get all excited, lads,” he said as he reached into the back of his underwear and, straining in discomfort, extracted a small tubular object from where the sun didn’t shine. “Ow! Christ, you’ve no idea how uncomfy that was. Made my eyes water.”
Boodu was about to take it from Eddie when he noticed the unsavory coating on its metal surface and instructed the guard to hold it instead. With an expression of great distaste, the man held it up for his superiors to examine. It was around three inches long and a little over an inch in diameter, one end rounded off. A red LED blinked at the other, flat end, a tiny switch beside it. “Does the switch turn it off?” Boodu asked Eddie. The Englishman nodded.
Boodu gestured to the guard, who clicked the switch with a thumbnail. The LED went dark. Chuckling, he regarded Eddie again. “You shouldn’t have set it to transmit on a military frequency, Chase. A stupid mistake.”
“Oh, I dunno,” said Eddie. A sudden confidence in his voice was accompanied by distant sounds from outside, a series of flat thuds. Boodu stiffened, realizing that the situation had somehow changed. “It wasn’t to tell my mates I was here.” A broad smile exposed the gap between his front teeth. “It was to tell ’em you were here.”
He dropped and shielded his head—
A rising high-pitched whine told Boodu what was happening—but too late to do anything about it as mortar shells struck the prison.
A hole exploded in the corridor’s ceiling, shrapnel ripping into the head and back of the prison official. The governor was also hit, the blast flinging him into the cell. Both Boodu and the guard were thrown off their feet as more detonations tore through the building.
Eddie lifted his head as the first round of shelling ceased. As planned, the bombs had been fired to impact in a pattern around his cell as soon as the beacon was switched off. Risky, but he’d had confidence in his collaborators’ aim. The mortars were just over the top of a small ridge almost a mile from the fort, set up and sighted on his position by surreptitious use of a laser rangefinder during the early hours of the morning. So far, they were on target. The door hung off its hinges, the wall beside it smashed. A shaft of sunlight cut through the swirling dust from a hole in the roof.
He jumped up. The guard was closest to him, breaking out of his daze as he saw the prisoner move and standing clumsily, raising his gun—
Eddie grabbed his arm and wrenched it up behind his back as he fired. The bullet smacked against the door.
The sound shocked the governor back to life. He fumbled for his own holstered weapon, broad face contorted in panic and fury.
Eddie twisted the guard’s arm even harder, jamming the gun’s muzzle into his lower back—and his own index finger on top of his captive’s. Four shots burst gorily through the guard’s abdomen. Even mangled and smashed by their passage, the rounds still had enough force to tear into the governor’s flesh. He screamed, gun forgotten as he writhed in agony from the mortal wounds.
Pulling the gun from the dead guard’s hand, Eddie dropped the corpse and whirled to face Boodu. The Zimbabwean was on his hands and knees. As he squinted in pain and disorientation, his gaze fell upon his machete, the ornate handle just inches away. He grabbed it—
Eddie’s foot stamped down on the blade.
Boodu looked up to find the smoking, blood-dripping gun pointed right at him. “All right, face-ache,” Eddie growled. “Let go.” Boodu withdrew his hand and backed away. The Englishman bent to retrieve the machete. Outside, an alarm bell started ringing—just as another round of far-off thumps reached the prison. “Oh, and if I were you, I’d duck.”
Boodu shielded his head as another round of mortar shells struck their targets. These explosions were farther away, but still shook dust from the ceiling as guard towers were blasted into fragments and the prefabricated administration block blew apart, the remains collapsing on top of the prison staff inside.
Eddie jabbed Boodu with the machete. Another noise rose: the helicopter, its pilot desperately trying to take off. “Okay, get up. Get up!” He gestured with the gun toward the broken door. “Move.”
Boodu had no choice but to obey, though his voice seethed with defiance. “Where are you taking me?”
“Long term? Botswana. Short term,” Eddie went on as the other man responded