The Devil's Breath

by David Gilman

  A final banked curve, the controls juddered; she leveled out, eased the nose up, shoved the flap levers down and felt the wheels bounce.

  The wheels skidded across the hardened surface and she guided the trusty old plane to a final standstill.

  Silence.

  Then she heard the sound of metal creaking: the engine cooling down.

  She sat for a moment, letting her relief at her survival wash over her. And then she laughed. She had brought a crippled aircraft down safely in some of the most frightening minutes of her young life, and she was covered in Tobias’s Desert Buster Ice-Cold Special.

  It was the flask that had exploded. She licked some of it from her face. It tasted better than at any other time she could remember.

  Mike Kapuo listened carefully to her story. She told him everything that had happened since she had picked Max up at Windhoek Airport, why he was in Namibia; and then finally recounted her own terrifying experience.

  “You’re certain it was sabotage?”

  “Yes, I thought I didn’t recognize the mechanic when I went back to my plane. The fuel injectors had been loosened—they came away after about an hour’s flying—and a piece of the braided pipe had been replaced with a length of plastic tubing.”

  “So what? I’ve done the same with the fuel line on one of my old cars. That’s not proof of sabotage or attempted murder.”

  “Yes it is,” she insisted. “Avgas melts plastic. It was enough to get me up into the air, and then it was only a matter of time. If the injectors had not rattled loose, then the pipe would have melted. It was double insurance to bring me down.”

  He nodded without saying anything. Kapuo knew the aftereffects of trauma; she would need food and rest.

  “We’ll talk tomorrow. You’re coming home with me.”

  “Mike, I can’t.”

  “Yes you can. I’ll have someone go out and look at your plane, and we’ll thank the farmer who brought you in.”

  “You do believe me?”

  “Yes, I do. I saw an interdepartmental report about two men being severely injured at Eros Airport the day you picked up this Max Gordon boy. They were known hard men, who hired themselves out for any unpleasant work that needed doing. We’ve also had a report on this boy’s missing father for a few weeks now, but initial searches gave us nothing. We figured he was either dead or dying. You know how it is out there.”

  “Max’s father sent a letter to England from here, in Walvis Bay. And this guy he works with, someone called Leopold, he was here as well,” Kallie told him.

  Kapuo hesitated, debating with himself how much he should tell her. How much might his friend’s daughter know? Kapuo folded his jacket over his arm and eased her out of the office. “You need a hot bath and some of Elizabeth’s cooking. We’ll tackle this whole thing tomorrow morning.” His wife’s food and a decent bed for the night would bring the girl down to earth a little. Lower her defenses.

  If she had useful information, he could pass that on to the man in England who was hunting the boy and his father.

  The chilled night cramped their muscles, and for a long time Max had lain, staring into the cave’s void, knowing his father had been there and had left a message. Only the exhausting anxiety of not knowing what that message meant had finally sent him to sleep.

  !Koga shook him awake and, as he rubbed what little sleep he had from his eyes, gestured to Max to follow him to the mouth of the cave. !Koga pointed, smiling contentedly. “!Kognuing-tara—the Dawn’s Heart,” he said.

  Max looked. Low on the horizon was a fat ball of light. Max had seen that star before. Years ago when they were in Egypt, his father had woken him early, wrapped him in a blanket and taken him out into the cold desert dawn. He pointed. “See that light? That’s Jupiter.” Max realized that’s what the drawing in the cave meant. His father was pointing to the “morning star”—the planet Jupiter, the Dawn’s Heart. Telling him where to go: east, beyond those mountains. Max smiled. The dawn swept away his self-doubt as the storm had blown away the clouds of darkness.

