Golden Fox

by Wilbur Smith

  ‘Do you have to go away again, Mamma?’ he asked.

  ‘Would you come with me, if you could?’ she countered.

  ‘And leave Padre and Adra?’ He lapsed into silence. It was the first time he had ever spoken to her of Ramón, and it troubled her deeply. Was it respect or fear she had detected in his voice? She could not be certain.

  On an impulse she began: ‘Nicky, tonight – if anything happens, don’t be afraid.’

  ‘What will happen?’ He sat up with interest.

  ‘I don’t know. Probably nothing.’ He looked disappointed and dropped back on the pillow.

  ‘Good night, Nicky,’ she whispered.

  Adra was waiting for her in the darkness between the huts. It was the opportunity Isabella had waited for.

  ‘Adra,’ she whispered. ‘I have to talk to you. Tonight . . .’ she broke off.

  ‘Tonight?’ Adra prompted her, and when still she hesitated Adra went on: ‘Yes, tonight he will come. He says to expect him. He could not come before, but tonight he will come to you.’

  Isabella felt panic rise to wash reason away. ‘Oh God – are you sure?’ Then she caught herself. ‘That is wonderful. I have waited so long.’

  All thoughts of warning Adra of the rescue attempt were wiped from her mind. How could she face Ramón – now that she realized what a cruel and evil monster he truly was? How could she let him touch her without trembling?

  ‘I must go now,’ Adra whispered, and slipped away into the darkness, leaving her alone with her terror. She had planned to wear jeans and a jersey beneath her nightdress ready to leave when Sean came, but she dared not do that now.

  She lay so long alone in the darkness beneath the mosquito-net that at last she began to hope that Sean would come to her before Ramón did, or at least that dawn would save her.

  Then suddenly she knew that he was in the hut with her. She smelt him before she heard him. The faint but distinctive odour of his body that had always aroused her so readily. Her nostrils and every nerve in her body jumped tight. Her breathing seized up in her throat.

  She heard the whisper of his feet across the floor of the hut, and then his touch upon the bed.

  ‘Ramón.’ Her breath escaped on an explosive gust.

  ‘Yes, it is me.’ His voice struck her like a blow in the face.

  She felt him lift the mosquito-net and she lay rigid. His finger-tips brushed her face, and she thought she might scream aloud. She did not know how to act, what to say to him. ‘He will know.’ She realized that she was panicking. She dare not move or speak.

  ‘Bella?’ he said, and she heard the first suspicion in his tone. In sudden inspiration she reached up and seized him.

  ‘Don’t talk,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘I cannot wait another moment – don’t say anything. Take me now, Ramón.’

  She knew she was not acting out of character. Often in that distant happy past she had been like this – urgent, wild with desire, brooking not an instant’s delay.

  She sat up and began to tear at his clothing. I have to keep him from talking, from asking any questions, she thought desperately. I have to quieten and reassure him that nothing has changed.

  With terror in her heart and the smell of him filling her head she let his hands lift her nightdress and then the hard smooth naked length of him slide into the bed beside her.

  ‘Bella,’ he whispered harshly. ‘I have wanted you too much for too long.’ And his mouth covered hers. It felt as though he were sucking out her very being from between her lips, the way he might suck the juice and flesh from a ripe orange.

  With shame at the perversity and treachery of her own body she felt herself overwhelmed by raw sexual passion. She was making love to a sleek and beautiful animal, something inhuman and cruel and infinitely dangerous. Fear mingled with lust to spur and goad her. She felt like that doomed creature in the bull-ring of Granada whose tragic struggle and lingering death had moved her so when long ago she and her love had been fresh and young.

  At last when they were spent together, he lay on top of her as though he were dead. She could not move; her guilt and his weight threatened to suffocate her. She hated herself almost as much as she hated him.

  ‘It was never like that before,’ he whispered. ‘You never did that to me before.’

  She could not trust herself to reply. She could not know what might come out once she began to speak. She realized that she was on the verge of a terrible destructive madness – and yet when he lay beside her and he stroked her and gently touched the most intimate parts of her body her things fell apart and she felt her flesh melt and her bones soften.

