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

Toppling, falling away from him.

The second shot, ripping into his shoulder.

The screaming.

He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them, gulped air down and drained his glass. Nobody had noticed. Everyone in the room was watching the pictures on the screen.

Gabriel looked at Don. The older man was bolt upright, staring intently at the screen, unaware that his wife was clutching his left arm. Gabriel knew what he was doing because, free now of the flashback’s grip, he was doing it himself. Analysing. Looking beyond the horror, the blood, looking into the picture. Searching for details.

The devastation to the princess’s head said large-calibre weapon. The choice of target said professional marksman. The bullet could be retrieved. It would be embedded in the coach’s bodywork or the road surface. Nobody else had been shot. This was no spree killer. This was an assassination.

A hit.

Don’s mobile had been ringing continuously since the moment the princess’s lifeless body had slid sideways across her stricken husband’s lap. As soon as one call ended, another began.

In thirty minutes he’d spoken to the heads of MI5, MI6, the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command and a civil servant working within 10 Downing Street.

While they waited for him to be free to brief them, Gabriel, Eli and Christine could only do what the rest of the country was doing, and stare at the TV.

As the gut-churning few seconds were replayed from angle after angle, commentators tried to offer words of comfort. Military experts were wheeled out to make pronouncements about the likely calibre and type of weapon used by the assassin. And journalists, particularly the men, made great play of using weapons terminology with which they clearly had only passing acquaintance.

‘What do you think, boss?’ Gabriel asked Don, after he’d ended his latest call.

Don stroked the side of his nose, making his distinctive ‘Hmm, mm-hmm’ as he formulated his reply.

‘We all receive a weekly briefing of the various unsavoury groups crawling around in the silt of the body politic,’ he said. ‘Rightists, leftists, Islamists, white supremacists, Irish republicans, anarchists. KOA pop up from time to time but they’re a fringe group. About thirty members, if memory serves.’

‘You saw the banner, boss,’ Eli protested.

‘Yes, I did. And that’s all I did see. A banner. Admittedly a very professional and lurid banner,’ he added. ‘But a few square metres of printed vinyl do not a terror group make.’

‘You going to defend their right to free speech?’ Gabriel asked.

‘Afraid so, Old Sport. I’m sorry, Eli, whoever put a sniper onto a tall building with a high-powered rifle, it wasn’t them. I’d stake my reputation on it.’

‘Well who, then?’

‘That’s rather the question, isn’t it?’

‘Anything for us?’

Don shook his head.

‘Five and Six are already squabbling for jurisdiction with Counter Terrorism and Special Branch. They’ve convened a COBRA committee so no doubt they’ll hash out a command structure. We, however, are not required.’

5

KGALAGADI TRANSFRONTIER PARK, BOTSWANA

Nick Acheson, colonel of the Parachute Regiment, and his men stood in the clearing to which Eustace, head still bandaged, had led them. As soon as he’d received the message from the Anti-Poaching Unit, Acheson had swung into action.

He’d called his oppo at the SAS in Hereford and asked for immediate assistance. Within half an hour the regiment’s unmarked, matte olive-green Hercules C-130K had taken off with Acheson and sixteen SAS members on board, heading for Botswana.

There being no convenient airport nearby, the SAS men and their guest parachuted in, steering their rectangular ram-air chutes in a tight formation so they landed within a quarter mile of each other in the bush. Along with the men and their kit, the Hercules had also dropped two specially adapted Land Rovers, each mounted with a pair of ferociously effective L7A2 General Purpose Machine Guns.

Under the command of a thirty-four-year-old captain sporting a piratical red beard, the eight SAS men, together with thirty members of the Botswana Defence Force, established a perimeter around the clearing.

The Landies were circling the clearing beyond the on-foot perimeter, bearing, in addition to the gunners, a driver and two more heavily armed fighters. Any poachers coming within range could expect to be either captured or killed without mercy.

Acheson looked down at a depression in the earth, its outline demarcated by animal footprints. The earth in the centre was stained a deeper red and scraped out somewhat. Beyond it, the skin-draped skeletons of the dead elephants looked like badly erected tents.

Eustace pointed at the vaguely man-shaped space.

‘I am sorry, Sir.’

Acheson shook his head.

‘And you didn’t find any remains at all?’

Eustace shook his head.

‘No, Sir. We searched, but human remains, they are easier to carry than elephant bones,’ he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the skeletonised elephant carcass. ‘That is why the elephant is still there. Lions, hyenas, leopards, jackals, plus all the birds of prey – they take away everything. Hyenas crack marrow bones. Strong jaws.’

A shout went up. Acheson turned towards the source. A SAS man came running with a set of identity discs.

‘Sir, I found these over by the trees. Caught on a thorn bush,’ he said as he handed them over.

Acheson took the proffered discs, still in the green rubber rings that prevented them from chinking together. He turned them over on his palm and learned he was holding possibly the only remaining evidence of Corporal Steven ‘Stevo’ Wallingham’s tour of duty in Botswana. He pocketed them and snapped the press stud closed.

‘Right, I want the whole area searched. We had three guys out here and there were two APU guys as well,’ he said. ‘If possible, I want two more ID discs for our lads and something to prove Moses and Virtue were here, too.’

The SAS man nodded and returned to his squad to brief them.

Over the next three and a half hours, the SAS and the Botswanan soldiers meticulously searched the clearing and a hundred-yard-diameter circle outside it. Sometimes they crouched to rake their fingertips through trampled undergrowth. Others stretched to pluck things free