An Empty Coast

by Tony Park

  Sutton frowned and looked around to make sure they weren’t being watched too closely. Sebastian was barking orders at Natangwe and Andre had taken up a shovel and was clearing away sand forward of the tailplane, not far from where they were. ‘They’d be mad to massacre us all,’ he said quietly, between grunts.

  He was a naïve old man, she thought. ‘I spoke to Natangwe earlier. He’s going to try to get away tonight. They’ll have to let us sleep sometime. He’s going to try to get to the road that runs through the Skeleton Coast Park, north to south, and flag down a passing car.’

  ‘There will be no traffic at night, and he might wait all day in the blazing sun with no water or food and not see a single car. We’re far north of the normal tourist route.’

  He was scared. Emma helped him drag the bodywork aside.

  ‘Stop talking, you two,’ Sebastian called to them. ‘Back to digging.’

  Emma picked up her shovel and walked to where Andre was. His shirt was soaked with sweat; there was no denying he was doing his share of the excavation, but then he was motivated by an all-consuming greed. Emma saw the khaki fabric ride up his back, revealing the butt of the nine-millimetre pistol sticking out of the waistband of his cargo trousers. She knew how to cock and fire a pistol, and strip and clean it. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Sebastian staring down at them – it felt like his eyes were targeting her in particular, through his sunglasses. Would Andre have a round in the chamber, she wondered, or would she have to rack the pistol, as her mother had shown her on the firing range?

  Emma moved closer to him and started shovelling sand. She would have to position herself so that Andre was between her and Sebastian; if she could get to Andre’s weapon then she would have time to cock it, if necessary, and get a shot off at Sebastian before he could react; Andre would be her shield.

  Alex caught her eye and she wondered if he could tell what she was thinking, or if he’d had the same thought. He motioned with his eyeballs towards Sebastian and Emma looked up at their guard.

  ‘Yes, I’m watching you, Emma,’ Sebastian called, then laughed. He raised his AK-47 into his shoulder and pretended to fire, kicking the end of the barrel up in mock recoil. ‘Don’t try me. Just keep working.’

  Andre attacked a mound of sand at the side of the aircraft mercilessly, huffing and puffing with each shovel load. Sutton moved next to him. Andre was distracted with his digging and Emma took her chance to edge slowly down the fuselage towards the tailplane. Sutton was now just behind Andre, between her and Sebastian. Emma hoped he might shield her movements. She worked her way closer to Andre, scooping aside half-loads of the sand that was amassing around Andre’s ankles. She had to duck to avoid the return swing of his shovel.

  ‘I can see inside,’ Andre panted.

  ‘Where?’ Sutton asked, closing in on the other man, trying to see over his shoulder.

  The bulk of the two men close together shielded her from Sebastian, although in her peripheral vision she could see him moving. Alex had left his position by the side of the fuselage, shovel held up at waist height. Emma sensed Alex was moving to intercept Sebastian and further screen her.

  Emma dropped her spade and closed on the older men, reaching between them. Her fingertips were just centimetres away from the grip of the pistol when Andre lurched forward and Professor Sutton’s sizeable bulk fell on top of him, propelling them both into the cavity which had just been exposed.

  Sebastian fired two shots. ‘Stand back.’

  Emma withdrew two steps, her opportunity missed as Andre angrily elbowed Sutton off him. Sebastian had, mercifully, fired into the air, but he now pointed the barrel of his rifle at Alex who had dropped his shovel and raised his hands.

  ‘Everyone take a deep breath,’ Sebastian said. ‘Alex, go join Emma. The pair of you, sit down by the tail where I can see you, hands on your heads.’

  Alex moved to where Emma was and they both sat down, but Alex seemed intent on placing himself between her and Sebastian.

  ‘Very gallant, Alex, and very stupid of you, Emma, to try and take Andre’s pistol.’ Sebastian went to Sutton, who was on his feet, dusting himself off, and pushed the academic to one side. Andre was looking into the Dakota’s cargo hatch, his torso out of sight. Sebastian strode to him and pulled the exposed pistol from his belt.

  ‘Hey!’ Andre spun around and was confronted by Sebastian, waving his pistol at him.

