He shifted against the chilly stone. Blood had always flowed on this continent. Here where man at last had shrugged off the ape, where he left his first tracks on two feet in mud that later turned to stone. Not even the glaciers, those great ice rivers that transformed the landscape, that left heaps of unsuspecting rocks in grotesque formations, could staunch the flow of blood. The ground was drenched in it. Africa. Not the Dark Continent. The Red Continent. The Mother. That gave life in abundance. And death as counterweight, creating predators to keep the balance, predators in all their forms, through the millennia.
And then she created the perfect hunter, the predator that upset the balance, that could not be controlled by ice ages and droughts and disease, that kept on sowing destruction, rejecting her power and might. The two-legged predators carried out the great coup, the cosmic coup d?etat, conquered all and then turned on one another, white against white, black against black, white against black.
He wondered if there was hope. For Africa. For this land.
Johnny Kleintjes. If steadfast Johnny Kleintjes could bow to temptation, led astray by the rotten stink of money, merely one of the lures of this continent, could there be hope?
He sighed deeply. More lights broke away from the cluster in the darkness; an ambulance siren wailed through the night, coming closer, gone along the road.
Not long now.
It became systematically still again. He heard a jackal howl, far over the ridges, a mockery of the ambulance.
Predators and scavengers and prey.
He was the former.
Maybe. Perhaps there was hope. If he had looked into the mirror of his life and found it abhorrent, he who lived his carnivore vocation so mercilessly, then there could be others like him. And perhaps that was all that was needed, one person, first only one. Then two, four, and a handful of people to shift the scales, just a fraction of a millimeter, to reclaim Mother Africa piece by piece, foot by foot, to rebuild, to give a glimmer of hope.
Maybe, if he and Miriam could take Pakamile Nzululwazi away to the Cala river, make a new beginning far from the city, in the landscape of his forefathers, away from the cycle of poverty and soulless travail, the crime, the corruption of empty foreign cultures.
Maybe.
Because nothing in this world could make him as he once was.
The Rooivalk helicopters chose their flight path through the tops of the cumulus nimbus, the white towers majestic in the moonlight, lightning striking silver tentacles kilometers far through the system, turbulence jerking and shaking them, the green, orange, and red flickering of the weather radar screens confirming the system.
?Another ten minutes, then we?re through,? said the pilot of Rooivalk One. ?ETA, twenty-two minutes.?
?Roger, One,? answered the other.
Just over 160 kilometers east of the two attack helicopters the flight engineer of the Oryx clicked on the intercom.
?Better buckle up, Mazibuko.?
?What?s up??
?Weather system. And it looks bad.?
?How long still?? asked Tiger Mazibuko.
?Just over an hour. I hope you brought raincoats in those crates.?
?We?re not scared of a little rain.?
thought the flight engineer.
13.
Allison Healy wrote the story immediately, because the official deadline was already past.
CAPE TOWN? A manhunt for an armed and dangerous fugitive is under way after an unknown government intelligence agency alerted local police and traffic authorities along the Ni to be on the lookout for a Xhosa man traveling on a big BMW motorcycle.
she thought.
CAPE TOWN? A big, bad Xhosa biker on a huge BMW motorcycle is the subject of a province-wide manhunt, after an undisclosed and top-secret government intelligence agency alerted police and traffic officials along the Ni to be on the lookout for what they called ?an armed and dangerous fugitive.?
Reliable sources told the
the alert was posted around 22:00 last night, but the directive did not provide details about the reason Mr. Thobela Mpayipheli was sought so desperately by what is rumored to be the Presidential Intelligence Unit (PIU).
The fugitive is allegedly in possession of two firearms and one BMW R 1150 GS, all illegally obtained, ?but apparently that?s not the reason they want to apprehend him,? the source said.
Now she had to spin another paragraph or two out of the meager details. That was all the front page would have room for.
