The Pride, page 19
She was exhausted, sore and bleeding from the hand, but she had to find Sonja, and get to Hudson. Emma checked the man on the floor; he was out cold. She gave him a kick in the ribs to make sure he wasn’t faking, then grabbed him by the epaulettes of his safari shirt and dragged him down the length of the passenger compartment. When she got to the open door at the rear Emma pushed him out. He landed with a thud on the road.
Emma banged on the floor of the truck. She knew from Bheki that the compartment was below. ‘Mum! Mum!’ She put her ear on the linoleum.
She heard nothing.
‘Shit.’
She felt for the edges of the floor covering and lifted it up. As she tugged it from under the chairs and to one side she saw a hatch. It was secured with a sliding bolt and a padlock.
Emma felt the panic rise in her. She had to think, about Sonja, Hudson and herself. First, she needed to get rid of the danger. She crawled back under the front seat and retrieved her pistol and then the driver’s knife. She leaned into the front of the truck and took the keys from the ignition.
She started trying the padlock with the assortment of keys on the ring and got lucky with the fourth. Emma took a deep breath, steeling herself for the worst, as she removed the lock, undid the bolt and opened the hatch. It opened with a squeak.
‘Mum?’
She exhaled. In the hidden cavity were two large green vinyl dive bags; at least they weren’t big enough to contain a body, she thought.
Emma went to the rear of the compartment, jumped down and sprinted back up the road to where Hudson’s vehicle had come to rest. She felt bad, now, that she had wasted time looking for Sonja, who was clearly not inside the vehicle.
‘Hudson!’
The Land Cruiser had come to rest on its side, near where the cleared verge of the highway surrendered to the dry African bush beyond. She heard the ping, ping, ping of tortured metal, contracting in the heat. The vehicle’s radiator hissed steam.
‘Hudson?’ She ran around the vehicle, seeing the crazed windscreen, blood smears, his Colt .45 lying on the ground. He hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt.
Everything they had done had been crazy and it was bloody Sonja who had set them off on this mad, violent chase. As usual, she had left nothing but death and destruction in her wake.
And tears.
Hudson had been thrown from the vehicle and was lying on his back, ten metres away, his face a mask of blood, one leg bent at an impossible angle. He wasn’t moving. Emma started to cry.
‘No! Damn you to fucking hell, no!’
Chapter 15
Carrington Wu took out his Huawei phone and called Hendricks from the air. Normal airline restrictions about making calls didn’t apply when one owned the aircraft, which in this case was a twin-engine Beechcraft.
‘Hello, Vincent, how are you? Have I caught you at a bad time?’
‘I’m fine, and no, I’m just playing a round of golf.’
‘A fine game, which, as you know, I enjoy myself.’
‘Carrington, I don’t wish to sound rude, but I’m also talking business here on the fairway.’
‘Of course. I am actually on my way to you, but wanted to give you a “heads-up”, I believe is the term.’
‘Where are you? In a car?’
Wu looked out the window at the dry expanses of Africa. Some saw emptiness there, but Wu saw money, a vast, still mostly untapped well of resources to feed his own country, hungry as it was for raw materials.
‘I’m flying, not far out of Cape Town International.’ He gave Vincent his arrival details. ‘I have a gift for you, Vincent. Boxed and ready for you to open.’
‘Really?’
‘I was annoyed that certain personal matters have resulted in the loss of a shipment of abalone, but I have no desire for some third party to come between us, my friend.’
‘And I feel the same.’
‘I bring this present to you not just as a show of good faith in our business relationship.’
‘That is good.’
Wu looked back at the cargo hold, beyond the webbing net, at the crate. The thought of the woman in there was mildly arousing to him. He wondered what Hendricks, a well-known devotee of the sins of the flesh, would make of her.
‘This gift,’ Hendricks continued with a chuckle, ‘is it bigger than a breadbox?’
‘About five-ten, auburn hair, blue eyes.’
‘Ah, just my size. I’m indebted to you.’
