Red Earth

by Tony Park

  ‘Oh, I think I can.’ Suzanne unzipped her own bag and took out an envelope bulging with US one-hundred-dollar bills. She handed it to Alberto. ‘That’s the first half. The second half is when I get my baby back.’

  ‘Baby?’

  Suzanne outlined the mission. She had picked up a rental car at Harare Airport and parked and camouflaged it in the bush near Fish Eagle Lodge, then conducted her own reconnaissance on foot. None of the people she was looking for were visible at the lodge but at the outlying tented camp she had found Dunn, the two teenagers and Hassan. She had seen Lerato Dlamini walking around the camp with the baby in her arms, wrapped in a brightly printed cloth. Suzanne would have made straight for the girl if it hadn’t been for the fact that she was being escorted on her little walk, while she rocked Hassan, by two armed men.

  ‘There are five armed men in green uniforms, two black and three white. They look like anti-poaching operators,’ she explained to Alberto.

  The poacher scratched the stubble on his chin. ‘One of the white men is old, grey hair, another much younger, the third in middle age.’

  Suzanne nodded. ‘You know them.’

  ‘It is the Penquitts, father and son, and their dogs, the Mpofus. The other white man is an Australian, a former soldier. I take back what I said before. It will be a pleasure killing these men. They have killed too many friends of mine.’

  ‘Whatever. There is another white man, about fifty, who will be armed as well, and a teenage Zulu boy and girl. The girl will be caring for my baby. I want no witnesses left alive, Alberto.’

  ‘All right. We will do our best to ensure your child is not harmed.’

  ‘Just do your job.’

  Suzanne had made a mud map of the camp, a three-dimensional model using rocks for the tents and lines in the sand for the tracks around them. She used a stick as a pointer as she got back to the business of briefing her assassins. ‘They have been making an improvised bunker, here,’ she pointed to the trench she had etched in the dirt. ‘This means that they know that I know they are here and that I am on my way.’

  Alberto translated and squatted down on his haunches. ‘I will position two of my men on the right flank, to lay down fire support, with extra ammunition, and to act as a diversion. You and I and the other two will then circle around.’ He looked to one of his men, ‘Eduardo, granada de mão.’

  Eduardo reached into a canvas satchel he wore across his chest and pulled out two Russian-made hand grenades.

  Alberto smiled. ‘We sometimes put these under the carcasses of dead rhinos, to catch the anti-poaching bastards when they come to inspect the animals. These will take care of your bunker.’

  ‘Good thinking,’ Suzanne said. ‘We will take up position, not too close, because the anti-poaching people look well trained. They may patrol around the camp. We will watch, though, and make sure no one leaves with my baby.’

  ‘We attack at night, two in the morning, when some of them will be sleeping.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Suzanne said.

  *

  ‘Themba,’ said Lerato, ‘could you do something for me, please?’

  Lerato and Themba sat in the rudimentary bunker, an assortment of blankets and pillows not quite making it comfortable nor warm enough. Themba was pleased that Hassan, at least, was somewhere safe. Oscar Mpofu stood and scanned the bush at the edge of the camp through a pair of night vision binoculars.

  ‘Anything,’ Themba said. He meant it.

  ‘Will you hold me, please?’

  He shifted closer to her and tentatively put an arm around her shoulders.

  ‘Tighter.’

  Oscar looked down and grinned. Themba replied with what he hoped was a stern look. Oscar shrugged and went back to his surveillance. Themba drew Lerato to him and she laid her head on his chest. Themba felt like he never wanted to let her go.

  ‘I’m scared, but I feel safe with you, does that make sense?’ she asked.

  ‘You give me courage and strength, Lerato.’

  She nodded and looked up at him.

  Themba’s heart was beating faster. He looked at her beautiful lips, her shining eyes, and moved his mouth to hers. Just as he was about to kiss her there was a shout from beyond the other side of the camp, and the gunfire began.

  ‘Contact, wait out,’ a voice said from the hand-held radio on Oscar’s belt.

  ‘What is it?’ Themba said.

