African Dawn (18 page)

‘Tate … I saw Braedan last night.’

He put her bag down, straightened and just stared at her. She knew she didn't have to say more.

Tate put his hands up to his head and clutched at his hair. ‘No.’

‘Tate …’

‘No, no, no … this can't be happening.’

She changed her mind again. She could make this work. She
did
want to spend the rest of her life with this beautiful, gentle man. He would be a kind, selfless lover and she would want to make love to him every day until they died, to atone for her sin. ‘It was nothing, Tate … I'm so sorry. Please forgive me.’

He would, she was sure of it. He would be angry. He might cry. She would be ashamed, but he would forgive her.

Tate turned away from her and walked towards a green open-topped Land Rover. He opened the door, got in and started the engine. Hope picked up her bag and walked slowly towards the vehicle. She began lifting her suitcase to put it in the back, but Tate just stared straight ahead, over the windscreen, which was folded flat on the truck's bonnet. Hope couldn't blame him for being angry and sad, and for not helping. Just as she was about to lower her luggage into the rear of the Land Rover Tate let out the clutch and drove off, out of the airport car park.

*

Hope sat on her suitcase in the shade of a mopane tree for two hours. She didn't know where or how to contact Tate. She'd never called him: all their communication had been by letter. She knew he was working in the Kuburi wilderness area around Kariba, but that was it.

She cried until there were no more tears. When she was done, and she realised he wasn't coming back to fetch her, Hope went into the terminal to the Air Rhodesia booking desk and asked if there were any seats on the return flight to Salisbury.

The girl checked some paperwork. ‘It's busy, but we've got two flights this afternoon – there are some bigwigs in town so they've put on another Viscount. I can get you a seat.’ Hope nodded and the reservations clerk handed her a green boarding pass.

Hope went to the payphone in the terminal and fed it some coins. She fished the scrap of paper from her handbag and dialled the number.

‘
Ja
,’ said the voice on the other end. It was husky from too much drink and too many cigarettes.

‘It's me,’ she said.

‘Izzit? Oh, right. Howzit? This is a surprise.’

‘Yes, well … I'll be on the five o'clock flight back to Salisbury. Air Rhodesia, flight 825.’

‘I'll be there,’ Braedan said.

Hope said nothing more and hung up. She sat in the terminal and watched it fill with sunburned holiday-makers in shorts and sandals, as well as a growing group of military men – some in uniform and others in the neatly pressed, slightly unfashionable clothes of soldiers in civvies.

Two armed soldiers walked in and several others got to their feet as Lieutenant-General Peter Walls entered the building. Hope looked up. The jowly features of the General, the chief of the Rhodesian defence forces, were instantly recognisable from his appearances on TV and in the newspapers. Hope hated him and everything he stood for.

The woman who had served Hope at the ticketing counter made an announcement over a tinny-sounding tannoy calling all passengers with green boarding passes to the gate. Hope checked hers and stood. She saw the General and his aides chatting. He held up a red pass. Hope wondered if he might bully his way onto the first flight, but he and his entourage found themselves seats in the terminal instead.

Hope joined the queue of mostly homeward-bound passengers and looked back over her shoulder, hoping against hope that she might see Tate's national parks Land Rover pull up to the terminal entrance. But he wasn't there. The young couple in front of her were holding hands. Honeymooners, she guessed. The man had a small pistol, a .38 she thought, in a holster on the belt threaded through his shorts. She needed to get out of this screwed-up, self-destructive country of hers. South Africa might be home to one of the world's great evils – apartheid – but at least you didn't need to carry a gun to protect yourself.

Hope handed her boarding pass to the same woman who'd issued it to her.

‘Your lucky day, hey? Getting a seat and then getting on the first plane.’

Hope said nothing. She didn't feel very lucky at all.

13

A
young man sat in the bush, in the hills near the tiny settlement of Makuti, seventy kilometres from Kariba. He heard the drone of aero engines and lifted the binoculars to his eyes.

One could see forever, up here on the edge of the escarpment, overlooking the giant lake and the Zambezi Valley. It was little wonder the hotel up the road was named the Clouds' End.

