Red Earth

by Tony Park

  ‘Babe?’

  She recoiled at her pet name but didn’t look back at him. Instead she went to the chopper, opened her door and climbed into the pilot’s seat.

  Banger came to her. He looked down at her with his pale green eyes. His colouring was odd, exotic, a legacy of his Hungarian father and Irish mother, he’d told her. His parents had come to South Africa in the seventies and Angus had been born in Durban, like her. They’d met at Joe Cools on the beach.

  ‘Babe, I’m sorry. The old dude, he says I should stay here with you.’

  Nia snorted. She hadn’t really thought of Mike as an ‘old dude’. She looked over to where he was reaching into his Land Rover, through the right rear door. He was tall, rangy, with dark hair turning to grey. He pulled out a gun case, unzipped it, and extracted what looked like a heavy-bore hunting rifle. He placed the rifle down and then found a leather cartridge belt in the vehicle which he buckled on. He had the air about him of a man who knew what he was doing. His face was longish, angular, sort of handsome. She wondered, indeed, how old he was. Maybe mid-forties, she thought, perhaps fifteen years her senior, but to Banger, who was two years younger than her, that would qualify as ‘old’.

  She looked back to Banger. Like her, he surfed and worked out in the gym. He was tanned and ripped and could have been on the cover of a fitness magazine. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Yeah? You don’t really look it. What are you going to do?’

  ‘I have to wait here until the company can send some fuel. God knows how long that will take. I’m worried about the baby, Angus.’

  He nodded. ‘Me too. And I’m worried about you. You put your life at risk today.’

  She felt the anger rise in her again. ‘You put your life at risk every day. I know how many security guys get shot in this country. You were probably safer when you were in Afghanistan.’

  He grinned. ‘Probably.’

  Banger had been a policeman but had left the service after being passed over for promotion to detective. Like many South Africans with police or military experience he’d gone to Afghanistan to work as a civilian security contractor, providing protection to VIPs and riding shotgun on convoys out of Pakistan for the American and NATO war machine. When the war had de-escalated he’d come home.

  ‘We should wait here for the cops,’ Nia said.

  Mike was walking over to the helicopter. ‘You’re right, we should,’ he said, breaking into their conversation. ‘But there are kids in trouble in that car. We can’t just wait. I’m going to pick up their trail, see if I can get eyes on them.’

  ‘You won’t try and stop them, do something silly, will you?’ Nia felt a rush of concern for the man, perhaps because he had been the only person to come to her assistance when she needed someone.

  ‘I can back you up,’ Banger said.

  Mike looked to Banger’s little hatchback car. ‘Not in that. The road just goes from bad to worse up here. If they’ve headed into the hills, rather than down to the motorway, you won’t get more than another kilometre.’

  ‘Dude’s got an AK, bru, and it’s two against one. You sure you’re up for those odds?’

  ‘I’m going to find them, not start a gunfight,’ Mike said.

  Nia folded her arms. ‘Well, there’s nothing I can do. When I’ve refuelled I can go have a look for the Fortuner. Until then, you two sort this out between yourselves.’

  Banger looked into her eyes. ‘Are you OK, seriously?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘I’m going,’ said Mike.

  Banger went to his patrol car, reached under the front seat and pulled out a .38 special revolver. He brought it to Nia.

  ‘What’s this?’ she asked him.

  ‘My back-up weapon.’

  ‘Legal?’

  Banger’s mouth crinkled into a half-grin. ‘Ish.’

  She took the pistol. ‘I hope I don’t have to use it.’

  Banger kissed her.

  Mike was already in the Land Rover, starting the engine. Banger jogged around to the passenger side and climbed in. He blew Nia another kiss and she smiled back at him.

  *

  Mike drove as fast as he dared on the corrugated red earth road. After a couple of kilometres, though, he saw a stationary car, an Audi, with three doors open. He slowed. It had been a black Q5 that had dropped the white man at the Mona market.

