As he climbed out of the Land-Rover Johnny felt his legs trembling beneath him, as though he had just climbed a mountain. The hard knotted sensation in his chest shortened his breathing.
He went slowly towards the raft, and there was a story to read in the soft sand.
The smooth drag mark of the raft, and the two sets of footprints.
One set made by bare feet; broad, stubby-toed and with flattened arches, the prints of a man who habitually went barefooted.
These tracks had been made by one of the coloured crew of Wild
Goose, Johnny decided, dismissed them and turned his whole attention to the other set of footprints.
Shod feet, long and narrow, smooth leather soles; the imprints were sharp-edged suggesting new shoes little worn, the length of the stride and the depth of prints were those of a tall heavily built man.
Johnny realized with mild surprise that his hands were shaking now, and even his lips quivered. He was like a man in high fever; light-headed, weak and shaking. It was Benedict van der Byl. He knew it with complete and utter certainty. Benedict had survived the maelstrom of Thunderbolt and Suicide.
Johnny balled his fists, squeezing hard and he thrust out his jaw, tightening his lips. Still the hatred washed over his mind in dark hot waves.
“Thank God,“he whispered. “Thank God. Now I can kill him myself.” The footprints had churned the sand all about the raft.
Beside them lay a thick piece of planking which had been used as a lever to rip the emergency water container and the food locker from the floorboards of the raft.
The food locker had been ransacked and abandoned.
They would be carrying the packets of iron rations in their pockets to save weight, but the water container was gone.
The two sets of prints struck out straight for the dunes.
Johnny followed them at a run and lost them immediately in the shifting wind-blown sands of the first dune.
Johnny was undismayed. The dunes persisted for only a thousand yards or so, then gave way inland to the plains and salt flats of the interior.
He ran back to the Land-Rover. He had his emotions under control again. His hatred was reduced to a hard indigestible lump below his ribs, and he contemplated for a few seconds lifting the microphone of the Land-Rover’s RIT set and calling Cartridge Bay.
Inspector Stander had the police helicopter parked on the landing-strip behind the depot buildings. He could be here in thirty minutes. An hour later they would have Benedict van der Byl.
Johnny dismissed the idea. Officially Benedict was dead, drowned.
No one would look for him in a shallow grave in the wastes of the
Namib desert.
The crewman with him would be a complication; but he could be bribed and frightened or threatened. Nothing must stand in the path of his vengeance. Nothing.
Johnny opened the Land-Rover’s locker and found the knife. He went to the raft and stabbed the blade through the thick material at a dozen places. The air hissed from the holes, and the raft collapsed slowly.
Johnny bundled it into the back of the Land-Rover. He would bury it in the desert; there must be no evidence that Benedict had come ashore.
He started the engine, engaged the four-wheel drive, and followed the spoor to the foot of the dunes.
He picked his way through the valleys and across the knife-backed ridges of sand.
As he descended the last slope of the dunes he felt the oppressive silence and immensity of the land enfold him.
Here, only a mile from the sea, the moderating influence of the cold Benguela current did not reach.
The heat was appalling. Johnny felt the sweat prickling from the pores of his skin and drying instantly in the lethal desiccating air.
He swung the Land-Rover parallel to the line of the dunes and crawled along at walking speed, hanging over the side of the vehicle and searching the ground. The bright specks of mica in the sand bounced the heat of the sun into his face.
He cut the spoor again where it came down off the dunes and went away on it, headed arrow straight at the far line of mountains which were already receding into the blue haze as the heat built up towards noon.
Johnny’s progress was a series of rushes where the spoor ran true, broken by halts and painstaking casts on the rocky ridges and areas of broken ground. Twice he left the Landrover to work the spoor through difficult terrain, but across one of the flat white salt pans he covered four miles in as many minutes. The prints were strung like the beads of a checklace, cut clearly through the glistening crust of salt.
Beyond the pan they ran into a maze of black rocks, riven by gullies, and guarded by the tall misshapen monoliths.
In one of the gullies he found Hansie, the little old coloured crewman from Wild Goose. His skull had been battered in with the blood-caked rock that lay beside him.
The blood had dried slick and shiny, and Hansie stared with dry eyeballs at the merciless sky. His expression was of mild SUrprise.
The story of this new tragedy was written in the sandy bottom of the gully. In an area of milling, confused prints the two men had argued. Johnny could guess that Hansie had wanted to turn back for the coast. He must have known that the road lay beyond the mountains, a hundred miles away. He wanted to abandon the attempt, try for the coast and Cartridge Bay.
The argument ended when he turned his back on Benedict, and returned on his old tracks.
There was a depression in the sand from which Benedict had picked up the rock and followed him.
Standing over Hansie, and looking down at that pathetic crushed head, Johnny realized for the first time that he was following a maniac.
Benedict van der Byl was insane. He was no longer a man, but a raging demented animal.
“I will kill him,” Johnny promised the old white woolly head at his feet. There was no need for subterfuge now.
If he caught up with Benedict and did it, no court in the world would question but that it was self-defence. Benedict had placed himself beyond the laws of man.
Johnny took the deflated rubber raft and spread it over Hansie.
He anchored the edges of the rubber sheet with rocks.
He drove on into the dancing, shimmering walls of heat with a new mood on him; murderous, elated expectation.
He knew that at this moment in time he was part animal also, corrupted by the savagery of the man he was hunting.
He wanted payment in full from Benedict van der Byl in his own coin. Life for life, and blood for blood.
A mile farther on he found the water container. It had been flung aside violently, skidding across the sand with the force of its rejection; the water had poured from its open mouth, leaving a dried hollow in the thirsty earth.
Johnny stared at it in disbelief Not even a maniac would condemn himself to such a horrible ending.
Johnny went across to where the five-gallon brass drum lay on its side. He picked it up and shook it, there was the sloshy sound of a pint or so of liquid in it.
“God!” he whispered, awed and feeling a twinge of pity despite himself. “He won’t last long now.” He lifted the container to his lips and sucked a mouthful.
Immediately his nostrils flared with disgust, and he spat violently, dropping the can and wiping at his lips with the back of his hand.
“Sea water!” he mumbled. He hurried to the Land-Rover and washed out his mouth with sweet water.
How the contamination had occurred he would never know. The raft might have lain for years in Wild Goose without its stores being checked or renewed.
From that point onwards Benedict must have known he was doomed.
His despair was easy to read in the blundering footsteps. He had started running, with panic driving him.
Five hundred yards further on he had fallen heavily into the bed of a dry ravine, and lain for a while before