He found the aircraft and saw its four engines. He lowered his binoculars and double-checked the torn page from the Air Rhodesia inflight magazine. It was definitely a Viscount. From his canvas satchel he took the marine distress flare, which had been bought in the boating shop at the Carribea Bay marina. He removed the cap, placed it on the base so the pin was in contact with the striker, then pointed it skywards and slapped the cap hard down on the palm of his left hand.

The green flare whooshed towards heaven.

*

Emmerson Ngwenya, known to the men who served under him as Comrade Beria, saw the flare, even before his spotter confirmed it. Emmerson felt his heart start to beat faster, but he told himself to remain calm.

He lifted the SA-7 Grail man-portable surface-to-air missile launcher onto his shoulder. He licked his lips. Three months on since the bloody contact with the
Skuz'apo
stick west of Bulawayo this was his reward for orchestrating the annihilation of those jackals. Emmerson had risen in the ranks and the esteem of the senior comrades of ZIPRA when he finally made it back across the border to Zambia.

His tale of survival was already being taught to new recruits to the struggle. Ngwenya, it was said, had recognised the traitors of the feared Selous Scouts as soon as he had seen them and had bravely opened fire. Even though he had been wounded, he had engineered the
Skuz'apo
patrol's demise by cunningly firing on a Rhodesian Light Infantry force that was on its way to link up with the scouts. In the confusion that followed, the
kanka
fired on each other. The white racist regime called it a victory, but everyone in Lusaka knew that the security forces had blundered, that
Skuz'apo
were not invincible, and that Emmerson Ngwenya was a hero.

This Ngwenya, the wide-eyed volunteers were further told, crawled away into the bush from the scene of his brilliant work and hid, bleeding from his wound, in the heart of an old baobab for two days. After that he made his way to a rural store, broke in and liberated a bottle of Dettol and some bandages. A bullet had entered his body, after ricocheting off the wooden stock of his AK-47. Its progress slowed, the round entered below his left clavicle, narrowly missing his brave heart and strong lung, and then lodged beneath the skin of his back. This man Ngwenya, the recruits learned, stripped the bark from a thin mopane stick, then reached around to where he could feel the bullet and sliced his own skin. This fearless lion of a warrior tipped Dettol over the stick and then rammed it into the entry wound and pushed until the bullet came out of the fresh cut on his back. It was said Ngwenya nearly passed out as he tipped the burning liquid into the wound, and if a man had stood behind Ngwenya at that moment he might have seen the antiseptic pouring out of the newly created exit wound.

Emmerson rolled his shoulder, the movement an involuntary reflex. His own brother. That was not part of the story, not part of the legend of Emmerson Ngwenya. The comrades would have suspected him, if they knew that Winston had served in
Skuz'apo.
No matter that Emmerson had tried to kill him. At least his traitorous older brother was dead and Emmerson had had the satisfaction of watching the white man, who he now knew from the Rhodesian newspapers to be Corporal Braedan Quilter-Phipps, shooting Winston without knowing his brother was a member of the security forces. Naturally the government had covered up the affair, but Emmerson wondered if Quilter-Phipps – the same boy who had caused him so much trouble at George Bryant's wedding by yelling out in alarm when he had tried to silence Hope – had been told of his mistake.

Emmerson had planned the attack on the Bryant farm out of revenge, and he had hoped to find Hope Bryant, who had cost him long months of freedom, at home. The child would have been a fitting substitute for her aunt, if his mission had succeeded, but Emmerson had taken solace and satisfaction at the private pain the raid had caused the family.

‘
My brother
…’ Emmerson would forever recall Winston saying, just before the
ma-brooka
troopie shot him. My shame, thought Emmerson.

‘There it is,’ said the spotter.

Emmerson nodded. He had heard the Viscount approaching, the engines still running hard and hot as it climbed towards the southeast. He was in a perfect position for the shot. The setting sun was behind him, which meant the missile would not inadvertently lock on to it, like a mindless Icarus.

