The Prey

by Tony Park

  ‘Idiots. Tell me what went wrong.’

  Vusi swallowed. ‘I’m following the Professor now. He got away on foot, boss. I will get him.’

  ‘I didn’t ask you what you were doing, I asked you what went wrong.’

  It was the way of the man. Enforcement of his will, and retribution, were more important to him than getting a job done. Wellington could accept that sometimes people would fail, as they were only human, and seemed almost to enjoy receiving bad news as it gave him a chance to demonstrate his power. ‘We shot the tyres of the bakkie out and then Danger shot the woman.’

  There was a pause. ‘So instead of thinking it was a common hijacking they knew you were going after the Professor and his wife.’

  Wellington was as clever as he was evil, Vusi thought. ‘Yes boss.’

  ‘The mining vehicles all have satellite trackers. There will be a response team on their way now.’

  Vusi cocked his head. As if on cue he heard the mosquito buzz of a helicopter, far off but getting closer. ‘I think they are on their way, boss.’

  ‘Go back to the bakkie.’

  Vusi almost objected, but held his tongue, turned back to the road and ran towards the crashed Toyota. A BMW X5 slowed to look at the Hilux but didn’t stop. This was South Africa. ‘I am almost there, boss.’

  ‘Is Danger still there?’

  Vusi could see Danger’s knock-off Levis, low on his hips so his similarly authentic Calvin Kleins were showing. He was leaning in, still hacking at the body of the dead woman. ‘Yes boss.’

  ‘Call him. Tell him I want to talk to him.’

  Vusi could see the speck of the helicopter now. His heart was racing. He wanted to run into the bush. ‘But the Professor, boss …’

  ‘Shut up, you idiot. Do as I tell you, boy.’

  ‘Danger! Danger, the boss is on the phone.’

  Danger straightened and looked back at Vusi. He held up the small band of thin, cheap gold, a broad smile on his face as he wiped the blade of his knife on his jeans and folded it closed against his thigh. ‘Tell him I’m coming.’

  ‘He’s coming, boss.’

  Danger walked towards him.

  ‘Kill him,’ said Wellington. ‘Then go find the Professor. I want him alive, remember.’

  Vusi licked his lips as his friend approached him. He could ignore the order and they could both try to run, but Wellington had contacts throughout South Africa and into neighbouring Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Wellington was in Mozambique now, judging by the number he was using, but he could be less than ninety kilometres as the crow flew. The helicopter was plainly visible now. The pilot had lost altitude and was racing towards the bakkie. Danger looked up over his shoulder. ‘We must run, brother.’

  ‘Kill him.’

  It would be better this way than if Wellington killed him slowly himself. Vusi raised the .45 and shot Danger in the face. The bullet entered his friend’s open mouth and smashed through his neck bones on the way out. Danger fell backwards, paralysed but not dead. Blood gurgled from his mouth and his wide eyes begged an answer. Vusi kept the phone to his ear as he aimed at Danger’s forehead and fired again. They had known each other since their first day at school, but Vusi’s fear of his employer was far greater than his loyalty to his friend.

  ‘Good boy. Don’t lose the Professor or I will find you myself,’ Wellington said. ‘I want him alive, understood?’

  ‘Yes, boss, I understand. I must bring the Mozambican to you alive.’

  Vusi ran into the bush, the hot bile rising up the back of his throat, burning him from the inside.

  *

  The police had cordoned off the crashed bakkie and undertakers were loading the three body bags into a white minivan when Kylie and Cameron arrived at the crime scene.

  ‘Do you want to stay in the truck?’ Cameron asked as he switched off the Hilux’s engine.

  ‘No. I can handle it.’

  He nodded. He knew she could. He had thought she would be a cowardly corporate type, too worried about her manicured nails and power suit to go underground, but she had followed him down there and she had seen first hand what the zama zamas would do for gold. She had guts. She could still annoy him with her supercilious attitude, but she was growing on him. He had been wrong to underestimate her. She had made it to one rung from the top in the company and he knew Jan’s reputation well enough that Kylie’s rise was about her, not some gender window-dressing.

