Agent 21: Reloaded: Book 2 Read online

  They walked on in silence.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Zak said finally. ‘I didn’t think.’

  But Malek didn’t reply.

  When they reached the pier, Zak saw three fishing boats drifting out to sea from the harbour area to the left. Some children were at the water’s edge, splashing and waving the fishermen off. When they saw Zak, Malek and the guns, they too grew quiet. They stood ankle deep in sea water and watched them walk down to the end of the pier.

  Malek threw his weapon in first, flinging it out as far as he could with his one good arm. He didn’t stop to see how quickly the AK-47 sank. With a final dark look at Zak, he stormed back towards the shore. Zak watched him go. He had the feeling he’d just lost a friend.

  ‘Idiot,’ he whispered. But he was talking to himself, not Malek. He hurled the rifles, one after another, out to sea, followed by the ammo. The guns spun like boomerangs, but they were never coming back. The moment they hit the water, they sank and disappeared.

  Zak sat at the end of the pier. Foiling Ntole and his men had seemed like such a good idea. Malek was right, though. Zak hadn’t thought it through properly. He remembered Michael’s words of a few days ago. You’re there to carry out this op quickly and efficiently, not to right the wrongs of western Africa. It was one thing undergoing training on St Peter’s Crag; it was quite another putting that training into action. It meant nothing, he realized, that he was proficient with every weapon known to the modern military. It meant nothing that he was as highly trained as any special forces operative. It was no use having skills if you didn’t know the right time to use them.

  He thought back to his first operation, and the thin, serious face of Cruz Martinez, the son of South America’s most wanted drug dealer, came into his head. In the few days that he’d known him, Cruz and Zak had bonded. Though they came from opposite sides of the world and from backgrounds as different as could be, they’d become close. Zak had helped Cruz stand up for himself, and Cruz had trusted him. He would never forget the look on the young man’s face when Gabs delivered a fatal bullet to his father’s skull. The look of betrayal. Of hatred. The way he’d vowed to take his revenge.

  Losing friends, Zak realized, was something he would have to get used to.

  He wished Raf and Gabs were here. He suddenly felt very alone, stuck in this strange, threatening place, thousands of miles from home. Wherever home was. He found himself thinking of Ellie. He wondered what she was doing now. If she was still mourning him. Half of him hoped she was. The other half hoped she’d moved on.

  Zak stared out to sea.

  And he stared.

  He’d been sitting there for twenty minutes when he suddenly realized what he was looking at.

  The vessel on the horizon appeared gradually. At first it could have been a mirage. As it drew closer, it might have been just another fishing boat. But within fifteen minutes it became clear that this was a bigger ship than any he had seen in Lobambo so far. And it was heading this way.

  Zak heard footsteps. He looked over his shoulder to see that the children who had been playing in the water – five of them – were behind him. The look on their faces told him that such a big vessel was unusual here.

  Within half an hour it was close enough for Zak to see that it had a black hull and a white body. He could see that there were jets of water pumping from the sides. He didn’t know what these were for, and they stopped when the ship was 500 metres away from shore. Zak could just make out two figures talking on deck, but nobody else. And as it slipped into the dock alongside a jetty fifty metres from Zak’s position – looking far too big for this small port but not running aground in the deep natural harbour – he saw, quite clearly, the name of the vessel written in large white letters along the side of the hull.

  Mercantile.

  Agent 21’s target had arrived.

  11

  EL CAPITÁN

  11.30 hrs West Africa time

  THE SKIPPER OF the merchant vessel Mercantile watched the shoreline approach.

  His name was Antonio Acosta, but the members of his crew called him el capitán. This was not out of respect, but out of fear. Their capitán was a brutal man. He had swarthy skin and eyebrows that met in the middle. As he stood at the head of the ship, his bare chest was wet with sweat and spray. His skin was as tough as the leather boots he wore. He looked to port. A bunch of bambinos were sitting on a nearby pier, watching the Mercantile make port. Just kids. He didn’t need to worry about them.

