by Ian Patrick
‘We’re going for the second car, left on Effingham Parade. The others have hit a right on Effingham. How far are you?’
‘Got you,’ Mashego replied. ‘We’re less than fifty behind you. We’ll take a right.’
They hit the junction as he replaced the mouthpiece in its cradle and Buthelezi spun the wheel to the right, slewing the car’s back wheels around as they sought traction, the front wheels then biting first, and suddenly they were hurtling south down Effingham Parade after the lead car.
Meanwhile Thabethe was speeding northward on the same road. He had a clear view of the ocean ahead. On his right, luxury homes were anchored into the prime real estate that sloped down toward the beach. On his left, walls, rockeries, manicured foliage and bright green lawns spread up the hill, embracing other luxury homes. Thabethe decided that their best chance lay with the beach. He sped past Jutland Place on his left and then swung the wheel right at the first fork in the road. The car seemed suspended in mid-air for a moment as it lifted over the sharp sudden descent in the road. Mgwazeni’s heart was in his mouth as Thabethe sped down Falkland Place, skidding to a halt as he ran out of tarmac. There was only a bush path down to the beach and they both sprang out of the car to take it, Thabethe lagging only slightly behind his accomplice.
*
Buthelezi and Mashego hurtled down to the opposite end of Effingham Parade, siren howling as they gained inexorably on the first car. The four fugitives skidded to a halt as they hit the cul de sac at the end of the road and abandoned the car to take their chances in the thick bush to the left via the path that twisted and turned down to the beach. The detectives skidded to a halt and followed, leaving their car with doors wide open.
‘Wait, Thenji,’ Mashego shouted after her. ‘Careful. Ambush. They probably know this area like the back...’
‘Follow me, Nights,’ she shouted back over her shoulder. ‘I’m the one who knows this place like the back of my hand. Thandi and I used this path many times!’
Mashego saved his breath and continued after her. The path angled steeply down and they had to leap over fallen trees and roots, stumbling and slipping in the black soil enriched by decades of rotting leaves and foliage. They could hear the men forty or fifty paces ahead of them crashing through the undergrowth. They appeared to have left the path and headed off to the right just before the beach.
Buthelezi burst through the final section of bush, turning sharp right and upward onto a white sand-dune that arose out of the undergrowth with a clear view of the surf two hundred metres away. Suddenly, she heard three shots fired down to her left, behind her, and immediately turned back to investigate. As she did so, one of the men hurled himself at her from her right, a dagger glinting in the sun as he aimed for her neck. She saw the movement just in time, lurching away to her left and as a consequence losing her footing. Her assailant fell with her as his target moved before he could adjust the thrust and momentum of his body weight. They both tumbled down the dune, Buthelezi scrabbling in vain to grab her service pistol as it flew from her hand down the bank, and she fell face first into the sand.
The man was up on his knees as she was lifting herself from the ground and beginning to turn, and he lunged forward at her. She was only distantly aware of the cold sharp pain as the blade sank into her stomach. Rage and despair mixed in equal measure as she abandoned any hope of retrieving her pistol. Instead her fingers became predatory claws in a fight to the death as she lunged for his eyes. Her right thumb jammed into his left eye socket as the nails of her left hand scratched at his right cornea. He screamed in agony and clutched at his eyes, dropping the blade.
She didn’t let up on the pressure, her right thumb ploughing deeper into the socket as she imagined herself prising out the eyeball, while her left hand now clutched at his Adam’s apple, nails digging in behind the protrusion of cartilage, and she tried with all her might to rip his windpipe from its moorings, as they rolled over in the sand. And over again, and again. Then she saw her pistol, now within reach, and with a superhuman effort she stretched every sinew in her body to grab it. She released both hands from him in order to do so, and saw in a flash that she had had some success with her assault on the eyeball, which was now, if not pulped, at the very least damaged almost beyond repair.