‘Vincent?’
‘Yes?’
‘She is like a caged lioness, this one. Handle with care.’
*
Hendricks ended the call, excused himself once more to the man he was playing golf with, and made another call, to a SARS officer at Cape Town airport who received a fat bundle of cash from his network every month.
‘South African Revenue Service, Gerald speaking. How can I help?’
Vincent gave the man Wu’s name and the details of his flight. ‘Make sure he and his cargo are not delayed.’
‘Of course, sir,’ Gerald said.
Hendricks ended the call.
‘You’ve got the best golf courses in the world outside of Ireland, Vincent,’ his playing partner said to him with a broad smile.
‘Thank you, David. I’d love to come to Ireland sometime in the future and play some of yours.’
‘If you’ve a taste for the finer things in life, like a good Irish whisky, you’d love it.’
Vincent put a ball and a tee on the ground. ‘So, David, our mutual friend in the UK tells me you’re here to do some shopping, for more than carved wooden giraffes.’
The Irishman, David Rafferty, was dressed well, casual but stylish, like a successful businessman nearing the end of a good career, perhaps with an eye on an early retirement. His build and complexion spoke of a life well lived; the broad shoulders, crooked nose and the white scars on his knuckles hinted at another side.
‘That’s true, and I appreciate you seeing me.’
Vincent swung his driver.
‘Good shot, Vincent.’
Hendricks retrieved his tee and both men got into the buggy, with Vincent at the wheel. ‘What’s on your shopping list, David?’
‘Assault rifles. AKs, as long as they’re not made in some Yugoslav tractor factory in the 1950s – something more modern if you’ve got it; RPG-7 grenade launchers, and some Dragunov sniper rifles.’
Vincent raised his eyebrows. ‘And what makes you think that I, an honest Cape Town property developer, would have access to such weapons?’
‘Honest property developer? Sure, and that’s an oxymoron if ever I’ve heard one. No, you’re a man with an eye for a deal, Vincent, is what I hear, and also one with a bit of a soft heart for the oppressed. Is it true you were a foot-soldier in the ANC in the old days?’
They stopped where David’s ball had landed. David selected an iron and Vincent nodded at his choice.
‘I did my time,’ Vincent said. ‘My people were forcibly evicted from their homes in Cape Town and moved out onto the flats by the apartheid regime. We had to do whatever we could to survive.’
‘Then you know what it’s like to be oppressed, to have your identity taken away from you.’
‘I always thought it was the Catholics who were the underdogs in your country?’
‘It’s my people, the Protestants, who’ve been left in the lurch since this whole Brexit mess happened. We want to stay part of Great Britain, but now with the hard border in place it’s as though our enemy has won and we’re locked out of our own country. It suits the Tories in Downing Street to court my people when they need our vote, but they care nothing for us. Trouble’s brewing again, so it is.’
‘Governments are all cut from the same cloth, favouring their own supporters over anyone else,’ Vincent said. ‘My people have not fared well since Mandela. I myself left the ANC.’
‘Sure, and now you’re a big man in the Democratic Alliance, isn’t that right?’ David took his shot, and they both watched as his ball reached the green. They got back in the buggy. ‘Running for parliament, I hear.’
‘I’ll do my best.’ Hendricks had been contacted by a man he knew in England, a former Capetonian, whose tourism business had been crippled by the COVID pandemic. The man had ‘pivoted’ during the outbreak to importing illegal drugs, cocaine from South America, shipped via South Africa. The man had dealings in Northern Ireland and it seemed that the extremists on both sides of the political and religious divide were no strangers to the drug trade. ‘You’re UVF? Ulster Volunteer Force?’
‘More of a splinter group. So, you won’t sell me some guns, Vincent?’
‘No.’ Out of habit he made as if to scratch his chin, placing his hand over his mouth, just in case there was some anti-gang squad surveillance team, or even someone from State Security, snooping at the behest of the ruling party, trying to lip-read. ‘I said I was an honest man.’
