by Tony Park
Brand had been chatting to Allchurch in the gloom, but he came to the fire now and sat down beside her, eating his noodles in silence. When he had finished he said, ‘Thanks. Great meal.’
She smiled. ‘Fuel.’
‘Yup, you got that right. Matthew’s gone to sleep in the back of the truck. His hand’s OK.’
Sonja nodded. Allchurch still seemed like a burden to her, but if he could fire a weapon he might be of some use to them. And even if he couldn’t shoot, if they could ambush the people who had Emma there would be four armed bodies for their enemy to confront; that might be enough to scare them into submission. However, she could not be optimistic; these people had already had two serious attempts at taking out Brand and Allchurch, and her, and Sonja did not think they would roll over without a fight.
She would be ready. She was mentally prepared for the mission ahead and, having stayed away from hard drink for a brief period at least, in better physical shape than she had been.
‘Stirling, are you coming with us tomorrow?’ Hudson asked across the fire.
Stirling set his tin mug down. ‘I’ve been thinking about that. I wasn’t going to, as you’ll be illegally entering the Skeleton Coast Park, but I’ve decided I’m coming along with you.’
‘It’s not up to you to decide,’ Sonja said. ‘It’s my mission, not yours.’
‘I know this country,’ Stirling said.
‘I was born here.’
‘Yes,’ Stirling agreed, ‘but not in this part. Also, I know many of the parks people in the Skeleton Coast. We get together for regular coordination meetings. I can help smooth things over if you get caught by the rangers.’
Sonja wasn’t convinced that Stirling would be able to get them out of trouble.
‘Sonja’s right,’ Brand intervened. ‘Thanks for the offer, Stirling, but I’m sure between us Sonja and I will be able to find the route and talk our way out of any trouble we find ourselves in. We’ll play dumb tourists; probably just get a slap on the wrist.’
Now that surprised Sonja – Brand taking her side. She wondered if the handsome American had an agenda of his own. ‘I’m going to bed.’
Stirling looked up at her as she stood. ‘So am I coming or not?’
Her childhood sweetheart was and always had been indecisive and over-cautious. ‘That’s up to you. We’ve been in a lot of kak on this trip, Stirling – people have tried to kill Brand and Allchurch twice, and me once. It’s probable they’ll try again if they can target us. Are you sure you want to take the risk of being shot, just to tag along?’
‘I wouldn’t be tagging along. I told you, I know this part of Namibia better than any of you, and if your daughter’s in trouble I want to help out.’
‘You’re not coming.’
‘You said it yourself, Sonja,’ Stirling said, ‘someone’s out to get you guys. If you’ve got a spare gun I’ll help even the odds. What do you say, Hudson?’
Brand rubbed his chin and looked at Sonja. ‘Well, we do have an extra rifle.’
Sonja ran a hand through her hair. ‘OK, whatever. Stirling, if you want to get yourself killed in your first firefight, then by all means join us. You don’t know what you’re in for, but if you think you can handle it, then I don’t care.’
Stirling stood. ‘Sonn, I know you think I’m a coward, but I’ve faced down a charging lion and I shot a rogue buffalo that would have killed one of my guests if I hadn’t fired quick enough.’
‘It’s different killing people,’ she said.
‘I’m sure. Look, all I’m offering is to guide you and to be there if you need me.’
She put her hands on her hips. ‘But why, Stirling? I’ve only ever treated you like shit. I left you when we were young and you let me down once before.’
‘You were breaking international law, starting a war that didn’t need to be fought,’ he countered.
He was right, and that pissed her off as well. She waved a hand in the air. ‘I’m going to bed. You can all fight for the right to come with me and die if you want, but I’m getting up at oh-dark-hundred tomorrow to go find my daughter. Whatever the rest of you do – well, I just don’t give a fuck.’
