Ivory Nation, Andy Maslen [e manga reader .txt] 📗

sail strung on galvanised steel poles.

They sat, and a minute or two later, a woman appeared, dressed in a traditional black-and-white maid’s uniform, complete with frilled apron and cap. She set down a tray of frosted mugs of beer.

Taylor beamed up at her.

‘Thanks, Mary. Can you tell chef we’ll have lunch at one, please?’

‘Yes, Mr Taylor,’ she said with a smile, before leaving them to enjoy the cold beer and unbroken view of trees and scrub that stretched to the horizon.

‘Cheers!’ Taylor said loudly before downing half of his beer.

‘Cheers!’ Gabriel and Eli said in unison.

‘How did you meet John?’ Taylor asked.

‘Didn’t he tell you?’ Gabriel replied.

‘Why don’t you tell me?’

Gabriel frowned. ‘We met at the funeral of one of the lads who were massacred. Guy called Steve Wallingham.’

Taylor smiled, seemingly satisfied.

‘Sorry. Just doing my due diligence. I like to know who I’m dealing with. And you’re ex-regiment, is that right?’

‘Eight years. I was badged in in 2005 and I left in 2012.’

‘How about before that?’

‘Paras.’

‘Ever see action in Africa?’

Gabriel nodded.

‘I was part of Operation Barras. September 2000 in Sierra Leone. We supported the SAS against the West Side Boys. You ever hear of them?’

‘Nasty bunch,’ Taylor grunted, taking another pull on his beer.

‘They’d taken British hostages,’ Gabriel said. ‘We recovered the hostages and some British army trucks and blew the West Side Boys’ heavy weapons to shit.’

Taylor turned to Eli.

‘How about you, Eli? You must have something special about you if you ended up out here,’ he said, sweeping his free arm in a wide semi-circle.

‘IDF then the Mossad. Now I work with Gabriel in a government role.’

Taylor gave a low, appreciative whistle.

‘Mossad, eh? Kidon?’

He was referring to the secretive unit within the Mossad responsible for targeted assassinations of Israel’s enemies. Those recruited to join the “tip of the spear” were drawn exclusively from Israeli Special Forces.

Eli smiled.

‘If I told you that, I’d have to kill you.’

Taylor stared at her for a couple of seconds, then laughed loudly, startling a pair of grey-and-turquoise parrots that had perched on the edge of the sail canopy.

‘I believe you would, too,’ he said, finally, wiping his eyes with a spotless white handkerchief. ‘Although whether you’d get out of Bots in one piece is another matter.’

She inclined her head.

‘I think I’d manage.’

After a little more banter, Taylor straightened in his chair and slapped his hands down on his knees.

‘You didn’t come all this way just to swap war stories,’ he said. ‘Do you want to follow me? We’ll go and meet Frank.’

‘Frank?’ Eli asked.

‘Onagweyo. Our quartermaster.’

They walked together along a track for a hundred yards until they reached a white-painted blockhouse, roughly sixty yards to a side. Recent rains had splashed red mud up against the first foot of the walls, giving them the look of bloodstained plaster.

Inch-thick steels bars striped the windows, which were backed with a reflective film, preventing anyone from seeing in. A steel plate reinforced the door and the lock looked serious enough to withstand anything less powerful than a thermic lance.

Taylor smiled.

‘Welcome to Toyland,’ he said, as he entered a code into the stainless-steel box mounted on the wall.

15

Once inside, Gabriel and Eli nodded with the respect of professional soldiers. Beyond a plain grey steel front desk, they could see sturdy drilled-metal racks of equipment. Uniforms, Bergens, boots, canteens, zipped battlefield first aid kits, olive-green steel boxes, fat, camouflaged sausages that looked like tents – all the enterprising paramilitary team would need to do anything from protecting a goldmine to staging a small military coup.

Taylor called out.

‘Frank?’

A tall, solidly-built black man in sand-coloured fatigues rounded a corner and smiled when he saw them. He came hurrying over and shook hands with Eli and Gabriel.

‘Frank, I want you to meet Gabriel and Eli. They’ve come over from England to investigate those murders over in Kgalagadi,’ Taylor said.

‘Bad business,’ Frank said, shaking his bald head. ‘You going to find the bastards who did it?’

‘We hope so,’ Gabriel said. ‘That accent. Are you from South London?’

Frank’s eyes widened.

‘I am, as it happens. Brockley. Don’t normally get officer-class types with that sort of ear for accents, ’specially ones from my neck of the woods.’

Gabriel smiled.

‘I had a friend who came from Peckham.’

Frank nodded, as if that were all the explanation he needed or wanted. He half-turned and extended an arm.

‘Welcome to my little empire,’ he said. ‘Want the tour?’

‘Yes, please,’ Eli said.

‘I’ll leave you in Frank’s capable hands,’ Taylor said. ‘Come and find me once you’ve finished up here.’

Frank led them down the central aisle, pointing out different items like a proud department store manager aiming to impress important customers.

Gabriel inhaled and smiled as his brain processed the universal aroma of military kit: grease, gun oil, cold steel and brass and musty canvas.

‘Nice, isn’t it?’ Frank said, catching sight of Gabriel’s half-closed eyes.

‘Wonderful. Did you serve with George then?’

‘Ten years. Best bloody battlefield commander I ever saw. Never asked us to do anything he wouldn’t do himself.’

‘The mark of a good leader,’ Eli said.

Frank nodded.

‘One time, just outside Kandahar? We’re closing in on a Taliban machine gun nest. They’d had us pinned down for six hours, so Major Taylor says, “Right, lads, I’ve had enough of this. We’re going to wait till nightfall, then go up there and annihilate the fuckers.”

‘We waited till it got dark, then we made our move. It was all going to plan, then they hit us with a searchlight. They lit us up and only me and Major Taylor survived. Our machine gunner, Dicky Salmon, got his head shot off. Major Taylor grabbed his GPMG, and him and me ran on.

‘I chucked a grenade towards their position and Major Taylor, he got the GPMG on his hip and opened up. I arrived a few seconds after him and started feeding the belt to stop it jamming, you know?

‘We killed them all. Four with the GPMG, then when we ran through the first belt, him and me, Major Taylor I mean, we went for it. The major,