Chapter 22

"Where are they now?" Sir Lance screamed as he settled down and turned one of the mounted multi-purpose screens towards him. "And how the hell did this happen?"

Paul, monitoring the consoles, spoke calmly.

"On the Airport Coastal Line, sir. Seems they're on a speedboat, judging by the rate of progress, headed towards the White Coves."

"Cut him off!" Sir Lance shouted. "The Coves have too many… simply too many places to hole up. Send four choppers along the line. Alert the damn Coast Guards to keep patrolling boats on the White Coves, four miles radii! Tell them to shoot to kill if they get a line on Prodigal without harming Stanley."

"Yes, sir," Paul said and fixed his headphone, and then he began issuing out orders.

"And show me the damn footage at the airport, would you?" Sir Lance cried. "I wanna know what the heck happened! How the heck that bastard pulled this off! And I want to know the interval between sight and the warning! What were those arseholes doing in the control room anyway? Damn you, Prodigal! Somebody just kill that bastard for me!"

A moment later, the screen in front of Sir Lance lit up and began showing video footage of two agents meeting Stanley Adu at the airport.

***

Stanley Adu was a bit calmer now.

When his eyes opened, he was sitting in the comfortable leather seat to the port of the speedboat whilst Chris was behind the wheel at starboard. Stanley knew immediately that he had been taken, and knew too that Sir Lance would set the machinery rolling for his extraction.

They would need to know where he was first, though, and that was why the first thing he did was press the Body Tracker sensor which had been fixed inside his left elbow.

He moaned, leaned forward, and put his right thumb on the sensor and pressed. He held for ten seconds, and then he felt a slight vibration in his arm and knew his location was locked on SPF radars.

Very soon, if Prodigal kept him alive, help would come!

He would be rescued and Prodigal would probably be dead.

Mission accomplished, he leaned back in his seat and looked at the bleak man behind the wheel. The sea spread peacefully around them as the powerboat cleaved cleanly through at top speed.

"You've made your worst mistake, Prodigal," Stanley said with an almost sympathetic shake of his head. "Look, I understand your fury, okay, but…"

His voice trailed off when Chris turned and looked at him coldly.

"You do?" he asked softly as the speed of the boat began to reduce. "Humour me, pussy."

"Chris, Chris, come on!" Stanley said as the look in the man's eyes sent a shiver of fear through him. "You must know that whatever went down was way above you and me, man! You should bloody know! Shit, you escaped from prison, well that ain't surprising to me. I always knew you had it in you. But you should have kept running, concentrated on getting out of KOE. You're still here, and that will mean only one thing, Chris; death! Your death! And you made the foul mistake of kidnapping me! For what, Chris, for what? I stayed clear of your case the moment the king and queen testified against you! I don't have the slightest fucking idea why you should kidnap me!"

Chris looked at the man with cold eyes.

"Stayed clear of my case? Are you suffering from amnesia now? You bloody well testified against me in court too, Stan. You, my colleague and friend, lied about me to the inquiry committee."

The boat had stopped, but the engine was idling. Again, Stanley felt a shiver of fear when Chris killed the engine and turned in his seat to look at him. The hardtop provided shade over the helm, and in the tranquil atmosphere, his heart began to beat with fear.

"That was above me, Chris, damn it! Look, I can help you, Chris, if you'll allow me," Stanley said with a nervous chuckle. "I have clout, I have means, and I have access to money and the right people. I can help you get out of KOE, man, and then you can disappear anywhere you want. A man like you with your skills will be relatively safe once you're out of KOE. Let me offer the olive branch, and help you in any way I could because of the path I played in your case, okay? Anything you want, my son, just tell me."

"I don't run. Hoc Bellum est. Semper Fi," Chris said through gritted teeth. "You pussy, I'm not your son. You're going to tell me why you lied in court. Secondly, my brother didn't die in an armed robbery in a bloody bank, you motherfucker. You're going to tell me who ordered my brother's murder, and the names of those fucking arseholes who killed him!"

"Jesus, Chris!" Stanley cried as fear slammed into his heart. "Let's be calm over this, okay? Let's be professionals, like men with mutual respect. Don't be angry!"

Chris' eyes bored into him.

