by Tony Park
He looked away from her. ‘They were still screaming when the aircraft exploded.’
She saw the raw skin on his hand and his forearms now, the singed eyebrows and hair. His face was blackened and there was dried blood crusted on the side of his face. He slapped at his leg. She looked at his eyes. They were red, and there were streaks leading from them over his cheeks as though he’d been crying. She wondered if his wounds were worse than she could see, if he was in pain. She hadn’t thought him the crying kind.
Kylie closed her eyes and thought about the young couple. It was the pilot’s brother and his girlfriend. She thought hard for a moment to remember their names. Paul and Julia. He was an ex-Zimbabwean living in New Zealand and she was a Kiwi. They were already on the aircraft when Kylie and Cameron boarded. She had been under the impression they were going to be the only two passengers, and she wondered if Dougal had slipped his brother and girlfriend on board without the owners of the aircraft knowing. She and Cameron had had taken the bench seat at the rear of the aircraft. She remembered the hot blue vinyl on the backs of her legs, and wondered if being at the rear of the Cessna, just a little further away from where the bomb had gone off, had saved her and Cameron.
She opened her eyes again as her mind processed the scenario. ‘It was Wellington.’ Another fly landed on her. It was big and brown, with scissor-like wings that folded over one another. She slapped at it, hit it, but it just shook itself and flew away. ‘What are these bloody monsters?’
‘Tsetse fly,’ Cameron said. ‘And yes, I think you’re right about Wellington. Our testimony about him trying to kill us in the mine could have put him behind bars for a long time.’
‘Well, he’s added three people to his murder tally.’
Kylie sat up slowly, with Cameron still supporting her. She looked around. ‘Where the hell are we, Cameron?’
‘About ten kilometres east of the crash site.’
‘You carried me ten kays?’
He shrugged.
‘Look, I’m no expert in survival, but one thing they always tell us when we’re travelling long distances by road to mines in the outback is that if you have a breakdown to stay with the vehicle. I know Dougal was probably off course, but surely it won’t take the local authorities too long to find the crash site.’
He nodded. ‘They’ve already found it. A helicopter flew over yesterday. It must have landed because it was quite a while before it tracked back over us and …’
‘A helicopter! Are you bloody concussed too? Cameron! Why didn’t you wait, and why didn’t you try and signal it?’
He looked at her and she checked his eyes again. They were different from those that had seen into her soul when he was holding her. These were the eyes of an animal, a predator of some kind, devoid of emotion.
‘I couldn’t get to Julia and Paul. The fire had taken hold, but I grabbed Dougal’s backpack from the rear of the aircraft, and yours. In his bag was a satellite phone. I called my home first, and there was no answer. I called Jess’s cellphone and it was switched off. That’s not like her. That thing’s an extension of her body.’ He sniffed.
‘Cameron, what is it?’ She saw something else in the red glistening eyes now. Pain.
‘I called Charmaine, Jessica’s friend’s mom, at her florist shop. She started crying when she recognised my voice.’
‘Cameron.’
He gritted his teeth and his face contorted in barely suppressed rage. ‘She said Jess was raped and killed, Kylie.’
She reached for him and hugged him, but he was rigid in her embrace. Kylie held him at arm’s length and looked into his eyes.
‘Charmaine said there was no body, although they found the dominee, our local pastor, who was killed by the same man. She said the guy who did it killed himself; he was one of my drivers, Timothy, but I know it couldn’t have been him. He’s no rapist or murderer, though Barrica had suspected him of being one of Wellington’s stooges.’
Kylie’s head throbbed and she was having trouble absorbing all this news. She thought of pretty Jessica and she wanted to believe she was still alive. ‘What about your wife?’
Cameron took a deep breath to steady himself. ‘Dead. They found her body in my bakkie, at the bottom of our hill.’
‘My God, Cameron.’ His whole family was gone.
‘I told Charmaine not to tell anyone that I had called her.’
She was injured and they were lost in the African bush. Kylie thought that perhaps Cameron really was concussed. ‘Why, exactly?’
