by Tony Park
Terry and George were posing for a photograph with Britney a couple of tables away. Linda was pointing the camera and a waiter was looking annoyed. Mike’s crowd was getting restless and he wondered how long it would be before one or all of them were chucked out of the nightclub. At the next table along, Jane and Julie Muir were deep in conversation with a couple of tall, muscled men.
‘The Muirs have got lucky,’ Sarah said, following Mike’s gaze. ‘Those guys don’t look like your average tourists.’
‘River gods.’
‘What?’ Sarah yelled, as she moved even closer to hear Mike’s answer.
‘River gods. That’s what the white-water rafting instructors here like to call themselves. They do OK with the tourists, especially the female tourists, if you know what I mean.’
The Muir women had gone rafting earlier in the day and hadn’t stopped talking about it, and their instructors, since. Jane was leaning closer to one of them, a hugely muscled African, resting a hand on his thigh as they spoke. The other man had furtively slipped an arm behind Julie’s back, encircling her waist without her mother noticing.
‘What are you smiling about?’ Sarah asked, leaning close again.
‘Nothing.’
The rest of the crew were on the dance floor, screaming the words to a retro number from the movie Grease, which Mike remembered seeing on first release, before most of them were born. No one in the group was looking at Sarah and him.
‘Shit!’ Mike said.
‘What?’
‘That guy. The tall guy over there. Recognise him?’ The man was dressed in black from top to toe. Tailored trousers, black silk shirt and, incongruously considering the heat, a long black leather jacket.
It took Sarah a moment, then she said, ‘Christ! He was with Hess and Orlov today.’
The man hadn’t seen them yet, but he was walking through the crowd towards Mike and Sarah. The ladies and gents toilets were on the far side of the packed room from their table, as was the exit. There was no way they could barge through the heaving dance floor without passing the man or attracting attention to themselves. Mike knew that if they stood and started to move, the rest of their party would call out for them to join their drunken gyrations, focusing all eyes on them.
The man was ten paces from them now, his eyes scanning the room from side to side like the needle on a radar scope. Mike saw him reach instinctively under his left armpit, probably subconsciously reassuring himself his pistol was still there.
Sarah looked at Mike and he saw the earlier bravado drain from her face, along with all colour. ‘What are we going to . . . ?’
He reached his right arm out until it was around the back of her neck. Mike felt her recoil reflexively at the embrace, but pulled her forcefully towards him nonetheless. Sam had been sitting at their table earlier and had left his floppy khaki bush hat on his chair. Mike grabbed it with his left hand and pressed it to the back of Sarah’s blonde hair, hoping the man had been given a suitably vague description.
Mike leaned back in the deep padded velour of the booth cushions, smelling years of stale body odour and tobacco, and pressed the back of his head into the fuzzy material to hide his ponytail. Sarah shrugged viciously for a brief second, then suddenly seemed to understand what he was trying to do. Mike’s mouth was only two or three centimetres from hers. From the corner of his eye he saw Hess’s henchman standing to one side, very near to them. He probably wouldn’t have noticed if they weren’t actually kissing, but Mike didn’t want to take the chance.
He pressed his lips hard against Sarah’s. Again she recoiled – whether from disgust or simple surprise, he couldn’t tell.
Then her lips parted.
Their tongues met and he tasted tobacco and tequila. She relaxed slightly in his embrace and he tightened his arms around her. Her tongue was in his mouth now, her eyes half-closed. The man looked around him again, turned on his heel and strode back to the door, pushing through the throng of dancers. He hadn’t seen them, but Mike suddenly didn’t want to stop the subterfuge.
Their teeth gnashed for an instant as she broke the kiss. ‘Is he gone?’ Sarah whispered, for they were close enough now to hear each other and there was a brief lull in the music as the DJ fast-forwarded a skipping CD.
‘I think so,’ Mike said.
‘Good,’ she said. She placed her palms on his chest and gently, but decisively, pushed him away.
They both looked around to see who had noticed. No one from their group.
