The Africans had made it through most of the crates and were satisfied with the quality of the arms – a combination of desirable automatic assault rifles, grenades, RPGs, missiles, mines, and other instruments of destruction. They’d documented the contents of the crates, and Lucien was preparing to call Abel and confirm receipt of the arms. He fished a small cell phone from his shirt pocket and smiled to Leo.
“Abel will be pleased. Everything is as agreed,” Lucien said.
“Of course it is. You will find I am as reliable in every transaction.”
“Not everyone we’ve dealt with has been honorable.”
Leo nodded with understanding. “It’s regrettable, but–”
The exchange was interrupted by a crash from the street doors. The metal slabs blew inward and a dark hulk hurtled through the opening and bore down on the container. Leo froze with his mouth open at the apparition, the roar of the big motor deafening as the tanker truck accelerated, and then Rudolf was screaming at the gunmen, who were bringing their rifles to bear on it.
“No – don’t shoot. It’s a fuel truck!” he yelled, and then pulled Leo toward the harbor exit as the rest of the stunned men stood rooted in place. The truck plowed straight at the container, closing the distance with the inevitability of an avalanche as they watched it draw near.
Lucien shook himself from his spell and took off after Leo and Rudolf at a full run. The Russians had almost made it to the door when the fuel truck detonated with the force of a guided missile, sending a fireball down the length of the warehouse and distending the sides of the building. Crates, containers, and chunks of truck shredded through the corrugated metal walls as the blast of flames blew anything proximate aside like the vengeful hand of an angry God.
The container was vaporized by the thousands of gallons of fuel exploding nearly on top of it, and it disappeared in a tidal wave of liquid fire, taking the nearby men with it. At the harbor exit doors, the explosion knocked Leo and Rudolf off their feet, sending them skidding outside on the wet cement as the massive fireball followed them into the night.
~
Jet threw herself from the truck cabin and rolled behind a steel shipping container as the big vehicle’s forward momentum carried it toward the men. She counted in her head as she pulled herself into a nook and curled into a fetal position, hands over her ears, forearms covering her eyes, windbreaker inverted over her head.
She held her breath as she reached the end of her count, and then the world exploded around her in a massive blast. She resisted the urge to exhale as heat seared the container she was wedged behind, and she narrowly avoided being crushed when it slammed into another beside her. Only once the initial shockwave had passed did she dare peek from her hiding place, to see that the interior of the warehouse near where the truck had detonated was a blaze of molten destruction.
The grenade had taken a second longer than she’d thought, but in the end it had done its job, and the payload of fuel had destroyed the entire area while creating enough new openings in the sides of the building for her to escape through. The heat receded, and she forced herself to her feet. Jet was running for a rent in the nearest wall when she saw a flash of white outside, on the harbor side of the pier. Her eyes locked on Leo’s jacket as someone dragged him toward the cabin cruiser, and then she was engulfed by black smoke belching from the gas truck’s smoldering remains.
Screams from the street entrance reached her as she neared the opening she’d chosen for her escape, and then shots stuttered behind her as the gunmen there fired at the shadowy figure running through the inferno. Bullets ricocheted from the concrete floor around her as she zigzagged to a gap in the warehouse wall, and then she was sailing through the air in a swan dive toward the cold harbor below.
Jet hit the surface hard and sliced through the water, staying deep enough to be invisible to the gunmen above, and pulled with powerful strokes toward the rocks. Only once she had covered fifty meters underwater did she risk surfacing for air, turning so only her face broke the surface. She stared back at the building’s burning silhouette and the gunmen outlined against the fiery backdrop, their weapons pointed at the water as one of them yelled orders. She gasped air deep into her lungs and submerged herself again, the image of Leo’s jacket on the pier seared into her brain as she swam for the adjacent wharf with all her remaining energy.
Chapter 54
Bangui, Central African Republic
The strident ringing of a telephone echoed through the manor house, shattering the stillness. Moments after it fell silent, a knock sounded at the master bedroom and the muffled voice of one of the servants jarred Abel to full wakefulness.
“Sir? I’m sorry, but it’s Captain Roberge. He says it’s urgent.”