Target Response (8 page)

Kilroy brought the panga down….

Kilroy was now in command of the gunboat. Krentz, Ajani, Hamid, and T’gai went over the side to feed the crocodiles. When last seen, Sesto was swimming madly for shore; darkness swallowed him and Kilroy never knew if he made it to the safety of dry land or not. Nor did he care.

The patrol boat he’d seen earlier upstream on the Rada stayed there, showing no inclination to come downriver to investigate what had happened. If it did, the gunboat’s .50 machine guns would make short work of it.

The troops encamped on the point were no threat; they were too far away for accurate shooting and had no boats with which to take up the chase.

Kilroy stepped on something fleshy and yielding: Krentz’s severed hand.

He pried open its fingers, freeing the gun they held. He kept the gun and tossed the hand into the water.

He held the Walther up to the lamplight. It was a good piece, clean, oiled, with a full clip ready for action. Kilroy stuck the gun into the top of his waistband, wearing it butt-out over his left hip for quick access.

Ward Thurlow sat on the bottom of the boat with his back against the sidewall, legs extended in front of him. A raw red scrape centering a massive purple-brown bruise on the side of his jaw marked where Kilroy had kicked him. He held his face in his hands.

But peeked between his fingers.

He uncovered his face. It was pale, drawn, and frightened, the dilated blacks of his pupils showing like a pair of dots pasted to his eyeballs. He cleared his throat.

“I can get you out of this, Kilroy,” he began.

“After getting me into it,” Kilroy said. “Suppose you tell me why I shouldn’t feed you to the crocs a piece at a time.”

“Money.”

“Well, that’s something, anyhow,” Kilroy said after a pause.

Thurlow took that as encouragement. He stood up, rising creakily on quaking legs. He clutched a sandbag atop the gunwale for support.

“There’s money, plenty of money. It’s yours. Only don’t kill me,” he said. “I can get you out of this country and back to the States. You’ll be a rich man. You’ll never have to work again.”

“Who’s paying for it? You?” Kilroy asked. “Or MYRMEX?” he pointedly added.

Thurlow rubbed his face as though trying to stroke some feeling into it. Accidentally fingering the bruised area where Kilroy’s kick had landed, Thurlow winced, gasping.

“So you know about MYRMEX,” Thurlow said.

“Everybody in Lagos knows that Krentz was on the MYRMEX payroll,” Kilroy said. “It’s all starting to come together now. It takes an outfit with the money and manpower of MYRMEX to go against Uncle Sammy and blow up a DIA investigative team. Even an old Army dogface like me can figure that out, even without the benefit of an Ivy League education like yours.”

Thurlow ignored the sarcasm and nodded vigorously, head going up and down like a bobblehead doll’s. “Then you know you can’t buck the MYRMEX combine and live.”

“I’m doing all right so far,” Kilroy said.

“For how long? Once you’re on MYRMEX’s shit list, they won’t rest until you’re dead. But I can get you off the hook, Kilroy. A word from me in the right ears and you’ll go on the payroll, with more money than you ever dreamed of. Otherwise, you’ll never get out of Lagos alive.”

“You forget one thing, Thurlow. You’re the only one besides me who knows that I’m alive,” Kilroy said, smiling thinly.

Thurlow held up a hand palm out, as if in appeal. “Think, Kilroy. Just stop and think before you do anything stupid that you’ll regret. I’m your ticket to riches and freedom,” he said.

Kilroy rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Funny thing, Thurlow. I’ve been watching you for some time now and something struck me: You’ve been looking around every which way on this boat except for one direction. You make a point of not looking at that tin can back there that’s drawing all the flies. Why is that?”

Thurlow’s pallor deepened, taking on a green tinge. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“You’re still not looking at the can. Maybe I’d better investigate,” Kilroy said.

“You’re wasting time you could be using for your getaway.”

“What a pal. Concerned about my safety, are you? That’s okay, I can spare a minute or two.”

Kilroy went to the stern, went down on one knee beside the cannister lashed in place in the corner of the starboard quarter. He positioned himself where he could keep an eye on Thurlow at the same time.

He used his belt knife to cut the lines securing the round five-gallon can. The pommel of its hilt served to hammer open the lid. Kilroy popped open the top. The foul odor returned.

“Well, what have we here?” he said.

The can was filled almost to the brim with a crystalline white powder.

“Dope? Cocaine, heroin?” he mused. “In this part of the world, more likely heroin, though you couldn’t grow opium in the swamp….”

He dipped a fingertip into the powder, coating it with white grains. He touched the very tip of his tongue to the stuff, tasting it.

