Golden Fox c-12

by Wilbur Smith

  The operator on the switchboard answered on the third ring. 'Capricorn Chemical Industries, good day. How may I help you?" 'Get me Mr. Garry Courtney in the boardroom. I'm his brother. This is an emergency." 'He is expecting your call. You are going straight through." As he waited Sean glanced quickly around the hangar.

  He saw the safety-suits hanging on the wall beside the door.

  "Is that you, Sean?' Garry's voice was strained.

  "Yes, it's me. I'm at Firgrove. It's as bad as we feared. Michael and Ben and the Fox. The target is the showgrounds." 'Did you stop them, Sean?" 'No. Michael and the Fox are airborne. They took off two minutes ago. They are almost certainly heading for the showgrounds." 'Are you sure, Sean?" 'Of course I'm bloody sure. I'm in Mickey's hangar and I'm looking at a map right now. The showgrounds are marked and the wind speed and direction.

  There are two smoke-proof suits hanging on the wall - they didn't have a chance to get into them." 'I'll warn the police, the Air Force." 'Don't be a prick, Garry. It will take an order from the chief of the defence force and the minister before they'll send up a fighter or a helicopter gunship. That could take a month of Sundays. By then two hundred thousand people will be dead." 'What must we do, Sean?' At last the administrator deferred to the man of action.

  "Take the Queen Air,' Sean told him. 'She's faster and bigger and more powerful than the little Centurion. You have to intercept them and force them down before they reach the show." 'Describe Mickey's Centurion," Garry ordered crisply.

  "Blue on top. White belly. Her markings are ZS - RRW, Romeo Romeo Whisky.

  You know the location of Firgrove and their course to reach the show." "I'm on my way,' said Garry, and the connection clicked and went dead.

  Sean picked up the Smith & Wesson from the bench-top where he had dropped it, and spilled the empty cases from the chambers. From his pocket he pulled the box of ammunition and reloaded swiftly. He ran back to the door and with the revolver held ready he stood clear and kicked it open.

  Immediately he dropped into a gunfighter's crouch and aimed through the doorway.

  Ben had dragged his paralysed legs only a few yards before he collapsed. He lay in a huddle at the foot of one of the peach trees. He was bleeding copiously; bright arterial blood had soaked his shirt and the tops of his trousers. His left arm hung by a taller of mangled flesh. The shattered bone was spiked through the meat like a skewer.

  Sean straightened up and safed the Smith & Wesson. He walked through the door and stood looking down at Ben.

  Ben was still alive. He rolled over painfully to look up at Sean. His eyes were brown as burnt sugar and filled with a dreadful anguish.

  "They got away, didn't they?' he whispered. 'They will succeed. You cannot stop us. The future belongs to us." Isabella came running through the trees. She saw Sean and swerved towards him.

  "I told you to keep out of the way,' he growled at her. 'Why can't you ever do as you're told?" She saw Ben lying at his feet and stopped short.

  "It's Ben. Oh God, what have you done to him?" She started forwa - rd again and dropped to her knees beside the prostrate body.

  Carefully she lifted Ben's head into her lap, but the movement tore something in his injured lung and he began to cough. A mouthful of blood spilled between his open lips and poured down his chin.

  "Oh God, Sean. You've killed him!' Isabella sobbed.

  "I hope so,' Sean said softly. 'With all my heart, I hope SO." 'Sean, he's your brother." 'No,' said Sean. 'He's not my brother. He's just a lump of shit." As Garry Courtney started the engines of the Queen Air, he was calculating furiously.

  Capricorn was almost sixty miles closer to the showgrounds than Firgrove, and in addition the Queen Air was seventy or eighty knots faster than the Centurion at the cruise. It was seven minutes since Sean had called him, nine minutes since Mickey had taken off.

  It was all running very close. He dared not try to guess where to intercept the Centurion and try to cut its track. There was only one sure course open to him. He had to fly directly to the showgrounds, then turn and head back on the reciprocal of Michael's heading. He had to risk everything on a head-on interception.

  As he opened the throttles and ran the Queen Air out on to the runway, he found with mild surprise that he still had a half-smoked cigar between his teeth. In the panic of getting to the aircraft he had forgotten all about it. As he lifted the big twin-engined machine into the air, he drew deeply on the cigar. It was the very best Havana, and he smiled at the irony. The fragrant smoke calmed his nerves a little.

  "I'm not as good at this as Sean is.' He spoke to himself. 'Give me a hectic day on the Stock Exchange or a nice bloody takeover deal any day." He pushed the Queen Air right over the manual, squeezing an extra fifteen knots out of her.

  He picked out the showgrounds from almost seven miles out. A pod of giant balloons floated above it like colourful. whales. The vast carparks were a-glitter with reflected sunlight from thousands of vehicles.

  He turned back on to a direct heading for Firgrove and leant forward in his seat, peering ahead through the windscreen and puffing on the fat cigar. He was still running calculations of speed and time and distance through his head.

