‘No. If Cruz hears that you’re even in the vicinity of that hotel, he’ll know Malcolm tipped you off and he’ll get his East Side Boys to kill him immediately.’ Zak didn’t mention that this was the only way he could think of to save Smiler’s skin too.
Gabs hesitated, looking uselessly from side to side.
‘We got him into this, Gabs,’ Zak urged. ‘We have to get him out.’
Without waiting for a reply, he sprinted over to the next car in line, ignoring the cacophony of car horns that blasted through the air. He dug one hand into his pocket and yanked out a fistful of notes, which he waved under the nose of the driver. ‘Will you take me to the airport for this?’ he shouted.
The driver’s eyes bulged and he nodded vigorously. Zak jumped into the back of the car. Within seconds, the driver had done a U-turn. Zak looked out of the window and saw the battered old car carrying Raf and Gabs do the same manoeuvre. He caught a glimpse of Gabs herself, her face troubled and nervous, and suddenly felt very alone.
‘Please hurry,’ he said to his Gambian driver.
The man looked nervously left and right. In the rear-view mirror, Zak could see sweat on his brow. ‘All the planes are cancelled anyway,’ the driver said. ‘They are making circles in the sky. All the phones are down. Nobody can talk to anybody else.’
‘Yeah,’ Zak said. ‘I heard.’
‘Probably it is something to do with the weather.’ The man was talking fast and Zak sensed he was trying to keep his mind occupied while they headed back into the city.
‘Probably,’ said Zak, looking out at the piercing blue sky.
‘You will not miss your flight.’
‘I’m not catching a flight,’ Zak mumbled.
‘Then why go to the airport? You want to wait there until you can get out of Banjul? That is a good idea. There are riots in the streets today. Buildings on fire. It is not a safe place to be.’
‘How long till we get there?’ Zak asked.
‘It is not far. Five minutes maybe.’ The man fell silent as he concentrated on the road.
‘I think there’s something Zak’s not telling us,’ Gabs said.
Their driver screeched wildly up the main road. A sign told them that they were entering the town of Serrekunda, a suburb of Banjul. It appeared to be a busy, sprawling place. But a place in a state of panic. Roadside stalls had been left abandoned. Empty cars sat at the side of the road with their doors flung wide open. They drove past shacks to the left and right where whole families seemed to have congregated. Many of the men were holding phones up to the sky, clearly trying to understand why they wouldn’t work.
‘What do you mean up to something? Like what?’ asked Raf. He glanced at his watch. 11.37hrs.
‘I’m not sure. Did you see the way he looked at that coffin? Something’s going on. I don’t like it.’
Raf gave her a solid stare. ‘I know he’s like your kid brother, Gabs, but you’ve got to let go sometime. We’ve taught him all this stuff so he can act on his own. We won’t always be there to help him, you know.’ He sniffed. ‘He was probably just spooked by that Vodun picture.’
Gabs’s cheek twitched. She wiped some little beads of sweat from her nose. ‘What if he comes across Sudiq on his own? The guy killed his parents. He’s going to want revenge, Raf. He’s just a kid. I know he’s clever and brave and all that stuff, but he’s never killed anyone. I just don’t think he has it in him. But if he hesitates for even a moment . . .’
Raf put one hand on hers. ‘I think you’ll be surprised,’ he said, ‘what Zak has in him.’
They stared silently at each other for a long moment. Then Gabs ripped her gaze away. ‘How far is the hotel?’ she asked their nervous driver.
‘Two minutes,’ the driver said. He honked his horn and started to overtake a white bush taxi trundling up ahead.
Then he cursed.
‘What is it?’ Raf asked tersely.
‘There is a road block,’ the driver hissed. ‘I’m going to turn back.’
‘
No!
’ Raf hissed. ‘Keep going. We’ll talk our way through.’
‘They have guns!’ the driver screeched.
‘Listen to me,’ Raf snapped. ‘If we don’t get to that hotel, people are going to die, do you understand?’
The man was hyperventilating. His eyes were as wild as his driving. The bush taxi had pulled up at the side of the road to pick up some passengers and there was now nothing but open space between the VW and the roadblock. They were fifty metres away and closing. And they could clearly see that the armed guards blocking the road had the distinctive scars on their faces that they had grown to fear. There were four of them, standing in front of a barrier with bright orange chevrons.
