The Devil's Breath (6 page)

“Are you Max?” she asked.

“Yes,” he finally managed to answer, wiping a dribble of water from his chin.

“Sorry I’m late. Had a problem with a fuel line. Come on then.”

She turned away.

“Hang on a minute,” he called after her. He wasn’t going to be treated like a puppy—and after the last twenty minutes he was not going to follow anyone anywhere, no matter how appealing they looked. She stopped and waited. “I don’t know who you are,” he said, realizing this might be a setup.

She gazed at him. “I’m Kallie van Reenen,” she answered. “He said you’d be cautious. That’s good out here—it might keep you alive.” She raised an eyebrow. Was that enough information?

“Who said?”

“Mr. Farentino.”

Max nodded and fell into step with her. And wished she weren’t so attractive.

When they left the terminal she took him to the other end of the airport apron, where private aircraft were parked. Safari companies often flew their clients from here, and local farmers used it as their nearest parking area for the city. Farentino had warned her that Max was on his way, and as it was her father to whom the Bushman had delivered Tom Gordon’s animal-wrapped field notes, she was the starting point for Max’s journey.

The outside temperature was a shock. Sweat gathered around the waistband of his cargo pants and soaked a long stain down the back of his T-shirt. Max knew he would acclimatize quickly, as he had done before on trips with his father; but his body was also coping with the stress he had been through. He edged into the shade of a hangar and watched silently as Kallie did her preflight inspection on an old single-engine plane that looked to be well past its sell-by date. But he remembered his father telling him about these old bush-bashers. They were as solid as they come, and every aircraft had to have a vigorous ongoing maintenance and airworthiness certificate, so he took some comfort in that.

Kallie checked the propeller, making sure there was no damage to it; then the flaps; she ran a loving hand along the struts and then, finally, clambered on board. Max was edgy, expecting police cars to come screaming up any minute. But nothing happened.

He checked the phone. The message from Sayid on the blue screen was brief:

Peterson nos where u r.

Max grimaced. Thanks, Sayid, but recent events have already confirmed this.

“OK!” Kallie shouted. “Let’s go!”

Climbing into the cockpit was another step away from whoever else Peterson might have sent after him. He gratefully strapped on the safety harness. Kallie flicked control levers with practiced ease, clicked the radio on, contacted the tower and was given clearance to taxi. Max had a flight simulator on his computer at Dartmoor High, but this old plane’s instrument panel looked completely different from
the F16s he tried to maneuver at Mach 2 on his computer screen. No target screen, no rate-of-climb dial, no radar. With a bit of thought he could identify the basic instruments as her fingers moved to the master and alternator switches, which turned on all the electrics for the plane. Stuck to the instrument panel was a somewhat tattered, postcard-sized, laminated board. The laminate was bubbled in places, and the heat had frayed the edges into brown crackling. Half a dozen words were typed on it:
Rather Too Many Pilots Forget How It Goes
.

“What’s this?” he asked, as she eased out the throttle lever, slowing the plane so that it was barely moving, waiting to take up position for takeoff.

“Oh, my dad. He worries. He taught me to fly. But you know what dads are like. Don’t want you to make mistakes if they can help it.” She hesitated, noticing the shadow that flickered across Max’s eyes. “Sorry, that was thoughtless of me. Under the circumstances.”

He shook his head. “It’s OK. Honest. My dad’s the same.”

She smiled. “It’s a reminder. A whatchamacallit. When the words trigger things …”

“A mnemonic.”

“That’s it.” She pointed at the capital letter for every word, each a stab at a pilot’s memory. “R—Radios on. Rudder check movement; T—Trim elevator to takeoff position, throttle tension and set for start; M—Mixture rich, magnetos on; P—Pitot heat—that’s in case there are icy conditions, not much chance of that today; F—Fuel select for tanks, flaps set for takeoff; H—Harness secure, hatches
closed; I—Instruments, check temperatures; G—Gyros set to the compass heading, gear selected down and three green lights.”

