Red Earth (9 page)

*

‘Help me, please,' the man called.

Nia licked her lips and climbed out of the pilot's seat of her helicopter. She had seen the man coming, and it was clear even before his plaintive call that he was in trouble. He was nursing his left arm with his other hand and dragging his left leg. Nia opened the rear of the chopper and unfastened the first aid kit from its place on the bulkhead.

She started walking towards him, the first aid kit in her left hand, but the fingers of her right, in her pocket, closed around the grip of the .38 revolver Banger had left with her. As the distance between them closed she could see that the left side of his face, and his clothing on that side, were blackened as though they'd been burned. His face was streaked red.

‘Help me,' he said again.

‘Who are you?'

‘My name is Ibrahim. I was driving down the road when this madman in a Fortuner hit my car, trying to get past me.'

‘I was following a stolen Fortuner. A white one?'

The man nodded. They met and he staggered; Nia took her right hand out of the pocket of her flight suit and put an arm around him to support him.

‘There was a young man, a boy really, and a girl in school uniform, and they had a child with them,' the man croaked.

‘Yes, that's them, for sure,' Nia said. ‘Here, sit down. Let me look at you.'

‘I'm fine. Can we get to a hospital, though? Perhaps you could fly your helicopter?'

‘You don't look fine to me at all. Besides, my chopper's out of fuel. I'm waiting for a resupply. I'm hoping the police will be here soon as well. You can tell your story to them. What else happened to you? Have you been burned?'

‘The police are coming?' he asked.

Nia shrugged. ‘Today, with what's happened in Durban? Who knows? But they know where I am, and an ambulance showed up at least to take away an off-duty policeman who was here, so someone's got to make a report some time.'

She looked him up and down. This Ibrahim, with his designer stubble, looked like a nightclub bouncer or someone's hired muscle. He wore a gold chain over a black T-shirt and black jeans. Unusually, for the weather, he wore a charcoal sports coat, the left side of which was peppered with tiny holes. When his coat flapped open a little she saw that his side was not only burned, but his shirt was sticky with blood.

‘That car,' he pointed to Banger's security company vehicle, ‘where is its owner?'

Nia took a step back. There was something in his eyes or, more to the point, nothing in them. They were dark, empty, and at the same time calculating as he looked around him, through her. ‘Nearby. He'll be back any minute.'

‘I need to get going.' He eyed the car again.

‘Wait,' she said. ‘Let me see to your injuries at least. You nearly fell a minute ago.'

‘No, it's fine.'

He turned his back on her. A chill passed through her, raising tiny hairs on her arms and the back of her neck. This guy had not simply been in a car accident, and he was avoiding her questions.

‘Stay right where you are.' Ibrahim flicked his head around and looked back over his shoulder. She saw his eyes go to her hand, which was reaching into the pocket of her flight suit.

His right hand was a blur as it arced through the air and Nia's head rocked from the closed-fist blow to the side of her face. The next thing she knew she was on her backside and Ibrahim was standing over her, a pistol pointed down at her, between her eyes.

‘If that's a gun in your pocket, take it out, very slowly, fingertips on the handgrip.'

Nia took a deep breath to stop from letting out a sob and did as he told her, reaching slowly into the pocket of her flight suit and drawing out the pistol.

‘Good, now toss it to my feet.' She threw the gun and he ordered her to put her hands on her head. ‘So, you're out of fuel?'

She blinked and nodded.

‘You're waiting for a resupply?'

‘Yes.'

‘Good, then we will wait together. I will be inside the helicopter, with a gun pointed at you. When the driver arrives with the fuel you will tell him you are taking me to hospital. You will not give him any signal that anything is wrong, or I will kill you and the driver. I would like to have you fly me in this helicopter, but I can make do with a truck. The choice is yours, either to save your life and the life of an innocent man driving a truck, or for you and him to die at the same time. Do you understand?'

Nia gave another brief nod.

The man coughed and winced at the pain the action produced. ‘If the man who drives this security car comes back you will say nothing to him, nor give him any sign that anything is wrong here, or I will kill you both before he has time to draw his gun.'

‘Who are you?' she asked him.

‘I am a man seeking to reclaim something that was stolen, that is all. I have no need to hurt you, but you made a mistake by asking too many questions and trying to pull a gun on me. I acted in self-defence.'