  Banger was texting on his phone, smiling to himself. Mike guessed he was communicating with the helicopter pilot. Lucky guy, he thought. She’d been gutsy to stay close to the hijacked Toyota when people were shooting at her. ‘Check this out,’ he said.

  Banger looked up, put away the phone and drew the nine-millimetre from his chest holster and cocked it. ‘Look how that car’s sitting low. Its tyres have been shot out. Take it easy, man.’

  Mike nodded. As he came closer he saw the bullet holes and the bare metal scratches where bullets had scored the paintwork. He stopped the Land Rover and got out, taking his rifle with him.

  Banger approached the Audi with his pistol up, his left hand wrapped around his right. Mike could hear a hiss, like a snake, and saw the puddle that darkened the earth under the radiator. He sniffed the air.

  ‘Explosives,’ Banger said, then pointed to a patch of burnt grass and disturbed dirt. ‘Grenade.’

  ‘You get many grenade attacks in your line of work?’ Mike asked.

  ‘I did in Afghanistan.’

  Mike nodded. The kid was brash, cocky, and pumped up from long hours at the gym, maybe steroids, but he did have some experience. Mike scanned the ground and started in a circle around the car, while Banger checked the vehicle itself.

  ‘Nothing inside,’ Banger said.

  Mike dropped to one knee and ran his pinched thumb and forefinger along a stem of flattened grass. He held his hand up to Banger when the security man came over to him.

  ‘Blood.’

  Mike touched his fingers together a few times. ‘Fresh.’ He stood, placing himself so the tracks were between him and the sun. ‘One man, dragging a leg, headed that way.’

  ‘Back towards the chopper, where we just came from?’

  Mike looked back up the road, thinking the same thing as Banger. ‘We didn’t see him.’

  ‘Shit, he could be headed for Nia. If we didn’t see him he must have been hiding from us.’

  Mike continued his circuit, moving faster now, and found the tracks of two other men. He followed them, tracing the course of the battle. He stopped and bent to pick up a couple of bullet casings. ‘5.56-mil. R5s, fired in three-round bursts. These guys meant business. I was at a rhino horn deal that went wrong at the Mona market this morning. There was an Audi like this one on the scene. These could be poachers.’

  Banger followed in his wake. ‘This is hectic. I’m getting a bad feeling about it.’

  ‘I agree.’ Mike found the tread patterns of the Toyota Fortuner, the copper-coloured casings of Russian ammunition, from an AK-47, the same weapon Nia had seen pointed at her.

  Then he saw the body.

  ‘Sure,’ said Banger, coming up next to him. ‘Someone wanted this oke gone.’

  The man had been stitched by an R5, maybe two judging by the number of bullet holes. Mike knelt by him and placed a hand on his throat. The skin was already cool. The man was in his early twenties and he looked familiar. Mike searched his pockets and noticed, while doing so, a wound in his shoulder, and a balled, blood-soaked T-shirt. He found a wallet and a driver’s licence. ‘Joseph Ndlovu. He was the car thief.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Banger asked.

  ‘I know his cousin, the kid who lives back at the hut where the shooting was. I was at a court case his cousin attended. Joseph’s a career hijacker and he might have come here looking for help. Themba, what have you done?’ he whispered to himself.

  Banger loo
ked at the car tracks that led towards the distant hills. ‘So the kid, the one in the school uniform, was the apprentice. Looks like he got away with the wheels, as well as the kidnapped baby and a schoolgirl.’

  Mike didn’t want to think that Themba had turned bad again, but he had to admit it was a possibility. But where had he – or Joseph – got a hand grenade, and who were the men who had been shooting at them? Maybe the grenade was theirs and one of them got shot while trying to throw it? Mike cast about further and saw two sets of tracks heading to the hills. ‘Two guys went after the Fortuner on foot.’

  ‘That’s crazy.’

  Mike stood and looked around him. Yes, it was crazy, like so much that went on in this country, this world.

  Banger looked back down the road. ‘I’m worried about Nia. If some wounded guy with an assault rifle was headed her way and decided to hide from us instead of seeking help, then she’s in danger.’

