it was in self-defense, they would not see it like that.
He looked down at the wound.
He must concentrate on survival.
Now more than ever.
He could see now that it was more than one bullet: one had taken a chunk of flesh out just below the hip bone, the other had gone in and out on a skewed trajectory? it must have struck the hip bone. Blood was thick over the wounds. He pulled a shirt from the bag and began to clean it up, first looking up to see the copilot watching him, seeing the wounds, the man was pale. Checked the compass, looked outside, below he could see the landscape flashing by in the moonlight.
He looked around the interior. Some of the soldiers? gear had been left inside: backpacks, two metal trunks, a paperback. He pushed the backpacks around with his left foot. Got hold of two water bottles and loosened them from the packs.
?I need bandages,? he said. The copilot pointed. At the back was a metal case with a red cross painted on it screwed to the body of the helicopter. Sealed.
He stood up and unplugged the headset. He broke the seal of the case and opened it. The contents were old, but there were bandages, painkillers, ointment, antiseptic, syringes of drugs he did not recognize, everything in a removable canvas bag. He took it out and moved back to his seat, replaced the headset, went through the checklist of crew, altitude, and direction. He placed the bandages aside, trying to make out the labels on the tubes of ointment and packets of pills in the poor light. He put what he needed to one side.
He had never been wounded before.
The physical reaction was new to him; he vaguely recalled the expected pathology: there would be shock, tremors and dizziness, then the pain, fatigue, the dangers of blood loss, thirst, faint-ness, poor concentration. The important thing was to stop the bleeding and take in enough water; dehydration was the big enemy.
He heard his mother?s voice in his head. He was fourteen, they were playing by the river, chasing iguanas, and the sharp edge of a reed had sliced open his leg like a knife. At first all he felt was the stinging. When he looked down, there was a deep wound to the bone, he could see it, above the kneecap, pure white against the dark skin, he could see the blood that instantaneously began seeping from all sides like soldiers charging the front lines. ?Look,? he said proudly to his friends, hands around the leg, the wound long and very impressive, ?I?m going home, so long,? limping back to his mother, watching the progression of blood down his leg with detached curiosity as if it wasn'?t his. His mother was in the kitchen, he needed to say nothing, only grinned. She had a shock??Thobela,? her cry of worry. She let him sit on the edge of the bath and with soft hands and clicking tongue disinfected the wound with snow-white cotton balls, the smell of Dettol, the sting, the bandages and Band-Aid, his mother?s voice, soothing, loving, caressing hands? the longing welled up in him, for her, for that carefree time, for his father. He jerked back to the present, the compass was still at 355.
He got to his feet, pressed the HK against the copilot?s neck. ?Those helicopters. How fast can they fly??
?Aah ? uum ??
?How fast?? And he jabbed the weapon into the man?s cheek.
About two-eighty? said the pilot.
And how fast are we going??
?One-sixty.?
?Can?t we go faster??
?No,? said the pilot. ?We can?t go faster.? Unconvincingly Are you lying to me??
?Look at the fucking aircraft. Does it look like a greyhound to you??
He sagged back to his seat.
The man was lying. But what could he do about it?
They wouldn'?t make it; the border was too far.
What would the Rooivalks do when they intercepted?
He unclipped another water bottle from one of the rucksacks and opened the cap, brought it to his lips and drank deeply. The water tasted of copper, strange on his tongue, but he gulped greedily, swallowing plenty. How the bottle shook in his big hand? hell? he trembled, trembled. He breathed in slowly, slowly breathed out. If he could just make it to Botswana. Then he had a chance.
He began to clean the wound slowly and meticulously.
That is what the minister of water affairs and forestry had said, and now there was one body and Janina Mentz wondered if the gods had conspired against her. For what were the odds that the perfect operation, so well planned and seamlessly executed would draw in a retired assassin?
And in the moment of self-pity she found the truth. The foundation of reason that she could build upon.
It was not by chance.
Johnny Kleintjes had instructed his daughter to involve Tho-bela Mpayipheli if something happened to him. Was it a premonition? Did the old man expect things to go wrong? Or was he playing some other game? Someone had known about the whole thing, someone had waited in Lusaka and taken the CIA out of the game, and the question, the first big question was, Who?
The possibilities, this is what drove her out of her head, the multiple possibilities. It could be this own country?s National Intelligence Agency, it could be the Secret Service, or Military Intelligence? the rivalry, the spite, and corruption were tragic in their extent.
The contents of the hard drive was the second big question, because that was a clue to the who.
