Torsten Dahl book 1 - Stand Your Ground (17 page)

He knew how to save Prime Minister Sealy – a stranger, a man he’d never knew existed before today, not even by name. Dahl could save his life. Spurred on by engrained principles and no small commitment to his soldier’s sense of honor, he clung hard to his decision. The dilemma was he’d have to get close enough to personally attack Sealy in order to save his life. There really was no other way. As plans went, it was pretty simple and, in the past, it was the simple ones that always worked best.

Dahl mulled that over now as he led the way. Up ahead, the carnival procession twisted by, and they quickly approached the noisy intersection. The pitch-black, silent skies above played dark gooseberry to the flamboyant colors and intense noise below. Despite everything, Dahl stopped to take it all in as they emerged from the side street, astounded by the breadth of the parade. Women dressed in homemade, vibrant bikinis made up the majority of the marchers, at least as far as Dahl could see. Hundreds of figures filled just this section of the street, and the parade vanished into the distance, both to the back and at the front. A few vehicles rolled slowly through the midst of the procession, trucks with billboards and dancers aboard. Ten deep, they laughed and capered around and sang to one another. They shook musical instruments and banged on drums. They mingled and boogied and twirled to the vivid beat, a rich and multi-colored street party snaking slowly down Lower Broad Street. Onlookers and tourists lined up behind dour-green barriers, waving their arms in time to the music or cheering on certain antics. The noise swelled around the street, augmented by the high-walled buildings, and mushroomed toward the skies, a distended bubble of festive abandon.

“Oh, wow,” Julia said, thoughts of home momentarily forgotten. “This is amazing.”

Dahl agreed, but aimed for the narrow path behind onlookers that uniformed officials kept clear. They made good time, ignoring the parade and following a circuit toward Jubilee Gardens. A towering palm tree stood ahead, one of the signature markers of the gardens, but Dahl simply followed the signs. Soon, he made out a yellow-painted building and a noisy, bustling crowd – not a row of onlookers but a proper, dense throng. At its head, Dahl knew, Prime Minister Sealy would stand.

They hurried along, Dahl guiding Johanna and the children through the crowd. He asked them to bow their heads, and Johanna to tie her hair into a bun. Anything to keep the disguise in place.

Dahl skirted the crowd until he reached its front. Jubilee Gardens was a relatively small, mostly paved area without fences, so the people ranged out into the road. A few buildings bordered the street and the ocean could be heard but not seen in the near distance. Dahl saw several pinprick lights and guessed they belonged to sailing ships. It felt like days had passed since they made their headlong dash down the beach, onto the small watercraft, and into the sea.

He beckoned everyone together. “This is as close as you go.” He paused as the crowd began to quiet, heart beating faster as he realized the appearance of Sealy was imminent.

“I want you to meet me at the tall palm tree. Stay there. Give me time, but if Sealy goes down and I don’t appear, you get the hell out of here. Understand?”

Dario nodded, but Johanna was far from convinced. “I’m coming too,” she said, turning his expectations upside-down once again. “You shouldn’t do this alone.”

“They need you more.” He said, indicating the children. “They can’t be without both their parents, Jo.”

The crowd hushed.

Dahl fought the desperate urge to hug Isabella and Julia, to feel their untainted spirit enfold him one last time before leaving. He did touch Johanna on the hand and felt her fingers close upon his own.

“Be safe.”

“I will. And, Dario. Look after them.”

Overlooking the incongruities raised by speaking those words to Vega’s son, Dahl hustled away, urging his burly body through the crowd. He threaded towards where he anticipated Sealy would appear, easing men and women aside without too much hassle. No sign of Grant, Vega or any of the cartel boss’s men. Police were everywhere, arrayed in front of the crowd and throughout. Dahl anticipated several problems to his approach but wasn’t about to stop now. Half way through he slowed as cheers erupted and the man of the hour appeared.

“Sea-ly! Sea-ly!”

The PM had certainly brought his fan club. Dahl parted the throng a little more forcefully, now only three rows from the front. Arms and shoulders and hips bustled him, the crowd denser here, slowing his progress. Sealy appeared ahead after climbing some unseen podium, raising his arms and basking in the limelight.

