* * *
Frans had been the one driving the Jeep in the hospital parking lot. I laid his lifeless body down beside big Vannie, crushed his VAC on the ground under my foot, picked up Vannie’s rucksack and the Galil and jogged through the dark to the house.
There were at least another three outside, but I suspected there were more. If there were only five they need not have come with two vehicles. I guessed at six. That meant another four. At least.
‘Vannie, can you hear me now?’
In the dark house I opened the rucksack. Bottled water. Sandwiches. They smelled like chicken.
‘Frans, what are you doing?’
I looked for my Twinkies. Found only the empty carton. They would pay for that too.
‘Frans, come in, Frans.’
I ate and drank in a hurry. Just enough to still the hunger.
‘I don’t believe it.’
I picked up the Galil and went out the back door, past the vehicles, south to the dense bush where I had lain in wait the night before.
‘Eric, I think we’ve got trouble.’
‘Fuck.’
‘He’ll have the rifle too.’
Eric ruminated on this wisdom.
‘And the VAC too, maybe,’ said Eric. ‘Lie dead still and shoot anything that moves.’
44
He worked in the Swazi mines, on remote farms and once on a plantation. Sometimes he just hid away in the mountains and stole to stay alive. Twice he went back to Mozambique, but there were no jobs, no means of survival. He lived in fear every day for eight years. He never stopped looking over his shoulder and developed an instinct for who would betray him, and when. He didn’t blame them. If you are poor and hungry, and you have a wife and five children somewhere in a Swazi village who want more, always more, then you take every cent you can get. When you walk into the shebeen in Mbabane and meet someone asking questions, then you tell him about the strange white man who works beside you in the mine shaft, the one who speaks your language and never laughs.
In 1992 the Swazi papers were full of the Great Change in South Africa.
He found hope.
He waited another two years, until March 1994, and then took the money he had saved and bought himself a new face from a surgeon in Mbabane. He bought a Nissan 1400 pick-up and a false passport in Bulembu and drove over the border and down the mountain to Barberton.
He found a public telephone booth in the town centre and dialled his parents’ home number, but before it could ring fear overtook him and he put the receiver down.
What if …
Wait for the elections to be over. Wait. He had waited eight years, what were a few more months.
A week later he heard about Stef Moller in a bar and drove out to Heuningklip. It was only when he wanted to marry Melanie Lottering that he knew the time was right, it was safe enough to see his family again.
I knew where they would have to hide to see the gate and the access road. I knew from which direction they would expect me.
They would be in pairs, because that made everything easier.
For me too.
I approached from the west, because they would be focused on the north, with one of the team looking south. Through the night sight I saw two of them within fifty metres of my own nest, where I had waited for Donnie Branca and Stef Moller.
I was not familiar with the Galil. I didn’t know for what distance the scope was calibrated. I crawled to within two hundred metres of them and settled down. With very slow deliberate movements, I found enough shelter and took aim.
No wind. I halted the cross-hairs on the shoulder of the one looking south, took a deep breath, let it escape slowly and silently, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
I made sure the safety was off. Then I remembered that it was a sniper’s weapon. It had a two-stage trigger.
I took aim again, breathed in and out, pulled the trigger, pulled again and the shot boomed. I swung the barrel towards the other, he was moving, looking at his partner. I shot him; saw him jerk.
Then it was quiet.
‘Who shot now?’ Eric’s voice.
The last two. I wasn’t sure where they were. I suspected that they would be covering the eastern front, somewhere beyond the leafy tunnel where I had talked to Donnie Branca. I got up and began to jog from dark spot to dark spot.
‘Dave, come in, Dave, who was that shooting? Did you see anything?’
‘Eric, can you hear me?’ I said.
‘Who the fuck is that?’
‘My name is Lemmer and I’m watching you through the night sight of a Galil.’
I had to talk to him, a talking man can’t hear.
He wouldn’t talk.
‘You’re the only one left, Eric. Now tell me why I shouldn’t pull the trigger.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Information.’
I couldn’t see them. I was on the two-wheel track between the house and the gate. I swung the scope from left to right, slowly, but I couldn’t see them. Farther east? Could be.
‘What kind of information?’
‘I’ve only got two questions. But think carefully before you answer, because you only have one chance.’
‘I’m listening.’
I knew what he was up to. He would gesture to his partner, look here, look there. Their eyes would search for me. Their adrenalin would be pumping; they would be ready to shoot.
‘Put down your weapons.’
I couldn’t keep up searching for them. If they saw me, any movement at all, they would know I was lying.
‘I said, put down your weapons.’
‘OK.’
‘Now get up.’
I couldn’t see anything. They were closer to the gate than I thought.
‘Both of you.’
I waited, stretching out the silence.
‘Now what?’ asked Eric.
‘Walk towards the road.’
‘Which road?’
‘The road to the house.’
‘OK.’
But I saw nothing.
Did they know I was bluffing?
I still couldn’t see a thing.
