The Devil's breath

the stinging sand. As the wind dropped, Max found himself facing away from the trampled grass. His peripheral vision gave him another angle, which allowed him to see a shape in the trees. It was a slightly different shade of green from the others, and a smaller shadow skirted the fringe of scrubland.

For a moment, Max thought he saw a jackal. What was it he failed to remember about one of the constant clues in this whole thing: that wraithlike figure of the jackal? His father’s Egyptian stories came back to him-as well as being the God of the Dead, the jackal was the guide between the two worlds. It would show the way. That made sense. Even in the cave drawings, it was the jackal’s figure that had led him to the images of himself and his father on the wall.

Eagle, dust swirls and a specter-all directed him to that one place.

The flattened grass felt like straw beneath their feet. With the high grass to one side and the low trees to the other, Max sensed a mixture of dread and expectation. The place was comforting, like a secret den he’d had when he was younger-a place where you could hide and not be seen; one of those special places no one knows about-but it also felt like a baited trap. The further they went along that elephant track, the higher the grass, the more dense the shrubs and trees.

Max stopped.!Koga had moved ahead and went down on one knee. Max looked around him. A small flock of chattering birds scattered across the treetops. Was that a warning, or were they simply irritated by Max and!Koga’s presence? Max joined!Koga and stared into the undergrowth-there was something in there-it brooded in the shadows. Something fluttered, rasping, like leaves on a beech tree.

“There are no tracks,”!Koga told him. But that didn’t mean an animal could not have pushed its way into the undergrowth from another place. What little breeze there was came from behind them, so there was no apparent scent of anything, but whatever was in there would catch their scent. There were no sounds of feeding; elephants would be ripping the branches apart. What else? Buffalo were not supposed to be in this part of the country, but they had already experienced a rogue herd, the night of the stampede. Farmers had tried and failed to domesticate this most dangerous of animals, so there were still small herds scattered around. And a buffalo could wait until an unsuspecting hunter was almost nose to nose before charging and killing.

!Koga put an arrow onto his bow string and Max followed suit. Such a flimsy defense would be useless against a big animal, but it gave them courage.

Walking a couple of meters apart, they stepped cautiously into the undergrowth. The shadow was ten meters in, at the end of a broken path of shrub and low branches.

The sunlight flickered through the tree canopy; they were upon it now. Max lowered his bow, reached out to the irregular shape in front of him and touched a dried branch. He gave a tug and it fell away. Another step forward, another cut branch. That too he pulled back. Someone had cut branches down to hide whatever it was in this glade. Now his hands touched what felt like coarse string and plastic. He yanked, but it would not give. It was a net, snared over thorn branches. A camouflage net. The small, dull plastic panels fluttered differing shades of green. Max had seen plenty of these on the army training ground; an armored vehicle’s outline could be disrupted to make it very difficult to see. But now the shape behind the net was obvious.

It was a small plane.

And on its tail fin was the drawing of a dove.

The plane had been manhandled into the trees, turned, and then camouflaged. It looked as though someone wanted to be able to take off in a hurry, and that would be achieved by pulling off the cut branches and lifting the front of the netting clear of the propeller. Within moments of starting the engine, the pilot would be able to taxi forward, turn the plane onto the trampled grass, and take off.

Max and!Koga edged their way around the aircraft. The air was cooler under the trees’ canopy and the netting added a lot of shade. Max felt a guilty sense of trespass; this was someone else’s secret. As far as he could see, the plane was undamaged and was about the same vintage as Kallie’s, so, although it was unsophisticated, with only bare rudiments for comfort, it looked perfectly serviceable. Tentatively he reached out for the cabin door latch. It was unlocked. The door creaked a little and cool air from the interior touched his face.