Dahl cringed inwardly, seeing the perfect opportunity for a gunman to take a shot. As he pushed through the last two lines, Sealy started to speak. Dahl inched along the front of the line, between two policemen and closer to the Prime Minister.

One glance at the podium revealed the depth of his problem.

Two bodyguards flanked the raised dais, one on each side. A third stood in front, directly before Dahl. What appeared to be a fourth waited toward the rear, possibly a spotter and a man who would lead the way if the PM were forced to flee the area.

“Welcome to Grand Kadooment Day!” Sealy began.

The crowd roared its approval, and chants of “Sea-ly” began anew.

Dahl assessed the setting, seeing the potential for utter chaos and easy assassination. No wonder Grant had chosen this moment. The Bajans were in their element, jovial and all guards down on such a merry day. He moved a little closer.

One distraction . . .  just one
. He realized it was unrealistic to wish for some kind of disturbance to help prevent an assassination. Second after precious second ticked by and Dahl knew he couldn’t wait a moment longer.

It’s now or never. You’re lucky they waited this long.

Gathering his wits, Dahl sprang forward like a man leaping for something unreachable.

THIRTY

Dahl came to a sudden halt, stopped bodily by one of the prime minister’s own men. The man was broad and dense, a body-builder with a neck as wide and wrinkled as the trunk of a palm tree.

“I need to speak to Sealy,” Dahl said with as much authority as he could muster. “Now.”

“Go, before I have you arrested.”

“You don’t understand.”

Dahl tried to squeeze past the man, expecting at any moment to hear that fateful shot. Sealy stood up high, a clear line-of-sight all across the gardens.

“Don’t make me hurt you,” the man growled.

Dahl stood back, unable to keep the surprise off his face. “Now that’s an ambitious thought,” he said. “But hardly probable.”

The guard grunted and grabbed him around the waist, muscles bulging. Dahl sighed and maneuvered the man around, trying not to break anything as he flipped him onto his back. The air whooshed out of him with an
ooof
! Dahl stepped over the fallen protector, knowing he’d been seen by the other guard, a cop and dozens of whooping spectators.

Playing the would-be assassin after all, then
. . .

Sealy continued speaking to the crowd, a vast curve of darkness stretching above him. Dahl vaulted onto the dais that supported the podium and came face to face with a gun.

Held by the second guard and pointed straight at his face.

“Come on!” Dahl cried, frustrated. “I’m trying to save your boss. Please, put it down, mate.”

“On your knees,” the guard said simply.

Dahl saw Sealy looking across and down, now, interrupting his speech. It became clear that it was now or never, in more ways than one. He crouched as if complying, then used the position to spring up, grab the gun arm and head-butt the guard to the ground. Blood sprayed but Dahl had no choice; the guard would be okay in an hour or two. Another few steps and he was shouting in the face of Prime Minister Sealy.

“I work for the US government,” he said. “There’s a threat on your life. An assassin. You have to take cover.”

Sealy was an older man with thin-rimmed glasses and a light dusting of grey in the small patch of black, curly hair that tried in vain to cover the top of his skull. The eyes behind the glasses were piercing and small, and now they bored into Dahl.

Sealy said nothing. His men were closing in, yelling.

Grant and Vega’s assassin would surely be on tenterhooks now. Why hadn’t they fired?

“They’re gonna shoot you!” Dahl cried.

A man tackled him, but Dahl withstood the charge, shrugging him off, wavering only slightly, like an oak tree in a raging hurricane. The crowd were screaming at him, some running forward with arms upraised and fists shaking. The cops were converging. Those spectators behind the front row were also breaking ranks, coming forward. Dahl saw this entire situation becoming more fraught with danger as each second passed. More than one man might die now.

“Just get down.”

He reached out both hands and planted them on the shocked Prime Minister’s shoulders. The face glared at him, the eyes narrowed. Not a hint of shock or surprise furrowed the mature features. Dahl experienced a stunning light-bulb moment, the reality of it all hitting him like a bolt of lightning.

“You’re not the target,” Dahl breathed. “You’re the fucking
client.”