  Sebastian slipped the gun into his own shorts. ‘I’ll hold on to this. Watch your back next time.’

  Andre snorted with indignation.

  ‘Sutton, get in there with Andre and see what you can pull out. You two,’ he motioned to Alex and Emma with his rifle, ‘don’t move or you’ll go to heaven together.’

  Andre had disappeared inside the partly buried aircraft and Sutton squeezed his bulk through the gap in the sand after him. ‘It’s here,’ Andre called from inside the Dakota a couple of minutes later.

  Sutton backed himself out into the fresh air, coughing and sneezing.

  ‘What is it, Professor?’ Emma asked.

  Sutton took off his glasses and rubbed the lenses on the tail of his shirt, then put them back on. He sat down, heavily, in the sand. ‘Boxes, wrapped in plastic, with parachutes attached to them.’ He held his hands, palms up, as if to say he had no further idea. ‘And it still smells in there, terribly.’

  Emma shivered despite the overpowering heat.

  ‘Come back in here, Sutton,’ Andre said, his face animated in the doorway.

  Sutton seemed not to hear the other man at first, then turned to him, his expression blank. ‘I think I’ll just sit a moment, if it’s all the same to you. I’m feeling a bit faint.’

  ‘Bahler, get in there.’ Sebastian waved his AK-47 at Alex and then at the Dakota, to reinforce the command.

  When Alex stood up, Emma did too.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Sebastian asked her.

  ‘I’ll help.’

  Sebastian shrugged. ‘Many hands and all that. Try anything, though, and you’ll be joining the dead pilots inside there.’

  ‘Your threats are becoming more comical by the second,’ Emma said.

  Sebastian laughed. ‘Just behave. I told you, if you play nice then we’re all going to get out of this alive. The sooner we move the cargo, the sooner Andre and I can get away and you can go back to your mommy.’

  Emma seethed at his mention of Sonja. ‘She’ll kill you, you know, if she ever finds you.’

  ‘If being the operative word. She’s a pre-menopausal ex-mercenary and from what I hear, a bit of a basket case. I’m not overly worried.’

  Emma glared at him through slitted eyes. She thought – no, fantasised – briefly about what her mother might do to a man who spoke to her that way, and bit back her reply. She followed Alex through the crawl space into the interior of the Dakota.

  Inside, the darkness was strobed by a head torch Andre had produced from somewhere. He turned back to them and grinned like a demented cyclops. ‘Here it is! Still here after all these years. Help me undo the cargo straps and we’ll carry it out.’

  Emma sniffed. Sutton was right, the air smelled of something old but rancid. The odour was coming, she imagined, from whatever was left of the pilots up the front in the cockpit, beyond the dust, the sand that had blown in through the shattered windows, and God alone knew whatever other desert-dwelling creatures lived in this crypt.

  ‘Hey, we need some more light in here,’ Emma called out.

  ‘Sutton,’ Sebastian barked, ‘go get a couple of torches out of the Land Cruiser and the Hilux.’

  Emma felt her way around in the darkness. As Professor Sutton had said, the cargo seemed fairly ordinary at first touch. There were bulky crates or, rather, plastic-wrapped bundles, each about a metre by two metres. On top of each one was a dusty, spongy bag, which the prof had ident
ified as a parachute. Emma traced a fabric cord from the top of the parachute she was touching upwards to a steel wire cable that ran along the inside of one wall of the fuselage. Emma had done a parachute jump once in LA. She’d been attached to an instructor, in a tandem jump, but he’d later explained to her that if she wanted to jump by herself but didn’t have the confidence to do a freefall jump she could jump with a static line parachute. This was the same sort of rig, she realised, with the line running from the ’chute to a fixed cable inside the Dakota. When the cargo was pushed out the door the line was pulled tight and that then pulled the parachute from its bag, which was tied to the top of the bundle.

  Andre had gone to the front of the aircraft, to the cockpit, but was now coming back to the rear.

  ‘What did you see up there?’ Emma asked him.

  Andre swallowed. ‘Nothing. None of your business, in any case.’

  ‘The pilots?’

  ‘Get to work,’ Andre said.