Nia scoffed at that. ‘I don't know what you're up to, but you should know that there really are police on the way here. They'll be here any minute, probably before my fuel, which has to come all the way from Durban. The cops will be coming from Mtubatuba. There's already been a policeman shot here and you know how cops get when one of their own is injured.'

The man seemed to weigh up her words, rocking his head slightly from side to side as he absorbed the news. ‘I believe you.'

‘Good.'

He smiled. ‘No, not so good. I think I'll have to kill you now, before the police arrive.'

Nia heard the clatter of a diesel engine. Ibrahim picked up the pistol from the ground and tucked it in his trousers, then knocked her hands from her head and lifted her to her feet by grabbing a handful of her hair. He pressed his pistol into her back and retreated to the helicopter, taking cover behind it.

The white Land Rover, Mike the vulture man's vehicle, crested the hill. Nia could see only one face through the windscreen – Banger's. Her relief turned quickly to dread. This maniac would kill Banger, and her, in a heartbeat.

Ibrahim climbed into the rear of the helicopter, awkwardly squeezing into the cramped rear seat until he was lying on it, facing her. He pulled the door closed, but left it slightly ajar. ‘If he stops, tell him to be on his way. Don't give him any signal that you're in danger. Same deal as before: I'll kill you both.'

She nodded. Banger drove off the road and parked a few metres from the helicopter. Nia started to walk towards him.

‘Stop,' Ibrahim hissed. She complied. ‘Don't walk any further from me or I'll shoot you in the back. If you try anything I will kill him and then come for you.'

Nia gave an almost imperceptible nod. ‘Hi there, no need to worry about me, man, I'm fine, don't need any help,' she called to Banger as he climbed out of the Land Rover. She didn't want Angus running to her and throwing his arms around her.

He stopped and looked at her, momentarily puzzled. ‘What's up?'

‘My chopper's run out of fuel and I'm just waiting for a delivery here. But like I say, everything is totally fine.'

‘Really?' He raised an eyebrow.

‘Hundred per cent. No problem at all, whatsoever. Just another ordinary day at the office.'

‘Serious?' Nia saw Banger's eye drop to the first aid kit that she'd taken from the helicopter then dropped on the ground.

‘Yes, man, very serious.'

‘Do you want me to take you back towards town?'

Nia shook her head. ‘No, I'd be killed for sure if I left this chopper alone.'

Banger moistened his lips with his tongue. She could see he was flexing his fingers, the rage building inside him. As well as being impetuous he had a temper, but he could control it when he had to. When he made love to her it was with a barely constrained passion, a kind of animalistic savagery.

‘I'm fine,' she repeated.

‘All right, then, I guess I'll be on my way,' Banger said.

‘You'd better be quick then, cowboy,' she said. Angus liked to pretend he was a cowboy, sometimes, when they were fooling around at home. He would practise drawing his pistol from his holster in front of the mirror, and he'd tell her he was the quickest draw on the wild east coast. His terrible American accent always made her laugh.

‘Yes, ma'am,' he said, with the slightest of drawls. He had got her message; now was the time for him to be quick on the draw for real.

Banger turned, as if to leave, and Nia saw his right hand go up. They had only one chance. The man in the back of the helicopter was going to kill her, if not now, then later. He wouldn't be the kind to want witnesses around. She still had no idea what, if any, connection he had with the stolen Fortuner, but it was becoming clear this was more than just an ordinary car hijacking.

Nia dived to the ground and rolled left, under the nose of the helicopter. Even as she started to fall she heard the first shots from behind her, a deafening double bang, and felt the displacement of air close by her as a bullet passed her, missing her by millimetres.

Angus was firing as well and Nia heard the
thunk
of his rounds passing through the skin of her chopper. She kept rolling, staying low so as not to get hit. Banger yelled and she screamed.

Nia scrambled away on her hands and knees then pulled herself to her feet. There was nothing she could do. She had no weapon and she would have to cross open ground to get to the Land Rover. She screamed in frustration, but when she finished she stood there, in the dry grass, alone. Around her was silence, then a few seconds later a groan of pain.

