An Empty Coast

by Tony Park

  ‘Then let’s get a move on.’

  Brand and Sonja turned left when they reached the main road, passed the filling station and started running up the road.

  ‘Shit,’ Brand said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Dorset’s telling Matthew to get out of the truck. I think he’s going to kill him.’

  Chapter 35

  Matthew got out and stood by the side of the road. He thought about running, but he knew he wouldn’t get far before the bullet drilled into his back. In any case, he needed to know.

  The white-haired professor, the picture of the harmless, wise academic, moved to the driver’s side of the truck and raised the rifle to his shoulder with the practised ease and the stance of a killer. Matthew took a breath. ‘At least tell me.’

  Dorset tensed, his finger curled through the trigger guard; Matthew knew from his brief time in the army that one only did that when one was ready to shoot.

  ‘Tell me,’ Matthew said again, louder, emboldened by the crystal-clear certainty that his own death was imminent. He thought of Helen, of how her sadness would just be multiplied because of his foolishness, trying to lay Gareth to rest. ‘Tell me how my son died.’

  Dorset blew a breath out of his mouth, seemed to sag a little in his marksman’s stance, and licked his lips. ‘It was a different time, you know?’

  Matthew nodded slowly. ‘I know. I investigated shootings of civilians, of soldiers killing each other; most of them I helped sweep away. We were fighting for our survival.’

  Dorset laughed. ‘Don’t patronise me, you know that’s not true. We were fighting against an ideology that crumbled of its own accord, fighting for one that disappeared a few years later when our politicians sold us out.’

  ‘Sold us out?’ Matthew countered. For whatever Sutton had been, he wasn’t stupid. ‘Don’t lapse into clichés. You were part of the system, propping it up, but you took a different path, turned to crime.’

  Sutton rocked his head from side to side. ‘Yes, true. I was in the intelligence service, and the longer I spent in Angola the more I realised how little intelligence there was. The smart ones were feathering their own nests.’ He glanced up, as if to heaven. The dry easterly wind began its daily torment, whipping up dust and grit and snatching at the professor’s clothes. ‘I tried to save him.’

  ‘Save him?’ Matthew asked. His lips were cracked, his hand ached, and he almost wished he were dead. Only Gareth was keeping him alive.

  Dorset lowered the rifle, just a little. ‘The fire that Brand started had spread into the wiring, something to do with the fuel pumps. The bottom line was that we were running out of fuel and there was nothing Gareth could do to keep the engines going long enough to ditch in the sea – though I had no desire to be rescued by a bunch of Russians – or to get back to Ondangwa. We tried lightening the load, jettisoning some cargo, but it was too little too late, and I didn’t want to lose all of the rhino horn.’

  Matthew nodded. ‘I see. So it was all about the money.’

  ‘Of course it was. You know it wasn’t about saving Angola, or even saving South Africa.’ Dorset sounded angry now, losing it. ‘Gareth said he would have to put the aircraft down. He reckoned we were close to the coast, that we could make for the salt road and someone would find us, even if it took a couple of days. He had seen me kill Bester, but he was calm. I thought . . . I thought . . .’

  ‘You thought you could corrupt him, buy him?’ Matthew asked, feeling the dread rise up inside him. For a moment he wanted just to turn and walk up the road, knowing Dorset would put a bullet in his back and end the pain.

  ‘I did, but I was wrong.’

  Matthew felt the relief, but knew it was false. ‘But he survived the crash.’

  Sutton looked around him, as if for ghosts. ‘Yes. He was injured, but I fared worse. I thought he might try something so I sat behind him, my pistol covering him. When we crashed I was thrown into the front of the cockpit and through the windscreen like a bloody javelin. I was battered and bruised and sliced and almost killed. I was unconscious.’

  Matthew tried to imagine the scene, the smoking aircraft in the dunes where they had seen it, Gareth the only person conscious, his co-pilot executed beside him. ‘He should have killed you.’

  The professor nodded. ‘Yes, you’re probably right, but he didn’t. He carried me, for God knew how far – it’s taken me this long to work it out – over his shoulder, through the desert. I came to on the edge of the salt road. It was blistering hot, we were being sand-blasted by the wind, and he was hurt as well, a fractured wrist I think.’