  Alex was running his hands over the cargo. ‘These boxes are tied down with cargo straps. I’ve tried working the buckles, but they’re corroded. They won’t budge. I need a knife.’

  ‘Very funny,’ Andre said. ‘Back up, both of you.’

  Emma and Alex retreated aft, towards the light streaming in through the open hatch and the semi relief of the dry, hot desert air. Emma coughed and sneezed, as Sutton had, from the dust. Andre pulled a Leatherman from the pouch at his belt and unfolded a serrated blade. He cut quickly through a series of straps on the bundle closest to Emma and Alex. ‘Shift this one out, while I free the others.’

  The light behind them was blocked by a head and torso silhouetted by the sun. ‘Natangwe, is that you?’ Emma asked.

  Natangwe ducked his head and entered the fuselage. He held a hand to his head. ‘Sebastian says I must come help you move the cargo.’

  ‘Your head’s still bleeding. You might have concussion,’ Emma said.

  ‘That’s the least of his problems,’ Alex said under his breath.

  ‘Stop whispering down there.’ Andre continued sawing through the old restraint straps.

  Emma and Alex got their hands on the bundle nearest them and tried sliding it. ‘There’s some sort of roller system underneath,’ Emma said, hearing the protesting screech of no longer lubricated wheels.

  ‘You push, I’ll pull,’ Alex said.

  With Natangwe’s help they half rolled, half dragged the bundle to the window of light. Alex knelt on the floor of the aircraft. ‘Hey, look at this.’ He held up a strap, with buckle still attached, that Andre had not cut. It had been left by the side of the roller system.

  Emma looked down and picked up another restraint, then cast her eyes upwards. Hanging from the wire cable that ran the length of the fuselage was a folded and stitched canvas line, the same as the one attached to the parachute on the bundle they had been rolling.

  ‘That must be off the bundle we found further back in the desert,’ Alex said.

  ‘Less talk, more work,’ Andre said. He moved to them. ‘Let’s get this one outside.’

  With Andre, Natangwe and Alex all lifting together there was no room for Emma to get a handhold in the confines of the fuselage. She didn’t care. She had no interest in helping Andre and Sebastian get rich, and hastening her own death. She was under no illusion that they would let her, Sutton, Natangwe and Alex go with a promise not to tell the police about what they had found.

  Emma backed slowly into the darkness, towards the still buried nose of the Dakota. As she moved, feeling her way past the remaining cargo bundles, the musty, foul smell she’d first noticed became stronger. She swallowed hard and steeled herself for what she might find. The sole of her boot landed on something metallic. She carefully lifted her foot and then dropped to one knee. Feeling on the deck she closed her fingers around the object. It was a bullet casing. She held it close to her face so she could make it out in the gloom. ‘Nine millimetre,’ she mouthed to herself. The discovery made her heart beat faster.

  Andre was cursing and the three men were heaving and grunting. The cargo bundle had to weigh more than a hundred kilograms at least, she reckoned. They were making slow progress, with both Andre and Natangwe scooping away sand from inside the aircraft that was blocking the way out. Emma crept further forward. She ran a hand along the interior wall of the fuselage and inspected her fingers. It wasn’t just dusty; her skin was black. There had been a fire in here, which may have contributed to the crash. On the floor she noticed a spent fire extinguisher, which reinforced her theory. In other circumstances this piecing together of a historical puzzle might have been exciting and fun; now it was a matter of life and death.

  Seeing the spent extinguisher she realised it could have made a good weapon, to blind Andre or Sebastian with so that she could steal one of their guns. No, she countered, after this many years the pressure in the extinguishers would have dropped. She wrapped her fingers tightly around the bullet casing and slipped it into the pocket of her shorts.

  The further she walked the darker it became and the more she relied on touch. She stepped on something soft and reached down to pick it up. The fabric was cotton, dry, crumbling in her hands, and there was a pad attached; it was a bandage of some kind. As well as a fire there had been people shooting on board and later a wound was dressed. Emma stood and walked with her hands outstretched. She was stopped by something metal. She ran her hand over it and felt canvas and padding of some kind. It must be a seat, she thought; the pilot’s or co-pilot’s. She kept feeling and then gasped, fighting back a scream. There was something firm but yielding.