‘Everyone thinks we’re dead,’ he said, ‘including Wellington and the people he works for. I’ve got to get back to South Africa. I won’t believe Jess is dead until I find her. I don’t accept that Timothy killed her or the dominee. Wellington’s behind this and if he killed Jess and wanted people to believe Timothy killed her, he would have left her body for the police to find.’
‘But what would he want with her alive?’ Kylie asked.
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘And if you can’t find her?’
‘Then I’m going to find Wellington and kill him.’
She wondered if the suppressed grief was making him crazy. ‘But he’s in the police lockup, in Barberton.’
‘He escaped,’ Cameron said. ‘Like we feared.’
Kylie put her fingers to her forehead and gingerly touched the bandage. The pain was a constant throb. ‘My parents. They’ll be going out of their minds. I’ve got to call them and tell them I’m alive.’
Cameron nodded. ‘I’ve thought about that. You must. We’ll get to Lusaka and you can fly from there to Johannesburg and then on to Australia. All I ask is that you don’t contact anyone from Global Resources, or the South African police, for as long as you can. Every day you give me is another day for me to find Jess and Wellington.’
‘Cameron –’
‘I sent an SMS to email from the satphone and contacted an old army friend who works for a geological survey company in Lusaka. He called me back and he’s coming to get us. He should be here in a couple of hours. There’s not a lot of battery life left on the satphone, but you should call your parents. Just ask them not to tell anyone.’
‘All right, but I’m coming with you to South Africa.’
35
Cameron couldn’t help but fall into a deep sleep after he had showered at his room at the Southern Sun Hotel in Lusaka.
His phone’s ringtone woke him. Dry-mouthed and disorientated, he fumbled for his Nokia and answered. Kylie stirred beside him on the bed and rolled over and blinked a couple of times. A doctor had stitched and rebandaged her leg wound, and the gash on her head had stopped bleeding and was now covered with just a small dressing.
‘Cameron, howzit? How are you two doing?’ It was his old army comrade, Attie, who had rescued them.
‘Better, thanks Attie,’ Cameron said. ‘Have you got any news for me?’
Cameron and Kylie had slowly continued to head east through the wilds of Kafue National Park after Cameron had contacted Attie. Kylie had called her parents, whose relief was audible to Cameron standing nearby. They had questioned the wisdom of not telling anyone they were alive, but the beeping of the phone’s dying battery had silenced their argument. They saved the last of the phone’s power to SMS Attie the GPS coordinates of their location once they reached a road running north–south. There Cameron sat them down in the shade of a leadwood tree and they tried to sleep. Attie, who was already on his way from Lusaka and waiting for another coordinate, used the GPS in his Land Cruiser to find them, two hours later. He had brought them to Lusaka where a friend who managed the Southern Sun had found them rooms.
‘Ja, Cameron. That’s why I’m calling. I don’t know how you guys feel about flying right now, but we’ve got a charter going back to Johannesburg in an hour’s time. We’ve got four geologists on board, but there are two spare seats. It’ll be landing at Lanseria.’
‘That sounds good.’ Cameron ran a hand through his ha
ir. Lanseria was Johannesburg’s second airport and from there they might be able to charter a light aircraft to Barberton. ‘But it will just be me on the aircraft.’
Kylie grabbed the phone from him. ‘Attie, it’s Kylie. Thank you, thank you, again. But please make that two of us on the charter.’
Cameron took the phone back. ‘I’ll confirm that later, Attie, but thanks again. I’m heading to the airport now.’
‘You don’t get to make decisions for me just because we’ve slept together.’
He stood and looked down at her. ‘OK. But you can understand me not wanting anything to happen to you.’
‘Damn it, Cameron. Can’t you tell that I feel the same way about you? Whatever crazy plan you’ve got for when we get to South Africa, I’m going to be a part of it.’ She got off the bed and walked to him. She put her arms around him and pressed her naked body against his. ‘I want to help you find Jessica,’ she said, her tone softer and quieter, ‘but you have to prepare yourself for the worst. Whatever happens, though, we’ll get him.’
