Durant was more than a kilometre away from the ship, but it felt like his vehicle had exploded. The bang was loud – louder than anything he had ever heard before – then a few seconds of silence, then absolute chaos. Disorientated, he’d gone off the road and the Land Rover banged into a parked car, setting off its alarm. Under normal circumstances, this would have attracted the attention of other motorists and passersby, but tonight, there was something much bigger happening across at the harbour and nobody even cast a glance in his direction. Durant stumbled out of the Land Rover, his hands shaking, and tried to dial Masondo’s number.
Shabalala was in the bathroom when he heard the explosion. It was distant, and at first he thought it was fireworks, but no matter how big the firework, it didn’t bring a shock wave that made buildings tremble. He realised it was the ship. Nandi threw aside the magazine she was reading and screamed. A moment of unease and silence followed. Shabalala burst from the bathroom and grabbed his phone on the dining room table. He dialled Ruslan’s number.
Ruslan was amazed at how the Mercedes had absorbed much of the noise and shock wave of the blast. The vehicle had rocked violently to and fro, but the suspension had handled it well. Burning objects were flying through the air and exploding around the car park and Ruslan thought it best to stay in the car. He could see the car was damaged on the outside, but there was little point in phoning the sheikh. He doubted anybody could have survived the explosion. He heard a siren, then more sirens and shouts of men as they ran towards the ship. There was nothing he could do. He turned on the car’s radio and tuned in to a news broadcast.
Khalid felt himself being pulled to his feet by the marine beside him.
‘You functional, sir?’
It seemed like an odd question, but Khalid guessed the marine wanted to know if he was alive or not.
‘Yes,’ Khalid said, ‘I think so.’
‘Evacuate the ship, sir, on the double. I need to assist my men.’
The marine ran towards the ship’s superstructure where the black smoke billowed from hatches. Khalid looked around, dazed. An alarm was sounding and people were running in different directions. Some were running towards the ship, others away. What the hell had happened? Did he do this? There was no way that little package could have done so much harm. It must have been something else. He ran towards the entrance and stopped at the ship’s sickbay which was close to the reception area. A well-built sailor had a female marine in his arms and as he pushed past, Khalid recognised the lifeless body of Rosetta Garcia and he collapsed against the bulkhead and cried out to Allah for mercy.
Masondo had felt this before. He had been in the bush war and when the jets bombed his camp, the only thing which kept him alive was his presence of mind. He thrust his fingers into his mouth and pulled out hot, fibre-like material which was choking him. His jacket was in tatters and the material came apart in his hands when he pulled it. By the time he took his next breath, he had tied the sleeve of his jacket around his mouth and nose. Better. He could see lights outside and the city skyline through a tear in the bulkhead. The heat was unbearable and it would kill him if he didn’t get out. All sounds had gone, replaced by a total silence, the oily debris so thick it had entirely sealed his ear canals. It was like watching a disaster movie with the mute on. It was no less terrifying being denied the crackle of the flames and the hissing of steam and the screams of the dying men and women around him. His leg hurt. He needn’t have worried about Nandi. She was a good girl. He was too protective over her. But what if something happened to him? Who would take care of her? Masondo winced in pain as he dragged himself off the deck and steadied himself against the bulkhead. This was a helicopter hangar. Hangars were geared to the hazards of fire. He felt the bulkhead behind him but there were just pipes and cables. Nothing, just choking black smoke. He fell back to his knees and vomited a thick wad of black slime. His eyes were gummed up and he wiped his hand across them to clear them. Blood. Was it snowing? Thousands of white snowflakes swirled around the room, contrasted against the black smoke and orange flames. The polystyrene snow. It was surreal. This marvel of the twentieth century, a three-billion-dollar showcase of state-of-the-art military hardware had instantaneously been transformed into a lifeless, defenceless piece of molten metal. And he was inside it. Nandi would be worried. He had to phone her, tell her he was okay. He couldn’t feel his legs.