‘Slow down,’ Raf said, his voice suddenly very calm. ‘When we get there, let me do the talking.’
The driver’s hands were shaking even as he held the wheel. He slammed his foot on the brake and the car skidded to a halt just metres in front of the barrier.
Silence. Two East Side Boys swaggered up to the driver’s window, clutching their weapons. The remaining two stood by the barrier, their eyes narrow with suspicion.
The driver lowered his window. At a command
from one of the sour-faced East Side Boys, he then opened the door and stepped outside. Suddenly he started babbling, his words tripping over each other. Neither Raf nor Gabs could understand the dialect, but they certainly understood its meaning. The driver started pointing at them, and rubbing his fingers to indicate a wad of money.
‘
He’s turning us in!
’ Raf hissed.
In an instant, he and Gabs had opened both passenger doors and were lunging out of the car.
But too late. The East Side Boys had spotted them. They raised their weapons and started screaming: ‘
HANDS AGAINST THE CAR! HANDS AGAINST THE CAR!
’
Raf and Gabs looked all around, desperately trying to spot an exit strategy. But there was no cover nearby. If they ran, the East Side Boys would shoot. They had no option but to do as they were told.
As Raf put his palms against the burning metal of the beige VW, he glanced at his watch.
11.47hrs. Thirteen minutes to go.
They were never going to get to the hotel.
It was going to be a bloodbath.
The road to Banjul Airport was in the opposite direction to the city itself. It did not pass through the town of Serrekunda. But it did pass some tiny, poor-looking shanties on either side. Zak observed families milling nervously around huts with corrugated-iron roofs. Occasionally he caught sight of frightened children crying.
Cruz might have disabled the communications systems for the entire area, but it was clear that word was travelling the old-fashioned way that all was not well in Banjul. He gritted his teeth and looked straight ahead.
As they approached the airport, Zak saw several military trucks. They were parked up by the side of the road and their occupants stood next to them, arguing. They clearly had no idea quite what was going on, or what to do.
He looked at his watch. 11.48hrs. Twelve minutes to go. An icy feeling trickled down his spine. ‘Can you go any faster?’ he asked the driver.
The driver gave him a dark look in the rear-view mirror, but Zak felt a lurch and saw their speed edge up from fifty kilometres per hour to sixty.
The car itself was disgusting. Empty drinks cans were littered all over the place, and the driver had left various musty-smelling items of clothing in the back seat. Zak was sure he felt something scurrying around his feet – cockroaches, maybe. He tried to put his mind off it by peering through the front window. He saw four planes spiralling above the airport and he had a sudden flashback: Raf’s Cessna spluttering above the jungle, and the dreadful noise it made as it crash-landed. These spiralling aircraft had limited fuel. They couldn’t spiral for ever. And if they came crashing down to earth, they’d make a much bigger noise than the Cessna had.
And cause a lot more death and devastation.
‘There!’ he said out loud. From his left-hand window he could see, about 500 metres away, a concrete tower. It had a cluster of radar dishes and aerials sprouting from the top and was surrounded by a wire perimeter fence. The entrance gate in the fence was 100 metres to his ten o’clock. ‘Drop me here,’ he said.
The driver screeched to a halt and looked over his shoulder at Zak. ‘What? Why? The airport terminal is this way, crazy English boy.’
Zak ignored him. He looked round the back seat and picked up a brightly embroidered but rather dirty hooded top. ‘I’ll buy this,’ he said. Without waiting for an answer, he added another hundred-dollar bill to the wad he already had in his fist and thrust it at the driver. The driver accepted the money with a look on his face that clearly said:
this kid is mad
.
Zak pulled on the hooded top. It stank of stale sweat, but he ignored that and pulled the hood over his head, nodded at the driver, and left the car. He didn’t watch the driver zoom off – just heard the screech of his tyres as he put some distance between himself and the crazy English boy.
Zak didn’t hesitate. With his head down and his face concealed by the hood, he strode towards the perimeter fence.
He glanced at his watch. 11.51hrs.
Nine minutes to go.
With his hands up against the car, Raf felt the barrel of a gun at the back of his head.
‘What’s the hurry, my friend?’ said the rasping voice of the gunman.
‘Lunch date,’ Raf said from between clenched teeth. ‘Old friend. You know how it is.’