!Koga had moved back into the sunlight and the entrance to the trees which, from where Max now sat in the pilot’s seat, looked like the mouth of a cave, with the inside of the plane and the shadows being the cave itself. Max let his fingers touch the controls, holding them in his palms like a flight simulator joystick on his computer at home. The unmoving dials waited for electrical current to spur them into life. Fuel gauge, airspeed indicator-in knots, not miles per hour like Kallie’s-this plane was a slightly newer model. Vertical speed dial, altimeter, a row of flip switches for lights and fuel pump, warning notices to check contaminants in the fuel and to make sure the seat was locked into position before takeoff and landing. A red master switch was in the Off position, waiting for the ignition key to be inserted and the magnetos switched on. Without thinking, he flipped down the sun visor and found a well-worn key with brown cardboard tag attached. An almost illegible call-sign number, faded beneath years of handling and grime, was written on the tag.

Max put the key in the ignition and turned it. There was a hum of power from the battery and the dials swung into life. Max quickly turned the key off.!Koga opened the other door as Max pushed the key back under the elastic band on the sun visor.

“Someone wanted this ready for a quick escape,” he said.

“There are tracks, on the grass. I think it is the same truck that was at the place of the dead.”

“That means the plane landed, the pilot met someone else in a Land Rover or whatever, hid the plane, and then they drove off again,” Max said. Suddenly he remembered the paintings on the cave wall. The dove hidden; the white man injured. This plane had to be the one his father used! It was!Koga’s father who had taken Tom Gordon’s notes from where the Bushmen died, and he had said there were two white men in a pickup. Dad and Anton Leopold. So perhaps his dad had got a message from Leopold on the ground, who then met him here. Leopold would have told him about the dead Bushmen and, knowing his father, Max realized they would have driven off after the men responsible.!Koga’s father had told them that the two white men went off after the other men. His father had probably concealed the plane for a quick getaway.

Max twisted in the seat to look in the back of the plane. A couple of empty plastic water bottles, a box of field rations. No clothes or luggage. Nothing to prove the pilot was his dad. There was a blackened stain which made a neat outline, showing where the small white-and-green sticker said First Aid. The box itself was missing, probably taken from its mounting for the first time ever, given the dirt outline.

He clambered into the back. His fingers touched the bare metal carcass, tracing the shape of the cabin. Was anything hidden? Any clues to be found? His father had made those drawings to bring him here to the dove. There must be something. Then his finger found what his eyes had missed. He winced and withdrew his hand, looking at the small tear in the skin and the dribble of blood. On the edge of the plane, where the floor met the sides of the cabin, three holes were torn in the metal. The flare of impact was minimal, almost no mushrooming inwards; it was these ragged edges that had snagged his finger. He sucked the blood, then noticed the angle where the light came in. He eased out a reed-thin arrow from its quiver and placed it in the hole. The angle showed him that the bullet which made this hole would have passed between the seat and controls. The pilot would have been hit in the leg. Max bent down and realized that the dark stain on the floor was not dried mud. Beneath the passenger seat he saw a grubby edge of paper. It looked like a map.

He slid his hand beneath the seat and, as he teased it out, he heard the gentle rolling of something he had touched. Working blind, his fingers found a small glass ampoule. It was an empty morphine phial.

Max held the folded map. The words Sector Search were scrawled in the margin. It was his dad’s handwriting. There was no doubt now that this was his father’s plane.

And it seemed obvious that he had been shot.

The map’s creases were even dirtier than his own map. He opened out two folds. An area was defined by boxed, faded pencil lines. Max couldn’t determine just where the area was, but a dozen or more marks-small red crosses-were scattered across the map. Max unfolded another panel.

His finger traced contour lines, the mountains, the rivers. The map was getting too big to read properly.

As he climbed out of the cockpit, a smaller folded map fell from the bulk of the larger one. It was a hydrology chart. Moments later, he and!Koga had opened both on the ground next to the aircraft. The bigger sheet related to Max’s own map, but the emptiness of the country allowed for little detail. The northeastern part was where the red crosses were distributed. Max traced a finger back to Kallie’s area, from where he had started his journey. Brandt’s Wilderness Farm was shown. It was like gliding across the country, peering down at the landscape from space. Farm names, small airfields, settlements and towns, they had all been surveyed over the years. Max worked out