Red Earth

by Tony Park

  Themba had been lying down, near Lerato, but now he sat bolt upright. ‘I hear an engine.’

  Mike cocked his head. Themba’s young ears were better than his. ‘I hear it now.’ He stood and moved closer to the road, shielding his eyes from the sun’s glare with his hand. A couple of hundred metres to the east the road made a bend. He saw the dark green bulk of a truck emerge. Mike dropped. ‘Everyone down! It’s the Zimbabwean Army.’

  They all lay in the grass and Mike, who was closest to the road, held his breath as he peered through the yellow stalks in front of him. Half a dozen soldiers dozed in the open rear of the truck and the driver leaned lazily on his steering wheel. As the truck passed them Mike saw a big sign stuck on the back of the vehicle. In bold red lettering on a white background, below a skull and crossbones, were the words, Danger, land mines in this area. Do not walk.

  Once the truck had passed out of sight they all sat up. ‘Hey,’ Nia said, ‘did you see that?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Mike reassured her, ‘this area’s clear. They’re concentrating their work up and down the Mozambican border, which was heavily mined during Zimbabwe’s war of independence.’ Mike stood. ‘I’m going to walk up the road a bit, see if I can see anyone.’

  Just as he set off they heard another vehicle coming. Mike dropped to a crouch, but got to his feet again when he saw a battered Isuzu bakkie heading their way, a cloud of black diesel smoke in its wake. Mike flagged the man down.

  ‘Avuxeni,’ Mike said to the driver.

  ‘Ayeh imjani.’

  ‘Kona,’ Mike said, completing the greeting, telling the man he was well. He switched to English. ‘Please, can you take my friends and me?’

  ‘Where do you wish to go?’

  ‘Do you know Fish Eagle Lodge?’

  The driver rubbed the grey stubble on his chin. ‘I do, but it is far. I can take you there, for a price.’

  ‘I have money,’ Nia said.

  Lerato took Hassan into the front passenger seat and the rest of them climbed in the back, Themba lying down on an old, haphazardly folded tarpaulin and Nia taking a seat next to Mike. He put his arm around her. It was good to be moving, with the warm breeze on their faces. ‘You’re not worried the children will see us?’

  He laughed. ‘It’s good to have something to joke about. I think they’ve probably guessed.’

  Nia leaned over and whispered in his ear, ‘Themba loves Lerato.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be passing me a note to tell me that?’

  She punched him lightly on the shoulder. ‘Think we can risk a kiss?’

  Mike looked theatrically over his shoulder at the back of Lerato’s head in the cab, then gave a small nod. Nia rolled into him and kissed him hard on the lips. As he savoured the feel and taste of her mouth he glanced to the side and saw that Themba had opened his eyes. The youngster winked at him, then went back to pretending to be asleep.

  When they broke apart, Nia rested her head on his shoulder and Mike closed his eyes. When he opened them again he saw a speck against the blue sky. He put his hand gently on Nia’s and she looked up at him.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Chopper.’

  She looked to where he was pointing. ‘It’s over Kruger, heading parallel to the river. Shit, it’s an American Sea Hawk again.’

  ‘Themba!’

  The lad was already following their gaze.

  ‘Unroll that tarp. We’ve got to cover ourselves.’

  Nia took the end of the tarpaulin from Themba, and with Mike helping they shook out the green sheet and laid it over themselves. The road they were on veered right, away from the Limpopo River.

  Mike peeked out from under the cover. ‘They’re not crossing the river. Even the Americans have to respect international airspace, and they won’t be welcome here in Zimbabwe.’

  ‘I sure hope not,’ Nia said, though she didn’t sound convinced.

  Chapter 30

  Suzanne Fessey took the turnoff to Johannesburg’s O. R. Tambo International Airport. It had been a six-hour drive from Durban. She felt invigorated despite her lack of sleep.

  Bilal, the last surviving member of the team that was supposed to have met her at the Mozambican border and escorted her north to Tanzania, dozed with his head against the passenger-side window.