‘Sarah, I’m –’
‘Leave it,’ she interrupted. ‘Had to be done. Um . . . good thinking, by the way.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
The waiter arrived with their beers, giving them both a reprieve from the awkward moment.
Sarah poured her Zambezi into a frosted glass, slowly, as if buying time. Finally, she said, ‘Look, nothing happened. It was just part of the act, right? I don’t need this . . . this right now.’
What didn’t Sarah Thatcher need right now? Mike asked himself. Him, he supposed was the answer, and he could understand that. Sort of.
‘No problem,’ he called over the increasing din as the music returned.
‘Good. I’m glad to hear it,’ she said, as if that was the end of the matter.
Sarah gazed out at the crowded dance floor to avoid meeting his eyes. Her cheeks were flushed red and her hand was a little unsteady as she raised the beer glass to lips still moist from his. Mike thought of Rian’s golden rule again and realised now why it was called that.
‘I’d better get back to the truck. Nigel’s been there all day. The poor bugger probably needs some sleep,’ Mike said, leaning close to Sarah’s ear again so she could hear him. Her perfume unsettled him, and he couldn’t stay in the club anymore.
‘Sure,’ she said, nodding her head. ‘Good idea. I’ll head home with the others.’
‘Right,’ Mike said. He didn’t look back as he threaded his way to the exit. He wondered if she was watching him leave.
He was glad to get outside into the night air, away from the smell of body odour and stale cigarette smoke. It was warm out, but not oppressively hot and humid like the club.
Once he’d taken his fill of clean air, Mike pulled out a cigarette and lit up. It was only a short walk from the club back down the hill to the camping ground, just a couple of blocks. The tequila had left him feeling dehydrated and he wished he’d bought another beer for the road. He resolved to get one from the fridge in the truck, even if it meant conversing with Nigel, assuming he was still awake.
Mike snuck into the camping ground the same way that everyone else obviously did, over a side security fence that had been trampled down by a couple of decades of drunken party animals short-cutting their way back from the nightclubs, not to mention the occasional thief. As he unhitched a rusty barb from his trousers he heard the distinctive whooping of a car alarm. He assumed the fool owner had triggered it by mistake and didn’t know how to turn it off. However, when he heard the crash and tinkle of breaking glass he quickened his pace.
The camping ground was nearly empty. There had been another overland truck in during the day, but it had left in the afternoon. The only other vehicle that was still there when the group had left for the nightclub was a new-looking white Toyota double-cab four-wheel drive with a Jo’burg registration.
Mike rounded the shower block and saw the Toyota, its hazard lights flashing and its alarm whooping. This was no false alarm, he realised. The headlights were smashed and the vehicle sagged low to the ground – all four tyres had been slashed. A man emerged from the far side and, even in his alcohol-induced fug, Mike had no trouble recognising him – bald head, black trousers, black leather jacket. There was no mistaking his tall, hulking build, either. The man brought a long arm up over his head and the street lighting glinted on the length of pipe in his hand. The windscreen of the expensive vehicle shattered into a crazed spiderweb of broken glass.
Mike dropped his cigarette
and stubbed it out. He briefly considered running to his truck and making for the police station, but dismissed the idea just as quickly. He – they – were on to Sarah and him, but there was nothing to suggest they knew they were travelling in a bright yellow overland truck along with a bunch of tourists. Mike assumed Hess and Orlov now knew Sarah and he were staying in the camping ground, but how they had found out escaped him for the moment. Obviously the man in black thought Mike and Sarah were the owners of the Toyota.
Mike decided to fetch the police, or security, or whoever he could find. He turned and took a step, but the remains of a broken beer bottle crunched loudly as he lowered his foot. He looked over his shoulder and saw the man staring at him. They both started to run.
Mike had a good twenty-metre start on the intruder and, although he supposed they were about the same age, there was not an ounce of fat on the pursuer’s long, lean body. He caught Mike a few metres short of the fence, beneath a broken streetlight.