  Max ran with renewed energy towards the rising sun. Spears of light shot through the ragged mountain peaks. His long strides kept up comfortably with !Koga, whose feet seemed barely to touch the ground. The grass was still sparse, barely ankle-deep, but it made the ground softer underfoot and running easier. They had clambered down the slope from the cave and pushed hard to reach the opposite mountainside, whose sweeping grassland curved up to embrace massive, sculptured boulders. The baboons had raced for the safety of the rocks during the night’s storm, so as they drew closer !Koga slowed the pace. The last thing they wanted was to burst unannounced into a baboon colony’s breakfast; their curved, razor-sharp canines could inflict lethal wounds. !Koga stopped as Max caught up with him. They were halfway up the mountainside, a thousand meters from the summit, where the jagged teeth barred any entrance. Down at this level the ground undulated, and if they stayed on course they could skirt the mountain range using these lower slopes—but they had to negotiate their way through the baboons.

  A gateway through the boulders led them to a three-sided bowl in the hillside: a small amphitheater of grassland and trees, which offered shelter from severe storms and a collection point for any precipitation. Max and !Koga stood in silence. To reach the far side they would have to walk for at least a kilometer through what looked like a couple of hundred feeding and grooming baboons. The boys had not yet been noticed. “Walk slowly, yes?” !Koga told him.

  “You bet,” Max said, licking his lips nervously.

  Although they were scattered across the grassland, the baboons were in family groups; at various points big male baboons stood guard, watching over their females and offspring.

  “The big baboons …” !Koga indicated them with a lift of his chin.

  “The males?” Max asked.

  “Yes. They come for you, they run at you, like attack … you stay. Stand still. They want to see if you a threat. OK?”

  “Oh yeah, I’ll invite them for tea while I’m at it.” !Koga seemed uncertain about Max’s sarcastic answer, so he reassured the Bushman boy. “I’ll close my eyes and think of England. I won’t move.”

  From somewhere ahead came a sound like a guttural dog bark. One of the guardian baboons had sounded the alarm. A sudden ripple of fear ran through the troop; youngsters ran to their mothers, but it was not the boys’ presence that had frightened them. The baboons crouched, looking up. A shadow drifted across them. Max searched the sky. A martial eagle had stepped off a high peak and glided into a thermal. The warm morning air carried him easily across the gathered baboons, but he was still too high to swoop and make an attack on any vulnerable youngster. !Koga tugged at Max’s arm. This was a good time to make their way through the distracted baboons.

  After a few minutes the huge eagle, showing first its dark-brown back feathers, then its speckled white chest, curved lazily in the air and drifted away. Perhaps it had spotted easier prey further down the valley. Max reckoned it was big enough to take a small antelope, so a young baboon would certainly not have posed a problem for the winged predator, which could strike with stunning power. Its talons could pierce a skull, biting deep into the base of the brain, causing instant death. Then it would carry the prey to its nest and dismember the carcass, tearing out the intestines, severing the head and limbs to be eaten. The baboons obviously knew the ominous reality of the raptor’s shadow.

  The danger passed, and now Max and !Koga were in the midst of the baboons. One of the males stood on its hind legs, watching them from a distance; the others returned to their nit-picking duties while the youngsters played in a chattering, raucous rough-and-tumble. A huddle of boulders lay in Max and !Koga’s path; baboons scattered as they approached. Some of the rocks were scooped out, worn down by centuries of weather and baboon activity; now they acted like the granite drinking troughs Max knew from Devon. A distant memory, Devon: gentle, forgiving Devon, where the enfolding hills nurtured the traveler into mean
dering pathways and fields, where the wildest creature likely to be seen might be a barn owl looking for field mice. Max’s mind wrenched back to reality. The baboons had stopped whatever they were doing and were watching them.

  !Koga crouched at one of the basins; his hand tickled the water and brought it to his lips. “It is from the storm. It tastes good.”

  Carefully they edged closer to the water. Would the baboons fiercely protect their invaluable resource or let them share it? Max pulled off his bush hat and peered down. The reflection that stared back looked nothing like the boy who had started his quest only days earlier. His fair hair was tufted and streaked with dirt. He was leaner, gaunt even, and the caked dirt made him look older. His eyes were red-rimmed from the sun’s glare, and his tears of the previous night had washed a couple of tracks in the grime. Beneath the dirt a tanned, weather-beaten face glared back at him. He looked like a wild man. And maybe now he was.