  "If I'm going to meet them, it should be five or six minutes-' He broke off as a beam of sunlight reflected from something ahead and below caught his eye. He pushed his horn-rimmed spectacles up on his nose, once again hating his weak myopic eyes and peered fretfully down, trying to find it again.

  He had left the built-up residential areas behind, and was flying over the open countryside, studded with small villages and criss-crossed with roads.

  The patterns of ploughed lands and plantations of trees disturbed his eye, and threw up a hundred decoys and optical tricks to confuse him. He searched frantically, sweeping the open sky briefly and then concentrating on the earth below. He expected the Centurion to be well under him.

  He saw the shadow first. It flitted and jumped like a grasshopper across the fields. A moment later he saw the tiny blue aircraft. It was a thousand feet below him and two miles directly ahead. He pushed the nose of the Queen Air down into a dangerous altitude and dived to intercept.

  The two aircraft were converging at almost five hundred knots, and before Garry could get the Queen Air down to the same altitude as the Centurion it had passed like a blue flash below him.

  Garry hauled up one wing into a maximum-rate turn and came round behind the Centurion. He used the Queen Air's superior speed and the dive to overhaul the smaller aircraft.

  "We'll be there in about ten minutes,' Michael warned Ramsey. 'You'd better get ready." Ramsey leant forward and reached down to the gaudily painted cylinders bolted to the floorboards between his feet. Carefully he opened the tap on the neck of each of the bottles. He felt the rush of internal pressure checked immediately by the gate of the main valve in the connecting T-piece.

  Now it needed only to thumb the valve-lever across, half a turn in an anticlockwise direction, to send the mixed and activated gas hissing into the long hose and spraying out through the nozzle under the Centurion's belly.

  Ramsey straightened up and glanced across at Michael in the pilot's seat beside him.

  "All set-' he began, and then broke off and stared with astonishment through the side-window beside Michael's head.

  An enormous silver fuselage filled the entire frame of the window. Another aircraft was flying wing-tip to wing-tip with them, and the pilot peered across at them. He was a large baby-faced man with dark horn-rimmed glasses and the stub of a cigar clamped in one corner of his mouth.

  "Garry!' shouted Michael in consternation. Garry lifted his right hand and stabbed downwards with his thumb, an unmistakable gesture.

  Instinctively Michael flung the Centurion into a tight descending turn, and dropped away towards the earth like a stone. He levelled out just above the tree-tops.

  He glanced in his rearview mirror and saw the Queen Air's round silver nose a hundred yards from his tail and
closing rapidly. He hauled the Centurion up and around hard, but the moment he levelled out the silver machine loomed up beside him. Garry had always been a far better pilot than he was, and the Queen Air had the wings to out fly him.

  "I can't get away from him." 'Fly straight for the target,' Ramsey ordered brusquely. 'There is nothing he can do." Michael had hoped that Ramsey would abandon the operation now, but reluctantly he turned back on to his original track. He was down to two hundred feet above the tops of the tallest trees. Garry followed him round and came up alongside him. Their wing-tips were only a yard apart.

  Once again Garry signalled him to land. Instead, Michael snatched up the microphone of his radio, knowing that Garry would be tuned to i 18,7 megahertz.

  "I'm sorry, Garry,' he cried. 'I have to do it. I'm sorry." Garry's voice boomed through the radio speaker into the cabin. 'Land immediately, Mickey. It's not too late. We can still get you out of this.

  Don't be a fool, man."

  Michael shook his head vehemently and pointed ahead. Garry's expression hardened. He dropped back, and before Michael could react he slid in sideways and thrust the Queen Air's wing-tip under the Centurion's tail.

  Then he came back hard on the control-wheel and flicked the smaller plane's tail up, so she tumbled forward into an almost vertical dive.

  The Centurion was too low and the dive too steep for Michael to recover before he hit the top branches of a tall blue-gum tree.

  Michael threw up his hands as he saw it coming, but a dry branch as thick as a man's arm stabbed through the windscreen that had been weakened by Sean's bullet. The point of the branch caught Michael at the base of his throat. It found the notch between his collar-bones and went through with the ease of a hypodermic needle, transfixing his upper torso and coming out between his shoulder-blades.

  The momentum of the falling aircraft snapped the branch off, and the jagged butt protruded from his throat like an ugly twisted lance.

  The Centurion drove on, crashing and crackling through the tree-tops. First one wing then the other were ripped away, braking the aircraft's speed, until it fell clear of the trees and the wingless fuselage hit the ground, and bounced and skidded to rest at the edge of a field of standing maize stalks.

  Ramsey Machado dragged himself upright in the seat, amazed that he was still alive. He looked across at Michael. Michael's mouth was wide open in a silent shriek; the jagged branch stuck out of his throat, and a fountain of his blood spurted over the remains of the shattered windscreen.

