The Outlaw (19 page)

"Shoot to kill!" shouted Beogo. "Don't let him escape!"

The beehives.
Yakuuba dodged behind the first one and tried to make himself small. Bullets tore into the hive, riddling the wood and honeycomb with daylight. A furious buzzing came from within.

The policemen advanced, their pistols set to automatic, strafing the beehive with lead until it began to disintegrate. Blood pounded in Yakuuba's ears. He sprinted five yards to the second hive and dived behind it.

Commissioner Beogo was the first to realize the danger. He knew full well that bees hate any disturbance of their hives, and that loud noise or vibration agitates them even more. "Hold your fire!" he shouted. "I repeat, do not fire on the hives!"

His warning came too late. Two boiling, frenzied columns of worker bees rose from the ruptured hives and swelled into a thick black cloud. They swarmed toward the home wreckers, barbed stings at the ready, apoplectic with rage.

"Stand your ground, men!" hissed Beogo. "Remember your training."

Yakuuba flattened himself against the back of the third hive and pulled the mesh visor down over his face as the fury descended on him. Bees shrieked in his ears and tried to sting him through his protective clothes and gloves and the mesh of his face guard.

Beogo's men did not have the benefit of protection, and they stood in wide-eyed horror as the bees enveloped them. Elite fighters they may have been, but they were also townies. They did not know bees. There were shouts of fear and pain as two thousand irate insects alighted on ears and nostrils and necks and lips, stinging fast and hard.
Gendarmes
were shouting, running, whirling their arms like windmills, trying to bat the homicidal insects away.

"Calm yourselves!" yelled Beogo. "If they smell your fear, that makes it worse. Stop flapping your arms. Focus on the outlaw. Find an angle. Six bottles of pastis to the man who nails him!"

Lieutenant Ouedraogo dropped to the ground and began to move forward in a fast cat crawl. Followed closely by four of his best men, he advanced toward the third hive, ignoring the red-hot jabs of pain all over his body. He narrowed the angle bit by bit, and
there it was,
the outlaw's head, poking out from behind the hive.

"Get in here!" Jake's mum was shouting from the house. "Get inside, all of you. You're going to get stung to death!"

The lieutenant propped himself up on one elbow and lined up his sights. The masked head of the outlaw disappeared, a gloved hand shot out, and a whole tray of honeycomb came skimming across the ground toward him, spilling its occupants as it came. The air swirled with dust and yet more angry worker bees. The lieutenant cringed and writhed. It was impossible now to get the outlaw in his sights, let alone to fire a shot.

"Twelve bottles!" roared Beogo. "A whole case of pastis to the man who takes him down!"

But the lieutenant was no longer thinking about pastis. The pain on his face and neck was too much to bear. He jumped to his feet, sprinted to the swimming pool, and dived in fully clothed. As he entered the water, the thick layer of bees peeled off him, but they did not fly away. They hovered there, just above the surface of the water, waiting for their victim to come up for air as he surely must.

"Get out of the pool!" shouted Jake's mum. "Into the house, all of you!"

Sor was on the move again, dragging the hive with him as a shield. He set it down next to the shed and peered over the top, scanning the situation.

The
gendarmes
no longer cared about their mission. Each of them was flapping and dancing in his own private hell. One by one they turned and ran for the house.

Except for one. François Beogo was striding toward him, revolver in hand, his face covered with exultant bees. On he came, squinting at his prey through puffed-up eyelids.

Yakuuba ducked down and fitted a pebble into his slingshot. Then he leaped up and slung the pebble, chinning the police commissioner and knocking him off balance. He climbed up onto the hive, fired another stone, and jumped up onto the shed roof.

Lying in the dust, Commissioner Beogo rattled off the contents of his magazine. One of the rounds tore through the outlaw's face guard and grazed the side of his head, but it was only a skin wound. Yakuuba slung two more pebbles, vaulted the wall of the compound, and disappeared from view.

Commissioner
Beogo, can you hear me?"

Jake's mum knelt on the ground next to the stricken police commissioner. She loosened his belt and undid the brass buttons on his uniform jacket. Beogo and three other men had received more than a hundred stings each and were in very serious condition.

The bees that had delivered their stings littered the ground, dead or dying. The others, sensing a threat to their colony, had swarmed and left the premises.

