Red Earth (8 page)

Chapter 9

Banger arrived in his security patrol car, alone, just as the paramedics were loading the wounded policeman into the ambulance. There were still no police in attendance.

‘Babes, thank God you're safe. I'm sorry I'm late. I dropped Sipho at his home and I couldn't get a phone signal for ages.' He ran to her and hugged her, then held her at arm's length. ‘Sheesh, are you sure you're all right? All this blood …'

Nia nodded towards the departing ambulance. ‘It's his. I'm fine. Sort of.'

He clasped her tightly again and she let herself melt into him, or get as close as she could, given he was wearing a bulletproof vest and had a nine-millimetre pistol in a holster velcroed to his chest. He smelled of sweat and gun oil. She looked up into his eyes and he kissed her and ran his fingers through her hair, gently massaging her scalp at the same time. He knew how to soothe her.

Nia just wanted to go home and get into a bath, but there was unfinished business here, plenty of it. Reluctantly, she broke the embrace. The vulture man had disappeared into the nearby hut and
kraal
. He was walking back to them now, wiping his bloodied hands with a fistful of grass. ‘Banger, this is …'

‘Mike Dunn.' He came to them and held out a closed fist. ‘Don't want to get blood all over you.'

‘Angus Greiner. Everyone calls me Banger.' He bumped fists with the older man then looked from Dunn to Nia. ‘So, someone tell me what's going on here.'

Nia ran through the series of events and as she spoke the emotion welled up from deep inside her. By the time she got to the part where she was being shot at she could barely form her words. She fought to remain controlled.

‘It's OK, babe.' He patted her shoulder. ‘Have the police been and gone already?'

‘No, they haven't got here yet. It's this bomb in Durban or whatever,' she said.

‘But I heard, on the radio news, that a tracker helicopter had been fired on and that the police were investigating,' Banger said.

Nia shook her head. ‘No, I told John that a kid had pointed an AK-47 at me and told him to pass that onto the police. It must have got lost in translation.'

Banger nodded. ‘It sure got my attention; when I spoke to John he told me it was you in pursuit. I want to get these bastards.'

‘We should wait for the police, Banger,' Nia said.

Mike looked up the dirt road, in the direction the Fortuner had headed, then back at the
kraal
. ‘The kid I was telling you about, his name's Themba …'

Nia nodded.

‘Just as I thought, that's his home over there. I found a couple of his school books in there with his name on them. I knew he lived around here somewhere, just not where exactly.'

‘You think he's one of the car thieves, that he's gone back to his old ways?'

‘Who is this?' Banger interrupted.

Nia brought him up to speed.

‘We don't know he's a criminal,' Mike said. ‘You said he was wearing a school uniform?'

Nia put her hands on her hips. ‘Yes, he was. Maybe the hijacker brought the Fortuner here to hide it. He certainly left with the kid.'

‘And a girl. You think she's in on it?'

Nia shrugged. ‘Who knows? All we do know is they're gone and they've got a child with them.'

‘All right, I've got to go and get those kids,' Banger said.

Nia turned from him and walked to her helicopter. A flush of anger burned her cheeks. It was irrational to be mad, she knew, but it really irked her that Banger had no sooner showed up than he was going again. Behind her, she heard Mike saying something; it was hard to hear exactly what it was that he muttered, in his deep voice, but she thought she heard him say, ‘go to her'. That riled her even more.

‘Babe?'

She recoiled at her pet name but didn't look back at him. Instead she went to the chopper, opened her door and climbed into the pilot's seat.

Banger came to her. He looked down at her with his pale green eyes. His colouring was odd, exotic, a legacy of his Hungarian father and Irish mother, he'd told her. His parents had come to South Africa in the seventies and Angus had been born in Durban, like her. They'd met at Joe Cools on the beach.

‘Babe, I'm sorry. The old dude, he says I should stay here with you.'

