Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  Then the assault boat was past, turning back steeply with Isaac spinning the wheel. She leaned out into the turn as he lined up the bows for the next canoe in the straggling line. He hit it without a check, steering into the fragile hull and spilling its crew into the river, driving it under and running on, swinging into the next turn like a slalom racer weaving through the poles.

  The men in the third canoe saw them coming and threw themselves over the side an instant before the bows struck and then they were splashing and screaming as the swift green current carried them away.

  Isaac spun the wheel back the other way, and the next canoe was dead ahead. The crew were shouting and pleading and firing wildly. The volleys of bullets kicked up fountains of spray all around the approaching assault craft in the moments before it struck and trod the shattered canoe under.

  The remaining canoes had turned back and were paddling desperately for the south bank. Isaac overtook them effortlessly and smashed in the stern of the nearest vessel. He felt the engine check and shudder as the spinning propeller bit into living human flesh and then it surged forward again.

  The last canoes reached the south bank and the poachers spilled out of them and tried to clamber up the sheer cliff. The red clay crumbled under their clawing fingers.

  Isaac throttled back and turned the bows upstream holding the assault boat against the current. “I am a Parks warden,” Isaac yelled across at them. “You are under arrest. Stand where you are. Do not try to escape or I will fire upon you.” One of the poachers still clutched his rifle in his hand. He almost reached the top of the bank before the clay broke away under his feet and he slid down to the water’s edge. Sitting in the red mud, he threw up the rifle and aimed at the men in the assault boat.

  The two unwounded rangers were kneeling at the rail, their rifles cocked and levelled.

  “Bulala! Kill!” Isaac snapped, and they opened up together, a massed volley of fire that swept the riverbank. They were hand-picked members of the anti-poaching unit, both good marksmen, and they hated the gangs that plundered the elephant herds, savaged their comrades and threatened their own lives. They laughed as they shot the panic-stricken gang members off the bank. They made a game of allowing them almost to reach the top of the red clay wall before bringing them flopping and kicking back into the river with a short crisp burst of fire.

  Isaac made no effort to restrain them. He had a long-outstanding score to settle with these men, and a few years imprisonment was not enough punishment for their crimes. As the last of them rolled down the bank and sank slowly into the clear green water, he spun the boat and raced back across the river.

  Scar-faced Sali was the leader. These others were mere brainless thugs and cannon-fodder. Sali could recruit a new regiment of them for a few dollars a head. Sali was the brains and the guts of the trade, and without him this day’s work would count for little. Unless Isaac stopped him now, Sali would be back again next week or next month with another gang of ruffians. He had to crush the head of the mamba or it would strike again.

  He raced in close to the edge of the reeds on the north bank, to the spot at which he had rammed the first canoe. Then Isaac turned into the current and throttled back the Yamaha and allowed the current to drift them downstream, using bursts of engine to keep within a few yards of the edge of the reeds.

  The two rangers stood at the port rail, and eagerly scrutinised the reedbed as they drifted by. There was no telling how far the Zambezi current had carried the poacher before he had been able to reach the cover of the papyrus.

  Isaac would make only one sweep from the boat for a mile downstream. Then he would go ashore with his men and heat back along the north bank on foot to pick up any sign that Sali might have left as he dragged himself from the reeds on to dry land and tried to escape. Then they would follow him, for as far and as long as it took.

  Strict interpretation of the law gave Isaac no powers of arrest on the Zambian side of the river, but this was a hot pursuit of a murderer and a notorious bandit. Isaac was prepared to fight if challenged, and put a bullet through his prisoner’s head if the Zambian police tried to intervene and take Sali away from him.

  At that moment something caught his eye in the reedbed directly opposite the drifting assault boat. Isaac touched the throttle and held the boat stationary against the current.

  A small area of reeds had been disturbed, as if something had been dragged through them, a crocodile possibly, or a large leguan lizard, except that clumps of reeds had been twisted and broken as though used as handholds. Crocodiles don’t have hands, Isaac grunted, and manoeuvred the boat in closer. The disturbance must have taken place only minutes before, for under his eyes the flattened reeds were still straightening and rising into their original upright position. Then Isaac smiled thinly.