She jogged back to the helicopter and gingerly peered around the nose. A brown hand protruded from the gap where the rear door had been left open. Blood dripped from the fingers. Nia drew a deep breath, summoning the last of her reserves of courage and composure, and pulled open the door. She had to step back as Ibrahim's body tumbled to the ground.

Seeing the danger was gone she went to Angus, who was lying on his back, and crumpled to her knees beside him. Nia cradled his head on one arm and with her other hand searched him for the wound that had felled him.

Banger coughed and Nia feared she would see blood coming from his mouth, but there was none.

‘Shit,' he said.

‘Banger, where are you hit?'

He coughed, then started to laugh. ‘Took one in the vest. Damn, I fell backwards and winded myself and landed on my arse bone.'

He was alive. She wiped away a tear and collapsed into him. At long last she heard the wail of a police siren.

Chapter 10

Mike Dunn dropped to the grass as he approached the crest of the next hill. This was open country and he would be easily spotted if he allowed himself to be silhouetted against the sky.

He crawled forward and pulled a pair of compact Zeiss binoculars from the pocket of his bush shirt. He rested himself on his elbows and scanned the valley ahead. About four hundred metres distant were the two men he had been tracking, one African, one brown.

He put the binoculars back and took out his cell phone. He checked its screen; no signal.
Who are these guys
?

They had made short work of Joseph the car thief, and if they were police, then at least one of them would have been left behind, or reinforcements would already have arrived. They were heading towards the game reserve and if it was, in fact, Themba driving the car with the schoolgirl and the baby on board, that might make sense. The young man would see Hluhluwe–iMfolozi as a kind of sanctuary. Mike knew this because he'd described the national park in exactly those terms to Themba.

He ran his hand through his hair. He was tired, but he could carry on. The question was, however, what to do when he caught up with the men. He checked his watch. Angus, the security man, would have had plenty of time to get back to the chopper by now, pick up Nia and get back to him. But there was no sound of his Land Rover's engine.

Mike stood and was about to carry on his pursuit of the two men, in the hope he could get closer to them while staying out of their sight, when he heard faint gunshots coming from the direction in which the helicopter was parked.

He stopped. Mike was worried about Themba and the other kids, but this was a job for the police. Concerned that the missing wounded man had got the drop on Angus and Nia, he turned and started jogging back the way he'd come.

Mike thought about Themba as he ran. He hoped the boy would be safe. Mike had seen too many young kids from bad backgrounds fail in their attempts to lift themselves out of the gutter, but he just couldn't believe he was wrong about Themba. Life wasn't fair. Africa wasn't fair, but Themba had a strength that had been lacking in too many of the young men Mike had tried to help.

From a distance he could see flashing blue lights at the spot where Joseph had been killed. As Mike approached the police car he held his rifle up high above his head.

The two uniformed police officers, a man and a woman, pulled their guns as soon as they saw him.

‘Coming in,' he called out to them. ‘Don't shoot.'

When he came closer to them he recognised the woman. ‘Sergeant Khumalo.' That was a relief. She was based in Mtubatuba and they had worked together in the past. Mike had supplied her with information about
muti
deals in the past and, unlike some of her colleagues in other towns and villages, Lindiwe had come through and busted a few sellers.

Lindiwe and her partner lowered their weapons. ‘Hey, Mister Vulture Man, how are you? What are you doing here?'

Mike gestured to Joseph's body. ‘I'm fine, Lindiwe. I heard gunshots.'

The male police officer pointed back down the hill to where the helicopter had landed. ‘Shootout between a security guy and one of the occupants of this Audi.'

‘Are they OK?'

‘The pilot and the security man, yes,' Lindiwe Khumalo said. ‘Who are these people, Mike?'

‘No idea, but they're packing R5s and dressed like gangsters. I've just been following two of them.'

‘
Umlungu
?'

‘No, I didn't see a white man, just one African and one coloured or Indian. However, there was a shootout at the Mona market earlier today and a white man was one of the perpetrators. He was dropped at the market by a black Audi Q5.'

‘I heard about that gunfight on the radio,' she said. ‘You've had a busy day. We all have. You didn't see the registration of the Audi at Mona?'

Mike shook his head. ‘No, but the guy who was dropped off was supposed to be selling rhino horn, to none other than Bandile Dlamini.'