  ‘Keep your heads down.’ Oscar continued watching the bush ahead and in an arc in front of him. ‘That was Shane. He and Tim were on a clearing patrol, to the east. They have found someone.’

  There were more bursts of fire.

  ‘Two enemy.’ Shane’s staticky voice was calm through the radio.

  ‘You want the QRF?’ said the younger white man, Jordan, through the radio. Jordan and Oscar’s brother, Sylvester, were in the centre of the camp acting as the small contingent’s quick reaction force, ready to rush to any part of the battle when they were needed. Mike had been roving around the camp checking on all of them. Themba hoped Mike would be OK after his earlier breakdown.

  ‘Hold your position, son,’ Tim Penquitt radioed.

  There was shouting and more gunshots.

  ‘He’s running!’ Shane Castle yelled, loud enough for them to hear from the far side of the camp.

  There were two shots and then silence. A minute later Tim broadcast: ‘Two dead enemy. Both have AKs and there’s a span of magazines stacked here. Looks like this was the fire support team. QRF, stand by to move to Oscar. Jordie, you’re in charge, for now, my boy. We’ve got one WIA.’

  ‘Someone is wounded in action,’ Oscar said to Themba.

  ‘Shane’s taken one in the leg,’ Tim said over the radio. ‘He’ll live but he can’t stand. I’m going to patch him and be with you just now.’

  ‘Roger, Pops,’ Jordan said.

  ‘Be ready, you two,’ Oscar said. ‘What Tim is saying is that there are others, somewhere near here, who were getting ready to attack us while those other two men tried to divert our attention.’

  Themba stood, his legs feeling a little weak, and pointed his AK-47 out towards the darkened bush.

  ‘Stay down, boy,’ Oscar said.

  ‘Don’t call me boy. I am a Zulu. My people are warriors.’

  Oscar tutted. ‘You have a woman to protect now. You should stay down.’

  Themba was about to continue the argument when he detected movement in his peripheral vision. He turned. ‘Oscar. There’s someone in the trees.’

  Oscar picked up his night vision binoculars again and swung them to where Themba was pointing. ‘Grenade, get down!’

  Themba saw the person’s arm moving. A burst of automatic gunfire came their way as well. Oscar shoved him in the back and Themba fell down, on top of Lerato, who screamed.

  Oscar dropped the binoculars and reached as though trying to catch something. He missed and a metal orb bounced and rolled into the trench between Oscar and Themba.

  ‘Get it out of here!’ said Oscar.

  Themba tried to, but he was tangled with Lerato. Oscar pushed him aside again and grabbed the grenade. As he tossed it, backwards, over his shoulder, he dived forward, falling across Themba and Lerato, crushing them.

  The grenade exploded and shrapnel rained down over them. Oscar screamed.

  *

  Mike hit the ground when he heard Oscar call out the warning about the hand grenade. A storm of dirt and rocks washed over him.

  As soon as he’d heard on the radio that Shane and Tim had encountered the fire support team he’d left Jordan and Sylvester and started moving to the bunker. He heard the screams from the trench.

  Mike got up on one knee and saw a slight figure moving through the tree line. It had to be Suzanne Fessey. He raised his rifle to his shoulder and fired, but the woman dropped too soon. Gun
fire came his way. He was in open ground so he crawled as fast as he could towards the trench.

  Two men were up and running from the trees towards the bunker. As they ran two rifles opened up from the darkness, laying down a hailstorm of fire. Mike made it to the edge of the trench and slid in, landing hard on the people inside.

  ‘Oscar’s hurt,’ Lerato said.

  Themba helped Mike to his feet. ‘He saved us.’

  ‘Get up, Themba, there are two of them coming this way.’

  Mike raised his head, forcing himself to ignore the bullets whizzing around him, and opened fire with his R5. Themba’s AK-47 joined in with a near-deafening fusillade by Mike’s right ear.

  A bullet cleaved the air between Mike and Themba. ‘Get down, Themba.’

  ‘No.’

  Behind them they heard a yell and Mike glanced around quickly to see Jordan Penquitt screaming a war cry as he ran across the open ground from the safari tents. He fired his R5 from the hip as he charged and Sylvester, behind him on one knee, covered him with fire.