Durant ran to the back of the Land Rover, took out his red emergency light and placed it on his dashboard. As a military-trained medic, he made sure that his kit was always packed and stowed in the vehicle. A paramedic without his medical kit was like a policeman without his weapon and handcuffs. Useless if not there when needed. He had his reflective jacket and yellow paramedic helmet on in seconds, turned the Land Rover around and fell in behind two other emergency vehicles as they raced past him, their sirens blaring. The access control boom at the port entrance was open now as the emergency vehicles poured in and he doubted the policemen on duty even noticed his vehicle as it raced towards N-shed. It was a spectacular sight as he drove over the bridge into the circle that ramped down towards the quay. The huge ship was burning, it was burning and he had known it was going to happen. He cursed himself for not figuring out sooner that Mohammed was just a red herring. The smell of burning kerosene was thick in the air and he thought of Mushkie Bear and how he’d promised Alexis he’d never be hurt again.
Ruslan opened the car door and stepped out, his shoes crunching metal debris under his feet. The heat was intense and the noises jarring. Loud bangs, hisses, crackles, different types of alarms. Screams. Ruslan looked up. The sky had turned completely dark and pieces of glowing material whizzed through the air like fireworks. His hands shook quite involuntarily as he leaned back into the car to get his phone; he dropped it twice before flipping it open. A cacophony of sirens grew louder as emergency vehicles raced past the parking area and found positions near the ship. He saw the three missed calls from Reno and dialled his number.
‘Reno,’ his voice trembled with unmistakable shock. ‘It’s terrible. The . . . ship. A big explosion, fire, it’s terrible, terrible.’ Shabalala could hear the sounds of chaos in the background. ‘People running, I can hear the fire engines.’
Shabalala pressed the phone closer to his ear. He didn’t want Nandi to hear any of this. ‘What happened? Was it a bomb?’
‘I don’t know. Big bang, then fire and . . . where I am, even the car park, showers of metal. I’m going to get closer.’
‘Be careful. Call me back in two minutes. And please, keep your phone on.’
Nandi was sobbing. She knew it was the ship. ‘I need to go there. I need to help . . . my dad.’
Shabalala pulled her close in a hug. ‘I don’t know if that’s wise. There’ll be plenty of help there. It’ll take too long to get there. Let’s rather go straight to the hospital.’ He had to get her mind off the possibility that her father might already be dead. ‘I bet your dad’s busy ordering everybody around as we speak. You know your dad.’
‘If something . . . happened to him, I don’t know what I’ll do.’
‘Let’s go, Nandi, we can’t stay here.’
It was a chaotic scene. Durant thought the scale of it was just too big for anyone to comprehend and in the midst of such horror it was hard to find someone to take charge. An incident of this magnitude had a way of making all contingency plans, chains of command and standard operating procedures fall apart. Within a few minutes, order and command would come, no question. An impenetrable cordon would be thrown around the area and it would become one of the biggest crime scenes South Africa had ever had. But only in a few minutes, once the shock and awe had subsided. And a few minutes was all Durant needed.
He drove right up to the outer cordon with two fire trucks and parked behind them. Suddenly, security seemed to be a lesser concern. In the chaos of war, medics outranked the commanders when there were people wounded and dying. As long as he looked like a medic, no one was going to stop him. Durant ran towards the ship with about twelve other emergency workers, some
SAPS
members and firemen. The marines had dispensed with the perimeter security measures and their first priority was getting the victims off the ship. The threat had shifted to inside the vessel. Durant stopped at the open door of a fire truck, looked around briefly, and snatched a two-way radio off the seat. Behind the seat he found a fireman’s jacket and quickly pulled it on. Too big, but it would have to do.
At the top of the gangway a shocked marine raised his hand as Durant stepped onto the deck. Before he could speak, Durant put the two-way radio to his mouth and keyed the mike once so that it made a convincing feedback crackle and shouted ‘Tell my crew I’m on my way, they mustn’t fall back, I’ll be there in thirty seconds.’ The marine lowered his arm.
As Durant neared the top of the gangway, he could see a fire crew dressed in silver fireproof suits running hoses towards the hangars. A continuous stream of people, most of them civilians, still lurched and stumbled down the gangway to the quay and was then directed to a triage area which the fire department had set up inside the building. Durant recognised a few of these walking wounded as politically or economically significant people. There were survivors. His watch told him it was eight minutes since the explosion. Order in the chaos would come soon. He felt a shove on his shoulder and was pushed backwards, almost stumbling. A fireman swung his breathing apparatus off his back and dropped it to the deck. An elderly lady had collapsed next to him and the fireman scooped her into his arms, his helmet falling off his head. Durant wanted to help, but he had to find Masondo. He snatched the breathing apparatus and helmet from the floor, and ran towards the hatch where the smoke was.
