Red Earth

by Tony Park

  The next time was slower, more tender.

  Now that he looked at her, saw her comparative youth, he wondered what had just happened. Was it simply survivors’ sex? he wondered. She was on the rebound as well, so perhaps he was just part of her own personal healing process, a way of getting over Banger. It was the day after her break-up, but she didn’t strike him as the promiscuous type. She did, however, clearly like sex.

  For him, it had been a taste of a forgotten paradise, feeling her body under him and above him, marvelling at her slender arms, her muscled bottom. Her skin was soft and smooth, young, unlike his own.

  He swung his legs off the bed and sat up, running his hand through his hair. He reached for his pants on the floor and took his phone from the pocket. While he scrolled through his recent calls to find Boyd’s number he felt the touch of her hand on his back.

  Mike looked over his shoulder.

  Nia smiled up at him. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Time for us to go collect the kids.’

  ‘We sound like an old married couple.’

  ‘Not quite.’

  ‘No.’ She left her hand there, her palm small, warm, soft on his spine. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘My pleasure. Thank you.’

  She lowered her hand. ‘Mike …’

  He stood, picked up a towel and wrapped it around him. ‘It’s OK. You don’t need to say anything. Besides, I need to call Boyd.’

  He went to the French doors, opened them and went outside and sat on a sun bed. He dialled Boyd’s number.

  ‘Mike?’

  ‘How are they? Everything OK?’

  ‘Themba’s looking better,’ Boyd said. ‘The bleeding’s stopped. Physically he’s looking a little stronger. I’d like to keep him overnight, but I know you want to get going.’

  ‘I’ve found somewhere safe, you don’t need to know where, but he’ll be resting up soon after we collect him.’

  ‘Need to know basis only, huh? I like that. Very James Bond. OK, you on your way?’ Boyd said.

  ‘I’ll be with you in less than an hour.’

  ‘Roger that. All good here, buddy.’

  Mike ended the call and walked back inside. Nia was sitting up in the bed, the sheet pulled up, covering her breasts.

  ‘Don’t turn your back on me and walk out when I’m about to say something to you.’

  Her tone annoyed him. ‘Don’t tell me what to do. We’re not married, you know.’

  ‘Why are you treating me this way?’ she asked.

  ‘I get it,’ he said. ‘You were going to tell me that this was a one-off. I’m too old for you, Nia. In any case, we have to go get these kids.’

  ‘You have no idea what I was about to say.’

  He looked at her. She glared back at him, her green eyes unblinking. She pursed her lips.

  ‘Well?’ he asked.

  ‘The truth is that I don’t know what I was about to say. What happened before was, well, to tell you the truth it was pretty fucking wonderful, but I just don’t know …’

  ‘It’s OK. It’s no big deal.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  He remembered fights with his wife; sometimes they hadn’t even begun as fights, but it had seemed that every word he said, no matter how carefully thought out, had been wrong. He felt like he was in one of those situations now. ‘I’m going to shower. I’ll be ready to leave in ten.’

  Mike walked past her, shook his head, and got under the water.

  *

  Boyd Qualtrough sat on the stoep of his house with a pump action shotgun resting across his knees. He was in a swinging chair, the kind that would have looked more at home in his house in Florida than here in Africa, but he liked it. There was a fine African sunset brewing and he took a moment to savour it.

  He reached down and picked up his glass of bourbon and Coke and took a sip. It was his first of the day; he needed to make sure he had his wits about him until Mike arrived to pick up the youngsters.

  He took the binoculars he’d placed on the seat next to him, raised them to his eyes and focused.

  ‘Lerato?’ he called.

  The Zulu girl – she would be a head-turning beauty as she matured – came out to him. ‘Yes, Dr Boyd?’

  ‘Do you know how to drive?’

  ‘My dad’s been teaching me.’

  ‘Ever driven a quad bike?’

  ‘Um, once, on holidays, at the beach.’

  ‘Come with me.’

