The Prey (28 page)

A man stepped out from behind a tree and brought his AK to his shoulder, taking aim at Luis. He must have been less keen than his comrades, Luis thought, lagging behind the advance on the store. If he had been a hardened Renamo cadre he would have stayed in cover and shot Luis. His suspicions were confirmed by the way the barrel of the rifle wavered.

Luis screamed again and ran straight for the man. If he shot him, then so be it. It would be better than enduring the torturer’s knives. Luis’s senses were recording, in detail, every moment of his last seconds on earth. He saw the fear in the man’s eyes, watched his finger curl and squeeze. But there was no sound. The man lowered his rifle and worked the cocking handle. It had jammed or misfired. Whatever the case, Luis had been saved. All he needed to do was dispatch this inept fool and carry on his way.

The man fumbled with his rifle and raised it to try to ward off Luis’s charge. Luis turned his own AK in his hands and smashed the other man’s weapon out of the way with a butt stroke. The younger, smaller man teetered under the force of the blow and Luis pressed home his advantage, bringing the butt of his rifle up into the man’s cheek and slamming him backwards. The man sprawled on the ground on his back, arms outflung.

Luis stood over him and twisted his rifle again so that the sharpened point of the bayonet was pointing down at the man’s belly. He raised his arms to deliver the killing thrust. The top few buttons of the Renamo man’s Rhodesian-supplied camouflage shirt were open and something glittered on his chest. Luis saw the silver crucifix and paused, just before the tip of the blade touched the man’s skin.

The man reached up for him with open hands, his rifle lying useless on the ground beside him. ‘Mercy,’ he said in Portuguese.

Luis blinked. His chest rose and fell and he felt the mist clear from his mind. What had become of his country? What had become of him?

He heard voices behind him. He knew he should kill this man, now, and take his ammunition. But he couldn’t do it. He felt tears pricking the backs of his eyes. He stepped away from the prone form and started to run again.

The men tracking him were calling to each other in a mix of Portuguese and Xitswa. They were getting close. There wasn’t even time for him to check the terrified soldier’s pouches for more magazines. Besides, there were too many of them for him to take a stand against.

He started to run, but had covered no more than twenty metres when he heard another voice yell a command in a different language. Behind him, he heard the metallic snicker of a rifle being cocked, and then a single gunshot. Then his world went black.

*

Luis forced himself back to the present, to try to evaluate what he would do next, where he would go. There were horrors aplenty to confront in the present without the demons of his past resurfacing. He had a clear and present enemy today – Wellington Shumba, the Lion. Wellington had seemed something of a saviour at first, but Luis had soon learned he was an angel of death. And there was no escaping him or his reach.

After running into the bush he had circled back to the crashed
bakkie
. He needed to know what had happened and who had killed his wife and the driver, Sipho. He had hidden in the long grass at the verge of the road and watched as one of the gunmen had spoken on his phone and then used his pistol to shoot his comrade in the head while still talking.

‘I understand, boss. I must bring the Mozambican to you alive,’ the young
tsotsi
– criminal – had said into his cellphone.

When the killer had headed back up the road, scanning the ground, Luis had known he had limited time to get away. He couldn’t run, however, before saying goodbye to Miriam. He had crept to the wreck and found her there. Luis had pressed a knuckle to his mouth and groaned like a dying animal when he saw the blood on her hand where the bastard had cut off her finger. Luis had become desensitised to death and gore decades ago, but the sight of his wife’s severed finger lying on the blood-soaked upholstery of the mine truck had been too much for him. He had sunk to his knees, and might have stayed there if it hadn’t been for the buzz of the helicopter.

He had pushed himself deep into cover, shivering and shaking with rage and fear despite the heat of the day. The noise of the chopper blades took him back to the war years.

By the time the tremors had subsided the police were at the crash site, responding to the radio call of the privately operated tracking-company helicopter that hovered above the stricken Toyota and its grisly cargo of death.