  A police captain in a blue SAPS uniform waddled over. Cameron recognised him. He had spoken to him in the past about the zama zamas and various crimes and the man had always promised to follow up and get back to him, though he never did. They greeted each other and shook hands.

  ‘I’m sorry about the loss of your worker,’ the captain said.

  ‘So am I.’ Sipho had a wife and three children. This was happening too often.

  The captain checked his notebook. ‘The woman carried a Mozambican temporary travel document. She was Miriam Correia. Did you know her?’

  Cameron shrugged. ‘She came to the mine looking for her husband.’ It was the truth, but he didn’t want to give out any more.

  The policeman gestured to the white van. ‘There is another body in there. It’s a local boy, named Bright Maseka. He’s got a record as long as my arm. I take it he wasn’t the woman’s husband.’

  ‘No,’ Cameron said, surprised. The satellite tracking company employees, who were first on the scene, had told him there were three people dead at the truck wreck, a woman and two men. He had assumed one of them would be Luis.

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Mr Correia.’

  The policeman pursed his full lips. ‘If there was someone else in the vehicle with the dead woman and your worker, then he – or she – may be an important witness. Someone killed Bright Maseka, and even if it was in self-defence we need to talk to them. How many people were in the truck when it left the mine?’

  Kylie took a step closer to them. ‘I’m Dr Kylie Hamilton, from Global Resources. Cameron and I were in a meeting when Sipho left with Mrs Correia. We didn’t see him leave the mine so we don’t know for sure if there was anyone else in the truck. There could have been.’

  Cameron was impressed by her again. She had picked up his vibe about the police officer. ‘Is that the hijackers’ car?’ He pointed to the black Golf.

  ‘We think so. There are some spent bullet casings in it.’ A pair of crime scene investigators in disposable overalls was searching the hatchback.

  ‘Do you have a Mr Correia working for you?’ the policeman asked.

  ‘No.’ Cameron felt a moment of relief. Again, he wasn’t lying to the police. He needed to keep steering the conversation away from Luis, and the fact he and Kylie had been harbouring a zama zama. ‘What do you think was the motive for this – whatever happened here?’

  ‘Simple carjacking and robbery,’ the captain said too quickly. ‘The Golf was taken from outside a pub a few days ago. The dead man, Maseka, was known to us as a local thug. It was only a matter of time until he tried his hand at carjacking. You may not have seen anyone leave the mine with Mrs Correia, but my sources tell me that a Mozambican illegal immigrant, Luis Correia, was in this car.’

  ‘No one by that name has ever worked at Eureka.’

  The cop nodded, both of his chins wobbling, ‘Be that as it may, we have now started a search for this man Correia as we need to question him over the shooting of Maseka. My theory is that he shot the car thief, perhaps in self-defence, and is now worried that if we catch him we will lock him up.’

  ‘And will you?’

  ‘Yes. At least until we work out what to do with him, and confirm the circumstances of the shooting. If we don’t charge him over the death of Maseka and he is an illegal, we will deport him to Mozambique, but if he’s carrying an unregistered firearm he may face charges over that.’

  A white bakkie approached them from the direction of Nelspruit, the next nearest major city. The driver indi
cated and pulled up alongside them. A sign on the truck said, Mpumalanga Dog Squad. A burly man with a sun-reddened face and arms got out.

  ‘Our priority now is to find this Correia. Is there anything else you want to tell me, Mr McMurtrie?’

  ‘Our first priority, Captain,’ Kylie interrupted, ‘is to contact the family of our murdered employee.’

  ‘Of course,’ said the captain. ‘But I will be in touch.’

  Cameron and Kylie walked back to his Toyota.

  ‘How can he have known about Luis?’ Kylie said as she opened the door and got in.

  ‘Wellington’s got eyes and ears everywhere, especially at the mine where half my staff were supplying the zama zamas. I wouldn’t be surprised if the captain’s in his pocket, because I’m pretty sure his boss, Colonel Sindisiwe Radebe, is. That’s why the local cops have been so reluctant to do anything about the illegal mining for so long. What worries me now is that if they find Luis he’ll be in for much worse than deportation or a slap on the wrist over an illegal firearms charge.’

