Burning Angels

‘It’s Africa. It’s not that cold,’ he muttered, as he slipped an arm around her. ‘Better now?’

‘A little.’ Narov held on to him. ‘But remember, I am made of ice.’

Jaeger suppressed a laugh. It was so tempting just to go with it; to go with the easy, intimate, intoxicating flow.

A part of him felt tense and jumpy: he had Ruth and Luke to somehow find and rescue. But another part of him — the slightly inebriated part — remembered for a moment what it was like to feel the caress of a woman. And deep within himself he longed to return it.

After all, this wasn’t just any woman he was holding right now. Narov had a startling beauty. And under the moonlight, she looked utterly arresting.

‘You know, Mr Bert Groves, if you play an act for long enough, sometimes you start to believe it’s for real,’ she murmured. ‘Especially when you have spent so long living close to the thing you really want, but you know you cannot have it.’

‘We can’t do this,’ Jaeger forced himself to say. ‘Ruth and Luke are out there, somewhere beneath that mountain. They’re alive, of that I’m certain. It can’t be long now.’

Narov snorted. ‘So, better to die of the cold? Schwachkopf.’

But despite her signature curse, she didn’t relinquish her grip, and neither did he.

54

The last twenty-four hours had been an absolute whirlwind. The kit they’d ordered from Raff had arrived as requested, and was now stuffed deep in the rucksacks they carried.

The one thing they’d forgotten to ask for was two black silk balaclavas to hide their features. They’d had to improvise. In keeping with their honeymooning cover, Narov had brought with her some sheer black stockings. Pulled over their heads and with eyeholes slashed in them, they were the next best thing.

Once Raff had warned them that the tracker had gone stationary, Jaeger and Narov knew they had their target. As a bonus, the building the tusks had been taken to turned out to be known to Konig. It was where the Lebanese dealer was thought to have his base, complete with a hand-picked contingent of bodyguards.

Konig had explained how the dealer was the first link in a global smuggling chain. The poachers would sell the tusks to him, and once the deal was done the goods would be smuggled onwards, on a journey that invariably ended in Asia — the prime market for such illegal wares.

Jaeger and Narov had moved out from Katavi using their own transport — a white Land Rover Defender that they’d hired in-country under false names. It had the hire company name — Wild Africa Safaris — emblazoned across its doors, as opposed to the Katavi Lodge’s Toyotas, which carried the reserve’s distinctive logo.

They had needed someone trusted to remain with their vehicle when they went in on foot. There was only one person it made sense to use: Konig. Once acquainted with their plans — and assured that the coming action could never be traced back to Katavi — he was fully on side.

As dusk had fallen, they’d left him with the Land Rover, well hidden in a wadi, and melted into the flat, ghostly light, navigating on GPS and compass across dry savannah and scrub. They were equipped with SELEX Personal Role Radios, plus headsets. With a good three miles’ range, the SELEX sets would enable them to keep in touch with each other and with Konig.

They’d had no opportunity to test-fire the main weapons they carried, but their sights were factory-zeroed to 250 yards, which was good enough for tonight.

Jaeger and Narov came to a halt three hundred yards short of the building pinpointed by the tracker. They spent twenty minutes lying prone on a ridge of higher ground, silently observing the place. Beneath Jaeger’s belly, the soil still held the warmth from the day.

The sun was well down, but the windows of the building before them were lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree. So much for security. The poachers and the smugglers clearly didn’t believe there was any real and present danger; any threat. They figured they were above the law. Tonight they were going to learn otherwise.

For this mission, Jaeger and Narov were one hundred per cent rogue; a law unto themselves.

Jaeger scanned the building, counting six visible guards armed with assault rifles. They were sitting out front, clustered around a card table, their weapons either leant against the wall or thrown casually across their backs on slings.

Their faces were illuminated in the warm glow of a storm lantern.

More than enough light to kill by.

On one corner of the building’s flat roof Jaeger spotted what he figured was a light machine gun, covered with blankets to hide it from curious onlookers. Well, if everything went to plan, the enemy would all be stone-cold dead before they ever got near that weapon.