“Salt,” he said. He frowned, thinking. “Odd…Why salt?”

He tilted the can on its side, pouring the salt on deck. As its level dropped, it revealed an object that had been buried in the stuff:

A human head. Freshly severed at the neck.

The hair was too short to get a grip on. Kilroy gripped the head by the ears and hauled it out, holding it up to the lantern light.

Its features were frosted with caked salt. Kilroy brushed them clean to better make them out. Recognition brought a sad, sweet smile to his lips.

“How about that? It’s my old buddy Bill Raynor,” he said softly. “Hey, Bill, how you? Never thought I’d see you again.”

Kilroy looked up from Raynor’s face to Thurlow’s. “Just goes to show you, life is funny.”

Thurlow held out both hands in front of him, making a placating gesture. “That’s none of my doing, Kilroy. It was Krentz. Krentz did it, not me. I didn’t want any part of it,” he said quickly.

“What business did Krentz have with poor ol’ Bill’s head?”

“Tayambo wanted it, the sick fuck. What for, I don’t know. He collects them like trophies, I guess.”

Kilroy mulled it over, his face expressionless. “Head-hunting, eh? And the salt acts as a preservative, especially in this hot weather, hmm?”

A nervous tic started in the corner of Thurlow’s mouth. “I swear, Kilroy, I had nothing to do with this atrocity—”

“Don’t swear, it ain’t polite,” Kilroy said mildly. He put the head back in the can and closed the lid. “Well, he’ll keep. Talk to you later, Bill.”

Kilroy rose. The Walther was in his hand, pointed at Thurlow. “You don’t look too bad off yet,” he said. “Here, have one on ol’ Bill.”

Thurlow shrieked. “For God’s sake, don’t!—”

Kilroy shot him once, in the right knee. Thurlow collapsed in a heap.

“Once the shock wears off it’ll really commence to hurting,” Kilroy remarked conversationally.

Ward Thurlow didn’t hear him—he had passed out.

Kilroy went forward. Leaning over the side, he took hold of the taut line angling into the water and heaved, freeing the anchor from where it had snagged its steel flukes into the river bottom. He hauled it in, depositing the anchor with a thunk on the gunboat flooring.

Thurlow was awake now, babbling and sobbing.

Kilroy sat down in the pilot’s seat, familiarizing himself with the instrument panel and controls. He was a ground pounder from way back and not a sailor, but over the years he’d learned plenty about boat handling, enough to pass for a pretty fair mariner.

He started up the engines. Taking the wheel, he eased the dual throttles forward. The gunboat lurched forward, surging, following the Kondo’s southeasterly course downriver toward the sea.

Dawn.

Not so much of a sunrise as it was a general lightening in the east, the sun’s naked orb hidden by a heavy overcast and steamy mists.

The gunboat was anchored above the mouth of the Kondo where it emptied into the sea. Beyond, following the coastline on a westerly course, Lagos lay a few hours away.

Kilroy had paused to take care of some unfinished business.

On the boat’s starboard side, about twenty yards away, lay a long, flat beach of sticky black mud.

It was carpeted with crocodiles, scores of them. Big ones, medium ones, small ones. They wallowed, basked, lolled, and from time to time snapped at each other. They grunted, snorted, and bellowed.

Kilroy fashioned a sliding loop at the end of a rope line whose opposite end was secured to a cleat on the gunwale.

The loop went over Ward Thurlow’s head and shoulders and under his arms. Kilroy pulled it taut, snugging it.

Thurlow was in pretty sad shape. He could have passed for a corpse, so pale and stiff was he, except for sick, pain-dulled eyes and a continual moaning that escaped from his slack-jawed mouth.

He’d had information Kilroy needed and the latter hadn’t been too particular about how he got it. Thurlow had spilled his guts once Kilroy had gone to work on him. It hadn’t taken much. The bullet in his knee had ruined the rogue CIA agent. There wasn’t much of him left.

Soon there would be a whole lot less.

Kilroy had squeezed him for facts, leaving behind only the rind and the pulp. Now he had to hold Thurlow up as he propped him against the gunwale.

Thurlow swayed, pain-dulled eyes heavy lidded, almost closed.

“This is where we say good-bye,” Kilroy said, slapping Thurlow on the back.

Thurlow forced his eyes open; they went in and out of focus. “What…whaddya mean?”

“Last stop. I wasn’t fooling when I said I was going to feed you to the crocs,” Kilroy said.

Thurlow screamed, “No!”

Kilroy shoved him over the side into the water.

Thurlow hit with a splash. The rope halter pulled him up short, keeping his head and shoulders above water.