  He sensed someone behind him.

  ‘What is it?’ he demanded in English spoken with a very heavy Spanish accent. His crew came from all over the world. English was their common language.

  ‘The men want to know how long we’ll be in harbour, Capitán. They’ve been at sea for a long time. They want to get their land legs. Find something to drink …’

  ‘Nobody leaves the ship.’

  ‘But, Capitán …’

  The skipper turned. Antonio’s first mate, Karlovic, was no weakling. He came from Georgia but was wanted in that country for crimes he never talked about. He had a shaved head and a line of piercings along his left eyebrow. They were almost always weeping and infected. It didn’t seem to bother him, and Antonio suspected he kept them like that to make his appearance more threatening.

  ‘Nobody leaves the ship,’ he repeated.

  He could tell Karlovic didn’t like being told what to do. The first mate’s face twitched. He was going to argue. It was obvious.

  ‘If they stay on board,’ Karlovic asserted, ‘they’ll fight with each other. Much better if they go ashore. Get nasty with the locals. These Africans, they’re used to—’

  It was the skipper’s habit to carry both a knife and a handgun. The gun was strapped to an ankle holster. It was a .38 snub-nose, very small, its barrel much shorter than that of a normal handgun. It suited him just fine. Out at sea, he didn’t need anything bigger. He’d seen pirates – Somalians mostly, thin and ragged – carrying rocket-propelled grenade launchers and sub-machine guns before now. None of that was necessary. It was easy to kill a man, at close range, when you were surrounded by nothing but sea. Antonio should know. He’d done it enough times.

  The snub-nose, however, was only his second favourite weapon. The knife, which was attached to a scabbard hanging from his waist, was made from highly tempered steel. This meant it could be brittle if used carelessly, but it also meant he could make the edge extremely sharp. The blade was fifteen centimetres long. It curved slightly at the end. The other edge had a series of vicious hooks pointing back towards the handle. These hooks would make no difference when the knife entered a human body. When it was pulled out, however, they would bring the innards with them.

  The knife was el capitán’s favourite because he had learned that people were more scared of it than of a gun. They were scared of the thought of metal slicing flesh. Scared of the exquisite pain it could inflict.

  Antonio flicked the knife from its scabbard now and held it up against his first mate’s cheek. Karlovic inhaled sharply. A thin edge of scarlet appeared on his face.

  ‘Nobody leaves the ship,’ the skipper said yet again. This time there was no argument.

  ‘Yes, Capitán,’ Karlovic breathed. ‘I will tell them.’

  He stepped away from the skipper, touched his fingers to the blood and looked at them. He was humiliated. But he knew better than to complain. With a scowl on his angry face, he turned on his heel and walked across the deck, leaving the MV Mercantile’s skipper to return to his business of watching the west coast of Africa slowly approach.

  Midday.

  The sun was high in the sky and it was pushing forty degrees. A crowd of villagers, perhaps fifty of them, had come down to the waterside to stare at the unusual sight of the large merchant vessel in their harbour. But there was no sign of activity on the ship itself. The two figures Zak had seen as the Mercantile approached were gone. Hidden below decks, he assumed. Keeping their faces out of sight,
their identities a secret. The ship looked far too big for the little jetty it was moored against. Like a hulking, silent giant. Waiting for something.

  Zak tried to block out the excited chatter of the children around him. He needed to focus on the vessel. To work out his next move. To sit here in the full glare of the sun, scoping out the Mercantile, would just draw attention to himself. But how long would the ship remain docked? He only had a limited window to complete his operation. If she set sail before he’d had a chance to ID the crew and plant the explosive device, he’d have failed. But he couldn’t do any of that until nightfall. So it meant waiting.

  Zak pushed himself up to his feet and, with a smile at the excited children, walked back along the pier to the shore. He needed to keep eyes on the Mercantile even during the daytime, he decided. She was here to collect a shipment of uncut diamonds. Evidence of the diamonds being loaded would be a signal to Zak that the ship was likely to depart soon. If that happened, he’d need a plan B. Until then he just had to watch.

