An Empty Coast

by Tony Park

  ‘Get out of there, Emma,’ Sebastian called. ‘There’s nothing you need in there. Alex has the jack.’

  ‘Emma,’ said Alex, ‘find the crank; we need it to lower the spare wheel down from under the Toyota.’

  ‘Yes, very well,’ Sebastian agreed. ‘Find that thingy as well.’

  Emma’s hand closed around a small aerosol can that she’d missed on her first search of the crate. She took a quick look; it was a lubricating spray called Q20. It was, she thought, the kind of stuff used to loosen rusted bolts and stuck door hinges. It would do. She shifted the crate and found the collapsible rod that lowered the tyre. She had watched Sam change a wheel on his four-by-four in Los Angeles one time; it was, he had told her, about the most adventurous thing he had done since meeting her mother in Africa.

  Emma looked out the side window and saw that Andre was busy guarding Professor Sutton, who had been ordered to open some tins of food and heat the contents over a gas stove.

  Emma withdrew herself from the rear of the truck and, when Sebastian was looking away, holding his hand out for Alex to toss him the keys, she dropped the can of spray onto the sand next to Natangwe. Without even knowing what the contraband was, Natangwe raised his T-shirt and, wincing in pain, slipped the can behind the waistband of his trousers.

  Emma got down on her knees and inserted the long rod of the crank into the hole in the rear bumper, as Sam had shown her, and jiggled the end around until it mated with the socket above the spare wheel. She started to wind. It was stiff at first, but with a screech of metal, the chain came free and the spare started to drop.

  Alex hefted the heavy high-lift jack to a position next to where Emma was.

  ‘All OK?’ he asked her.

  ‘I think so,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve got some lubricating spray but Sebastian’s never going to take his eyes off us. I don’t know when I’m going to get a chance to clean the gun.’

  ‘Where’s the spray?’ Alex whispered.

  ‘In Natangwe’s trousers.’

  ‘Stop winding the tyre down.’

  ‘OK,’ Emma said.

  ‘The spare wheel’s stuck,’ Alex called to Sebastian.

  ‘Well, get underneath and try to shake it free. There’s some lubricating spray in the back of the vehicle,’ Sebastian said.

  ‘Shit,’ Emma whispered.

  Alex made a show of rummaging in the rear of the Toyota. ‘Get it back off Natangwe, pass it to me,’ he whispered.

  With Alex blocking the view Emma knelt and retrieved the spray from a still groggy and slightly bewildered Natangwe. She passed it to Alex. He lifted the can high and shook it. ‘Found it.’

  ‘Emma, you get underneath and spray the chain. I’ll try to keep cranking.’ Alex passed her the spray and, with his back to Sebastian, winked at her.

  ‘Just get a move on,’ Sebastian called to them.

  Emma got down on her hands and knees and dropped to her belly. The sand was cool on her exposed skin. She leopard-crawled under the Land Cruiser.

  It was dark, but Sonja had taught her to strip and reassemble a nine-millimetre Glock blindfolded at the indoor shooting range in Los Angeles. ‘This is ridiculous, Mum,’ she remembered saying to Sonja, but she sent her mother a silent thank you now as she slithered deeper into the gloom.

  Emma reached around and pulled the pistol from her jeans. She looked it over. It was a different make from the Glock; the word ‘star’ was engraved on the metal slide and embossed on the black plastic grip. ‘Most pistols have the same basic components,’ she heard her mother saying in her head.

  The magazine release button was close to her thumb and she pressed it. Again, though, the magazine seemed stuck. She sprayed some lubricant on the button and the end of the magazine. ‘I’m spraying now,’ she called out for Sebastian and Alex’s benefit. Above her she heard the rattle of the crank as Alex pretended to make hard work of turning it. His movements, while slight, dislodged bits of dried mud and road grit, which pattered down on her. She coughed as she breathed in the grit, and the strong fumes from the spray made her eyes water in the confined space under the vehicle.

