Trackers (55 page)

She saw the extension of his arm, a
weapon. Long and thin.

The outstretched arm jerked.

Lukas toppled forward.

The sound washed past her, dull.
Lukas collapsed, dropped into a little bundle.

She must go and lift him up.

Keeping her eyes on him, her hands
searched and found the pistol. Grabbed the rifle. Stood erect, so difficult, so
slow. She shuffled down the slope. She saw them leave Lukas there and all walk
over to the quay. There was activity on the deck, but her eyes were fixed on
Lukas.

She walked across the pavement,
across the tarmac of Strand Road. She pushed the pistol down the front of her
jeans, not feeling the scrape of metal against the skin of her belly. She held
the AK in both hands, walked down the road to the gate, across the gravel, her
trainers almost soundless.

She pushed the gate open with her
hip.

The ambulance was in front of her,
that yellow light from the interior, the man busy with something, head down. The
boat and the others were out of sight behind the building.

She cocked the AK as Lukas had showed
her, left hand under, pull the bolt back, let go. Pressed the long safety catch
with her right thumb, from top to bottom. In the ambulance the man heard the
metallic clicks, looked up, saw her. He was coloured, middle-aged. He had a
black fringe. Long. A dark mole on his forehead, above the left eye, big and
unsightly. His jaw dropped.

She pointed the AK at him. He put his
hands up. 'No.
Asseblief!
Pleading.

She stopped. She could see Lukas. He
lay tipped forward, still half kneeling, his head on the concrete, turned to
her as though resting. The blood shone in the light, a wide dark red puddle.
One eye was open, white and staring. The other eye was destroyed, horrifying.

Something tore inside her, a world
fell away.

Rajkumar sweated, dark stains on his
back and under his arms, clicked on the
Sent
Items
folder, Mentz stood behind him.

There were messages.

'Thank God,' he said, and opened them
one after the other.

She heard them coming, the noise of
something moving on the concrete.

The wheels of the stretcher.

She took two steps to the ambulance
and got in. The man with the long fringe stared at her in fear, hands raised
defensively. 'I'm just the doctor.'

She moved right to the back corner,
beside the sliding window to the driver's cab. She poked the doctor in the ribs
with the barrel, so that he had to shift forward on the bench.

Then they were there, five of them,
guns slung over their shoulders. One held a drip high, four handled the
stretcher. A shape lay on it under blankets, beard, hair peppered with grey.

The carriers saw her. Shock like shadows crossed their faces.

The patient followed their frozen stares, to her. He turned
his head slowly. And looked at her. Pale, sunken, black eyes, lined, contoured
features, beard, face, an eternity before it sank in.

She knew him.

Fragments tumbled through her mind: bits, pieces, words, a splintered
mirror that became whole. She saw, she rejected, she tried again, she
understood, dizzy, synapses flashed and fired and crackled, an impossible
reality that eventually made sense.

The doctor's whispers, respectful, pleading. 'Please don't
shoot.'

Brought to her senses, Milla took a deep breath. 'Put him
in,' she said.

No one moved.

Milla moved the barrel of the gun to the side panel. Pulled
the trigger. The noise inside deafening.

They jumped. Someone bellowed outside. The smell of cordite
in her nostrils. She leaned forward, pressed the weapon to the patient's head.

'Put him in.' She didn't know her own voice.

They picked up the stretcher, and pushed it slowly in.

The big
man appeared at the ambulance door, pistol and silencer in his hand.

Rajkumar and Mentz stood at the back of the Ops Room
listening. Over the radio, the racket of the Super Lynx 300 turbo engines.
Mazibuko's voice: 'On our way, ETA seven minutes.'

Quinn's voice was calm, every word clear. 'Major, I have a new
directive, repeat, I have a new directive. Shipment may be human cargo, of
extreme value, order is to intercept and protect, protect at all costs, please
confirm.'

'Roger, Ops, target is possible human cargo, extreme value,
intercept and protect at all costs.'

Rajkumar looked hopefully at Mentz, wishing she would share
the secret with him. She said nothing, her expression grim.

'Roger, Major. Be aware of a black
BMW X5, Advocate Tau Masilo and a member of the CIA are en route, five or six
minutes away, unarmed, they will wait for visual confirmation of your arrival,
at the corner of Portswood and Beach Roads, and approach drop zone from the
east, down Beach, please confirm.'

'Roger, Ops, black BMW X5, their ETA
five minutes, coming down Beach Road from the east after our arrival.'

Silence.

Rajkumar couldn't keep it in any
more. He whispered to the Director: 'Haidar means "lion", that's all
I could find.'

'Try "lion sheikh",' she
said provokingly, the suspense a mask.

At first he stood processing the clue
of a phonetic 'lion's cheek' to the context of' sheikh'. He walked quickly to
one of the vacant computers, set the web browser to a search engine, and typed
in the words.

The third link was the one that made
his eyes pop. He clicked on it. Arabic script, a simple web page. He had to
scroll down before he saw the photo, the familiar face, and the English
translation.
From The Lion Sheikh Usama Ibnu Laden May Allah
Preserve Him.

