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Legacy
James Steel
Alex Devereux, former cavalry Major and hardened mercenary takes on a mission to raise a private army and attack a diamond mine in Africa – and in doing so, comes face to face with an ancient prophecy with earth-shattering implications.1501 - A medieval Knight encounters an object of awesome power - The Nubian Deathstone. Filled with terrifying visions of what the future might bring, he embarks on a quest to discover its secret.1941 - Himmler orders an elite SS Officer on an expedition to resolve the centuries-old enigma, but his discovery will have dire consequences.Working for a diamond cartel and operating outside of international law, Alex comes face-to-face with the Dark Heart Prophecy.Past and present collide - but can Alex redeem himself and prevent the prophecy from coming true?
JAMES STEEL
Legacy
Copyright (#ulink_764d6a1c-d0a0-5b0c-82f0-6fef9ed8a388)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are
the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is
entirely coincidental.
AVON
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Copyright © James Steel 2010
James Steel asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9781847561602
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2010 ISBN: 9780007412235
Version: 2018-07-09
For my family and friends.
Contents
Cover (#uc405d40a-51f3-5880-9b2e-d17419bf8764)
Title Page (#ubec0f1ba-4ffb-53f1-a0b6-42b261317874)
Copyright (#u7d3dbbdf-9efb-513e-89ff-075ee86be6e7)
SUNDAY 21 SEPTEMBER, LUCAPA DIAMOND FIELD, ANGOLA (#u863edd40-e2af-580e-bd48-b3a38703aea0)
1501; CONSTANTINOPLE (#u96e7b535-8ef4-5982-84c7-47d458a4fae9)
THURSDAY 6 NOVEMBER, LONDON (#ub6c9f879-973f-59b1-9067-48ae666260fa)
11 P.M., THURSDAY 6 NOVEMBER, CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC (#u8d321969-fd8f-59c0-949b-2969ba94ba50)
AUGUST 1522, STELTZENBERG, SOUTHWEST GERMANY (#u945f8e7e-8b88-52c7-8887-fe06c4a6c082)
SEPTEMBER 1522, PFÄLZERWALD FOREST, CENTRAL GERMANY (#ud19fecef-c273-5642-abf0-ff56e336704b)
PRESENT DAY, 17 NOVEMBER, LONDON (#uc90b5e8f-9602-5fba-a309-6907fc7d3489)
17 NOVEMBER, MBOMOU PROVINCE, CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC (#ua63ab7b4-a591-53a5-8fe5-d4b0a7c8b87b)
SATURDAY 22 NOVEMBER (#u3228389e-38f5-5924-a09a-6e2a0fb7cc3c)
14 JANUARY 1525, NEUHOF FOREST, HESSE, CENTRAL GERMANY (#ucf18edf6-2349-52aa-a930-97de0ba4e7f2)
PRESENT DAY, MONDAY 24 NOVEMBER, MBOMOU PROVINCE, CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC (#u97860da6-bea7-541a-817d-e243612aff95)
PRESENT DAY, TUESDAY 25 NOVEMBER, MBOMOU PROVINCE, CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC (#u333c9fe9-d2a6-5215-b9ed-12560879b9df)
THURSDAY 27 NOVEMBER, MBOMOU PROVINCE, CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC (#litres_trial_promo)
6 FEBRUARY 1525, MÜHLHAUSEN, CENTRAL GERMANY (#litres_trial_promo)
SATURDAY 17 JANUARY, GBADOLITE AIRPORT, EQUATEUR PROVINCE, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO (#litres_trial_promo)
14 MAY 1525, FRANKENHAUSEN, CENTRAL GERMANY (#litres_trial_promo)
EVENING, 20 OCTOBER 1525, BAHR EL GHAZAL REGION, THE KINGDOM OF SUDAN (#litres_trial_promo)
30 MARCH 1941, HEIDELBERG UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, GERMANY (#litres_trial_promo)
10 APRIL 1941, LESKOVAC, MONTENEGRO, THE BALKANS (#litres_trial_promo)
PRESENT DAY, 24 JANUARY, CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC (#litres_trial_promo)
15 APRIL 1941, TRIPOLI, LIBYA (#litres_trial_promo)
PRESENT DAY, WEDNESDAY 28 JANUARY, MBOMOU PROVINCE, CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC (#litres_trial_promo)
14 JUNE 1941, IDEHAN UBARI. SAHARA (#litres_trial_promo)
PRESENT DAY, THURSDAY 29 JANUARY, MBOMOU PROVINCE, CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC (#litres_trial_promo)
30 MAY 1945, OUTSIDE MUNICH, BAVARIA, GERMANY (#litres_trial_promo)
FEBRUARY 1951, BONN, WEST GERMANY (#litres_trial_promo)
FRIDAY 30 JANUARY, DORTMUND, CENTRAL GERMANY (#litres_trial_promo)
Author’s note (#litres_trial_promo)
By the same author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
LEGACY
James Steel is a writer and journalist based in the UK.
