by Wilbur Smith
‘That’s the best we can do. They are designed to work in all the most extreme conditions,’ Hector grunted. ‘You lead, Tariq. Tracking is your job. I will be on your left side.’ They climbed to the top of the first dune, where they found the spot where Uthmann had lain amongst the bushes. Tariq knelt beside the indentation his body had left. The loose dry sand was still trickling down into it. He must have watched them land on the beach, before he moved on. Something else caught Hector’s eye: a pair of sandals lying under the nearest clump of scrub. They were still soaking wet, and the strap on one of them had snapped at the buckle. Uthman must have discarded them and gone on barefoot. The tracks he had left confirmed this.
‘He is not very far ahead,’ Tariq whispered. ‘He is probably watching us again right now.’
‘Go carefully. He might have lost his rifle, but he always has his blade,’ Hector warned. For a brief moment they both thought of their four companions whose corpses they had left at the Oasis of the Miracle. Then they put from their minds everything but the job in hand. They went forward in overlapping formation so that each of them was able to cover the one flank as well as the immediate front. They could not afford to let their hatred override their respect for Uthmann as a fighter. They dared not let him get in close enough to use his blade.
The bush was dense, the hooked thorns tenacious. They had to move with the greatest care so as to make as little noise as possible. It took them six minutes ten seconds by Hector’s wristwatch to cover the first hundred yards. There they came upon Uthmann’s next lie-over, where he had waited for them to come up to him. If they had shown the slightest carelessness or given him any advantage at this stage they knew that this was where he would have taken them. But he had moved off again just ahead of them. The barefoot tracks he had left in the sand where he had squatted to wait for them were still settling.
Now he knows we aren’t going to blunder in on top of him, Hector thought grimly. His next trick will be to circle and try to get behind us. He snapped his fingers softly and Tariq shot a quick glance at him. He made a circling motion to warn him. Tariq nodded; he understood the danger. They went on. Twice more they pushed Uthmann off his lie-over. Each time he moved away silently just ahead of them.
By now he will be thinking he has lulled us with repetition. This is when he will circle back on us. Hector changed his own tactics in anticipation. After every twenty slow paces he stopped and revolved slowly, studying the ground that he had already traversed from a fresh angle. Then he squatted on his haunches and studied the same ground behind them from a lower perspective, concentrating on the bases of the trees where the roots were bunched and twisted, behind which a man could lie with a thin sharp blade in his hand.
Suddenly Hector blinked as something alien caught his eye. He stared at it with all his concentration. It moved slightly and the whole picture jumped into focus. He was looking at a naked human foot that protruded from behind a bunch of the twisted roots. The sole of the foot was dusty pink, and the skin above it was tobacco brown. Hector felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. By God, Uthmann was close! He had almost walked on top of him.
He was lying not more than five long strides from where Hector was. Hector knew he could cover that distance with the speed of a hunting cheetah. He could almost feel Uthmann’s eyes on him, watching him through one of the tiny chinks in the dense vegetation of the saltbush. Uthmann had a trick of keeping his eyes carefully slitted when he watched an enemy, his dark lashes veiling the tell-tale shine of the whites of his eyes. Hector saw the tendons in Uthmann’s left foot standing out proud as he dug in his toes for purchase in the soft earth, prior to launching himself at Hector.
Hector was squatting on his haunches. The rifle was across his lap. There was a bullet in the breach, and the safety was off. His right hand was on the pistol grip, but he knew he could not get the rifle butt to his shoulder before Uthmann covered the gap and was on him. If that happened the rifle would be an encumbrance. He had to shoot out of hand, and he had to do it quickly. Uthmann’s foot was all he had to aim at, and he had to fire without lifting the weapon from his lap. He could not aim the shot. He had to let his instinct take over completely. This was payback time for all those hundreds of hours spent on the firing range, he told himself. He made a slight movement as though he was about to rise upright, but the barrel of the rifle dropped slightly and swung through a narrow arc onto the target, and he fired as a reflex action. He saw the heel of Uthmann’s bare foot ripped off in a burst of bone chips, flying tissue and blood.
