the grassed area before turning abruptly and leading to the garage. The road was cheaply laid straight onto the rock. In places it had already begun to crack and show the first signs of potholes.

A
loud caw.

Blake
pointed his P90 directly at the spot of the noise.

Two
birds ran across the lawn.

Peacocks.

“Weirdo,” Blake thought. “Who needs peacocks on their lawn?”

It
all smacked of opulence gone wrong – as though a visionary, or at the very least a show-off, had run out of money halfway through his plan.

He
cautiously followed the camel closer to the barn.

Finding
Aarez's lair had been simpler than he'd expected.

It
required a simple cross-check: properties capable of supporting a falconry, in an area of the UAE with red soil, within two hours drive of the hostage exchange site, that were owned by either the Al Calandria family, Fedor Milanovich or Rasoul Kaskhar.

The
search yielded a single result.

Blake
stepped in closer to the camel, which let out a typical guttural burst of protest. He flicked the assault rifle to semi-automatic – one bullet for every pull of the trigger.

Blake
felt a flicker at his arm, the swish of a camel’s tail.

He
looked down just in time to see a splatter of red emerge from the camel’s belly. It expanded before his brain could even register: then burst through with a plate sized hole.

The
beast let out another gurn.

Crack.
Thump.

“Shit,”
he thought and sprinted for the barn.

In
seconds he was near enough to the walls to see the woodworm holes in each individual plank. The sniper was somewhere in the main hacienda and loosed two speculative rounds into the building. The sun-baked lumber offered all the resistance of paper. Without seeing Blake, though, there was little chance the sniper would hit his target.

More
of a problem were the perimeter guards, alerted to his presence, who were doubtless closing on his position. A sniper might not hit him through the wood, but raking fire from two Skorpions increased the odds significantly.

Blake
shifted along the barn.

A
Somali appeared at the end of the wall, scanning his gun through the camels.

Blake
fired.

Two
shots.

He
advanced.

Two
more shots.

The
gunman was dead.

Another
Somali ran along the line of fencing Blake had so carefully navigated from the milking shed. He fired a volley from his Skorpion. It was far too high, rattling the top rafters of the barn.

Blake
looked at the man’s face.

He
could see the fear on the Somali’s features.

Blake
didn’t want to kill him. It was a little known rule of warfare that emerged because of a study by Brigadier General Marshall: in the midst of war only 15-20% of soldiers ever fired their guns. Of those that did, an even smaller number actually fired at the enemy – many preferred simply to shoot straight up into the air until they had been brutalised fully by repeated combat experience.

It
wasn’t cowardice. Those same men would face greater danger rescuing fallen comrades or even charging enemy positions without shooting. It was the strength of a human’s innate desire not to take another’s life.

Less
than 5% would shoot on a first engagement directly at the enemy. Of those that did, the study found many to be psychologically unstable before they’d even reached the battlefield.

And
they were trained soldiers, not farm hands with weapons thrust in their hands.

“Put
the gun down,” Blake said.

The
man continued walking forward.

He
fired another burst of bullets.

Still
high, they rattled 6 feet over Blake’s head – but they were lower than the first volley. Such is the evolution of a man in his first gunfight.

“I
don’t want to kill you,” Blake said. “Put your gun down and surrender.”

The
Somali kept coming.

His
weapon was lowering with each step.

The
barrel reached the horizontal.

He
raised it up to eye level to aim.

Blake
shot him twice.

“Damn
it.”

Blake
opened the back door of the barn. Another man sat shaking in the corner, rocking gently back and forth against a bale of hay. By his feet was another machine gun.

Blake
pointed his rifle at the African.

“Don’t
shoot,” the Somali said. “Please, please – I don’t want to die.”

“Kick
your weapon over here,” Blake replied.

The Somali complied and Blake
picked it up as it ploughed across the ground. He stuffed it in his backpack.

“Where
are you from?”

“Puntland,”
the Somali said. “I come to work on the farm. Please don’t kill me, I don’t want to die.”

“How
farm workers, other than you, are armed and here?” Blake asked.

“
Three others,” the man replied. “There were many of us. Every day there are fewer.”

Blake
had killed three already. That implied the sniper in the building was Russian.

“Who
else is here?”

“Mr
Aarez came home this morning,” the man replied. “Later five more men arrived in big cars. I had to park them in the garage.”

