by Tom Cain
Here he was, though, still alive when so many others had gone, and now the nightmare that had cursed him for so long was being replayed in a new form. The night was quiet this time with just the chatter of insects and the occasional rustle of animals in the long grass to disturb the moonlit stillness. From his position behind a fallen tree trunk, Justus could see what he still thought of as the Stratten house no more than a hundred paces away, a low-slung building that nestled beneath a grass-thatched roof. The terrace where the Strattens had eaten so many of their meals and held so many parties, the African guides like Justus transformed into white-jacketed waiters for the night, was exactly as he remembered it. Even the woven palm-leaf sofas and chairs were still there. Yet Zalika Stratten was a prisoner in what had once been her home and the rest of the family were rotting in unmarked graves.
Now those chairs were occupied by armed men, four of them, sitting hunched over a table while they played games of cards. Though there were a few beer bottles on the table, these men had not let themselves get drunk. Their manner was sober in the extreme, the cards merely a means to pass the time between watches in the house, or out in the grounds. A woman appeared from time to time, but she was no prostitute, instead a respectable housekeeper who upbraided any man who dared put his feet on the furniture, even as she brought them their meals of thick maize porridge and stew.
Carver and Justus had arrived two hours earlier, having left the Land Rover hidden in the bush more than a mile from the house. They had approached their destination with extreme stealth, and Justus had been surprised and not a little impressed by the skill with which Carver selected his path, always avoiding soft ground; taking extreme care to move silently, without leaving tell-tale broken twigs or disturbed leaves in his path; regularly pausing to listen out for anyone who might be following them. Together they had reconnoitred the property and assessed the number of guards and the routine with which they carried out their assignments. There were eight in total: two inside the building, presumably standing guard over Miss Stratten; two patrolling the perimeter, walking in opposite directions; four resting between watches. Yet even these, the card players and beer drinkers, maintained their readiness.
Far in the distance, Justus heard the roar of a lion, a noise that struck a primitive, animal terror into a man, no matter how far away it sounded. Instantly, all four of the men stopped their game and looked out into the night, towards the direction from which the roar had come. As the sound of the lion subsided in a series of short, coughing growls, one of the men got to his feet and walked to the edge of the terrace, sweeping his gaze from side to side and causing Justus to fear that he had been spotted, even though he knew that no man had night-vision sharp enough to penetrate as far as his position.
All Justus had to do was wait. His job was very simple. As and when Carver emerged from the building, with Zalika in tow, it was his duty to lay down covering fire to suppress anyone who might want to stop them getting away. The orders Carver had given him were very specific. He was to remain exactly where he was. If anything went wrong, then he should melt back into the bush, return to the Land Rover and drive like hell for the border, which was less than ten miles from where he now stood. Under no circumstances was he to risk his own life in an attempt to save Carver’s.
Justus wondered about that last point. He was by nature a man who obeyed his commanding officer. He also had a very good reason indeed to survive the night in one piece. Yet he had a feeling that if the moment came, he might for once be insubordinate.
But what about Carver? Justus could not see or hear him. He was out there somewhere, silently tracking the patrolling guards like a deadly spirit, his sharp, black-bladed knife in his hand.
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Carver had already struck once, though Justus did not know it. The first of the sentries had been eliminated and his body dragged off the path on which he’d been walking. Carver had walked on a little further, towards the oncoming second sentry, and now he was invisible in the undergrowth by the side of the path, waiting for his next victim.
He was a young soldier who looked little older than the Iluko boy he’d rescued a few hours ago, and who carried himself with the nervous bravado of any squaddie in any army forced to mount a solitary patrol in the dark. It was almost too easy to let him go by and then slip out on to the path and approach the soldier from behind, place his left hand over the lad’s mouth, pulling his head back, and then slide the blade in a single smooth stroke across the exposed neck, slicing through the trachea and feeling his body go as limp in his arms as an exhausted lover.
Slowly, with almost tender care, Carver lowered the dead soldier to the ground. Then he stepped back off the path and dropped to his belly to snake across the ground to his next position. When he got there, he pulled round the M4 carbine that had been slung across his back and found a comfortable shooting position. He imagined he was back on one of the stands at Campden Hall, waiting for his targets to be released. He thought of the sequence of shots he would be firing, the various adjustments he would have to make as he tracked from one target to another. He calmed himself, let every last dreg of tension be bled from his neck and shoulders. And then he got to work.
From where Justus was watching, what happened next had an eerie calmness, even a detachment, to it that made him wonder for a moment whether he was back in the world of his dreams. There were four gentle but quite distinct popping sounds, each less than a second apart. And then a spell seemed to be cast over the card players. The man who had just seconds earlier been looking so purposefully into the darkness fell to the ground without so much as a murmur of pain or surprise. A card player suddenly jerked backwards, his head resting against the back of his sofa, a bright-red hole between his wide-open, sightless eyes. The man sitting next to him was knocked sideways by the impact of a bullet in his temple. The third slumped forward over the card table, his beer glass still gripped in his right hand. As his head hit the table, his grip relaxed and the glass smashed on the stone-tiled floor – the first loud noise since the first shot had been fired.
