The Prey (51 page)

She coughed on the first attempt. Her mouth was so dry. ‘Kylie,’ she croaked.

He smiled again. ‘And my name?’

‘George Clooney?’

‘No, you’re not dead. This isn’t heaven.’

Kylie coughed again. ‘What happened?’

He sat and put his arm under her as she tried to sit up again. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I feel woozy.’

‘Rest.’ He laid her back down, her head supported by a backpack that smelled of smoke.

‘Fire. I remember fire.’

Cameron nodded. ‘We crashed, Kylie. We were blown out of the sky.’

‘Blown … bomb?’

He reached for a water bottle and tipped it to her lips. She slurped the warm water greedily and it ran out the side of her mouth. She tried to wipe it away, feeling strangely self-conscious. He mopped her mouth for her and put a finger on her lips. ‘Don’t exert yourself.’

She felt the tenderness of his touch, heard it in his words. They had made love. She remembered. But where were they? What had happened? She closed her eyes and felt his hand on her cheek in response. She opened them again and saw the relief wash over his face.

‘There was a bomb, Kylie. The blast came from underneath, in the aircraft’s cargo compartment. The fuel tanks are in the wings, so it wasn’t a problem there. It was something stored with the bags.’

Kylie looked from side to side. ‘The pilot … Dougal. The others?’

Cameron shook his head, then closed his eyes to try to blot out a memory. ‘They’re dead. It’s just you and me.’

She recalled the deafening bang, the smoke, the screams of the couple seated in front of her. The smell of old smoke brought back an image in a flash. ‘They burned.’ He wrapped both his arms around her as the sobs rose up from deep inside her. ‘They were on fire, Cameron.’

‘Yes. But you’re alive, Kylie. I was so worried about you. You were knocked out. Your leg was badly cut as well.’

She sniffed back her tears and felt for the source of the pain in her head. She felt the padding of a bandage. Kylie raised her head a little and looked down at her right leg. The calf was bandaged.

It flooded back now, swamping her with visions of horror as she screwed her eyes shut. The flash of light, the terrible noise, the smoke filling the cabin. Dougal, the pilot, kept looking back at the couple behind him as he fought to control the stricken aircraft. Cameron managed to find a fire extinguisher and sprayed it on the young man and the woman.

Their screams.

The terrible sound stayed with them until Dougal spotted a clearing and brought the Cessna down. All the way, though, the young couple, burned black, screamed and screamed. She tried to put the memory of the smell out of her mind.

Cameron had made sure she was strapped in tight and he’d returned to his seat, just seconds before the belly of the plane bumped the ground. Kylie had thought the pilot would make it, but he had hit something on the second bounce and the nose of the aircraft had crumpled in on Dougal and they had flipped upside down. Kylie had hit her head and passed out.

She looked up at Cameron.

‘Dougal almost made it, but we hit a termite mound,’ he said. ‘You were out cold and I carried you about thirty metres from the aircraft. I went back, but a fresh fire had started. Dougal was killed outright. The others …’

She felt his hold on her relax and she gripped him with her hand as the faces of the other passengers, the couple who were already on the aircraft when they boarded, came back to her. ‘No, Cameron. There was nothing you could have done for them. I remember. They must have been nearly dead by the time we crashed.’

He looked away from her. ‘They were still screaming when the aircraft exploded.’

She saw the raw skin on his hand and his forearms now, the singed eyebrows and hair. His face was blackened and there was dried blood crusted on the side of his face. He slapped at his leg. She looked at his eyes. They were red, and there were streaks leading from them over his cheeks as though he’d been crying. She wondered if his wounds were worse than she could see, if he was in pain. She hadn’t thought him the crying kind.

Kylie closed her eyes and thought about the young couple. It was the pilot’s brother and his girlfriend. She thought hard for a moment to remember their names. Paul and Julia. He was an ex-Zimbabwean living in New Zealand and she was a Kiwi. They were already on the aircraft when Kylie and Cameron boarded. She had been under the impression they were going to be the only two passengers, and she wondered if Dougal had slipped his brother and girlfriend on board without the owners of the aircraft knowing. She and Cameron had had taken the bench seat at the rear of the aircraft. She remembered the hot blue vinyl on the backs of her legs, and wondered if being at the rear of the Cessna, just a little further away from where the bomb had gone off, had saved her and Cameron.

