The Prey (15 page)

‘Thank you.’

She drove slowly along the access road. When she came to the headgear she saw Cameron’s parked truck. Again she weighed up her options. The sensible one would be to do nothing for now, and to confront him later. She got out of her car and walked over to the Hilux. It was unlocked so she opened the passenger door and looked inside, scanning the cab. Next she unhooked the rubber bungy cord securing the vinyl cover of the load area. Nothing. The rifle case was missing.

Kylie knew she couldn’t go to Tobias and she doubted she could mobilise mine security to go after Cameron and Gideon on the flimsy pretext that she now thought the mine boss might be in partnership with the criminals below.

So she did the only thing she could do: she went back to her hire car and got her borrowed hard hat out of the boot. If Cameron was up to something, she needed to know about it.

*

Gideon had dredged up a little courage on the drive to the mine and had threatened to call the police and lodge a complaint against Cameron for abducting him and threatening him with a gun.

‘All I want is Chris Loubser back above ground,’ Cameron had said to him. ‘If you help me get to where the
zama zamas
are holding him you can do whatever you want. You can come back to work if you want. I don’t give a fuck. But if Loubser dies, then so do you.’

Once at the mine they had gone to the locked storage room where the seized contraband was being stored before being destroyed or, in the case of the drugs, being handed over to the police. Cameron unlocked the door and picked one of the emptied SCSR packs and told Gideon to fill it with a mix of food, alcohol and a bag of marijuana.

When they arrived at the cage at the bank, the top of the shaft, Cameron saw the mix of confusion and fear in banksman Cassius’s face as Cameron told him to tell the hoist operator to send them to level fourteen. Cameron was sure Cassius was in the pay of the
zama zamas
and suddenly he was sick of it all – sick of turning a blind eye, sick of head office’s non-confrontational approach, sick of Tobias’s duplicity, and sick of thinking about what he could have done differently to keep his wife from running away from him. And as much as he hated to admit it, Kylie was right. They needed to go after the middle and upper management of the
zama zamas
rather than the illegal workers themselves. It was time to go find his subterranean counterpart. Cameron unzipped the gun case and pulled out the twelve-gauge. He tossed the bag on the floor and said to the operator as he motioned for Gideon to get into the cage: ‘Call the police – not mine security – if I’m not back by the time the shift comes up.’

‘You made sure that Cassius saw the gun and saw me. The
zama zamas
will know it was me who led you to them,’ Gideon said.

Cameron nodded. ‘Still want your job back?’

‘There is nowhere I can run now. The Lion will find me and kill me and my family.’

Cassius signalled to the driver in the hoist room that the cage was bound for level fourteen. Ten seconds later the brakes were released and they began to drop. The black rock walls hurtled past them. Cameron switched on his headlamp, in case Gideon tried something in the dark. He shone it in the other man’s eyes and saw the terror. Gideon was crooked, but perhaps no more so than half his employees. ‘I will give you money for a bus ticket.’

Gideon closed his eyes. ‘Even if you give me enough rand for an aeroplane ticket Wellington will find me. I cannot do this. Please.’

The cage juddered to a halt and Cameron opened the door. He hardened his heart. He raised the shotgun and pointed it at Gideon, motioning with a flick of the end of the barrel for him to get out.

Gideon stepped into the darkness and turned on his lamp.

‘Just take me as far as where their workings begin, where you usually make your drop-offs and pickups. After that you can come back here and wait for the cage. You heard what I said to Cassius. They will come for you eventually if something happens to me.’

Gideon looked back at him and smiled. ‘They will kill you, and Wellington the Lion will feed on your heart to make him strong. I have heard he does that.’

‘We’ll see who eats who.’ Cameron’s words belied his nerves. He knew what he was doing was stupid, perhaps suicidal, but at the same time he felt more alive than he had in years. The shotgun felt like a natural extension of his hands and he experienced the scarily familiar surges of adrenaline electrifying his nerve endings, just as he had in the moments before a contact in Angola.

