The Devil's Breath (15 page)

Carefully they edged closer to the water. Would the
baboons fiercely protect their invaluable resource or let them share it? Max pulled off his bush hat and peered down. The reflection that stared back looked nothing like the boy who had started his quest only days earlier. His fair hair was tufted and streaked with dirt. He was leaner, gaunt even, and the caked dirt made him look older. His eyes were red-rimmed from the sun’s glare, and his tears of the previous night had washed a couple of tracks in the grime. Beneath the dirt a tanned, weather-beaten face glared back at him. He looked like a wild man. And maybe now he was.

Without another thought he dipped his cupped hands into the cool water and drank thirstily. Then he pushed his head under, scratched his fingers through his hair, and rubbed his face. As he pulled free of the rock pool a baboon took fright and fled, chattering. Maybe Max was more acceptable as a dirt-clogged creature from the bush. A young baboon sitting in a rock bowl gazed back at him like a boy in a bath, then dragged one hand over its head, spiking its own short hair, punk-like. Max pulled the binoculars from his shirt to stop them banging against the rock and put them down next to him on his bush hat, as he took another luxurious wallow.

Lifting his head clear, he snorted dust and mucus from his nose. He would never take water for granted again. It was sobering to think how much of the precious liquid he wasted at home. He gazed out across the curved hillside. Watching the baboons was a momentary diversion. Max sensed their caution at his presence, but they did not seem to register any threat.

!Koga’s gleaming, dripping face emerged from another pool. “Max,” he said quietly.

Following his gaze, Max saw that the punk baboon had stolen his hat and binoculars. Max tentatively reached out towards it, but it jumped back and scurried into another’s arms, where they hugged and gazed warily at him. Max needed those binoculars. He stepped carefully towards the youngsters. A bark warned Max. He turned. A big, heavily built male was stalking towards him. Its front paws supported muscled shoulders and the mane of long hair around its neck and shoulders made it look even more threatening. It was a meter tall and the doglike muzzle snarled as it barked again. Max stood still, sensing the ripple of tension in the animals around him. The baboon bared its fangs. Max saw !Koga slowly ease an arrow into his bow. “Don’t kill it, !Koga. It’ll be OK.”

“I don’t know,” !Koga replied. “Maybe not. He is the leader. Others will attack if he does.”

Max glanced around. !Koga was right. The warning bark had alerted other males. The strict hierarchy of the baboon troop meant that the older juveniles, often acting as scouts for the troop, rallied when the danger call came from the leader. Other males stayed with their families but were nevertheless alerted.

Max reassured !Koga. “We’ll walk away … slowly.”

Once in a while Max had come across kids at school who were stronger than he, and there was always the odd bully to contend with. Despite best intentions, some kids just had to exert their dominance, and Max had had a couple of scraps at school. There were Baskins and Hoggart, two of the older boys. They got out of hand at times. If they
weren’t looking for a scrap with someone else, they would rough and tumble each other. Whatever the outcome, it meant a few bruises, but this baboon with its razor-sharp teeth was way above the Baskins and Hoggart league—this was the equivalent of a knife-wielding, streetwise kid with a very bad attitude. If there wasn’t something to hand for self-defense, then a fast sprint for self-preservation brought no shame. Only Max would never outrun this bruiser. He flinched as the baboon coughed another bark and with a snarl charged to within four meters of where Max now stood with his back to the rocks. The other baboons began to join in, their screeches and threats sounding like a badly out-of-control football crowd.

“Next time he will really attack,” !Koga shouted, bringing attention to himself from the other young males. The height of the boulders offered some immediate sanctuary, but that would be short-lived once the frenzy spread. It was not much of a choice: an attack would come sooner or later.

“I want a chance to get out of this, !Koga. We walk slowly, and then we run. All right?”

!Koga gazed at the confident boy who stood unflinching before the baboon’s agitated aggression.

“We’ll run like hell, !Koga, once we reach those rocks over there. You ready?”

!Koga nodded and eased his back along the boulders, watching the gathering juveniles, who were eager for combat, once their leader attacked. Almost shoulder to shoulder, the boys edged away. Within moments, one of the juvenile males broke ranks and charged. The screaming,
indignant bark of the leader barely stopped the young baboon before it reached Max—who smelled its fetid breath and saw the ragged spittle hanging from its lips.

