by Tony Park
Outside, the aircraft at Fraser’s disposal were bathed in floodlights and watched over by a black African airman with an Alsatian guard dog. The British C-17 looking as elegant as a pregnant walrus; three sturdy Atlas Oryx helicopters – upgraded South African versions of the French Aérospatiale Puma – resting like a rank of stationary cavalry mounts; and the US Navy FA-18 Hornet, as sleek, grey and deadly as a shark.
A South African colonel had hastily been put in nominal command of the multinational operation, but Major Jonathan Fraser was under no illusions who would be calling the shots if and when someone set eyes on Greeves and Joyce: him. For now, though, all he could do, apart from clean his own weapons and check and recheck his personal gear – body armour, radio, stun grenades, tear gas – was wait and study maps and aerial pictures of the wide stretch of coastline where the policeman who had gotten them all into this believed the hostages were being held.
Fraser’s signallers had in record time done a sterling job of getting their satellite communications system up and running inside the hangar. As well as secure phone and email links back to the UK, he had a broadband internet connection. Until they could get access to direct feeds from a rerouted CIA satellite – which the Americans had promised – he was making do with images from the civilian equivalent, Google Earth, to start getting a feel for the coastline north of Xai Xai.
The police chief inspector, Shuttleworth, had arrived an hour ago, picked up from the local airport by a South African National Defence Force driver. His connecting flight from Johannesburg had been delayed. Fraser had no idea why the man was here – the UK police element of this operation was irrelevant. If their man had done his job in the first place, none of them would be here now. ‘Morning, Chief Inspector.’
Shuttleworth sipped from a plastic water bottle and checked his watch. ‘So it is, Major.’ He had discarded his suit coat, and large damp patches stained the underarms of his shirt. He looked pale and close to expiry.
‘Jonathan, please. And nice to see a fellow Scot on the job.’ Fraser prided himself on his diplomacy. It was the same on exercises. There were always egos to stroke before the regiment was eventually called in to finish the job, once the police had realised they were out of their depth. ‘You’ve spoken to your man Furey?’
‘Aye.’ Shuttleworth had been in the air when Furey had tried to call him with an update of the progress across the border in Mozambique, but the Met’s switchboard in London had put him through to the COBRA situation room in Downing Street and they had given him Jonathan Fraser’s secure satellite phone number at Hoedspruit. Tom had passed his information on to the SAS commander, and Shuttleworth, playing catch-up after his delayed flight, had just made Tom talk him through the same information again. ‘The Mozambicans did a good job today, identifying the suspect vehicle – assuming it was the right one – and they’ll be ready to start their search at first light.’
Fraser had to stop himself from laughing. Talk about shutting the gate after the horse had bolted. As usual, the military was one step ahead of the civil police, and not afraid to take decisive action. It was the South African defence force which had provided the description of the likely getaway vehicle to the Mozambicans. Several hours after the kidnappings had taken place, the South African military had still not been given permission to cross the border in pursuit of the terrorists. To his credit, though, the colonel in charge of the operation, an African chap who had once been a senior cadre in the ANC’s military arm, had ordered one of the Oryx helicopters carrying a stick of South African recce commandos across the border to try to pick up the trail of the fugitives.
Fraser had been impressed by the man. Not only by his risk-taking decisive action, but because the colonel had had the foresight to order the commandos to Hoedspruit as soon as he was appointed. They wouldn’t be assaulting any terrorist strongholds in Mozambique – South Africa wouldn’t risk offending its neighbour if things went pear-shaped – but they were an excellent resource to have on tap during the pursuit phase. There were six of them, all intimidating-looking fellows. The whites reminded Fraser of Springbok forwards; while the blacks could have played Zulu warriors. The British SAS prided itself on its ability to sneak into a place undetected and slit a few throats or rescue a hostage or two, but this bunch of recce commando ruffians looked like they would ram in the doors of a hideout with their foreheads and lay waste to everything and everyone in their path.