‘Yes, so you said,’ David said. ‘Though your old pal from Cape Town, Engels, said you were still in the, shall we say, import–export business.’
They walked the short distance to his ball. ‘Tell me, David, why are you reaching out to me for guns? Like you say, I’m a businessman and aspiring politician.’
David grinned. ‘And, from what I hear, one of the largest exporters of abalone out of South Africa. Got a licence for that, have you, Vincent?’
Vincent narrowed his eyes. Engels had told him via an encrypted messenger service that this Irishman wanted ‘hardware’. Engels had gone quiet these last few days, but that wasn’t unusual. Vincent knew his old friend from the Cape Flats was sometimes too fond of his own merchandise, as well as English girls, and every now and then dropped out of contact on a drug-fuelled bender. Engels had said that ‘David Rafferty’, whatever his real name was, would pay for contacts.
‘No comment,’ Vincent said. ‘But perhaps I can facilitate an introduction for you. There is a person I can put you in touch with who will have the hardware you want.’
‘I’m guessing there’ll be a fee for this introduction.’
‘A million rand.’
David whistled. They stopped the buggy, and Vincent got out and took his next shot.
‘Sure, and that’s more than I expected to pay for the whole shipment,’ David said. ‘I’m looking for the best deal I can get.’
‘I thought you were looking for guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers at short notice, in the face of a volatile situation in your country.’
‘Aye. I’ll give you half a million for an introduction.’
‘Eight hundred thousand, not a rand less.’
David hesitated for a moment, then nodded. ‘All right.’ They got in the buggy and drove to the green. ‘When and where can I meet the dealer?’
‘X is in Mozambique,’ Vincent said as they got out and went to his ball.
‘“X”? Bit theatrical, isn’t it? What do you know about him – or her?’
Vincent looked the Irishman in the eyes. ‘What makes you think X could be a woman?’
David grinned. ‘It’s a new world, Vincent. By rights I should be asking you what pronoun you prefer to be addressed by. In my business I’ve come across some hard women, as well as tough guys.’
Vincent held the other man’s stare. He didn’t let on, but Wu, who also dealt with X at arm’s length when he needed firearms, had recently voiced an opinion that he thought the supplier could be a woman. It was, Wu said, a feeling he had picked up from the tone of X’s messages. ‘I’ve never met X in person. I’m told they are from Africa, originally, but served in the British Army in the 1990s. For that reason, I doubt they would see you if you were from the IRA. In any case, you’ll be meeting an intermediary in Mozambique.’
‘And how, exactly, will all this take place?’ David asked.
‘X’s man – or woman, or whatever – is in Palma in the north of Mozambique.’
David raised his eyebrows. ‘Palma? Isn’t there a wee war going on there, with ISIS taking over the place?’
‘Correct,’ Vincent said. ‘And it’s awash with guns right now. It’s said X has contacts everywhere, on all sides of all conflicts. There’s a mercenary crew headed by a man named Steve Oosthuizen based just outside of Palma at the moment. They’re flying out expat workers from the liquefied natural gas plant there. I know you’re ex–British Army yourself – I had you checked out – and I’ve recommended you to Oosthuizen.’
‘You seem to be a few steps ahead of me, Vincent.’
‘When Engels told me you were coming, I took the necessary steps.’
‘You and this Oosthuizen . . . is he in your line of business also?’
Vincent shook his head. ‘No. Some members of a criminal gang, nothing to do with me, assaulted his mother, badly, in a robbery. Steve came to me and I gave him the names he needed. He owes me a favour.’
‘Fair enough. How will I know who to contact? When? Where?’
‘Do you have a satellite phone?’
‘I do,’ David said. ‘I wasn’t sure in which far-flung part of this continent I’d end up.’
‘SMS me the number. You’ll get a message when you’re in Mozambique. Check every hour on the hour once you arrive. How do you intend to move your hardware out of Africa, once you buy it?’
