Red Earth (34 page)

Chapter 35

The next day Mike parked his rented car at Johannesburg's O. R. Tambo International Airport and walked through the undercover parking area to the terminal buildings and downstairs to Arrivals.

The hall was busy as always. Families were waiting for loved ones while safari operators and hire car drivers held signs with the names of arriving passengers. Two security guards in blue camouflage uniforms and matching berets patrolled past Mike as he took up a position and waited for Nia.

He checked his watch. It was 10.55. Nia had messaged him just after Swissair flight LX288 had landed, on time, at 10.25.

Long queue at immigration
, was the next message he received from her.

All clear on this side
, he replied.

‘Mike.'

He turned around and realised he had messaged too soon to Nia. ‘Jed.'

‘I'm not here to grab Nia, if that's what you're wondering.'

Mike looked around the terminal for any other signs of muscle power. ‘The thought had come to mind.'

‘I've got bad news, Mike,' Jed said. ‘Suzanne Fessey is in the wind.'

Mike's chest tightened. ‘She escaped?'

Jed nodded. ‘Franklin didn't check in when he was supposed to, after leaving Louis Trichardt yesterday. Suzanne never arrived at Johannesburg's women's prison, where she was to be held in maximum custody until the US and South African governments worked out who was going to prosecute her, and what for.'

‘Franklin?'

‘There was him and two South African police officers in the SUV. The Chevvie was found burned out on a farm between Pretoria and Joburg. There were the bodies of three men on board and no Suzanne. Initial report is that all of the men were shot, and there was no sign of Franklin's pistol in the wreck. Somehow she got the jump on them.'

‘While she's alive and on the loose Nia's at risk.'

‘And so are you, Mike,' Jed said.

Mike looked around the Arrivals hall again. A pair of South African police officers, armed with R5s, moved through. He guessed the additional security was a result of the recent bombing. ‘Do the South Africans know that Nia's on this flight?'

‘No.' Jed lowered his voice. ‘If your friend Nia hit the jackpot and emptied the terrorists' bank account then the South African customs or police people would seize any sizeable amount of undeclared cash. If Nia doesn't play ball with us, and collect her reward for her troubles, then I'm afraid I will call the airport police into play.'

Mike had no idea what, if anything, Nia had found, and she had been unwilling to talk about it over the phone in case he was being listened in on. ‘I don't know if she found anything in the bank account.'

Jed looked him in the eyes. ‘I know that, Mike.'

Mike smiled. He'd been right. They were both on the CIA's radar now, he and Nia, and with Suzanne out there again Jed would be thinking, perhaps hoping, that they might lure Suzanne into the open.

Mike's phone beeped again. Nia had cleared immigration and was on her way through.

*

Chris Mitchell pulled into a short-term parking bay in the pick-up zone outside the airport terminal but didn't turn off the engine of the hired Mercedes transit van.

He reached over and turned up the volume on the car radio. He'd heard the news on 5FM half an hour ago, but his two passengers in the back would have missed it. The timing was perfect.

‘The President announced today that South Africa would stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States in the fight against terrorism on the African continent following the assassination of Ambassador Anita Rosenfeld in Durban. This radical shift in national policy was tentatively welcomed by the opposition Democratic Alliance.'

Chris turned off the radio and looked back at the man and woman in South African police uniforms.

‘We're almost done here. Nia Carras will be coming into the Arrivals hall any minute now. Banks is there, as is Mike Dunn. You two good to go?'

‘Affirmative, sir,' said Franklin Washington. He looked to the woman next to him.

‘Yes, I'm ready,' Suzanne Fessey said. She took the Z88 pistol from the leather holster on her belt and cocked it. Franklin did likewise and the pair did a quick check of their equipment and radios.

It had been a shame about the two South African police officers that Franklin and Suzanne had killed in the Chevrolet, and the homeless man they had killed and burned in the truck to make it look like Franklin was dead. More troubling to Chris was the death of the Navy aircrew on the helicopter that Paulsen's men had brought down. Suzanne Fessey had told Chris she had not known that their cache of weapons included an RPG-7 anti-armour weapon.