Together, the boys eased away from the advancing baboons—it seemed like a small army was gathering around them. It was a hundred or more meters before they could reach the rocks, allowing them to put on a turn of speed. The rocks would divide the advancing baboons and give the boys a chance of reaching the flatter, wider plain beyond the fringe of the mountains.

“Get ready, !Koga, we have to go for it now!”

Max sensed the quivering anticipation in the startled looks of the baboons and felt his own energy gathering to explode. Then suddenly a shadow swept across them all.

The shrieking peaked. The commanding voice of the leader barked above them all and the baboons were unleashed. They surged towards Max and !Koga, who were helpless. Blurred images—fragments of his mother and father—slammed through Max’s mind. He saw !Koga level his spear in readiness. This was it! A fight to the death. He sucked in air to scream his defiance.

But the horde swept past them, jostling them, the juveniles now taking the lead, scouting ahead, leading the troop to safety beyond the place of exposed danger.

A reprieve!

Max and !Koga reacted instinctively and ran with them, pounding across the ground, immersed in the baboons’ hysteria. They were safe amidst the panic. The blackness fell across them again, but it was not the shadow of the hunting
eagle. The darkness belonged to a far more dangerous creature.

Five hundred meters above, the silent predator rose higher on a thermal spiral. On huge, featherless wings stretched across a skeletal frame, it whispered through the sky. The glider’s Perspex cockpit, an all-seeing eye, held Shaka Chang.

Slye had tried to contact the men sent to kill the boys, but their radio transceiver responded with a lion’s rumbling growl and the sound of it being scraped across the ground. Chang was indifferent to the men’s fate and this morning’s flight served only to acquaint him with the terrain from where the boy might emerge—or where he had perished. Chang liked to know everything about those who were trying to interfere with his plans, and ultimately he trusted only his own eyes.

Chang gazed down at the fleeing baboons. He thought he saw a shape, different from the others, but the warm air scooped him upwards and obscured his vision. He heeled the glider around again and swept low across the broad, sloping mountainside, his glider chasing its shadow across the ground. The baboons clambered into rocks, seeking shelter from the perceived threat. Chang twisted left and right, searching for the figures that had caught his eye. Nothing. Once again he banked into the thermal and felt the surge of nature’s power lifting him above and beyond the mountain range. Power he could control.

On the far horizon, cumulonimbus, the king of clouds,
gathered a storm-threatening army. Even Chang would not venture into that awesome turbulence. It was like a nature god, and any intruder would be tossed and ripped apart by the contained force the clouds held. Stacked like multiple atomic explosions climbing sixty kilometers high, their bonds would finally be broken and would release tons of rainwater, flooding the landscape below, then Shaka Chang’s dam would restrain the power of that water. And that control would give him command of life or death over the whole region.

Everyone needed water. Diamonds and gold were mere trading commodities, crystals and metal made glorious by the vanity of man; but he would still take them when they were thrust into his hands as payment for releasing the life-giving energy he had entrapped. But before that happened, those self-same rains would carry out the first step of Chang’s plan. They would scour the earth’s underground caves and fissures, carrying a plague of death, to destroy human and animal life for thousands of kilometers. Governments would then give even more for Shaka Chang’s unsullied water. And all that could stand between him and domination was a fifteen-year-old boy and the knowledge he might hold. And it was only that boy’s power over him that caused Shaka Chang a moment of doubt.

Satisfied that the harsh landscape below offered but a meager chance of survival for anyone foolish enough to challenge it, he eased the glider towards the heavens. Two hundred kilometers away, he would swoop from the sun like an all-powerful god and descend to earth, returning to Skeleton Rock, the earthly home of a celestial warrior: the
bringer of chaos and destruction which were the instruments of success.

The rains were coming soon.