  Dunn’s ex-wife had given her the lead she needed to catch up, or even overtake the fugitives. She had decided to let the woman live; if she had killed Tracy then Dunn would have found out and known she was closing in on him. The risk was that Mike Dunn might call her, or the real South African police might pay her a visit, but Suzanne balanced that thought with the fact that Dunn had not called her so far, so he was unlikely to ask her for help from Zimbabwe.

  Bilal stirred as she parked her latest stolen car, a Chevrolet Aveo, in the high-rise car park.

  ‘Stay here,’ Suzanne said to Bilal. ‘I’ll go buy our tickets and come back for you. I’m going to change my appearance and then you can do the same, separately from me. The authorities will be looking for a couple.’

  Bilal nodded. He was a foot-soldier, used to following orders. If he objected to being commanded by a woman, as some men did, he gave no sign of it.

  Suzanne headed to the left luggage office and presented a dog- eared, crumpled ticket to the grey-haired attendant.

  He checked the card. ‘Ah, but this bag has been here a long time.’

  ‘I’ve been busy.’

  ‘You’ve been travelling in our beautiful country?’

  Suzanne looked at her wristwatch then at the man. ‘Please, I’m in a hurry, my flight leaves very soon. It’s a small black wheelie bag.’

  The man checked the ticket again and turned and shuffled slowly into the storeroom behind him. Suzanne drummed her fingers on the counter top while she waited. A few minutes later the man returned with her dusty bag.

  ‘It took me a while to find it. Sorry for the wait.’

  ‘No problem.’

  The man worked out the cost and Suzanne paid in cash.

  ‘Would you like a receipt?’

  ‘No, thanks, I must rush.’

  Suzanne walked through the terminal to the nearest toilets. She had stopped at the shopping mall at Pietermaritzburg, outside of Durban on the road to Johannesburg, and bought herself jeans, a couple of T-shirts and some flat shoes. She had ditched her police uniform in a rubbish bin.

  She let herself into a disabled bathroom and locked the door. Then she unlocked the padlock on the bag with the tiny key on her key ring and unzipped it. Inside was an Irish passport in the name of Mary O’Sullivan with her picture on the identity page, though her hair was black. Also in the bag were another change of clothes, underwear, a hand towel, a leather purse containing five thousand US dollars and twenty thousand rand in cash, and a counterfeit credit card also in her assumed name.

  There was also a zip-up toiletry bag. From it Suzanne took a bottle of hair dye and a small plastic contact lenses case. She draped the hand towel around her shoulders, ran some water in the hand basin and set about dying her hair.

  When she was done she rinsed her hair then opened the contact lenses case and changed the colour of her eyes from blue to brown. She stepped back a pace and regarded her new self in the mirror. She wetted a paper towel and wiped black dye from her hairline, then nodded to herself and threw the bottle in the bin. She let herself out and went into the terminal.

  She made her way through Terminal A, where international departures was located, and found the British Airways office. She greeted the woman in blue behind the counter. ‘Do you have any seats available on the next flight to Zimbabwe, please?’

  ‘Harare, ma’am?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Her red-painted nails clattered on her computer keyboard. ‘Only two seats left, ma’am, but they’re both in business class. Wo
uld that be fine?’

  ‘Yes, no problem, I’ll take one.’

  ‘OK, ma’am, I’ll make the booking. Will you be paying by card?’

  ‘Cash.’

  ‘Fine.’

  The woman processed the ticket. It was expensive, but money meant nothing to Suzanne. All that motivated her was getting to her child, and the microchip in Hassan’s little body.

  Suzanne looked around her, ever watchful, expecting at any minute to see a posse of armed police or CIA operatives in plain clothes. She had been trained to fight through tiredness and exhaustion and to draw sustenance from her mission. She tried not to think about the personal losses she had suffered. Her husband had died for the cause and he was in paradise. She loved their son, but she saw him as a warrior as well. His path may very well be martyrdom, but she hoped he would live.

  ‘Are you all right, ma’am?’ the woman asked from behind the counter.

  Suzanne felt the wetness and wiped her eyes, blinking. ‘Death in the family.’

  ‘My deepest condolences,’ said the woman. ‘Is that why you’re going to Zimbabwe?’