They went down in a tangle of arms and legs, and Mike fell heavily on his right side, grazing his arm and elbow beneath his short-sleeved shirt. He curled into a ball and rolled to the left, quick enough to avoid the full force of the first blow of the pipe. The metal glanced off his left shoulder. No bone cracked, but the pain was enough to make him gasp in shock. The next blow was better aimed, landing just below the left side of his rib cage. The breath shot from his lungs with a painful burst and he lashed out uselessly with his legs.
He rolled onto his right side, gasping for breath, and felt something dig into his ribs. He flexed the fingers of his right hand feeling for the object, hoping to find a weapon of some sort. His attacker straightened above him. The big man transferred the pipe to his left hand and reached into his jacket with his right.
‘Make a sound and you die here and now,’ the man said in a deep, measured voice. ‘Now tell me, who are you? Who is the girl, and who do you work for?’
The man fidgeted for a second, as if he was undoing the clasp on a shoulder holster. Mike reckoned he had less than a second. His fingers closed around the object underneath him. It was a half-brick, heavy and jagged. He flipped his body to the left, using the momentum to add power to his throw. The brick scraped his fingers as it left them and glanced off the man’s high ebony forehead with an audible thud.
The man staggered but didn’t fall. Instinctively his free hand, the one that had been reaching for his pistol, moved to the painful wound on his head. Mike was on his feet now and he rushed the man, hitting him in the chest with a shoulder. The man flailed with the pipe, but couldn’t move his arm high enough to swing down with any real force. Mike hooked the fingers of his left hand and gouged the man’s eyes as he raised a knee hard into his groin. It was the assailant’s turn to gasp now, but the blow from Mike’s knee was not enough to fell him. The man threw his head back and Mike felt his short fingernails scratch harmlessly down his cheek. Before Mike could move his hand away the man had his index finger between his teeth. The pain was excruciating and Mike moved his whole body away to give weight to his bid to free himself from the other man’s wildly grinning jaws.
This was the reaction the man was hoping for and he drove his left fist, with the pipe still clenched in it, up into Mike’s solar plexus. Mike doubled over and dropped to his knees. The man’s teeth scored the length of Mike’s finger as it finally came free. The man jumped back, using the room to deliver a brutal kick up into Mike’s jaw, knocking the Australian all the way to the ground.
Blood ran freely from the gash on the man’s head and he wiped it from his eye with the back of the hand that held the pipe. Mike was having trouble breathing, his finger and face afire with competing agony. He felt like he was going to throw up and tasted stale tequila rising at the back of his throat.
The man again reached under his jacket for his pistol. This time it came out easily. It was an automatic with a long silencer screwed to the barrel.
‘Who are you?’ he asked again. He was breathing rapidly, but there was little doubt who had come out of this fight the worse off.
‘Fuck off,’ Mike managed painfully, wasting the little air he had been able to drag back into his lungs.
The man kicked again, this time finding Mike’s stomach. Mike curled into the foetal position. Somewhere in the darkness he heard running footsteps on the road. I’m going to die, he thought to himself. But there was another thought, as well. He knew he had to protect Sarah and the rest of the people in the truck. Even if he died, the others must not be dragged into this mess.
‘I’ve been told to kill you, you know,’ the man said matter-of-factly, his rich, deep voice steady again. ‘Tell me what I need to know and the girl will go free.’
‘There’s nothing to tell,’ Mike gasped. ‘Why the fuck did you smash my truck?’
He gave a satisfied snigger. At least Mike now knew Hess, Orlov and their henchman had nothing to connect Sarah and him to the garish overland truck parked in the shadows.
‘Have it your way, then,’ the man said. He straightened his arm.
Mike saw his finger take up the slack on the trigger. He realised with a clarity that sliced through his pain that he wasn’t ready to die, and that he wouldn’t be until Hess and Orlov and whoever had assisted them were locked up or dead – preferably the latter. He had to think of something to stall the man above him. ‘It was money,’ he rasped.
The man relaxed his arm slightly and looked over the foresight of the pistol. ‘What?’
‘Money. We get information from contacts, sources, in the top hotels about wealthy male clients. The girl distracts them, gets into their rooms on the promise of sex, then she drugs them and rolls them. Sometimes I do the rooms while she keeps them busy. This time it didn’t work, we got busted.’
