Dust Devils

by Roger Smith

  The doctor crossed to a small desk by the window and booted up a laptop. He heard the cricket warble of a dial-up connection as she went online. "It is very slow, so you must be patient." She took some clothes from a wooden chair and threw them onto the bed. Pointed to the chair. "Please." Zondi sat, lowering his duffel bag to the floor.

  "I'll go shower," she said and disappeared into the bathroom and shut the door.

  Zondi heard the spurt of water and had to quell images of her wet, naked flesh. As he slid the chair closer to the computer the butt of the gun in his waistband stabbed into his abdomen. He removed the weapon and put it on the table beside the keyboard.

  The face of the computer was anonymous. No screensaver. Files neatly organized, in contrast to the room. Zondi called up Google. The Internet connection was as slow as the Belgian had promised but it didn't take Zondi long to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

  As he suspected, the old man who'd gunpointed the girl was Earl Robert Goodbread. Just about recognizable from the photograph taken at his trial sixteen years ago. And the second man was his son, Robert Dell. The fugitive family murderer. Looking very different now from the mugshot on the monitor, where he was all long hair and patchy beard and wild eyes.

  Zondi knew from the Ben Baker investigation that Dell's wife had worked for the fat man. Was screwing him on the side, in fact. It wasn't hard to join the dots. She'd known something that could incriminate the minister or his dog. Inja killed the woman and her children by smashing their car off a mountain road. Was sloppy in his work and left Dell alive. Then tried to cover his tracks by framing Dell. Goodbread broke Dell out of jail and they were coming after Inja. The girl was the bait. Easy for Zondi to figure out what had happened. No idea what he would do next.

  Zondi shut down the search engine and deleted the browser history, erasing his tracks. He sat a moment and massaged his temples.

  The bathroom door opened and the doctor emerged, followed by a tendril of steam and the smell of jasmine soap. She wore a white bathrobe, brushing her wet hair straight back from her face as she walked.

  Her eyes flicked across to the gun lying beside the computer. "So what are you, Disaster Zondi? Some kind of a gangster, or some kind of a cop?"

  He reached for the 9mm and made it disappear beneath his shirt. "I used to be in law enforcement. Now I'm just another citizen."

  "You are sure?" She sat down on the bed, staring at him, unblinking.

  "Yes."

  She found a box of Gitanes beside the bed and lit one. Her eyes matched the blue of the pack. The room was very quiet and he could hear the cigarette paper ignite. Heard her inhale and exhale. Saw her eyes on his duffel bag beside the chair. "Where are you staying?"

  "Nowhere."

  "There is a room empty, next door. A doctor went back to Italy. His replacement arrives only in one week. I'm sure nobody will mind if you use it for a night or two." She scratched beneath the clutter on her bedside table, squinting through cigarette smoke, and found a key tied to a piece of card. "Here."

  He stood and took the key. "Thank you."

  The doctor shrugged. "It is nothing." She crossed her long legs, the bathrobe falling away. Looking at him with those clear blue eyes.

  And there it was. He felt the room tip. Felt himself sliding toward her. Zondi pulled his eyes away from hers and grabbed the edge of the desk, to anchor himself.

  "I appreciate your help, Martine."

  She shrugged again, sucking on the cigarette. Inhale. Exhale.

  Zondi shouldered his bag and walked toward the door, opened it, turned to her. She sat with her back to him, staring out the window at the sun low over the red hills. He went out and shut the door.

  Zondi slumped behind the wheel of the Ford, on a ridge overlooking Inja's compound, parked so the low sun didn't flare off the truck's windshield. He waved away a fly, drawn to the sweat that ran down his face and pooled beneath his armpits, gluing the shirt to his back. His own stink mixing with the vapors rising from the Ford's torn upholstery.

  An image of the doctor floated in from nowhere, her full lips pouting as she sucked on the cigarette. He forced himself to imagine those lips in twenty years' time, no longer plump, etched with deep furrows, her beauty a faded memory. It didn't work. He wanted her. Simple as that.

  Zondi sighed and shifted in his seat. He looked down at the kraal wishing he had a pair of binoculars. No movement since two vehicles had driven in and parked outside the main house a half-hour before. He watched the sun sinking ever lower. Knew that once darkness fell his plan would be useless. He laughed. What fucking plan?