It made no difference, because he would never see again anyway. She grabbed her pistol, brought her arm back, thrust the barrel into the damaged eye socket and pulled the trigger twice.
The man’s face seemed to explode and he fell across her. As she struggled to roll away from the corpse, Buthelezi could see Mashego, now on the beach, some fifty metres away, with the other three men around him like hyenas. Each of them had daggers in their hands. She could see in an instant that Mashego must have taken the three bullets she had heard being fired, and had stumbled down onto the beach. Clearly seriously hurt, he was moving in a daze, as if he was struggling in quicksand, too big and too slow and too wounded to be a match for the three men who were now taunting him as they moved in for the kill. Buthelezi sobbed in panic and frustration as she, too, tried to rise from the white loose sand of the soft dune. She could see that the stab wound to her stomach was serious, that blood had spread over her entire abdomen, and that she was weakening with every second.
She was losing blood rapidly. And she was losing consciousness. She looked at the scene through tears of frustration and helplessness as her fevered imagination ran riot. The men were moving in for the kill. The wild dogs were taking down an enormous bull. Nights Mashego was going to die. The giant shambling detective was going to be cut down by tiny, evil, knife-wielding tokoloshes.
*
Mgwazeni was ahead of Thabethe. Thirty metres down the path Thabethe made a break to the left. Pillay was close behind him but she decided to keep going straight ahead after Mgwazeni. She screamed back at Ryder, who was twenty paces behind her.
‘I’ll take the first guy, Jeremy. You get Thabethe!’
‘Got it. Go for it, Navi!’
It was as if his words switched on fuel injection inside her, and she accelerated after Mgwazeni as Ryder lurched off to his left, following Thabethe, crashing through the bushes like a rampaging elephant.
There was nothing elephantine about Pillay as she took down her quarry before he could get to the beach. She brought him down as any cheetah might bring down an impala, springing onto his back from behind with a leap so surprisingly high that for an instant he looked like some fairy tale creature carrying a vengeful goblin on his shoulders, before she crushed him down into the undergrowth. His mouth collected soil and twigs and leaves in abundance as he ploughed into the earth with her full weight on him.
He scrambled to his feet and seemingly out of nowhere had drawn a dagger with a shiny, eight-inch lethal-looking blade. Pillay recognised it instantly as a Damascus steel hunting knife, among the most lethal and dangerous weapons she had taken off any criminal. She paused for only a second before she danced toward him, spun 360 degrees clockwise as she left the ground, and struck his right temple in a crushing blow with the heel of her right boot. He crashed to the ground, concussed, rendering unnecessary her planned follow-up blow with her right fist.
Within seconds she had cuffed him and hauled him to his feet for the walk back up the hill to the car.
Meanwhile Ryder was gaining on Thabethe with every stride as they both smashed through the thick undergrowth.
*
Through the fog of her emotions, the rapidly weakening Buthelezi saw one of the men lunge forward. Mashego, as if in a daze, managed to avoid the thrust of the dagger, shift his weight backward and grab the assailant’s arm. He ripped the arm upward and over and behind the man’s back. The thug screamed as the shoulder-joint ligaments were torn from their moorings in the socket by the enormous power that the wounded detective was still able to wield. The fading Buthelezi then experienced a moment of pure stasis, watching as Mashego, almost in slow motion, grasped the gangster’s neck from behind with his right hand
and grabbed his genitals from behind with his left, and with a superhuman effort lifted him straight-armed above his head. The movement was sufficient to make the other two assailants pause for a moment in shock. The man struggled for a moment in the grip of the giant, facing upward and kicking his legs and swinging his remaining good arm in vain like an upended cockroach kicking in vain on its back. Mashego then dropped down suddenly onto his left knee, at the same time bringing the gangster’s full weight smashing down onto his right knee, breaking the man’s back and severing his spinal cord cleanly at C3.