‘Yes. We will.’
*
Luis ended the call to an impatient Coetzee, who clearly had no desire to give him more than the barest details about the deaths of Kylie Hamilton and Cameron McMurtrie. Luis had lost family and friends and was still coming to terms with the loss of his wife, but the news about the two people who had helped him so much was like salt poured in fresh wounds.
At an internet cafe in Inhambane, where he had returned after finishing his business with the drill rig, he had found a string of news reports but he could not believe the aircraft crash was an isolated accident. Cameron’s wife and daughter had also been killed. Luis, better than most, knew how the Zimbabwean thought and operated. ‘Wellington,’ he said to himself.
‘Who, Father?’ Jose asked him from the next computer. He was researching something for a school assignment.
‘Nothing,’ Luis said to his son. ‘I am finished here.’ In every sense of the word, he thought as he paid the woman at the counter for the use of her machines. He and Jose walked out onto the street, dodging South African tourists, a woman hawking peanuts and locals going about their business. Luis felt his spirits flag.
‘It’s good to have you back, Pai,’ Jose said, using the familiar term for father.
He smiled at the boy. Luis’s cellphone rang and he took it from the pocket of his trousers. He couldn’t believe the name that flashed up on the screen.
‘Cameron!’
Jose looked at him as Luis told the mine manager he had just been reading about his death. Cameron filled him in on what had happened, assuring him that Kylie, too, was alive.
‘I am so happy to hear from you,’ Luis said. He knew there was an element of self-interest in his words, but it seemed a gift from God that Kylie and Cameron had survived.
Cameron’s voice was calm to the point of coldness as he told Luis that he was on his way back to South Africa and would be flying to Barberton, in secret. He wanted to find Wellington, and he believed his daughter was still alive, underground. Luis wanted to believe Jessica was unharmed, but he knew Wellington’s modus operandi: he exterminated witnesses and anyone who was not of use to him. Luis doubted the girl had been kidnapped, but he, too, wanted Wellington, and Cameron and Kylie were probably the best chance he had of making something of his life again and providing his son with a future.
‘I will come to Barberton as soon as I can,’ Luis said.
‘You weren’t so keen when we left you in Mozambique,’ Cameron said. ‘Can I count on you? You know the illegal workings at Eureka better than anyone.’
‘I will come. You have my word. Things have changed here.’ Luis ended the call. He needed to move fast but almost had second thoughts when he saw Jose’s eyes as he told him of his plan.
‘Why do you have to leave again, Pai?’ Jose asked him when he told him he had to return to South Africa. Father and son walked the pavement outside the Mercado Central, the main market in a fetching but dilapidated building in the baixa, the lower part of town.
‘There is business I must finish. Important business. I want you to behave well for your grandmother, stay away from the boys she says have been leading you astray, and study hard. Your exams are close.’
Jose looked down as they walked. ‘You have only just come back. My mae was wrong to go looking for you.’
Luis stopped and his son carried on another three paces before he stopped and looked back. Tears began to well as he thought of his cherished wife and Jose’s mae, mother. ‘Nothing your mae ever did was wrong. I wish I could say the same for myself.’ He swallowed hard. ‘You are old enough to know the truth. Come, let us get coffee and I will tell you.’
And he did, of his work in the mines in South Africa as a legal miner and, later, after circumstances changed, as a zama zama. ‘Nothing good comes from crime, Jose. Remember that. Even though the money is appealing, and I fell for that, in the long run it cost me a price too terrible to bear.’
‘Are you going to commit more crime now?’
Luis thought about the question. ‘I am going to right a wrong, and to stop further crime. Hopefully, too, I will make a deal that will help all of us, you, me and your grandmother, to live honestly and well for the rest of our lives. If anything happens to me, though, you must go to your second cousin Alfredo, the policeman in Xai Xai. I have been doing some business with him and I have asked him to ensure you are taken care of. Your grandmother has some money I brought with me from South Africa, enough to see you through your next year at school.’