‘
Yebo
,' Lindiwe said. ‘He's in hospital, but no one that side is telling me what's happening with him.'

‘Those men I was following,' Mike said. ‘They were with your other dead man in the Audi, and he was wounded before Banger – the security man – shot him. Grenade fragments.'

Lindiwe narrowed her eyes. ‘How did you know that?'

Mike gestured to the scorched earth. ‘Crater's over there, and you'll see the Audi has been peppered with shrapnel.'

‘These guys are armed like rhino poachers. I'm calling for back-up before we go after them.'

Mike nodded. ‘Good idea.'

‘What is going on here?' the sergeant asked no one in particular.

‘Good question,' Mike said. ‘There are plenty of 5.56-millimetre casings here, also some 7.62-millimetre from an AK.'

Lindiwe narrowed her eyes. ‘For a man who researches vultures you know a lot about weapons.'

‘I come across a lot of poaching carcasses and work with the crime scene teams sometimes.' He didn't want to go into more detail about how he knew about assault rifles.

‘Call for back-up, Elphes,' she told her partner. The policeman headed back to the car. ‘What is this, I wonder? A business deal gone wrong? And what are these people doing with hand grenades?'

Mike had wondered the same things. ‘I've heard of rhino poachers with grenades; they've been known to pull the pin on one and leave it under a dead rhino so when the police or rangers get there and try to move the carcass the grenade goes off.'

Lindiwe tutted and shook her head. She called to her partner: ‘Hey, ask base what information they have about this missing Fortuner.'

Mike thought out loud. ‘So we've got two, formerly three, guys trying to get back a stolen Toyota that's now transporting a baby, two teenagers and an AK-47.'

Lindiwe pulled out her notebook, flipped over a couple of pages and made some new jottings. When she was done she looked up. ‘I knew this dead man, Joseph. He was small-time, not even a good thief. According to the report the car-tracking service received, the woman driver almost got the better of him. She killed his partner.'

‘Really? How is she?' Mike asked. ‘If she's the baby's mother she must be going crazy.'

Lindiwe clicked her tongue a few times and drew a breath. ‘There is the problem. I can't find a record of this woman making a call to the police.'

‘Really?'

‘For sure it's been a crazy day, with the bomb in Durban, and the emergency number was almost overloaded with the number of calls that came in afterwards, but according to Nia Carras and the tracking service, they got the call about the stolen Fortuner half an hour
before
the bomb exploded. I checked with the call centre – no hijackings or car thefts reported in the Durban area this morning.'

‘So she called her car-tracking service direct before, or instead of, calling the cops?'

Lindiwe nodded. ‘I don't like to say it, but you're probably thinking what that woman was thinking: that it would be quicker for her to find her child by using a private security company with a helicopter on call.'

The thought had crossed Mike's mind. ‘But surely she would have followed it up with a call to the police.'

‘The guy who took the call from the tracking company says he told the woman to call the police emergency number as well.'

‘You get a number for her?'

Lindiwe rocked her head from side to side. ‘I've probably talked enough about this case with you, Mike.'

He liked her, and he hoped she felt the same way about him. Lindiwe was intelligent and honest.

She hesitated, but then continued anyway. ‘
Yebo
, I got her cell number off the car-tracking company, but it's out of service. I'm getting a trace done to find out what number she called the company from, but as you can imagine there are lots of people tracing calls today and a car theft is way down the list of priorities compared to a major terrorist attack.'

‘Even though there's a baby missing?'

‘A baby who's missing, but whose mom hasn't bothered reporting it to the police yet.'

‘The road the Fortuner was on leads to the border with Mozambique, or Swaziland. Maybe Mom was heading for the border and Dad didn't know?' Mike thought about his own daughter. Debbie was sixteen and he'd taken her to Mauritius for a week last year. He'd been surprised when his ex-wife, Tracy, had told him about the rigmarole he would have to go through. The government was trying to cut down on child trafficking by tightening the rules allowing children to leave the country with only one parent. He'd needed to get a certified copy of Debbie's unabridged birth certificate and a letter of permission from Tracy.

‘I'd already thought about that,' Lindiwe said quickly. ‘And, for your information, there's some evidence to back up that theory. The helicopter pilot saw the younger guy, the one in the school uniform, pulling out all sorts of stuff from the back of the Fortuner to make room for him and the girl, apparently. I took a look at what was lying around – blankets, pots, pans, an iron, a couple of bags of clothes – it looks like she was moving house, or maybe running away.'