Kilroy played out the line, causing Thurlow to drift toward shore. Thurlow found new reserves of energy as he thrashed about screaming. And that was just from being in the water. His arms and legs were free, so he could splash around pretty good, making quite a stir. Blood from many cuts and scratches oozed into the turbid waters.

Thurlow swam back to the boat. He clawed at its sides, trying to pull himself up out of the water, a feat he lacked the strength to accomplish. He was babbling now, pleading, choking on river water that poured into his screaming mouth.

Kilroy used a long gaffer’s pole to push Thurlow away from the boat.

Thurlow’s thrashing agitation in the water acted like a dinner bell to the crocodiles.

Singly at first, then in pairs, then groups, they waddled down the black mud of the beach into the river. Once in the water they moved fast, converging on Thurlow.

Massive jaws gaped, closing on his arms and legs. The beasts struck and rolled, tearing him limb from limb.

Thurlow’s fancy cell phone had a built-in digital camera. Kilroy used it to make a record of the carnage.

Red clouds swirled in muddy brown water that churned and boiled from the feeding frenzy.

Even as an armless, legless trunk, Thurlow still kept on screaming. Right until a crocodile’s steaming, voracious maw clamped shut on his head.

Kilroy raised his knife to cut the line tied to what was left of Ward Thurlow but he didn’t have to. A croc’s dagger teeth had already parted the rope.

While late-coming crocodiles fought over the scraps, Kilroy raised anchor. He took the wheel, piloting the boat out of the estuary and into the open sea.

On to Lagos!

The Palace of Government in Lagos, Nigeria, was a massive pile of stucco-covered masonry painted pink with white trim. It had arched windows, a massive domed roof centered with a pointy tip, and corner turrets. Its Arabian Nights roofline was spoiled by an array of spiky antennas and satellite dishes.

The fantastic structure was fronted by a spacious courtyard. The extensive palace grounds featured elaborate gardens with rows of palm trees, hedges and shrubs, marble statuary, and a network of paved walkways.

The site was bordered by a ten-foot-high black iron spear fence and guarded by patrols of soldiers armed with small machine guns.

A boulevard lay beyond the towering, stone-pillared main gate and at right angles to it. The thoroughfare was four lanes wide. A median lined with lofty palms divided the roadway into two, two-lane strips, each strip bearing traffic in an opposite direction.

The time was late afternoon. The boulevard was clogged with traffic: trucks, taxis, beat-up old cars, motor scooters, motorbikes, pedicabs, bicycles—a teeming profusion of variety of wheeled transportation.

The air was heavy with a pall of exhaust fumes. The traffic, chaotic and noisy, was further enlivened by collisions and near-collisions. The air rang with a din of horns honking, tires screeching, and unmufflered engines racketing.

Across the boulevard, on its far side, lay a row of newly built apartment and office buildings, a pricy and much prized new addition to the cityscape.

It was a hot, sweltering day with a hazy, gray-white sky. Behind an overcast of clouds and brown smog, the sun was a broad, blurred smear of sullen, simmering yellow-white heat.

The palace’s main gate opened on a broad paved drive as long as three football fields laid end to end, leading to the fantastic structure housing the seat of government and key ministerial offices.

An open courtyard paved with massive tan flat stones fronted the palace. A wide white stone staircase angled upward to the columned front entrance, with its multidoors set in a two-story-high rounded archway.

A half dozen or so official vehicles were parked in the courtyard. Most were shiny air-conditioned limousines reserved for the use of important government officials. Pride of place was held by the showiest and most important official vehicle of all, a limousine belonging to Minister of Defense Derek Tayambo.

A shiny stretch limousine as long as a cabin cruiser, this ornate land yacht was purple with gold trim. Real gold.

Here was no creampuff, however. The custom-made machine was sheathed in armor plating hidden beneath layers of a glossy, mirror-finish purple paint job. Windshield and windows were made of bulletproof glass several inches thick. Under the hood was a sixteen-cylinder diesel engine.

The undercarriage, springs, and suspension were specially reinforced to bear the weight of all that armor. The tires were made of solid rubber to bear the heavy load without bursting. Which also hardened them against bullets.

The interior was customized with genuine leopard-skin upholstery. Exterior roof and side panels were covered in special leopard-skin-print vinyl. They would have been covered with real leopard skin had the genuine article been able to withstand the rigors of the capital’s steamy, seething climate.

Tayambo’s personal chauffeur, the brother of his second wife, was more smartly uniformed than most of the soldiers on duty, and they were an elite palace guard. He sat in the shade with some of the soldiers, smoking and chatting.