  ‘But he saved you?’ Matthew pictured his son, young, lean, fit, outraged at the betrayal by those around him of all he’d thought he was fighting for.

  ‘Yes. I tried to reason with him, to get him to go along with a story I made up.’

  Matthew felt tears welling up inside him, for the first time in many years. ‘But he wouldn’t.’

  Dorset lowered the AK-47. ‘No, he wouldn’t. Matthew, I’m going to offer you a deal. No, forget that, I’m just going to leave. I have a bakkie load of rhino horn, enough to see me living in comfort for the rest of my life. I’m leaving, and you can leave too. Go, and know your son was not corrupt or immoral or a war criminal. The only mistake he made was to save my life.’

  ‘You killed him, just like you killed Roland Pretorius.’

  Dorset shook his head. ‘No, Matthew, I didn’t kill Roland, but I read about his death. I imagine Andre killed him, or had him murdered before he could get to you and tell you about the smuggling operation and Andre’s role in it. Goodbye, Matthew. I’m giving you this chance, a chance I didn’t give Gareth. He was young and he was fit, but I was a spy for the old regime, the Bureau of State Security. I’d killed plenty of men, some with my bare hands, men who would bring down our civilised, perfect society. Gareth had a gun, but I got it off him.’ Sutton started to get into the bakkie.

  Matthew pictured the scene: the two men in the desert, so close to being rescued, beating the odds, and then one of them turning on the other because Gareth, the young, principled pilot who thought he had joined the air force to protect his homeland, had been dragged into a cesspool of greed and corruption and was threatening to do the right thing. Dorset had taken his son’s sidearm and killed him on the edge of the Skeleton Coast. ‘What happened to my son’s body? Did you bury him?’

  Dorset glanced away for the briefest of seconds. ‘No. I heard a hyena, and there were lion in the area. My guess is the desert lions ate him.’

  ‘You bastard.’ Matthew reached for the pistol stuck in his trousers in the small of his back.

  Dorset saw the movement, and quicker than Matthew would have thought possible, the old grey-hair had the AK up again and pointed at him.

  Matthew fumbled with the pistol, not even able to remember if it was still loaded, let alone cocked. I am going to die, just like my son did, at the hands of the same man.

  The shot echoed across the open land around them.

  *

  Sonja reached across to Brand and put her hand on his rifle, forcing him to lower it. They had stopped running as soon as Sutton and Allchurch had come into view, both of them out of breath and, if Sonja was honest, she at least was feeling her age. Brand had raised his weapon to take a shot at Sutton.

  But Brand hadn’t fired, someone else had, and Dorset Sutton was now on his back, in the dust. Matthew was running towards them from about three hundred metres away.

  As they had run, between ragged breaths, Hudson had told her his theory about Sutton. He’d told Matthew he had been expecting to find that Andre Horsman was the man on board the Dakota who had ordered his death and had tried to shoot him when Venter, the loadmaster, had been unable to kill him. But Brand had checked the body, and although Horsman was blond and the right age, there was something about his build that wasn’
t right.

  Someone had walked out of the desert onto the road and been picked up by Sonja’s uncle. If it wasn’t Andre, then who was it? Brand had told her that it was the way Sutton had carried on when Irina and her pilot had flown in for the kill that had made him think he was the one. Sutton had exposed himself to Irina more than once, not just recklessly, but blatantly.

  ‘I think she knew him,’ Brand had said to her. ‘I told Matthew, and I said we would confront Sutton after we’d finished with the Russians. I was willing to risk losing the rhino horn to buy us some time, and if I was right about Sutton, that he was in cahoots with the Russians, then it would have only been a matter of time before he turned on us, in the castle. But then Matthew took it on himself to go and kick Emma out of the bakkie and try to take on Dorset alone. Crazy bastard.’

  They both now dropped to one knee, their training mirroring each other’s, rifles up, covering Matthew, seeking a target, but there was none. Someone had shot Sutton, but neither of them could see who.