  Boyd led her back to the room where Themba was resting. His eyes were much brighter as they entered. Boyd set his shotgun against the wall, checked the saline drip and saw it was almost finished. He pulled out the cannula from Themba’s arm and put a sticky plaster over it. ‘You’ve got to go now, son. There’s a car pulled up down by my gate and three people just got out. One of them’s a lady cop.’

  Themba and Lerato looked at each other. ‘No,’ the girl said.

  Boyd nodded. ‘Looks like it could be the folks who are after you. Mike told me about the woman. The baby’s mom, right?’

  Lerato sighed. ‘She’s crazy, Dr Boyd, they all are. Part of me wants to just give her the baby and hope she’ll leave us alone.’

  ‘You’ve seen her, you’ve seen what she and her kind have done. You know she’s not just gonna leave you be, don’t you, girl?’

  Lerato sniffed.

  ‘Come with us, Dr Boyd.’

  ‘Mike took my truck. The only other transport I’ve got is my quad bike, and there’s no way we’re all going to fit on that.’

  Boyd helped Themba get out of bed and with Lerato’s assistance they dressed him in a fresh shirt Boyd had taken from the closet, and the boy’s dirty, torn school pants. ‘You’ll need some new duds when you get to safety.’

  Lerato went to her room and came back with the baby. He was clean and fed with a small hand towel pinned around him as a nappy. He seemed content enough and gurgled as she bounced him gently on her hip. ‘Please don’t leave us alone, Dr Boyd.’

  ‘Hush.’

  He took up his shotgun and led them out the back of the farmhouse. The zebra foal he’d been caring for brayed, sensing the tension. ‘Hush, now, boy, ain’t nothing to worry about.’

  They went to the carport. Boyd showed Lerato how to start the quad and turned the key for her. ‘Throttle and brake are here, it’s easy. Climb aboard.’

  Lerato got on the driver’s seat and Boyd set the baby down on the grass and helped Themba onto the back. When the boy was seated Boyd lifted the child and placed him between the two teenagers.

  ‘Lerato, a friend of mine, Pete Nairn, farms on the other side of the valley. Head down to the stream, and where you see those two tall trees, there’s a rocky drift where you can cross. Water’s not deep this time of year. I’ll call Mike and tell him where you’re headed. Touch base with him when you get to Pete. Tell Pete you’re the favour that he owes Boyd.’

  Boyd had saved Pete’s favourite dog, stitching him up after a leopard had savaged him, but Pete was having a bad year farming and couldn’t afford to pay the bill. So many of Boyd’s patients were in similar situations. Pete said he owed Boyd a favour and Boyd had told him he’d call in a big one someday.

  ‘Go, now.’

  ‘I’m scared, Dr Boyd,’ Lerato said. ‘If those people come they’ll kill you.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me, young lady. I’ll just stay here and keep an eye on things and once I know you’re safely away, I’ll give those bad guys the slip. Now go on, get. On your way.’

  The quad bike lurched and Themba had to wrap his good arm around Lerato to make sure he didn’t fall off backwards.

  Boyd turned, went back to the house and stopped first in his bedroom. He went
to his closet and took out a pair of hand-tooled vintage cowboy boots that he’d bought as a graduation present to himself when he’d finished veterinary college.

  He sat down on the bed, shook off his sandals and pulled on his boots. Boyd stood, picked up his shotgun by the sliding stock and flicked his hand, chambering a shell. From his closet he also took his .375-calibre hunting rifle, with telescopic sights. Also in the cupboard was a small safe; he opened it, took out a Smith & Wesson .44 revolver, and stuck it in the waistband of his pants. His phone rang and he looked at the screen.

  ‘Howdy, Mike.’ Boyd walked down the corridor of his home, his boot heels clicking slowly, rhythmically, on the floorboards. He hadn’t been here long, but he liked the place. He was pleased he’d bought it before moving to Botswana. It was one of the few sensible decisions he’d made in his life. He took a deep breath, through his nose, imprinting the house’s smell on his senses – wood, floor polish, cigar smoke.

  ‘Boyd, howzit.’

  He walked out through the front door onto the stoep and set the guns down. ‘Could be better. I got company coming up the drive, moving tactically, covering each other as they advance. Two men and a woman. I’ve sent the kids to the property behind me. Pete’s place. You know it?’