  ‘Do you think he managed to get hold of a gun somehow between getting out of hospital and to the mine?’ she asked.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ said a voice behind them.

  Cameron and Kylie both looked around, into the rear of the double cab. There, lying on the floor at the bottom of the passenger bench seat, was Luis.

  19

  Luis Domingues Correia had known tragedy and disappointment all his life, but the death of his wife was threatening to unravel him.

  His body shook as he lay curled in the foetal position under a tarpaulin in the back of Cameron McMurtrie’s truck. Above the tarpaulin was the black vinyl cover of the Toyota’s load area, stretched tight to its tie-down points on the sides. Sweat ran from every pore and he blinked away salty drops that may have been perspiration, or perhaps tears. He doubted, however, that he had any of the latter left in his body.

  His father had been an early recruit to Frelimo, the Frente de Libertacao de Mocambique, the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique, and had been killed in 1970 during the colonial government’s military offensive against the guerilla movement, known as Operation Gordian Knot. Luis had been just six years old at the time and his mother had only just begun to inculcate a true hatred of the colonialists when they disappeared. In 1974, following a revolution in their own country, the Portuguese gave up their colonies, including Mozambique, and Frelimo was handed victory and a country to govern.

  But Luis was not to be cheated out of a war. Others outside of Mozambique had an interest in destabilising President Samora Machel’s fledgling socialist independent state. White Rhodesia, nearing its death throes, ploughed guns and ammunition and landmines into the Mozambican right-wing opposition, Renamo, fuelling a civil war designed to disrupt Mozambique’s ability to provide a safe haven for Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union and its national liberation army guerrillas who used Mozambique as a base to launch raids back into their homeland, Rhodesia.

  As the son of a revolutionary martyr, Luis was offered the chance to study abroad, in East Germany. The Soviet bloc supported Machel – until he tired of their rapacious demands on his resource-rich country and booted them out in the early 1980s. By then, however, Luis had already earned his Bachelor of Science with majors in Metallurgy and Engineering.

  The consensus among those who sent Luis away was that he would return to play a senior role in kickstarting Mozambique’s mineral economy. But the war between Frelimo and Renamo continued even after Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980, and Luis found himself not supervising new mining projects but rather carrying an AK-47, hunting Renamo soldiers in the bush of Gorongosa National Park, once the country’s flagship game reserve and now an open-air slaughterhouse for man and animal alike.

  He had a brother who had been killed in the Rhodesian raid on Mapai and a sister who had lost both her legs beneath the knee to a landmine. She’d lived for six months before dying of infection. His mother had miraculously survived the war.

  His son and mother in Inhambane were all that was left of Luis’s family. The war had touched everyone, and the darkest days of his time in uniform were coming back to him, here, now. He heard the screams and the bullets again. Perhaps it was seeing Miriam’s mutilated body that took him back to that hell again, to the day in 1987 when he had nearly died.

  *

  The rocket-propelled grenade whooshed over his head, trailing a stream of dirty smoke across the battlefield, and exploded against the wall behind Luis. He screamed as he felt shards of shrapnel and dislodged masonry pepper his back. The jagged metal burned.

  The Renamo rebels were advancing. Luis gritted his teeth against the pain and squeezed off the final three rounds from the last magazine he had for his AK-47. One of the enemy fighters fell, but Luis couldn’t tell if he had hit the man or if he had dived for cover. He reached under the scorching hot barrel of his rifle, flicked out the folding bayonet and fixed it in place. He had heard of the atrocities committed by the Renamo rebels when they took prisoners. Luis would fight to the death.

  He ducked back through the doorway in the wall that had just been hit by the grenade. The building was an old store, built by the Portuguese. It was in ruins now. He stepped over fallen shelves, empty tins of fish, shattered bottles of Dois M beer and a tangle of torn women’s clothing. Anything that could be eaten in Mozambique was consumed on the spot or looted.

