Edit Book Page
Title:
Content:
address. Engines cut, doors locked with casual ease. The four men stepped out in pairs, their movements� unhurried, deliberate�just pedestrians on an ordinary night. One by one, they drifted toward the lead vehicles and slipped inside, two in each car. Five cars arriving at once would draw eyes. Three felt reasonable. Three was normal. The reduced convoy rolled on, smooth and silent, until the wrought-iron gates of 93 Abel Street rose into view. A thumb pressed the remote; the gates parted with a muted click, swallowing the vehicles into the compound. The moment the latch sealed behind them, the mask dropped. James Banda, the driver of the armoured BMW, stepped out first. Without a word, he opened the rear door for the old man, whose every movement sold the illusion of frailty. The girl climbed out ahead of him, her wide-eyed awe perfectly choreographed�a teenager marvelling at the apartment block as though it were something to behold. The other men emerged from the remaining two cars, each one scanning the perimeter with that subtle, restless vigilance born of long service in dangerous worlds. Their weapons stayed holstered, but their eyes were drawn steel. No one spoke. No one needed to. Together, they crossed the polished courtyard and disappeared into the elevator lobby, following James Banda toward apartment 607. Inside apartment 607, the men had done what they could to make the space worthy of the man they served. It was still just an apartment�walls of concrete dressed in borrowed elegance�but they had tried. The air carried the faint tang of fresh polish; curtains hung crisp and new, and a bottle of twelve-year-old Scotch waited on a glass-topped table like an offering. Not that it mattered to Carlos. This was a base, not a palace. He had slept in worse places for the sake of survival. He had crawled through Colombian jungles with a price on his head, sharing air with insects and ghosts. He had lived in caves when duty demanded it. Compared to that, four walls and running water were a luxury. Still, their effort did not go unnoticed. He saw the quiet pride in their arrangement, the symmetry in the way the glasses were set, the way the leather couches faced inward like sentinels. It was respect, made visible. And while comfort meant nothing to him, loyalty did. Minister Ted McBride had been chasing Lieutenant Mazibuko all day, to no avail. Since their last conversation the night before, Mazibuko�s phone had been a dead line. The
Page Number:
Update Page