"Believe me, I don't respect you, and I'm not angry," he said in a deadly voice. "You'll know when I'm angry, pussy."

"Chris…" Stanley Adu began.

His voice trailed off because Chris drew a huge Luger from his waistband and a bullet clip from his pocket. Casually, he pushed the bullet clip into the gun and fed the first bullet into the chamber. He raised the gun and put it near the steering wheel.

His cold eyes then bored into Stanley Adu, who looked at the gun and licked his lips rapidly with fear.

"Prodigal, don't be stupid!" he said in a voice that he hoped was firm and authoritative. "I'm the Director of Field Operations of the Special Palace Forces! Kill me, and the whole Kingdom of Eden security force will come for your neck. Murder has never solved anything and will solve nothing now. We can talk as two professionals, as I said earlier. No need to threaten me."

"Don't worry about that," Chris Bawa said coldly as he leaned back in the seat. "You lied about me in court. Tell me why."

Stanley licked his dry lips, and he looked at Chris with fear, and as sweat suddenly formed on his face, he wondered where the rescue forces were. His Body Tracker had been activated for enough time now, and he expected them to have gotten a lock on his position and be circling them now with planes and boats to neutralize Prodigal's threat.

"Look, kiddo, that thing went far over me!" he cried earnestly. "You should understand, Chris, fuck it! The king and queen also stated categorically that you tried to assassinate the king. So, may I ask why your sole interest is in my testimony?"

Chris Bawa leaned forward slightly and grabbed the Luger. Without a word, he leaned back, angled the gun, and shot Stanley in the right foot.

The loud report of the gun startled Stanley for a moment before he looked at his foot with horror as the blood began to fill his shoe. He screamed and hobbled out of his seat, floundered on the deck for a while, then grabbed his foot as his frenzied eyes rested on Chris' cold face.

"Prodigal!" he screamed. "You bastard! You fucking bastard!"

"Next bullet goes to your brain," Chris said calmly. "You lied that you caught me with a gun in my hand pointed at the head of the king. Why?"

"Fuck you, I was made to say it!" Stanley screamed. "I'm bleeding to death, man, fuck it! Get the First Aid box, man, and stop the bloody blood before I bleed to death."

Chris raised the gun.

"You have approximately five minutes to bleed out," he said coldly. "I don't give a fuck whether you live or die, Stan. Choice is yours. Why did you lie about me?"

"They told me they had intel about you!" Stanley screamed as blood covered his hands. "Said it was irrefutable, that you were working with the damn imperialists to assassinate the king! I wasn't given any leeway, damn you! They wanted you out of the way, and I was just a small fish in the pond whose testimony added to that of the royal family!"

"Who's 'they' Chris asked softly.

"C'mon, Prodigal, damn it!" Stanley screamed.

Chris shot him in the left shoulder.

The bullet pile-drove the man backwards and slammed him on his back. He screamed and clutched his bleeding shoulder as pain lacerated through his body. He watched with horror as Chris stood over him with the gun levelled at his head.

Stanley Adu held out a blood-covered hand with horror on his face as he shook his head violently. 

"They told me to lie about you!" Stanley screamed. "The damn army Commander, the damn Air Marshall, the Navy General! They were all there! Said it was imperative I said exactly what they asked me to!"

"Sir Lance was a part of them?"

"No, no, he wasn't part of it, damn it!" Stanley screamed as he looked desperately into the sky, wondering why the place was not swarming with helicopters, speedboats and the coast guards! Surely, his signal might have gone all over by now. "Sir Lance always believed in you; thought you were innocent even when he was presented with irrefutable evidence!"

"Then why is he hunting me down? Why did he agree to send an assassin to kill me in prison? Why? What convinced him that what you idiots said was true?"

"The testimony of your sister!" Stanley shouted desperately. "Your sister Dinah spoke to us, Sir Lance, me, a few guys, including the judge, the jury! Fuck, she was weeping and all, but she said she heard you speaking to white men, having conferences with them! She showed us communication evidence, emails you exchanged with them, accounts numbers of monies sent to you, secret codes of contracts between you and some shady men in the USA. Yes, Prodigal, your sister gave the dose on you that convinced Sir Lance!"