Uthmann grunted as savagely as a gut-shot lion and he reared up from behind the saltbush. But the crippled foot pinned him to the spot. The pain forced him down on one knee. Hector saw the blade in his right hand, and the despair in his eyes. Uthmann knew he had lost, but he kept trying. He came up again on one leg, and tried to hop close enough to Hector to use the blade. But by now Hector was on his feet and charging in on him. He swung the rifle butt at Uthmann’s elbow. It landed solidly and he felt the joint shatter. This time Uthmann screamed, and the blade spun out of his nerveless fingers. The crippled foot gave way and he sprawled in the loose sand. Tariq darted in behind him and seized the wrist of Uthmann’s damaged arm. He wrenched it over and the broken bones grated upon each other. Tariq put his boot on the back of Uthmann’s neck and forced his face into the sand. It filled his eyes and mouth and nose. He began to suffocate.
‘Wait!’ Hector ordered Tariq.
‘You told me that vengeance was mine,’ Tariq protested. He was sobbing wildly with the strength of his hatred.
‘This is too good for him, Tariq.’ Hector pulled him back. ‘This is too quick. This creature burned your wife and your son. He murdered our comrades. He betrayed us to the Beast. He must pay for these sins in full measure.’ Tariq shook his head and lifted the pistol, shoving the muzzle into the back of Uthmann’s head.
‘There is no fitting punishment. Anything we can do to him will not be enough.’ He ground the muzzle of the loaded pistol into his scalp, but although Uthmann’s face contorted with agony he refused to cry out.
‘It was you who set fire to my home,’ Tariq panted at him, ‘you who burned Daliyah and my son! Deny it if you can, Uthmann Waddah.’ Uthmann tried to smile but it was a painful travesty, and his voice was pain-racked. He spat the sand out of his mouth,
‘They reeked like burning pork as they cooked,’ he whispered, ‘but I revelled in the stink of them.’ Tariq sobbed and looked at Hector with the tears oozing down his cheeks.
‘You heard him! What is there we can do to match such evil?’
‘Water,’ Hector replied quietly. ‘Only seawater will wash away this stain from the face of the earth.’ They saw the terror flare in Uthmann’s eyes, and Tariq rejoiced.
‘Of course, you are right, Hector. Seawater will do it. Up, Uthmann Waddah! Get on your feet. Your last walk will be down the beach and into the sea.’ Tariq lowered the pistol and grabbed his wrist. He twisted it viciously against the shattered elbow joint. Uthmann shrieked again. His fierce defiance and his reckless courage were eroded by the threat of the one thing he feared above all else.
‘I challenge you to do it here, if you have the stomach for it, Tariq. Shoot me and make an end to it, you gutless coward!’
‘You are too hasty,’ Tariq told him. ‘This is the final act of your foul existence. You must savour every last moment of it. The taste of saltwater in the back of your throat, the burn of it in your lungs as they fill, the sting of it in your eyes as your vision fades.’ He hauled on the broken arm and Uthmann could not resist the pressure. He allowed himself to be hoisted upright and tried to balance on his one good leg, but Hector seized his other arm and between the two of them they dragged him back to the beach. At last they looked down upon the bay from the crest of the final dune.
The Golden Goose lay at anchor where they had last seen her, but most of the surviving pirate longboats were abandoned along the shoreline like flotsam left behind the stor
m. The cannon on the Golden Goose were firing intermittently at targets that were out of sight to them from where they stood, and there was the distant rattle of automatic fire from the precincts of the town. A few of the buildings were on fire and the smoke drifted out over the bay. Just below them the longboat that they had abandoned was nudging the beach.
‘Come on, Uthmann.’ Tariq twisted his arm viciously. ‘Not much further to go.’ Uthmann fell to his knees, and now his terror had taken control of him completely. He was blubbering and gibbering barely coherently.