  Emma needed light. Sebastian had frisked her, Natangwe and Alex, but perhaps out of some vestige of decency he had not run his hands across her breast. Even though her phone had not worked for days, thanks largely to Andre’s portable jamming device, she habitually kept it in her bra; it was the only place she had found she could keep it without forgetting it. She reached into her shirt and turned it on, praying there was some battery power left.

  As she fully expected, the jammer was not needed out here in the desert as there was no signal. Her battery was in the red. She opened messages and tapped a quick SMS to her mother, telling Sonja they had been kidnapped by Andre Horsman and Sebastian Lord and were being forced to excavate a lost aircraft full of illegal cargo. I’m scared they are going to kill us, Mum. If you can’t find us somewhere in the Skeleton Coast National Park, west of Palmwag, then please know I love you, always.

  She choked back a sob and then selected the light app on the phone. She shone the weak beam ahead of her and took another sharp breath. The dead pilot’s skin was still largely intact, mummified by the heat and dryness surrounding his metal sarcophagus. His lips were stretched in a gruesome smile, his teeth visible.

  Emma was trembling, scared, although she knew the man could not harm her. She leaned closer to him, playing the light over his tormented features. There, at his temple, she saw the neat hole in the dry skin. Emma leaned around him and saw the exit wound on the other side of the skull.

  The other pilot’s seat was empty.

  Emma played the weak light from the phone down over the pilot’s chest, arms and bony hands.

  ‘Come on you bastards, push,’ Andre called from the back of the aircraft.

  Emma knew she had to be quick. At the pilot’s waist was a canvas webbing belt. She leaned over the body, gagging again at the ancient but still present smell of decay, and ran her fingers along the belt. ‘Yes,’ she whispered quietly as she felt the holster at his side. She leaned further over and saw the flap that would cover the pistol, but when she lifted it she found that it was not fastened and, to her dismay, there was no gun in the holster.

  ‘Shit.’

  Emma dropped to her hands and knees and started feeling around her. She squeezed between the two pilot’s seats and felt below the pedals and, almost retching in the proce
ss, around the dead pilot’s legs. She found another bullet casing, but nothing else. She backtracked and moved to the dead man’s side. Her phone flashed twice and the battery died. Blinded, she kept feeling away.

  ‘Aagh!’ The scream escaped her without warning as she felt something brush her face. She recoiled, then summoned the strength to reach out and touch it. She felt dry, papery skin on lifeless fingers. The pilot’s arm was hanging down. She felt on the floor beneath his fingers and her hand brushed the angular shape of the man’s pistol.

  Chapter 27

  Sonja rolled out her improvised bedroll, a couple of blankets and a pillow, on the sandy dry riverbed they had chosen as a campsite for the night. They had driven as late and as far as they could, to the western boundary of the Palmwag Conservancy. From here they would soon enter the dunes that bordered the Skelton Coast. It would be hard enough in daylight with a GPS, impossible at night.

  She went to the campfire that Stirling had lit and was tending and took the black metal kettle off the flames. She poured water, now boiling, into four tin cups, and added two-minute noodles and flavouring. She passed the mugs and forks to the men and sat down on the ground, cross-legged, in front of the fire.

  Sonja wouldn’t admit it to the others, but she was feeling dejected. The enormity of the odds against them finding Emma and her colleagues was weighing on her. She was in no doubt that her daughter was in dire danger, if she wasn’t already dead, but the more she thought about the vast empty tracts of desert around them the less sure she was that they had even a hope in hell of finding Emma.

  ‘We should be able to pick up the road construction crew early tomorrow, once we hit the Skeleton Coast,’ Stirling said from across the flames, trying to sound positive.

  Sonja looked at him and nodded. If they could find out – even though the Namibian police had been unable to – where the Chinese road workers had found the rhino horns, it might lead them to the wreck. That was, of course, if the horns had even come from the missing Dakota. The Chinese road workers had provided no information to the police about how or where they had bought the rhino horns, according to Stirling, but Sonja was certain that if she could get to them they would talk.