Rogue Element

‘We will meet here again in two days time, at 0030, to go over the details. Our time is nearly here. There is only one way for us to go, and that is forward,’ said Suluang.

No, there is another way, thought Masri.

General Suluang stood, ceremoniously removed the top from the large bottle of XO, and poured each man a generous tot. ‘Gentlemen. Success.’

All six men stood and raised their glasses in a silent toast. Masri’s eyes were frozen in their sockets. He walked out of the humid, grease-heavy atmosphere of the garage and stepped quickly into the air-conditioned comfort of his chauffeur-driven Benz. ‘Home,’ he snapped at the attractive female, a lieutenant, behind the wheel. They drove in silence to the general’s residence. The forty-six year old man looked nervously over his shoulder at the following traffic several times, which, the lieutenant noted, was something he had never done before.

The lieutenant could sense the general’s nervousness. After their six-month affair, she was attuned to his many moods. She had been hoping that they would go to a hotel in the evening as usual and play their special games. Her favourite was a role reversal in which she was the general and he the junior officer. In this game she gave orders commanding him to do silly, sensual things. From the man’s anxiety, she knew there weren’t going to be any such games that night.

They arrived at the general’s home and he asked her to wait, leaving the motor running. Again, unusual. He dashed out of the car while it was still rolling to a stop and tripped up the stairs to the front door.

The lieutenant received a call on her cell phone. The staccato instructions she received instantly sobered her. She knew, now, why the general was tense. He had good reason to be.

Ten minutes later, the general’s wife, with a bag under one arm and a small boy under the other, burst through the front door and ran down the steps to the car. The woman dumped the crying child in the rear seat and raced back up the steps and into the old residence that dated from Dutch colonial times. Seconds later, both the woman and the general came out carrying medium-sized suitcases. The general didn’t give the lieutenant a destination. He just told her to drive, and fast. The anxiety and stress exuded by his parents, coupled with the violent motion of the car, made the young boy cry louder.

Masri told the lieutenant to take a left and then a right. He kept looking behind them, craning his neck, examining the following headlights. The lieutenant drove as fast as the traffic allowed. A motorcycle accelerated out of a side street. It darted through a gap in the traffic and pulled up behind the limousine. The pillion passenger pulled a machine pistol from his jacket and hosed the rear of the car.

Bullets ricocheted off the bitumen in a ballet of dancing sparks. The general’s wife had time to scream once before she died as a slug drilled through the top of her shoulder and spun a channel through her lungs and heart, bursting its chambers. The driver reacted as anyone might in such a situation, despite the fact that she knew the attack was coming. She turned the car away from danger. The rear of the vehicle flicked out with the weight transference and removed the front wheel from under the motorcycle. The bike instantly slid on its side, spilling its rider and passenger under the wheels of a truck trundling heavily in the opposite direction.

The general screamed at the lieutenant to take another left. She complied. He then screamed again for her to stop. The lieutenant ignored the second command and instead pushed the accelerator pedal to the floor. She could not stop at this pace.

Masri jammed a pistol into the back of her head with such force that her forehead hit the horn. The general flicked the gun to the left and fired a warning shot. He meant business. The blast of the round erupting from the muzzle perforated her eardrum and blood spurted from her ear hole. She dazedly saw the road passing under the car, through the fissure drilled by the round in the floor beside her feet. She got the message and stood on the brakes.

The car skidded up and over a kerb, crashing heavily into a solid brick and cast iron fence. The firearm discharged a second time, accidentally, the bullet removing a large portion of the back of the lieutenant’s head and spraying it on the footpath.

Unlike the child’s, the general’s seatbelt had not been fastened. The impact catapulted him over the front passenger seat and smashed him through the front windscreen. He came to rest, bloody and unconscious, on the ground. A restrained brass plaque on top of a cracked pillar read ‘Australian Embassy’.