  ‘Three hundred!’ Brand yelled, and Sonja focused on the range and saw the figure emerge from the scrubby thornbushes at the side of the road and make for the bakkie. ‘On the road, lone rifleman.’

  ‘Seen,’ Sonja replied. She raised her AK and saw the slim woman with the overly long sniper’s rifle. It was Irina. Sonja took aim, quickly, and fired a double tap.

  Irina dropped but crawled to the vehicle, unharmed. Matthew looked back and, missing his footing, sprawled into the dirt.

  ‘Moving!’ Brand yelled.

  Sonja cursed to herself. She wanted to be the first to close the distance between them and Irina, but Brand was on his feet and sprinting, not too slow for an old guy. Sonja laid down a burst of six or seven rounds in Irina’s direction. The range was too far for the AK-47 to be accurate, but Sonja kept the bitch’s head down.

  Brand dived for the ground. Sonja knew he would be crawling to a fire position. She counted to three. ‘Moving!’

  Matthew was on his feet again, hands and face bloodied. She waved at him with her free hand, motioning for him to seek some cover in the bush. Sonja, however, stayed on the road to narrow the distance between her and Irina as quickly as she could.

  Brand was firing, covering her run, but before Sonja had covered half the distance she’d planned, Brand called out, ‘Stoppage!’ His weapon had jammed.

  Sonja saw the barrel of the Dragunov laid across the roof of the truck. Irina was taking aim. Sonja zigged to the left as the bullet kicked up the dust where her foot had just been. It was her turn to trip and fall.

  ‘Cleared,’ Brand called. He stood and pumped four rounds at the bakkie, but Irina was already in the vehicle and on her way. A cloud of dust obscured her escape.

  Sonja got up and ran, passing Brand.

  ‘She’s gone,’ Hudson said.

  ‘She dropped her rifle,’ Sonja called into the wind.

  Sonja passed Matthew, ignoring his cries of thanks or whatever he was saying. Irina had dropped the Dragunov when she’d climbed into the truck, probably because she was out of ammunition and didn’t want to be caught on the road in Namibia with a military sniper’s rifle. Sonja got to Sutton’s body. She kicked him, confirming he was dead, and picked up his AK-47. She removed the magazine and saw he had one round left. She thumbed it out. Next she quickly removed her own magazine and saw she had only two bullets. These she removed as well.

  ‘Stay calm,’ she told herself. She picked up Irina’s rifle, took out the magazine from it and loaded the three bullets she had been able to salvage. Irina was getting away from them, was perhaps already three hundred metres away and moving fast, but the road was not as good here as in other parts of Namibia, and she was entering a bend. Her change in direction also meant that the dust cloud she was leaving was being blown away from her, giving Sonja a clear view of the fleeing bakkie.

  Sonja refitted the magazine to the Dragunov and looked around her. There was nothing to rest the rifle on except for the dead guy. She unfolded the bipod, lay down behind Sutton and rested the supporting legs on his chest. Tucking one leg up into her body she was able to raise herself enough to get a good, stable view of the bakkie through the telescopic sights.

  The east wind was pushing the grass over at a forty-five-degree angle; Sonja allowed for it, cocked the Dragunov and squeezed off a round.

  ‘Go right, lead her by another metre,’ Hudson said from behind her.

  Sonja gave a small nod, took the correction under advisement and lined up ahead of the moving vehicle. She took a quick glance behind her and saw that Brand had a small pair of binoculars up to his eyes.

  She returned her concentration to the vehicle and squeezed the trigger.

  ‘Irina veered, just then. You hit the truck somewhere, but she’s still going.’

  ‘One shot left,’ Sonja said. She felt rather than saw Brand drop to the ground next to her, on one knee. The next thing she felt was his hand on her back. She would have flinched, normally, at a strange man’s touch, but Brand wasn’t strange.

  ‘You’ll be fine.’ Brand raised the binoculars to his eyes.

  Sonja took aim, just ahead of the blue gas bottles fixed to the rear of the bakkie’s cab. She breathed, in and out, as her dead father had taught her all those years ago, when this staggeringly beautiful country had been in the grip of a terrible war.

  In.

  Out.

  In.