Justus realized that the two sentries must also have fallen to Carver. Six men dead, and still Justus had no idea of where, precisely, their killer was.
The sound of breaking glass alerted the two men posted inside the house. From the first-floor landing it was possible to see right through the open-plan interior to the terrace where the four bodies now lay. Whoever had killed them was surely on their way into the house. Nervous fingers tapped out a number on a satellite phone, and the voice that spoke into the mouthpiece trembled with fear.
‘We are under attack. At least four men are dead, maybe six. Please come quickly, I beg you, or it will be too late.’
In the back of the helicopter transporting him south from Sindele, Moses Mabeki felt a mixture of fury and delight. Carver’s sheer effrontery was intolerable, and the possible seizure of Zalika Stratten was a nuisance, to put it mildly. But at least this gave him an opportunity to deal with Carver once and for all. It had been a mistake to expect a gang of Chinese peasant gangsters to solve his problems for him. From now on, Mabeki would rely on his own resources and do the job himself.
He checked his watch. He would be at the house in twenty minutes. He did not expect Carver to have got too far away by then.
Back at the house, the last two members of the unit detailed to stand guard over Zalika Stratten were not planning a desperate last stand to defend their master’s chosen woman. They were climbing through a window at the back of the building, sliding down the thatched roof, falling the last seven feet to the ground and then running away as fast as their legs would carry them.
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Carver was not a fan of the open-plan style. Not when it was fully lit and he had to make his way across a good fifty feet of living area, then up a single straight flight of stairs with flimsy wooden banisters and no decent cover anywhere. He came out of the dark with his M4 up and his eyes looking through the sights, ready to fire at the slig
htest movement or sound.
Yet none came.
At first he thought it might be a trap. He was being lured right into the property, the more easily to be caught at point-blank range. But the ambush he expected never came.
He took the stairs in half-a-dozen strides, three steps at a time.
The landing was deserted.
Carver turned right and made his way along the landing, stepping quietly, keeping his back to the wall until he came to the furthermost door. He paused to listen for any movement or noise from the room beyond it. There was none. He took a pace back, then smashed the heel of his boot against the door, crashing it open.
Nothing happened. The room was empty.
Carver checked around the bed. He opened the wardrobes and went through an internal door to the en-suite bathroom.
No one there.
He went back out to the landing and repeated the process in two more bedroom suites.
The main house had only ever had four bedrooms; guests were put up at smaller cottages in the grounds. When he reached the last bedroom, it was empty, just like the others. But the bedcover was pulled back, the sheets were crumpled and the indentation made by a resting head could still be seen on the pillow. A pair of jeans and a T-shirt had been left carelessly draped over the back of a chair. And there was something more, a lingering trace of scent in the air, a scent that went straight to his brain like a potent drug, triggering memories so powerful it was almost as if he were back in a hotel suite in Hong Kong with her body draped around his, his hand tracing a path down the curve of her spine…
‘Zalika!’ he shouted. ‘Where are you?’
There were no words of reply. But he thought he heard a sound from behind the bathroom door, the whimper of a frightened animal.
He was there in a second, striding across the room, flinging open the door and saying it again – ‘Zalika!’ – when he saw her naked body curled up in the bottom of a huge stone bath.
He went to her and reached down to touch her, desperate to know that she was still warm, still alive.
‘Are you all right?’
She nodded wordlessly and looked at him with wide, panicked eyes. All her hard-won self-assurance had deserted her, leaving just the broken husk of the girl he had first rescued all those years ago.
‘The guards ran away,’ she said. ‘They were so scared. I just wanted to hide. I didn’t know what was out there. I… I…’ The faintest glimmer of an exhausted smile flickered across her face. ‘I hardly dared hope it was you.’
‘Come on,’ Carver said, helping her from the bath, ‘let’s get you out of here.’
He hesitated then, trying to find the right words for what he had to ask next.
‘Has he… has he treated you all right?’
Zalika pressed herself closer to Carver. He felt her nod against his shoulder. Then she pulled away a fraction and looked him in the eye as she gently ran the tips of her fingers down the side of his face.
‘I’m OK,’ she whispered. ‘He hasn’t hurt me. I promise.’
She pulled on her clothes and followed Carver out of the house, clutching him tight as they passed the four dead bodies on the terrace. Justus met them outside and they began the walk to the Land Rover.
Far away in the night, a lion’s roar echoed across the bush once again, like a rumble of distant thunder.
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The wardens called him Lobengula, after the last great warrior king of the Ndebele people. From the moment he was born, he was the biggest, most dominant cub in his litter. The two brothers and one sister that were born with him all died young, as most lion cubs do: one killed by hyenas, another by a snake-bite, and the third mauled by an older male. But Lobengula survived and swiftly grew to be the finest young male in his pride.