SUNDAY 21 SEPTEMBER, LUCAPA DIAMOND FIELD, ANGOLA (#ulink_76befe33-dc5c-5522-b36e-fabfee293ce9)
The whisper came through the African night.
‘Zero, this is Lima Three.’
He pressed the radio earpiece hard against his head, focusing on that quiet voice from the throat mike feeding him information. He clicked the transmit key twice to acknowledge his forward observer silently.
The voice whispered again.
‘Sighting report as at two-zero-four. At junction of Gully Red and Gully Yellow now. Infantry. Estimate platoon strength. Moving south.’
He checked the map. This was what it was all about, everything he did: contact with the enemy. They had waited for the moon to go down and hoped to hit the diamond mine just before dawn.
He turned round from his command post, a groundsheet hung up under an acacia tree with the radio on a stack of empty ammunition crates. Its dim glow was the only light. Behind him was the mortar platoon, black shapes in the darkness.
‘Fire Plan India,’ he called in an urgent whisper to the nearest crew, who repeated it down the line. The men twisted the elevation screws and the tubes rose slightly to lengthen the range. The 81mm mortars stared blank-eyed up into the night, blind to the destruction they would cause.
Yamba, the platoon sergeant, scuttled down the line to check the four crews were ready. Then he came close so that his dark face could be seen in the glow from the radio set. He nodded.
‘Zero, this is Lima Three. Fire mission.’
‘Lima Three, this is Zero. Fire mission. Out.’
He waited for the details; pencil stub paused over a dog-eared pad.
‘Fire mission. Grid: three-zero-eight-four-eight-one. Bearing three-two hundred mills. Infantry in gully. Destroy now. One minute. Over.’
He repeated the fire-control orders back to the observer. Then he stood up and turned to the mortar line. The time for action had come.
‘Open fire!’
He barked the order out in a harsh voice that tore away the veil of silence that had cloaked them.
The mortars made their distinctive thunk sound and spat their metal loads up into the night. White flames shot up out of the tubes. Base plates slammed and rang with the recoil.
The crews turned away from them when they dropped each round down. They jammed their fingers in their ears, but still it did not stop the feeling of being kicked in the head by the propellant burst.
After the first rounds dropped down the tube he grabbed the mike and called urgently: ‘Lima Three. Shot five!’ to indicate the number of seconds before impact.
The response came equally abruptly as the observer took cover.
‘Shot five. Out!’
They pumped round after round out at the stars. The forward observer, dug into a foxhole a mile away, could see the vivid flashes of orange in the night where the shells landed but he could not see the murderous swarms of metal splinters that they unleashed through the air when they burst.
The observer called in a correction.
‘Drop fifty! Over!’ he shouted loudly now over the din.
Range screws were twisted on the mortars.
‘On target! Over!’
Figures ran, stumbled and fell. They blundered around, shocked by the blasts. An officer’s whistle blew desperate signals but then stopped abruptly as a bomb hit. Eventually no more movement could be seen.
‘Cease loading!’ The shout went down the line and the last rounds fired off.
The crews froze and stared at their officer. The silence that followed was as stunning as the terrible noise that they had just been making.
He shouted brisk commands at them as he swept on his webbing and grabbed his assault rifle.
‘Col! You take Charlie fire team and a tracker, and sweep east of Gully Yellow. Yamba! Bring Delta fire team with me! We’ll sweep west!’
Alex Devereux looked down at the bodies laid in a row on the ground.
There were thirteen of them, teenagers mainly, but a couple of men in their twenties and one who must have been forty, a UNITA guerrilla veteran from the Angolan civil war, and presumably their commander. They were either barefoot or wore an assortment of wellies and trainers, with ragged T-shirts and patched trousers.
In the follow-up sweep to the mortar ambush their torches had revealed the carnage in the gully. In the confined space the blast of the bombs had blown the insurgents against the walls and ripped them apart.
The trackers had followed the blood trails from the scene. Dark splashes on the ground and smears on elephant grass stems led them to their quarry. Two had been injured and had crawled a few hundred yards before collapsing.
The trackers, Yamba and Sunday, knew their stuff. As the blood got fresher they signalled the squad to fan out in a line and switch off their torches. Eventually Alex’s squad heard the laboured breathing and mumbling of the wounded man as he dragged himself along.
Quick stabs of gunfire in the dark and he went down. No rules of engagement and warnings given here. He wasn’t in the regular army any more.
They went back and cast around for more tracks, but by the time they followed them up the survivors were long gone; the tracks showed them running wildly and crashing through bushes, terrified, desperate to escape.
The men dragged the bodies back to the gully and laid them out neatly. In the morning, the local Angolan army commander posed in front of them with a grinning thumbs up for the camera. He had the shots framed for the wall of his office back at the mine.