  ‘I do. We’re on our way. Get out of the house, Boyd, go with them.’

  ‘Shortage of wheels, my friend, and on that note, just so you know, your bad guys have found themselves a new ride, white Toyota Land Cruiser Prado.’

  ‘Call the police, Boyd.’

  ‘I’ll do that, directly, but I wanted to give the kids time to get away.’

  ‘Boyd, run.’

  ‘I don’t do running at my age. See you soon, Mike.’ Boyd ended the call and took his hunting rifle. He knelt on the timber decking and rested the barrel on a carved wooden handrail. He traversed left to right and saw the form of a man running, bent at the waist, behind a hedgerow. He allowed for the man’s speed, and possibly the fact that he wasn’t a terrorist and just a madman running concealed, and took aim. Boyd fired.

  He knew the bullet wouldn’t hit, but it had the effect he had desired. Through the leaves of the hedge he saw the man drop to the ground. He scanned the countryside. Boyd saw a flash of blue, the woman in uniform, disappear into some long grass. She had gone to ground.

  ‘Good.’

  He had slowed their advance on him, they would be more cautious now, but he had also just signalled that he had seen them and knew who they were.

  ‘Come on, come out,’ he willed them.

  Another man was up, but he had turned away from the farmhouse and was running. Boyd tracked him, keeping the cross hairs of the scope on the man’s back as he headed to the parked Land Cruiser. Boyd was sorely tempted, given what he knew of these people and what they had done, to shoot the man through the back. He even half squeezed the trigger, but something stayed his hand. The man ducked behind the white four-by-four and dropped out of view.

  Boyd saw movement in the grass. It was the woman. She was up and running and he could see she was aiming to get around behind his house. He could see now that she was carrying an R5 and he had to stop her before she saw the fleeing kids. He fired, but it was a snap shot, and he saw the bullet kick up dust in front of her. She did stop though and take cover behind the trunk of a big Natal mahogany. She opened up on him.

  Bullets smacked into the timber frame of his stoep and shattered a window. Boyd dropped to his belly behind a planter box. The flowers in it had died shortly after his most recent girlfriend had left him.

  He poked his head up and was answered with another burst of automatic fire. A man was running towards him, but before Boyd could draw a bead on him the man was behind an old cement water trough.

  Boyd bided his time. He reckoned he would take at least one or two of them with him, and that would give the youngsters enough time. He looked to the Land Cruiser, where the third person had gone. He saw the missing man now, standing up straight, bracing himself against the vehicle. The object in his hand was long, and pointed at the end.

  ‘Crap!’ Boyd got up just before he heard the bang and the whoosh and saw the trail of white smoke as the rocket-propelled grenade left the RPG-7 launcher. Bullets tore into his house around him as he made for the door to get inside.

  The grenade exploded behind him, on the stoep, and the shockwave of the blast knocked him over and propelled him across the lounge room floor. His head smacked into a doorframe.

  Smoke filled the house, and as Boyd rolled onto his back he felt multiple stabs of pain. He’d been peppered either with shrapnel or debris from bits of his own home. He looked around him. He had dropped his rifle and the shotgun was outside somewhere, probably blown away by the grenade blast.

  Boyd tried to stand but his legs would not function.

  He rolled to one side and saw the blood pooling on the floor. He reached down but when he pinched each of his legs in turn he felt nothing. He didn’t want to die, certainly not a long painful death from cancer, but now that he was staring it in the face he tried to be a man about it. He said a quick prayer, thanked God for the love he’d known and apologised for the pain he’d caused.

  There were voices outside, speaking a language he didn’t understand. He thought it sounded like Arabic. Boyd took his phone out of his pocket, dialled Mike Dunn and set it down beside him.

  From his belt he took his revolver. He heard footsteps, fast as they took the stairs then slower as they reached the front deck. Boyd judged where the target would be, raised the heavy pistol, and fired. The pistol bucked twice in his hand and the heavy slugs smashed through the front timber wall of the house. He heard a yelp.