  He reached over the side and snapped one of the reeds and held it to the sunlight. The smear of colour along its fibrous stem came a way wet and red on Isaac’s fingers and he showed it to the ranger who stood at his shoulder. “Blood,” the ranger nodded. “He is hurt. The prop–”

  Before he could finish the sentence somebody screamed in the reeds ahead of them. It was a high ringing cry of utter terror that froze them all for an instant. Isaac recovered first and nudged the throttle, forcing the bows into the dense stand of reeds. Somewhere ahead of them the human voice screamed and screamed again.

  Deep in the river Sali felt the boat run over him. His head was filled with the deafening shriek of the spinning propeller blades. The sound had no direction but assaulted his senses from every angle.

  Then something struck his left leg a blow that seemed to dislocate his hip and the force of it spun him end over end in the water and disoriented him. He tried to lunge for the surface but his left leg would not respond. There was no pain, just a great heavy numbness as though the limb was encased in a block of concrete that was drawing him down into the green Zambezi depths.

  He kicked out wildly with his good leg and suddenly his head broke the surface. Through streaming eyes he saw the assault boat weaving and zigzagging across the river, smashing up the flotilla of canoes and throwing their crews, splashing and screaming, into the river.

  Sali welcomed the respite that this attack on the other canoes had afforded him. He knew that he had a few minutes before the boat came roaring back to find him.

  He turned his head. The edge of the reedbed was close. With the strength of his fighting anger and outrage still strong upon him, he struck out for it. His leg was a dead weight, a heavy drogue anchor that hampered and slowed him, but he swam with great sweeping overhead strokes of his powerful arms and seconds later grabbed the first handful of papyrus stems.

  Desperately he dragged himself into the cover of the reeds, sliding his body over the springing mattress of papyrus, the maimed leg slithering after him. Deep in the reeds, he paused at last and rolled on to his back to look back the way that he had come. His breathing whistled in his throat as he saw the trail of blood that he had laid through the water.

  He grabbed his own knee, lifted the wounded leg above the surface and stared at it in disbelief. His foot was gone and white bone protruded from the mangled flesh. His blood spurted and dribbled from the severed vessels so that he floated in a red-brown cloud. Tiny silver fish, excited by the smell of it, darted through the stained water, gobbling the strings and morsels of tattered meat.

  Quickly Sali lowered his good leg and tried to touch bottom. The water closed over his head, but his right foot groped unavailingly for the Zambezi’s mud bed. He came to the surface again coughing and choking. He was well out of his depth, with only the thick reeds to support him.

  Far away across the river he heard the sound of gunfire, and then the high-pitched whine of the returning assault craft. It drew closer and closer, until abruptly it sank to a faint burbling sound and he heard voices. He realised that they were searching the edge of the reedbeds for him, and he shrank down lower in the water.

  A cold lethargy wa
s stealing over him as his life-blood leaked away into the river, but he forced himself to rally and began to edge away, deeper into the reeds, towards the Zambian bank of the river. He pushed gently into an opening in the reeds It was the size of a tennis court enclosed by a palisade of tall swaying papyrus. The surface was paved with the flat circular green leaves of the water-lilies and their blooms raised lovely cerulean heads to the early sunlight. Their perfume was sweet and delicate on the still air.

  Suddenly Sali froze with only his head above the surface. Something moved beneath the water-lilies. The water pushed and bulged while the blossoms nodded their heads to the weighty and stealthy movement passing beneath them.

  Soli knew what it was. His thick liver-coloured lips split open and he drooled with terror. His blood drifted away on the lily-strewn waters and the thing beneath moved with greater authority and determination, homing in on the tantalizing taste of blood.

  Soli was a brave man. Very few things in this world could frighten him. However, this was a creature from another world, the secret cold world beneath the waters. His bowels evacuated uncontrollably as terror released his sphincter muscle, and this fresh odour in the water brought the creature to the surface.

