by Tony Park
‘It’s not an Oryx, sir. And it’s already on its way here. In fact, it should be here any minute now. It was going to rendezvous with the aircraft carrying the ivory, so the cameramen could get pictures of it in flight, over the Kruger Park. I thought it would be good public relations for the air force and I was going to tell you, but then . . . well, all this happened.’
De Villiers could feel his cheeks reddening with rage. He was going to throttle this air force poephol if he didn’t give him some good news soon.
Steyn drew a deep breath and held up both hands, palms outwards, as if trying to ward off the salvo he knew the colonel was about to fire. ‘Sir, it’s a Rooivalk!’
De Villiers’s mouth opened and he stared at the air force captain, but the younger man had stopped talking. He was beaming at him like a child who thinks he has just done something monumentally impressive and is awaiting a word of praise. ‘Tell me it’s armed, Steyn.’
The captain nodded, still grinning broadly. ‘Eight Mokopa laser-guided antitank guided missiles and an F2 twenty-millimetre cannon in the nose with seven hundred and fifty rounds, sir.’
‘How far away is it?’
The air force officer looked at his watch. ‘It should be here any minute now. I ordered the pilot to divert here to Satara immediately. I hope that’s all right, sir.’
De Villiers’s face showed the merest hint of a smile for the first time since the Oryx had taken off towards Mozambique. He started issuing orders to half-a-dozen staff officers, telling them to contact a general in Pretoria and the office of the Minister for Defence, among others who would need to authorise the action they were about to take. He was asking Mandile to find out from his superiors what would happen if the ivory was destroyed when the whine of turbine engines and the thwap of rotor blades cleaving hot air silenced all conversation.
The canvas walls of the tent were snapping and billowing against their poles as the colonel walked outside, a hand shielding his eyes from the glare of the afternoon sun and the stinging wall of dust. He looked up. Ordinarily he would have cursed the pilot for such a reckless, ostentatious show, coming in low over the headquarters to land.
Now he could have kissed him.
Steyn and De Villiers ran, heads bent, to the Rooivalk. The name was Afrikaans for ‘Red Kestrel’, but the colonel thought South Africa’s home-grown two-seat attack helicopter looked more like a shark. Long, sleek, fast and deadly, the Rooivalk had had its detractors over the years it had taken to get the aircraft from the drawing board to the air, but De Villiers now thought it the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
A refuelling truck pulled up beside the gunship and two airmen got out.
The pilot who opened the cockpit hatch was a tall, broad-shouldered African man who looked no older than twenty-five. He had a narrow moustache and perfect teeth and he gave crisp, authoritative orders to the refuellers before turning his attention to the two officers.
‘Howzit,’ the pilot said to Steyn, extending a hand.
‘Colonel De Villiers,’ Steyn said, ‘this is Lieutenant Oliver Msimang. He’s one of the finest helicopter pilots we’ve got.’
Msimang ignored the compliment and shook the colonel’s hand.
‘Steyn’s explained the situation?’ De Villiers asked.
‘Yes, on a secure back channel,’ Msimang yelled above the noise of the still-turning engine.
‘I’m waiting on final approval from the powers that be,’ De Villiers said. ‘But if it comes through, can you shoot down the Oryx, Lieutenant? Can you pull the trigger and down one of our own helicopters?’
‘I’ve been waiting all my life for the chance, sir.’
De Villiers ran his eyes along the camouflage panels of the helicopter. Msimang had clambered down from the pilot’s cockpit, which was situated above and behind the weapons officer, a white man who was busy checking displays and instruments in front of him. Hot exhaust gases from the twin Makila turbo-shaft engines billowed around them. ‘Can you catch them, though? I’ve read that the Rooivalk and the Oryx have the same powerplant.’
Msimang nodded. ‘That’s true, sir, but we’re lighter and sleeker than he is. Also, from what Steyn tells me, they’re carrying a tonne or more of ivory in a net. That’ll increase their drag and reduce their speed dramatically.’
De Villiers pointed to the stubby wing on their side of the helicopter, from which four missiles hung. ‘What about those?’