  Suzanne felt a surge of strength energise her and banish her tears. ‘Yes, that is why I am going to Zimbabwe.’

  ‘Shame. I’m so sorry.’

  Suzanne nodded her thanks and left. She walked back out to the car park, trailing her wheelie bag. Bilal was leaning against a pillar, reading a discarded newspaper. He looked up as she came nearer and she indicated for him to meet her at the car.

  When they were reunited she bent and unzipped her bag. ‘Get in the car.’

  He did as ordered and took the passenger seat. From the bag Suzanne took out the Tokarev pistol with a silencer attached. After a quick check to make sure no one was in view or close enough to hear the muffled report, she opened the driver’s door and shot Bilal twice in the head.

  Chapter 31

  The Sea Hawk helicopter’s pilot touched down on a gravel access road not far from Crooks’ Corner in the northeast of the Kruger park.

  Jed and Franklin got out and Jed headed towards the South African national parks section ranger responsible for this part of the reserve; the man had guided them into the landing zone by radio. Franklin went to the edge of a grove of almost luminous green fever trees, sat down in the shade, and began stripping and cleaning his MP5.

  Jed and the ranger shook hands. ‘Our forward command post in Durban is now receiving a live satellite feed from over Zimbabwe. As soon as we know where that bakkie with the fugitives on board is headed we’ll be leaving here.’

  ‘You’re going to cross into Zimbabwe?’ the ranger asked.

  Jed winked. ‘I didn’t say that. We could see the people we’re looking for in the back of a truck hiding under a tarpaulin with a FLIR camera on the chopper and we’ve got a bead on them now. We’re watching where they’re headed to and when we get the go from our government, well …’

  ‘OK, then I won’t ask any more questions.’

  Jed clapped him on the arm. ‘Probably a good idea.’

  Jed walked over to Franklin and sat down in the grass beside him. The other man continued cleaning and oiling his weapon.

  ‘We need to talk,’ Jed said after a while.

  Franklin began reassembling the machine pistol. ‘About what?’

  ‘I know you can’t talk about where you were before this.’

  Franklin racked the cocking handle backwards and forwards, testing the slick action.

  ‘It was Syria, right?’

  Franklin looked through the sights, aimed at a tree and pulled the trigger. The hammer clacked on the empty chamber. ‘You said yourself, you know I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘You know more than you’re letting on, more than Chris knows, or more than he’s giving up.’

  Franklin set the gun down, took up the magazine and started thumbing out the bullets into his floppy bush hat, which he had set, upside down, on the ground.

  ‘You’re Muslim.’

  Franklin glanced at him. ‘Says who?’

  ‘I saw you praying, discreetly, closing your eyes and facing Mecca yesterday.’

  ‘Last time I checked it wasn’t a crime.’

  Jed tried another tack. ‘Paulsen’s dead. Tell me about him.’

  ‘What makes you think I knew him?’

  ‘Only reason you’re here is because you know these people. You don’t know Africa, that’s why I’m here. Chris didn’t partner us up just because we both happened to be in South Africa at the same time. Was Paulsen a true believer?’

  The other man paused in his work. ‘True as they come. There’s no one so zealous as a convert.’

  Jed nodded. ‘I get that. I guess he was the right man for this job because he blended in, being white South African and all, but he sure must have stuck out in Syria.’

  ‘They called him Hamza al Sabah, “the ghost”, in Syria. Firstly, because he was as white as a ghost with his blond hair and complexion, and secondly because he sent plenty of nonbelievers to their graves. He was ruthless.’

  ‘More so than anyone else in ISIS?’

  Franklin seemed to ponder the question. ‘Yes. He went through a lot to get to the front line. Naturally, with his looks and background, plenty of the Daesh guys thought he was a plant.’

  ‘Sounds like you were there.’

  ‘You know better than to ask questions, Jed.’

  Jed let it lie.