One of their key skills was a knowledge of tracking in the African bush. That afternoon, while Fraser and his men had been flying to South Africa from England, the recce commandos had crossed the border and found the spot where the fugitives had picked up their second getaway vehicle. The recces were able to identify the likely make of the vehicle – another four-wheel drive pick-up – from its tyre treads. The bad news was that, as with the first truck the gang had used, it was an all too common model. On his arrival the team had briefed him and Fraser passed the information on to Shuttleworth.
‘This man Furey, bit of a maverick, is he? Likes taking off on his own?’
Shuttleworth looked Fraser in the eye. ‘He’s one of the best protection officers I have. Taking off across the border was, of course, completely unauthorised, but he’s been on the heels of these terrorists ever since the abductions occurred.’
‘Hmm.’ Fraser was yet to be impressed by the man’s capabilities. Protection officers, to his mind, should take a bullet protecting their man, not chase him across international borders.
‘Aye, and he was taking down IRA bombing cells with the Branch when you were in short pants, Jonathan. Don’t forget that if you have to face these buggers down there’ll be two less of them because of Tom Furey’s work this morning.’
And they wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for one of the Met’s best men, Fraser said to himself as he returned to the computer and his detailed maps of the Mozambican coast.
17
Bernard Joyce awoke to the sound of the door opening. Outside he could hear frogs croaking. Night-time; though it was perpetually dark under the stifling hood.
He smelled someone else in the room. A hand moved to his throat and he recoiled in terror, but a voice said, ‘Still.’ He forced himself to relax – he would show no more fear in front of these men – and felt the fingers untying the knotted string which held the hessian sack secure.
Bernard snorted warm, sticky, salty night air, which was still deliciously cooler and fresher than his own breath in the hood. He blinked, for even though the room was dim, lit only by a light somewhere out in the hallway, the door to the cell was open and he could smell the outdoors. The man had the black hands of an African and wore a ski mask. Bernard was sure he was one of the two who had come for him to take him to his meeting with the Arab. But this time the man was alone. Before he had dozed off, though he had no idea how long he had been asleep, he remembered hearing a car’s engine starting. Had the others gone on some errand? His mind raced. There had been little time to establish a routine, and no doubt they wanted to keep him off balance. His captor’s weapon was slung, pointing down as he removed Bernard’s hood.
The little luxuries continued as the man ripped off the fresh duct tape that had been applied to Bernard’s mouth after his earlier interview. Bernard didn’t begrudge the pain of the tape being removed, as it allowed him to suck in more air. He felt some calm return to him now that he didn’t have to rely on his feeble nasal passages muffled inside a hood in order to stay alive, and could almost feel his brain starting to function better.
The man pulled a knife from a leather scabbard at his belt. Bernard tried to control his fear and the man bent forward. Again, ‘Still,’ was all he said. He reached behind Bernard and slid the cold, narrow blade between Bernard’s bound wrists. He didn’t flinch, though he was terrified the man might cut him by mistake. With barely a flick of the wrist Bernard felt the thick cable ties snap. His gratitude at being able to feel his hands again was swamped by the immediate rush of p
ain that flowed with the returning blood to his fingers.
‘Rub them.’
Bernard did as he was told, massaging his wrists, seeing and feeling the raw skin where the plastic had drawn blood because of its tightness. Still holding the knife, the man reached behind his back and pulled a pair of metal police handcuffs from his belt. He held them in front of Bernard. ‘Put these on – hands in front.’
Bernard was disappointed, but anything would be better than the plastic ties, and to have his hands in front would at least relieve the ceaseless pain in his shoulders from having his wrists bound behind his back. He reluctantly locked the open cuffs on each wrist, but kept them loose enough so that they weren’t contacting his skin. The man reached down and checked them, closing each manacle another notch for good measure, though Bernard still had full circulation to his fingers and his hands were already feeling better. The man dropped to one knee and slashed the tie binding Bernard’s ankles. As with his wrists, the relief was mixed with fresh pain and the blood flow seemed to reignite the aches in the tortured soles of his feet.