Sheltering under the lee of the rocks, !Koga and Max kept their faces turned away from the silent hunter. Who could be flying a glider out here? Was it a wealthy farmer indulging a hobby, or was there a more sinister reason for the silent approach? It was not worth risking being seen, and they hoped they had not been. Once the quivering wings had lifted the slender body across the mountains, the boys broke cover and ran. The baboons, still terrified, offered no threat. And provided the glider did not return, they were free to run as far and as fast as their legs could carry them into the distant scrubland and the safety of the trees.

Max and !Koga pushed themselves onwards; Max was convinced that, if his father’s cave message had shown them the way, there would be other clues waiting somewhere ahead. They ran across the open savannah flecked with thorn trees, moving deeper into more shaded areas. Soft-topped grasses undulated, their feathered tips touched with dust and sunlight. It was getting too hot to move at this pace, and Max slowed to a walk, but !Koga urged him on: he would crouch and, with extended thumb, point out animal tracks to Max, explaining that predators had also sought shade but were far enough away not to pose any immediate danger. Finally !Koga knelt and placed his hand in a darkened blemish in the sand: the remains of an old fire. “They are near.”

“Who?” Max asked.

“Those who helped your father. My family.”

When Mike Kapuo took Kallie home, his wife, Elizabeth, hugged her, let her soak in a hot bath, and then fed her the usual scrumptious meal that she always managed to feed to her family. Two sons, a daughter and now grandchildren, not counting waifs and strays like Kallie, all sat around the big kitchen table next to the solid-fuel stove that Elizabeth Kapuo refused to be parted from, even though they sweltered in the summer months. It was as comfortable a family home as anyone could wish for, and Kallie was envious. The pain of her own parents’ divorce had never left her. Her father was like a modern-day buccaneer. He was a free spirit who would die for his family, but getting him to stay at home was impossible. Kallie had grown up quickly, and being stuck out on the farm gave her a stubborn strength, but while she was wrapped in the warmth and friendliness of the Kapuo family, she allowed herself to relax. Finally, unable to swallow another morsel of food, she gratefully fell into bed.

She woke up the next day with dawn still an hour away. Suburban sounds had roused her from fractured dreams. The house still slept and, as she made her way towards the kitchen to make coffee, she walked past a room whose door was slightly ajar. A shaft of light cut into the passageway. There was a gentle scratching sound which she could not identify. She carefully opened the door wider. Mike Kapuo obviously used the room as an office. The desk lamp was still on and papers and files were evident—Mike had probably
been working late. A cat was licking itself on the desk, its claws gripping the sheets of paper beneath it. That was the scratching noise Kallie had heard. The cat had obviously spent a comfortable, undisturbed night under the warmth of the lamp. But then Kallie’s movement at the door made it leap from the desk in fright, scattering papers across the floor.

Kallie muttered under her breath. Why hadn’t she just minded her own business? She scooped up the papers and tapped them together into a tidy pile, but as she went to put them back on the desk she saw a name typed on a sheet of paper and the air suddenly became even colder.
Tom Gordon: Missing, Presumed Dead
. It was a police report, dated a couple of weeks earlier. She scanned the single sheet. It was a cursory read, full of police jargon; a pseudoformality that police forces all over the world adopted, as if the clunky language made it all the more serious. She didn’t care, she kept reading. It had obviously been a search conducted with limited resources, which would have made it virtually impossible to find anyone presumed injured in the thirstland.

She thumbed through the rest of the papers. At least a dozen sheets had something to do with Max’s father. It took her only a few moments to realize that the papers the cat had spilled belonged in a folder that had been left open on the desk. She went to the door, quickly checked that no one was moving in the house, eased the door closed again and got down on her knees. She spread the sheets out on the floor, angling the lamp down.

The folder contained a description of the missing man, reports from search teams, the one-page summary she had
just read and a photocopy of the area searched. There was nothing that seemed to offer any new evidence or information about Tom Gordon. She put the papers back together and put the file back on the desk. As she did so, her fingers touched another file, closed this time, but with the edges of photographs showing. She opened the folder. The black-and-white pictures were of a man’s body being pulled out of the harbor. Photo after photo taken by a police photographer. The victim finally ended up on his back, the feet of the policemen, just in frame, turned away from him. They had done their job now. It all had the cold, calculating feel of distant emotions, of routine. Of matter-of-fact death.