  ‘Hit at least one of them,’ he said aloud, in case Mike was listening.

  A burst of automatic fire smashed what was left of the front windows and stitched a long line of holes above Boyd’s head. Splinters and plaster rained down on him.

  Boyd rolled over onto his belly, grabbed the phone and used his elbows to drag his paralysed body further inside, to the kitchen. He heard voices behind him. He reached the oven and pulled its door open.

  ‘Boyd?’ he heard Mike’s voice on the phone. ‘We’re close.’

  ‘Go to Pete’s and hush now. Just listen. They’re coming for me. I’m finished, Mike. Been good knowing you, pal.’

  ‘Boyd …’

  ‘Quiet.’ He hoped Mike would be able to hear what was going on, but no one who entered would hear him speaking.

  ‘Dr Qualtrough,’ the woman called from out the front of his house. ‘We don’t want to hurt you.’

  ‘Bit darned late for that,’ he croaked back. ‘How’d you find me? The pilot?’

  ‘Let’s just say Mr Buttenshaw won’t be flying again for some time. Perhaps never. It’s good you’re still alive, though. We’ll get you medical attention.’

  Boyd scoffed to himself. ‘All right, I know when I’m outgunned. Come on in.’

  ‘Throw out your firearms,’ she called back to him.

  ‘Rifle and shotgun are on the stoep. This pistola’s all I got left.’ He tossed his Smith & Wesson through the door. He heard footsteps as someone retrieved the pistol. The woman said something in Arabic.

  The barrel of an R5, followed by a brief glimpse of a face, peeked around the doorframe. Boyd had his hands up. The man came out from cover, rifle in his shoulder. Boyd saw the blood soaking his shirt.

  ‘You’re the one I winged. How’s the woman?’

  ‘I’m fine, Dr Qualtrough,’ she called from the other room.

  She was too canny to show herself or come into the room until she knew it was safe. The man was a solid-looking brute, cannon fodder, he guessed. ‘I ain’t so fine.’

  The man spoke in their language, and Boyd guessed he was giving her an assessment.

  ‘That’s right, my legs are gone. Your guy’s seen the blood trail on
the floor. Come on in, darling, I can’t hurt you.’

  ‘Where are the children? That’s my baby they have with them. All I want is to find him and take him home with me. After that I’ll be done.’

  ‘I don’t know why you need to kill so many people to do that. If you were legit, you’d leave it to the police.’ Boyd said nothing about the microchip in the baby’s neck. He didn’t want to let on that Mike and Nia had found it. He looked up at the thug with the gun, who watched him with dark, unfeeling eyes. The man blinked.

  ‘Your boy here isn’t looking so good. I can take a look at him if you like. Come on in and take the gun from him. You can cover me while I patch him up. I’ll have to do it sitting down, though.’

  ‘Enough bullshit, Dr Qualtrough. Save me some time, and your life. Tell me where they’ve gone and I’ll be on my way.’

  ‘How about you bite me, missy.’

  The woman gave a command in Arabic. The man aimed, pulled the trigger and a bullet slammed into Boyd’s left shoulder. The blow didn’t hurt right away. Boyd coughed. ‘Hard ass, hey?’

  ‘Doctor, you don’t know the half of it. We can do this slowly and painfully, or quickly and mercifully.’

  ‘I ain’t going to talk.’

  ‘Everyone talks. Always.’

  The next shot went into his groin. Boyd screamed more in shock than pain. He was dead below the waist in any case and soon he would be dead, full stop. ‘You’re not coming in here, are you?’

  There was a pause. ‘What’s that smell?’ she asked from the other room.

  ‘You got me, Suzanne,’ he said, using her name for the first time.

  ‘You know who I am. You know there’s only one way this can end, Dr Qualtrough.’

  ‘Yep,’ he said.

  The man looked down the open sights of his R5.

  ‘Djuma, get out of there!’ the woman yelled. The man glanced over his shoulder.

  Boyd lifted his right hand and reached into the breast pocket of his bush shirt. As he pulled his Zippo lighter out of his pocket the man, Djuma, looked back at him and fired twice.