  Mike didn’t know if that was the case or not. He didn’t know what to think about this day or this scene. There was no sound of police sirens on the wind, so for now they were on their own. If he went after the Fortuner in his Land Rover he would soon encounter two armed men on foot. They would, he presumed, take his vehicle by force.

  ‘Take the Land Rover back to the chopper,’ Mike said.

  ‘What? Why? No, man, we stick together.’

  ‘Go check on your girlfriend, make sure she’s safe. Tell her to leave her chopper; it’s got no fuel so even if someone knew how to fly it they couldn’t steal it. Fetch her, then come back for me. I’m going forward, on foot.’

  Banger pulled his shoulders back, squaring up to him, as if he was going to argue some more. They stared each other down, but Banger broke eye contact first, looking back the way they had come, then once more to Mike. ‘You’re not just a bird researcher, are you?’

  ‘Let’s just say you’re not the only one here who’s been in combat. Go to her.’

  Banger nodded and went to the Land Rover and started it. ‘Good luck,’ he called.

  ‘Be careful,’ said Mike. ‘Remember that other guy’s still out there somewhere.’

  Mike watched the Land Rover disappear over the hill, then turned his eyes back to the tracks. He set off at a slow jog, rifle at the ready.

  *

  ‘Help me, please,’ the man called.

  Nia licked her lips and climbed out of the pilot’s seat of her helicopter. She had seen the man coming, and it was clear even before his plaintive call that he was in trouble. He was nursing his left arm with his other hand and dragging his left leg. Nia opened the rear of the chopper and unfastened the first aid kit from its place on the bulkhead.

  She started walking towards him, the first aid kit in her left hand, but the fingers of her right, in her pocket, closed around the grip of the .38 revolver Banger had left with her. As the distance between them closed she could see that the left side of his face, and his clothing on that side, were blackened as though they’d been burned. His face was streaked red.

  ‘Help me,’ he said again.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Ibrahim. I was driving down the road when this madman in a Fortuner hit my car, trying to get past me.’

  ‘I was following a stolen Fortuner. A white one?’

  The man nodded. They met and he staggered; Nia took her right hand out of the pocket of her flight suit and put an arm around him to support him.

  ‘There was a young man, a boy really, and a girl in school uniform, and they had a child with them,’ the man croaked.

  ‘Yes, that’s them, for sure,’ Nia said. ‘Here, sit down. Let me look at you.’

  ‘I’m fine. Can we get to a hospital, though? Perhaps you could fly your helicopter?’

  ‘You don’t look fine to me at all. Besides, my chopper’s out of fuel. I’m waiting for a resupply. I’m hoping the police will be here soon as well. You can tell your story to them. What else happened to you? Have you been burned?’

  ‘The police are coming?’ he asked.

  Nia shrugged. ‘Today, with what’s happened in Durban? Who knows? But they know where I am, and an ambulance showed up at least to take away an off-duty policeman who was here, so someone’s got to make a report some time.’

  She looked him up and down. This Ibrahim, with his designer stubble, looked like a nightclub bouncer or someone’s hired muscle. He wore a gold chain over a black T-shirt and black jeans. Unusually, for the weather, he wore a charcoal sports coat, the left side of which was peppered with tiny holes. When his coat flapped open a little she saw that his side was not only burned, but his shirt was sticky with blood.

  ‘That car,’ he pointed to Banger’s security company vehicle, ‘where is its owner?’

  Nia took a step back. There was something in his eyes or, more to the point, nothing in them. They were dark, empty, and at the same time calculating as he looked around him, through her. ‘Nearby. He’ll be back any minute.’

  ‘I need to get going.’ He eyed the car again.

  ‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Let me see to your injuries at least. You nearly fell a minute ago.’

  ‘No, it’s fine.’

  He turned his back on her. A chill passed through her, raising tiny hairs on her arms and the back of her neck. This guy had not simply been in a car accident, and he was avoiding her questions.

