late.’
‘We can use it. Can you get Tinga on that thing?’
‘We’re too far away now, but I can try to relay a message.’ After some more talking on the radio, Duncan was able to pass a message back to Tinga giving their location and confirming that they were in sight of the missing persons.
As they bounced and skidded through tight turns and a dry river crossing, a message came back from Tinga. Duncan translated it. Sannie was relaying through another guide that the police were on their way, but there would be no air support, as the parks board’s helicopter, normally based in Kruger, was in Johannesburg for an engine overhaul. They were trying to get military air support from the nearby air base at Hoedspruit. ‘Still on our own,’ Tom said bitterly.
‘This road ends soon, in a T-junction. They can go left or right or, if your theory is right, they’ll ditch their bakkie and continue on foot.’
‘Well, let’s hope we’ve foiled that part of their plan. I’m assuming you can take this thing through the bush?’
‘You better believe it, man.’ Duncan slapped the dashboard fondly. ‘They’re slowing. What do you want me to do?’
‘Hang back.’
Tom’s command was too late. The bakkie in front of them skidded to a halt. Even though Duncan hit his brakes as well, the distance between them closed rapidly as a result of the lead vehicle’s sudden stop. ‘Get down!’ Tom yelled as he saw the gunman in the back taking deliberate aim. One of the rear doors of the twin-cab passenger compartment opened and another man in a ski mask climbed out. He carried a cut-down Russian assault rifle identical to the other man’s.
The two AK 47s fired on automatic and Tom felt the impact of slugs slamming into their engine. The front of the Land Cruiser sagged and Tom knew the tyres had been hit. Steam hissed from their punctured radiator and Tom heard the Isuzu’s engine start up again. He raised his head and saw the trailing dust cloud once again. ‘Grab your rifle.’
Tom got out of the stricken four-by-four and started running up the dirt road. He knew the track would end soon, and even if the other vehicle went off road, its momentum would be slowed by the bush, perhaps to walking pace if the trees were as thick ahead as they were to each side of him. He looked back and saw Duncan trotting behind him, working the bolt of his heavy hunting rifle and chambering a round as he ran. He felt a momentary pang of guilt at putting the safari guide in danger. He was a civilian and this was not his fight. Tom had no business ordering him into harm’s way, and he told him as much when he drew alongside.
‘Mr Greeves and Mr Joyce were clients. Their safety is as much my responsibility as yours, so be quiet and save your breath for the fight.’
Duncan raised a hand and moved off the graded road into the long golden grass and thickets of thorn-studded trees on their right. Tom followed the guide, who had reduced his pace. They heard the Isuzu’s diesel engine ahead, but it had slowed to a laboured growl. Duncan paused and dropped to one knee, and Tom followed suit. Ahead of him through the bush, he could see the intersection.
Duncan cocked his head to one side. ‘They have gone on ahead, driving through the bush. They will not move fast. Listen.’
From their left, Tom heard another vehicle’s engine, though this one was screaming at a high pitch. He squinted into the morning sun and saw a dark green Land Rover closing on them, a dust cloud in tow. The vehicle stopped at the intersection, and Tom and Duncan emerged to greet it.
‘Howzit, my boet,’ the Afrikaner driving the Land Rover said to Duncan as they shook hands, African style, linking their hands by the thumbs halfway through the traditional European greeting. The man was grey-haired and his face, tanned to the colour of mahogany, was lined with deep furrows, worn by age and a lifetime in the unrelenting African sun, and his beard was stained yellow by tobacco smoke. He conversed rapidly with Duncan in Shangaan. In the rear of his Land Rover, which, like Duncan’s Cruiser, had no sides or solid roof, just a canvas awning above, were two plainly confused tourists, a young couple.
‘Duncan’s explained what’s going on?’ Tom asked the man.
‘ Ja. I’m Willie. He tells me you want to take my Land Rover off road into that bush, to follow those other okes.’
‘That’s right,’ Tom said. ‘We don’t have time to waste. Radio your position and get someone else to come collect you and your clients.’
‘Hold on, bru. You don’t tell me what to do, and no one, not even Duncan, gets to drive my vehicle. I’ve told him to stay here. I’ll drive you.’
Duncan looked at Tom and shrugged. The white man went on, ‘I was a recce commando in our war in Angola. If those okes are as bad as Duncan’s made them out to be, you need someone like me more than someone like him.’ Willie took his own rifle from its cradle on the Land Rover’s dashboard and inserted its bolt and then chambered a bullet as long as Tom’s middle finger. ‘Now then, folks, my colleague Duncan here is going to look after you while this gentleman and I go look for some tsotsis in the bush.’
Before the confused tourists could ask too many questions, Tom was sitting in the passenger seat beside Willie. The big Afrikaner engaged low-range four-wheel drive and the boxlike truck lurched down a drainage ditch and into the bush. Ahead of them the trail carved by the Isuzu was plainly visible. ‘This should be fun.’ Willie veered off to the right.
‘What are you doing?’
‘They’ll be watching their backs, expecting us to follow their tracks. Look around you — this is a valley. They’re only going in one direction, and that’s east, towards Mozambique. I’m going to try to outflank them. This beast of mine will go harder and faster through the bundu than theirs will — take my word for it.’
The ride was almost sickening as the Land Rover lurched up and over fallen logs, bounced through hidden holes and plunged in and out of ditches and sandy watercourses. Thorn-covered branches whipped past them, shredding the canvas canopy and Tom’s exposed arms in the process. If Willie felt the stings of the vicious barbs he said not a word. Tom saw his crazed grin and knew the man was completely and utterly in his element.
‘After Angola I served with the parks board for a while. I know this country better than most,’ Willie said above the protesting whine of the engine. ‘There’s a town on the Mozambique side, not far from here. The road starts there and leads all the way to the coast.’
‘So I’ve been told.’
Willie nodded. ‘We’re also about to hit a fire trail, which, hopefully, your bad guys don’t know about. It’s not on any publicly available map.’
On cue, they crashed through a screen of low bushes, flattening the saplings in the process, and landed on a cleared dirt track. It was rutted and rock-studded, but after their carving ride through virgin bushland it felt like a four-lane motorway to Tom. Willie disengaged low range and floored the accelerator. A tiny antelope — a steenbok, according to the Afrikaner — darted across their path and bounded deeper into the bush.
The track took them down a natural ridgeline above a re-entrant to the Olifants River valley, which both Tom and Willie had reasoned would be the escaping vehicle’s most logical path into Mozambique. On a downhill stretch, Willie cut the engine and coasted in neutral. ‘Listen now.’
Above their vehicle’s noises they heard the Isuzu’s engine, still groaning slowly as the bakkie ground its way through the uncleared country. Willie turned the steering wheel and let his vehicle plough into some thornbushes. ‘Ambush time,’ he grinned.
Tom climbed down, ignoring the barbs that raked him and snagged his already torn shirt. He followed Willie through the bush. Every few paces the bigger man stopped to listen. He raised his nose at one point. ‘We’re downwind, I can smell their exhaust smoke — it’s blowing past them, faster than they’re moving.’
They picked their site well, in among a cluster of granite boulders, looking down over a dry tributary. ‘They’ll be following that game trail, I reckon,’ Willie said, pointing to a well-worn path about a metre wide, which wound through the bush on the floor of the shallow valley. ‘They’ll have to slow to cross. That’s when we’ll flatten them.’
‘Aim for the driver and the passengers in the cab. Don’t fire on the canopy and the load area. That’s where the hostages are.’
Willie nodded, resting his hunting rifle on the smooth surface of a boulder.
