The ATV almost tipped over and sent the driver flying off his seat. The driver bounced against the dirt path and rolled a few times, finally coming to a stop against the stone wall. To White’s surprise, the man instantly jumped back to his feet, like nothing had happened. He looked to his left and right, no doubt searching for his rifle. White didn’t know where the man’s weapon was, either, and since he wasn’t convinced his own rifle wouldn’t blow up in his face after being run over by the ATV, they stood facing each other in silence.
With lightning speed, the man pulled a knife from his rear pocket and opened the blade with a flick of his wrist. White did the same with the knife he’d seized from the man’s dead colleague.
The man attacked with speed and agility. Like White, this wasn’t his first knife fight. White blocked the man’s initial strike and backed off, trying to create some distance, despite knowing that he had to attack. In a knife fight, the person playing defense usually ended up dead. That advice had come from a gifted knife fighter: Maxwell White. The words of his father, during one of the rare times they’d bonded over military training, still echoed in his mind.
You will get cut. You will get hurt. Don’t be afraid of the pain. What you need to concern yourself about is the protection of your vital organs. Be the aggressor, Clay. Always be the aggressor.
White feinted a looping thrust to the man’s head. The tactic worked, and the man was suckered into a defensive cross slash. White easily avoided the blow and stepped into the opening he had created with a counterthrust to his attacker’s neck, his blade sinking into the man’s throat. By the time his opponent’s knife had slipped from his dying hands, White had already pulled his blade from the man’s neck and driven it into his heart. The man fell backward, twitched twice, then went still.
White ran to the dead man’s ATV, which had come to a stop against the stone wall. The ATV’s engine was still running, and it looked like it hadn’t sustained any critical damage. Wedged between the front of the ATV and the stone wall was the man’s rifle.
White reached for it, but as he did, he heard a voice behind him say, “You going somewhere, Clayton?”
White, startled and still slightly out of breath from the fight, raised his hands in the air and slowly turned toward the voice. Fifty feet away, Roy Oxley, now equipped with a pair of NVGs on his forehead, was pointing a rifle right at him.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Kommetjie, South Africa
Pierre Sarazin snapped his eyes open and looked around. His body jerked up at the sound of a loud crash not too far away from him. For a moment, he wondered where he was. Then he remembered. The last thing he recalled clearly was that he couldn’t breathe, that he’d had to sit down. Then White had left him. Where was the American? Had he abandoned him?
In front of him was his black pistol. Pierre took it in his hand, vividly remembering the two shots he’d fired with it into the back of one of Oxley’s men.
Merde! What happened to me? Never in his life had his body shut down on him like this. He glanced at his watch. It was almost eleven o’clock. The helicopter. Had he told White about the chopper? He couldn’t remember. Hammond had been very specific about this. The chopper was going to land on Oxley’s helipad at precisely eleven o’clock, and it wouldn’t stay longer than sixty seconds.
The helipad was a quarter of a mile away. There was no way Pierre could cover the distance on foot in so little time. He suddenly jolted his head toward the cloudless night sky, certain he had heard the sound of a helicopter, but his eyes couldn’t find it. If the helicopter was close by, he had no time to lose. Maybe White was already waiting for him at the helipad?
Pierre stood up, holding his pistol with both hands. He remembered hearing the sound of ATVs, which gave him an idea. He carefully stepped through the vines and banged his knee against a meter-high stone wall that bordered the dirt path. Not far to his right was the tasting room. But it was what was unfolding fifty meters to his left that took his breath away—a scene he could see clearly thanks to the burning ATV.
Clayton White was in the middle of the dirt path, fighting with someone and completely oblivious to the two men approaching him from behind. Pierre’s body became rigid when he watched White stab the man he was fighting with in the neck and again in the heart a second later. Pierre wanted to scream at him, to let him know that two armed men were almost on him. But what purpose would that serve? Pierre would lose the only advantage he had left. Surprise.
The thing was, he wasn’t even sure he could fire the pistol again. Just thinking about shooting someone else gave him the creeps.