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

He stretched out a hand and patted the venerable semi-automatic, where it lay beside him on the Corolla’s dirty grey velour passenger seat.

The hotel lay a couple of miles to the north. The women would have to pass through Bontleng Extension, a four-square-mile neighbourhood where the Africans had run out of money, energy or both to install and power streetlights.

He planned to make the hit roughly in the centre.

After the truck shimmied around a pothole big enough to dump a body into, it resumed a steady path and speed – thirty miles per hour – towards Avani resort. They crossed Old Lobatse Road and entered the kill zone.

The Syrian nodded with satisfaction. Like most of his peers, he was a meticulous planner. How else to command the high fees that kept him in mistresses, sports cars and fine wines? He watched the pinkish-red tail-lights make a right and followed the women into a narrow street lined with cinderblock houses roofed with rushes or corrugated iron.

A dog darted out from an alley, barking at his front wheels. He had time to swerve but held his line, nodding with satisfaction at the dull thump from the rear tyres. He watched the cur limping away in the rear-view mirror. The dog was lucky. They wouldn’t be. They had five minutes to live.

He accelerated to forty-five, then braked suddenly, shot down a side street and floored the throttle, driving along an unnamed, dirt-surfaced street running parallel to the road the women had chosen. At the far end, he cornered hard again, took another right then jammed on the brakes and slewed the car to a halt. He yanked the bonnet release catch, stuck the Colt in the back of his waistband under his jacket, ran round to the front of the car and raised the bonnet.

With his head stuck into the engine bay, which smelled of hot oil, he could look sideways under the bonnet and watch the Hilux approach on the other side of the road.

Seventy yards to go. Sixty. Fifty.

He straightened, looked round as if in surprise and waved his hands in the air from side to side. The universal ‘I need help!’ gesture of broken-down motorists.

For good measure, he pasted an embarrassed yet hopeful expression onto his face. He’d practised in the bathroom mirror back at his hotel until he had it just right. Eyebrows drawn together. Eyes widened. Half-assed smile.

Forty. Thirty. They slowed. Good. Come to me.

Twenty. He heard the Hilux’s brakes bite onto the pads.

They stopped.

Of course they stopped! I’m not white, like you, but I’m sure as hell not black like these Africans.

He turned the volume up on the helpless yet harmless expression until his cheeks quivered with the effort.

Through the windscreen he could see the women conferring. He was no lip reader but it wasn’t hard to decode the conversation.

We should help him.

What if he’s dangerous?

He doesn’t look dangerous. Besides, there are two of us.

I don’t like it.

Come on, the poor guy’s broken down in the shittiest neighbourhood in this shithole country.

The woman with the lighter complexion, the detective, settled the matter. She opened her door and climbed out. Stayed behind the comforting slab of steel, though. OK, so she wasn’t completely innocent in the ways of the world.

‘What happened?’ she called out.

‘My car. It broke down,’ he answered, using his BBC World Service accent. Arab desk, obviously. ‘I’m terribly sorry, but you wouldn’t be able to run me back to my hotel, would you?’

He stayed where he was. No threat. Not yet. The Colt felt good, pushing against his lumbar spine. Comforting. He put his hands behind him and rested them on the front wing. Look, they said. Even less of a threat.

‘What’s wrong with it?’ she asked. Staying behind the door.

The other woman, the one with the darker complexion, stayed in the cab, staring at him through the windscreen. Arab, like him? Israeli? It didn’t matter. She was dead.

‘I’m not one hundred per cent sure, to be honest. I’m a journalist, not a mechanic. I think it might be something electrical.’

He inched his right hand behind him until he could brush the back of it against the Colt’s grip.

‘A journalist? Who for?’

‘What?’ He could feel his smile slipping. Jacked it back into place. She was ten yards away. Not the easiest of shots, especially as he’d have to hit her through the window glass. But not impossible. Not for him.

‘Who do you work for? The BBC?’

‘Yes. I’ve got my ID here. Hold on a second.’

He reached behind him, still smiling, and curled his fingers round the Colt’s chequered grip.

The cop turned to the woman in the cab. She said something. The other woman nodded. The cop started to climb back into the Hilux.

He brought the Colt round in a tight under-arm swing so that the barrel brushed his right thigh on the way up. More economical than a roundhouse move.

The driver was gunning the engine. He had split seconds before the cop slammed her door and they took off.

His first shot shattered the windscreen. Fuck! The round passed harmlessly between their heads, blowing a hole in the rear glass before disappearing into the trees.

He fired again, a double tap. The truck was moving. No time to think. She was bearing down on him. He jumped to one side, firing again. Four more hollow-points slammed into the truck.

He meant to dodge the onrushing vehicle and give chase in the Corolla. But something grabbed the sleeve of his jacket. He whirled round to see the cuff buttons caught in the angle between the front wing and the bonnet prop.

The Hilux’s rowdy engine note boomed in his ears. He wrenched at his jacket and the sleeve tore. Scrambling to find safety, he tried to climb onto the roof.

The slabby front end of the pickup caught his left leg, mashing it against the Corolla’s door. The driver hauled the wheel right, rolling him all the way along the car’s grimy body, crushing him between a combined three and a