When he saw the fat policeman and his underlings peering into the truck, Luis decided to give himself up. He could not run any more. He would surrender and tell them everything he knew about Wellington. With luck they would cart him in the back of a police
bakkie
with a dozen or more other illegal immigrants who had chanced their luck in this land of blood and gold and drive him back to the border crossing at Komatipoort. From Ressano Garcia, as the other side of the border was known, he would, perhaps after a beating from the police or army, make his way home to his son.

He had placed his palms on the ground and begun to raise himself up when the young man emerged from the bush and waved to the policeman.

‘Don’t shoot,
baba
,’ the thug called to the policeman, whose hand nonetheless went instinctively to the black Z88 automatic on his belt.

The police captain walked away from the others, grabbing the youth by the collar and taking him into the tree line. They stopped, not five metres from where Luis had lowered himself back into the grass.

The policeman backhanded him in the face, almost knocking him off his feet. ‘I just got the call from Wellington. You fucked up.’

The angry young man clenched his fists, though kept them by his side, and spat blood. ‘Danger fucked up.’

‘Your handiwork?’ The captain tossed his head back towards Luis’s dead wife and the other two bodies.

‘I didn’t kill the woman or the driver,
baba
. Like I said, it was Danger who screwed it for us.’

‘We need to find the Mozambican,’ the policeman said. ‘He’ll take the blame for killing Danger. We might even frame it as him setting up a hit on his wife.’

The youth nodded, smiling at the policeman’s guile, his hands relaxing by his side. ‘
Yebo
. That’s cool. But doesn’t the boss want the Mozambican alive? That’s what he told me,
baba
.’

The cop chuckled. ‘Yes, he does, and we’re going to deliver him that way. If the man’s wanted for the murder of his wife he won’t last long above ground. Wellington will keep him locked up underground like a caged pet forever.’

Luis had started shivering again as he lay in the grass, ants crawling over him. Wellington had the police captain in his pocket and was determined to destroy Luis’s life. If it wasn’t for his son, the man would have succeeded – Luis would have given up. But the dreadful thought of Wellington coming after Jose washed through his body and turned his insides to water. He clutched at the tufts of grass in front of him to steady himself. He was a fool. He should have accepted his lot in life and stayed underground, and not done anything to assist McMurtrie and Hamilton. He was making reasonable money as a
zama zama
and at least some of it had been getting back to Miriam and Jose. And now she was gone. He could not go on.

No.

He dragged a breath into his lungs. He had seen death, in the war, and he had survived. He would mourn for his wife when he could, but his priority now was Jose. He must be strong for him.

‘Go look for the Mozambican, boy,’ the captain said, belittling the carjacker. ‘And pray you find him before my dog squad arrives and catches him. You might be able to save your skin with the boss if you can deliver the Professor to him. Alive, remember?’

‘
Yebo, baba
.’

Luis had lain in the grass while the youth went in search of him. He’d watched the police search the
bakkie
, and the coroner’s men lift out the blood-soaked bodies of his wife and the driver, Sipho, and zip them into body bags.

He didn’t cry for his dead wife. Instead he let his anger and grief and his hatred of Wellington fuel him. In his mind, he was back in the bush again, during the civil war. He had killed for stupid, outdated ideologies that had delivered his country nothing but poverty, even in victory. But he had killed.

Luis felt the fear and the adrenaline surge that followed it. He looked around him for a weapon. There was none, but that did not matter. The
tsotsi
had taken his orders over the phone, from Wellington. That phone was a link to the man who all but destroyed his life.

Luis edged backwards, away from the police, and went in search of the criminal. The young one had moved quietly and Luis glimpsed the back of his white T-shirt before he heard him. Luis, too, could move as quietly as a leopard through the bush, though it had been many years since he had needed such a skill. He placed each step carefully.

Slowly, he closed in on his prey.

With a knife or a gun he might have simply held him up and taken his phone or scared him into revealing what little he might know about Wellington’s whereabouts. But that was not an option. He vaguely recalled this young enforcer delivering a beating on Wellington’s orders a year or so ago. A
zama zama
had been caught sleeping during his shift. The man’s head had hit a rock when the youth had knocked him to the ground the first time. He had died
quickly. It might have been forgivable, as an accident, except Luis had seen how the unfeeling young man had pounded the dead man’s skull to a pulp under his work boot, in the hope of winning a smile from Wellington. Luis didn’t know if psychopaths were drawn to each other, or if they were nurtured by men such as Wellington.