  Mike saw one of the enemy in front of him stagger and fall, but now all the other rifles from that side, three by the looks of it, were firing at Jordan.

  ‘Crazy bastard’s drawing their fire. Themba, aim at the muzzle flashes.’

  Mike and Themba took careful aim and fired single shots. One of the opposing AK-47s stopped firing in the darkness, but Jordan cried out in pain and fell.

  There was a momentary pause in the shooting. ‘Keep watching, Themba,’ Mike said, ‘aimed shots when you see a target.’

  Mike looked around and saw that Sylvester was running to Jordan. Mike remembered what Tim had said, about them all being like family. Sylvester raised his rifle and sprayed the bush with a full magazine of bullets, then dropped to his knees. He slung his weapon and heaved Jordan up onto his shoulders in a fireman’s lift.

  ‘Cover him, Themba,’ Mike said. They both started firing and a couple of AK-47s answered in reply.

  *

  Suzanne crawled to a granite boulder before firing again. She knew her enemies would be aiming for where they had last seen muzzle flashes.

  She took aim not at the bunker, where the firing was coming from, but at the man who had just picked up the wounded anti-poaching man from the ground. She drew a breath, then expelled half the air from her lungs. Suzanne held the pistol grip of the assault rifle, her finger curled around the trigger. She squeezed her whole hand, as if making a fist.

  The African man carrying the white man pitched forward into the dust. Neither of them moved. The firing stopped.

  ‘Suzanne Fessey,’ a voice called out. ‘It’s Mike Dunn here. You know who I am, I’m sure.’

  She cocked her head, listening. There were still a couple of anti-poaching guys unaccounted for. They could be sneaking up on her and Alberto while Dunn tried to distract her.

  ‘We have your baby here, in the bunker. There has been enough killing.’

  Suzanne changed firing positions, crawling to a leadwood tree, and took aim at the bunker. There would not be enough killing until she had that baby in her arms and found a microchip scanner, though where she might find one of those in the wilds of Zimbabwe she did not know.

  ‘I’m coming out.’

  You do that. Suzanne watched the edge of the trench, waiting for her shot.

  ‘We have your money, Suzanne.’

  She lowered the end of the barrel of her rifle a little. She felt a physical pain in her chest.

  ‘It’s true,’ Dunn called. ‘We felt the microchip in the baby’s neck and scanned it at Boyd Qualtrough’s surgery. We got the account number and the passcode number. Nia Carras is in Switzerland now. I just got an SMS from her. She’s got access to the account if she wants it.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ she called back.

  Dunn crawled out of the bunker and stood. Hands up. ‘You haven’t seen her in the camp, have you? I’m unarmed. Let’s talk. We want to give you your baby back, let you go in peace.’

  Suzanne’s mind raced. Dunn could be bluffing, but on the other hand it was possible that he was telling the truth. Omar had told her, just before leaving on his mission to blow up the American ambassador, that he had taken Hassan to a friend, a veterinarian, the evening before. She’d believed him when he told her he had just taken the child out in its stroller for a long walk, to say goodbye to him. When she’d detected the sticky plaster on the back of Hassan’s neck Omar had told her he had been bitten by a horsefly. It wasn’t until she kissed Omar goodbye that he’d whispered in her ear, on the remote chance that their house was bugged, that he’d had a microchip implanted in Hassan’s neck.

  Omar had told her that he would find a way to leave her the account number and a clue to the password, and as they had discussed, she would receive the number and clue or be able to find it after his death and after she was out of South Africa and safe. If she was caught leaving the country the Americans would surely get the number and code out of her somehow. As tough as she was she knew everyone broke eventually.

  The money, twenty million euros, had been specifically earmarked by the Sheik, Osama bin Laden, to purchase a nuclear device, should one ever actually come on the market. Omar had believed that they were tantalisingly close to a deal with the Russians, and that deal was still a possibility.

