Poacher (11 page)

‘Climb over the fence,’ he said.

‘I can’t.’

He slapped her very hard. ‘Climb.’

She climbed, cutting her hands and feet on
the barbed wire and crying softly. Joao stayed abreast of her, and
they landed on the far side simultaneously. She was standing in the
middle of the open area, eyes closed and covering her nakedness,
tears streaming down her face.

Joao positioned himself between her and the
game fencing and took a last look around. All quiet.

‘I’m sorry, but I need you for this,’ he
said. ‘You were a lousy fuck anyway.’

She still didn’t comprehend as he approached
her.

With one mighty shove he made her stagger
back into the electrified fence. She shrieked once as blue sparks
erupted from the wire, the stench of scorched flesh filling the
air. After a brief macabre dance she fell away from the wire,
smouldering burn lines criss-crossing her back in the
starlight.

The current would now be shorted out on this
section of line, and alarm bells would be ringing in the guard
huts.

To make sure, Joao picked up the corpse and
threw her against the wire again. Nothing. He crossed the fence and
the game fencing on the other side in a flash.

As he ran into Mozambican bush he could hear
the Unimogs converging on the area of the breach. Home and dry!
‘Comrades!’ he started shouting at the top of his voice, peeling
his lips away from his teeth in an effort to get some more volume
through his clamped jaws. Once again, the missing teeth were an
advantage. ‘I am Joao dos Santos – I have escaped from the Boers!’
No use getting shot by a trigger-happy Frelimo patrol at this
stage.

He ran into the bush, his gown flapping
behind him, leaving his semen still smouldering inside the woman
under the bleak light of the stars.

Sam was dreaming about Linda when Smitty
shook his shoulder at three in the morning.

‘Your prisoner is gone!’

‘Go away,’ he mumbled, turning on his other
side.

‘I’m telling you, Joao has escaped!’

As it penetrated his sleepy mind, his blood
pressure soared. He shot bolt upright and grabbed Smitty by the
front of his white jacket. ‘What did you say?’

‘I said your prisoner has escaped. He killed
the policeman guarding him. He is gone. Flown. Disappeared.
Missing.’

‘What’s being done? When did he escape?’

‘Nobody knows. Apparently the new cop came on
duty at 10 p.m. He has just been discovered, throttled to death by
the looks of him. He was in Joao’s bed. The sister initially
thought her patient had expired but when she saw the uniform she
amazed everybody by deducing that something was amiss. She called
me and I phoned the cops.’

‘Can I get to a phone?’ Sam was already out
of bed, tying the belt of his gown, his wounds completely
forgotten.

‘Sure thing. At the nurses’ station.’

Sam hurried down the passage, Smitty trailing
behind. Tobacco-pouch was on duty again, and did not approve.
Fortunately Smitty intervened, and saved her from being
throttled.

The lieutenant, acting as station commander
for the night, was in a flat spin. He assured Sam that road blocks
were being erected everywhere and everything was being done to
apprehend the culprit.

The murder of a member of the South African
police was tantamount to assassinating the president of a minor
country. And this was the second policeman in a matter of weeks. No
effort would be spared.

Sam wanted Joao. He wanted him badly. ‘I want
to speak to the colonel.’

‘We have advised the colonel, and he is on
his way to the station, sir.’

‘Shit! He slammed the phone down and in his
fury grabbed Smitty by the coat once more. ‘Tell me how the fuck
this could have happened!’

Dislodging his hand, Smitty tried to pacify
Sam. ‘Relax, man, there is no way he is going to get away in a
hospital gown. They’ll nail him before sunrise.’

Sam was beside himself. Storming back to the
nurses’ station he demanded his clothes.

Tobacco-pouch pouted at him. ‘Mr Jenkins,
this is a provincial hospital. You are a patient, and whether you
like it or not, my word is law in this ward. Here, you have no
rights. Stop running around like a raving lunatic and get back to
your bed. You are disrupting the whole ward.’

‘Like hell! I demand my clothes. I am
discharging myself.’

