Captive_A High-octane And Gripping African Thriller

by Tony Park

  Fidel nodded. Eli Johnston was one of their most annoyingly effective enemies, having foiled several poaching forays. The American occasionally had use of a privately operated Bat Hawk, the same type of aircraft the South Africans used to patrol the Kruger Park.

  ‘You two, stay in the truck,’ Fidel commanded the shooter and bearer. ‘Luiz, in the front, with me.’

  Something was not right on this night. Fidel would not drop off his team so they could walk across the border in search of rhino, not because he was concerned they might be captured or killed, but because he suspected someone was snooping in his backyard.

  *

  Bruce Maxwell made a perfect landing in the dry grass of the open vlei. He collapsed the canopy of the parachute, bundled it in his arms, and took it to the tree line where he stashed it and covered it with dry branches. Still got it, he thought to himself; the rush of a successful jump was still there, but it was no time for a celebration.

  He took the handheld GPS he had borrowed out of his pocket and checked the coordinates for Costa’s farm. It was a one-kilometre walk.

  Bruce moved at a steady pace, taking care to watch his footfall so that he didn’t snap a dry twig or kick a rock. He felt the tingle of adrenaline charge his senses. He paused by a stout tree, moving from one source of cover to the next, and checked the GPS again. He was on track.

  *

  Four kilometres from where he had dropped Bruce, and six hundred feet above ground level, Graham Baird wondered if he was lost.

  He checked the GPS screen in the Bat Hawk once more and assured himself that he was on track. Eli Johnston should have been somewhere on the road below him.

  ‘Trident, this is Eagle, over,’ he said into his radio for the fourth time, using the call-signs he and Eli had agreed on – Eli’s after his old Navy SEAL badge. ‘Nothing heard, out.’

  ‘Eagle, this is Sabre,’ came a voice in his headset.

  ‘Go, Sabre,’ Graham said. Sabre was Bruce’s call-sign, harking back, apparently, to Bruce’s days in an SAS Sabre Squadron.

  ‘Where are you?’ said Bruce.

  ‘I’m over the rendezvous point, but there’s no one here.’

  ‘Shit happens. Put down where you can and await further orders.’

  Graham’s nerves were stretched to the limit and he was dying for a drink. Anything could have happened to Eli. He could have come across some poachers, had a breakdown or a flat tyre. Graham checked the fuel gauge. He couldn’t afford to loiter about in the air indefinitely.

  He carried on another kilometre, then climbed and turned in preparation for landing on a deserted road in the middle of Mozambique.

  *

  Ahead of him, Bruce could see a hill rising up out of the otherwise featureless bushveld. It was the koppies, an outcrop of granite boulders and trees they had identified on the satellite image.

  Bruce quickened his pace and made it to the first of the smooth rocks. He started to climb the boulders but found the climb harder than he expected. It was a warm night and by the time he reached the top of the outcrop he was sweating and gasping for air. This, he conceded, was his body reminding him of his age. But the view below him was worth the effort. Not two hundred metres away was a man-made clearing with four buildings around it.

  He shrugged off his pack and pulled out the night vision goggles. Bruce saw movement in the open square and focused on it. A man with an AK-47 was walking to the smallest of the four buildings. Bruce heard the sound of metal clanging and a high-pitched voice coming from the compound. His heart pounded hard.

  *

  ‘Water! Water! Water!’ Kerry kept banging on the metal door of her cell until José relented and came to her.

  She stepped back as he undid the lock and opened the door. He thrust a warm litre bottle of water into her hands.

  ‘Toilet?’

  José sighed and, as before, instinctively looked over his shoulder. As he turned Kerry noticed the black leather pouch on his belt, a holder for a Leatherman multi-tool.

  ‘Bucket.’ He looked back at her and pointed to the corner of her cell with his rifle.

  ‘I’m desperate.’ She peeked over his shoulder.

  ‘The other men will see you. I will be in trouble.’

  ‘There can’t be many of them,’ Kerry said.

  ‘There are . . .’ He scowled at her. ‘You do not need to know how many other men are here.’