Jose looked at him with wide eyes that started to blink. ‘You’re not coming back, are you?’
Luis felt his own tears forming and knew he must leave. ‘I have to do this.’ He paid the bill, hugged his son, and walked to the bus depot. He couldn’t look back at the boy.
*
Jan drove back to the mine from the guesthouse in Barberton where he had been staying. ‘Get one of the armed security men to come to the manager’s office. Now,’ he said to the guard on duty.
Eureka’s administrative offices were empty. A skeleton maintenance staff was keeping the mine running and, probably, Jan thought, keeping the zama zamas supplied with anything they needed while they ramped up their operations underground.
Even as he waited in the office he felt a tremor rise up from the earth below. Wellington was blasting. There was a knock at the door. ‘Come in.’
‘Yes, boss,’ said the security guard.
‘Get me an R5 and five magazines of ammunition, and a set of camouflage overalls.’
‘But boss –’
‘Do as I fokken say or you’ll be out of a job like the rest of the stupid bloody miners who’ve gone on strike.’
‘Yes, boss.’
*
Colonel Sindisiwe Radebe closed her eyes as she lay on the massage table in the spa treatment room at Cybele Forest Lodge, nestled in the hills between White River and Hazyview.
She had decided to treat herself to an afternoon off and was feeling pleasingly mellow as a result of the wine she had drunk at lunchtime while having business negotiations with her cousin, a builder, who was about to get the contract to repaint the police station.
Sindisiwe was face down, just a towel draped over her buttocks. She heard the girl enter the room and sighed in anticipation of the warmth of the hot stones that would soothe the tension from her knotted muscles. She felt feminine hands on her shoulders.
‘Be gentle with me.’
‘Of course, Colonel.’
Sindisiwe opened her eyes. She hadn’t introduced herself by her rank and she had been in civilian clothes over lunch. Perhaps the girl recognised her from the recent spread in Lowveld Living, but she sounded foreign and white, with a strange accent. She twisted her neck to try to see the masseuse, but her movement was checked by cold steel.
‘Don’t move. It’s a gun and it’s in the side of your head.’
‘Do you know who I am? If you d
o, then you must know you are already dead, and if you don’t, well, let me tell you, you are already dead.’
‘You’re cool, I’ll give you that.’
‘What do you want?’ Sindisiwe asked. ‘My keys and credit cards are in my purse on the sideboard. But you already know that.’
‘You can’t buy your way out of this. It’s information I want.’
Sindisiwe nodded into the sheet. She could pick the accent now, and she had seen the woman on television. Wellington, what have you done, she thought. Or, rather, what have you failed to do? ‘All right, I will tell you what you want to know. Just don’t hurt me.’
‘That’s a long way from “you’re already dead”.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Get dressed. We’re going for a drive in the forest. If you try anything, I’ll shoot you.’
Sindisiwe rolled over and swung her legs over the side of the massage table. It was the Australian woman, all right. Hamilton. The one who was supposed to be dead. She was holding a Sig Sauer. ‘You’re not from here; you won’t shoot me.’
‘I killed a man underground, and this time a girl’s life is at stake. You’re going to take us to where she is.’
‘She’s dead. The murderer confessed before he killed himself.’
Kylie shook her head. ‘We don’t think so.’
‘This is preposterous. How dare you insinuate that I, a police commander, would have inside knowledge of the commission of a crime?’ Sindisiwe put on her pants and fastened her bra. She would fix this meddling bitch, in time. Sindisiwe was worried for Wellington, but more so for herself. The fact that the girl was alive worked in Sindisiwe’s favour. If she could somehow wrest her back from Wellington and his master Mohammed and produce her live, it might save her own skin, if not Wellington’s. ‘Listen to me. I am a law enforcement officer. I am not a criminal. Perhaps together we can find McMurtrie’s daughter, if you truly believe she is still alive. If you have information, you must share it with me and together we can save the girl. I will even forget about you pulling a gun on me; we all have the child’s safety as our number one priority.’