But the massive effort had virtually finished off the detective, who had now fallen onto both knees, head bowed, completely exhausted, as if waiting for the final fatal thrust of the daggers. The other two men had recovered and were now moving toward him. Buthelezi brought up her weapon more in hope than in faith as the first man stabbed his lethal blade into the detective’s back then drew back quickly to prepare for the next fatal thrust.
She had little more than a second to aim and hit two assailants at a distance of forty metres. Even she, the top marksman throughout her police training, could not hope to succeed at this distance. As both men moved in for the kill she steadied the weapon, two-handed, and fired two shots in succession at the man on her right. In the next half-second she aimed fractionally to her left and let off another two rounds. As she collapsed she thought she saw - she hoped she saw - both men stumble slightly. But she also saw the giant Mashego topple forward into the sand.
And then she passed out.
*
Thabethe felt the detective closing him down. His whoonga-infected lungs, sucking in small gasps as he ran, were no match for the pair of great bellows that Ryder called on to pump oxygen into his own bloodstream. The fugitive’s throat, drawing in shallow gulps of air that made him feel as if he was tasting blood, was screaming in parched agony. He felt the world closing down around him with every stride, thorny bushes tearing at his skin and thick foliage impeding every change of direction as he zig-zagged through the bush.
Suddenly he stumbled to a halt, and leaning helplessly against a tree he turned, panting, to face his adversary.
Ryder had him cold. Thabethe’s gun hung from his hand as if it was a useless dead weight. He knew he was no match for the cop. He wouldn’t even get his weapon halfway up before the detective would send three or four slugs smashing into him.
For Ryder’s part he desperately wanted Thabethe to try it on. This man that he had been tracking for so long. A man who had a range of serious crimes to his credit. Nothing would give him more pleasure than to put a bullet into the guy’s chest, then another into his head.
But Ryder needed his man to make the first move. Ryder was no Mashego. And no Thenjiwe Buthelezi, for that matter. He had been in any number of shootouts and had always felt as cool as ice, with no remorse following a kill in such circumstances. This was because he would always only ever have his weapon drawn for good cause. But simple straightforward execution was something he had never yet done, no matter how bad the villain.
He wasn’t sure that he would always feel that way. If this man had violated or killed his wife or children, or even his much-loved Sugar-Bear, Ryder knew he could be as ruthless as any Mashego or Buthelezi. But fate had not yet put him in such a situation. Not yet.
The two men faced each other, both panting heavily. Both waiting. Who was going to make the move? Their eyes locked in a gaze that could be broken only by a decision from one of them. Nothing outside mattered. A tense couple of seconds merged into an easier five seconds. Their breathing eased, slowly. Five seconds became ten seconds. Then a decision was reached.
Thabethe let the weapon slip from his grasp and fall to the ground. Very slowly, avoiding any quick movement that might provoke the wrong reaction from the detective, he lifted his hands up in the air and then placed them behind his head, clasped, with fingers intertwined.
‘Turn around.’
Thabethe obeyed, wearily. Ryder stepped forward and with the one-handed skill that comes from years of practice, he handcuffed Thabethe from behind, stepped back, and let his prisoner turn around again to face him. Thabethe raised his cuffed hands up and over his head and let them hang down in front of him. For a few seconds Ryder looked into the deep black wells of his eyes and wondered, for an instant, why he hadn’t just pulled the trigger to rid the world of this deeply malevolent thing in front of him. Surely, he thought, there’s no moral ambiguity in killing the devil himself?
‘Move.’
Ryder pushed him forward, picked up the fallen weapon and holstered it, and they walked through the bush back to the car. As they did so, Ryder switched his own gun to his left hand and pulled out his phone.
‘Navi. Jeremy. I’ve got him. Yes. Yes. No. Yes. We’re coming through the bush. Yes. Meet me at the car.’
*
Residents had swarmed out of the last four properties on Effingham Parade and gathered around the two cars. One of them, a woman who had some experience with car radios, had reached into the open police car to take the call, then directed the approaching police back-up vehicles down to where they were.