Nia snorted. She hadn't really thought of Mike as an ‘old dude'. She looked over to where he was reaching into his Land Rover, through the right rear door. He was tall, rangy, with dark hair turning to grey. He pulled out a gun case, unzipped it, and extracted what looked like a heavy-bore hunting rifle. He placed the rifle down and then found a leather cartridge belt in the vehicle which he buckled on. He had the air about him of a man who knew what he was doing. His face was longish, angular, sort of handsome. She wondered, indeed, how old he was. Maybe mid-forties, she thought, perhaps fifteen years her senior, but to Banger, who was two years younger than her, that would qualify as ‘old'.

She looked back to Banger. Like her, he surfed and worked out in the gym. He was tanned and ripped and could have been on the cover of a fitness magazine. ‘I'm fine.'

‘Yeah? You don't really look it. What are you going to do?'

‘I have to wait here until the company can send some fuel. God knows how long that will take. I'm worried about the baby, Angus.'

He nodded. ‘Me too. And I'm worried about you. You put your life at risk today.'

She felt the anger rise in her again. ‘You put your life at risk
every day
. I know how many security guys get shot in this country. You were probably safer when you were in Afghanistan.'

He grinned. ‘Probably.'

Banger had been a policeman but had left the service after being passed over for promotion to detective. Like many South Africans with police or military experience he'd gone to Afghanistan to work as a civilian security contractor, providing protection to VIPs and riding shotgun on convoys out of Pakistan for the American and NATO war machine. When the war had de-escalated he'd come home.

‘We should wait here for the cops,' Nia said.

Mike was walking over to the helicopter. ‘You're right, we should,' he said, breaking into their conversation. ‘But there are kids in trouble in that car. We can't just wait. I'm going to pick up their trail, see if I can get eyes on them.'

‘You won't try and stop them, do something silly, will you?' Nia felt a rush of concern for the man, perhaps because he had been the only person to come to her assistance when she needed someone.

‘I can back you up,' Banger said.

Mike looked to Banger's little hatchback car. ‘Not in that. The road just goes from bad to worse up here. If they've headed into the hills, rather than down to the motorway, you won't get more than another kilometre.'

‘Dude's got an AK,
bru
, and it's two against one. You sure you're up for those odds?'

‘I'm going to find them, not start a gunfight,' Mike said.

Nia folded her arms. ‘Well, there's nothing I can do. When I've refuelled I can go have a look for the Fortuner. Until then, you two sort this out between yourselves.'

Banger looked into her eyes. ‘Are you OK, seriously?'

‘I'm fine.'

‘I'm going,' said Mike.

Banger went to his patrol car, reached under the front seat and pulled out a .38 special revolver. He brought it to Nia.

‘What's this?' she asked him.

‘My back-up weapon.'

‘Legal?'

Banger's mouth crinkled into a half-grin. ‘Ish.'

She took the pistol. ‘I hope I don't have to use it.'

Banger kissed her.

Mike was already in the Land Rover, starting the engine. Banger jogged around to the passenger side and climbed in. He blew Nia another kiss and she smiled back at him.

*

Mike drove as fast as he dared on the corrugated red earth road. After a couple of kilometres, though, he saw a stationary car, an Audi, with three doors open. He slowed. It had been a black Q5 that had dropped the white man at the Mona market.

Banger was texting on his phone, smiling to himself. Mike guessed he was communicating with the helicopter pilot.
Lucky guy
, he thought. She'd been gutsy to stay close to the hijacked Toyota when people were shooting at her. ‘Check this out,' he said.

Banger looked up, put away the phone and drew the nine-millimetre from his chest holster and cocked it. ‘Look how that car's sitting low. Its tyres have been shot out. Take it easy, man.'

Mike nodded. As he came closer he saw the bullet holes and the bare metal scratches where bullets had scored the paintwork. He stopped the Land Rover and got out, taking his rifle with him.

Banger approached the Audi with his pistol up, his left hand wrapped around his right. Mike could hear a hiss, like a snake, and saw the puddle that darkened the earth under the radiator. He sniffed the air.

‘Explosives,' Banger said, then pointed to a patch of burnt grass and disturbed dirt. ‘Grenade.'

‘You get many grenade attacks in your line of work?' Mike asked.

‘I did in Afghanistan.'