Luis closed the distance between himself and the
tsotsi
and reached out and wrapped one arm around his neck, squeezing the cry of pain and alarm before it could form. He placed his other hand behind his quarry’s neck and pushed his arms against each other. He heard the snap of the enforcer’s neck and felt the body go heavy in his grip. He let the dead boy slide to the ground. Luis stood over him for a second, his breath blowing hard through his nose as he fought to keep the rising tide of red rage under control. He dropped to one knee and quickly, efficiently searched the body as if it was just another dead Renamo man. He found the .45 stuffed down the boy’s jeans, under his T-shirt, and transferred it to his own belt. In his back pocket was the telephone. Luis pushed a button and the screen lit up. He found the menu and then selected recent calls. The last incoming call was from a cellphone number beginning with +258, the country code for Mozambique.

Luis pocketed the phone and headed back to the road, leaving the boy’s body for the police or some wild animals to find.

When Cameron had pulled up in his mine company Toyota the police had been distracted by his arrival. Luis had leopard-crawled through the grass and under Cameron’s Hilux. Emerging on the far side, out of sight of the assembled police, he had been able to quietly open the rear door of the double cab and slide inside.

The hum of the highway was softening now, the vehicle slowing. Luis crossed himself, in the baking darkness in the back of the pickup truck, and prayed that the white people who were helping him would hold their nerve.

*

Kylie wasn’t used to breaking the law and she was feeling slightly nauseous as Cameron drove through one side of Barberton and out
the other, then turned left to climb the narrow dirt road to his home high in the hills. They had already stopped at the Diggers’ Retreat on the way back from the crime scene for Kylie to quickly pack up and load her luggage.

He glanced over at her. ‘You look a little pale.’

‘I’m fine. No, actually, I’m not fine.’

Cameron turned his attention back to the road. ‘So do you have a better plan? We know from Luis the local cops are crooked – I could have told him that, but now it looks like they were in on the plan to kill his wife and capture him. He’s also our best lead to Wellington. We need to get him in front of someone at the National Prosecuting Authority.’

Kylie exhaled. She didn’t know how to function in this country. She was out of her depth, but bubbling underneath her uncertainty was the bitter bile of anger. She, too, wanted this Wellington out of business – permanently – and she knew, deep down, she was willing to do whatever it took. ‘You said we were going to take Luis somewhere safe. Not to your home?’

‘No. I just need to pick up Jess and some stuff. My wife’s parents own a holiday home near the Kruger Park. We can go there. I doubt Wellington or his people would know of my connection to the place; we’ve only stayed there a couple of times.’

They turned into his driveway and Jessica opened the door and came out to greet them at the sound of the engine.

‘Dad, I heard about Sipho.’ She wrapped her arms around her father and looked past him at Kylie.

Cameron kissed his daughter on the top of the head. ‘Jess, this is Dr Kylie Hamilton, my boss, from Australia.’

‘Hi.’ Kylie took Jess’s hand and was surprised by her firm, confident handshake.

‘Nice to meet you, Dr Hamilton.’

‘Call me Kylie, please.’ The teenagers she knew in Australia, including her nieces and nephews, were uniformly surly, noncommunicative and spoilt.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Jess asked her.

‘Jess,’ Cameron interjected, ‘we can’t stay for tea. I want you to get some clothes and stuff for a couple of nights in the bush. Kylie and I are going to stay at Ouma and Oupa’s place at Hippo Rock, and I want you to come with us.’ Jess had always referred to Tania’s parents, who were Afrikaners, as grandma and grandpa in their mother tongue.

Jessica raised her eyebrows. ‘What about school?’

‘You can use a couple of days off, after all the drama we’ve had going on in our lives. Come. It’ll be fun. Kylie, if you don’t mind, there’s a camping mattress rolled up in the garage – you might like to put it in the back of the
bakkie
.’