Predator. Wilbur Smith

a couple of Range Rover Sports with five-litre supercharged engines, a Porsche Cayenne, an Audi Q7 and a tuned-up Mercedes ML63 AMG that could do nought to sixty in a shade over four seconds. Within hours of being taken, the cars had all had any tracking devices removed, before being driven to different workshops to be resprayed and given new licence plates. Meanwhile, police officers were telling the cars’ owners that they’d do their best to find their precious vehicles, but the chances weren’t good.

      ‘I hate to say it, but models like that get stolen to order,’ one very upset oil executive’s wife was told. ‘Chances are, that Porsche of yours is already over the border, making someone in Reynosa or Monterrey feel real good about life.’

      Rashad Trevain, meanwhile, had one of his people spend a few hours online, scouring every truck dealership from the Louisiana state line clear across to Montgomery, Alabama, looking for four-axle dumper trucks, built after 2005, with less than 300,000 miles on the clock, available for under $80,000. By the end of the morning they’d located a couple of Kenworth T800s and a 2008 Peterbilt 357, with an extra-long trailer that fitted those specifications. The trucks were bought for their full asking price from an underworld dealer who sold only for cash, didn’t bother with paperwork and suffered instant amnesia about his customers’ names and faces, then driven west to a repair yard in Port Arthur, Texas. There they were given the best service they’d ever had. Every single component was checked, cleaned, replaced, or whatever it took to make these well-used machines move like spring chickens on speed. The day before Johnny Congo was due to go to the Death House, the trucks headed over to Galveston and picked up forty tons apiece of hardcore rubble – smashed up concrete, bricks, paving and large stones – in each of the Kenworths and fifty tons in the Peterbilt. Now they were loaded, locked and ready to go. One final touch: a plastic five-gallon jerrycan was tucked behind the driver’s seat in every cab, with a timer fuse attached.

      Cross was half an hour into his final afternoon’s fishing when the iPhone in the top pocket of his Rivermaster vest started ringing, ruining the peace of a world in which the loudest sounds had been the burbling of the waters of the Tay and the rustle of the wind in the trees.

      ‘Dammit!’ he muttered. The ringtone was one he reserved for calls from Bannock Oil head office in Houston. Since his marriage to Hazel Bannock, Hector Cross had been a director of the company that bore her first husband’s name. He was thus powerful enough to have left instructions that he was not to be disturbed unless it was absolutely essential, but with that power came the responsibility to be on call at any time, anywhere, if need arose. Cross took out the phone, looked at the screen and saw the word ‘Bigelow’.

      ‘Hi, John,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’

      John Bigelow was a former US Senator who had taken over the role of President and CEO of Bannock Oil after Hazel’s death. ‘Hope I haven’t caught you at a bad time, Heck,’ he said with all the affability of a born politician.

      ‘You caught me in the middle of a river in Scotland, where I was trying to catch salmon.’

      ‘Well, I sure hate to disturb a man when he’s fishing, so I’ll keep it brief. I just had a call from a State Department official I regard very highly …’ There was a burst of static on the line, Cross missed the next few words and then Bigelow’s voice could be heard saying, ‘… called Bobby Franklin. Evidently Washington’s getting a lot of intel about possible terrorist activity aimed at oil installations in West Africa and off the African coast.’

      ‘I’m familiar with the problems they’ve had in Nigeria,’ Cross replied, forgetting all thought of Atlantic salmon as his mind snapped back to business. ‘There have been lots of threats against onshore installations and a couple of years ago pirates stormed a supply vessel called C-Retriever that was servicing some offshore rigs – took a couple of hostages as I recall. But no one’s ever gone after anything as far out to sea as we’re going to be at Magna Grande. Was your State Department friend saying that’s about to change?’

      ‘Not exactly. It was more a case of giving us a heads-up and making sure we were well prepared for any eventuality. Look, Heck, we all know you’ve had to go through a helluva lot in the past few months, but if you could talk to Franklin and then figure out how we should respond, security-wise, I’d be very grateful.’

      ‘Do I have time to finish my fishing?’

      Bigelow laughed. ‘Yeah, I can just about let you have that! Some time in the next few days would be fine. And one more thing … We all heard how you handed that bastard Congo over to the US Marshals and, speaking as a former legislator, I just want you to know how much I respect you for that. No one would’ve blamed you for taking the law into your hands, knowing that he was responsible for your tragic loss, and our tragic loss, too. You know how much all of us here loved and respected Hazel. But you did the right thing and now, I promise you, we in Texas are going to do the right thing. You can count on that.’

      ‘Thanks, John, I appreciate it,’ Cross said. ‘Have your secretary send me the contact details and I’ll set up a Skype call as soon as I’m back in London. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve just spotted what looks like twenty pounds of prime salmon and I want to put a fly in its mouth before it disappears.’

      Cross dropped his fly on to the water downstream of where he was standing; then he lifted his rod up and back and into a perfect single Spey cast that sent his line and lure out to a point on the water where it was perfectly positioned to tempt and tantalize his prey. But though his concentration on the fish was absolute, still there was a part of his subconscious that was already looking forward to the task that Bigelow had set him.

      It seemed to Cross like the perfect assignment to get him back into the swing of working life. His military expertise, and his ability to plan, supply, train for and execute an interesting, important task would all be utilized to the full. But the work, though challenging, would essentially be precautionary. Just like all the soldiers, sailors and airmen who had spent the Cold War decades training for a Third World War that had thankfully never come, so he would be preparing for a terrorist threat that might be very real in theory but was surely unlikely in practice. If he was really going to lead a less blood-soaked life, but didn’t want to die of boredom, this seemed a pretty good way to start.

      It was half past eight in the morning of 15 November and all the morning news shows in Houston were leading with stories about the upcoming execution of the notorious killer and prison-breaker Johnny Congo. But if that was the greatest drama of the day, other tragedies, no less powerful to those caught up in them, were still playing themselves out. And one of them was unfolding in a doctor’s consulting room in River Oaks, one of the richest residential communities in the entire United States, where Dr Frank Wilkinson was casting a shrewd but kindly eye over the three people lined up in chairs opposite his desk.

      To Wilkinson’s right was his long-time patient and friend Ronald Bunter, senior partner of the law firm of Bunter and Theobald. He was a small, neat, silver-haired man, whose normally impeccable, even fussy appearance was marred by the deep shadows under his eyes, the grey tinge to his skin and – something Wilkinson had never seen on him before – the heavy creases in his dark grey suit. When Bunter said ‘Good morning’ there was a quaver in his thin, precise voice. He was obviously exhausted and under enormous strain. But he was not the patient Wilkinson was due to be seeing today.

      On the left of the line sat a tall, strongly built, altogether more forceful-looking man in his early forties: Ronald Bunter’s son Bradley. He had thick black hair, swept back from his temples and gelled into a layered, picture-ready perfection that made him look like someone running for office. His eyes were a clear blue and they looked at Dr Wilkinson with a challenging directness, as if Brad Bunter were forever spoiling for a fight. Even so, the doctor could see that he, too, was suffering considerable fatigue, even if he was more able to hide it than his father. There was, however, nothing wrong with Brad Bunter that a good night’s sleep wouldn’t cure.

      The patient whose condition was the reason for the Bunters’ visit to Frank Wilkinson’s office sat between the two men: Ronald’s wife and Bradley’s mother Elizabeth, who was known to everyone as Betty. As a young woman Betty had been an exceptionally