Dahl backed away, limbs drained of all energy and brain reeling as if hit by a train. Sealy had been the PM of Barbados for many years. He’d been
put in place
by the bloody cartel. Something else was going down. Something that required the presence of the man who ruled this realm – Gabrio Vega.

Dahl fell back off the platform, dazed as bodies surrounded him, some pummeling, some shouting, but all he saw through the haze was Prime Minister Sealy staring down at him, a smug smile on his dark face, those pinhole eyes glinting behind their glass shields.

I tried . . . tried to do the right thing . . . risked my family to do it. And now . . . ?

He’d been rewarded with a glimpse into the face of the devil himself.

Dahl became aware again of his immediate surroundings. The reaching arms, the angry faces, the spittle-flecked lips. He heard rather than saw the unleashed energy of the crowd as they erupted with every emotion from fear to joy to fury. Sealy turned away, attempting to calm the storm. Dahl rolled and kicked and tried to scramble to his knees but knew full well he was going nowhere.

“Hold the bastard down,” someone said. “Let me get a set of cuffs on him.”

What’s the plan for Barbados, then?
Dahl thought.
What are Vega and Grant doing here?

“Shoot him,” someone else said. “Belly shot. That’ll take the starch outta him.”

The shot rang out. Dahl flinched, awaiting the pain, but instead he took in the looks on the faces of those who surrounded him, their expressions transforming through several odd stages, ending in confusion. Another shot rang out. Men jumped away and checked on Sealy. The PM was already hastening down the podium steps, searching for guards, not even glancing toward the struggle around Dahl.

Screams split the night. The bodies around him suddenly receded, and he saw stars again, real stars that shone in the night sky. Most of the men surrounding him ran; others stood in bewilderment. Dahl nursed one hopeful, wonderful thought:

Dario.

From experience, he knew the shot had come from a pistol, likely the same make of gun as the one Dario held. Probably fired into the air, much as the boy had done at the market. Although nothing was certain.

Still surrounded, Dahl rolled now, smashing legs aside like pins being by a bowling ball, rising to his feet as men fell all around him. A cop with flinty eyes moved toward him. Dahl ran in the opposite direction, confident he wouldn’t be shot amidst so many innocent bodies, and grabbed his first real view of the scene.

Jubilee Gardens was in uproar, reminiscent of a few battlefields Dahl had seen in his time but minus the violence and death. Civilians in colorful clothing fled rapidly in all directions, filling the road and the streets and the fronts of buildings, streaming toward the ocean, hunkering down behind parked calls and walls. Palm trees shook with the passing hordes. Dahl spotted exactly what he wanted to see by the big palm and then jumped high and far, off the stage, like the lead singer of a rock band leaping into his adoring audience.

Except Dahl landed on his feet.

And ran for his life.

THIRTY ONE

Dahl made a bee-line for his family and the enormous palm tree, which offered meager shelter from the stampeding crowd. More than one man was bowled over by Dahl, but he took care to skip around older folks and those with kids. Suddenly, a shocking force struck him from behind, bearing him down, but Dahl fought back and managed to keep his feet. His head whipped around to see the steely-eyed policeman hanging on to his shirt, ripping it at the seams. Dahl threw an elbow back, blackening his eye but the plucky cop held on. Dahl stopped suddenly, let the cop’s momentum carry him past and then helped with a little roll of the shoulders. The cop left the ground, breath taken away, and landed hard. Dahl felt sorry for the man – seemingly an innocent – but he knew time was as important now as it had been ten minutes ago. Actually, their situation had grown worse.

Dario met him. “Are you all right? What went wrong?”

Dahl enfolded his family in his arms. “Was that you?”

“Yes. Everything fell apart and we lost you. It was all I could think of.”

“Well, I think you saved my life.” Dahl allowed a half-smile. “But we have to get away from here.”

He moved even as Dario and Johanna quizzed him, trying to stay hidden within the crowd, which was finally starting to disperse. Ambulances were arriving to join the few that had already been stationed around the garden, but Dahl didn’t see anyone badly hurt, just a few scrapes and bruises.