‘
Raf!
’ Gabs hissed quietly. She was standing immediately next to him on the right, but none of the other gunmen seemed to think she was a threat, so she wasn’t at gunpoint. ‘Don’t antagonize him.’
But the gunman didn’t sound antagonized. He laughed a mirthless laugh and jabbed the gun harder into the back of Raf’s head.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ Gabs sighed.
She moved so fast that even Raf was surprised. Her left hand shot out and grabbed the barrel of the boy’s gun, yanking it upwards so that now it pointed above Raf’s head.
A shot rang out. The bullet fired harmlessly into the sky and Gabs yanked her arm round, twisting the gun so that now it was positioned across the East Side Boy’s body. She thrust it upwards with colossal force and there was a massive crack as it hit the underside of the gunman’s chin. The boy’s eyes glazed over. As he slumped into Gabs’s arms, she spun him ninety degrees and took charge of the weapon that was still slung round his neck. She fired a burst of rounds at the feet of the remaining East Side Boys. They shouted in alarm as the bullets thundered into the road surface, throwing chunks of stone up into the air.
Then they ran.
The driver had watched all this happening with bulging eyes. He staggered backwards. Then, at a fierce look from Raf, he turned and ran too. He didn’t get far. Raf ran after him and grabbed him by the arm. ‘You’re coming with us,’ he said. ‘We need directions.’ He dragged the man over to the waiting car and bundled him into the back, before taking his place behind the wheel.
Gabs let the gunman slump to the ground. She helped herself to his gun. Then, following Raf’s lead, she jumped into the back of the car. Raf pressed his foot down on the accelerator and the car screeched forward.
‘This way?’ she asked the terrified man cowering next to her.
He nodded violently, unable to take his eyes off the weapon.
‘What time is it?’ Raf shouted at Gabs.
She checked her watch. ‘11.54 hours,’ she said. A pause. ‘The bombs go off in six minutes. We’re not going to make it, are we?’
Raf stared straight ahead. ‘Maybe we can help with the wounded,’ he growled.
‘If there are any,’ said Gabs quietly.
Zak sweated heavily under the thick hood. He kept
his head down but his eyes up as he approached the concrete communications tower.
There was a black Range Rover parked ten metres from the foot of the tower. To its right there was a dead body lying on the ground. But the area was otherwise deserted. He knew from Malcolm’s message that he was being held at gunpoint by two armed guards. But Zak himself was unarmed. He couldn’t just walk in there. He needed to draw the East Side Boys out.
He headed straight for the Range Rover. The keys were still hanging in the ignition. He silently thanked his Guardian Angels for all the driving instruction they’d given him back on the island, then jumped behind the wheel and turned the engine over. Before knocking it into gear, he revved the accelerator several times. The engine screamed loudly – loud enough, he reckoned, for it to be heard inside the tower. Then, with one eye in the rear-view mirror, he started to drive off.
He took it slowly at first. He didn’t think it would take long for the East Side Boys to come running out of the tower to confront the hooded figure who had just stolen their vehicle.
He was right.
Zak was barely twenty metres away from the tower when they appeared. They both burst out of
the door and although he couldn’t hear them, he could see that they were shouting.
He could also see that they were raising their guns.
In a flash, he leaned over so his head was almost lying in the passenger seat. Just in time. Two shots rang out, and there was a sudden, splintering sound as the rear windscreen shattered violently. Unable to see where he was going, Zak yanked the steering wheel down sharply to one side and pressed hard on the accelerator. The vehicle spun round, its engine screaming because he was still in a low gear. He heard two more shots, but there was no impact: the East Side Boys had missed the Range Rover this time.
A voice entered his head. It belonged to Michael, his handler. Zak remembered word for word what Michael had said to him in the Cessna as they were flying towards Senegal.
If a Spitfire pilot got hit by an enemy plane – a Messerschmitt or similar – his best bet was always to fly directly at the oncoming aircraft. That way, the enemy craft would be too busy trying to avoid a collision to spend time aiming accurately at the Spitfire.
Zak sat up straight again. He knocked the car into a higher gear, but kept the turning circle tight. Now he was pointing directly at the tower. He could
see the two gunmen clearly. They stood about three metres apart on either side of the door. Although their guns were raised, they looked uncertain, and glanced anxiously at each other.