Singapore Sling Shot - Andrew Grant [75]
It was at this moment that Soon Heng knew they were not alone. A figure dressed all in black stepped out of the bushes. The figure was holding a sub-machine gun in front of his face.
I had designated the hits. The first man out of the hotel was mine and I concentrated on him. As I stepped out of the bushes, I gave the order to fire.
My man was turning, raising the automatic he had in his hand. I gave him a three burst and then another for luck. The range was less than ten metres. He was gone. The night was crackling. Glass was falling in a shower from the face of the building above us. I moved to the hostages.
“Down,” I yelled and they went to the ground. There was a man with an AK47 coming across the foyer towards us. The glass doors were closed, but just for a moment before they disintegrated under a hail of copper jackets. One of the marksmen across the car park had seen him coming. I finished the job by shooting through the glass-less doorframes. The guy took several hits and fell skidding onto the marble floor.
“All down,” K was calling. “Quong, watch the roof. Singdip, cover the windows.”
The replies came back from our two guys on the far side. If there were any of Lu’s men left alive in the building, we could still have a problem. I anticipated that there were at least two gunmen still unaccounted for. Loc had taken the van driver. The man’s body was sprawled under the van’s open door. I stepped over him. The keys were in the ignition.
“Everybody in,” I called. I was going to be driving. It hadn’t been in the original plan to use Lu’s van. We had the medium-sized bus, with one of Sami’s guys as driver, parked a hundred yards back up the road. The bus was covered in signage. It looked just like the sort of vehicle that tour groups use to get around Singapore. It was innocuous and near invisible. Rather than bring it down, we were going to it.
K was herding the hostages into the back of the van. There wasn’t time to get their gags or wrist restraints off.
As yet there were no shouts or screams and no lights coming on in the buildings beyond our narrow fringe of jungle. Maybe the pops and the sound of breaking glass really had been mistaken for breakfast snap, crackle and pop. Whatever, we were out of there.
As I fired the van into life, there was a sudden barrage of pops from behind me and it wasn’t the van’s exhaust. In front of me a man impacted with the tarmac. I later learned he had been shot off the roof.
“Go!” It was K’s call as he threw himself into the passenger seat. The back of the van was crowded with bodies. Quong and Singdip were crouched side by side at the car park entrance, their guns giving us cover as I pulled a wheel-squeaking turn and sent us their way. I slowed, they scrambled into the back and we were out of there.
At the bus, I stopped and there was a rapid transfer of bodies. We left Lu’s van where it was. Aboard the bus it was balaclavas off, gags and bindings off, weapons under the seats, and then the early morning tour began. Simone clung to me and sobbed. Every second word was why?
28
It was daylight. A feeble sun was pushing through the grey dawn as the truck carrying the battered shipping container with its four billion-dollar cargo drove along the east coast. It was close to the Costa Sands Resort and only now had Thomas Lu given Sami Somsak the location for the exchange. Sami quickly passed the information on. They had anticipated this would happen. A hundred metres ahead of the Isuzu with the container was a works truck carrying a squad of gardeners. The works truck slowed as it crossed the Siglap Canal. It turned into the car park. Watching it, Sami smiled. It had been a hellish gamble, but Lu had miscalculated. He had been concerned about a tailing vehicle.
Jo Ankar was slipping into lower gears in preparation for pulling into the lay-by. Traffic was still light. Sami used a small handheld radio. The cellphone was reserved for K and Thomas Lu.
“You catch