  Well, at least I know he’s not alone, Kerry thought. ‘Please, José, I’m feeling sick. I need to go to the toilet.’ She doubled over and groaned for effect.

  Kerry glanced up and saw José checking behind him again. ‘I can’t,’ he said, but Kerry detected a note of uncertainty in his voice.

  She lurched, one arm outstretched for support. José caught her with his free hand, his other still holding his rifle. Kerry reached around with her other arm, clinging to him, and flicked open the cover of José’s Leatherman. He lifted her then pushed her away. ‘Please, José.’

  ‘All right, quickly.’ He opened the door for her and she stepped out. He raised his rifle with two hands and she walked in front of him, towards the tin-roofed brick building that she assumed was Fidel’s house here.

  Kerry looked around and saw two long buildings that looked like dormitories, each with a row of five windows and doors. Lights shone in three windows in one building while the other was dark. A cooking fire glowed in front of the occupied building and a three-legged pot sat on the coals.

  She headed towards the big house, but José told her to turn right. They went around the back to a small outhouse. It was little better than her bucket.

  There was a small window above the toilet, but it was too high for her to escape through. When she’d finished she washed her hands and came outside. ‘Thank you, José.’

  ‘Hurry.’ He pointed back to her cell with his rifle.

  Kerry heard voices and looked across to the dormitory room with the lights on. She saw a man in shorts and a football shirt step out. He had an AK-47 slung over one shoulder. He leered at her as she walked past, and she quickened her step. He said something in Portuguese to another man, who pushed past him from inside to get a look at her. The second man laughed then whistled at her, but the two voyeurs then lost interest and returned to their rooms.

  As Kerry walked up the three steps back into the storeroom where she was being kept she deliberately tripped and sprawled forward. She cried out. José cursed in Portuguese, but followed her in and bent over and extended his free hand to help her up.

  ‘Are you trying to trick me?’ José asked her as she reached for his hand.

  ‘No.’ Kerry tried to grab him with two arms and got her fingers under the flap of his Leatherman pouch. She could feel the metal on her fingertips as she pulled the Leatherman tool free.

  ‘Get off me! Stand by yourself.’ José shoved Kerry away. Kerry doubled over and unfolded the Leatherman’s blade out of sight. When she turned, José’s inner gentleman had returned and he reached out to help her up. Instead of grabbing his hand, however, Kerry grabbed the barrel of his rifle.

  José pulled the trigger.

  Kerry felt the steel of the weapon in her left hand go from cold to cooking as she swung around with José in a deadly dance. She managed to slide her hand down to the wooden foregrip of the rifle before her skin was burned, but held on. His eyes were wide with surprise as if he’d been caught off guard. He kept his finger depressed on the trigger and as they spun bullets punched holes in the shed wall. As quickly as it had begun the barrage of gunfire was over and the rifle was emptied. Kerry arced her right hand around and plunged the blade down somewhere into his back. José screamed in pain, dropped his AK-47 and fell to his knees, frantically reaching for the knife still stuck in his body. Kerry ran.

  *

  Looking through his night vision goggles Bruce saw bright plumes of light from the muzzle flash of a rifle at the same time as his ears registered the chillingly distinctive pops of an AK-47 being fired on f
ull automatic.

  A woman’s high-pitched scream echoed through the night, and just as his wife, Anh, had been able to distinguish the yells of their kids from a cacophony of a dozen others, Bruce knew it was Kerry crying out.

  He hauled himself to his feet and hopped down the koppies, from boulder to boulder like the sure-footed klipspringer antelope that called these rocky hills home.

  Once down he broke into a sprint, thorny acacias scoring his face and hands as he ran through the thick bush. He heard shouting as he closed on the farm buildings. Bruce couldn’t face the possibility that he was so close to saving his daughter, only to lose her while he watched from his observation post.

  He was not the nineteen-year-old bundle of muscle and testosterone who had gone off to Vietnam to fight, but nor was he unfit, so it was surprising to him that he suddenly found the running so difficult.