  There were no suitable OPs on the waterfront – Zak had already established that. He wandered along the harbour front, behind the crowd that was still ogling the big ship. Now that he was on the other side of the Mercantile he was able to scope her out from the opposite direction. He saw a metal ladder fixed to the starboard side of the ship and extending up to the deck. An access point. Good.

  He headed towards the nearest of the three palm trees. Here he sat down with his back against the trunk. He hoped he merged into the background. That he looked insignificant. He hadn’t done a very good job of it so far, he realized. It was time to up his game.

  * * *

  The sun started to set. Zak had moved from the palm tree to the water’s edge. Most of the Angolans had returned to the village. Only the children remained and even they were getting bored. There had been no sign of movement from the Mercantile. Nobody had come out on deck and nobody had approached with any cargo. As far as Zak was concerned this was good news. As soon as it was dark he could set up at the end of the pier and start ‘fishing’. With any luck, he could finish the operation tonight and get out of here.

  He walked back to the camp. The volunteers had returned from the building site. It was clear that they’d been working hard as their faces were dirty with sweat and dust. They were all drinking deeply from bottles of water. Zak looked around to see if he could find Malek. No sign of him. He walked up to Marcus. ‘How did it go at the site?’ he asked.

  Marcus looked awkward. ‘Look, Jay, we’ve been talking. We all think it’s best if you don’t stick around here much longer. I can take you back to the airport. It’s pretty easy to get a flight back to the UK.’

  Zak looked around at the others. Tillie’s face was full of regret. So was Alexandra’s, and everyone else’s – except Bea, who just looked a bit smug.

  Zak nodded. ‘Right,’ he said quietly.

  He made his way round the little group of volunteers and into his tent. His stomach was churning. He felt a mixture of embarrassment and relief. Embarrassment that he’d messed up and was being asked to leave; relief that the Mercantile had arrived on time. Another twenty-four hours and the mission would have been compromised.

  Zak hunted in his bag for his iPhone. He’d be needing that. Then he gathered up his tackle bag and rod and walked outside again. ‘I’m going fishing,’ he told the others. ‘I’d quite like to be alone.’

  And when nobody replied, he wandered off by himself.

  It was almost fully dark when he reached the end of the pier. There was still no sign of movement on the Mercantile. Zak sat with his legs over the left-hand edge of the pier. This way, he was facing the Mercantile and also had a line of sight back towards the shore, so he could see if anyone was approaching him. He removed the fishing rod from its tube, slotted the sections together and laid it across his lap. Then he took the reel from his tackle bag. Five seconds later he was using it to survey the deck of the Mercantile.

  Everything was still. There were no people around, no lights on deck. It looked like a ghost ship. Zak fitted the reel to his rod and cast out to sea. There was no hook at the end of his line – he didn’t want to catch a fish at the wrong moment. The moon was bright enough for him to scan for movement on the Mercantile’s deck with the naked eye. He checked his watch. Eight o’clock. The vessel had been in harbour for eight hours now. Surely something had to happen soon. If this truly was a Black Wolf operation, they weren’t here on vacation.

  The sea, black beneath him, lapped gently against the legs of the pier. Occasionally there was a splash and Zak imagined a fish flipping above the surface. Every ten minutes he removed the reel and scanned the deck with his night sight. Eight-thirty passed. Nine o’clock. Nine-thirty. It was just past ten when he saw something. It wasn’t on deck, but on the shore. Headlamps. Two sets, trundling through the darkness from the direction of Lobambo. Zak watched them without the use of his night sight. They drove along the waterfront and stopped just by the jetty at which the Mercantile was moored. The headlamps went out.

  Zak reeled in his fishing line and thirty seconds later he was looking through the night sight. He saw four men, two from each car. They looked like native Angolans. They were standing by two four-by-fours. Two of them were carrying heavy suitcases, one was speaking into a mobile phone and the fourth was carrying an assault rifle. He was looking around, clearly checking that nobody was observing them. But Zak was a hundred metres away and it was dark. The gunman couldn’t see him.