She left them, annoyed, but not blinded by anger. She took several deep breaths, calming herself. She went to the Land Rover, took out the rifle she had earmarked for herself, a cleaning kit and a small tin of oil. She sat, cross-legged, on her bedroll and closed her eyes. There was enough moonlight for her to see clearly what she was doing, but she needed to be able to strip this weapon, reassemble it, and fill the magazine in complete darkness. The soldier’s simple task settled her, as meditation might some hippy. She was at one with the night, with the cold metal parts in her hands, with her mission.
She would find her daughter, and if anyone tried to stop her, she would kill them.
*
Emma and the others worked into the night, unloading the bundles from the Dakota and then unwrapping them in the glare of the Land Cruiser’s headlights, in which Sebastian stood, silhouetted, watching over them with rifle in hand.
Emma wondered what would happen next. Even if Sebastian and Andre killed them all and emptied the two vehicles of all of their gear and loaded the roof carriers, there was still nowhere near enough room for all of the cargo they had recovered from the Dakota.
The sweat that had soaked her clothes through the afternoon had chilled her as soon as the sun set. Andre attacked the last of the bundles with a knife, slashing off the now brittle plastic wrapping, and then used a crowbar to open the wooden crate within. ‘Yes!’ He punched the air.
His elation had become tiresome. He had already opened all the other crates and this one, like the rest, was full of the same illicit cargo: rhino horns, perhaps hundreds of them. Emma sat down in the sand and Alex and Natangwe took a seat either side of her. Sebastian watched them like a lion selecting his prey. There was no way she could talk.
After she had discovered the dead pilot’s pistol she had nearly been caught with it. Andre had stumbled back into the Dakota, his headlamp picking her out in the darkness of the fuselage, but he had been too insistent on her getting back to work to notice her stuffing the pistol in her shorts and hurriedly pulling her T-shirt down over it.
In the rare breaks they had between shifting the bundles she had checked out the pistol. It was caked in dust, and when she had pushed the magazine release button, as her mother had shown her, instead of the mag sliding slickly into her palm she’d had to claw at it to free it, breaking two fingernails in the process.
On another break she fingered the rounds out of the magazine and was dismayed to find there were only three. The pilot must have been firing at someone inside his own aircraft the night he went down; that accounted for his right arm dangling over the side of his seat and the pistol lying on the floor, not to mention the bullet hole in his skull.
The events of the night the plane crashed occupied her mind less than the prospect of what she would do with this ancient pistol that was so dirty it would probably explode in her hands if she was even able to cock it and pull the trigger.
‘Alex,’ she whispered out of the side of her mouth when Sebastian briefly took his eye off them in order to check on the haul of rhino horns.
‘Yes?’
‘Can you get to the back of the Land Cruiser?’
‘I don’t know, why? What do you want?’
‘There’s a plastic storage crate there, I noticed it when we were packing. There’s a toolkit in the crate and I noticed there were some plastic bottles as well – gear oil, engine oil, brake fluid, that sort of thing.’
Alex exhaled. ‘What do you want with oils?’
Sebastian looked back at Alex and Emma, pointing the barrel of the AK-47 at them as he resumed his watch. Emma stayed silent until Andre called out that he needed help to move the latest box to where the others were
, and Sebastian switched his focus to Natangwe.
‘Natangwe, go help him,’ Sebastian said, and tracked him with the rifle as he moved.
‘I’ve got a gun,’ Emma whispered to Alex.
‘Seriously?’
‘Keep your voice down.’ Emma saw that Sebastian was still watching Natangwe and Andre. The professor was resting, sitting in the sand about five metres from Alex and Emma. ‘I found it in the Dakota; there’s a dead pilot up in the cockpit and it was his. But it’s filthy and might not even work unless I can clean it. Hell, it might not work at all, but it’s our only chance.’
‘Do you know how to use it, how to clean it?’ Alex whispered.
‘Yes, my mother taught me.’
‘What every young girl should learn from her mother.’
Emma liked that he could joke at such a time, but this was no time for laughing. ‘How can we get to the Land Cruiser?’
Alex pursed his lips. ‘You notice how Andre and Sebastian have collected the rhino horn in one place?’ It was stacked about ten metres behind the Hilux, which in turn was in the dark, the same distance past the Land Cruiser.