"That dirty terrorist ... will get what he ... deserves," wheezed Beogo in English. His eyes were swollen shut and he seemed to be having difficulty breathing. "He's destined ... for hellfire."

"Stay still," said Mrs. Knight. She was using her long nails to scrape the bee stingers out of Beogo's skin, starting with those on his face and neck. "You are in shock, and you need an adrenaline injection. The ambulance is on its way."

"All of them ... destined ... for hellfire," croaked the police commissioner. His eyes rolled up into his head and his whole body began to spasm violently.

"What's going on?" asked Jake. "What's he saying?"

Mrs. Knight jumped and looked up at her son. "I didn't see you there," she said. "Please don't watch this, Jake—it'll give you nightmares. Go back in the house."

 

The ambulances finally arrived. They took nineteen
gendarmes
to a local hospital for treatment. Beogo and two others were taken directly to the morgue.

The rest of the
gendarmes
left on foot, limping and leaderless, shaking their heads in disbelief at what they had just seen: thirty armed men beaten in a pitched battle by one boy with a slingshot. Some of them covered their embarrassment with vague threats against the British embassy.

When the last
gendarme
had left the compound, the Knight family held a hurried conference in the study.

"I've just been on the phone to the Foreign Office," said Jake's father. "I asked for permission to close the embassy and evacuate."

"What did they say?" asked Jake.

"They want the embassy to stay open, but they recommend that you and Kirsty be sent home to England for a while."

Kas gasped. "This is my home," she said. "I don't know anyone in England."

"Nevertheless, there is still a significant kidnapping risk. Your mother and I think that—"

"No way." Kas had tears in her eyes. "I'm not going."

"Yes, you are," said Mrs. Knight, and the tone of her voice made it clear that argument was useless.

"There is a flight tonight from Ouagadougou to London," said Mr. Knight. "Aunt Rosemary will meet you at the airport, and you can stay with her until things calm down. I'll go and call her now." He hurried out of the room.

"And I'm going to make a pot of tea," said Mrs. Knight, heading for the door. "Go upstairs and pack your bags, you two, then come down and set the table."

"How long do we have to stay with Aunt Rosemary?" asked Jake.

"Not long," replied his mum brightly. "Just until things here quiet down a bit."

She left them alone in the study, reeling from the news of their imminent evacuation.

"Typical," said Jake.

Kas flopped into a swivel chair and spun moodily from side to side. "I'd rather stay with the Friends of the Poor again than with Aunt Rosemary."

"Don't let Dad hear you talking like that. He'll have you treated for Stockholm syndrome."

Kas suddenly stopped swiveling. "What's that?"

"It's where a hostage falls in love with—"

"No, what's that?" Kas was pointing at something in the wastepaper basket underneath the study desk.

Jake looked and saw a shimmer of red. He bent down and rummaged in the basket. "It's a beetle," he said, picking it up. "Or at least it used to be. It's been mangled."

"Gross," said Kas.

"It's that robot beetle we saw in Kongoussi."

"The one Dexter was using to track us?"

"Yes, it's got some sort of GPS component. At least it did have. Looks like someone has cut it out."

"Dexter," said Kas. "He's only happy when he's maiming and killing."

"Come on." Jake threw the mangled cyborg back in the wastebasket. "We should go and pack."

It took them half an hour to pack their bags, twenty minutes to shower, and five minutes to set the table for the evening meal.

The fried chicken was very tasty, much better than
nyiiri,
but the atmosphere around the table was unbearably heavy. Mr. and Mrs. Knight had many questions about Jake and Kas's kidnapping and their journey home, but Jake was far too tired to talk about it properly, and Kas was far too angry.

It was a relief when Dad pushed back his chair and announced that it was about time they all got going to the airport. "I'll give you one last ride on the Dakar," he said to Jake. "Your mother and sister will follow in the car with the luggage."

Twenty minutes later the motorcycle shot out of the gates and roared along Embassy Row, heading for the airport. Jake hung on to the pillion grips and tried to fix the sights and sounds of Ouagadougou in his memory. As they passed the president's palace, he lifted his visor and leaned over to talk to his father. "Where's Dexter? I haven't seen him since the bee thing."