  Omar had been worried, though. Not by the effects that a nuclear blast might have on the country they attacked, or the rest of the world, but rather that he might be detected and somehow arrested or assassinated by the Americans before he was able to detonate the device. Paulsen had received intelligence from a Russian former military man that a corrupt contact of his in the FSB had told him the CIA suspected Omar – no one else – of being in the market for a nuke.

  Suzanne and Omar had discussed how they might both each make the ultimate sacrifice for their cause and go to paradise as martyrs. The visit by the American ambassador to Durban, so soon after the news that Omar may have been compromised, had seemed like a sign. Omar had left knowing his wife had the means to see through the deal to buy the ultimate weapon of terror.

  ‘The account number and the passcode number were on the microchip,’ Dunn said now. ‘We’ve got all the information. Give up, Suzanne, you’ve lost.’

  ‘Give me my child.’

  ‘Put down your rifle, as I have, and I will bring the baby to you. Then you and whatever men you have left alive may leave.’

  ‘I’m pointing a gun at you. What’s to stop me shooting you right now?’

  ‘I’ve got a man with a gun trained on you as well,’ Mike said.

  Suzanne looked to the bunker and saw the face of the teenage boy, Themba Nyathi, appear over the parapet. He had an AK trained on her. ‘Ha! A child, not a man.’

  ‘No, that young Zulu is a man,’ came a voice from off to Suzanne’s right. A tall man stepped from the bush, pointing an R5 at her. ‘And I’m another man.’

  She glanced at him. It was the older white Zimbabwean. She looked behind her; now was the time for Alberto to step out and even the odds.

  ‘Looking for Alberto Flores?’ the grey-haired man said.

  Suzanne said nothing.

  ‘I’ve been looking for him for a long time, and after what his gang have done tonight, and to the rhinos and elephants of my country for so long, it was only a pleasure for me to slit his throat just then. You’re on your own now.’

  Suzanne lowered her AK-47 and slowly put it down on the ground. Then, she reached into the pocket of her pants.

  ‘Keep your hands where we can see them,’ Dunn called. He had picked up his rifle again.

  Suzanne ignored him as well as the old anti-poaching man who was striding towards her, rifle up and ready. From her pocket she pulled the hand grenade Alberto had given her.

  ‘Want me to kill her?’ the Zimbabwean called to Dunn.


  Suzanne looked up and behind her at the phenomenal, endless natural theatre of the African sky at night. She had loved gazing up at the stars as a child. How had her life gone so horribly wrong?

  The whine of the Sea Hawk’s turbine engines washed over her and its big blades cleaved the air above. A spotlight fixed on her, blinding her.

  ‘Suzanne Fessey, do not move. Drop your weapons or we will open fire,’ came an American-accented voice from above.

  Suzanne looked around her. The others had moved out of range. The two teenagers were scrambling out of the bunker, dragging a wounded man between them. Dunn was backing away, but keeping an eye on her.

  ‘The baby. Where is he?’ she yelled over the engine noise.

  ‘In an orphanage, safe,’ Dunn called. ‘Lerato’s been carrying around a doll wrapped in a blanket.’

  Suzanne dropped the hand grenade beside her and smiled to herself as she watched the others run from her.

  Chapter 34

  ‘She gave up, just like that?’ Nia asked, her voice clear in Mike’s cell phone even though she was in Switzerland.

  ‘I know, amazing, right?’ he said. He was in an aircraft hangar at Air Force Base Makhado near Louis Trichardt in South Africa, not far across the border from Zimbabwe. It was hot inside, the day’s heat trapped under the steel roof. The Sea Hawk sat on the tarmac outside the open sliding door. Inside was a South African National Defence Force Gripen jet fighter. ‘She had a hand grenade and dropped it beside herself when she was cornered, but she hadn’t even pulled the pin.’

  ‘How is everyone?’ said Nia.

  ‘Themba’s doing OK, even with his wound and all he’s been through, and Lerato is in front of me, being hugged by her dad. The South African police brought him here. I misjudged him – he really was taking part in an undercover sting when I had him arrested at Mtubatuba. The serious and violent crimes squad detectives that were supposed to be there to arrest Paulsen got caught in Durban because of the bombing. He lost a lot of money but the police apparently found the cash on Paulsen’s body.’