air chilled quickly as the wind tugged at the cloud, tearing it from the cliff face. Max held out a hand, feeling the damp air, wanting the rain, but none came; only a dewlike residue clung to the rocks. And then the brief swirling assault ended. The rolling storm passed and they were left with the crystal night sky and the first edging of dawn. The baboons had fled into the crocodile-toothed mountains.
Once again the vastness was silent.
Max gazed out into the night. The never-ending land crept into the darkness, beckoning him, daring him to enter.
An enemy in waiting.
The stench of disinfectant almost made Kallie gag. Used as she was to the unsullied air of the desert, the impact of the confined police station, with its claustrophobic corridors, noisy holding areas and humanity shoved together in close proximity, made her skin itch. This was a world she never saw in the wilderness. She tried to keep her eyes averted from arrested men shouting abuse at their captors or women screaming through their drunkenness; cage doors rattled closed, a cleaner mopped the floor and Mike Kapuo finally guided her through this maze into the sanctuary of his office.
Mike Kapuo was a bruiser who liked his food. He was a tall man whose belly hung over his trousers; his sausage-size fingers made the big handgun he carried look like a child’s toy. Despite his bulk, though, he could move fast when occasion demanded, and he had boxed for the police service until he was nearly forty years old, a record for a heavyweight. That was where he first met Ferdie van Reenen; they were opponents in the ring, and Kallie’s father was the man who had stopped him from becoming the champion by knocking him out in the fourth round. They had been good friends ever since. Nowadays Kapuo left the more physical demands, such as villain- chasing on foot, to younger men.
At fifty-seven years of age he should already have retired, but he loved the job and his staff loved him, even though he could be a hard taskmaster. Only the criminals were distressed by his staying on in the CID. Kapuo cared about people being hurt by the callous and self-serving attitudes of others.
“You shouldn’t be down here at this time of night,” he told her.
“Where else would I find you?”
He smiled. This was one determined girl; if he had been out on one of his deep-sea fishing trips, she’d probably have swum out to reach him if there was an important enough reason. And for her to be here, it had to be important.
“You weren’t just passing by, then?” he teased.
He poured her a cup of coffee which resembled river mud but was hot and tasted sweet, which was exactly what she needed.
“Your dad OK?” he asked. It wouldn’t be the first time Kapuo would have had to help Ferdie van Reenen. The last time Kallie’s father had tackled a gang of poachers-he went after them with a vengeance and a shotgun-he had got himself badly hurt. If Kallie hadn’t got to Kapuo and he in turn had not reached van Reenen, the poachers would have got a lot worse than the few years in jail they’d received.
“He’s fine. He’s up at Kunene with some birders.”
“Uh-huh.” Kapuo waited. She was sipping the coffee, first looking at him, then letting her eyes gaze away around the untidy room-not that Kapuo thought it was untidy. He knew where everything was.
“I think I’ve got a problem,” she finally said.
“More of a problem than my lousy coffee?”
“Worse.”
She hesitated. He waited.
“I think someone is trying to kill a boy I know,” she said carefully.
He looked at her. Kallie van Reenen was her father’s daughter and, like him, would never say anything just for effect. “And why would you think that?”
“Because I think they’ve just tried to kill me as well.”
Lucius Slye was an orderly man. He insisted on making his own bed in the morning because the servants did not fold the sheets correctly at the corners. His toothbrush, razor, hairbrush, toothpaste tube and hair gel were all neatly laid out next to his spotlessly clean washbasin. Neatness, tidiness, orderliness, cleanliness and attention to detail were exactly what Slye needed in order to function. He did not have the emotional resources of Shaka Chang which enabled him to adapt to any changing situation with animal cunning. No, Mr. Slye needed a controlled environment in which to function at maximum efficiency. Which was why he hated loose ends. And ever since the Gordon boy had been in Africa, loose ends were squirming like a basketful of snakes, not that he had ever seen a basketful of snakes-he would probably scream and faint if he did. Like many cruel-minded men, Slye was a coward at heart.
He had suggested that Shaka Chang might just consider following up the failed attempt on Max’s life at the airport with an attack on the van Reenen farm. But Chang had said no to that. It would attract far too much attention. At least the airport violence could be thought of as a personal attack, a mugging that had got out of hand. Chang did not want to complicate matters by causing harm to outsiders. “Let events unfold, Mr. Slye,” Chang had told him. “The wilderness or our men will finish off the boy.”
But they hadn’t yet, had they? Mr. Slye was a good employee and he knew he needed to relieve some of his master’s burden-because Chang
She had taken the boy from Windhoek Airport and equipped him for his journey. Slye had tracked her northwards to the remote airfield where she met her father. He had left with a safari party so he was not involved, but his informers had told him of the girl’s flight plan filed for Walvis Bay. That was a long way from home. She had information she should not have, that was Mr. Slye’s conclusion. It had not taken much to ensure that one of his local men fixed her plane, guaranteeing it would crash.
Most satisfyingly, he had heard her Mayday call over Skeleton Rock’s radio transmitters.
Even more gratifying was the sound of an explosion and the girl’s scream. Mr. Slye was convinced that Kallie van Reenen must have crashed in the middle of nowhere. In the unlikely event of the crash site ever being found, an investigation would conclude that her old plane was simply not reliable enough. In the meantime, hyenas and jackals would dispose of her remains.
He flipped open his PDA and ticked off one item on his list of things to do. It read: Kill Kallie van Reenen.
Kallie had done her preflight checks as always, but when she took off she thought the engine sounded ragged. She had pushed in the throttle, gained takeoff speed and hauled the plane into the sky.
Within an hour she knew she was in trouble. There was the unmistakable smell of avgas; the engine shook violently in its mountings, followed almost immediately by a loss of power. The aviation fuel was flooding the engine compartment at just about the same time as her brain flooded with fear at falling out of the sky. Fire was her immediate concern, so there was no point in trying to restart the engine. The Cessna 185 was known among pilots as a tail-dragger, difficult at takeoff and landing; if she managed to land without power, she was going to need all her skill to come out of it in one piece. The plane’s nose dropped; the propeller whirled of its own volition, nothing more than a windmill. Her training kicked in. Calmly but urgently, she banked the plane into the start of a sweeping arc, away from the rocky hills piercing the dunes ahead, all the time looking for a suitable landing site. She flicked the radio dial to the emergency frequency: 121.5 megacycles. “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday,” she called. The international distress signal sounded unreal, coming from her own lips. It was something she had never expected to say. “This is Victor Five, Bravo Mike November … Mayday, Mayday, Mayday …”
And then there was a bang and she was spattered with fluid. She yelled in fright, wiped her eyes clear and brought the plane back under control as best she could. No more time for Mayday signals, she had to get the plane down.