Msimang shook his head. ‘They’re antitank missiles – air to ground only. We can carry air-to-air missiles. If we had those I’d be able to blow this guy out of the sky before he even saw me.’ Msimang walked to the nose of the aircraft and slapped a palm on the long barrel of the twenty-millimetre cannon that jutted forward from a turret mounted in the helicopter’s chin. ‘It’ll have to be this baby. And Jaco – that’s my weapons officer – never misses.’
The white man knew they were talking about him. He looked across at De Villiers and grinned, giving him a thumbs up.
‘The 16 Squadron motto is Hlaselani. It means ‘attack’, sir. We’ll find that Oryx and we’ll slaughter it like a lion taking a buck.’
De Villiers nodded, but his face remained grim. He’d spent enough time in the bush to know that the desert-dwelling oryx with their long pointed horns were dangerous when attacked, and that lions often shied away from them.
Jose drained the dregs of his bottle of Manica beer as the chartered twin-engine turboprop executive aircraft taxied under the control of the African marshaller and pulled up outside the Vilanculos International Airport terminal building.
Jose left a crumple of Meticas notes on the table and winked at the pretty waitress, who scooped up the generous tip and stuffed it into the lacy bra poking out from the open top of her white blouse. Jose would have liked to linger longer, but business was business.
He excused himself as he stepped over the bucket of the cleaner who was kneeling scrubbing the steps which led to the terminal’s rooftop bar and restaurant. He moved through the small terminal with confidence and greeted the customs and immigration officials with a friendly ‘Ola’. One was his brother-in-law, the other a cousin. As he shook hands with each man he palmed them green fifty-dollar bills, which were secreted as hastily and expertly as the waitress had done.
Jose pulled on gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses as he stepped out onto the baking black tarmac of the runway, which simmered under the unforgiving midday sun. ‘Welcome, Mister Chan, or Bom dia, as we say here.’
The gangster wore a lightweight beige cotton suit with a black open-necked shirt. He was followed down the stairs by a shaven-headed bodyguard. Jose noted the bulge under the man’s navy blazer and assumed his boss, Chan, would be armed as well. Jose’s own Glock was in a shoulder holster under his loudly patterned beach shirt. He could handle these two if there was trouble. Alex had warned him to be vigilant.
‘Is the Peng Cheng ready to sail? Where is Captain Wu?’
Jose’s African blood was instinctively offended at the gangster’s abruptness. He wondered if Chan hated black people. Criminals such as Chan and the Chinese government were pillaging his country’s lands and waters to feed their greed and their people’s hunger for resources and possessions. If Chan despised Jose for being African, then it was nothing compared to Jose’s dislike of the mobster. ‘Your ship is moored at Ilha dos Sonhos, fuelled and ready. Captain Wu and two of his crew have been shopping in the markets for fresh fruit and vegetables for your voyage. We’re joining them just now.’
Chan nodded and looked around him. He spoke rapidly in Mandarin to his bodyguard, who turned back to the aircraft’s copilot and relieved him of a briefcase and a green canvas and brown leather safari carry bag.
Thanks to the gratuities Jose had paid his relatives, Chan and his bodyguard, whom Jose learned was also called Wu, passed through the customs and immigration formalities in a matter of seconds. Jose got into the driver’s seat of his black BMW, leaving Chan’s sour-faced bodyguard to o
pen the back door for his master. Jose would be damned if he was going to kowtow to the bastard, even though Alex had told him to treat Chan civilly.
Mitch held the body of Angel Guitterez over the dhow’s starboard gunwale. He lowered her head until her frizzy black hair kissed the turquoise water. He thought her face looked serene, almost beautiful, now that he had closed her eyelids.
When the waters washed over the gash in her throat he had to grip her sequinned red top even tighter as her body literally started to fill. He watched, fascinated, as the blood coagulated and curled into a fluttering submerged streamer of red that tailed the wooden boat and mixed with its wake. It would, he hoped, attract the sharks.