Off to the side where they wouldn’t block the coming and going of high-powered officials and VIPs were several sand-colored Hummer-type vehicles assigned to the security forces. With all the heavily armed troops stationed on the grounds, the palace was better guarded than many state military posts.

On the palace’s third, top floor, a row of glassed-in French doors opened onto a tan stone balcony with a waist-high balustrade. The glass doors were banded with strips of black iron grillework. Above them was a high, arched, plate-glass window. Doors and windows were closed, sealed tight.

Within lay an impressive ministerial conference room. Here was where the president met with his cabinet. A meeting was now in session.

Brightness flooded into the room through the French doors and arched windows. A long mahogany table stood at right angles to the balcony windows, parallel to the room’s long axis. At the far end, seated at the head of the table in a high-backed throne chair, was Minister of Defense Derek Tayambo.

The seat was normally reserved for the president, but the chief executive was a sickly man, ill and aging, who rarely attended cabinet meetings—or, for that matter, properly over-saw the orderly operation of the country’s executive governmental functions.

Power, like Nature, abhors a vacuum, and in the absence of strong (or any, really) leadership from the president, Minister Tayambo had taken up control.

The administration’s ostensible Number Two man, Vice President Johnny Lisongu, was seated way down at the foot of the table, far from the august presence of the high-and-mighty Tayambo.

The defense minister, in his midforties, had a soccer ball–shaped head and a pair of jug handle ears. His head seemed as wide as it was long. His scalp and cruel, thick-featured face were clean-shaven. His eyebrows came to points in the centers, giving him a satanic look. Perched atop his shining skull at a jaunty angle was his trademark leopard-skin fez.

Tayambo wore a custom-tailored khaki uniform whose knife-edged creases were kept in place with ironing and plenty of starch. It was no mean feat to look sharp in Lagos’s sultry climate beyond the palace’s coolly air-conditioned confines.

The defense minister wielded a bamboo-handled horsetail fly whisk. The palace was more or less free of flies; the whisk was a traditional symbol of authority. When crossed or irked, Tayambo was wont to slash the whisk across the face of the offending party.

Seated below him on both sides of the long conference table were eleven lesser ministerial officers, along with the vice president.

About half of the functionaries wore military uniforms; the others wore civilian clothes. Of the latter group, some wore Western-style suits and ties, and the rest wore more traditional folkloric garb, dashiki shirts with colorful prints.

“The next order of business is the matter of the new port facility being built on the coast by the MYRMEX group,” the cabinet secretary announced, reading from a printed roster of the day’s issues at hand.

“The matter is decided,” Tayambo said. “The port will be sold to our good friends from the People’s Republic of China.”

His flat declaration left little to no room for discussion. Several ministers of other departments exchanged glances and stirred uncomfortably in their seats, but none seemed inclined to dispute the matter.

Tayambo thrust his head forward on the end of a thick bull neck, gimlet eyes scanning both sides of the table, searching for dissent.

The few restive officials in the room sat stone-faced and very still.

Vice President Johnny Lisongu nervously cleared his throat. Tayambo glared at him.

“Excellency, might it not be more prudent to lease the property to the Chinese, rather than sell it outright?” Lisongu ventured to ask.

“No! There is no new port facility unless the Chinese continue financing the construction, and they won’t do that unless they hold title to the land,” Tayambo said, in a harsh, no-nonsense tone.

The vice president sat too far away for Tayambo to hit him with the fly whisk and Tayambo feared that he might miss if he threw it. Instead, he went off on a tirade.

“It’s a good site, an excellent natural harbor,” Tayambo said. “It will make an ideal transshipment point to offload our shipments of oil. We’ll run a pipeline to the refinery and storage tanks, all of which will be built by MYRMEX and paid for by our Chinese friends.

“They have the resources. Most of all, they have the funds. China is the coming world leader in the next generation and MY RMEX is their chosen instrument in this sector. China and MYRMEX combined, who can withstand their power?”

From outside the room came a dull crumping sound, a heavy thud. Nothing major but enough to make the assembled dignitaries glance away and turn toward the windows overlooking the courtyard.

A beat or two later came a tremendous booming blast. It shook the windows and doors. Had they not been made of thick plate glass and been so solidly set in their black iron frames, they might have been jarred loose.

The conference room also shook. Water pitchers and glasses on the table jumped into the air. The chandelier suspended from the ceiling on a chain jingled, swayed pendulum-like.

A column of smoke and fire uncoiled in the courtyard, thrusting skyward.