  Without another thought he dipped his cupped hands into the cool water and drank thirstily. Then he pushed his head under, scratched his fingers through his hair, and rubbed his face. As he pulled free of the rock pool a baboon took fright and fled, chattering. Maybe Max was more acceptable as a dirt-clogged creature from the bush. A young baboon sitting in a rock bowl gazed back at him like a boy in a bath, then dragged one hand over its head, spiking its own short hair, punk-like. Max pulled the binoculars from his shirt to stop them banging against the rock and put them down next to him on his bush hat, as he took another luxurious wallow.

  Lifting his head clear, he snorted dust and mucus from his nose. He would never take water for granted again. It was sobering to think how much of the precious liquid he wasted at home. He gazed out across the curved hillside. Watching the baboons was a momentary diversion. Max sensed their caution at his presence, but they did not seem to register any threat.

  !Koga’s gleaming, dripping face emerged from another pool. “Max,” he said quietly.

  Following his gaze, Max saw that the punk baboon had stolen his hat and binoculars. Max tentatively reached out towards it, but it jumped back and scurried into another’s arms, where they hugged and gazed warily at him. Max needed those binoculars. He stepped carefully towards the youngsters. A bark warned Max. He turned. A big, heavily built male was stalking towards him. Its front paws supported muscled shoulders and the mane of long hair around its neck and shoulders made it look even more threatening. It was a meter tall and the doglike muzzle snarled as it barked again. Max stood still, sensing the ripple of tension in the animals around him. The baboon bared its fangs. Max saw !Koga slowly ease an arrow into his bow. “Don’t kill it, !Koga. It’ll be OK.”

  “I don’t know,” !Koga replied. “Maybe not. He is the leader. Others will attack if he does.”

  Max glanced around. !Koga was right. The warning bark had alerted other males. The strict hierarchy of the baboon troop meant that the older juveniles, often acting as scouts for the troop, rallied when the danger call came from the leader. Other males stayed with their families but were nevertheless alerted.

  Max reassured !Koga. “We’ll walk away … slowly.”

  Once in a while Max had come across kids at school who were stronger than he, and there was always the odd bully to contend with. Despite best intentions, some kids just had to exert their dominance, and Max had had a couple of scraps at school. There were Baskins and Hoggart, two of the older boys. They got out of hand at times. If they weren’t looking for a scrap with someone else, they would rough and tumble each other. Whatever the outcome, it meant a few bruises, but this baboon with its razor-sharp teeth was way above the Baskins and Hoggart league—this was the equivalent of a knife-wielding, streetwise kid with a very bad attitude. If there wasn’t something to hand for self-defense, then a fast sprint for self-preservation brought no shame. Only Max would never outrun this bruiser. He flinched as the baboon coughed another bark and with a snarl charged to within four meters of where Max now stood with his back to the rocks. The other baboons began to join in, their screeches and threats sounding like a badly out-of-control football crowd.

  “Next time he will really attack,” !Koga shouted, bringing attention to himself from the other young males. The height of the boulders offered some immediate sanctuary, but that would be short-lived once the frenzy spread. It was not much of a choice: an attack would come sooner or later.

  “I want a chance to get out of this, !Koga. We walk slowly, and then we run. All right?”

  !Koga gazed at the confident boy who stood unflinching before the baboon’s agitated aggression.

  “We’ll run like hell, !Koga, once we reach those rocks over there. You ready?”

  !Koga nodded and eased his back along the boulders, watching the gathering juveniles, who were eager for combat, once their leader attacked. Almost shoulder to shoulder, the boys edged away. Within moments, one of the juvenile males broke ranks and charged. The screaming, indignant bark of the leader barely stopped the young baboon before it reached Max—who smelled its fetid breath and saw the ragged spittle hanging from its lips.

  Together, the boys eased away from the advancing baboons—it seemed like a small army was gathering around them. It was a hundred or more meters before they could reach the rocks, allowing them to put on a turn of speed. The rocks would divide the advancing baboons and give the boys a chance of reaching the flatter, wider plain beyond the fringe of the mountains.

