Jackal's Dance

by Beverley Harper

  Fletch stood in front of Ace and answered the questions.

  ‘What country are you from?’

  ‘South Africa.’

  ‘What does your father do?’

  ‘He owns a vineyard in the Cape.’

  ‘How big?’

  ‘Just over a thousand morgen.’

  Ace didn’t understand the measurement.

  ‘Five hundred acres,’ Fletch offered helpfully when Chester asked him to explain.

  ‘What car does he drive?’

  Fletch was surprised by the question but answered calmly. ‘A Toyota Land Cruiser and an Audi sedan.’

  ‘And your mother? What does she do?’

  ‘Helps my father.’

  Ace thought about it. Farmers cried poor at every opportunity but farms could be sold to raise ransom money. This kid’s family was comfortably off. Nothing special. If he survived the trip his parents would be good for a few million. If it became necessary to kill him, his clean-cut youthful looks would work in their favour, the media certain to put Pretoria in a difficult position over the remaining South Africans. Fletch was told to stand with Walter and Jutta.

  Troy was next.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Johannesburg.’

  ‘What does your father do?’

  ‘He’s a lawyer.’

  ‘Does he employ other people?’

  Troy had to think.

  ‘About forty.’

  On and on the questions went. Troy, Josie, then Angela all joined Fletch.

  Now it was Megan’s turn.

  ‘What does your father do?’

  ‘He was a doctor but he’s retired.’

  Ace had already made up his mind. Irrespective of her background, the girl’s leg would be a hindrance. She remained in the car park.

  Chester watched Kalila coming towards them. She held herself proudly, contempt and disdain evident for all to see. Chester hadn’t a clue about her background but decided that a little insurance wouldn’t go astray.

  ‘What does your father do?’

  Chester didn’t translate. He said, ‘Say your father is a chief.’

  Kalila looked straight at Ace as she responded, ‘My father is a Zulu chief and a South African government minister.’

  Ace was elated. He had one rich German and his daughter. The girl was of no account but she would provide a diversion for the men. Four white South Africans, three of whom came from wealthy backgrounds. And now this black girl, the highborn daughter of a senior politician. Kalila was told to stand with the minority group.

  Dan’s age very nearly went against him but Ace could see he was fit. He needed more than one who could be executed if the need arose. Sean, still covered in blood, was accepted for the same reason. Billy’s citizenship saved him. Namibia had a short leash on patience when it came to armed incursions, but chances were, with one of their citizens held for ransom, they’d cough up. If not, well, his parents sounded as if they’d be good for a fair whack – his father owned a block of flats. Caitlin’s Scottish background provided possibilities. There was no love lost between the Scots and the English. They could play one against the other. Britain had always dug its toes in over hostages but if Scotland decided to pay up there’d be one hell of an outcry if Westminster didn’t vote to do the same. Thea, when it was discovered she was the manager’s wife and not a tourist, was to join the condemned until Ace learned that she also carried a British passport. The more the merrier.

  Ace recognised Gayle and immediately sent her to the smaller group. On being told that the still unconscious Matt was another English actor, Ace ordered that he too be dragged to the lodge. The British were known to be sentimental about their famous citizens.

  Philip, being the only Australian, was spared. As was James, the remaining American. Ace had hoped for at least one. Felicity’s status as a poet saved her. She was a well-known South African with a popular public profile. Which left an elderly and overweight Afrikaans pair. Henneke was of no interest, and as soon as Ace discovered that Johan had worked all his life as a clerk for South African Railways, neither was he. Chester would be useful as interpreter.

  Daylight hovered eerily on the eastern horizon. The selection process was complete. It was time for the next step. Ace shouted his orders.

  Two men were told to guard the eighteen selected hostages. Bound and frightened with the exception of Matt, they posed little threat and weren’t going anywhere. Twenty-eight still sitting in the car park had been told to stand. Ace asked Chester about the electric fence running around the lodge.