‘Mr Jenkins, you have no clothes. Your
blood-encrusted and perforated accoutrements were incinerated on
admission. You will remain a patient in this hospital until you are
officially discharged.’ She was obviously enjoying herself now,
adding fuel to Sam’s frenzy.

‘Get lost,’ he said, turning his back on her.
‘Smitty, I need clothes.’

Tobacco-pouch was awestricken. Nobody, but
nobody addressed her in such a manner, especially in her own
ward.

Before she could react, however, Smitty
intervened. ‘No ways are you going anywhere, Sam. The sister is
quite within her rights. Get back to your bed and await
developments. There is nothing you can do anyway.’

‘Like hell! I can kick some ass. This is one
guy that is not going to get away. I want him.’

‘More than Linda?’ It just slipped out
inadvertently.

Sam very nearly swiped him. ‘Stuff you, too.’
He grabbed the phone again and ordered a taxi.

Both Smitty and Tobacco-pouch trailed him to
the front door, alternately imploring and threatening, to no
avail.

He got into the taxi in his gown and asked
for the police station. Had his destination been anywhere else the
driver might have baulked.

Arriving at the charge office, a hectic
argument about payment ensued. The driver eventually followed Sam
into the station to either collect his fare of lay a charge. Sam
borrowed the necessary money from a very reluctant lieutenant, and
the driver left in a huff. All these hassles did nothing to improve
Sam’s frame of mind.

‘Has the colonel arrived?’

‘Yes, sir. Actually, he has already tried to
get hold of you at the hospital. Please follow me.’ They passed
through a security checkpoint and took the lift to the top floor.
Colonel Aucamp was sitting behind his desk, gesticulating wildly
while shouting into the telephone. He did a double take on Sam’s
apparel, and gestured towards the chair in front of his desk. The
harassed lieutenant, who was about to leave, was waved back.

Slamming the phone down, Colonel Aucamp
glared at the man in the hospital gown opposite him. ‘Jenkins, I
presume. What the hell are you doing here?’

‘I want to know how Joao dos Santos managed
to escape. You people damn well knew he was dangerous and
desperate. I also want to know what is being done to apprehend
him.’

Aucamp, his colour having risen considerably,
slammed his fist on the desk. ‘Mr Jenkins, don’t you dare come into
my office demanding explanations! This is police work and as a
civilian it has got absolutely nothing to do with you. The
circumstances and the follow-up in this matter is privileged
information. I must ask you to leave this station immediately. You
are interfering with our work.’

By this time Sam was livid. Having half risen
out of his chair, he also took a turn in slamming the desk. Like
Tobacco-pouch, Colonel Aucamp was too awestricken to react
immediately. No civilian had ever had the audacity to back-chat him
in his own office.

‘Listen, Colonel,’ Sam said, trying to
control his anger. ‘Firstly, this is not entirely a police matter.
The man is not only a poacher and a murderer. He is also a foreign
solider who entered the country illegally, carrying arms and
ammunition issued by a foreign army. This makes it a military issue
as well. Secondly, I am not a civilian. I am an offer in the
Recces.’

Taken aback, the colonel kept glaring at Sam.
‘A very serious claim to make, Mr Jenkins. Can you prove that you
are a Recce?’

The Recces, or reconnaissance corps of the
South African Army, was a top-secret counter-insurgency branch of
the armed forces. Only the very best were invited to join the long
queue of aspiring recces, and of these very few passed the first
rigorous survival tests. The net result of the continuous training
was a brand of man entirely different from the special forces
anywhere else in the world. In addition to being expert in the
skills taught elsewhere, their absolute speciality was in
infiltrating the neighbouring states singly or in pairs, living off
the veld and sometimes penetrating for up to a thousand kilometres
without their presence being detected. Their main aim was locating
camps used by transient terrorists en route to South Africa.
Despite vehement denials by the neighbouring states these camps did
exist. They were marked by the Recces, and air strikes were
executed at times deemed feasible by the politicians.

Hardly anybody knew anything about the
Recces; this secrecy only heightened the awe in which the general
public held the elite.