Max knew he would have trouble remembering the reminder, let alone what it stood for. Before he could think of anything sensible to say, Kallie’s voice changed to a monotone, concentrated answer as she responded to the instructions from the air traffic controller’s voice in her headphones. The old Cessna 185 rattled like a supermarket cart full of empty tin cans. Kallie eased in the throttle, gave Max a reassuring smile—which did little to help his nerves—and then the plane lurched forward, centered on the runway’s white strip. Suddenly they were rumbling towards the horizon. Max watched the airspeed indicator climb from 60 to 65 miles per hour—the plane was ancient enough for its dial not to show aeronautical knots. The rev-counter touched 2550 revs and Kallie pulled the plane up into the sky, straight at the high hills that were far too close to the end of the runway for Max’s liking. The long, gradual climb took forever, and the plane rocked a little. She smiled at him. “This kind of heat can make things tricky in the air.”

She seemed confident enough that they were going to clear those fast-approaching hills.

“Would you keep your eyes on the road,” he muttered.

After half an hour he could barely hear himself think. The plane’s engine was deafening, and there was only one pair of headphones, which were clamped over her ears. They were cruising at 130 miles per hour, the vast expanse of the
country below them etched with the occasional never-ending line of a road. Max tried to take an interest in the mountains to the east, their slopes furthest from the westering sun now cloaked in shadows and dust haze. But he was feeling rotten.

“Not long!” she shouted. “Only a couple of hours!”

He was uncomfortable. His backside ached. The old seats were like the old-fashioned tubular chairs they used to have in the school’s assembly hall, and he could not see above the instrument panel. How could you land when you couldn’t see the ground?

The plane wavered gently, its nose and blurring propeller pointing slightly above the horizon, as it seemed to balance precariously. The altimeter was marked in feet, and the needle nudged marginally past the 2 mark. Two thousand and a bit feet. Then the plane dropped into some sort of hole in the sky. The engine surged, Max’s stomach almost came up into his throat. “Turbulence!” she yelled again. “Happens all the time!”

He felt grubby from not having showered since he left Dartmoor; the long-haul flight’s food sat somewhere in his stomach like a ball of clay, and the noise and heat from the engine were scrambling his brains. And the attack at the airport had left him decidedly shaky. Airsickness started to coil around his throat like a clammy hand.

She glanced at him. “You going to puke?”

Embarrassed beyond belief, he nodded.

“Stick your head out the window!”

He pushed out the Perspex side window the fifteen centimeters its hinge allowed, and thrust his head out into the
cold slipstream that buffeted his face. And then he vomited. The airline’s prepacked dinner disappeared beyond the tail-plane, free from the confines of his stomach. He wished he could be free of this plane. But it was a long way down—as the dinner showed him.

He decided to keep his head outside the cockpit. With any luck he might freeze to death. That would save him the embarrassment of facing Kallie again.

What a way to make a first impression.

Brandt’s Kraal Wilderness Farm was a jewel in the scorched landscape. A small, underground spring-fed water hole, about a quarter the size of a football pitch, and surrounded by palm and willow trees which created a cool haven. The ramshackle house was a huge, original Victorian bungalow with a deep veranda running all the way round it. Tired white paint covered the decorative finials running along the veranda’s lintel. Rust, time and the desert had taken their toll on everything he could see.

Kallie swooped the plane once across the farm, fifty meters above the battered galvanized roof, and then sideslipped expertly and landed close to the house. Max was thankful to get his feet back on terra firma. The heat sucked his energy from him. A couple of cross-bred dogs eased out from the dark beneath the house, which he could now see was built on low brick piers, and their deep-throated growls warned Max.

She soothed them. “Easy, boys. Come on.” They went happily to her, tails wagging lazily. Now confident that Max
was no threat, the dogs sniffed his hand as he looked around him. The water obviously provided a vegetable garden, and drinking for livestock. These people were as self-sufficient as they could be. And where there’s water there’s wildlife, and that in turn brought hunters. A raptor circled lazily, high above the water. Ominous. Vulture-like.

“It’s an African Hawk Eagle,” Kallie told him as he shielded his eyes. “Plenty of birds here for it, and some small game as well. I hate to see the songbirds get taken but … well, that’s how it is. Getting killed out here is a daily occurrence. For animals, at least.”

“Are your parents here?” he asked, expecting the formality of introductions and preparing for long explanations as to how he was feeling, why he was there, and how hopeless his task might be.

“Divorced. Dad’s got a newer plane than the old Cessna. He’s taken clients up west and north. Lot of birders come out here. It pays OK.”

“So you stay here alone?”