'Shit,' said Rajhev Rajkumar, the
sibilant long and drawn-out.

The big man outside the ambulance,
the one who had shot Lukas, had a heavy face, as if carved from granite, thick
bushy eyebrows above eyes filled with hate, as he lowered the pistol.

Milla, right at the back, stared back
with contempt.

The doctor took the drip and hung it
from a hook, folded his hands on his lap. The bearers retreated.

'Lukas's money,' said Milla.

No one responded.

She lifted the AK, brought it down on
the patient's face, on his nose and mouth, a convulsive movement, the doctor
gasped, the big man roared, her voice above everything, screaming, rage verging
on hysteria, 'Bring Lukas's money!'

More hesitation. Then the big man
shouted at someone out of sight: 'Bring the silver case.'

'And his rucksack,' she said with
more control this time.

'Take the rucksack off him,' the big
one ordered.

Blood from the patient's nose soaked
into the grey-black moustache. The doctor looked at it, looked at her in
question. She shook her head.

A case was passed to the big man,
another pair of astounded eyes peered at her, then disappeared.

'Open it.'

He took a step up to the ambulance,
put the shiny aluminium case down on the floor, undipped it, turned it around,
lifted the lid.

Dollars, tightly packed.

She nodded.

The rucksack arrived. He took it, put
it beside the case.

She saw the blood spatters on Lukas's
bag, the flecks of tissue. A sound slipped from her throat. She looked up, saw
the contemptuous eyes under the bushy eyebrows. She lifted the AK, leaned
forward as she had been taught, and shot the big man, three cracking staccato
shots, jerking him back and away, staggering, falling. The doctor called to
Heaven, the patient tried to lift his arms from under the blanket, and she
turned the weapon, pressed it against him, and said: 'Drive now. Drive.'

The bearers outside the open doors
didn't move.

Again she hit the patient with the
muzzle of the gun, against the cheekbone. The doctor shouted, in desperation:
'Get someone, please, someone to drive.'

One of the bearers came to his
senses, a young man, he disappeared, she felt the springs of the vehicle
budge, the front door slam shut, the window behind her slide open.

'Where to?' he asked.

In the distance, the sound of
helicopters.

The parking lot of the Tyger Valley
shopping centre was dark and deserted.

She gestured to the driver to drive
to the Renault. The patient's eyes were on her, intense. Filled with hatred.

They stopped beside her car.

'Open up,' she said to the doctor.

He hesitated.

'I want to get out,' she said. 'Then
you can go.'

(Form 92)

February 2010

Reporting found persons must be
cancelled by personally

notifying the police station
where the person was reported as

missing of his/her return, or
by the investigation official

investigating the missing person's
case. A SAPS 92 is used to

effect the cancellation on the
relevant Circulation System.

South African Police
Services Directive, 2008 (verbatim)

He loved to
watch her.

Margaret stood on the other side of
the breakfast counter, ten to seven in the morning, already showered and
dressed. Her long, reddish- brown hair in a plait, pale pink lipstick, an
almost invisible sprinkling of freckles on her cheeks. A head shorter than he
was, but tall for a woman. And full-bodied. With the slender forearms and
delicate hands that now constructed the sandwiches with so much practised
skill: a lick of mayonnaise, lettuce leaves, half peppadews, fine rounds of
sweet cucumber and, finally, the slivers of roast chicken, before she sliced
her creation cleanly with the knife, straight across, precisely in half.

He sat and ate
his yoghurt and muesli.

She placed each sandwich in its own
transparent bag and looked up at him with her oddly-coloured eyes, the one
bright blue, the other brown, flecked with speckles of gold dust.

'So how does
it feel?'

'Strange,'
said Mat Joubert. 'A bit nervous.'

'I can believe it.' Her English
accent was careful, the way her tongue worked the Afrikaans charming.
'Everything will be fine. Ready for your coffee?'

'Please.'

She turned towards the coffee
machine. He admired her curves in denim jeans, the white heels. Forty-eight,
and easy on his eye. 'You look sexy,' he said.

'You too.'

He smiled, because it was good to
hear her say it. She poured coffee into a mug, walked around the counter, right
up against him, kissed him on the cheek. 'Jacket and tie have always suited
you.' She had picked it all out, Saturday at Canal Walk, because he was never
good with clothes. The scale of the search was always so discouraging - it was
a constant struggle to find something that fitted his unusually large frame.
But this time he
had
to, because
at Jack Fischer and Associates the dress code was a little different from what
he'd been accustomed to over the last few years.

She pulled the milk and artificial
sweetener closer. 'Mat Joubert, Private Eye. It's got a certain ring to it.'

'Senior Security Consultant,' he
added. 'Sounds like some guy sitting at a gate with a clipboard.' He shook one
sweetener pill into his coffee, added milk and stirred.

She walked across to the sink with
his yoghurt bowl. 'I have to go to Stellenbosch. Michelle's washing ...' Her
daughter, third-year drama student, absent-minded and eccentric. 'I have to be
back by twelve, for the buyers.'