Emmerson took a breath and flicked on the thermal battery. He peered through the optical sight and found the growing spec of the aircraft. The infra-red seeker locked on almost immediately and Emmerson heard the buzzing tone from the grip stock and saw the green light appear in the optical sight.

‘Fire,’ said the spotter, another particularly devoted comrade who was known for his willingness to dish out swift and savage beatings to comrades who were found guilty of laziness in training, cowardice in battle or reactionary talk. Emmerson wondered if the younger man's sole purpose on this mission was to make sure Emmerson went through with the firing and didn't get any pangs of doubt about shooting down a civilian airliner.

The hated war criminal General Walls was on board this aircraft, and he was ZIPRA's prime target. Emmerson, like the comrades in Lusaka, knew that the deaths of the civilian passengers would also have tremendous repercussions. White resolve, already weakened by years of war, would crumble, and what was left of the Rhodesian tourism industry would collapse. The puppet Muzorewa would see which was the strongest force in Rhodesia, and it was not his army of black and white jackals. And ZANU, headed by the newly crowned Robert Mugabe, would see who had the biggest balls and the strongest stomach for war.

‘Quiet,’ Emmerson said, ignoring the spotter. The fool probably wanted to be able to tell his children and grandchildren that he gave the order. Emmerson was too smart to shoot too soon. He tracked the aircraft, waiting for the perfect shot. The tone still sounded and Emmerson knew he had sixty seconds of battery time. Plenty.

Emmerson swivelled as the aircraft climbed high and passed over him. When he was facing towards its right-rear quadrant he depressed the trigger on the grip stock halfway. He heard the gyro inside the missile start to spin up, as the seeker was uncaged. He counted the seconds … four, five, six …

Emmerson pulled the trigger and the ejector charge fired the missile from the launcher.

*

Hope was staring out the window, again trying to ignore the passenger next her – this time a matronly woman who'd drunk too much before boarding the aircraft and wanted to tell Hope about her stay on Fothergill Island, one of the larger hilltop islands in Lake Kariba, which boasted a safari lodge and bountiful game.

Hope had taken a seat near the rear of the aircraft, on the right-hand side, and thought she might be able to sleep if she could lean her head against the window. It was pointless, though. She kept replaying every word, every second of her unspoken confession to Tate. He'd known straightaway. Unbidden, Braedan intruded into her gloom. She could still
feel
him, for God's sake. She wanted to cry again, but a bright flashing comet of light caught her eye.

Hope lifted her forehead from the window. The woman next to her was talking about a close encounter with an elephant, but Hope wasn't listening. The light raced towards them.

The two hostesses on board, one white and one black, had just got out of their seats and had started to wheel out the drinks cart. ‘Hey!’ Hope yelled, waving to one of them. The white woman looked up, mildly annoyed, and Hope saw the heads of a few other passengers ahead of her who turned to look at her.

A man yelled something, but Hope couldn't register what it was before the aeroplane erupted. Hope was thrown against the woman next to her as an explosion opened a hole in the right-hand fuselage wall, three rows in front of her. Chunks of metal blasted through the aircraft's skin and punched out the other side. People were screaming and the cabin was filling with smoke. The hostesses were running down the aisle.

Her ears rang. She looked out her window and saw the right inboard engine was on fire, the propeller not turning. Air was whistling in through the multitude of holes ahead of her. Hope felt something wet on her face. When she touched her forehead and inspected her fingers she saw blood. The woman next to her was screaming. Hope ran her fingers over her face again. She felt no pain, no cuts … It took her a few seconds to realise the blood had come from someone else. In front, in the rows near where the bomb had hit, she saw blood running from the top of a man's head, which lolled against his seat rest. The man next to him was out of his seat, screaming to the hostess to find a fire extinguisher.

‘Get back in your seats!’ the white hostess was saying. The black girl was running to the rear of the aircraft.

Hope felt the aircraft lurch and bank, as if it was sliding sideways out of the air. ‘My God, my God,’ the woman next to her keened, ‘we're going to die!’