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t they just get us to load all the horns into the vehicles?’
Emma hadn’t thought Sebastian and Andre’s orders through; she was tired and she had a headache, which she guessed was due to dehydration. They had worked all afternoon in the blazing heat and Sebastian had allowed them only one half-litre bottle of water each, while he and Horsman had drunk steadily through the day. She focused on Alex’s question. ‘There must be someone else coming, perhaps in a bigger vehicle.’
‘Yes.’
‘You think they might want to keep us alive as slave labour until then?’ Emma asked.
‘Perhaps. I can’t really see Sebastian letting us go, can you?’
Emma looked at the handsome man she’d almost given herself to. ‘No.’
‘Sebastian,’ Andre called from where he and Natangwe had moved the last crate. ‘I’m going to answer the call of nature.’
‘OK,’ Sebastian replied. ‘Natangwe, get over there with the rest.’
Natangwe walked over and sat down on the sand beside them. Sutton shifted closer to them, sliding along on his bottom. ‘What are we going to do?’ Natangwe asked.
Emma didn’t have an answer, but she heard the hopelessness in this normally proud, opinionated, intelligent young man’s voice. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Hey, no one speaks unless they’re spoken to,’ Sebastian called to them. He walked closer, swinging the AK-47 from side to side, checking each of them. Emma felt her heart pounding.
Sebastian took a pace closer to them, though remained out of striking reach of any of them. He must have realised, Emma thought, that if he got too close and the men made a move on him he could only hope to hit one of them before the others overpowered him. But, she wondered, would any of these men have the guts to try something or, for that matter, would she be as brave or as reckless as her mother would undoubtedly be in such a situation? What would Sonja do? Emma asked herself. She would wait, she would analyse, she would plan, and she would act.
Sebastian confronted Alex down the barrel of his rifle. ‘Everyone’s going to walk out of here alive as long as no one does anything brave or stupid.’ He took a few steps back from them and looked out over the dunes in search of Andre, who was taking his time on his toilet break.
‘I’ve got a pistol,’ Emma said quietly.
Natangwe nodded. ‘I know, I saw you with it.’
Emma felt slightly miffed. ‘It’s almost inoperable. I need oil or something to clean it with, and I don’t have much ammo.’
Natangwe seemed to ponder the predicament and then, checking that Sebastian was still looking the other way, quickly reached into his pocket. He unfolded his hand, briefly, revealing a Swiss Army pocketknife to the other two. ‘I also found this in the aircraft. It must have fallen out of someone’s pocket during the flight. It looks old.’
Emma frowned. ‘It’d be hard to kill or maim Sebastian with that.’
‘I could if I got close enough,’ Alex said through gritted teeth. Sebastian turned his attention back to them and Alex stared back at him.
‘You need to get into the truck, right?’ Natangwe said out of the side of his mouth.
‘Shut it,’ Sebastian called.
Emma gave the slightest of nods. Natangwe stood up and started walking towards Sebastian, who raised his rifle again, into his shoulder. ‘Stop, or I’ll shoot you.’
‘I need to go to the toilet as well.’
‘Do it here,’ Sebastian said.
‘I will not. Never.’ Natangwe looked down at Emma. ‘Not in front of a woman.’
‘Sheesh,’ said Sebastian. ‘All right, go behind the Land Cruiser, but make it quick.’
Emma followed Natangwe’s movements out of the corner of her eyes. Sebastian was looking at her now, though, so she stared back at him defiantly, hoping he wouldn’t look too closely at Natangwe. No one spoke and the tension hung in the air around them, like the cool fog from the Skeleton Coast that had begun creeping towards them from the Atlantic. Emma shivered.
‘Hey!’ a voice called out. They all looked in the direction of the noise. It was Andre, running back towards them down the face of a dune, brandishing a shovel in the air like a weapon. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
‘What is it?’ Sebastian called.