  ‘It’s on.’

  ‘Do you take me for a fool?’ Ace shouted, suddenly furious. ‘Answer my questions honestly or you will have the blood of others on your hands. How can it be on? The generator has been off for hours.’

  ‘The batteries store power. How else can the lights be on?’ Chester challenged.

  Ace hadn’t thought of that. ‘Turn the fence off,’ he snapped, annoyed with himself. It was his plan to walk the condemned group straight out onto the pan. The sooner they were out there the better. With no cover there was less chance of anyone slipping into the darkness. Going with Chester to make sure the ranger did as instructed, Ace ordered him to demonstrate that the fence was no longer live.

  Hands still bound and with prodding from their captors, the doomed were forced to move.

  ‘Where’s Mal?’ James fretted.

  Chester had heard two terrorists discussing the American. Mal Black was dead. Now was not the time to tell James.

  ‘Where are they taking Megan and the professor?’ Angela asked, her voice trembling.

  No-one answered.

  Eben knew.

  They were marched due east. Frightened murmurings were the only sounds other than the white crust of salt collapsing under their feet. Some of the soldiers were smoking. The smell of marijuana was strong and several of them began to snigger.

  Dawn put on its usual display and powered up for a new day. The barely discernible light of several minutes earlier now a thing of the past. It was going to be a beautiful sunrise. They’d been walking for half an hour before Ace turned and raised his arms. The group came to a halt, confusion and fear written on every face.

  Megan had stuck close to Eben. ‘Prof, what’s happening?’

  His eyes were her answer.

  Johan was outraged. ‘We could die of thirst out here.’

  Henneke also knew. Bravery came to her by way of her imagination. She was the British spy, Violette Szabo, who, in January 1945, just before the war ended, along with two other women, Lillian Rolfe and Danielle Williams, had been captured, tortured and then executed by the Germans. Henneke seldom referred to books, let alone ones in English, but Carve Her Name with Pride was one she had read many times. Remembering now that while the other two women had to be carried to their place of execution, Violette walked. She stood erect as Lillian and Danielle were shot in the back of the neck with a small calibre pistol. When it was her turn, Violette threw her executioner a look of pure contempt, then bravely watched the sky. Virginia McKenna played the role to perfection in the movie of the same name. Henneke could do that too.

  ‘This is preposterous,’ Johan spluttered. ‘All I’m wearing is my pyjamas.’

  Henneke looked at him. Even now, seconds before death, Johan had the God-given gift of driving her mad. ‘I hate you,’ she said quietly.

  ‘What?’ Johan wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly.

  ‘I hate you,’ she said again. ‘I have always hated you.’

  ‘Mother!’ Disbelief crossed his face.

  She spoke through clenched teeth. ‘I am not your fucking mother.’

  ‘Henneke! What’s got into you?’

  ‘Do me a favour, Johan. For once in your life, shut your mouth.’ Henneke actually smiled as she turned to face the soldiers, now lined up in front of them.

  Erica Schmidt heard the exchange, but since it was conducted in Afrikaans, hadn’t understo
od. ‘What’s going on?’ she whispered.

  Henneke moved and stood close to her. ‘They’re going to shoot us. Be brave. Watch the sun rise.’ She was Violette Szabo again.

  ‘Get behind me,’ Eben muttered to Megan. ‘As soon as I fall, you drop too. Try to get under me.’ He didn’t think it would help but at least his words might give her something else to think about.

  ‘Prof.’ Megan began to cry. ‘I don’t want to die.’

  Eben looked at her fresh young face. Megan had confronted the odds for most of her life. What was about to happen could not be challenged. For this girl, it was more than a tragedy. She was too young. Eben’s life had almost run its course. The least, the very least he could do was try, with his own death, to make some gesture of human kindness, to give his dry academic existence a compassionate finale. ‘No-one wants to die, dear girl. Do as I say. It’s the only thing that might save you.’