‘Stand.’
More pain, but again it was good to get his circulation moving. The man returned his knife to its pouch and unslung his shortened AK 47. He pointed it at Bernard’s belly and inclined his head towards the open door. ‘Move.’ Bernard hobbled, the pain in his feet increasing with each step. The man prodded the stubby barrel hard into his spine and he shuffled into the corridor. ‘Right.’
Bernard looked around him, risking what punishment might come. He was in a hallway. He had been hooded the last time he was taken from his room. He noticed cream-painted wooden doors on either side of the one he had just come from. Looking up he saw a high cathedral-like thatched roof. The floor was concrete and, like the one in his room, polished to a dull sheen with some kind of wax that made it quite slippery. A hallway window was covered in black plastic and sticky tape, just like the one in his room. At the end of the corridor, in front of him, was another cream-coloured door, with a key in the lock. Glancing back, until another shove made him face forward again, he saw a wooden door at the other end of the corridor. The walls were plastered and whitewashed.
The man in the mask motioned him to the door at the end of the hallway, then reached around him and turned the key in the lock. The door opened on to a bathroom, with a combination bath and shower, and a toilet. The enamel on the bath was chipped and stained and the place smelled of mould and old urine, but Bernard had forgotten just how wonderful such simple facilities could be. He had pissed himself, but so far managed to avoid voiding his bowels. He stank and he ached and he almost thanked his captor when he said, ‘Wash.’ Bernard noticed there was water in the bottom of the tub and, looking at the floor, he saw a pile of grey-black hair sitting on three spread sheets of newsprint. On a shelf off to one side was a set of hair clippers, plugged into a power point on the wall. As a weapon, they would be useless. He wondered if the hair on the floor was Robert’s and if his would be added to the pile next. Presumably the hair was on the newspaper so it could be bundled and disposed of. The thought chilled him.
The man stood in the doorway as Bernard, his hands still manacled in front of him, stripped off his stained boxer shorts. In addition to the bruises on his body and the cuts and welts on his feet, his pale skin was covered in mosquito bites. Out of modesty, he turned away from the terrorist and ran the taps. He felt hot water coming out of the shower head. Sitting on the toilet he stared at the man, who smiled behind his mask at the Englishmen’s attempt at showing some defiance despite his embarrassment. Facing back towards the corridor, Bernard now saw a simple wooden chair behind the door. On it was a pair of folded orange overalls. His mind flashed back to videos he’d seen of the captives of Arab terrorists in Iraq. Often the victims wore the same type of garb, that reflected the uniforms worn by the detainees in Guantanamo Bay. Was he being cleaned up for his television performance? Quite possibly. If he could get to the chair he could use that as a weapon. However, the man stood blocking the doorway, his right hand on the pistol grip of the assault rifle, his finger curled through the trigger guard. His eyes followed every move Bernard made.
Naked, he stepped under the shower and attacked his filthy body with the bar of soap. There was a small window of frosted glass set high up on the wall beside him and if he’d stood on his toes he might have been able to see out. It was only opened a few centimetres and he sensed that if he tried to look out or open it wider he would be clubbed down. The man seemed to read his mind for, when Bernard glanced back over his shoulder at him, he shook his head. Bernard nodded his acquiescence. He lathered his hair with the soap and washed himself from head to toe again.
As he rinsed, Bernard caught a strong whiff of smoke. He looked back again at the guard and saw that he, too, had his nose in the air, and was sniffing. A gust of sea air brought a curling wisp into the bathroom, along with some black flakes of ash which disintegrated as soon as they landed on Bernard’s wet skin. Bernard stepped back from the window.
‘Enough! Out!’ The man brandished his AK and Bernard stepped out of the bathtub, dripping on the polished concrete floor. ‘Sit.’ Bernard followed the barrel’s direction and sat on the floor, knees drawn up, in the corner next to the commode.