  Each bound was becoming shorter, slower, and his heart was pounding. His fear for Kerry should have propelled him faster, adrenaline charging his aching limbs, but instead he was fighting for every single breath. The sound of his heartbeat pounded in his ears. Bruce saw lights through the bushes ahead. He carried on, his legs feeling like they were encased in lead. He had to get to his daughter.

  When he reached the edge of the clearing two men emerged from a building, one shrugging on a shirt. The other wore a football top. Both carried AK-47s. To his right was the hut in which he’d seen the muzzle flashes. A man was in the doorway, calling to the other two; he was also armed.

  The reflexes and skills he had honed in the jungle kicked in. Pain shot up his left arm to his chest, but Bruce had enough energy left to raise his rifle and take a sight picture of the closest of the pair of men. Just as the man noticed him, Bruce squeezed the trigger twice and the man went down, two holes in his chest.

  Stunned, but quick to act, the second man raised his rifle and let off a wild burst. Bruce felt the rounds cleave the air beside him. It took all his strength to hold his AKMS up and steady, but he fired twice more and saw the man fall.

  Bruce tried to call Kerry’s name, but the word came out half-formed, as a groan. He pivoted to the right, seeing the third man come down the stairs from the hut, taking aim at him. Bruce fired, but a spasm of pain overtook his body and his shots went wide. The other man opened up.

  Bruce fell to the ground.

  Chapter 9

  Graham was standing by the Bat Hawk, on the road, when he heard the distant gunfire. The shots continued.

  ‘Sabre, Trident, anyone, can you hear me, over?’ he said into his radio. Of Eli there had been neither sight nor sound.

  Bruce had given him explicit instructions not to fly to the access road of Costa’s farm until he gave the word. The gunfire had stopped. Graham weighed up his options and thought through a range of scenarios of what might have happened. Bruce’s radio could have been malfunctioning, Eli’s likewise, but the gunshots were not part of the plan. Bruce’s idea was that he would reconnoitre the camp, with the help of Eli’s drone and airborne infra-red camera, and then the ex-SAS man would sneak into the camp, free his daughter and make his silent exit. Bruce would neutralise, as he put it, any guards silently.

  His mind made up, Graham got back into the Bat Hawk, started the engine again and took off. As he turned towards the farm he heard static in his headphones and the faint sound of Eli’s voice.

  ‘Eagle . . . this is . . . contact.’

  Graham concentrated on following the road below while trying to make out the indistinct call on the radio. It sounded like Eli was in trouble. A contact was a military term for a gunfight.

  ‘. . . I repeat, two men wounded, vehicle immobilised.’

  ‘Trident, if you can hear me, I copied that you are not mobile, over,’ Graham said. Eli’s reply was drowned out by static. ‘I am heading to the farm. I heard shots fired there.’

  Graham tried Eli a couple more times, but there was no further word from the American. He devoted his attention to the ground and located the junction of the road on which he had landed and the rutted access track to Costa’s farm. He turned left and followed the winding route to the politician’s spread.

  He saw lights ahead and descended to not much higher than treetop level, popping up to clear the granite koppies Bruce had intended to use as his observation post. When he descended again he was over the compound. He saw two bodies on the ground and a figure crouched over another prone man. In the moonlight he saw the person’s face. It was Kerry. She waved frantically at him and pointed to the smallest of the buildings. As Graham looked over his shoulder he saw a man step from behind the shed and raise a rifle. The muzzle flash winked brightly and Graham heard and felt a couple of bullets rip into the fabric of the flimsy aircraft. He banked hard and tried to climb.

  *

  Kerry had run to her father, amazed to see it was him firing the rifle, and fallen to her knees. She had run her hands over his body and face, searching for bullet wounds.

  But she had found none. Bruce was lying in the dust and his face had turned an odd colour. ‘Dad, talk to me.’

  Kerry had been initially scared by the noise of the low-flying aircraft but had waved a warning in case it was someone coming to her rescue. The pilot was gone before she could try and make out who it was. José, however, had shown himself; the knife in his back had not debilitated him as he reloaded his rifle and opened fire at the departing machine. Kerry, enraged by all that had happened to her, picked up her father’s folding-stock rifle.