  Emma wiggled the magazine out and doused the pistol all over again with spray. ‘Keep trying,’ she yelled for effect. She pulled back the slide, ‘racking it’, her mother had called it and, holding it rather than letting it go, she found the pin that released the locking mechanism. She used the index finger of her right hand to push it out, and extracted it with her left hand.

  When Emma eased the pressure on the slide she found it was reluctant to move, which was not a good sign. Again she hosed the weapon with spray.

  ‘This shouldn’t take this long,’ Sebastian called. ‘Get a move on, Emma.’

  She cursed under her breath. Emma lay on her back on the sand and placed the parts of the pistol on her belly, in order to keep them free of grit and sand. With each movement of the slide backwards and forward the pistol’s working parts seemed to free up a little more. Emma took the slide all the way off and pulled the spring and barrel from inside.

  ‘Shit,’ she said.

  Alex dropped to his knees. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I just dropped the bloody barrel in the sand.’

  ‘Stay calm,’ Alex said in a low voice, ‘you are doing fine.’

  Emma took a breath, felt for the missing component and wiped it on her shirt. She liberally sprayed lubricant all over it to blast away the sand, and down the inside of the barrel as well. She used the tail of her shirt to wipe the pistol inside and out as best as she could. For good measure she reapplied a couple of squirts to the components as she reassembled the weapon.

  ‘Almost there,’ she called out.

  ‘Hurry up,’ Sebastian chided again.

  Emma took the magazine and thumbed out the three bullets. These she also sprayed and wiped, and then lubricated the magazine so that its spring would deliver the rounds into the chamber when she needed them. She quickly reloaded and then slammed the magazine back into the handgrip.

  ‘Done,’ she said. For good measure, Emma sprayed the chain above her to make it easier for Alex to lower the spare wheel. As she reversed out, sliding on her back and then rolling over at the last minute to secrete the pistol again, she heard the spare wheel thud into the sand.

  Alex got down on his knees and helped drag her out. He squeezed her hand. ‘Great job.’

  ‘I don’t know if it will work. The ammunition may be too old.’

  His eyes met hers in the glow of the fluorescent work light connected to the vehicle’s cigarette lighter plug. The light hung from the roof carrier. ‘There’s only one way to find out if the pistol and your bullets are in working order.’

  Emma looked across at Sebastian, who waved the barrel of the AK-47 to cajole them along. She had given herself to that thief, this creep, and the thought now filled her with nothing but revulsion.

  Sebastian was staring at them and, on impulse, Emma put her hand behind Alex’s head and drew him to her. She kissed him on the lips.

  A flash leapt from the muzzle of the assault rifle and a shot sailed over their heads. Alex wrapped his arms around Emma. After a couple of seconds, which she needed to calm herself, she gently broke from the embrace.

  ‘Yes, there’s only one way to find out.’ She picked up the tyre lever. ‘Bring it on.’

  Chapter 28

  Sonja stopped the Land Rover and got out when she could see the shimmering blue strip of the Atlantic Ocean, which appeared on and off on the horizon through the shifting curtain of wind-blown sand that stung her arms, legs and face.

  She stood with her hands on her hips. Brand and Stirling joined her, one either side. Sonja looked around, taking a moment to appreciate the all-consuming emptiness of the landscape, and the enormity of the task she had set herself.

  Brand scanned left to right through a pair of binocu
lars. ‘Can’t see any sign of the road gang.’

  Stirling put his hand up to shade his eyes. ‘No. Which is odd, as I thought they would have been in this area.’

  ‘We need to keep moving,’ Sonja said, leading the men back to the vehicles. The occupants of the three vehicles they had passed that day had seen no sign of a party of archaeologists on land, and no flyovers. Sonja hoped they might pick up some spoor once they hit the salt road, the main route that ran north–south along the edge of the Atlantic.

  She drove through the dunes down towards the coast. As she approached she saw that the Atlantic was living up to its fearsome reputation. Walls of cold water, greener up close than from a distance, smashed themselves to smithereens on the shore, creating volcanic geysers of white spume.