  “Get ready, !Koga, we have to go for it now!”

  Max sensed the quivering anticipation in the startled looks of the baboons and felt his own energy gathering to explode. Then suddenly a shadow swept across them all.

  The shrieking peaked. The commanding voice of the leader barked above them all and the baboons were unleashed. They surged towards Max and !Koga, who were helpless. Blurred images—fragments of his mother and father—slammed through Max’s mind. He saw !Koga level his spear in readiness. This was it! A fight to the death. He sucked in air to scream his defiance.

  But the horde swept past them, jostling them, the juveniles now taking the lead, scouting ahead, leading the troop to safety beyond the place of exposed danger.

  A reprieve!

  Max and !Koga reacted instinctively and ran with them, pounding across the ground, immersed in the baboons’ hysteria. They were safe amidst the panic. The blackness fell across them again, but it was not the shadow of the hunting eagle. The darkness belonged to a far more dangerous creature.

  Five hundred meters above, the silent predator rose higher on a thermal spiral. On huge, featherless wings stretched across a skeletal frame, it whispered through the sky. The glider’s Perspex cockpit, an all-seeing eye, held Shaka Chang.

  Slye had tried to contact the men sent to kill the boys, but their radio transceiver responded with a lion’s rumbling growl and the sound of it being scraped across the ground. Chang was indifferent to the men’s fate and this morning’s flight served only to acquaint him with the terrain from where the boy might emerge—or where he had perished. Chang liked to know everything about those who were trying to interfere with his plans, and ultimately he trusted only his own eyes.

  Chang gazed down at the fleeing baboons. He thought he saw a shape, different from the others, but the warm air scooped him upwards and obscured his vision. He heeled the glider around again and swept low across the broad, sloping mountainside, his glider chasing its shadow across the ground. The baboons clambered into rocks, seeking shelter from the perceived threat. Chang twisted left and right, searching for the figures that had caught his eye. Nothing. Once again he banked into the thermal and felt the surge of nature’s power lifting him above and beyond the mountain range. Power he could control.

  On the far horizon, cumulonimbus, the king of clouds, gathered a storm-threatening army. Even Chang would not venture into that awesome turbulence. It was like a nature god, and any intruder would be tossed and ripped apart by the contained force the clouds held. Stacked like multiple atomic explosions climbing sixt
y kilometers high, their bonds would finally be broken and would release tons of rainwater, flooding the landscape below, then Shaka Chang’s dam would restrain the power of that water. And that control would give him command of life or death over the whole region.

  Everyone needed water. Diamonds and gold were mere trading commodities, crystals and metal made glorious by the vanity of man; but he would still take them when they were thrust into his hands as payment for releasing the life-giving energy he had entrapped. But before that happened, those self-same rains would carry out the first step of Chang’s plan. They would scour the earth’s underground caves and fissures, carrying a plague of death, to destroy human and animal life for thousands of kilometers. Governments would then give even more for Shaka Chang’s unsullied water. And all that could stand between him and domination was a fifteen-year-old boy and the knowledge he might hold. And it was only that boy’s power over him that caused Shaka Chang a moment of doubt.

  Satisfied that the harsh landscape below offered but a meager chance of survival for anyone foolish enough to challenge it, he eased the glider towards the heavens. Two hundred kilometers away, he would swoop from the sun like an all-powerful god and descend to earth, returning to Skeleton Rock, the earthly home of a celestial warrior: the bringer of chaos and destruction which were the instruments of success.

  The rains were coming soon.

  Sheltering under the lee of the rocks, !Koga and Max kept their faces turned away from the silent hunter. Who could be flying a glider out here? Was it a wealthy farmer indulging a hobby, or was there a more sinister reason for the silent approach? It was not worth risking being seen, and they hoped they had not been. Once the quivering wings had lifted the slender body across the mountains, the boys broke cover and ran. The baboons, still terrified, offered no threat. And provided the glider did not return, they were free to run as far and as fast as their legs could carry them into the distant scrubland and the safety of the trees.