  She had fired an AK-47 once, at a shooting range while on a family holiday to Vietnam and this weapon looked basically the same. But José had seen her and now that the aircraft was gone he was striding across the compound towards her. As he walked he removed the second magazine from his rifle, tossed it away, and reached into the canvas satchel hanging around his neck for a fresh load.

  ‘Stop!’ Kerry shouted.

  ‘You tricked me and stabbed me,’ he said. He slotted the new magazine home in the rifle. ‘I don’t care if the boss wants to keep you alive, I’m going to kill you.’

  ‘No, José, please stop. Please, just let me go, my father needs help.’

  He looked at the prone man, then to the bodies of the other two men. ‘Your father? He just killed one of my cousins. And now, you . . .’

  Kerry saw the fury in the young man’s eyes. She brought her father’s weapon up to her shoulder. ‘No!’

  José mirrored her actions. Kerry pulled the trigger. The rifle bucked, slamming into her shoulder, but at least one of her bullets hit home. José pitched backwards into the dirt. There was silence.

  Kerry let out a primal cry and dropped the rifle, wanting no more of this killing. Her head was spinning and she felt like she just wanted to curl into a ball. This madness, the kidnapping, the killing could not have happened to her. Through her panic and terror, she looked down at her father and fought to regain control of herself. She lay her ear against his mouth. She put two fingers to his neck and when she picked up his pulse it seemed terribly slow. He was clutching his left side and though he was trying to talk he couldn’t form his words. She remembered him, now, coming back from the doctor not long before her mother had died, telling her that the ‘quack’, as he had called their GP, had warned him to lower his cholesterol intake and stop smoking, or suffer the consequences.

  ‘Fit as a fiddle, I am,’ he’d said.

  Kerry wiped away the tears that filled her eyes.

  ‘Can’t . . . can’t breathe,’ he managed to say.

  She adjusted her father’s head to open his airway and blew two long breaths into his mouth. From the corner of her eye she saw his chest rise and fall.

  ‘Come on.’ Her father was clearly having a heart attack and she didn’t know what else to do. He was breathing, but for how much longer she had no idea.

  *

  Graham brought the Bat Hawk around again. He flew with one hand, every muscle in his body tensed and waiting for the impact of a bullet; in his other
he held his pistol, cocked and ready. He could not leave Kerry alone again.

  Graham had to land as close as possible to the farm. He took a low pass over the open vlei Bruce had parachuted into. There was no telling what the surface of the ground was like. Graham overflew the clearing once more, turned back and prepared to land.

  His first touchdown resulted in him hitting a mound which sent him lurching into the air again. He braced himself again as the wheels settled a second time. It was like driving over an endless series of speed humps but eventually the Bat Hawk slowed to a stop. He cut the engine.

  From under his seat Graham grabbed his veterinarian’s bag. He’d hoped he wouldn’t need it, but he was glad now that he’d brought it with him. He wasn’t licensed to treat human patients, but on occasion he’d found himself the closest thing to a medical doctor when accidents had happened out in the bush. Bag in one hand, pistol in the other, he ran in the general direction of the farm compound.

  *

  Fidel Costa smelled blood and cordite on the wind. They had re-joined the main gravel road back to Massingir just as another bakkie had been coming from their right.

  Fidel had noticed, in the moonlight, that the other vehicle was driving fast, with only its park lights on. He had switched off his engine and called to his men to ready their weapons.

  Through his Chinese-made night vision binoculars Fidel had picked out the distinctive silhouette of the American Eli Johnston’s anti-poaching vehicle. It had high seats in the back for his men, his dogs and extra driving lights mounted on the roof. Fidel could see two men on the rear seats, rifles across their laps.

  ‘They are moving fast, towards my place,’ he told his men. ‘Fire at my command.’

  When Johnston had come into range they had opened up on him and Fidel had the satisfaction of seeing the vehicle veer and skid off the road, then plough into a grove of thorn trees. There had been a couple of shots fired in their direction, but the barrage of AK-47 fire he and his men had directed at the anti-poaching patrol silenced them.

  Rather than staying and finishing them off, Costa had started his engine and sped off in the direction of his bush home. He had stopped whatever part they were playing in the night’s strange events.