‘Goodbye, babydoll,’ he said as he released his grip on the prostitute. Angel’s body, weighted with water, sank quickly from sight. He thought of her writhing and thrashing under his grip, after he had killed the dhow’s captain in front of her. What a shame there wasn’t time to satisfy his sexual thirst. He’d slake it soon enough on the Island of Dreams, which was growing with every second from speck, to blob, to enticing mound on the horizon in front of him. He adjusted the tiller then unceremoniously dragged the muscled body of the skipper, his throat also slashed, from the pink bilge waters, and tossed him over the side.
In the centre of the dhow was a wooden box lined with heat- and salt-corroded corrugated iron and filled with sand. This served as the ship’s galley and a mound of charcoal glowed in the centre. Mitch finished the job the captain had begun, just before Mitch had killed him, and poured tea into a tin mug. He blew on the hot liquid and sipped it. Life was good, he said to himself.
That morning, Angel had brought him the news he’d been waiting for. Jose and a couple of the Chinese sailors from the Peng Cheng had arrived in Vilanculos and the crewmen had gone shopping. Jose, he knew, would be heading to the airport to wait for Chan, just as George Penfold had predicted.
Angel missed nothing of what went on in town, particularly near the small port where she plied her trade, and she had advised him when Jose had ferried Kevin, Heinrich, Henri and Kufa to the mainland, and of their departure on the Pelican Airways flight to South Africa.
It was time for him to strike. The island and its arsenal would be unguarded.
Mitch steered his way through the gap in the coral reef and lowered the dhow’s ragged, patched sail. When the keel shushed home on the sandy beach he jumped off, not bothering to anchor or tether the vessel. He wouldn’t be needing it again. It drifted slowly out from shore, riding the strong current with just the ghosts of a man and woman as crew. His spine tingled, but in a good, exciting way.
He walked up the beach carrying his docksiders in his left hand and his fishing knife in his right. ‘Hi, honey, I’m home!’
*
George Penfold scanned the horizon with his binoculars. It was good to be back on the bridge of a ship, in his rightful place, as master. Even though he owned the entire company and its fleet, there was nothing quite so satisfying as being addressed, once again, as ‘Captain’.
Beside him, Piet van Zyl buckled the black nylon pistol belt around his waist and zipped up his combat vest. He carried enough ammunition in the magazines in his chest pockets, and strapped to his left thigh, to kill more than three hundred human beings. They were only hunting six today, but they were through taking chances.
‘Any further news from Reardon?’ George asked Van Zyl.
The mercenary fitted a magazine to his M4 assault rifle and cocked it. ‘No. Just that he had taken control of the armoury on the island, as planned, and had armed the Peng Cheng’s crew and taken care of Tremain’s man who’d brought Chan to Ilha dos Sonhos. Reardon’s staying on the island, as planned, and the Peng Cheng sailed an hour ago. She’s in international waters by now.’
George nodded. ‘Reardon worries me. He’s a psychopath. What are you smiling at, Van Zyl?’
‘Nothing. Mitch is the right man for the job. He’s betrayed his comrades and given us the location of the pirate base. With us on board the Peng Cheng and her crew carrying weapons, there’s no way Tremain and his men will escape now.’
It wasn’t only politics that made for strange bedfellows, George mused as he stared out to sea. He’d had a long, profitable and illegal business relationship with Valiant Chan for many years. The late Iain MacGregor had rendezvoused with the Peng Cheng on many occasions, usually transferring drugs to the smaller freighter, which Chan’s man Wu would then land in Mozambique or on isolated spots on the South African coastline.
When George had killed the prostitute Chan had told him that his men would dispose of the body, and that George would have to ‘compensate’ him for his men’s efforts, the risk involved, and Chan’s loss of earnings because of the woman’s death. Chan didn’t threaten, verbally, to do anything with the tape, but he did tell George that he would hand it over once he’d received his compensation. Chan was too polite to rise to George’s accusation of blackmail, but they both knew what was going on.
Following the pirates’ raid on the Peng Cheng and the Penfold Son, Chan had told George, via a secure phone, that Wu had confessed to telling the pirates that the package he had handed over to the Penfold Son’s engineer was worth a million pounds. In fact, George had paid only two hundred thousand. Chan had apologised for Wu’s actions and said he’d thought the man had made up the figure to tempt the pirates into letting him and his ship go, while they went in search of a juicier target. Wu’s strategy had backfired, as he had ended up incarcerated at the pirates’ base and would at some time in the future, Chan promised George, pay for his ill-thought remarks to the hijackers.