‘I’d be expecting this X to have a plan.’
‘No,’ Vincent said. ‘Let me introduce you to a man who specialises in import–export, flying certain goods out of Zimbabwe.’
‘Zimbabwe, you say? All right. Thanks.’
‘All part of the service.’ Vincent selected his putter. He lined up the ball as David waited by the flag. They had deliberately avoided having a caddy along for this game. Vincent looked up from the ball to David. ‘That was my import–export contact on the phone, earlier. He’ll be in Cape Town later this evening. I’ll introduce you.’
‘That’d be grand.’
‘Just do me a favour,’ Vincent said.
‘For sure.’
Vincent put one hand over his mouth again. ‘Say nothing about guns. If I tell him you want to ship “product” from Zimbabwe to the UK or Ireland, he’ll assume it will be something else.’
‘Abalone?’
Vincent smiled. ‘No comment. I’m thinking of staging a little event, if everything aligns. It’s something of a sporting fixture, with a little wagering and partying thrown in. You can come along and meet my guy.’
‘Wild horses wouldn’t keep me away, Vincent. Can I bring a friend? She’s a real little pistol, one of those hard women I was talking about.’
‘Of course.’ Vincent took his putter in both hands again, looked from the ball to the hole and played his stroke. David lifted the flag just as the ball spun around the edge of the cup and landed with a satisfying plop.
David fished Vincent’s ball out and handed it back to him. ‘Well played. I concede. I didn’t say anything earlier, when we met, but I understand you’ve some family issues. I’m sorry for your loss.’
‘Thank you, David. My heart is heavy, but the man I’ve been speaking of has brought me a gift that will help ease my burden.’
David shook his head. ‘What could possibly make up for the loss of a child?’
‘The woman who killed him.’
*
Emma crouched over Hudson and felt at his neck for a pulse.
‘Thank God.’
He blinked, looked up at her and tried to sit up.
‘Stay down.’ She put a hand on his chest, gently. ‘You got shot out of the truck like a fucking human cannonball. You might have a neck injury.’
‘My leg.’ He was a big, strapping safari guide, but when he tried to move his right leg he cried out in agony.
‘Broken,’ Emma said. ‘I told you, stay still.’
He gritted his teeth. ‘Bossy. Just like –’
‘Don’t fucking talk to me about her.’ She swallowed hard, trying to maintain the authoritative look, but her lower lip started to tremble. ‘She’s not in the truck.’
He reached out and gripped her hand, squeezing it. ‘She’s tough. You have to be as well. What . . . what was in the truck?’
‘A couple of big bags, hidden in the compartment where Bheki said they’d put Mum.’
‘Go take a look at what’s in them. Must be something valuable . . . why that guy didn’t want to stop. Emma, is he . . .?’
She frowned. ‘Out cold. Don’t worry – I didn’t go full Sonja on him.’
He tried a small laugh, but his body thought better of that. ‘She’s alive. We’ve just got to find her.’
‘We aren’t going anywhere any time soon, cowboy. Let me get the first aid kit.’
She went to the rolled Land Cruiser and ferreted about under the seats until she found the kit, and the remnants of the water container she’d tipped onto the road. She heard a car and ran to the roadside.
Emma started waving, but the driver, in an expensive-looking SUV, was already slowing.
‘Dumela,’ said a man in a suit, greeting her in Tswana as he got out. ‘My goodness. I will call an ambulance.’
‘Thank you so much,’ she said. ‘Can you also call the police, please? There’s an unconscious man by the other vehicle. He ran us off the road.’
‘Really?’ The man’s mouth and eyes were wide open. ‘All of this, in Botswana?’
Emma gave Hudson some painkillers and took a golf umbrella from the Land Cruiser to give him some shade. She asked the businessman to wait with him, took a bandage from the first aid kit, then strode across the road. The other driver was still lying on the tarmac where she had last seen him. She rolled him onto his belly, and as she began to draw his arms together behind his back he started to come to. He struggled against her.