‘No, Tariq! Shoot me here. Get it over with. There is something I want to tell you. I threw your brat into the flames first. Then I fucked your wife. I thought of you with every thrust I gave her. When I had finished I threw her on top of her bastard. Her long hair burned like a torch. Now you must shoot me. If you don’t it will be a memory that will follow you all your days.’ His voice rose in a despairing wail. Hector grabbed his other arm and the two of them dragged him on his belly, wailing and squealing down the dune and into the sea. When the water was knee-deep Hector rolled him face-down and lifted his ankles together behind him. Tariq straddled his shoulder and with his full weight forced his face below the surface. Uthmann was trying to hold his breath below the surface and at the same time give full voice to his terror. His movements grew wilder and less coordinated and then began to grow weaker. His mouth opened under the surface and a gust of silver bubbles broke past his lips. He was coughing and gasping and vomiting, the sounds muffled by the water over his head. When it seemed it was almost over, Hector dragged him out by his heels and laid him face-down on the wet sand. Tariq bounced on his back. Seawater and vomit gushed up out of his throat and he managed to draw a few short breaths before his whole body convulsed in another paroxysm of coughing. He vomited again and half of the yellow bile was sucked back into his lungs with his next breath. Slowly, very slowly, Uthmann managed to clear his lungs of water and vomit, but he was too exhausted to sit up or speak. Hector and Tariq squatted on each side of him and watched him struggle for his life.
‘You heard him boast about what he did to Daliyah and my boy?’ Tariq whispered.
‘I heard.’
‘There must be something we can do to match such hideous evil. A simple drowning is far too merciful.’
‘There is something,’ said Hector, nodding. ‘There is an anchor rope in the longboat. Tie one end of it to that ringbolt in the transom and bring the other end here.’ It seemed that Tariq was about to ask a question but without voicing it he jumped up and ran to the longboat. He came back uncoiling the rope on the wet sand. Uthmann tried to sit up as Tariq stood over him, but Tariq kicked him over on his back and looked at Hector.
‘Tie his wrists together,’ Hector ordered, and Uthmann began to struggle and scream again. Tariq twisted his broken arm to subdue him while Hector slipped a loop of the rope over his wrists and tightened it until the hemp cut into his flesh.
‘Do you know what you are now, Uthmann Waddah?’ Hector asked quietly, and immediately answered his own question. ‘You are live bait.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Tariq admitted, and Hector went on to explain,
‘All those captured boats have been lying at anchor for months out there in the bay. The men living on board have been throwing all their rubbish and sewage overboard. That attracts sharks, plenty of big sharks, tiger sharks mostly, for they are the scavengers, but others also – bronze whalers, Zambezi sharks and blacktips.’ Tariq smiled and horror dawned in Uthmann’s dark eyes.
‘You are bleeding quite heavily, Uthmann.’ Hector kicked his wounded foot, and Uthmann moaned. ‘Did you know that sharks are attracted by blood? Let’s go fishing!’ They pushed the stranded longboat off the sand while Uthmann struggled weakly on the end of the anchor rope. Every time he managed to get up on his knees Tariq jerked his end of the rope and sent him sprawling again. As soon as the longboat was afloat Hector jumped on board and started the motor. He turned the bows away from the beach and opened the throttle gradually. Uthmann was pulled flat and dragged across the wet sand, screaming with pain and fear.
Tariq splashed out to the longboat and scrambled over the gunwale. He and Hector stared over the stern as Uthmann was hauled bodily into the low surf. The rope dragged him under the surface, but he came out in a flurry of water like a breaching whale, and then rolled under again. The pressure of seawater shot up his nose and down his throat. He managed to cough a little of it out of his mouth before he went under again, but now the rush of water into his right ear ruptured the eardrum. The agony must have been blinding, but he no longer had the breath to scream. The wake he left along the surface was tinted with blood and as the longboat entered the deepwater channel the first shark finned up in the blood slick. Hector saw the stripes across its broad back.
‘Uthmann, there is a tiger shark coming up behind you,’ he shouted. ‘Not a very big one – a little less than three metres long. But big enough to bite a nice chunk out of you.’