Hope put her head in her hands. I deserve to, she thought. Hope looked out the window again and saw the fire had spread further out along the wing and that the other engine had now stopped. The aircraft shuddered.

*

On the flight deck of the Viscount the pilot radioed a Mayday and told anyone who was listening what he was planning on doing. He knew he had to try to extinguish the fires in the two right-hand engines, and to get the aircraft down as quickly as possible. Ahead he could see wide-open tracts of land.

‘Cotton farms,’ said his co-pilot.

They were west of Karoi, over the Urungwe tribal trust lands. ‘Undercarriage down,’ the pilot said, moving his hand to the lever. The landing gear apparently hadn't been affected and there was the reassuring clunk and attendant confirmatory lights to tell him the wheels were down. Thank God for something, he thought. ‘Brace, brace, brace,’ he said over the aircraft's internal intercom system. There was no time for anything else.

*

Emmerson Ngwenya watched the Viscount turn and lose altitude. Through the spotter's binoculars he saw smoke trailing from the right wing. The hit had been good.

‘Come,’ he said to the spotter and the ten-man security detail that had been fanned out around the firing point and had now regrouped around Emmerson. ‘We must go to the crash site. We have our orders.’

One of the men raised his AK-47 and cheered. It was too soon to celebrate, Emmerson thought. There would be time for that once he knew the job was done properly. They set off at a jog through the bush.

*

The aircraft bounced back up into the air as soon as its wheels touched the uneven farmland and Hope's stomach was left behind.
I don't want to die
, she told herself. She grabbed her legs tighter and kept her head down on her lap.
I don't want to die.

The Viscount settled again and when the wheels touched again they stayed on the ground. Hope felt her spirits soar. They were hurtling along and the aeroplane was jiggling and bouncing, and things were raining down out of some overhead lockers that had popped open, but they were on the ground.

Someone cheered.

Then the aircraft cartwheeled and broke in two.

*

When Hope regained consciousness she felt as though her head was about to explode. It took her a moment to realise she was upside down. Someone near her groaned. She smelled smoke and started to panic.

She fumbled for the clasp of her seatbelt and before she could think through the consequences she crashed head-first into the overhead locker and crumpled to a heap on the aircraft's ceiling. It was gloomy, partly from the encroaching twilight but also from the pall of sickly smelling smoke that had filled the cabin. It was a mix of oily, chemical smells and, oddly, the odour of cooking meat.

Hope put out a hand and shrieked. It was the woman who'd been sitting next to her. Her head was bent at an unnatural angle. Her skin was cold and her eyes lifeless. ‘Help me,’ Hope coughed, her lungs suddenly full of the smoke. The woman must have undone her seatbelt too early and had broken her neck.

Hope crawled towards an orange glow. It appeared the entire aircraft had broken in two, somewhere near the rear of the fuselage, not far in front of where Hope had been sitting, near the spot where the bomb – or whatever it was – had gone off. Other people were stirring around her. Someone behind her brushed past. It was a man. He was barefoot and he trod on her hand in his rush to get to the light. ‘Ow!’ Hope protested. She tried to stand herself, then winced with pain as her right ankle refused to take her weight. She dropped to her knees. The man who had pushed her paused, then turned back to her and offered her his hand.

‘Sorry,’ he said belatedly. He lifted her to her feet.

‘My ankle.’

He draped her arm around his shoulder and together they hobbled out of the cabin and into a vision of hell.

*

Tate had done what he always did when he needed to think. He had driven out into the bush, away from Kariba and up into the hills near Makuti.

He pulled off the road onto one of the firetrails that crisscrossed the Charara Safari Area. As a local ranger he didn't need signs to tell him which path to take. If only life had been the same, he thought, already thinking of it in the past tense.

The track deteriorated as he climbed higher. He stopped the Land Rover and pulled down on the gear lever with the red knob, engaging low-range four-wheel drive. The engine groaned in protest, but slowly he climbed a flight of naturally eroded rock steps to the top of the hill. The sun was just about to hit the horizon. Somewhere off to the west he saw a pall of smoke rising. Probably some native farmer burning his lands.