  Zak sensed movement on the Mercantile. He panned round. A figure had emerged on deck. He was standing to the port side and he too had a mobile phone to his ear.

  Zak zoomed in. This was the first member of the Mercantile’s crew he’d seen and Michael’s instruction was clear in his mind. You need to be very sure, Zak, that the traffickers on board are the people we think they are. Positive IDs. Nothing less …

  The crew member’s face was blurry. Zak adjusted the focus of his night sight. The man’s features, still bathed in green haze, grew sharper. He wasn’t a looker. His head was shaved and his features severe. It was his left eyebrow that identified him, however. There was a series of piercings along its length and it seemed fat and swollen. Zak instantly recalled the picture in his briefing pack. He’d last looked at it lying on the bed of the Holiday Inn at Heathrow. Surname, Karlovic. First name unknown …

  Positive ID.

  He panned back to the Angolans. The gunman stood by the two four-by-fours. The remaining three, however, were heading up the jetty. The man with the mobile took the lead; he was followed by the two carrying suitcases. They stopped halfway along the jetty. Zak examined the hull of the boat. There appeared to be a door there, but it was closed.

  Voices.

  For a moment Zak thought they were nearby. He looked left down the pier, expecting to see someone approach. But no figures emerged from the darkness and he realized the sound was wafting towards him on the breeze from the deck of the Mercantile. He directed his night sight in that direction.

  Karlovic was still there, but now he was surrounded by three others. Zak didn’t recognize them. The three men were fitting something to the railings of the deck while Karlovic looked on, and Zak could tell from the body language that Karlovic was in charge. He sensed that the three others didn’t much like taking their instructions from him.

  Another man appeared on deck. Zak focused on him.

  He was bare-chested. His torso rippled with muscles. His neck was very thick and his eyebrows, which looked like black smudges in the haze of the night vision, met in the middle of his forehead. Again Zak recalled his briefing pack, and Michael’s words. Name, Antonio Acosta. Born and raised in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. There’s a rumour that he murdered his own brother when he was thirteen. We now believe he’s a Black Wolf general …

  Positive ID.

  We can’t be sure who else will be on board the Mercantile, but a positive ID of these two men will be enough. Put it this way,
if Antonio Acosta and Karlovic are on board, the rest of the crew aren’t very likely to be sweet old pensioners …

  Zak looked at the three crew members by the railings. They had attached some sort of pulley system to the vessel and were now lowering a thick rope with a hook at the end down to the jetty. He didn’t need to see any more. It was obvious what was going on. The uncut diamonds had arrived. The crew was bringing them on board. It meant that the Mercantile’s business here was nearly done.

  So Zak couldn’t hang around.

  He’d identified the Black Wolf personnel. And that meant only one thing.

  It was time for him to advance to contact.

  12

  ADVANCE TO CONTACT

  HE MOVED QUICKLY and quietly.

  Within thirty seconds he had packed away his fishing rod and secreted the night-vision device back in the tackle bag. He left these on the side of the pier while he located the loose board that hid his equipment cache. He lifted it up and placed it to one side, then looked down the length of the pier to check that nobody was coming. All clear. Zak lifted the polythene-wrapped package from its hiding place. He could see that someone had constructed a wooden frame beneath the pier. It was this that was holding Zak’s equipment.

  The package was heavy. As Zak unwrapped it, he briefly wondered who had stashed this stuff here in the first place. He’d never find out, of course. That wasn’t the sort of intel Michael liked to share. It consisted of four items. The first resembled a large float, the sort of thing he’d used as a kid when his dad used to take him for swimming lessons at the local pool. There were differences, though, between those polystyrene aids and this swim board. It was larger, for a start. Fixed to the top was a circular compass about twenty centimetres in diameter. To one side of the compass was a switch but Zak didn’t touch it yet. He knew it would illuminate the compass but if he switched it on here he’d alert the men on the deck of the Mercantile to his presence.