  A head like a log, black and gnarled and shiny with wetness, pushed through the lilies. Its beady saurian eyes were set on protruding barklike knobs and it grinned at Sali with ragged fangs protruding over uneven lips. The wreath of lily blossoms draped across its hideous brow gave the creature a sardonic menace.

  Suddenly the great tail broke the surface, double-ridged and crested as it threshed the surface to foam, driving the long scaly body forward with astonishing speed.

  Sali screamed.

  Isaac stood at the control console and drove the long hull deeper into the papyrus. The tough fibrous stems wrapped around the propeller shaft and slowed the boat, bringing it to a gradual standstill.

  They ran to the bows and, grabbing handfuls of papyrus, dragged themselves forward until abruptly they burst into a small patch of open water. Directly in front of the bows there was an enormous disturbance in the water. Sheets of spray were thrown into the sunlight, and splattered over their heads.

  In the foam an enormous scaly body rolled and roiled, flashing its butter yellow belly, the long tail cockscombed with sharp scales thrashing the water white.

  For an instant a human arm was flung upwards. It was a gesture of entreaty, of terrified supplication. Isaac leaned over the side and seized the wrist. The skin was wet and slippery but Isaac reinforced his grip with both hands and leaned back with all his weight. He could not hold Sali and the weight of the reptile together. The wrist began to slip through his grip until one of the rangers leapt to his side and grabbed Sali’s arm at the elbow.

  Together, inch by inch, they dragged the man’s body from the water. He was stretched out between the men at one end and the dreadful reptile below the surface like a man on the torture rack.

  The other ranger leaned out over the gunwale and fired a burst of automatic fire into the water. The high-velocity bullets exploded on the surface as though they had hit a steel plate and had no effect except to send needles of spray into the eyes of Isaac and the ranger at the rail.

  “Stop it,” Isaac panted at him. “You’ll hit one of us!”

  The ranger dropped the rifle and seized Sali’s free arm.

  Now there were three men taking sides in the gruesome tug-of-war. Slowly they dragged Sali’s body from the water, until the reptile’s huge scaly head was exposed.

  Its fangs were buried in the front of Sali’s belly. The crocodile’s teeth lack shearing edges. It dismembers its prey by locking on and then rolling its entire body in the water to twist off a limb or a hunk of flesh. As they held Sali stretched over the gunwale, the creature flicked its tail and rolled. Ssali’s belly was ripped open. The crocodile heaved backwards with its fangs still locked in his flesh and stripped Sali’s entrails out of him.

  With the release of the strain at one end, the three men were able to heave Sali’s body on board. However, the crocodile still held its grip. Although his writhing form lay on the deck, Sali’s entrails were stretched over the side, a glistening fleshy tangle of tubes and ribbons like some grotesque umbilical cord that linked him to his fate.

  The crocodile jerked again with the full weight and strength of the long tail. The ribbon of guts snapped and Sali screamed for the last time and died on the bloody deck.

  For a while there was silence in the boat broken only by the hoarse panting of the three men who had tried to rescue him.

  They stared in horrified fascination at Sali’s mutilated corpse until Isaac Mtwetwe whispered softly, “I could not have chosen a more fitting death for you.” He spoke in formal ceremonial Shana. “Go not peacefully, O Sali, evil one, and may all your foul deeds accompany you on your journey.”

  Chapter 9

  “There were no prisoners, Isaac told Daniel Armstrong.”

  “Did you say none?” Daniel shouted. The telephone connection was scratchy and faint, with heavy atmospheric interference from the thunderstorm raging further down the valley.

  “None, Danny,” Isaac raised his voice. “Eight dead ones, but the rest of the gang were either eaten by crocs or escaped back into Zambia.”

  “What about ivory,” Isaac? “Did they have tusks with them?”

  “Yes, they were all carrying ivory, but it was lost in the river when the canoes went down.”