‘Colonel, I will give you an unlisted number
in Pretoria to phone. The current password is hipotrachus. The duty
officer will confirm my status as captain in the Recces. In a
sealed need-to-know file in your safe you may break the seal of
file 85 to confirm the procedure and the telephone number. You may
then proceed to write your report explaining the necessity for
breaking that seal.

Colonel Aucamp leaned back in his chair and
waved the lieutenant away. ‘Well, I’ll be buggered. A real
honest-to-God Recce. First confirmed sighting I have ever had on
your species. No, I don’t think I need to break that seal. You’re
one of them, all right.’

‘Have it your way, Colonel. Now, what has
happened in the meantime?’

‘As you know, the bastard killed one of my
men in the escape. As to why a relatively inexperienced man was
given the guard duty, that is a matter I intend following up
personally once we have handled the crisis. I can assure you the
responsible party is going to find himself up shit creek without a
paddle. But that’s beside the point. I am afraid I have some rather
disturbing news. We are fairly certain that our man is already in
Mozambique. I have received a call from the Komati border patrol.
There was an apparent breakout on the fence about fifteen
kilometres south of Komati. The electrocuted corpse of an
as-yet-unidentified woman was found on the scene. Tracks indicate
the exit of one barefoot person. They are busy back-tracking.’

‘Damn! Can we get to the scene?

‘I’m going in by chopper. The pilot should be
at the airport by now. I would suggest we get you something else to
wear, however.’ He picked up the phone. ‘Lieutenant, send someone
up here with an extra large operations overall and boots, and lay
on transport to the airport. Make it snappy.’ The phone rang again
as soon as he replaced it. He listened to the report grim-faced,
and slammed it down again. ‘It was him, all right. And he has
gotten clean away. They found the boyfriend of the dead girl tied
to his car near the tarred road. Apparently he is in a state of
shock, and they have taken him the local doctor. As you heard, I
have instructed them not to sedate the man before we get there.
Let’s move. You can change clothes at the airport.’

It was just getting light when they boarded
the yellow Jetranger with the police logo on the sides and took
off. They headed due east, passing over the southern part of
Nelspruit, the street lights blinking pinpoints in an early morning
ground mist.

The colonel’s distorted voice was giving the
pilot instructions over the earphones. ‘Their local medic lives
about two kilometres out of town on the Swaziland road. There will
be a police van marking the turnoff. Get this bird moving.’

‘Yessir!’

There was no further conversation as the
yellow machine sped eastwards into the rising sun. They followed
the winding course of the Crocodile River through the gorge, the
mountains rising majestically on either side. Sam was looking
through the Perspex at the country he loved so passionately. The
first rays of the sun were striking chips of flashing light off the
wet, seeping rocks on the high slopes. Ribbons of mist undulated
through the black trunks of the myriad indigenous trees growing on
the steep slopes, while the densely wooded ravines, sanctuary of
the leopard and the greater kudu, were still shrouded in darkness.
He could imagine the silence prevailing in those woods, only the
song of awakening birds and the occasional bark of a baboon
reverberating off the krantzes.

The mountain fell behind, to be replaced by
flat fields of sugar cane stretching as far as the eye could see.
This used to be mainly tomato and tobacco country, until the sugar
mill was built fifteen years ago. Since then most of the bigger
farmers in the area had become overnight millionaires.

The chopper banked where the Swaziland road
turned off, and they started losing height, scanning the road for a
yellow van. They found the farm within minutes and the pilot set
the helicopter down expertly on the doctor’s front lawn, much to
the chagrin of the two lion-like boerboels, baring their vicious
teeth and growling at the strange machine invading their territory.
The doctor’s wife was on the front stoep, two young boys hanging on
her hands, pointing at the helicopter excitedly.

As they ducked from under the still whipping
blades, Dr. Hamilton approached and introduced himself. He led the
way towards his study, admonishing them about the patient. ‘He must
be sedated and hospitalised immediately. He is in a serious state
of shock. Please try not to upset him further.’

The man was sitting on an examination couch,
gripping the rubber sheet on either side of his knees. Dr. Hamilton
introduced him as Hannes Meyer.

‘Mr Meyer, we know this must be very
distressing, but please tell us as accurately as possible what
happened. As soon as we’re through we will fly you to the
hospital.’