  Henneke watched the sky. The sun hadn’t quite risen. In her head played The Dam Busters march. She couldn’t remember the music from Carve Her Name with Pride.

  Then the firing started. The soldiers simply held down the triggers and sprayed from side to side. With each weapon capable of delivering six hundred rounds a minute, no-one escaped. No-one was hit only once. The bullet that killed Henneke took the tune in her head cleanly out. It was the fourth hit but since all the shots came so close together she hadn’t registered the first three.

  Johan wasn’t so lucky. Gut shot, he went down flopping like a fish on the end of a line. He was also wounded on one hand, both legs and his right hip. It was several minutes before a soldier delivered the coup de grâce and put him out of his misery.

  Erica died with a protest on her lips.

  Eben Kruger was shot in the heart, just as the asthma that had sealed his fate came back. He staggered backwards. The intense agony was short-lived. His last conscious thought on this earth was, Where’s my puffer?

  Megan was struck by two bullets. One in her arm, another in the head. The second wound was superficial but enough to knock her out cold. Eben’s body had provided some protection from the hail of bullets.

  As instructed, she was standing directly behind Eben when the firing began. Falling backwards, he knocked her off balance. One exposed arm was hit, spinning her sideways. At that precise moment Eben’s shoulder erupted, an explosion of blood and bone flew back into Megan’s face. It happened so quickly that there was no time for her to register anything at all. The distorted bullet, having lost some velocity, ripped its way past her left eye and along the side of her head, before continuing on to run out of energy some fifty metres later. Megan was still turning, Eben’s momentum causing her to fall. Blood welled immediately, covering the entire left side of her face, spilling down one shoulder and beyond. Bits of Eben’s collarbone and blood matted Megan’s hair. As she fell, strands mixed and stuck to the mess on her face. She hit the ground almost face first. More hair fell forward. Her head wound bled profusely, gleaming red wetness soaking the ground where Megan lay. Through her sodden hair, fragments of bone were clearly visible. Although Megan looked as though half her face had been shot away, careful scrutiny would have revealed that despite its gruesome appearance, her injuries were not serious. Lying half underneath Eben, no-one noticed she still lived. A coup de grâce was considered unnecessary.

  Five Europeans and twenty-three African staff members were left for the predators. Sunrise, which heralded gate opening time in the four rest camps allowing eager tourists to spill out across the park, and which Henneke had so bravely waited to see, was still two minutes away.

  NINE

  Huddled together for comfort, those who remained at the lodge strained their eyes trying to keep the others in view as they disappeared into a deep purple half-light. ‘Where’s Mama going?’ Jutta whispered to her father.

  Walter could only shake his head.

  Silence. It was a form of eloquence, more articulate than words. Somehow louder than screams, quieter than death, harsh and unremitting as the elements. It surrounded those left behind, taunted them, played games with their imagination. They waited. Time, a flexible, invisible state of mind, joined in, seeming to expand and contract simultaneously. The thing they were all dreading became that which they wanted over and done with. Five minutes or five hours? No-one could have said. It had been half an hour, at once far too long and way too short. Nothing, in any of their wildest dreams, could possibly have prepared them for this. Emotion, as with time, came and went, too intense to stay for long. Disbelief, rage, fear, grief, guilt, horror, flitted forward and left again as distorted sanity tried to deal with unspeakable evil. Death waited patiently out on the pan, life helpless to comfort those at the lodge.

  In the rapidly growing light, a form of severance was experienced when the condemned disappeared from sight. Claimed by the grim reaper, it was the last they saw of them.

  They’re still alive, they’re still alive. Dear God, let it be over. This is too cruel for words. Felicity was starting to hyperventilate as she willed the sound of the last thing in the world she wanted to hear.

