Vendetta, page 11
What the fuck were you thinking?
Sannie disappeared from view. He turned his thoughts to the others – Ferri and Litis. Who would be at the funeral? Maybe he was just being paranoid, but the last thing he wanted to do was to put Sannie van Rensburg in a position of danger.
Adam knew that Tony and Evan had been looking for him. They’d given up calling years earlier, but every now and then he would hear from an old army friend or acquaintance that one or the other of them had been asking about him. Even in Sydney, they’d reached out through the South African Military Veterans of Australia organisation, via their Facebook page, asking if anyone knew where he was.
He was not hiding. Nor, however, did he want to see either of them. It might come to that, if he did go to the funeral, but if that happened, Adam didn’t want to be in a position where he would have to introduce Sannie to them.
Adam thought about Mia as he sipped his coffee and looked out over the water. He remembered her as a baby, when Frank’s wife had still been around, and Mia’s tears as a teenager at Frank’s funeral.
Ferri and Litis would find her, at Dune Lodge. Would they tell her the truth?
The war had scarred them all, though they had dealt with their wounds in different ways and their fortunes had varied. Evan was rich; Ferri had the potential to be the most powerful man in South Africa one day; Frank and Luiz were dead; Rassie had been the only other survivor and he had died of skin cancer. Hennie Steyn had survived his wounds but had later been killed at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale. Adam knew that his own service had changed his life. It was not the only reason he was divorced and penniless, but it was a factor.
Adam took a cold shower; he husbanded his electricity to charge his laptop and phone and did not run an electric geyser because of the cost. He dressed in a T-shirt and running shorts, ate a breakfast of fresh mangoes, and spent the morning trying to work on his thesis. He found it hard to concentrate.
Sannie van Rensburg kept intruding into his thoughts – the way she smiled, her figure, her honesty in relaying her own thoughts of self-harm, the scent of lavender soap. He’d felt a jolt of something, maybe adrenaline, when she’d suggested driving him to the Kalahari. He loved the idea and he really did want to be at Luiz’s send-off, even if it meant tearing the scab off old wounds and putting others at risk.
At midday he laced on his running shoes, packed his clothes and car guard’s reflective vest in his backpack, and set off for the punishing run along the sand and road under the full force of the sun. As he sweated and pounded his way from Pennington to Rocky Bay he imagined the pain in his calves and glutes as a kind of punishment for his own wrongdoings in Angola.
‘What would you say to a friend if he was in the same situation?’ the shrink had repeatedly said to him.
He said it to himself, his mantra, again as he ran.
You served your country.
You should be proud of yourself.
You did not let your comrades down.
The war may not have been a just one in the minds of many, but you did your duty, honourably.
You killed to protect your comrades, and only when necessary.
No one could go through war, see what you have seen, and not be affected.
You are a good man, Adam Kruger.
‘Bullshit,’ he said out loud. He shook his head as he ran, trying to get rid of the memories.
*
His shift in the car park dragged, and the tips were small.
He jogged slowly home along the beach, scanning the late-afternoon walkers from a distance, hoping and dreading that one of them might be Sannie.
It was almost dark by the time he turned off the sand onto the path leading to his house. Inside, he lit a couple of paraffin lanterns and started boiling water on the gas hob to make pap. While he waited, he took out his frustration on the old carpet in the master bedroom, ripping it up off the floor and cutting and rolling it into sections that he would be able to carry.
He ate dinner and treated himself to his third-last bottle of Black Label as he sat on the stoep.
Adam blew his lanterns out at nine pm and went to bed. He lay there, listening to the rush of the surf. Normally comforting, tonight it was like white noise, played on a loop to torment him and prevent him from sleeping.
At midnight, he got out of bed, walked through to his office and opened his laptop. The battery was low so he plugged the computer in, but there was no power. There was no load shedding, the South African power company Eskom’s euphemism for rolling blackouts due to a lack of maintenance, planned for this time of night, and the weather was good, so it was unlikely a storm had disrupted supply. There was nothing he could do – this was Africa. He still had enough battery life to do some work so he tried to make up for his wasted time during the day.
After half an hour more of fruitless reading and tapping a few words, Adam leaned back in his chair, stretched and yawned. Perhaps he could go back to bed and hope for sleep this time.
He went through to his bedroom and lay on his back, one arm crooked behind his head. He thought about Sannie again.
Outside, his wooden deck creaked.
He sat up. Early mornings, after daybreak, he often heard one of Pennington’s resident troops of vervet monkeys scampering about on the deck or roof. They were especially active on garbage collection days. Monkeys, however, were not active at night-time.
Adam got out of bed and went to the window. He pulled aside the stained bedsheet he’d nailed to the wooden frame as a makeshift curtain. He thought he saw movement, but at this hour it could have been his eyes playing tricks on him. Maybe it had been a stray cat. He picked up his phone off the upturned old wooden beer crate that served as a bedside table.
Adam heard a crack, like splintering timber, from the rear of the house.