The terrorist stepped into the bathtub, took another menacing glance at Bernard and quickly raised himself on his toes and looked out the bathroom window. He swore in the Latin language Bernard had heard spoken before – probably Portuguese. ‘Stay,’ he barked at Bernard, then turned and walked out, slamming the bathroom door behind him and turning the key in the lock.
Bernard leapt to his feet and got back into the bathtub. He opened the tiny window a few more centimetres and peered out. The darkness outside was lit by flames. Next to the dwelling he was in was a small separate circular cottage with white walls and a thatched roof which was rapidly being engulfed by fire. Bernard could feel the growing heat on his face. No one else was outside and he heard a door open somewhere else in the house. The masked terrorist, his rifle now slung over his back, ran outside to a tap hidden in a flowerbed of bougainvilleas, and uncoiled a garden hose.
Bernard scrambled out of the bath, nearly slipping in his haste, and pulled on his dirty boxer shorts. He put his eye to the keyhole and smiled for the first time since his abduction. He saw nothing – the key was still in the lock. He looked around him for something to stick in the keyhole. The flushing mechanism on the toilet had long since broken off the top of the cistern and a piece of wire now protruded through the hole in the top of the porcelain cover. He pulled the top off the cistern and unhooked the wire. Next, he tipped Robert’s hair from a sheet of newspaper and slid the paper under the door and poked the wire into the keyhole. ‘Come on, come on,’ he whispered as he jiggled. The key fell with a clatter and he held his breath. Hopefully it hadn’t bounced off the newspaper. He pulled the sheet to him. ‘Yes!’ he exclaimed as the key slid under the door. Picking it up in his cuffed hands he almost dropped it in his anxiety. He turned the key in the lock and the door opened.
Bernard quickly grabbed a towel and dried his feet, leaving a pink stain. He didn’t want to leave footprints on the polished floor of the house and make it easer for his captor to trace his movements, but his soles still oozed blood. So be it. He moved quickly down the hallway. ‘Robert?’ There was no answer from the first door. He moved past the room where he had been imprisoned and stopped by the next. ‘Robert, it’s Bernard. Are you in there?’ In answer came murmuring from the other side and the noise of metal rattling on metal.
Bernard tried the bathroom door key in the lock and, to his surprise, it worked. This was hardly state-of-the-art security, but the terrorists were also relying on their prisoners being bound and gagged most of the time. Robert lay on his back, dressed only in underpants, on the bare springs of an iron-framed bed, his wrists and ankles handcuffed to the frame. Bernard moved to him and untied the hessian hood, then peeled off the duct tape from the politician’s
mouth. His head had been shaved close to bald, the skin of his scalp showing purest white against his tanned face.
‘Thank god,’ Robert Greeves said, working his jaw. ‘What’s happening?’
‘Fire outside. Looks like there’s only one man guarding us.’ Bernard tugged on Greeves’s handcuffs then ran his hand along the bed frame.
Greeves turned his head to follow Bernard’s hands. ‘It’s solid – same as the one I was on when they, when they . . .’
‘It’s all right. I’ll get you out of here somehow.’
‘How?’
Bernard’s panic was mounting. Greeves was right. He was cuffed to a solidly welded frame. Without a key, or bolt cutters to sever the handcuffs’ chain, Greeves was trapped. They couldn’t even remove the bed’s head and foot as these, too, had been welded to the spring base. ‘Oh, shit.’
‘Bernard, listen to me.’ Bernard ran a hand through his hair in frustration and looked down at Greeves. His eyes took in the man’s injuries. Blue–black bruising about his chest and abdomen, bloodied feet – like his – and dried blood all down his left leg from below the knee. It looked as though they had cut him there. Greeves’s eyes were bright, though. Defiant. ‘Bernard, get out. Now!’
‘No, Robert, I can’t leave you, I –’