‘This little bastard is letting the air out of the rear tyre.’ Andre grabbed Natangwe by the collar of his shirt and pulled him up, but then jumped back in alarm as Natangwe slashed the air just centimetres from the older man’s chest, the blade of the pocketknife flashing silver in the gloom.
Sebastian fired a shot. ‘Drop the knife!’
Natangwe held out the knife, but slowly lowered his arm.
‘Toss it to Andre.’
Andre scooped the pocketknife from the sand and walked to Sebastian, who gave him back the pistol he’d taken for safekeeping earlier that afternoon. Andre walked to Natangwe. ‘Get down on your knees, boy.’
Natangwe looked ready to explode. ‘Don’t call me that.’
Andre levelled the pistol between Natangwe’s eyes. ‘Get down on your knees or I’ll shoot you here. I don’t need all of you alive.’
With eyes locked on Andre, Natangwe slowly lowered himself to his knees. Keeping the weapon trained on Natangwe, Andre walked around behind him and pointed the pistol at the base of Natangwe’s skull.
‘No!’ Emma screamed. She felt Alex’s arm tighten around her, trying to shield her from what was about to happen next. ‘Don’t shoot him, Andre, please.’
Andre and Sebastian both looked to her. Andre brought his hand up and then savagely clubbed the butt of the pistol down on the back of Natangwe’s head. Sebastian strode across, reversed the AK-47 in his hands and slammed the stock into Natangwe’s neck and back three times, each vicious stroke ending in a thud and a diminishing convulsion on Natangwe’s part. Emma noticed that Natangwe didn’t cry out in pain or for mercy once.
Emma stood and broke free of Alex’s grasp as he tried to stop her. She ran at Sebastian, who turned his rifle on her. She stopped.
‘All right. Everyone, just chill the fuck out,’ Sebastian said, running a free hand through sweaty hair. ‘Natangwe was stupid, and he’s paid the price, but I’m not going to kill him unless I have to. Alex, get up and help Emma change the tyre.’
Alex stood and walked to Emma, putting an arm around her.
‘Get your hands off her.’
‘Don’t make him angrier than he is,’ Emma whispered.
Reluctantly, Alex removed his arm and Emma shivered. She liked it better when he was holding her, even though it had only been for a few seconds each time. She quickened her pace and knelt beside Natangwe.
‘I need to check on him.’
‘He’ll live,’ Sebastian said to Emma.
Emma cradled Natangwe’s head in her lap. He was conscious, but only just. He blinked up at her, and tried to speak. ‘Shush,’ she said. ‘You were very brave.’
‘Yes,’ Alex added out of the side of his mouth as he opened the rear of the four-by-four under Sebastian’s watchful stare. ‘You did well, Natangwe.’
Natangwe coughed. ‘Thank you.’
‘Set him down, Emma,’ Sebastian said. ‘Help Alex, and if either of you tries anything I’ll shoot Natangwe.’
Emma seethed at Sebastian, her hatred burning her from within, but she told herself to stay calm and tried again to think what her mother would do in this situation. Sebastian, she realised, would have already been dead if she were Sonja. Alex found a wheel spanner and a jack, which he tossed out onto the sand.
‘This is a small bottle jack, it will be useless in this sand,’ Alex called to Sebastian. He pointed up at the driver’s side of the Toyota’s roof carrier. Bolted to it was a high-lift jack, secured with a padlock. ‘We need that one.’
Sebastian held the rifle’s pistol grip with one hand and reached into his pocket with the other. He took out the vehicle’s keys. ‘Don’t try and be a hero, Alex; it’ll cost you your life.’
Alex nodded and caught the keys. He made slow work of finding the right key.
Emma could see Alex was deliberately distracting Sebastian.
‘Hurry up,’ Sebastian called.
Emma leaned into the back of the truck and started rifling through the crate. There was gear and engine oil, and brake fluid and automatic transmission fluid for the gearbox, but they were all in one and five-litre plastic bottles. There was no way she would be able to smuggle one of those past Sebastian. She moved the bottles in the crate around, frantically trying to find something she could use, or an empty container to decant some oil into.