“I do the bookings, keep the place going. Got a few helpers for the heavy stuff; and there’s a town about an hour away. It’s pretty convenient,” she said.

“I thought this was a wildlife farm. I don’t see any,” Max said as they reached the shade of the veranda.

“Used to be. It went bust thirty years ago. We kept the name.”

“And where’s Mr. Brandt?”

“He died a hundred years ago. This used to be a watering hole for cattle drovers, and Brandt had this place then. We
kept that name, too. There didn’t seem much point in changing it. People round here don’t like change.”

People? Max could scarcely believe anyone lived within a thousand kilometers of this place.

It was a blessed relief to lie in the cool water that slopped nearly over the edge of the old cast-iron bath. The discolored water came from the same source as the watering hole, the underground spring, but it was tepid, not icy as it would have been at home.

Kallie knocked on the bathroom door. “When you’re ready!”

A simple bed, covered with a mosquito net, stood in the middle of what was a room obviously belonging to a sportsman. Pictures and trophies were everywhere: swimming, rugby, shooting, hockey, football. It was Kallie’s brother’s room.

“Johan’s away at boarding school. Look, you’re going to need better clothes than what you’ve got. You’re about the same size, so I’ve dug out some of his stuff.” Lightweight khaki shirts and shorts were on the bed, well worn but still serviceable.

“How old is Johan?”

“Seventeen, same as me. And you?”

“Sixteen, nearly seventeen,” he lied. He was big enough, he decided, to get away with it, and he wanted to impress her. She looked at him and turned away.

“We need to eat—and talk. Get dressed.”

She had this casual way of telling him what to do. He didn’t like it, but he figured that people who lived out here didn’t have much chance to hone their conversational or social skills. He dropped the towel from around his waist and climbed into her brother’s clothes.

By the time he sat on the veranda, which she called a
stoep
—an Afrikaans word—the sun was setting, light bleeding gently away, giving up the land to cooling shadows. Night comes quickly to those latitudes, and by the time food was brought to the table the sky was black. Beyond the water and trees, low on the horizon, the yellow full moon edged upwards. It was a wonder of such uninhabited places that Max had experienced before. Crystal-clear nights, free from the light-pollution of city and town, gave the stars a water-like clarity—so many, the sky glistened with them. And Max never ceased to wonder that this moon, so close that it seemed he could step to the edge of the world and touch it, had known the footsteps of mankind.

One of the farm workers lit a paraffin lamp and the night bugs and moths hovered, attracted by the deadly flame.

Max ate his first decent meal in a couple of days. It was basic meat and vegetables and had been cooked by a servant, a woman with a slight pallor to her skin, an almost apricot color, and what looked like Mongolian features: high cheekbones and narrowed eyes. While Max chewed, Kallie explained. The woman was a descendant of the Bushmen, nomadic hunter-gatherers whose way of life was virtually extinct. Two hundred years ago, colonists and black tribesmen alike hunted them like animals and, although the
Bushmen never owned land—a concept alien to them—in more recent times the areas in which they hunted had been taken by the government and they themselves herded into a reserve. It sounded similar to the story Max had heard about the Native Americans.

“Over the years my father did what he could for the Bushmen,” Kallie told him. “They’re very special, not many people understand them, and their language is extremely difficult to learn. It’s all about clicking the tongue against your teeth and the roof of your mouth … different sounds, different emphasis. Sorry, that doesn’t explain it very well, does it?” She turned and spoke gently to the old woman who had served them food. Max thought they were sweet-sounding, rhythmic words, and he could hear the different click sounds. The woman nodded and moved away, her eyes averted.

Kallie saw his interest.

“Don’t stare at her, Max. Staring is rude in Bushman culture.”

“Sorry,” he muttered. “I don’t know much about the indigenous people here.”

She was silent for a moment. “Y’know, the Bushmen are trapped—their souls are in a kind of hell for them. They are God’s creatures, as close to the red dirt as the animals that wander over it. Now we tell them they have to live in settlements, or reserves, but when the rains come and the lightning chases the clouds, then they have to go walkabout. Their spirit is out there in the desert. You put one of these people in prison, he dies, and if they stay out here, many die
of hunger and thirst. Climate change, poaching, indifferent rainfall and the twenty-first century—it’s all stacked against them.”