Ivory Nation by Andy Maslen (free children's ebooks online txt) 📕

‘Very impressive. Shame such a big man as you feels the need to carry a gun just to rob three tourists. Especially when two of them are women. What’s the matter, you worried we’ll kick your arses?’

His eyes widened. Then he threw back his head and laughed for the third time.

Which was a mistake.

The sound died in his throat, as Eli’s blade-like right hand chopped across his larynx. She stepped in close and jerked her knee up hard into his groin, dropping him to the ground. Two punches to his left temple and he was out cold.

Gabriel and Stella moved in together as if they’d been fighting side by side for years. Clearly the heels weren’t an impediment.

He felled one man with a kick to the knee that sheared the tendons and ligaments with a loud crack.

Stella head-butted a second, stunning him so that he fell backwards, hingeing at his ankles. A third man punched Stella in the face, but his aim was off and the blow barely grazed her cheek. Gabriel was dodging knife thrusts from his man, waiting for the chance to inflict a deadly blow of his own.

‘That’s enough!’ Eli shouted, bringing the remaining fighters, Gabriel and Stella included, to a stop.

She pointed the little revolver into the face of the only gang member still standing. The terrified would-be mugger’s hands shot skywards.

‘Don’t kill me!’ he stammered.

‘I’m not going to,’ Eli said. ‘Unless you try anything. In which case I’ll shove this little popgun up your arse and pull the trigger. Now, on your belly.’

He pressed his palms together at his sternum.

‘Please. I am begging you.’

‘Now!’ she shouted.

He dropped to the ground, hands clasped above his head.

Eli whipped a bundle of cable ties from her trouser pocket. In a series of economical moves, she linked his right wrist to that of his nearest neighbour, then repeated the process until all five men were daisy-chained together around the ornamental lamp post.

She flicked out the chamber and emptied the six rounds into the palm of her hand. The now-useless revolver she dropped into the centre of the group. She collected their knives and dropped them into a plastic dumpster nearby.

Then, as calmly as if the whole episode had never happened, she pulled out her phone.

‘Hello? Yes, police? Come to the junction of Old Lobatse Road and Samora Machel Drive. You’ll find four gangbangers handcuffed round a lamp post. They have an illegal firearm.’

Despite the obvious string of questions chirping from the phone’s tinny speaker, she ended the call.

‘Let’s go,’ Eli said.

Ten minutes later, they regained the safety of the well-lit streets of the commercial district and the Avani. The Mercedes was exactly where they had left it. Gabriel glanced at the wheels; all on the Tarmac, not a brick in sight.

Reaching the car, he whistled, loudly. A ‘Hey! We’re back!’ signal to the protectioneers.

He needn’t have bothered. The two boys were already crossing the street to meet them, hips rolling, hands thrust deep into their shorts pockets.

‘Everything cool?’ he asked the taller boy.

‘Chilled, man. Icy,’ the kid said, affecting a half-decent American accent.

He held his hand out.

Gabriel pulled two ten-dollar bills from his wallet and slapped them down into the budding entrepreneur’s palm.

‘Good job. Thanks.’

‘You betcha!’ he said, pointing a finger at Gabriel then clicking his tongue as he dropped his upraised thumb. ‘Gotta blow, Joe.’

‘Gotta scram, Sam,’ his partner piped up.

Shaking his head, Gabriel blipped the fob to unlock the car. He, Eli and Stella climbed inside.

As he pulled away, he heard Stella sigh from the back seat.

‘Well that was intense.’

The next morning, Gabriel answered a knock on the door to find Stella standing there with a triumphant smile on her face.

He beckoned her in and closed the door. Eli emerged from the bathroom.

‘Hey, what’s up?’

‘Guess who just called “Joyce”?’

‘Mafombe came through?’

‘He did. Friday. Back at the Oasis. Four in the afternoon.’

Eli smiled.

‘Good. We can get a couple of steps closer to the killers.’

‘On which subject, now we’ve got a lead on the poachers, can you guys help me work on finding whether Lieberman ever came through here?’

‘Of course,’ Gabriel said. ‘I don’t know why, but I get the weirdest feeling it’s no coincidence we’re all out here together. What are the odds, after all?’

Stella shrugged.

‘He didn’t visit the university. That was just a wild guess.’

‘I’ve had a look up as we’ve been walking around. No CCTV apart from outside some of the big hotels,’ Gabriel said.

‘I know. Not quite the surveillance society we’ve got back home.’

‘Could you try calling Uri again?’ Gabriel asked Eli.

26

TEL AVIV

The three men and two women clustered around the desktop PC had over two hundred years’ service between them defending Israel against its enemies.

Uri Ziff stared at the screen. To his left he could hear the breathing of his immediate superior, Director Avigael Peretz, as she scrutinised the action unfolding in slow motion. To his right, Saul Ben Zacchai, the prime minister, remained silent, though his pungent aftershave gave plenty of signals he was in the room.

‘Back it up again, please,’ Uri asked the young intelligence analyst operating the controls for the CCTV playback.

The keyboard clicked, the mouse whispered across the mat and the footage restarted.

Two men, clad in baseball caps and dark clothes came into shot as they walked along the narrow balcony that led to the front door of Flat 27, 19 Yahalal Street. They kept their faces turned away from the camera mounted on the underside of the next floor up. Both were slim, both tall, both walked with the weight-balanced gait of professional men of action.

They stopped outside Lieberman’s home. The broader of the two stretched out a finger and rang the doorbell. A few moments passed, then the door opened, framing Sarah Lieberman. She brushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear, smiling and nodding as the man who had rung the bell spoke.

Then her expression changed. Her forehead crumpled and her mouth turned down. Eyes wide, she began gesticulating