“Russians?”
Blake asked.

The
man nodded.

Blake
glanced around the room as he assessed the information. A dark patch of sand in the middle of the floor caught his attention. He bent by it, careful to keep the farmhand in his sight. Brown radial patterns arced outwards from a central circle, like an exploding star.

“Someone
was whipped recently,” Blake said, “then bled to death.”

The
man bowed his head and began to sob.

“Mr
Aarez and Mr Oassan killed Mr Chaiwat,” the Somali mumbled through his cries. “They took three of my friends out to bury the bodies. Only Mr Oassan and Aarez returned. They are evil.”

“Is
Aarez still on the ranch?” Blake asked.

“Yes,”
the man said, returning to his rocking.

Blake
gingerly walked towards the edge of the building. The planks were lazily slapped together and there were many gaps. Ordinarily, he’d have avoided the walls, worried that the sniper would take aim at any shadow that appeared but the sun was rapidly losing height. Soon it would drop behind the mountains and an early dusk would fall on the hacienda compound.

He
could take a rough guess at the sniper’s position – an ajar window on the second floor. He could make no better estimation on the hiding spots of the other four Russians.

Blake's
eyes scanned the earth around the unlined tarmac strip. There were no unusual discolorations in the soil.

Good.

That significantly lessened the chances of landmines or buried improvised explosives.

There
was a potential killing zone, where two trained henchmen could catch him in a crossfire, if he headed directly toward to the main house across the courtyard.

Three
4x4s were parked sloppily in the garage, fronts facing outwards.

Blake
moved back from the wall and took aim.

He
put a slug in the engine block of one.

He
quickly rolled to another spot.

He
fired again at the second vehicle.

Instantly
he moved.

Splinters
of wood from overhead and the soil where he’d been half a second before puffed. He heard the report from the sniper.

He
picked a third spot and placed a final slug in the last car.

He
jumped to a new location just as the sniper took another pot-shot guess at his location.

“That’s
your vehicles out of commission,” Blake thought. “So you’re holed up here to make a last stand and there’s no way out.”

He
walked back to the Somali.

“In
a while, I’m sure those Russians will fill this building with bullets or throw in a grenade,” he said. “I suggest you leave by the back and head to the bottom of the farm. Wait a few hours and then it will be safe to leave. You must go, though, do not wait here or you will likely die.”

The
labourer slowly stopped his cradling his legs.

“Thank
you,” he replied.

“One
last thing,” Blake asked, “is there any way into the main building other than the front door?”

The Somali thought briefly.

“Out of here, next door, there are the animals,” the man said. “That goes into the bird house. There is a cellar inside. That leads to the kitchen in basement of the main house.”

***

The Iberian lynx was lapping water from a small stainless steel bowl as Blake nudged past its cage. In the enclosure next door, barely ten metres across, a lioness stared at him forlornly. It must have been torture for these animals in the high heat. Their only saving grace was another corrugated metal roof that would provide a measure of shade and two side walls, which provided Blake with cover from the sniper.

There
were twenty cages in all. Each contained small wooden kennels for the animals to sleep in at night. Aside from the big cats, there were gazelle, chimpanzees, Oryx and antelope – Blake recognised the impala from their stripes, but the kudu and roan were unknown to him until the passed the white labelled descriptions tagged to their doors.

The
sun dipped behind the mountains and night fell fast.

Blake
hovered low to the earth.

A
moving shadow – man sized.

“Are
you a Russian or are you some kind of gorilla?” he wondered.

He
edged closer.

Something
rattled in a cage.

As
the dusk quickly swept through, he could see the animal’s food bowls were empty. Were the monkeys restless?

Another
rattle. A click.

A
creak of rusty steel followed by growls and barks.

Blake
saw blackened shapes rush towards him. He fired rapid bursts. Howls.

One
animal went down.

Three
more sloped between the cages.

A
flash in the dark. Then another.

Blake
hit the deck as he heard bullets ricochet through the cages. Pistol fire. He crawled forward. He reached a furry carcass – a jackal? Coyote? Another bullet. He heard the ground thud next to him. He couldn’t see where the hell the shooter was.

The
chimpanzees started a racket in the cage next to him, banging their bowls against the enclosure. Two more shots. An ape fell dead.