  He began to speak softly. He told her how he loved her. He spoke about the future, when the three of them would be safe and happy in some secure and secret place. His lies were beautiful; they conjured up wonderful pictures in her mind. Although she knew that they were false, she wanted desperately to believe them.

  When at last he fell asleep with his face pressed between her naked breasts, she stroked the crisp springing curls of his head with a terrible regret and a longing for things which she knew did not exist. So deep was her distress that it had driven from her consciousness all other thoughts, until abruptly and shockingly the night was ripped through by the screams of a woman and the sound of gunfire.

  She felt Ramón come awake and at the same instant spring from the bed, naked and lithe as a jungle cat. She heard the metallic snicker of a fiream as he snatched the pistol from the holster that lay on the floor beside the bed. The night was lit by flame and explosion. She saw Ramón silhouetted against the light from the window. He held the pistol at the level of his eyes, pointed at the roof, ready for instant use.

  Then she heard Sean’s beloved voice, shouting for her in the darkness beyond the windows: ‘Bella, where are you?’

  She saw Ramón’s dark shape dart to the window, and the pistol glinted in the light of an exploding grenade as he levelled it.

  ‘Look out, Sean!’ she screamed. ‘Man with a gun!’

  Ramón fired twice, changing position between each shot. There was no answering fire from beyond the window. She realized that Sean dare not fire for fear of hitting her or Nicky.

  She rolled from the bed and dropped to the floor on hands and knees. Frantically she crawled towards the door. She wanted to get to Nicky, she had to get to Nicky.

  Halfway across the hut she felt Ramón’s muscular bare arm whipped around her neck from behind, and he forced her to her feet. With the last of her breath, she screamed: ‘Sean! He has got me!’

  ‘Bitch,’ Ramón hissed in her ear. ‘Treacherous bitch.’ And then he raised his voice. ‘I’ll kill her!’ he shouted. ‘I’ll blow her head off.’

  Then he dragged her to the door and forced her down the steps. ‘Move, bitch,’ he grated. ‘Keep moving. I know who Sean is. He won’t fire – not with you as a shield. Move!’

  The pressure on her throat was choking her. She could not resist it. He ran with her towards Nicky’s hut. The communications hut was in flames. From its thatched roof flame and sparks towered into the night sky. It was as bright as a stage. The serpentine shadows of the palm trunk writhed upon the pale sandy earth.

  They burst into Nicky’s hut. Adra and the child were crouched in the centre of the floor. Adra was covering Nicky with her body.

  ‘Padre!’ Nicky shrieked.

  ‘Come with Adra,’ Ramón snapped at him. ‘Keep close to her. Follow me.’

  In a tight group they left the hut and moved towards the carpark. Ramón held Isabella from behind; with his free hand he pressed the pistol to her head.

  ‘I’ll blow her head off,’ he called into the dancing shadows. ‘Keep your distance.’

  ‘Please, Padre, do not hurt Mamma,’ Nicky wailed.

  ‘Keep quiet, boy!’ Ramón snarled at him; and then, raising his voice again: ‘Call your dogs off, Sean. Unless you want your sister and her son to die.’

  After a moment, Sean’s voice bellowed out of
the shadows: ‘Hold your fire, Scouts! Back off, Scouts!’

  Ramón kept them moving towards one of the jeeps. Isabella was choking for breath, the muzzle of the pistol was pressed so hard into her ear that the tender skin tore and a drop of blood ran down her neck.

  ‘Please, you’re hurting me,’ Isabella gasped.

  ‘Don’t hurt Mamma,’ Nicholas cried, and twisted out of Adra’s grip. He ran to Isabella’s side, and for a moment Adra was isolated, offering a clear shot.

  In the darkness beyond the firelight a yellow flower of gun-flame bloomed, and a single bullet whiplashed across twenty yards of open ground.

  The side of Adra’s head dissolved in a liquid red smear. She was snatched over backwards to hit the earth with her arms flung wide open.

  ‘Adra!’ Nicky screamed, but before he could run to her Ramón grabbed him around the waist.

  ‘No, leave Adra,’ he snapped. ‘Stay close to me now, Nicky.’