  Ramsey released the catch of his seat-belt and tried to lift himself out of his seat. He found himself anchored, and he looked down. His left leg was broken. It was twisted like a piece of boiled spaghetti between the seat and the gas-cylinders. The leg of his trousers was ripped up to the knee, and the stainless-steel valve-handle was buried deeply in the flesh of his calf.

  As he stared at it, he became aware of the faint hiss of escaping gas. His leg had twisted the valve-handle into the open position. Cyndex was spurting into the hose and spraying from the nozzle under the fuselage.

  Ramsey grabbed at the door-handle and threw all his weight upon it. It was jammed solid. He placed both hands under the knee of his injured leg and hauled upon it, trying to pull it free. The leg elongated, and he heard the ends of shattered bone-shards grate together deep in his flesh, but it was held inexorably as in a bear-trap by the stainless-steel valve-handle.

  Suddenly he smelt the odour of almonds; his nostrils began to burn and sting. Silver mucus flooded from both nostrils and drooled over his lips and down his chin. In their sockets his eyes turned to coals of fire and his vision dimmed.

  In the darkness the agony assailed him. It surpassed any conception that he had ever had of pain. He began to scream. He screamed and screamed sitting in a puddle of his own urine and faeces until at last his lungs collapsed and he could scream no more.

  Centaine Courtney-Malcomess sat on a fallen log at the edge of the forest and watched the puppy and the child at play.

  The puppy was the pick of Dandy Lass of Weltevreden's last litter before Centaine had been forced to have the gallant old bitch put down. The puppy had inherited all her mother's best points. She would be a champion also, Centaine was convinced of it.

  Nicky was working her with an old silk stocking stuffed with guinea-fowl feathers. He learnt as quickly as the puppy. He seemed to have a way with dogs and horses.

  It's in his blood, Centaine thought complacently. He's a true Courtney, despite the name and the fancy Spanish title.

  She went on to think of her other Courtneys.

  Tomorrow Shasa and Elsa Pignatelli were marrying in the little slave church that Centaine had so lovingly restored. It would be one of the biggest weddings to be held in the Cape of Good Hope for at least a decade. Guests were coming from England and Europe and Israel and America.

  There would have been a time not so many years ago when Centaine would have wanted to make all the plans and supervise all the preparations for the wedding herself Now she was content to leave it all to Bella and Elsa Pignatelli.

  "Let them get on with it,' she told herself firmly. 'I've got my hands full with my roses and my dogs and Nicky." She thought about Bella. Bella was contrite and chastened, but Centaine was not satisfied that it was enough. She had debated long and hard with herself and with Shasa before at last agreeing to cover for the girl and shield her from the full consequences of her treason and the righteous fury of the law.

  Still, she has a penance to perform. Grimly Centaine justified her leniency. Isabella will dedicate the rest of her life to 'Making amends.

  She owes a lifetime of service to every member of this family and to all the people of this wonderful land of ours whom she betrayed. I'll see to it that she pays all her debts in full, she thought purposefully, and then turned to watch the puppy find the feather-bag that Nicky had hidden in the reeds down by the stream, the puppy's long silky tail waving like a triumphant banner as she came to deliver it to her young master.

  At last the boy and the dog came to sit at her feet together, and Nicky putone tanned bare arm around the puppy's neck and hugged her.

  "Have you decided on a name for her yet?' Centaine asked. It had taken her almost two years to break down the child's resistance to her, but she felt that now she had at last won him over from his memories of Adra and his previous life.

  "Yes, Nana. I want to call her Twenty-Six.' Nicxy's English had improved vastly since she had enrolled him at Western Province junior School.

  "That's an unusual name. Why did you choose it?" 'I had another dog once - he was called Twenty-Six.' And yet Nicky's memories of that other time had almost faded.

  "Well, that is an excellent reason - and it's a fine name. Dandy Twenty-Six of Weltevreden." 'Yes! Yes!' Nicky hugged the puppy's neck. "Dandy Twenty-Six." Centaine looked down on him fondly. He was still a mixed-up and confused little boy, but he was a thoroughbred with the blood of champions in his veins.

  Give us time, she thought. just give me a little more time with him.

  "Shall I tell you a story, Nicholas?' she asked. She had the most wonderful family stories, of elephant hunts and lions, of wars with Boers and Zulus and Germans, of lost diamond mines and of fighter planes and a thousand other things to thrill the soul of a small boy.

  So now she told him a story of shipwreck and of a castaway on a burning shore. She told him of a journey through a cruel desert with little yellow pixies as companions - and he walked every step of the enchanted way beside them.

  At last she looked at her wristwatch and said: 'That's enough for today, young master Nicholas. Your mother will be wondering whatever has become of us." Nicholas sprang up to help her to her feet, and the two of them walked down the hill towards the big house with the puppy gambolling around them.

  They walked quite slowly, because Nana had a sore leg, and Nicky took her hand to help her over the rough places.