The pair of them had talked at length about the growing number and increasing audacity of pirate attacks along the coast. In a previous meeting Chan had floated the idea of stealing several tonnes of ivory from the South African National Parks board once the authorities reinstated their controversial elephant cull. George had admired the boldness of the idea, but agreed with Chan that neither of them had the people or the logistics to steal the tusks and get them to the coast. ‘I’m a smuggler, not a thief, Valiant. There’s a fine line.’
Chan had told George that he had received a ransom email from the pirates and had a mind to see if they were interested in getting involved in the ivory heist.
‘Interesting,’ George had said. ‘You want them to do your dirty work and I want them dead.’ At the time he’d thought the pirates had stolen the tape from MacGregor’s safe, as well as killing the roguish old Scot, kidnapping Jane and damaging his beautiful new ship. There were plenty of reasons why he wanted them eliminated. Even though he now knew Jane had hidden the tape and betrayed him, he still wanted this Tremain and his crew wiped out. He gripped the binoculars hard in his hands, his knuckles showing white. Jane had obviously been helped in getting the tape back and it seemed she had been in cahoots with the pirates all along. If she knew what was on it, then so would they.
‘Perhaps we can both benefit from me forming a temporary alliance with these pirates,’ Chan had said, reading his mind. ‘It will not be in my interest to have these men roaming the seas at will, and armed with the knowledge of my role in a massive theft of ivory. I will want them gone as much as you, once I have my ship back and the ivory loaded on board. It seems you have your own small army at your disposal, George. Perhaps between us we can do our bit to stamp out maritime crime?’
George shifted his gaze from the horizon back to Van Zyl, standing beside him. Tremain had outwitted them all more than once, and he hoped the South African’s confident optimism wasn’t misplaced. ‘Don’t come back to my ship until the job’s finished. Understood?’
Van Zyl nodded.
‘After you’ve disposed of Tremain and his gang, and the ivory’s safely on board the Peng Cheng, I want you to go to Ilha dos Sonhos and kill Reardon.’
‘I’ll do it, but why?’
‘I don’t want some murderous nutter setting up another band of buccaneers on that island. I’ve got shi
ps to run up and down this coast. Also, I can’t trust him not to double-cross us in the future.’
Van Zyl nodded again. He waved his hand in the air, signalling his men to board the RHIB. Five minutes later they were laying a swathe of furious white foam on the waters of the Indian Ocean.
They stayed low, following the ribbon of white-gold sand that ran like a highway, south to north, dividing the emerald inland from the indigo ocean. Alex checked his watch.
‘Turning now,’ Kobus said, and Alex gripped the back of the pilot’s seat as the Oryx banked to the right.
Novak had lowered the winch cable soon after they crossed the Lebombo Hills and Alex had taken the green canvas satchel attached to the rescue loop and buried the bag as deep as he could beneath several layers of tusks. It had been a tricky job, but with the safety harness now looped around his torso and under his arms he’d been safe enough.
They were right on time, but Alex still had to wipe the sweat from his brow with the back of his gloved hand. ‘How’s the fuel?’
‘Tight,’ said Kobus, ‘but we’ll make it. Just. What was in that bag?’ he asked over the radio as Alex moved behind the pilot’s seat and looked forward through the cockpit.
‘An insurance policy.’
The pilot was too busy to query Alex any further.
‘Up ahead,’ Kobus said into his microphone, and pointed.
Alex blinked and refocused his eyes. He saw the speck and pointed it out to Novak. ‘Get everyone in the doors. Cover all angles, all approaches.’
Alex took off his headset, as they all knew the plan from here on in. Novak helped him fasten the padded yellow rescue sling around his body once again.
Alex checked the rifle slung across his chest. It was cocked and he flipped off the safety catch. He felt the nose of the helicopter lift, and the airspeed bleed off as Kobus approached the ship.