  When he left the hospital and found this vantage point, he'd convinced himself that Inja would lead him to the girl. The dog would have men all over the valley, searching for Goodbread and Dell and their captive. They were hidden somewhere around here and they would have been seen, the way everything was seen in this valley of spies. All Zondi would have to do was follow Inja. But in the dark he'd need to use the Ford's headlamps and that would make him a perfect target.

  Zondi sat up. Three cars were on the move. Inja's Pajero and two trucks. The warlord and his army, bumping away from the compound toward the gravel road that circled the low hills like a frayed belt.

  Zondi started the Ford. It moaned and spluttered, finally caught in a smoky rattle. He took hold of the steering wheel. Jerked his hands away. The cracked plastic was baked hot as a brick in a kiln. Cursing, he grabbed the wheel again, gritted his teeth, and set off after the convoy.

  The Pajero drove along a cattle track on the fringes of the valley, where the poorest scratched a living from the plundered land. Inja sat up front, heard the wheels drumming on the sun-baked soil. Two gunmen in the car with him. Another six in the vehicles ahead and behind.

  Inja hadn't washed since the ritual. His body, under his clothes, was caked with dried blood. It stank. Rich. Metallic. He held out his hand, fingers spread. Felt the blood cracking as his skin stretched. He wasn't shaking. He was strong again.

  He fired up a spliff, sucked in the smoke. Held it until he thought his lungs would burst, then he let it explode from his mouth in a fragrant cloud. Felt it infuse his blood. Focusing him. His fingers touched the amulet at his throat. A string of beads and dried roots. From the sangoma. For protection. To give him power over the enemy who awaited him. The white men.

  The track died and the cars negotiated boulders and ditches until they came to the base of a hill of stone. One of Inja's men sat on a rock, AK-47 resting across his knees. Guarding an old, emaciated man, in torn khaki overalls and tire sandals, who squatted on the ground, hunched in on himself, empty earlobes brushing his shoulders.

  Inja cracked the door and stepped down, ordnance clanking as his soldiers joined him. Inja's gunman stood, head bowed in greeting. The old man didn't move, stared off into the gathering gloom. Inja heard soft scuffs as a trio of skinny sheep appeared, searching the barren soil for feed.

  "What did he see, this old one?" Inja asked, nodding at the shepherd.

  "Induna, he says he was grazing his sheep down near Bourke's Cutting and he saw a truck. Two white men and a young girl. One of ours. They hid the truck and climbed up to a cave."

  "Stand, old man," Inja said.

  The shepherd stood. The old bastard couldn't meet Inja's eyes. "Is this true? What you saw?"

  Nodding, head bowed. "It is true, Induna."

  Inja pointed at the sheep. "These are yours?"

  "Yes, Induna. They are mine."

  "You have more?"

  "No, Induna. Only these."

  Inja drew his pistol and shot one of the sheep in the head. The animal toppled to the ground and the old man sighed. A sound of infinite suffering.

  "Tell me the truth, grandfather. What else did you see?"

  "I saw nothing more, Induna."

  The other two sheep had scattered at the shot, one of them trying to find shelter under the Pajero, its tick-infested ass sticking up to the sky as its hooves scratched a
t the sand. Inja shot it in the rear and the sheep screamed and tried to burrow deeper under the vehicle. He shot it again and it sagged to the earth. The third sheep bolted.

  Inja said, "Fetch that animal." Two of his men ran off in pursuit. Inja turned back to the shepherd. "Where do you live?" The old man lifted an arm and pointed up toward a mess of mud huts on the slope of the hill. "Did you speak to anybody else of what you saw?"

  "No, Induna."

  The soldiers returned with the sheep. One of them dragged it by the tail. The other had hold of the loose skin at its neck. The sheep bucked and twisted.

  "Let it go," Inja said.

  The men stepped away from the sheep and Inja shot it in the eye. It fell on its side, kicked twice and lay still. The shepherd looked at the dead animal without expression.

  Inja said, "Speak of this and it will be your stinking old backside I shoot next. Understand?"