Within minutes medics and photographers and a video crew had arrived to join the cops, all of them clambering down the path to the beach, where police cordons were rapidly erected to keep out other onlookers approaching from both the Mpenjati beach in the south and the Trafalgar beaches in the north.
Pillay and Ryder soon joined the melee at the end of Effingham, their two prisoners handcuffed in the back of the car, attracting stares and gossip from the crowd. The detectives collared two constables and tasked them with keeping a close watch on the prisoners as they then joined the rush down to the beach, where they heard that the medics were fighting against all odds to save the lives of two seriously wounded cops.
14.35
Having followed his passenger’s shouted instructions all the way, Pullen brought the vehicle to a skidding halt at the very end of the southern branch of the Izingolweni Road, just at the junction with the R61 and the main road for Port Edward. Innumerable taxis were pulling in, leaving, or waiting. Mkhize’s door was halfway open before the vehicle stopped. He had his mind set on a taxi across the Mtamvuna River toward the Eastern Cape. He had had enough of KwaZulu-Natal. And he was a wanted man in Gauteng, too. He needed new ground.
‘Wait! Where are you going? We have to link up with Menzi!’
Mkhize ignored him and continued striding away. Pullen got out and called after him again.
‘What are you doing, Mlungi? What about Menzi?’
Mkhize stopped. He had had enough of this whining mlungu.
‘Hey! Wena! It’s not Menzi. It’s Mzenzisi. You know what means Mzenzisi? No. You not know what means Mzenzisi. You know what means my name? Mlungisi? You know what means Mlungisi and Mkhohlisi? No. You, Mlungu, you go and find out what means these names, nè?’
Pullen was startled at the venom with which Mkhize spoke. He couldn’t understand what had turned him. All he could do in response was muster a weak question.
‘How am I going to write the story without the two of you...’
‘Hey! Hey! Wena! Now you listen one more time, you. Mr Pullen. Mr Michael Pullen. uMlungu. Mr big clever white newspaper man!’
Mkhize was spitting his words, furious, the rage within him barely contained. Pullen kept his distance, startled, as the two of them faced each other next to the car. The wind tugged at Pullen’s hair and sand flew up in both their faces as Mkhize continued.
‘You think that story we are telling you, there at Emahawini Tavern and at Superspar in KwaMashu, you thinking that story is a good one, nè? Mr Detective Ryder. James Bond, double-o-seven. Interpol they look for him. In China and Russia and England and everywhere they look for him. Maybe also on the moon, nè? Big international drug man, that Detective Ryder. You thinking I’m working for amaphoyisa, too, yes?’
‘I don’t understand, you mean all that stuff you told me...’
‘Hau! You newspaper men. You think you clever! Me and Skhura, we think when we meet you, we think this man is moegoe! We say he is one big stupid mlungu. He writes bullshit for the newspaper. We can tell him the more bullshit and he can write it some more. Then the police they can be busy working with the bullshit while me and Skhura we can go on with our work. Fokoff, wena. You write your stuff but you know nothing what is happening here, man. You know nothing what is happening in this country. Tchai! What you doing in this country, white man? Tchai!’
And he strode away in search of a taxi, leaving Pullen dumbfounded.
The wind rose. Sand began to sting his face. He watched as Mkhize hailed a taxi that had already started pulling out. The man he knew as Mlungisi got in and soon disappeared from sight, heading south to the Eastern Cape.
19.55
Nxumalo pulled up in front of the Beach Hotel on O.R. Tambo Parade and parked his car. The Brigadier, wearing plain clothes, arrived at the same time and parked his car five bays away from Nxumalo. Frankie and du Plessis were standing in front of the hotel about twenty metres from where they both parked.
The normal Saturday night crowds were out and about. The paved walk down south to uShaka Marine World was crammed with tourists and restaurant-seekers and buskers. Leading northward there was a similar pattern of pedestrians, while hawkers still plied their trade and young children ran about screaming and teasing.