Mike nodded. The kid was brash, cocky, and pumped up from long hours at the gym, maybe steroids, but he did have some experience. Mike scanned the ground and started in a circle around the car, while Banger checked the vehicle itself.

‘Nothing inside,' Banger said.

Mike dropped to one knee and ran his pinched thumb and forefinger along a stem of flattened grass. He held his hand up to Banger when the security man came over to him.

‘Blood.'

Mike touched his fingers together a few times. ‘Fresh.' He stood, placing himself so the tracks were between him and the sun. ‘One man, dragging a leg, headed that way.'

‘Back towards the chopper, where we just came from?'

Mike looked back up the road, thinking the same thing as Banger. ‘We didn't see him.'

‘Shit, he could be headed for Nia. If we didn't see him he must have been hiding from us.'

Mike continued his circuit, moving faster now, and found the tracks of two other men. He followed them, tracing the course of the battle. He stopped and bent to pick up a couple of bullet casings. ‘5.56-mil. R5s, fired in three-round bursts. These guys meant business. I was at a rhino horn deal that went wrong at the Mona market this morning. There was an Audi like this one on the scene. These could be poachers.'

Banger followed in his wake. ‘This is hectic. I'm getting a bad feeling about it.'

‘I agree.' Mike found the tread patterns of the Toyota Fortuner, the copper-coloured casings of Russian ammunition, from an AK-47, the same weapon Nia had seen pointed at her.

Then he saw the body.

‘Sure,' said Banger, coming up next to him. ‘Someone wanted this
oke
gone.'

The man had been stitched by an R5, maybe two judging by the number of bullet holes. Mike knelt by him and placed a hand on his throat. The skin was already cool. The man was in his early twenties and he looked familiar. Mike searched his pockets and noticed, while doing so, a wound in his shoulder, and a balled, blood-soaked T-shirt. He found a wallet and a driver's licence. ‘Joseph Ndlovu. He was the car thief.'

‘How do you know that?' Banger asked.

‘I know his cousin, the kid who lives back at the hut where the shooting was. I was at a court case his cousin attended. Joseph's a career hijacker and he might have come here looking for help. Themba, what have you done?' he whispered to himself.

Banger looked at the car tracks that led towards the distant hills. ‘So the kid, the one in the school uniform, was the apprentice. Looks like he got away with the wheels, as well as the kidnapped baby and a schoolgirl.'

Mike didn't want to think that Themba had turned bad again, but he had to admit it was a possibility. But where had he – or Joseph – got a hand grenade, and who were the men who had been shooting at them? Maybe the grenade was theirs and one of them got shot while trying to throw it? Mike cast about further and saw two sets of tracks heading to the hills. ‘Two guys went after the Fortuner on foot.'

‘That's crazy.'

Mike stood and looked around him. Yes, it was crazy, like so much that went on in this country, this world.

Banger looked back down the road. ‘I'm worried about Nia. If some wounded guy with an assault rifle was headed her way and decided to hide from us instead of seeking help, then she's in danger.'

Mike didn't know if that was the case or not. He didn't know what to think about this day or this scene. There was no sound of police sirens on the wind, so for now they were on their own. If he went after the Fortuner in his Land Rover he would soon encounter two armed men on foot. They would, he presumed, take his vehicle by force.

‘Take the Land Rover back to the chopper,' Mike said.

‘What? Why? No, man, we stick together.'

‘Go check on your girlfriend, make sure she's safe. Tell her to leave her chopper; it's got no fuel so even if someone knew how to fly it they couldn't steal it. Fetch her, then come back for me. I'm going forward, on foot.'

Banger pulled his shoulders back, squaring up to him, as if he was going to argue some more. They stared each other down, but Banger broke eye contact first, looking back the way they had come, then once more to Mike. ‘You're not just a bird researcher, are you?'

‘Let's just say you're not the only one here who's been in combat. Go to her.'

Banger nodded and went to the Land Rover and started it. ‘Good luck,' he called.

‘Be careful,' said Mike. ‘Remember that other guy's still out there somewhere.'

Mike watched the Land Rover disappear over the hill, then turned his eyes back to the tracks. He set off at a slow jog, rifle at the ready.