  Once at the salt road Sonja turned right, heading north towards Möwe Bay. They drove for an hour, Sonja leading and pushing the Land Rover up over the hundred mark; the salt road was smooth, wide and solid. With each kilometre, however, her anxiety increased.

  She slowed and did a U-turn, Brand and Allchurch tailing them, and drove back to a section of the road where there had obviously been some recent widening work. They got out of the vehicles again and Sonja dropped to one knee to inspect the tracks of vehicles and heavy machinery.

  ‘These tracks are full of sand. The gang must have got this far, then packed up and left. Dammit.’

  ‘Nothing we can do about that,’ Brand observed.

  He was right, but she had to do something. Sonja walked away from the road towards the water, which was about two hundred metres distant. The others followed her. As she walked the stiff onshore breeze shot chilly needles of water from the breaking waves at her face. The cold air helped clear her head.

  ‘Desolate place,’ Brand said, looking around.

  At the water’s edge was the rusting hull of a ship that had been wrecked. From its size Sonja guessed it had been a fishing trawler. It was these metal remains, as much as the bones of animals, whales and even humans that gave the coast its name. Brand had stated the obvious.

  ‘Beautiful, though, in a striking way,’ Stirling said. ‘I think if I’d worked in the Namibian national parks service I wouldn’t have minded being out here, away from it all.’

  ‘My uncle . . .’ Sonja stopped, turning instead to Brand. ‘Tell me again what year the Dakota came down.’

  ‘1987,’ Brand said.

  Sonja processed the information and thought about her conversation with her Aunt Ursula in Swakopmund. She thought about what she was doing at the time of Uncle Udo’s funeral, how old she would have been. Same year. ‘And the date?’

  Brand closed his eyes and thought for a moment. ‘Sixteenth of November. Hot.’

  ‘What is it, Sonn? What are you thinking?’ Stirling asked.

  ‘I need your satellite phone, Stirling.’ Sonja went back to the Land Rover, with Stirling a few paces behind.

  Stirling found the phone. He turned it on, flipped up the large antenna and sat it on the bonnet of the Land Rover so that the phone could acquire its satellite signal.

  Sonja drummed her fingers on the front fender of the truck while they waited for the phone to wake up. ‘My Uncle Udo was a ranger here on the Skeleton Coast during the war. He was killed in a SWAPO ambush, but just a few days before that he rescued a pilot whose aircraft had come down in the desert. He died two days after you nearly did, Brand.’

  The two men looked at her, absorbing the new information. The satellite phone beeped. Sonja took out her own phone, switched it on and found her aunt’s number in her contacts list. Committing it to memory, she put her phone away, took up the satellite phone and dialled.

  ‘Hello, Tante Ursula, it’s me, Sonja,’ she said.

  Sonja quickly dispensed with the pleasantries and asked her aunt if she could remember, or check, the date on which Udo had found the flier. Ursula said she would check Udo’s diary. Sonja heard a beeping noise and looked at the phone’s screen. ‘Shit, battery’s nearly flat.’ She turned the phone off. ‘I’ll give her fifteen minutes then call her back,’ Sonja said to the men. ‘Stirling, do you have a car charger for the phone?’

  Stirling looked sheepish. ‘Well, yes, but when I got the phone out just now I saw the charger wasn’t in the bag where it’s supposed to be. One of the scouts or the young research students who used it last must have forgotten to put the charger and cable back; they’re probably still in whatever vehicle they used.’

  She put the phone down, ran her fingers through her hair and walked away from the vehicle, back towards the water. Sonja thought of Udo, patrolling this lonely road. It would not have been a bad life, she thought, being away from people most of the time and able to return to his beautiful, artistic, fun-loving wife when he was on leave. But the bloody war had intervened, or had it been something worse, something more evil than men fighting for a cause?

  The men had sense enough to leave her alone this time, and when she checked her watch and confirmed it had been a quarter of an hour, she went back to the Land Rover and phoned Ursula again.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Ursula asked. In response Sonja explained she had waited to conserve the battery.

  ‘All right, I will be quick then. This sounds like it’s important.’