  ‘Stay right where you are.’ Ibrahim flicked his head around and looked back over his shoulder. She saw his eyes go to her hand, which was reaching into the pocket of her flight suit.

  His right hand was a blur as it arced through the air and Nia’s head rocked from the closed-fist blow to the side of her face. The next thing she knew she was on her backside and Ibrahim was standing over her, a pistol pointed down at her, between her eyes.

  ‘If that’s a gun in your pocket, take it out, very slowly, fingertips on the handgrip.’

  Nia took a deep breath to stop from letting out a sob and did as he told her, reaching slowly into the pocket of her flight suit and drawing out the pistol.

  ‘Good, now toss it to my feet.’ She threw the gun and he ordered her to put her hands on her head. ‘So, you’re out of fuel?’

  She blinked and nodded.

  ‘You’re waiting for a resupply?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good, then we will wait together. I will be inside the helicopter, with a gun pointed at you. When the driver arrives with the fuel you will tell him you are taking me to hospital. You will not give him any signal that anything is wrong, or I will kill you and the driver. I would like to have you fly me in this helicopter, but I can make do with a truck. The choice is yours, either to save your life and the life of an innocent man driving a truck, or for you and him to die at the same time. Do you understand?’

  Nia gave another brief nod.

  The man coughed and winced at the pain the action produced. ‘If the man who drives this security car comes back you will say nothing to him, nor give him any sign that anything is wrong here, or I will kill you both before he has time to draw his gun.’

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked him.

  ‘I am a man seeking to reclaim something that was stolen, that is all. I have no need to hurt you, but you made a mistake by asking too many questions and trying to pull a gun on me. I acted in self-defence.’

  Nia scoffed at that. ‘I don’t know what you’re up to, but you should know that there really are police on the way here. They’ll be here any minute, probably before my fuel, which has to come all the way from Durban. The cops will be coming from Mtubatuba. There’s already been a policeman shot here and you know how cops get when one of their own is injured.’

  The man seemed to weigh up her words, rocking his head slightly from side to side as he absorbed the news. ‘I believe you.’

  ‘Good.’

  He smiled. ‘No, no
t so good. I think I’ll have to kill you now, before the police arrive.’

  Nia heard the clatter of a diesel engine. Ibrahim picked up the pistol from the ground and tucked it in his trousers, then knocked her hands from her head and lifted her to her feet by grabbing a handful of her hair. He pressed his pistol into her back and retreated to the helicopter, taking cover behind it.

  The white Land Rover, Mike the vulture man’s vehicle, crested the hill. Nia could see only one face through the windscreen – Banger’s. Her relief turned quickly to dread. This maniac would kill Banger, and her, in a heartbeat.

  Ibrahim climbed into the rear of the helicopter, awkwardly squeezing into the cramped rear seat until he was lying on it, facing her. He pulled the door closed, but left it slightly ajar. ‘If he stops, tell him to be on his way. Don’t give him any signal that you’re in danger. Same deal as before: I’ll kill you both.’

  She nodded. Banger drove off the road and parked a few metres from the helicopter. Nia started to walk towards him.

  ‘Stop,’ Ibrahim hissed. She complied. ‘Don’t walk any further from me or I’ll shoot you in the back. If you try anything I will kill him and then come for you.’

  Nia gave an almost imperceptible nod. ‘Hi there, no need to worry about me, man, I’m fine, don’t need any help,’ she called to Banger as he climbed out of the Land Rover. She didn’t want Angus running to her and throwing his arms around her.

  He stopped and looked at her, momentarily puzzled. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘My chopper’s run out of fuel and I’m just waiting for a delivery here. But like I say, everything is totally fine.’

  ‘Really?’ He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Hundred per cent. No problem at all, whatsoever. Just another ordinary day at the office.’

  ‘Serious?’ Nia saw Banger’s eye drop to the first aid kit that she’d taken from the helicopter then dropped on the ground.

  ‘Yes, man, very serious.’

  ‘Do you want me to take you back towards town?’

  Nia shook her head. ‘No, I’d be killed for sure if I left this chopper alone.’