  The three of them were in the centre of a brightly lit stage. There was no other living soul in view. The corpse of one of the Cuban woman signallers lay curled against the wall of the burning building, and two dead paratroopers lay at the gate to the compound.

  Ramón called out an order in Spanish to any of his paratroopers that might still be alive, but he knew it was a vain effort. He knew the quality of the attackers. He had recognized the name of her brother the instant Isabella called it out. Sean’s shouted order addressed to the Scouts had confirmed it. He guessed that his men were all of them dead. They had probably died in that first storm of gunfire.

  These were the notorious Ballantyne Scouts, he was certain of that, but how they had got here eluded him. He knew only that Isabella had somehow managed to call them in. They were out there in the shadow, and they would strike the same way they had killed Adra, swiftly and with deadly accuracy, if he gave them the faintest chance.

  The only advantage he had on his side now was time. He knew that Raleigh Tabaka would have heard the gunfire and would be leading a relief column of his guerrillas down from the airfield. They would be here in minutes. He backed towards the nearest of the three parked jeeps in the motor pool.

  Sean watched them over the sights of the AKM. He lay at the base of one of the palms, the outline of his head broken by a pile of dead fronds. At this range of forty yards the assault-rifle with the rate-of-fire selector on single shot was only accurate enough to put a bullet into a two-inch circle. He had aimed for the bridge of Adra’s nose and hit her in the left eye. The bullet had sheared off the side of her skull.

  That kind of accuracy was not sufficient to risk a shot at Ramón Machado. The man was good. He was using his two hostages for maximum cover, ducking and weaving like a boxer so that Sean could never hold a steady bead on his head.

  To Sean, his sister’s naked body was disconcerting and shocking in the yellow firelight. Her breasts were very pale and tender-looking; the stark black triangle stood out clearly at the base of her belly. He knew that his Scouts were watching her.

  Even in the stress of battle, the way that Ramón Machado held her against his own naked body infuriated Sean and threatened to impair his judgement. He was tempted to risk a shot. His finger on the trigger lacked only an ounce of pressure, but Ramón ducked his head behind Isabella’s shoulder as they reached the jeep.

  Ramón slid into the driver’s seat and dragged Isabella and the child in with him. The engine started with a bellow, and sand spun from beneath the rear wheels as Ramón accelerated towards the gate.

  Sean fired a burst, low at the nearest back wheel, and saw a bullet strike sparks from the spinning steel hub. Then the jeep crashed into the barrier gate and ripped out one of the poles. The gate crumpled before its rush, and the vehicle bounced through the wreckage and roared down the track dragging a tangle of wire and fence-poles behind it like a sleigh.

  Sean leapt to his feet and raced to the second jeep. Four of his Scouts were pelting for the same vehicle and they piled into the back of it as Sean started the engine. He spun it in a wide circle and then gunned it through the ruined gate. They jolted over the mangled frame and then roared in pursuit of Ramón and his hostages.

  If Isabella’s sketch-map was accurate, this track would take them down along the river towards the airstrip, and Esau Gondele’s road-block.

  Esau would hose anything that came down the track, from either direction. An RPG 7 rocket would turn Isabella and her son to mincemeat.

  Sean thrust the palm of his hand down on the horn-ring and blew a long wailing blast. He hoped that Esau Gondele might understand the warning and hold his fire, but he knew it was a forlorn hope. Smoked up with boom, the Scouts would be hot and quick on the trigger.

  He had to overtake them. He shoved the pedal flat and roared into the standing wall of white dust left by the vehicle ahead of him on the narrow track. The track turned abruptly right, and for a second he lost it and slewed over the verge. The jeep canted over on its outside wheels and they crashed and tore through the light brush before he got her back on to the track.

  The angle of the breeze altered as they turned, and the dust was blown aside. Only fifty yards ahead he saw the tail-lights of the escaping vehicle, and he hit it with the full beam of his headlights.

  In the front seat Ramón Machado was driving with one hand. His other arm was locked around Isabella’s shoulders, holding her in an awkward cramped position. Her head was twisted around on the long column of her neck. Her hair fluttered and rippled in the wind, and her eyes were dark and wide with terror in the pale oval of her face. She was shouting something at him, but the words were whipped away by the wind.