  Franklin loaded the rest of the magazine then slotted it back into the MP5. ‘Yep, Egil was different. He killed to prove he was a true believer. Soldiers, civilians, women, kids. They put a parade of captives in front of him and he never flinched, though he sweated plenty – beheading thirty people is damn hard work.’ Franklin looked off into the distance, towards the Limpopo. ‘Don’t know if a true undercover agent could have done what they made him do, to prove himself.’

  Jed didn’t have to say any more. If Franklin had been undercover in Syria he might have been through similar tests to Paulsen. Jed could see from the haunted look in his eyes that he, too, must have done some things he would never want to reveal. It accounted, perhaps, for the cold-blooded way he had opened up on the kids with little provocation in Mkhuze Game Reserve.

  ‘We don’t work like them, remember?’ Jed said.

  Franklin looked back at him, his cold, dark eyes empty. ‘Don’t we? You heard Chris. The Company doesn’t care if we kill that baby to get hold of it, search it, find out what it’s carrying or what its mother was hiding.’

  Jed hated to admit it to himself, but Franklin was right. The stakes were high in this chase, maybe too high for him. He’d seen his fair share of killing, righteous and otherwise, in a couple of tours in Afghanistan, and some action on the African continent. He wondered if he was going soft in his old age, or whether having a family a second time around had simply reset his moral compass to normal.

  ‘I trust Dunn,’ Jed said. ‘I think he’ll deliver the kids, the baby and the teenagers to us, once he knows they’re safe, both from us and from ISIS. I think he’ll reach out to us.’

  Franklin put his handkerchief away and his bush hat back on his head. ‘You could be right, Jed, but if Suzanne Fessey gets to them first, it’s game over. If we can’t get her the next best thing is to get her kid.’

  For the first time in a very long time in his life, Jed Banks felt a shiver run down his back, as though he’d just encountered something evil afresh. ‘Tell me about her.’

  Franklin shook his head, slowly. ‘Paulsen killed like a machine. Suzanne’s not like that. She’s a monster.’

  *

  The driver of the bakkie took Mike, Nia and the children into Gonarezhou National Park through the southern entrance.

  It was a wild place, largely devoid of tourists, particularly in the south. They startled a small herd of zebra and ever
y now and then passed a lone bull elephant.

  They crossed the Runde River, driving through the shallow water, then followed the road east until they saw the magnificent Chilojo Cliffs.

  ‘They’re beautiful, Mike,’ Nia said. She’d heard of this national park, famous for its towering, sheer red rock formations, but this was the first time she had been here. The countryside was very different from KwaZulu-Natal, brown instead of green, sparse instead of lush, rocky instead of fertile. However, it was stunning in its own wild way.

  ‘It’s normally a place of great peace for me,’ he said, ‘which is odd.’

  ‘Why odd?’ He turned away from her, looking out at the cliffs. She suddenly realised the meaning of his words. ‘Was it here that it happened, that the boy was …?’

  ‘That I killed the boy, yes. Near here, just across the border in Mozambique.’

  Nia saw Themba look up and over at Mike. They had folded the tarpaulin after they had lost sight of the helicopter. Nia caught his glance and gave a slight shake of her head. Themba seemed to understand, and lay his head back on the tarpaulin, once more pretending to sleep.

  ‘I came here,’ Mike went on, ‘to these cliffs, after it happened. I camped out here for three days by myself, not moving. I drank. A lot. I would sit in the riverbed each evening as the sun was going down. I took a cooler box of beers, Scotch, whatever was left, and sat here, listening to the lions calling, half hoping they might take me. I still come here, when I’m down.’

  Nia saw him screw his eyes and his fists tight. She reached out and felt his arm shake with the torment still pent up inside him. He blinked a couple of times. ‘It’s OK, Mike.’

  He looked at her, eyes red. ‘It’s not.’

  ‘It is. You were in a war, a victim of that conflict. It was an accident, what happened.’

  ‘That’s what I told myself.’

  ‘It’s the truth.’

  He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘Yes, right.’

  Mike slumped down into the back of the truck and closed his eyes. Nia tried to doze, but the road was too bumpy, the view too magnificent to sleep. She saw eland, waterbuck and reedbuck, which gave a squeaky alarm call when they were startled by the truck full of people.