In time, as all male lions must do, he had left his birth-pride and become a nomad, ranging across the Stratten Reserve until he found another pride whose alpha male was past his prime and weakening. Lobengula had fought him, killed him and assumed his place at the head of the pride. For five years he had been the master of all he surveyed, a magnificent creature, standing almost five feet tall at the shoulder and measuring twelve feet from his muzzle to the tuft of his tail. In his prime he had weighed six hundred pounds, and the extravagant size and deep black-brown colour of his mane was a signal to all who came near of his physical prowess and regal status.
The male lion, however, leads a precarious existence. He is not required to hunt – his mane, acting like a massive scarf, causes him to overheat if forced to chase prey for any length of time – but he does have to fight. He must defend the pride against external threats and defend himself against other males seeking to take his place. In the end, a lion’s career, like a politician’s, inevitably ends in failure. He is either killed or forced to leave the pride and go back to a solitary, nomadic existence.
When Lobengula finally met his match he was still enough of a warrior to preserve his own life. But death in battle might have been a more noble end than the half-life to which he was condemned, wandering the bush, searching for carrion or particularly young or weak prey animals that he could bring down swiftly before exhaustion overtook him. But the shortage of food that affected the human population soon transferred itself to the animal population. Though the wardens of the reserve did their best to deter poachers, still the desperation of the people was so great that many of the wildebeest, bucks and even zebras were killed for their meat. And, in the end, unpaid and hungry, the wardens themselves joined the slaughter.
Every creature killed by human predators was one less for the animal ones. The lions grew hungry. Mothers could no longer provide for their cubs. And solitary males like Lobengula felt their muscles waste and their ribs press against their fur as starvation gnawed at their guts. But even a mangy, ageing Lobengula was still a very large, dangerous beast. He was also becoming more bad-tempered by the day; an angry, embittered old man with a grudge against his world.
Tonight he had been roaring his displeasure and frustration as he paced the bush, looking for something, anything, to eat but finding not a scrap. Now he was tired and hungrier than ever. So he lay down, as cats of all sizes will do, exactly where he pleased. And, like any other cat, once he had found his spot, he had absolutely no intention of moving from it.
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For fifteen minutes the Land Rover made steady progress over relatively flat, open terrain. From time to time they came across game: a giraffe, some warthogs, even a female rhino and her calf. All made way for the car, disappearing into the bush at the sound of its engine and the smell of its exhaust. Carver was driving without lights so as not to give away his position, a skill he’d first been taught in the SBS. But for all his training, even the most docile bush country was still littered with hazards: potholes, boulders, tree-roots and thickets of tangled, thorn-bearing undergrowth. It was far better to temper his impatience, keep his speed down and stay out of trouble than risk going too fast and suffer an accident. Yet he knew it was just a matter of time before some kind of pursuit came after them and it took every ounce of self-control he possessed to resist the temptation to press the pedal to the floor.
Three miles from the border, the land began to rise towards a low range of hills. Now the going became rougher. The soil was thinner with many more boulders to be avoided. The Land Rover’s four-wheel-drive and low gearbox ratio came into their own as Carver let it roll down the precipitous bank of a dried-up river-bed and then up the other side. His pace slowed still further as the car made its way through tight gullies, the tyres fighting for purchase on narrow trails that fell away into ditches and ravines. What had been a straight line across country became a twisting course around blind corners and over humps in the landscape that gave no clue as to what lay on the other side.
Justus did his best to recall what lay in store for them, as did Zalika. But a long time had gone by since either of them had lived or worked on the Stratten Reserve, and their task was made no easie
r by the night, even if a three-quarter moon shone from the cloudless sky and the stars burned in the heavens as bright pinpricks of billion-year-old light.
From time to time, Carver stopped the car and they listened for any sound of pursuit. Then, clutching his own rifle for security, Justus got out and tentatively walked on ahead, scouting out the way before returning to report his findings to Carver. As he stood outside the Land Rover, talking in a low, barely audible voice to Carver in the driver’s seat, his reports were always calm and measured, expert assessments of the challenges they faced.
They were so close to the border now, just another few minutes’ drive. The tension was still acute, the fear of capture ever-present. Now, though, for the first time, there was real hope, too. Carver had let himself imagine the beer that Parkes had waiting for him. Justus could almost feel the joy that would come when he held his children in his arms again.
But then, on his fifth sortie, when they were traversing a hillside along a narrow ledge, a rockface rising to the left of them, the slope falling steeply away to the right, Justus returned at a sprint, looking behind him as he ran. In his haste, he did not see the small hole in the trail ahead of him. His foot turned on the side of the hole, twisting his ankle and sending Justus crashing to the ground. In an instant he was up again, grimacing as he got to his feet and hobbling the last few steps to the car. He pulled open the passenger door, leapt up into his seat, the effort making him cry out in pain, and slammed it shut again before gasping a single, breathless word: ‘Lion!’
