Defender(40)

Fredericks snatched the binos from the air and grimly surveyed the area surrounding their hotel, "What a disaster!"

From their vantage point, the two ex-soldiers took in the carnage. Troops - mostly untrained conscripts drawn from local militias loyal to the elected Government and struggling to resemble an army - were fighting futile running gun-battles against the seemingly unstoppable rebel force of Baptiste's CLPA. The rebels were advancing through the streets of the capital, Cullentown, cutting a red swath through the startled conscripts. Pitched battles had broken out across the city. Dismembered bodies littered the streets amidst pools of blood. Locals were fleeing the capital en masse, herding their children ahead of them.

With a string of expletives Garrett pointed to the street below. Fredericks saw a trio of young men, no more than boys, attacking an old woman, savagely hacking at her with machetes. Garrett's weapon was up and into his shoulder. He let off a burst into the middle of the boys, but missed. They scattered, not knowing where the rounds had come from. Somehow the old woman had survived having her hands all but cut off and began dragging her mutilated body into the shadows of a burning building, searching for a private place to die. Everywhere else, buildings and vehicles were ablaze. Flames leapt high into the air. Fires raging out of control spewed vast pillars of smoke into the sky, forming an oppressive black canopy, shrouding the city in darkness. At the rate they were advancing, the rebels would reach the hotel within the hour. The government's army was as good as finished, and Cullentown as good as lost.

The coup d'etat had been launched by the Algerian-born Baptiste at dawn that morning, and only an hour ago the rebel troops had stormed the Parliament. In the absence of Namakobo, the Vice-President and senior ministers had been rounded up, taken out into the public square and then shot through the head by Baptiste, personally. It took minutes to gain executive control of the country. Domestic security arrangements collapsed. The local army and police dissolved, and many of them had run off to join the rebels. Anarchy reigned - and it hadn't even reached midday. Crouching on the roof of the Francis Hotel with a ringside seat to history, Fredericks knew he and his team had been called in too late. With the UN unwilling to act preemptively, the atrocities had been mounting day after day, month after month. In desperation, the Malfajiri Government had turned to their former colonial master, Britain, for help. Unable to redeploy troops from commitments in the Middle East, Britain turned to Chiltonford,

hot on the heels of the company's recent successes across the border.

Chiltonford International had taken the contract to support the democratically-elected government of Malfajiri a year earlier, with a mission to train the local army to fight against the brutal campaign being waged by Baptiste's CLPA rebels who were trying to wrest control of the country. Despite a fixed contract with a watertight agreement on objectives and timeframes, and a healthy percentage of the country's diamond mining interests as inducement, it was more out of a sense of moral obligation that Chiltonford's Board of Directors eventually agreed to send in a team of advisers. The establishment of a rudimentary Special Forces group with a 'shoot and scoot' mission, along with a crash course for selected Army officers in counterinsurgency operations, had been about as much as Fredericks and his team could do. They'd achieved moderate success in a year. Despite the loss of two men in the process, they had reestablished and retrained the Army, and managed to protect the country's rutile and diamond mining operations. Until today.

The reported assassination of Namakobo changed everything, literally overnight. Now, with the President apparently dead and the army in tatters, the Chiltonford crew were in it up to their necks.

"How the hell did we manage to get ourselves stuck in the middle of this?" Fredericks said, finally dropping the binoculars from his grey eyes. He ran a weary hand over his face and hair. "The US Marines aren't even ready to start the evacuation yet," he added, waving a dismissive arm in the direction of the US warship anchored 20 miles out to sea.

"They may not be coming ashore to fight, Mike," Garrett replied. "But we're lucky to have them on hand to drag us out of this shit."

Fredericks realised the time and wondered how Morgan was going getting the last lot of evacuees out of Pallarup. He hadn't worked with Morgan before, and whilst his arrival had been unexpected, he was dependable and not afraid of getting his hands dirty. That meant a lot in Fredericks' book.

"Where the hell is Morgan with that last load?" he grunted.

Suddenly, a blast like a thunderclap cut through the bedlam of the street battles and lifted the foundations of the hotel, sending Fredericks and Garrett instinctively flat on their guts. With the shockwave capped by an impenetrable umbrella of black smoke and low-lying cloud, the report of the blast flashed across the city for what seemed like minutes. A succession of huge explosions immediately followed and the two men knew that the target was just a few blocks from their position.