When they had moved a hundred metres Cameron allowed himself to lag behind Gideon. He slung the shotgun and reached into a pocket for the tin of black boot polish he’d taken from his
home. He quickly smeared the greasy substance on his hands and face. Next he opened the pouch slung across his body and pulled out a set of night-vision binoculars. He had bought them with his own money, online, from the United States. They had cost a small fortune. He’d put in a request for mine security operators to be issued with them, but Australia had turned him down. The reluctance to hire outside specialist mine security teams or properly equip his own men for offensive operations had prevented him from gaining the upper hand in the fight against the criminal miners.

He switched on the binoculars and Gideon appeared as a ghostly glowing green image. Gideon stopped and looked back. Cameron lowered his eyes as he knew a bright light, such as Gideon’s headlamp, would blind him and possibly damage the cathode tube inside the night-vision goggles.

‘I am still here,’ Cameron said. ‘And I can see everything you do, even if you turn off your lamp. Carry on.’

Gideon moved off again. Cameron knew that the night-vision binoculars drew on ambient light and intensified it, but if there was no light at all he could switch on an infra-red beam that would cast an invisible light ahead of him.

As Gideon led him through a maze of tunnels and stopes, Cameron realised he had been right to think that it was not enough for him to know which level of the mine to get out on in order to find the
zama zamas
.

After a few minutes Gideon stopped and Cameron crept up behind him, the shotgun raised in case the other man was about to try something. ‘It is here. In this old refuge chamber. This is where I drop the stuff off.’

‘And pick up the gold?’

‘I never smuggle gold.’

‘Whatever,’ Cameron said.

‘No, it is the truth. They say Wellington trusts no one but himself. He used to use donkeys, fit young men, to carry out the gold, but
one of them tried to rob the Lion by swallowing some gold in a condom. Wellington caught the boy and slit open his stomach. They say he pulled the gold from him while he was still alive, then let him bleed to death.’

Cameron nodded in the dark. If Gideon was telling the truth it was good intelligence. With luck he might stumble across this Wellington. He would try to take him alive, but if not, this whole underground operation might fold because of the paranoia of its leader.

‘Who is there?’ a voice from the darkness said in Swazi, then added in English: ‘Freeze motherfucker.’

Cameron dropped to a crouch and backed up the tunnel. He melded his body with the side wall and hoped that if the man who had spoken turned on a lamp or a torch then his black clothing and blackened face would disguise him. He trained the shotgun on the sound of the voice.

‘It is me, Gideon.’

A light appeared as a green sun in Cameron’s field of vision, though it wasn’t as bright as Gideon’s miner’s lamp; perhaps a torch with failing batteries, Cameron thought. The light played briefly on Gideon’s face as the man confirmed his identity. ‘You are late. What happened?’

‘The mine boss, that white cunt McMurtrie, stopped the shift on the way down and searched everyone.’

Cameron smiled in the darkness.

‘Then why are you here? Why were you not caught?’

‘I had a doctor’s appointment and I was only working a half-shift today. I came down with one of the artisans, an electrician, and they did not search us.’

‘Hmm. What have you brought me?’

Gideon held out the SCSR container and the
zama zama
darted into the light of Gideon’s headlamp, then back out again. It was as if, Cameron thought, he was scared of the light, or perhaps blinded by it after having lived so long in the dark. The glimpse had been brief,
but long enough for Cameron to make out the distinctive banana-shaped magazine of an AK-47 in the man’s hands. Cameron licked his lips.

The man checked the contents of the pack with the shielded light of his torch. The sound of his fingers greedily sifting through the contraband sounded like a rat’s nocturnal foraging. ‘This is all? What am I going to tell the Lion?’

Cameron strained to hear the conversation.

‘Perhaps, my brother,’ Gideon said after a pause, ‘you tell him nothing. Word will filter to him eventually of the search of the shift. No doubt you have the money from all of the
zama zamas
to pay for the whole shipment of stuff the miners were smuggling down before they got caught. Maybe you can give me your little bit of money that you contributed for your share and you can keep what I have brought.’

Cameron smiled again. He had to give Gideon credit. He was a fast and devious thinker and he’d walk out of the mine with some bucks in his pocket.

‘Maybe five hundred rand?’ Gideon said, filling the silence while the other man considered betraying his boss.