  Sonja made a fist around the rifle’s grip, feeling the strength return to her eye, her hand, her heart. The round left the Dragunov, cleaving the dry desert air. A moment later it hit the gas bottle on the back of the truck, and the vehicle exploded.

  Chapter 36

  Sonja waited for the police to leave the hospital in Windhoek before she walked in, wearing a new floppy bush hat and dark glasses.

  Her hiking boots squeaked on the polished linoleum floor as she strode along the corridors, following the directions Emma had SMSed. Her daughter intercepted her.

  ‘How’s Stirling?’ Sonja asked.

  Emma bit her lower lip. Sonja saw that her eyes were red. ‘Mum, they just don’t know. We convinced the staff we’re the closest thing he has to family so you can go in there.’

  ‘And Natangwe?’

  ‘Stable,’ Emma said. ‘Thank God. The doctors said Alex’s transfusion saved his life. Alex is off organising transport and stuff for us.’

  ‘OK. Good girl. I hope you understand, I couldn’t be here when the police arrived. I had things to do – I’ve transferred some money from the States for those poor Germans whose truck I took. They’ve been staying with Ursula and she leant them a car; she explained why I needed their vehicle and they seem happy they’re going to get enough to buy a new one. Also, I had to anonymously report the location of an abandoned Land Rover in Swakopmund to the police so a certain dirty old pastor can claim it.’

  ‘Dirty old pastor?’

  ‘I’ll explain later,’ Sonja said.

  Emma laughed. ‘Well, we spun the police quite a story here. Also, I told them about Benjie van der Westhuizen, the farmer friend of the guy who kidnapped us. The detective in charge called a little while ago – they sent someone to check on Benjie’s farm, but it was abandoned. Looked like he’d left in a hurry; all they found were three little lion cubs. The cops are sending some wildlife people to collect them.’ Her face turned serious. ‘Mum, sit down with me for a minute, please.’

  Sonja instinctively looked up and down the corridor, checking for danger, then sat on one of the tatty vinyl-covered chairs Emma motioned to. She took off her glasses. ‘What’s wrong? Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine, Mum, all things considered. It’s you I’m worried about.’

  ‘Me? There’s nothing wrong with me other than a few cuts and bruises.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant, Mum. I mean, all this, where you’ve be
en, the talk about you being in Vietnam . . . I want to know if it’s finished now.’

  Sonja took a breath and looked down at her fingers for a while, then back at Emma. ‘It is.’

  ‘Really?’

  Sonja nodded. ‘I thought I could get over Sam by killing the people responsible for his death, Emma. I know that must sound terrible.’ Emma said nothing, but reached out and took Sonja’s hands in hers. Sonja swallowed hard. ‘I realised these last few days that as much as I loved Sam I can’t live in the past, I have to move on, and I have to make sure you’re all right.’

  Emma squeezed her hands. ‘Thanks, Mum, but you have to look after yourself, too. You’re still grieving for Sam, or at least you have to let yourself grieve for him. And he wouldn’t have wanted you to – I don’t know – stagnate, or become a hermit or whatever. He was so full of life; he would have wanted you to get on with yours.’

  Sonja freed one of her hands and rubbed her eyes. ‘You’re right. I do want to get on, and . . .’ She felt the sting of tears and the first sob rise from deep inside her. As much as she hated the idea of crying in public she felt suddenly incapable of stopping, and when Emma wrapped her arms around her Sonja felt herself unable to do anything other than let the tears soak her daughter’s T-shirt.

  ‘It’s OK, Mum, it’s OK. You can cry for him. It’s natural.’

  Sonja had spent a life suppressing her grief, or drinking it away. When, at last, she sat up and dried her eyes, as weird as it was she felt as though a burden had been lifted from her. She still felt sad, still missed Sam, but there were other people she needed to check on, and perhaps care for.

  Emma hugged her. ‘OK?’

  Sonja sniffed, nodded, and composed herself, gently breaking away from Emma’s embrace. ‘Better.’

  ‘Oh, and Mum, seriously, you have to stop this mercenary shit.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  Emma put her hands on her hips. ‘Don’t “whatever” me.’