  Nothing could be worse than the waiting. Nothing, that is, until the silence was broken. They’d all been expecting it but the savage reality was more shocking than they could have imagined. The women wept openly. Sean, Troy and Fletch sat with heads bowed. Philip and Dan stared at each other, neither seeing anger in the other’s eyes. But it was there. Billy had gone ghostly white. James trembled. Chester, memories flooding back, had seen it before. His lips remained pressed in a tight line. Walter’s heart may have been surrounded by ice but still it burned with the agonising fire of grief.

  Then came loud popping. The coup de grâce. Fourteen in all. Fourteen souls who, for whatever reason, refused to perish under the murderous hail of bullets. For them, life flickered stubbornly but in vain. They had no defence against the rebels. This was the day they had to die.

  It’s over, Felicity thought when at last the sounds stopped.

  ‘Mama,’ Jutta wept.

  In a wild world where survival of the fittest is understood by all, nothing moved. Birds hid, stupefied, their dawn chorus hushed. Predators took cover and froze, the instinct of self-preservation far outweighing that of filling their bellies. And the preyed upon, eyes wide with fear, waited, watching for a manifestation of the intrusion that had the sound and smell of death.

  The soldiers paused briefly to survey their handiwork then pent-up emotion found release in an almost normal display of loud laughter and shouted comments. It was somehow more shocking than the deed they had just committed. The euphoria stayed with them on their return to the lodge. If any hadn’t realised it before, the hostages knew now. They were in the hands of men who cared nothing for decency, human dignity or altruism. They were wild beasts, every bit as unpredictable and dangerous. Only their leader displayed a capacity for reasoning but there was little solace to be gained from that. Decisions would always be in favour of his men. The captives’ fate was completely out of their hands. Some were beginning to think that those on the pan had been the lucky ones.

  Eyes alight with a kind of insane emotional buzz, as soon as he returned Ace snapped out his commands. Men dispersed to immobilise every vehicle, destroy all means of communication, plunder the kitchen for food and gather up as much alcohol as possible from the bar. Sean was taken back to his room to dress. Matt, wearing trousers only and still unconscious, seemed to be ignored but two men were told to come up with some kind of stretcher. Ace didn’t think the British actor would be with them for long but, in case he survived, decided to take him with them.

  The students’ backpacks were found, emptied, then stuffed with tinned food, alcohol and cigarettes. Soldiers started appearing in clothing they had stolen. One man wore a gold chain belonging to Gayle onto which he had strung all the rings he’d managed to get his hands on. Diamonds, sapphires, emeralds and rubies winked in the early morning light as metal chinked on metal against his dirt-encrusted neck.r />
  ‘We must be heading for some rough country,’ Chester said to Dan. ‘Otherwise they’d have left a few vehicles in working order.’

  Dan nodded and turned away. He knew that Chester had spent seven years fighting with UNITA. Up until now, he hadn’t given it much thought. A young man with ideals will follow his conscience, irrespective of right and wrong. The thought of an African with journalistic ambitions giving seven years of his life to fight for the liberation of Angola had seemed romantic. There was something almost Hemingway about it. But now? Chester once admitted that the reality of what started out as a noble cause had degenerated into nothing more than a demonstration of man’s inhumanity to man. In the scramble to attract supporters, character and moral standards were very much secondary considerations. Chester hadn’t given details. Was this the sort of thing he meant? And if so, had the African ranger taken part?

  Chester registered Dan’s disquiet but made no comment. There were times when he asked himself why he’d stayed in Angola for so long. It was a question to which there had never been an acceptable answer. The things he’d witnessed and done still haunted him. But he’d never hurt civilians. UNITA, even in the old days, had demonstrated unnecessary cruelty and a lack of compassion for the enemy. But nothing like this. Jonas Savimbi was clearly desperate. Chester wondered if the faction’s leader had lost touch with reality. How could he not know what his men were doing? Chester suspected he did. If that were the case, these soldiers, acting with the blessing of their charismatic leader, were likely to do anything. As he thought about the possibilities, Chester’s fear grew.