Events had overtaken him there for a while, Chris mused, after Suzanne's car had been hijacked. The initial response, coordinated by Jed Banks, had been almost too efficient. Paulsen and his men did not know Suzanne had been turned by the CIA and they had brought down the Sea Hawk with deadly force, nearly killing Chris's man, Franklin Washington, in the process.

Franklin had done a masterful job, going undercover in Syria, and making contact with Omar Farhat and his wife, Suzanne Fessey. The couple had travelled there, covertly, a couple of times a year to talk strategy with their new masters. Over the past two years Franklin had turned Suzanne, who had become increasingly disenchanted with the way women were being treated in the ISIS-controlled caliphate.

Suzanne had always exerted a large degree of control over her accountant husband, in all matters other than finance. Omar was ideologically committed to the struggle and had a brilliant mind, but he was a nervous man, and was not physically strong. He'd kept the details of bin Laden's secret bank account to himself, but, with Suzanne's prompting, had decided the time was nigh for another spectacular attack, at the same or greater level as that of 9–11, to allow al-Qaeda and its allies to remind the west of their power.

Behind the scenes, Franklin had facilitated meetings between Suzanne and Omar and other CIA agents posing as Russian arms dealers with a suitcase nuke for sale. Suzanne had convinced Omar the operation would be best planned from a country not on America's day-to-day surveillance radar – her homeland of South Africa.

In recent months Franklin, through feeding false information to Paulsen via Russian-speaking CIA operatives, had preyed on Omar's nervy nature and convinced him the Americans were getting wind of their quest for a nuke and that Omar was about to be exposed. Suzanne had talked of the two of them going out in a suicide attack on a worthy target rather than risk imminent capture. Omar had, as Suzanne predicted, suggested she should stay alive to raise their infant son, Hassan. The child hadn't been planned and while Suzanne hadn't wanted him she had some affection for him and he had proved useful in establishing their cover in South Africa as a happy couple.

As Omar had planned his own death, rather than risk capture and interrogation, he'd told Suzanne that he would leave her the number and passcode of the Swiss bank account that contained the money set aside by the Sheik to purchase a nuclear weapon. On the morning of his death Omar had told Suzanne about the microchip he'd had implanted in Hassan, and added that he had included on the chip a clue that she would understand to let her know the passcode.

If it had all gone to plan, which it hadn't, Franklin would have met Suzanne on the road to Mozambique, and when she'd rendezvoused with Paulsen and his men, Franklin and Suzanne would have assassinated them.

The operation to disrupt the extremists' plan to acquire a nuke was real and Chris Mitchell took solace in the fact that he was helping to prevent a catastrophe, but that was where the righteousness ended. When Suzanne had told Franklin how much money was in the Sheik's account, and Franklin relayed that to Chris, the three of them decided to split it three ways once Omar was gone.

Suzanne slid open the side door of the van.

‘No more mistakes,' Chris said.

‘Roger that, sir, we'll be back in five,' Franklin said.

*

Suzanne saw a young mother in the crowd, holding a newborn baby. She and Franklin had talked about having a baby, as part of their plan to start over.

They stayed on the far side of the crowd from where Banks and Dunn were waiting for the helicopter pilot.

‘In position,' Franklin said into his radio microphone, giving Chris an update.

Suzanne watched the automatic sliding doors open and a trio of passengers arrive. Two were a couple, the third was Nia Carras.

‘Standby,' Suzanne said into her radio. ‘Target in sight.'

‘Go,' Franklin said.

Suzanne reached into the satchel bag around her neck and pulled out a CS tear gas grenade. She pulled the pin and tossed it, high and far, to the other side of the Arrivals hall. At the same time, Franklin dropped another CS grenade by their feet. In the four seconds it took both to detonate Suzanne and Franklin had pulled out the gas masks from the pouches strapped to their right thighs and put them on.

Immediately scores of people began running for the exits, which were already blocked. Half a dozen people were on the floor screaming in pain from the debilitating gas and a few brave souls were staying to tend to them or help lift and carry them to safety. Others were coughing and crying from the effects.

