the sound of the thudding blades.
“We don’t know where he is. We’ve been on standby, waiting to get something positive out of Namibia. Now we have something.”
The two soldiers grabbed Sayid, lifted him into the helicopter and slammed the doors closed as Peterson gave the thumbs-up to the pilot, buckled himself and Sayid into their seats, pulled on a set of headphones, then settled another pair over Sayid’s ears. Sayid steadied himself as the helicopter rose and banked sharply.
“We may not be able to help Max and his dad right now; we have to stop Farentino and Shaka Chang. We have to get help from the Namibian government,” Mr. Peterson said, his voice scratchy from the microphone attached to the headset.
“How are you going to do that?”
“I’m working with a senior police officer in Namibia. Somehow or other he’s got his hands on one of Tom Gordon’s maps and, together with what this Kallie girl has told him, we think it gives us enough reason to make a low-profile incursion. Trying to get governments to react in time is like trying to stop a supertanker-it takes too long. Our government won’t get involved directly, but they’re pulling diplomatic strings.”
“An incursion?” asked Sayid. “Like an attack, you mean?”
“No, we’ll be going in as advisers; only when we hear something more concrete will we reevaluate the situation. There’s an abandoned military airfield in the desert; we’re going to help the Namibians assemble a strike force.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“Some of these blokes’ friends”-he looked at the grim-faced young soldiers, their faces streaked with camouflage cream and carrying foreign-looking weapons-“are joining us.”
Sayid studied them for a moment.
“SAS?”
“A long time ago, before you both were born, Max’s dad and I served with them.” Mr. Peterson smiled and put a finger to his lips. “Don’t tell anyone.”
Sayid listened to the muted roar of the engines outside the protection of his headphones. The helicopter had flown low and fast across Dartmoor, then swung south towards Plymouth. Sayid could already see their destination-a small airfield-below them. The local civilian airport was used to seeing Sea King search-and-rescue helicopters landing, so this military chopper wouldn’t be out of place. Now the pilot eased the camouflaged beast down towards a hangar on the edge of the airfield.
A civilian twin-engined jet sat waiting. Gathered around it were half a dozen men in civvies; their military Bergen backpacks were being loaded into the hold.
“That’s a Citation X,” Peterson told him. “Flies at just under Mach One. It’s available for special ops when they have to keep a low profile. Belongs to a well-known business-man who happens to own hotels in South Africa, so it’s a good cover for the time being. One refueling stop in Lagos, and we’ll be there.”
Sayid was beginning to feel way out of his depth. Big adventures and risk-taking were Max’s domain, not his.
“Why am I going?”
“Kallie van Reenen.”
“She thinks the policeman over there is working for you, I mean against Max’s dad.”
“Exactly. She may need convincing to tell us everything she knows. She’ll feel more confident when she sees you.”
“She got away from that copper.”
“Well, he’s found her again.”
“How do you know?”
“She told her dad.”
When Ferdie van Reenen got Kallie’s radio message, he used his credit card to pay another company to secure his clients’ ongoing safari, refueled the twin-engined Baron and flew by the most direct route to where she had landed. He scorched along low and fast, old flying techniques never forgotten from combat days. On the way, he gave Mike Kapuo an ear-splitting mouthful, using language that was definitely not correct radio procedure, on what he thought was the policeman’s damned carelessness and irresponsibility in allowing his daughter to get herself in danger.
It took Kapuo a couple of minutes to tell van Reenen everything, which made him realize just how precious his daughter was to him. People had to be independent and strong in an environment like the Namibian outback, but maybe he’d left his daughter alone too often. He swore quietly to himself that he would make amends and spend more time with her, but he couldn’t help feeling a deep sense of pride at what she had done.
22
Max had worked his way back through security, using Zhernastyn’s palm-print, then replaced his father with Zhernastyn in the bed, strapped him down and covered his face with an oxygen mask over his taped mouth. With any luck, that would fool anyone taking a cursory glance into the room. But for how long? Max knew time was against him, but he had to find a way of reaching Shaka Chang’s control center. If that could be damaged or destroyed, it might delay the dam gates being opened.
Max looked instinctively at his wrist. The watch was gone, of course, but the moment allowed him a fleeting thought for!Koga.
He had cradled his father, easing him back into the wheelchair. Tom Gordon drifted in and out of consciousness. Max’s mental clock ticked away. There was precious little time to hang about in this hospital. He ran back into the hydroelectric tank room and dropped the vital disc, taped back in its box, through the iron grid into the water. Hopefully, by now Sayid would have the information. Max didn’t dare risk being caught with it, because then both his and his father’s lives would be worthless.
But where could Max escape to? He tried to reason it out. If the fort had been built in the 1800s, then there certainly wouldn’t have been any lift shafts in place, all that came later with Shaka Chang. So, there had to be stairs, especially down to the basement area, where the original old iron grid lay across the water tank. In their day, servants might have hauled water up to the kitchens and living quarters. There must be steps going higher. If there was a way up to that hangar without using the lift, that was his best chance of getting himself and his dad out of this murderous place.
Using screwdrivers from the maintenance man’s tool belt, Max had wedged open the doors he needed to get through, but he had to make a move quickly. It seemed likely, he reasoned, that the lift shaft would have been dropped down alongside any stairwell that had been cut into the rock face a hundred-odd years ago. Max trundled his father out into the area where the lift doors opened. Somewhere on one side or the other of that modern glass cage was his way out. He gazed up into the darkening space that would swallow the lift car, letting his eyes search the cables and steel supports. It was open rock at the back of that structure, all the way up, as far as he could see.
He had missed the obvious. He must be more tired than he realized. There was a door with a small danger sign-HIGH VOLTAGE. The door felt as solid as steel and it was locked. The maintenance man was still trussed up- but his work belt sat like a gunslinger’s holster around Max’s waist. His fingers searched out a screwdriver. He would use it to twist and break the lock, but then he saw the T-bar of a short metal rod, about fifty centimeters long and with a beveled base, in a small pocket of its own. It fitted perfectly between his fingers, allowing him to grip and turn the T-piece. The angled cuts at the end of the bar slid into the hexagonal lock on the door. A twist of his wrist and the door opened. Just like the gas man opening the meter box, back home.
Half a dozen stairs rose up before him and then dog-legged to the right, following a zigzag path upwards behind the lift shaft. He would never get a wheelchair up there.
A light came on above the lift door. The top floor. Shaka Chang’s private domain. Someone was in the lift and they were coming down.
Third floor.