  Nicky was clutching the back of Isabella’s seat. He was dressed in a white T-shirt and shorts. He was also looking back at the pursuing jeep, and even in these desperate moments Sean was struck by the resemblance of the child to the mother. His fury at the man who threatened them smoked in his brain, and armed him with reckless courage.

  Then he realized that the other jeep was down on one side. The burst of fire he had given it had ripped the nearside rear tyre. Long tattered shreds of black rubber peeled from the spinning rim. The tangle of fencing wire and the crumpled pipe-frame of the gate dragged behind the damaged vehicle like a drogue, tearing up a spray of sand and dust from the track and slowing it down.

  He was gaining on them rapidly. The track had turned away from the beach and was running alongside the steep bank of the river. The mangrove trees loomed in the headlights of the two racing vehicles, and between their trunks the dark water glinted sullenly.

  Ramón glanced back over his shoulder and realized that the other jeep was only three feet from his tail-gate. He ducked his head and released his grip on Bella. He snatched the pistol from his lap and twisted around to aim at Sean’s face. The range was under twelve feet, but both jeeps were pounding and swerving over the rough track. The bullet struck the side-post of the windscreen and ricocheted away into the darkness.

  One of the Scouts thrust his rifle forward to return fire, but Sean struck the barrel upwards.

  ‘Hold your fire,’ he shouted, and drove into the back of the other jeep with a ringing clash of metal.

  The impact snapped their heads backwards, and Nicky was thrown over the rear seat with his legs kicking in the air as he struggled to regain his balance.

  ‘Jump,’ Sean howled at Isabella, but before she could react Ramón grabbed her again and pulled her close.

  Once again Sean butted his jeep into the back of the other vehicle. It crushed in the tail-gate and slewed it half off the track.

  Ramón was struggling one-handed to hold it on the road. The back end was swinging wildly. Dust boiled out from the rear wheels in a cloud, half-blinding Sean. Isabella was screaming, and Nicky scrambled up and crouched on the rear seat. His face was white and terrified.

  Another bend in the track flung the leading vehicle up on to the verge. While Ramón tried desperately to control it, Sean saw his chance and gunned his own jeep up
alongside it. For a second they were racing side-by-side like a team in harness.

  Ramón Machado and Sean Courtney looked into each other’s eyes at a distance of six feet, and hatred flashed between them like a discharge of static electricity. It was a primeval emotion, a deep atavistic understanding as two dominant males met and recognized that one must kill the other.

  Sean spun the wheel hard left and swerved into him, forcing his far wheels off the track. The bole of a palm tree wiped off the paintwork and smeared the metal down the length of the vehicle. Ramón swerved back and hit Sean as hard.

  Then Ramón released his grip on Isabella and once again snatched the pistol from his naked lap and thrust it into Sean’s face, reaching out between the speeding jeeps. Ramón’s face was a dark mask of fury and hatred.

  Isabella threw herself sideways and grabbed the steering-wheel. As Ramón fired she wrenched it over with all her strength. The bullet flew away into the night, and the jeep whipped into a murderous skid and plunged over the river-bank.

  In the instant before it disappeared Sean saw both Isabella and Ramón hurled head first against the windscreen, and from the back seat Nicky’s small form was catapulted high into the darkness. Then he was past, braking hard, wrestling with the wheel as the jeep slewed into the broadside skid. The moment he had her under control, Sean snapped the gear lever into reverse and roared backwards to the point where the other vehicle had disappeared.

  Dust still hung in the air, and the earth at the crest of the bank was torn by the spinning tyres. Sean leapt from the driver’s seat and ran to the top of the bank. The jeep was in the river below him. The headlights were still burning beneath the surface, like two drowned moons. She had capsized, and her rear wheels were spinning in a froth of white foam. Nicky’s small crumpled body lay on the bank at the water’s edge.

  Sean launched himself down the bank. Sliding and slipping, he kept his footing like a cat and used his momentum to carry him out in a long clean racing dive. He hit the water flat like an Olympic racer.