She opened her eyes again as her mind processed the scenario. ‘It was Wellington.’ Another fly landed on her. It was big and brown, with scissor-like wings that folded over one another. She slapped at it, hit it, but it just shook itself and flew away. ‘What are these bloody monsters?’

‘Tsetse fly,’ Cameron said. ‘And yes, I think you’re right about Wellington. Our testimony about him trying to kill us in the mine could have put him behind bars for a long time.’

‘Well, he’s added three people to his murder tally.’

Kylie sat up slowly, with Cameron still supporting her. She looked around. ‘Where the hell are we, Cameron?’

‘About ten kilometres east of the crash site.’

‘You carried me
ten
kays?’

He shrugged.

‘Look, I’m no expert in survival, but one thing they always tell us when we’re travelling long distances by road to mines in the outback is that if you have a breakdown to stay with the vehicle. I know Dougal was probably off course, but surely it won’t take the local authorities too long to find the crash site.’

He nodded. ‘They’ve already found it. A helicopter flew over yesterday. It must have landed because it was quite a while before it tracked back over us and …’

‘A helicopter! Are you bloody concussed too? Cameron! Why didn’t you wait, and why didn’t you try and signal it?’

He looked at her and she checked his eyes again. They were different from those that had seen into her soul when he was holding her. These were the eyes of an animal, a predator of some kind, devoid of emotion.

‘I couldn’t get to Julia and Paul. The fire had taken hold, but I grabbed Dougal’s backpack from the rear of the aircraft, and yours. In his bag was a satellite phone. I called my home first, and there was no answer. I called Jess’s cellphone and it was switched off. That’s not like her. That thing’s an extension of her body.’ He sniffed.

‘Cameron, what is it?’ She saw something else in the red glistening eyes now. Pain.

‘I called Charmaine, Jessica’s friend’s mom, at her florist shop. She started crying when she recognised my voice.’

‘Cameron.’

He gritted his teeth and his face contorted in barely suppressed rage. ‘She said Jess was raped and killed, Kylie.’

She reached for him and hugged him, but he was rigid in her embrace. Kylie held him at arm’s length and looked into his eyes.

‘Charmaine said there was no body, although they found the dominee, our local pastor, who was killed by the same man. She said the guy who did it killed himself; he was one of my drivers, Timothy, but I know it couldn’t have been him. He’s no rapist or murderer, though Barrica had suspected him of being one of Wellington’s stooges.’

Kylie’s head throbbed and she was having trouble absorbing all this news. She thought of pretty Jessica and she wanted to believe she was still alive. ‘What about your wife?’

Cameron took a deep breath to steady himself. ‘Dead. They found her body in my
bakkie
, at the bottom of our hill.’

‘My God, Cameron.’ His whole family was gone.

‘I told Charmaine not to tell anyone that I had called her.’

She was injured and they were lost in the African bush. Kylie thought that perhaps Cameron really was concussed. ‘Why, exactly?’

‘Everyone thinks we’re dead,’ he said, ‘including Wellington and the people he works for. I’ve got to get back to South Africa. I won’t believe Jess is dead until I find her. I don’t accept that Timothy killed her or the dominee. Wellington’s behind this and if he killed Jess and wanted people to believe Timothy killed her, he would have left her body for the police to find.’

‘But what would he want with her alive?’ Kylie asked.

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘And if you can’t find her?’

‘Then I’m going to find Wellington and kill him.’

She wondered if the suppressed grief was making him crazy. ‘But he’s in the police lockup, in Barberton.’

‘He escaped,’ Cameron said. ‘Like we feared.’

Kylie put her fingers to her forehead and gingerly touched the bandage. The pain was a constant throb. ‘My parents. They’ll be going out of their minds. I’ve got to call them and tell them I’m alive.’

Cameron nodded. ‘I’ve thought about that. You must. We’ll get to Lusaka and you can fly from there to Johannesburg and then on to Australia. All I ask is that you don’t contact anyone from Global Resources, or the South African police, for as long as you can. Every day you give me is another day for me to find Jess and Wellington.’

