The Dust Will Never Settle (35 page)

Jennifer entered the room, spotted Ruby and ground to a halt. Behind Jennifer, the solid wood door slowly swung shut. Its click masked the snick of the safety catch being pushed off by Ruby.

‘What are you doing here? Where is Chance?’

Before Ruby could reply, a thunderclap rang out. The windowpanes rattled as the 84mm HEAT rocket fired by Boucher boomed out.

‘What the hell was that?’ Jennifer instinctively turned towards the sound, alarm on her face. There was another boom as the rocket struck and exploded. This one was closer, much louder. Jennifer ran to the window.

Ruby stood still. In her mind’s eye she could see Boucher bring the launcher down from his shoulder, crack open the loading port and shove in the second round, then raise it to his shoulder and place his eye to the sights. Her body tensed.

Jennifer saw the expression on Ruby’s face. That Ruby had shown no surprise at the explosions registered with her. Jennifer halted in midstride and reached for the gun in her belt. Her hand moved like a blur of lightning.

Equally fast, Ruby’s hand came out from behind her back.

The sight of the silenced weapon almost froze Jennifer, but the point of no return had been crossed. She clawed out her weapon, knowing it was futile, yet hoping.

Jennifer’s weapon started to come level, aligning on Ruby. Her finger had already completed half the trigger squeeze.

Boucher’s first rocket slammed into the roadblock on the road to Ashoka hotel. Fired from 400 metres away, the FFV551 HEAT round decimated the waist-high wall of sandbags and rampaged through the men behind. There were no screams. None of the four men survived long enough to scream.

The six guards at the other end of the road were alive, but overwhelmed by the shock and by the debris that billowed out and now lay like a dark cloud over the roadblock. They were trying to figure out where the attack had come from when there was another massive flare of sound and light.

Boucher had fired again.

The second shot, an FFV441B HE rocket, was aimed at the hotel’s eighth floor. It slammed explosively into the wall of the hotel, missing a window by inches. The thick stone walls stopped the HE round, but Boucher’s job was not to cause damage. It was to create a diversion.

The explosion echoed harshly through the eighth floor, rattling the windows, shattering some. Bits of plaster broke free from the ceiling.

The second explosion masked the plop of the silenced pistol in Ruby’s hand. The 9mm round caught Jennifer in her face, just above the upper lip. The impact threw her backwards. The pistol in her hand fired reflexively and the bullet thudded into the ceiling, sending out gouts of plaster.

Jennifer’s body hit the ground with a thud. Life had already deserted her.

The smell of blood rose, mingling with the smoke curling out of the Browning in Ruby’s hand. For a second she froze, but then her training took over.

Time was short. Ruby ran for the door.

Ravinder was pacing the corridor on the eighth floor when Boucher’s first rocket decimated the roadblock. Galvanized into action, he ran for the elevator to get to the control room. He was halfway there when the second rocket struck, just a few windows away from the conference hall.

Silence returned. But he knew the attack had just begun and that rockets fired from a distance could only be a diversion.

From the other end of the hallway he saw Chance and Peled racing towards him. They all had only one thought: the delegates needed to be secured.

‘Code Red.’ Grabbing the radio from his belt, Ravinder snapped into it. ‘I say again,
Code Red
. Lock down the floors.’

Boucher dropped the rocket launcher and raced towards the taxi stand 200 metres down the road. He would commandeer a car from there. In his head he had already begun to race towards the airport.

What Boucher had not factored in were the snipers on all sides of the hotel roof. Ruby had known of them, but had conveniently forgotten to mention them when the two Aussies showed some reluctance during her briefing. Their lives meant little to her, considering she was putting her own on the line.

Despite the confusion below, the Indian Army sniper manning the side from which Boucher had fired was watching his area with eagle eyes. He spotted Boucher when he started running. Though he had seen the flares of the launcher’s back blast, he had not seen Boucher due to the overhang of a tree. But the minute Boucher ran for the taxi stand, the cover had been removed.

The sniper did not hesitate. Rocket launchers going off and a man running away from the place they’d been fired. The picture was clear. The weapon in his hands steadied. His cross hairs sought out the running man and homed in. He took a lead to compensate for the target’s motion. His finger curled around the trigger of his Snayperskaya Vintovka Dragunova Sniping Rifle and began to squeeze. A soft click.

A 7.62x54mm rimless round snapped out of the barrel and raced forward at a velocity of 830 metres per second. It covered the distance before Boucher had managed to take one more stride. The bullet smashed into Boucher’s back, tearing out his heart.

No second shot was required.

After dropping Thakur off to the conference hall, Mohite was returning to the control room. He was in the elevator when the rockets exploded. The canned music playing kept him from hearing either of the blasts. Unaware that the Summit was under attack, he was entering the control room when Ravinder’s voice erupted out of the radio.

‘Code Red!’ Ravinder’s voice was strident with urgency. ‘I say again, Code Red. Lock down the floors!’

‘What the hell is happening?’ Mohite asked the men at the monitors.

The minute Ontong heard the first rocket fired by Boucher explode, he grabbed hold of the rocket launcher in his van. He knew the second blast would soon be on its way.

He had already loaded the launcher. His second rocket was also ready to go. Double-checking everything, Ontong shouldered the weapon and stepped out of the bushes, as the second rocket fired by Boucher slammed against the walls of the top floor.

Starting the count, Ontong steadied the launcher on his shoulder and took careful aim.

Ten, nine, eight…
Ontong fired.

Ontong’s HEAT round smashed into the security post at the hotel’s entry gate. Its boom, much closer now, echoed dully through the control room.

Mohite ran to the monitor for the main gate. It had suddenly gone dark.

Unaware that the rocket had killed the camera, Mohite thumped the monitor, trying to bring it back to life.

‘What the fuck happened?’