‘Maybe I’ll take you to Wellington now and explain to the Lion how you suggested cheating him.’

‘Four hundred?’ Gideon replied.

‘Three.’

‘Three-fifty,’ Gideon countered.

‘All right.’

Cameron listened as the notes were peeled off and the deal sealed. Gideon and the man exchanged muted goodbyes and Cameron backed further down the tunnel as he saw the beam of Gideon’s headlamp sweep towards him. Cameron stayed low as he moved, in case the
zama zama
decided to put a bullet in Gideon’s back and retrieve his three hundred and fifty rand.

Cameron retreated ahead of Gideon until they were back at the shaft. ‘Put your hands behind your back.’

‘Why?’ Gideon asked. ‘I’m not going anywhere. You told me I could wait here until you were finished, or until the security guys come looking for you.’

‘For some strange reason I just don’t trust you, Gideon.’ He brought the other man’s hands together and bound them with a cable tie he pulled from a pouch on his vest. He told Gideon to sit down and then zip-tied his ankles.

‘I’ll be back,’ Cameron said.

‘I doubt it, Schwarzenegger.’

*

The cage juddered to a halt. Kylie switched on her lamp and opened the door and got out. Something moved in the shadows and she caught her breath. She saw the man sitting with his back against the rock wall. ‘You’re Gideon.’

He glared back at her, then raised his feet so that she could see they were bound.

‘What happened?’

‘Ah, he has gone mad, that one.’

‘McMurtrie?’

‘Yes. He threatened to kill me because I said I would go to the police and tell them he is the middleman in the gold-smuggling operation.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Kylie said, even though the thought that Cameron might somehow be involved with the pirate miners had crossed her mind.

‘He fired me because I was going to expose him.’

Kylie wasn’t convinced. ‘If he’s involved with the
zama zamas
as you say, why did he bring you underground?’

‘He is the big man above ground – he doesn’t dirty himself with the work underground and he doesn’t know how to get to where the
zama zamas
are working; he needed me as a guide. Wellington takes the gold up to him and McMurtrie negotiates with the Arabs, and the one they call Mohammed. People like me are the ones who
keep the
zama zamas
supplied with all they need. You know how big the problem is. Why do you think Global Resources loses so much money from this mine? McMurtrie will tell you it happens everywhere, but no mine is as lucrative for the
zama zamas
as Eureka.’

Kylie didn’t know what to believe. She still thought Gideon was lying to save his own skin, but what was Cameron up to, and why had he ignored her? He was acting like a guilty man. ‘Where is he now?’

‘Meeting with Wellington and discussing what they will do to me. McMurtrie wants to kill me, but he knows the Lion can use me underground as well. Either way I will be dead too soon. The
zama zamas
are dying down here in high numbers.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

Gideon shrugged. ‘What are you going to do now?’

‘I’m going to find McMurtrie and hear him out.’

‘You’ll never find him without a guide, or the
zama zamas
will find you first. We haven’t been able to smuggle a whore down here for three months. Tobias stopped that traffic when the
zama zamas
moved too deep for them to be marched in via the old workings. You are in danger of being raped.’

She wondered if he was just playing her, making her think everything McMurtrie had told her was a fiction. But the suspicions still nagged at her. One thing Gideon was right about, however, was that she had no idea where this abandoned tunnel led to, or how to find Cameron. If Cameron was involved with the pirate miners she could bring down the syndicate if she could catch him colluding with this Wellington.

On the other hand, if Cameron was off on some one-man vigilante mission to bring down Wellington and rescue Chris Loubser, then he had deliberately ignored her wishes, and Jan’s, and gone behind her back. He had signed his own dismissal letter. What concerned her, however, was that if this was the case then she felt as though she had goaded him into it.

Kylie unbuttoned the pouch of the Leatherman Wave multi-tool she always wore on her belt. It was a useful gadget. She had heard of
miners who had been trapped in rockfalls and had had to amputate their own hand or foot to free themselves and escape. She dropped to one knee, unfolded the blade and sliced through the cable tie around Gideon’s ankles. She grabbed his shirt by the collar and helped him get to his feet.