  The old man nodded, staring off into the darkness that seeped in over the valley. "I am silent, Induna."

  Inja laughed to himself as he holstered his pistol. Yes, now the old bastard was quiet. But when Inja was a runt of a boy, men like this had scorned him. Mocked him when he fell on his ass during the stick-fighting contents. Called him a mongrel dog. Said that only incest could have resulted in such a poor specimen of manhood.

  Inja walked back to the Pajero and one of his men held the door open for him. The SUV sat low as his soldiers joined him. "Let us go hunt us some white meat," Inja said.

  The driver started the Pajero and they bumped across the rutted land, the other vehicles falling in behind. Inja saw the fat moon inching its way up over the hills. A wedding moon. At its fullest tomorrow night. The night of his nuptials.

  Dell lay with his eyes closed, trying to bring the faces of his wife and children into focus, but they remained at a distance. Blurred. Instead he saw Ben Baker's thick white hands on Rosie's brown body.

  He felt a nudge and opened his eyes to darkness. Barely made out the shape of the girl crouching over him. She handed Dell the binoculars and pointed toward the entrance of the cave, the rocks haloed by silver moonlight.

  She crossed to his father who lay slumped against the wall, the rifle at his side. Dell could hear him fighting for breath and knew things were bad when he saw the old man's lips weren't wrapped around a cigarette. Heard him moan and mutter.

  The girl tore a strip of cloth from the hem of her dress and wet it with water from the plastic bottle. She wiped Goodbread's forehead, wiped at the blood and mucus that clotted his mouth. The girl spoke softly in Zulu, soothing the old man. Dell heard a word he understood. Tata. Grandfather. Goodbread grabbed at her wrist and he tried to fight her for a second, then he sank back as she whispered to him.

  Dell went to the mouth of the cave. Crouched down with the glasses and scanned the landscape made bright by the moon that rose big as a soup plate.

  Burning up. Like the flames of hell were licking at his flesh. A face coming at him. Black skin, silver light on the high cheekbones. A mouth speaking that language of clicks.

  No longer in the cave, Goodbread rushed a kicked down door in a ghetto house outside Johannesburg. Surging with the squad of Zulu killers. Another door opened behind him. He spun and fired, hearing the familiar conversation of the AK-47. A black girl, stepping out of a room, holding a baby. Trying to speak around blood. Couldn't. Folded. The baby fell on its back onto the stone floor, pedaling its yellow-brown sausage limbs. Howling.

  Goodbread shouting, "Hold your fire!" Reaching down for the naked, bawling infant.

  But one of the Zulus beat him to it. Picked the baby up by a leg and swung it, pulping its brains against the wall. Goodbread shot the man in his laughing mouth.

  Chaos.

  A clusterfuck of photographers and news crews fought their way into the house. Flashbulbs detonating in Goodbread's face as he and the Zulus fled in an unmarked truck.

  Goodbread struggled, strong hands gripping his wrists. "Shhhhh, grandfather. Be still." Felt cool water on his forehead.

  But still back in 1994. A few months before the South African elections. The last kick of the dying mule that was apartheid. Faceless Afrikaners, working in secret – politicians, cops, military – to destabilize the country. Knew their days were numbered if Mandela came to power. Conspiring with the Zulus who had long collaborated with them. A squad of men brought up to Johannesburg from a faraway valley. Men who were birthed into blood. Goodbread led them in the attack on a house full of youth leaders and comrades. The old enemy.

  But no enemy. Just women and a baby. A goddam media ambush. Afterward the Afrikaners and their Zulu allies knew there had to be a sacrifice. To shut the media up. Goodbread had shot one of his own men, and what the hell, he was a foreigner. A glorified goddam mercenary. So they threw him to the wolves.

  The prosecutors, the new guard – blacks and Jews – offered him a deal if he named his superiors. He declined and they sent him down for life. A pimply kid from the U.S. consul came to see him in a Pretoria prison. Told him he was a disgrace to his country. Goodbread laughed in his face and demanded to be taken back his cell. Reckoned it was right and just that he rotted away for the rest of his Godgiven days.