“Palace coup! The army has turned against us!—” one of the ministers said, voicing the great omnipresent fear of them all, including Tayambo, who as Minister of Defense well knew that the military was well stocked with ruthlessly ambitious colonels eager to seize supreme power. The generals were at the top of the heap and not inclined to rebel—it was the colonels who presented the main threat.

Thrown up with the column of smoke and fire were squares and slabs of purple metal.

Some of the more venturesome or curious went to the French doors, peered downward at the courtyard from whence the disturbance had arisen. Several spoke at once:

“What is it?”

“What’s happened?”

“Minister Tayambo, it’s your car!”

“What?” Tayambo pushed back his chair, jumping to his feet.

“It’s been blown up!” someone said.

The sky rained down scraps and shards of purple metal on the courtyard square.

Outrage mastered caution. Tayambo, stung, raced for the far end of the room overlooking the courtyard. Short stubby legs churned like pistons, carrying him to the glassed-in French doors.

“Don’t go outside, Excellency. It could be a trap,” a uniformed official warned.

The relevant part of the courtyard could be seen from inside as the men looked through the glass doors and over the balcony railing to the square below. The courtyard was a scene of chaos and confusion. Armed troops ran this way and that. But with no tangible foe to close with, they could do nothing more than run around aimlessly.

The epicenter of the disturbance lay at the base of the pillar of oily black smoke wreathed with red flames that mounted upward ever higher. Flames burned brightly there, a yellow-red fireball at whose heart laid the boxy outline and skeletal framework of what had once been a magnificent automobile.

The blast had blown off the roof, hood and trunk lids, armored fenders, and side panels. Blazing tires melted into molten black pools, sending out prodigious volumes of black smoke.

Even as Tayambo goggled in stunned disbelief, a purple metal fragment the size of a car door, which had been blown higher than the palace roof, now fell back to earth, crashing into the basin of the fountain in the landscaped center square.

“My car! Treason! They’ll pay for this!” He had no idea who “they” were at the moment but he was certain it had to be a plot. One aimed at him, hitting him where it hurt.

That magnificent machine with its signature leopard-skin-print vinyl roof and side patterning was inextricably associated with him. When it drove around town everyone knew to get out of the way. It said, “Tayambo’s coming!”

To strike at the car was a mortal insult to the mighty minister of defense.

The author of that insolence was far away, across the boulevard from the palace drive, out the main gate. He was in place on the rooftop of an office building a good 350, 400 yards away from the palace.

He was Kilroy. He wore a blue jumpsuit with the logo of a repair company blazoned on the front and back. He lay prone near the front edge of the roof operating a .50 caliber sniper rifle.

The building was a rectangular slab twenty stories tall, its narrow face fronting sidewalk and boulevard. It towered over its neighbors.

The flat rooftop was covered with tar paper studded with countless small pieces of white gravel. In its center was a concrete cube with a peaked skylight and a solid gray metal door in one side that accessed the rooftop.

The rooftop was tangled with lines and squares of sheet-metal conduit ducting, bundles of pipe and tubing, all centered around a boxcar-sized air-conditioning unit. The horizontal layout was punctuated vertically by ventilator-housing shafts.

Kilroy had gained admittance earlier by posing as an air-conditioner repairman. Many such mechanical specialties were handled by foreigners, so he did not excite any undue interest or notice from the building manager. The building had never been flagged as a potential threat by security forces due to its distance from the palace.

The manager had delegated the superintendent to escort Kilroy to the top of the building. The duo rode to the top floor in an elevator and climbed a flight of stairs to the roof. It was hot and the superintendant saw no need for broiling out in the sun when he could be in the building’s air-conditioned interior. He left Kilroy in place and hurried back inside.

Kilroy toted an oversized red metal toolbox. Once he was alone on the roof, he gimmicked the door, locking it from the outside. Barring access from within, so no one could surprise him at “work.”

The roof was bordered by no retaining wall, no parapet. It just ended on all four sides with a straight two-hundred-foot drop. That was no bother to Kilroy, who had no fear of heights.

He set up near the rooftop’s front edge, going down on one knee and opening the lid of the toolbox. Concealed in it in specially made brackets were the components of a disassembled .50 sniper rifle. He quickly put it together, mounting it on a bipod stand.

He stretched out prone on the flat roof, oblivious to the sharp-edged white pebbles that dug into his flesh.

He was no less oblivious to his ordeal in the Vurukoo swamps, his escape by the gunboat, his covert return to Lagos, and the complicated intrigue and series of maneuvers in contacting an underground network of spies, crooks, and patriots who had enabled him to establish himself in a safe house and ultimately acquire the hardware and forged documents that would allow him to complete his mission.