  Luis went to the rear of the store and saw young Joao lying on his back, a bullet hole drilled through his forehead and blood and brains pooled on the tiled floor. Luis crossed himself. He had assumed the worst when he had no longer heard Joao’s AK-47 firing, and when his call for more ammunition had gone unanswered. Luis moved to the rear door and, keeping his back pressed to the wall, peeked out. He saw a Renamo man in camouflage darting through the bush.

  Luis could surrender and, if he was lucky, be executed on the spot. If God had abandoned him, along with his country, then he might be tortured for information, or for fun. He heard the Renamo men calling to each other. They were readying for an assault on the store. Luis said a quick prayer – although it was against regulations – and charged out the door.

  Men shouted as they saw the lone fighter running towards their cordon, his AK out-thrust with its bayonet fixed. Luis yelled a berserker’s war cry as gunfire crackled around him. The Renamo men had to turn to draw a bead on him and ran the risk of shooting each other as Luis crashed through the thornbush and vaulted an empty petrol drum. He felt a bullet tug at his sleeve and burn his arm, but he had taken them by surprise.

  His lungs were burning as he took fallen palm trees in his stride. He heard the confusion and began to think he might make it to safety.

  ‘Stop!’

  A man stepped out from behind a tree and brought his AK to his shoulder, taking aim at Luis. He must have been less keen than his comrades, Luis thought, lagging behind the advance on the store. If he had been a hardened Renamo cadre he would have stayed in cover and shot Luis. His suspicions were confirmed by the way the barrel of the rifle wavered.

  Luis screamed again and ran straight for the man. If he shot him, then so be it. It would be better than enduring the torturer’s knives. Luis’s senses were recording, in detail, every moment of his last seconds on earth. He saw the fear in the man’s eyes, watched his finger curl and squeeze. But there was no sound. The man lowered his rifle and worked the cocking handle. It had jammed or misfired. Whatever the case, Luis had been saved. All he needed to do was dispatch this inept fool and carry on his way.

  The man fumbled with his rifle and raised it to try to ward off Luis’s charge. Luis turned his own AK in his hands and smashed the other man’s weapon out of the way with a butt stroke. The younger, smaller man teetered under the force of the blow and Luis pressed home his advantage, bringing the butt of his rifle up into the man’s cheek and slamming him backwards. The man sprawled on the ground on his back, arms outflung.

  Luis stood ov
er him and twisted his rifle again so that the sharpened point of the bayonet was pointing down at the man’s belly. He raised his arms to deliver the killing thrust. The top few buttons of the Renamo man’s Rhodesian-supplied camouflage shirt were open and something glittered on his chest. Luis saw the silver crucifix and paused, just before the tip of the blade touched the man’s skin.

  The man reached up for him with open hands, his rifle lying useless on the ground beside him. ‘Mercy,’ he said in Portuguese.

  Luis blinked. His chest rose and fell and he felt the mist clear from his mind. What had become of his country? What had become of him?

  He heard voices behind him. He knew he should kill this man, now, and take his ammunition. But he couldn’t do it. He felt tears pricking the backs of his eyes. He stepped away from the prone form and started to run again.

  The men tracking him were calling to each other in a mix of Portuguese and Xitswa. They were getting close. There wasn’t even time for him to check the terrified soldier’s pouches for more magazines. Besides, there were too many of them for him to take a stand against.

  He started to run, but had covered no more than twenty metres when he heard another voice yell a command in a different language. Behind him, he heard the metallic snicker of a rifle being cocked, and then a single gunshot. Then his world went black.

  *

  Luis forced himself back to the present, to try to evaluate what he would do next, where he would go. There were horrors aplenty to confront in the present without the demons of his past resurfacing. He had a clear and present enemy today – Wellington Shumba, the Lion. Wellington had seemed something of a saviour at first, but Luis had soon learned he was an angel of death. And there was no escaping him or his reach.

  After running into the bush he had circled back to the crashed bakkie. He needed to know what had happened and who had killed his wife and the driver, Sipho. He had hidden in the long grass at the verge of the road and watched as one of the gunmen had spoken on his phone and then used his pistol to shoot his comrade in the head while still talking.