  Goodbread heard a voice calling his name. His son's voice. Goodbread coughed. Clawed his way back from the past. Felt his lungs tear and burn like they were aflame. Puked a mouthful of warm blood down his shirtfront. Old man. Useless goddam old man.

  Heard his son again. Urgent. Spooked. "Headlamps. Coming this way."

  Zondi sat on a rocky ridge in the middle of the eroded plain, the Ford stowed behind an outcrop below him. The moon dangled over the empty landscape. The track Inja's convoy had followed to the shepherd's post lay like a pale scar in the moonlight.

  Again Zondi waited. He'd heard the shouts of interrogation and the gunshots and the screams of the sheep. Knew Inja and his men would have to return this way, there was no passage over the hills that surrounded the plain. So he waited. Uneasy. Too close to old ghosts. He rubbed a hand against the stubble on his jaw, caught the scent of the Sunlight soap still clinging to his skin.

  Thought of his mother. He never saw her alive after he fled the valley and the money he'd dribbled down from Jo'burg hadn't stopped tuberculosis and poverty from taking her. She was buried not far from where he sat. Just the other side of the range of low hills that hunkered before him. Fucking godforsaken place.

  Zondi heard the low growl of engines and headlamps cut through the night, powdery dust motes dancing in their beams. He watched as the vehicles slowed. The Pajero stopped and the trucks fell in beside it. The revving of motors, snatches of shouted Zulu, and then the vehicles moved toward the hill opposite Zondi. The SUV driving straight ahead, the trucks fanning out on its flanks.

  Inja was using the classic beast horn formation so beloved of the Zulus of old. The tactic that had left these plains sticky with British blood. Inja would attack from the center, and the two horns would outflank and surround the targets, cutting off any escape.

  Zondi scrambled down the embankment and started the Ford, the engine grinding before it caught. He set off after the convoy. Running blind. Following the beams that speared the night.

  They were closer. Three sets of headlamps. Dell dropped the glasses and turned. His father knelt, trying to stand. Not making it. The girl whispering to him.

  "We're getting out of here," Dell said.

  Goodbread stared up at Dell, just enough moonlight to see his dead man's face. "Leave me." A torn whisper.

  Dell was tempted. Knew he and the girl stood a better chance if they abandoned Goodbread. But the girl grabbed one of the old man's arms, lifting him. Strong these women. From years of carrying water and gathering firewood, while their men smoked weed and plotted revenge.

  Dell reached down and took Goodbread's other arm and between them they got the old man standing, his arms slung around their shoulders. Dell could feel his father's ribs fluttering like birds, fighting for every breath. />
  They left the cave and started down the slope, feet loosening rocks that clattered down to the valley. The bobbing headlamps were close now. The low growl of the approaching vehicles echoed in the hills. Then a spotlight kicked in, feeling its way up the rocks toward them.

  Inja saw the three people caught in the beam. The old one supported by the man and the girl. "Don't shoot," he shouted out the window of the Pajero, even as he heard a shot coming from the truck to his right. Idiots.

  He shouted again, his voice drowned as the men in the vehicle to his left opened up. Before he could see whether any of the shots had found their target the truck with the spotlight hit a rock and the beam bounced off the trio, scribbling a wild path up the hillside.

  The shooting stopped and Inja climbed half out of the side window of the Pajero, bellowing: "No fucking shooting, I said!"

  He heard the scream of an engine and a light colored pickup appeared from behind a hillock, speeding across the plain. Inja was almost flung from the Pajero as his driver swerved and floored the gas, in pursuit of the truck.

  The lights of the three vehicles glared at Dell from the rearview. The pickup's headlamps danced crazily across the uneven landscape and he could hear rocks tearing at the underbelly of the Toyota. He swerved to avoid an eroded sinkhole, fishtailed, almost lost the truck, fought to find traction on the sand.

  The girl sat at his side, gripping the dash, staring over her shoulder. Muttering some incantation. Maybe she was praying. His father was sprawled across the rear seat, panting like a dog.

  The Toyota vaulted a ridge, all four wheels off the ground. Seemed to hang forever, suspended in space and Dell could see two moons staring down at him like predator's eyes through the bullet-starred windshield. Then the truck hit earth. The girl flew and her head smacked the roof with a dull clang.