Suzanne and Franklin ran fast, each heading straight for their target. Suzanne barrelled into Nia, who was retching and holding her hands to her eyes. ‘Come with me, miss, I'm police, I'll get you out.'

Franklin had his arms spread wide and was pushing Mike Dunn and Jed Banks towards the exit, away from Nia. With his gas mask on and the other men's eyes clearly burning from gas, Suzanne was sure neither Jed nor Mike would recognise him.

Suzanne grabbed Nia by the forearm and half guided, half pushed her towards a set of escalators. Nia looked over her shoulder. ‘Keep moving, you have to get out of here.'

As they made it to the escalator and started moving, Suzanne saw that Mike and Jed were trying to push back, so Franklin dropped another tear gas grenade. As it went off Dunn and Banks were forced to back off, spluttering.

Suzanne pushed Nia higher and higher and, glancing around, saw that Franklin was backing up the escalator behind them.

Franklin grabbed one of Nia's arms and Suzanne the other and they half dragged, half propelled Nia towards the exit. While the tear gas had filtered upstairs its effects were only just being felt there and the doors were not yet blocked. They ran out of the terminal.

*

Nia gulped in the warm fresh air, her eyes streaming so much she was barely able to see.

The tear gas had been brutal, and now everywhere on her body where there was moisture – her eyes, her mouth, even under her arms where she'd been sweating – stung like someone was injecting her with hundreds of tiny needles.

A big black van loomed in her vision and the smaller of the two police officers, a female, opened the side door. ‘Get in.'

Nia wiped her eyes. She'd been more than happy to let the police officers lead her out of the terminal, but she had assumed there would be other innocent victims of the gas attack behind her. When she looked around she saw it was just the three of them. Panic seized her.

‘No.'

The man in the police uniform grabbed her arm and dragged her to the door. Nia screamed, but the woman came up behind her and grabbed her. The two of them dragged her into the van and slammed the door.

A man with wavy grey hair and spectacles turned to face her from the driver's seat. ‘Miss Carras, my name is Chris Mitchell. I'm CIA. You're safe, believe me.' He held out an ID card with his picture on the left-hand side and the agency's logo of an eagle's head atop a shield with a compass rose.

‘What about your other man, Jed?' she said.

‘Banks is fine,' said Chris. ‘He's meeting us later.' He turned to the other two. ‘Get Miss Carras some water, please.'

The van started to move as Chris reversed. The male in the police uniform produced a litre bottle of water. ‘Kneel on the floor and put your arms out. Try and keep your eyes open and I'll douse you with water. It'll take away the sting of the CS – the tear gas.'

Nia did as she was told and the man doused her with water. He was right, it immediately began to relieve the pain of the gas.

‘Where are you taking me?'

‘Safety,' Chris replied from the front without looking back.

*

Mike wiped his stinging eyes and tried to focus. Nia was nowhere to be seen and neither were the two police officers who had rammed him and brought Jed to his knees.

The downstairs exits were still clogged but Mike craned his head and looked up to the next floor of the airport, Departures. ‘Jed, they've gone that way.'

The two of them ran for the escalator and took the stairs two at a time. They rushed to the doors and outside. ‘CD,' Jed said.

‘What?' Mike asked.

Jed pointed to a black Mercedes van that was speeding away. ‘That vehicle's got Diplomatic Corps number plates. It's a Merc. I think I've seen it before.' He took out his phone. ‘Something else. That cop in the gas mask who pushed us aside, I got a look at his eyes. It was Franklin.'

‘Shit.' Mike opened a bottle of water he'd bought at an airport kiosk and flushed his eyes with it. He did the same for Jed and poured it over the American, who blinked as he talked on the phone to a woman named Janey. Mike gathered she handled administration at the embassy. Jed ended the call.

‘One of yours?' Mike asked.

‘You got it. It's from the fleet. My boss signed it out this morning.'

‘What's the CIA doing here, Jed?'

‘I could say “beats me”, but I'd be lying,' said Jed. Jed made another call. ‘Janey, hi, it's Jed Banks again. Say, Chris said he was flying out today and I wanted to try and get on the same flight as him. I can't raise him on his cell phone. You don't happen to have his itinerary, do you?'