Durant felt he was in some dark and swirling nightmare, one you awoke from with your skin sweat-drenched and your mouth dry as ash. He wrestled the yellow oxygen tank onto his back and strapped the black breathing mask onto his face. He knew it was the smoke which did most of the damage, and oxygen would be at a premium inside the grey metal walls of the ship as the fire fed off the life-sustaining element. Marines were now carrying dead and dying people down the passageway. He counted at least ten bodies on the deck. Some were barely recognisable but he was sure Masondo wasn’t amongst them. He stumbled into the sickbay passageway and was greeted by a black wall of thick smoke, tearing towards the hatch. Visibility was almost zero, and he couldn’t see more than an arm’s length in any direction. A fireman slapped him on his helmet and motioned for him to follow into the Helo Hangar, the reception venue. He could smell the nauseating stench of burnt flesh through the mask. The heat through the fire jacket sucked the strength out of him. It felt like a dungeon in some medieval horror story. But this was no dungeon. Dungeons still held the living. This was a tomb. It was a mass of twisted steel, fallen debris, fiercely burning fires. The smoke was black and oily and Durant had to wipe the visor of his mask with his hand to see. A gaping hole in the deck and bulkhead had obviously borne the brunt of the explosion. Durant could see the torchlight beams through the smoke, and red emergency lights did little to help visibility. Navy firemen brought more casualties from the reception area and as they came past him, Durant looked out for Masondo. A hand gripped Durant’s arm. It was a young sailor, wide-eyed and speckles of blood on his cheeks. ‘Am I gonna die?’ The words were a cry.
‘Yes,’ Durant said without thinking. ‘But not today.’
The esplanade almost had a carnival feel to it. Tanveer bought a bunny chow from a vendor and someone else was offering a pair of binoculars on a pay-per-view basis. Human beings were so fickle, he thought. The burning ship had become entertainment, a Christmas spectacular, an exciting sideshow that beats staying at home and watching
TV
. It was almost like the crowds watching the twin towers burn, not only from neighbouring buildings, but from their homes all over the world. Watching people die had a strange fascination. Perhaps it was more clinical from this distance. You couldn’t hear the screams or see the blood. He remembered switching off his
TV
when the people started jumping off the towers and the cameras followed them all the way down until they exploded on the pavement. Even that was too graphic to bear.
‘Something big went wrong there, man,’ a hobo next to him observed, taking a puff from a cigarette.
Tanveer nodded. ‘Or right,’ he said. Only hindsight would explain how one kilogram of commercial explosives could practically destroy a multi-billion-dollar American warship.
Khalid was in the triage section of the passenger terminal shed, receiving oxygen. He was uninjured physically, but shock and fear had brought him down. More and more bodies were being brought into the triage area and then Khalid saw him – Fulham. Two firemen laid the stretcher down beside Khalid and he watched as a paramedic knelt over the stretcher and put an oxygen mask over his face. After a minute, the paramedic motioned to a nurse and said something to her he didn’t hear. Khalid felt his head swim. He knew it was over for him now. Morphine. Something to take him out of this place and this world – he couldn’t deal with it now. He cried in mock pain until a paramedic’s needle infused a surreal calm into his bloodstream and he drifted off to sleep.
Durant threw the fireman’s gear down in frustration. His search for Masondo was futile, the conditions in the damaged part of the ship too dangerous to work in. Only a specialised navy rescue team was allowed into the wrecked venue to search for what was now only bodies. It was forty minutes after the explosion and inhalation of that oily smoke would have swiftly finished off any poor souls who had survived the initial explosion. Security was tight when Durant came down the walkway and he only took off the fireman’s gear once he was in the triage area at the back end of N-shed. Here, there was some sense of organisation and efficiency. The casualties were dispatched to areas according to the severity of their injuries – red, yellow and green codes. Durant knew there was another unmarked area out of sight, where the blue codes, or deceased, would have gone. The green codes, mostly survivors suffering from shock but otherwise unhurt except for minor cuts or burns, were left largely alone and the yellow-and red-coded patients were prioritised. Red code meant life-threatening and here Durant could see battles were being fought to keep people alive. In the yellow-code section of the triage area, about thirty patients lay on stretchers and were being treated for serious, but not life–threatening, injuries. Smoke inhalation, broken limbs, firstand small second-degree burns.