  “Damn it to hell,” Daniel muttered. It would be much more difficult now to convince the authorities that the bulk of the ivory was taken out from Chiwewe in the refrigerator trucks. The trail to Ning Cheng Gong was growing colder with every hour that passed.

  “There is a police unit on its way from here to the headquarters camp at Chiwewe,” he told Isaac.

  “Yes, Danny. They are here at the moment. I’m going to join them as soon as I have made arrangements to fly my wounded ranger out to Harare. I want to see what these bastards did to Johnny Nzou.”

  “Listen, Isaac, I’m going to follow up the only lead I’ve got on who was responsible for this business.

  “Be careful, Danny. These people don’t mess about. You could get badly hurt. Where are you headed?”

  “I’ll see you around, Isaac.” Daniel avoided the question. He dropped the telephone back on its cradle and went out to the Landcruiser. He sat behind the wheel and thought about it. He realised that this was merely a respite. Pretty soon now the Zimbabwean police were going to want to talk to him again, a little more seriously than before. There was only one place to be, and that was outside the country. In any event that was where the trail was leading him.

  He drove down to the customs and immigration post and parked in the lot before the barrier. Naturally, he had his passport with him and the papers for the Landcruiser were all in order. The departure formalities took less than half an hour, which by African standards was almost record time.

  Daniel drove out across the steel-girdered bridge that spanned the Zambezi and he was aware that he was not entering paradise. Zambia was, after Uganda and Ethiopia, one of the poorest and sorriest countries on the African continent. Daniel grimaced. A cynic might put that down to the fact that it had been independent from British colonial rule longer than most others. There had been more time for the policies of structured chaos and ruination to take full effect.

  Under private ownership the great mines of the Copper-belt had once been amongst the most profitable on the continent, rivalling even the fabulous gold mines further south. After independence, President Kenneth Kaunda had nationalised them and instituted his Africanisation policy. This amounted to firing those skilled and experienced engineers and managers who did not have black faces, a kind of affirmative action.

  Within a few short years he had miraculously transformed an annual profit of many hundreds of millions into a loss of the same magnitude.

  Daniel steeled himself for his encounter with Zambian officialdom.

&nb
sp; “Can you tell me if a friend of mine passed through here last night on his way to Malawi,” he asked the uniformed officer who sauntered out of the customs building to search his Landcruiser for contraband.

  The man opened his mouth to protest his outrage at being asked to divulge official information but Daniel forestalled him by producing a five-dollar bill. The Zambian currency, the kwacha, named for the dawn of freedom from colonial oppression had once held value equivalent to the US dollar. Numerous subsequent devaluations had readjusted the official exchange rate to 30:1. The black-market rate was closer to 300:1. The customs officer’s scruples evaporated. He was looking at a month’s salary.

  “What is your friend’s name?” he asked eagerly.

  “Mr. Chetti Singh. He was driving a large truck with a cargo of dried fish.”

  “Wait.” The officer disappeared into the station and was back within minutes. “Yes…” he nodded. “Your friend passed through after midnight.” He showed no further interest in searching the Landcruiser and stamped Daniel’s passport. His step was jaunty as he returned to his post.

  Daniel felt a little chill of unease as he left the border post and headed northwards towards Lusaka, the territory’s capital. In Zambia, the rule of law ended at the edge of the built-up areas. In the bush the police manned their road-blocks, but were never so foolhardy as to respond to appeals for assistance from travellers on the lonely rutted roads.

  During twenty-five years of independence, the roads had fallen into an interesting state of disrepair. In some places the potholes through the eroded tarmac were almost knee deep. Daniel kept the speed down to twenty-five miles an hour and weaved his way around the worst patches as though he were negotiating a minefield.

  The countryside was lovely. He drove through magnificent open forests and glades of golden grass known as damboes. The hills and kopjes seemed to have been built in antiquity by a giant’s hand. The walls and turrets of stone were tumbled and eroded into spectacular chaos. The numerous rivers were deep and clear.