Mike spoke quickly and hoped the man’s command of English was good enough for him to take it all in. The story was flimsy with a dozen holes in it and wouldn’t stack up in front of Hess and Orlov, but Mike was hoping it would be enough to stall the enforcer.
The man hesitated and Mike could see him concentrating on the story, weighing it up in his mind. ‘Bullshit,’ he said, smiling. ‘I don’t believe you, but if that’s the best you can come up with, I’ll tell the baas. But now you got to die.’
The man straightened his arm again and Mike grabbed a handful of sandy earth. He’d throw it into his eyes, he thought, and maybe the gunman would miss his head. Not much of a plan.
A loud whistle and a dog’s bark shattered the quiet. ‘Stop, police!’ Mike heard a voice shout. ‘Drop the gun!’
The man was suddenly trapped in the beam of a flashlight. He turned, one arm raised to shield his eyes from the glare, and fired a shot towards the light. Mike heard more shouting and swearing as he rolled, then crawled as fast he could into a patch of deep shadow. He looked back and saw his attacker was gone. He heard the fallen fence squeak and rattle in protest as the man scrambled over it, and he rose painfully to one knee to get a better view. He was running up the street, past darkened shops, scattering a few drunken late-night revellers from the footpath. He disappeared into the shadows of the first alleyway he came to.
Mike turned sharply as he heard someone approach him. He had his fists out in front of him, ready to strike. It was Nigel, looking red-faced and breathing hard. ‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Mike spat.
Nigel looked hurt and said, ‘Saving your bloody life by the look of it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘This character dressed up like Shaft comes up to me an hour ago at the truck and asks me if I’ve seen an Australian with a ponytail and a pommy chick with blonde hair. This dude looked bad, but he said he was a friend of yours. I told him I hadn’t seen anyone like that, but that there was a blonde woman and a man driving that Toyota four-wheel drive over there.’ Nigel smiled as he recounted the conversation.
Mike nodded. ‘Good work. What happened then?’
‘Well, he wandered around the camping ground. Checked the gent
s, and the ladies, which made me suspicious. He peered into the windows of the four-wheel drive and the next thing I knew, the alarm was going off. He’d broken into it, rooted around for something and then got out a knife and slashed the tyres! I took off and went looking for the security guard. He was outside gasbagging with his mates and the two of us hailed some passing cops.’
‘Thanks,’ Mike said.
‘No problem. Who was that guy, anyway? Why was he after you two?’
‘Just some crim,’ Mike said, as two Zimbabwean policemen approached them. The security guard was pulling hard on the leash of a barking Alsatian that looked like it wanted to tear a hole in the security fence with its teeth. Mike guessed the security guard’s duties didn’t extend to pursuit and capture. He supposed the police, too, were happier to stay and take statements rather than pursue an armed man on foot.
The police wanted to know what had gone on and Mike gave them a cobbled-together version of Nigel’s good deed and his arrival on the scene. Mike said he had interrupted the man vandalising the truck and had tried to stop him. Mike and Nigel went through the motions of giving descriptions and the police said they should both go to the station and give a statement. Neither of them wanted that. They were saved, however, by the arrival of the hapless owners of the four-wheel drive. Mike felt sorry for the young South African couple – they looked like they could have been honeymooners. However, he was relieved that their presence, and Nigel’s quick thinking, had saved the day. Mike left the couple with the police, and he and Nigel retreated to Nelson and their circle of tents. The rest of the crew stumbled into the campsite a few minutes later, minus Jane and Julie Muir.
‘Oh my God, what happened?’ Sarah asked when she saw the bruises on Mike’s face.
Mike told the rest of the crew the semi-made-up story about him and Nigel surprising the car vandal.
‘Where are Jane and Julie?’ Mike asked when he’d finished the tale.
Mel laughed. ‘Don’t worry about those two, they’re kicking on with the rafting guys. They said they’ll catch up with us tomorrow morning if they don’t make it back tonight.’