  ‘Just tell me, please, Tante, the date that Udo found that airman, and, more importantly, if he made some reference as to where it was. I’m putting you on speaker phone so I can make notes. And please, speak English so my friends here can understand you.’

  ‘Ja. OK. The date was the seventeenth of November.’

  Sonja had taken a green hard-backed military notebook out of her back pocket and was writing.

  ‘Day after,’ Brand muttered.

  ‘Does he record the time he found the man, Aunty?’ Sonja asked.

  ‘Yes. It was in the morning, at 9.17.’

  Sonja made a note. ‘Is there a location?’

  ‘I’m checking. Udo says he was on patrol from Möwe Bay to Terrace Bay when the man walked into the road and flagged him down. He says the man was wounded and seemed to have lost a lot of blood. He appeared weak and there was blood on him, on his face and uniform. He says: Asked where he was from, what unit, and all he would say was, “Get me to a doctor, now”. His accent and uniform were South African. He spoke to me in English.’

  They waited, and Sonja transcribed her aunt’s words. She would review them, although she already knew they were in the rough vicinity of where Udo had been patrolling that day. In this area that could equate to hundreds if not thousands of square kilometres. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Ja, but it’s just a whole collection of numbers. Shall I read them to you, Sonja?’

  The phone was beeping again. ‘Yes, please, Aunty, but quickly.’

  Ursula read out the numbers and Sonja’s heart leapt when she heard the letters ‘S’ and ‘E’ interspersed within them. ‘That’s lekker, Aunty. Is there anything else?’

  ‘No, that’s all. I hope this helps you. Is Emma all right? Are you with her?’

  ‘We’re going to find her.’ The phone beeped once more and died.

  ‘Latitude and longitude,’ Brand said, looking over Sonja’s shoulder at the numbers she had written in her notebook.

  ‘I’ll get the GPS,’ Stirling said. He unclipped it from the inside of his vehicle and brought it to them, along with the paper map, which he unfolded on the bonnet of the truck. As Sonja read out the numbers he punched them into the handheld device, then set the reference as a new destination. They waited until the GPS calculated distance, direction and time.

  ‘Seventy-three kilometres north of here,’ Sonja said, holding her hand over the small screen to reduce the glare. ‘And look, the point is almost exactly on the salt road. My uncle knew how to read a map.’

  Matthew had got out of the car and joined them. ‘What’s going on?�
��

  Brand filled him in, quickly, and showed him the approximate locations of where they were, and where Udo had picked up the airman, on the paper map.

  ‘Could this pilot that your uncle found have been my son?’ he asked Sonja.

  ‘I’ve no way of knowing. In his diary, according to my aunt, there’s no mention of a name, nor even a physical description, which you wouldn’t expect anyway, just a reference to the man being wounded and covered in blood, and that he’d come out of the desert.’

  Brand looked away from the coast to the dunes to the east. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence for it to be another aircraft. The Dakota was heading for the sea, but it must have crashed in the desert less than a day’s travel from the coast. The guy was wounded, so he must have been moving slowly. I left the aircraft late at night. Even if the guy your uncle found had started moving at night, he was only found just after nine the next morning. He couldn’t have travelled far; maybe twenty kilometres at the most. It’s not easy to walk in sand, particularly if you’re hurt.’

  ‘But how would we know where to look?’ Allchurch asked.

  ‘That’s easy,’ Sonja replied. ‘If the aircraft went down in the desert there are only two logical directions to head.’ She ran her finger along the paper map so the men gathered around the bonnet could all see. ‘There’s little civilisation to the north or south. If you went east you’d eventually cut one of the north–south roads, such as the road between Palmwag and Purros, but if the man walked to the salt road then he obviously knew the Dakota had gone down close to the coast.’

  ‘West would be the most logical, then,’ Brand interrupted. ‘He’d have known that someone from the parks service would be patrolling the coastal road, even if he had to wait a while.’

  Sonja nodded. ‘So, if we get to the point where my uncle rescued the man all we have to do is turn east into the desert.’