‘Cameron –’

‘I sent an SMS to email from the satphone and contacted an old army friend who works for a geological survey company in Lusaka. He called me back and he’s coming to get us. He should be here in a couple of hours. There’s not a lot of battery life left on the satphone, but you should call your parents. Just ask them not to tell anyone.’

‘All right, but I’m coming with you to South Africa.’

C
ameron couldn’t help but fall into a deep sleep after he had showered at his room at the Southern Sun Hotel in Lusaka.

His phone’s ringtone woke him. Dry-mouthed and disorientated, he fumbled for his Nokia and answered. Kylie stirred beside him on the bed and rolled over and blinked a couple of times. A doctor had stitched and rebandaged her leg wound, and the gash on her head had stopped bleeding and was now covered with just a small dressing.

‘Cameron,
howzit
? How are you two doing?’ It was his old army comrade, Attie, who had rescued them.

‘Better, thanks Attie,’ Cameron said. ‘Have you got any news for me?’

Cameron and Kylie had slowly continued to head east through the wilds of Kafue National Park after Cameron had contacted Attie. Kylie had called her parents, whose relief was audible to Cameron standing nearby. They had questioned the wisdom of not telling anyone they were alive, but the beeping of the phone’s dying battery had silenced their argument. They saved the last of the phone’s power to SMS Attie the GPS coordinates of their location once they reached a road running north–south. There Cameron sat them down in the
shade of a leadwood tree and they tried to sleep. Attie, who was already on his way from Lusaka and waiting for another coordinate, used the GPS in his Land Cruiser to find them, two hours later. He had brought them to Lusaka where a friend who managed the Southern Sun had found them rooms.

‘
Ja
, Cameron. That’s why I’m calling. I don’t know how you guys feel about flying right now, but we’ve got a charter going back to Johannesburg in an hour’s time. We’ve got four geologists on board, but there are two spare seats. It’ll be landing at Lanseria.’

‘That sounds good.’ Cameron ran a hand through his hair. Lanseria was Johannesburg’s second airport and from there they might be able to charter a light aircraft to Barberton. ‘But it will just be me on the aircraft.’

Kylie grabbed the phone from him. ‘Attie, it’s Kylie. Thank you, thank you, again. But please make that two of us on the charter.’

Cameron took the phone back. ‘I’ll confirm that later, Attie, but thanks again. I’m heading to the airport now.’

‘You don’t get to make decisions for me just because we’ve slept together.’

He stood and looked down at her. ‘OK. But you can understand me not wanting anything to happen to you.’

‘Damn it, Cameron. Can’t you
tell
that I feel the same way about you? Whatever crazy plan you’ve got for when we get to South Africa, I’m going to be a part of it.’ She got off the bed and walked to him. She put her arms around him and pressed her naked body against his. ‘I want to help you find Jessica,’ she said, her tone softer and quieter, ‘but you have to prepare yourself for the worst. Whatever happens, though, we’ll get him.’

‘Yes. We will.’

*

Luis ended the call to an impatient Coetzee, who clearly had no desire to give him more than the barest details about the deaths of Kylie Hamilton and Cameron McMurtrie. Luis had lost family and
friends and was still coming to terms with the loss of his wife, but the news about the two people who had helped him so much was like salt poured in fresh wounds.

At an internet cafe in Inhambane, where he had returned after finishing his business with the drill rig, he had found a string of news reports but he could not believe the aircraft crash was an isolated accident. Cameron’s wife and daughter had also been killed. Luis, better than most, knew how the Zimbabwean thought and operated. ‘Wellington,’ he said to himself.

‘Who, Father?’ Jose asked him from the next computer. He was researching something for a school assignment.

‘Nothing,’ Luis said to his son. ‘I am finished here.’ In every sense of the word, he thought as he paid the woman at the counter for the use of her machines. He and Jose walked out onto the street, dodging South African tourists, a woman hawking peanuts and locals going about their business. Luis felt his spirits flag.

‘It’s good to have you back,
Pai
,’ Jose said, using the familiar term for father.

He smiled at the boy. Luis’s cellphone rang and he took it from the pocket of his trousers. He couldn’t believe the name that flashed up on the screen.

‘Cameron!’

Jose looked at him as Luis told the mine manager he had just been reading about his death. Cameron filled him in on what had happened, assuring him that Kylie, too, was alive.