"I think he went to look for a dentist," said Mr. Knight. "Sor broke two of his teeth as a parting gift."

"Serves him right."

Mr. Knight shook his head. "Jake, I know you don't like Roy Dexter, but he's not a bad man. He saved your friend's life this afternoon."

"How do you work that out?"

"When I went into my study to get Yakuuba's reward, Roy was sitting there mending his slingshot for him. He said the rubber had come loose and he was retightening it. Just think, if it had broken in the middle of the bee battle, would he still have gotten away?"

"Why would Dexter mend Yakuuba's slingshot?" asked Jake. "He hates Yakuuba."

"There's nowt as queer as folk," his dad replied. "Anyway, here we are. Ouagadougou International Airport. Gateway to heaven."

They left the Dakar in the parking lot and waited for Jake's mum and Kas to turn up with the luggage. When the car finally arrived, the family had to run all the way to the check-in desk, and even then they only just made it on time.

The clerk behind the desk began to make a fuss about two minors traveling unaccompanied, but when she saw their green diplomatic passports, she changed her tune. She apologized profusely and even asked if they would like free use of the VIP lounge.

"No," said Jake. "We want to be with everyone else."

"How many pieces of luggage do you have?" asked the clerk.

"One each."

"Did you pack them yourselves?"

"Yes."

"Have you got a tag?"

"What?" Jake stared at her.

"A luggage tag, to write your destination address. Have you already got one?"

A tag.
In his mind's eye Jake was back in the study, looking at the mangled beetle....
It's got some sort of GPS component. At least it did have. Looks like someone has cut it out.

"Come on, Jake," said Mr. Knight. "The lady asked you a question."

Roy was mending Yakuuba's slingshot for him. He said the rubber had come loose and he was retightening it....

"Jake," repeated Mr. Knight, "do you need a luggage tag?"

That's a slingshot. He takes it with him everywhere....

"Are you all right, Jake?" said Mrs. Knight. "You look ever so pale."

All of them ... destined ... for hellfire.

"What's Hellfire?" asked Jake out loud.

"I beg your pardon?"

"It's something military, isn't it? Kas, have you got your phone there?"

"Yes," said Kas.

"Google Hellfire. Look for weapons."

Kas ran the search and scrolled down the list of results. She squealed in horror.

"What does it say?"

"'Hellfire, brackets missile,'" read Kas. "'The Hellfire AGM-114N missile is an enhanced blast weapon with a thermo-baric warhead. The missile can be fired from an Apache attack helicopter or a Predator UCAV (Unmanned Combat Air Vehicle). It has been used with success in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq.'"

"Here are your boarding passes," said the clerk. "Your flight leaves in half an hour from gate four.
Bon voyage.
"

Jake ignored the proffered boarding passes. "What else does it say?"

"'In 2008,'" read Kas, "'Hellfire caused controversy in the United Kingdom when it was found out that hundreds of these munitions had been secretly added to the British Army arsenal. In the United States experts spent eighteen months debating whether troops could use them without breaking international law. Thermobaric weapons, also known as vacuum bombs, have been condemned as "brutal" by human rights groups. They create a pressure wave which—'" Kas was choking up.

"Which what?" said Jake.

"'Which sucks the air out of victims, shreds their internal organs, and crushes their bodies. Hellfire is the next worst thing to a nuclear explosion.'"

"That's revolting," said Mrs. Knight. "I don't want you reading that sort of thing, Kirsty."

"Your boarding passes," said the clerk, waving them under Jake's nose.

"Dad, you've got to call the Foreign Office," said Jake.

"What on earth for?"

"Roy Dexter took the GPS component out of the cyborg beetle and wound it into the rubber of Yakuuba's slingshot."

The ambassador raised an eyebrow. "That's a little far-fetched, even for you, Jake."

"Think about it," said Jake. "What's the one part of Yakuuba's outfit that never changes, no matter what disguise he's wearing?"

"I really couldn't say."

"His slingshot! Yakuuba takes it everywhere with him. Don't you see, Dad? This was Dexter's plan B, in case Sor found a way to escape. Last thing Beogo said was something about Sor being destined for Hellfire. I'll bet you anything that a Predator UCAV is tracking that slingshot on a GPS receiver right this minute."