He left his bedroom and went through to the next room, where he’d been pulling up the carpet. He picked up a claw hammer and padded softly through to the kitchen. He could feel the sawdust sticking to his bare feet and his pulse throbbing in his neck. He had no alarm or panic button, but nor did he have many possessions of real value. He slept with his phone beside him and his laptop under his bed – it was essential for his studies and, apart from his tools, which had been his late grandfather’s, there was nothing else worth stealing.
His phone vibrated in his hand. He looked at the screen and was surprised to see a WhatsApp message, at this late hour, from Sannie van Rensburg.
Spoke to Mia G this evening. She says room is still free at the lodge if you change your mind.
She could have sent that message in the morning, or earlier in the evening, Adam thought. Had the detective been mulling over whether or not to contact him, and now, like him, found herself tossing and turning?
Adam selected the torch app on his phone and shone it out the kitchen window, casting the light around the backyard. There was nothing. He took hold of the back door’s handle and jiggled it. It was locked and the frame was intact.
He went into the hallway and could see that the front door was also still locked. At the opposite end of the house to his bedroom he had removed a door and window that had previously led onto a small timber deck, its planks and steps long since rotted. He’d covered the openings with plastic sheeting, sealing them off when he’d realised halfway through the project that it was beyond his current budget. The plastic was intact. Relieved, he headed down the corridor towards his room, reading the message on his phone again and turning his mind back to Sannie’s thought processes.
Maybe their discussion about suicide and grief had awakened her own demons? He felt concerned for her. He could, he supposed, just ask her why she’d sent a message at three in the morning.
As he walked, he started tapping out a message. Howzit? You’re up lat–
The blow from behind knocked Adam straight to the floor and his face smashed into the bare wooden boards of the hallway.
*
Sannie’s phone beeped and she sat up, quickly, and grabbed it off the nightstand.
The ceiling fan squeaked above her, providing some relief from the lingering heat. Instead of pyjamas she was dressed only in a T-shirt and underpants. For all its faults, Adam’s place, set just across the road from the beach, seemed to have a continual breeze. By contrast, Johan’s house, just a few hundred metres back from the beach, was sheltered and therefore much hotter.
She read Adam’s message, a fragment of a sentence. Sannie switched on the bedside light, propped herself up against two pillows, and waited for him to finish. But after a minute, there was still nothing more.
Sannie was surprised how quickly Adam had replied. She’d agonised over sending the message to him, after speaking to Mia that evening at about nine, when she knew Mia would be back from her evening game drive. Mia had repeated her offer and told Sannie that she was very keen to meet Adam. She had some memories of him from her childhood and her father’s funeral and wanted to reconnect. Mia had messaged her to say she would not be able to take time off when Sannie visited, as had been her plan, because of the arrival of some unexpected guests at the lodge. However, they would still be able to spend time together.
Sannie had told Mia she would try again, but she was worried about being seen to be desperate, or somehow stalking this handsome, troubled man. She tried to tell herself she was just doing the right thing, the Christian thing, by offering a poor man a lift to a funeral, but she could not deny she felt a physical attraction to him as well.
For a moment, she wondered if Adam might be drunk – she’d gone to bed after just one glass of wine with Johan and Annelien. Then she remembered Adam’s paltry stash of three bottles of warm Carling Black Label. That was hardly enough to get a man his size so drunk that he couldn’t finish a sentence.
Up late yourself, she typed into her phone, and hit send.
Again, she waited. Her phone buzzed.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
‘What the hell?’ she said out loud. Was that some kind of vulgar expression of pleasure? She doubted it. Something felt very odd about the weird reply. Sannie called Adam’s phone, waiting impatiently while it rang. He answered.
‘Adam?’
He said nothing, but she heard a noise like heavy breathing.
‘What are you doing?’
She was about to end the call when she heard what sounded like a gasp of pain. The call ended. When she tried to redial she got a message saying the phone was out of range.
‘Shit.’ She got out of bed, pulled on a pair of swimming shorts and put on her slops. She grabbed her keys, and her Z88 pistol out of its holster. Sannie also picked up the high-powered LED torch she kept by her bed because of load shedding. She opened the door, then the Xpanda security gate, slammed it shut, and ran down the external stairs leading to the flat. She pressed the remote control to deactivate the main house’s external alarm beams, then fumbled for the other remote to open the electric gate. ‘Bloody South Africa.’
She dialled as she drove, talking into the Bluetooth microphone. ‘This is Captain Susan van Rensburg, South African Police Service,’ she said as soon as the emergency operator answered. She gave Adam’s address and ordered them to send an ambulance.
Sannie accelerated down Pennington Drive. Her Fortuner bounced over the speed humps and her tyres squealed as she turned hard right just past the OK supermarket into Botha Place. She floored the pedal again, the car now smacking in and out of potholes until she braked hard outside Adam’s house.
She racked the Z88 and held it in her right hand, then got out of the car.
‘Adam!’
She turned on the torch and used it to light her way as she ran up the overgrown garden path. Out of habit she held the torch away from her body.
‘Adam, are you all right?’
When she came to the front door, she saw that it was partially open. She kicked it so that it swung wide, but stood just to one side.