‘So who are our three killers who showed up looking for the car?'

Lindiwe sighed. ‘That's what I intend on finding out when my back-up arrives. Maybe they're friends or relatives of the mom and she trusts them, over us, to get her kid and her car back?'

‘Or maybe it goes further than Mom running away from the father – if she doesn't want to involve the police, maybe she's on the wrong side of the law herself,' Mike said.

Lindiwe nodded. ‘I'm way ahead of you. I got the location of where the hijack went down, from the tracking company; it's out of my jurisdiction, closer to Durbs, and I think I'm going to have a hell of a time trying to get some detectives to go and check it out.'

‘What about the guys following the kids?'

She called to her partner and asked for an update.

‘No helicopter available,' Elphes said. ‘Any spare manpower's been called to Durban or put on roadblocks to catch the people who blew up the ambassador. It's chaos, Sergeant. They say we might have to wait a few hours.'

Mike looked to the sun. ‘Getting late. It'll be dark before your back-up arrives. You sure you don't want me to drive you up into the hills in my Land Rover?'

Lindiwe seemed to consider his offer. ‘No, this is a police matter now, Mike. Thank you for your help today, but I think you should go see how the pilot and the security man are, and if you can help them. He took a bullet in his body armour vest.'

‘All right,' he said, ‘but let me know if I can help.'

‘I will. The way things are going, I may well need you again in some capacity,' she said. ‘Before you go, is there anything you can tell me about this business with Bandile Dlamini today?'

‘Dlamini and one of his men claimed they were there on police business, part of a sting to catch a rhino horn trader. Did you know about it?'

She shook her head. ‘
Aikona
. Not any of our people. Could be the Hawks, from Durban, or the rhino task force, but if so, no one bothered to tell me about it. I'll send my one spare man to the hospital, though, to interview Dlamini, to see if he got the registration number of the Audi that dropped off the white guy.'

‘This shootout here, these armed men chasing the Fortuner, it smacks of organised crime,' Mike said.

‘I agree. But it's time for you to get back to Durban and back to your vultures, Mike.'

He would have liked to turn his back on this day of killing, but Mike got the feeling that was wishful thinking.

*

When John Buttenshaw arrived with a
bakkie
loaded with jerry cans of fuel, Nia sent Banger on his way back to Durban. She and John refilled her chopper, and she flew back to Virginia Airport in the dark.

She wasn't home much before Banger as she had to secure the helicopter by herself. John was driving back to Durban; it had been a long day for all of them.

In her flat she took off her hiking boots and socks, poured herself a gin and tonic and turned on the television. The assassination of the ambassador and speculation of who was behind it and what it signified was all over BBC and CNN.

Banger opened the door and she stood and went to him. He enfolded her in his big arms and squeezed her in a bear hug. Tears welled up and he kissed them away.

‘I'm here. I'm always here for you, babes,' he said. ‘You were amazing today, so strong.'

She kissed him again, tenderness melting into passion. ‘I need you. Turn me on, please,' she whispered into his ear.

He dropped to his knees in front of her and slowly unzipped her flight suit. He kissed his way down between her breasts to her belly.

‘I stink.'

‘I love the smell of you,' he whispered, and kissed her soft, springy hair through the fabric of her pants.

Banger helped her out of her flight suit and quickly shed his body armour and weapons. He went to the bathroom and ran the bath while she took off her underwear. He picked her up, in his arms, as though carrying her across the threshold, and she giggled.

While they waited for the bath to fill he sat her on the vanity unit. It was cold on her bum, but that made her hotter, as did his kisses. She could feel him through his uniform trousers and he pressed against her, still dressed, rubbing slowly.

He motioned for her to get into the bath while he undressed. Nia added bubble bath before turning off the tap and climbing in. She sank down in the water, letting the steam and the scent and the hot water relax her while, at the same time, the sight of his body made her heart beat a little faster. Banger knelt by the bath, took a flannel and soap and started to wash her. She loved it when he did that. The angry purple bruise on his chest, where the bullet had struck his vest, reminded her of the day's horrors.