The shark did not rush in at once, but it followed Uthmann cautiously until another larger shark rose out of the green waters. The one goaded the other and together they charged in. The larger shark opened its jaws in a cavernous gape and then bit down into Uthmann’s shattered ankle. He screamed as he realized what was happening to him. The sharks dragged him under and Hector cut the outboard motor and drifted softly on the tide. He didn’t want Uthmann to drown before the sharks were finished with him. It didn’t take very long. Each time Uthmann came to the surface his struggles were weaker and his screams feebler. The water around him darkened with his blood. Tatters of his own flesh floated around him. Then he went under once more but he did not surface again. When Tariq hauled in the rope Uthmann’s two disembodied hands were still fastened in the end noose. He tossed them back over the side. He went to squat beside Hector as he turned the longboat sharply and roared back across the bay towards the Golden Goose. They were both silent for a while then Hector raised his voice above the din of the engine.
‘I could not ask before but tell me now, what was your son’s name?’
‘His name was Tabari.’
‘We did what we had to do. But it doesn’t help much, does it?’ Hector mused. ‘Vengeance is a tasteless dish.’ Tariq nodded and turned his face away. He did not want even Hector to see too deeply into his soul where the ghosts of Daliyah and Tabari would live on for ever.
As they raced back under the towering hull of the Golden Goose Hector stood in the stern of the longboat balancing with a twist of the anchor rope around his wrist. He was figuring out the run of events that had taken place while he and Tariq had been engaged in the chase of Uthmann. He saw that the formation of three AAVs under Sam Hunter was approaching the beach in front of the town. He felt a quick flare of anger. By now they should have reached the prison stockade beyond town and freed the prisoners. He barked into the microphone of his battle radio, his tone reflecting his anger.
‘Sam, what the bloody hell are you playing at? You are almost an hour behind schedule.’
‘One of the hoists sustained damage from heavy machine-gun fire from the beach. It took time to get it working again. Sorry, Hector.’
‘Okay, so now let’s get our fingers out of our butts.’ Hector broke the connection, and watched the AAVs. The water was breaking over their bows as they rode the shore chop. Small-arms fire from the shanties above the beach was thrashing the sea around them. However the hatches in the turrets were locked down, and the 50 calibre heavy machine guns were hosing tracer into the village. Shells from Dave Imbiss’s Bushmasters were joining in the bombardment, bursting in the air above the rickety buildings. Some of the corrugated-iron roofs collapsed under the weight of shot and the surviving pirates scrambled out of the wreckage and fled back towards the hills. The gale of shrapnel burst overhead and most of them were knocked down.
As Hector watched all three AAVs reached the beach together and rolled ashore with their steel tracks churning up the sand, and hur
tling them up the slope and into the village. The winding streets were too narrow for the huge armoured machines and they drove straight through the flimsy shacks without a check, flattening them and then disappearing from view as they raced for the stockades in which the captured seamen were imprisoned.
When Hector and Tariq arrived at the Goose’s side in the longboat the hoists that had launched the AAVs were still hanging at water level. They abandoned the boat and jumped across to the hoist cradle. Hector called the hoist operator on the Falcon radio. He lifted them to the cargo deck where Paddy was waiting to meet them. He was looking agitated.
‘Fill me in with what has been happening, Paddy,’ Hector ordered him.
‘We have accounted for every one of Kamal’s pirates that he brought on board. Eight of them are dead, including the four you took down on the bridge.’ He paused and drew a sharp breath. ‘As you know Adam and Kamal are holed up in the pump service tunnel. They have taken Nastiya in there with them. Hazel is tracking their movements on the infrared sensors.’ Hector pressed the transmit button on his battle radio.
‘Hazel, where are they now?’
‘Hector, they are in the Number Two section, just beyond the main egress flow pipe intersection. They have not moved for the last twelve minutes.’ Hector frowned. The service tunnel was the most difficult section of the ship to work in. Confined and claustrophobic, most of the space was taken up with banks of steel piping as well as the huge gas pumps. The noise of the pumps was deafening, and there was little ventilation. Down there a defender would have a clear advantage over an attacker who was trying to rout him out. They were all looking at Hector for orders; even Paddy seemed devoid of any suggestions as to how they should proceed. Hector was trying to visualize the layout of the area.