Sannie heard a noise from inside the house, to the left. She tried to remember the layout; Adam’s bedroom was to the right. She drew a breath then stepped in, pivoting at the waist and bringing her pistol and torch up at the sound of feet thumping down the hall on bare floorboards.
It was dark, and she saw no one.
She was about to run down the hall in the direction she’d heard the footsteps, but when she looked to her right she saw Adam, lying on the floor on his back, his left arm outstretched. Sannie pulled out her phone, called the emergency number again, and reported a home invasion at Adam’s address. Then she went to Adam, knelt and put a hand to his neck, feeling for his carotid artery. He was still alive, but out cold. She rolled him onto his side but could see no sign of a gunshot wound. She got to her feet again, ran down the hallway and brought her pistol up as she came to the end room.
‘Stop, police!’ She kicked in the door and entered, ducking as she did so, to give herself a tiny advantage. The end of the building was open. Adam, in the course of his renovations, had taken out a door and a window leading to the outside, and covered them with plastic sheeting. Now, however, there was a man-sized rip in the plastic, which fluttered in the ocean breeze.
Sannie moved cautiously to the torn wall and stuck her head out. The remains of a clearly rotten wooden deck and stairs had been partly demolished and she found herself looking out over a precipice at a drop of a couple of metres. The man must have exited in a rush, then dropped and run. There was no sign of the intruder.
She turned and hurried back to Adam.
When she reached him, he was conscious and groaning.
‘Adam, talk to me. Are you OK?’
‘Ja, fine. I think I passed out.’
‘The guy is gone. What happened?’
Adam sat up and put a hand to his throat. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. ‘He came up behind me, hit me, and I think he choked me.’
‘Unusual for a robbery,’ Sannie said, as much to herself as to Adam.
He coughed. ‘I can’t remember what happened after that.’
Sannie exhaled, relieved that Adam was not hurt badly. She glanced around. ‘Is that your gun?’
Adam followed her gaze. On the floor next to where Adam’s outstretched hand had been was a pistol. It looked like a CZ, a Czech-made small-calibre handgun.
‘I’ve never seen it before in my life. I don’t own a gun.’ Apart from his role in foiling the robbery at Scottburgh Mall, the last time Adam had fired a gun was in the army.
Chapter 11
Angola, 1987
‘We have to complete the mission, Sergeant,’ Ferri said to Greenaway.
Adam watched the bush, scanning the area Frank had allocated him, but he cocked his head to better hear the increasingly heated argument between the two senior members of the fire force.
‘I’ll take the trackers and a couple of the men,’ Ferri continued. ‘We need to get to the aircraft.’
Frank shook his head. ‘We stay here until the chopper comes for Hennie, then we re-assess. Sir, we can’t split the patrol. The enemy knows we’re here now and they’ll be waiting for us.’
‘You’re not in command here,’ Ferri said.
Frank spat in the dirt. Rassie the medic knelt beside Hennie who lay, bandaged, in the blood-soaked dirt, gasping for breath. Rassie held Hennie’s hand and squeezed it.
‘Rossouw, Litis, come with me,’ Ferri ordered.
Adam glanced at Evan, who was lying a few metres to his left. Evan looked back at Adam, gave a small shrug of his shoulders, and dragged himself to his feet.
‘Fuck.’ Frank shook his head, ‘Rossouw stays with me. I need him to guide the Puma in, and to call in air support if we need it to cover the evacuation. Sir . . . I strongly advise that we all stick together; we don’t know how many enemy are waiting for us, and our priority right now is our man, Corporal Steyn. We can go look for the downed aircraft just now, or, better still, get the air force to do a photo recce, an aerial reconnaissance to look for survivors.’
‘All right, Rossouw can stay with you, but stop telling me what to do.’ Ferri pointed to Luiz and Roberto. ‘You two – come, Litis as well.’
The San soldiers exchanged a few words in their language with each other then stood and moved to Ferri’s side.
Evan stood and adjusted his webbing before joining Ferri and the San. Part of Adam wanted to go with them, in search of action, but he felt safer, more assured, sticking with Sergeant Greenaway.
‘Sheesh.’ Frank sighed. ‘The gunfire will have alerted every fucking Cuban and Angolan within five klicks of here, sir. Just go for a recce, all right?’
Ferri nodded.
‘Then come back, and we all go together,’ Frank continued.
‘I will take your suggestion on board, Sergeant,’ Ferri said.
‘Take care, bru,’ Adam whispered to Evan, who nodded. The two trackers led the way into the bush, and the officer and Evan followed them.
‘That doos is going to get himself and the others killed,’ Rossouw said.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Frank said. ‘Find out where the Puma is.’
‘All right, Sarge,’ Rossouw said, then spoke into his handset.
Adam thought that Frank probably agreed with Rossouw; Ferri was a cunt. His retort to Rossouw had been more matter-of-fact than admonishing. Adam felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise; there was definitely something not right about this mission, and not just in the way the sergeant and the officer were at each other’s throats. He’d noted the way Frank had been excluded from the briefing between the lieutenant and the colonel back at Ondangwa.
‘Sarge,’ Adam said.
‘What?’
