African Sky (41 page)

Like a light being switched on and off midair, the sun glinted on the bare metal wings of the South African DC-3 Dakota as it lined up on final approach to Kumalo air base.

Wing Commander Rogers scanned the wide expanse of sky with fighter pilot's eyes, praying he would see nothing else. A murmur of excitement rippled across the crowd of two hundred guests seated below the raised official dais where Rogers sat next to Sir Godfrey. ‘Shall we, Prime Minister,' Rogers said. His bad leg, which shouldn't have been giving him trouble for another two months, felt shaky under him.

The two men, followed by the prime minister's aide-de-camp, walked down the steps onto the Tarmac, past a rank of white mechanics and ground crew who had drilled for several weeks to function as Jan Smuts' guard of honour. Spit-polished boots slammed into the ground as a warrant officer called them to attention. At the command ‘Pre-sent arms!' their rifles were held out in front of their bodies in a salute to the Rhodesian leader.

The Dakota bounced once on the runway with a squeal of rubber, then settled and flashed past the crowd. It turned and motored slowly back to where the massed ranks of pilots stood ready to march onto their graduation parade. Two askaris pushed a wheeled set of steps up to the rear door, which was swung open by a crewman. The Kumalo band struck up ‘God Save the King', as the familiar, gaunt figure of Jan Smuts appeared.

Rogers still searched the sky, albeit discretely, as Sir Godfrey Huggins moved forward to the bottom of the steps.

Smuts, with his distinctive white goatee beard and moustache, high forehead and receding snowy hair, stepped down and shook hands with his counterpart. A field marshal in the South African army as well as his country's PM, Smuts was dressed in khaki dress uniform adorned with the red collar tabs of a senior officer and four rows of campaign ribbons. As the honour guard crashed to attention and presented their arms again, Smuts drew himself to his full height, placed the pith helmet he had carried under one arm on his head, and returned their salute.

‘So good of you to agree to visit us,' Huggins said as they passed the guard.

‘My pleasure, Sir Godfrey. I do like a good parade, and I am sure your Rhodesian Air Training Group will not disappoint. And such a perfect African day it is for this historic occasion.'

‘Shoot me,' said Bryant into the intercom.

‘What?' Reitz replied, his finger tightening on the trigger of the rifle.

‘I can't do it, Reitz. I won't be party to the death of two heads of state and hundreds of my men, and I don't want to live if Catherine kills Pip Lovejoy.'

‘Shut up and just fly the aeroplane, Bryant. You could have refused on the ground. You're a coward. You'll do what I say and, when it's done, you and the woman can go hide with your shame. You want to live.'

‘I'm letting go of the controls now.'

‘No, Bryant, grab the stick, you idiot!' The Harvard's nose immediately dropped, and they entered a dive.

Instinctively, Reitz grabbed the stick with his left hand and pulled back, but his first attempt to keep the wings level failed and the aircraft yawed steeply over on its left-hand side.

Bryant reached up with his right hand and grabbed the barrel of the Mauser, yanking it violently towards him. The movement forced Reitz to jerk the trigger and a round exploded inside the cockpit, drilling a hole through the front windscreen. Air hissed through starred glass and Bryant's right ear rang with pain. He held onto the hot, smoking barrel with one hand and used his other to release and roll back the pilot's cockpit canopy.

‘Let go!' Reitz yelled, his feet frantically working the pedals to steer the Harvard as he tugged back on the rifle from his end. Reitz felt resistance on the stick as Bryant tried to wrestle control of the aircraft from him. He fought back for an instant, using his left hand, then realised he would have to release the controls if he were going to be able to retrieve the rifle from the Australian and chamber another round. It was a bolt-action weapon and he would need both hands to recock it.

‘Given up on your flying lessons, Reitz?' As Bryant spoke, he
increased the throttle setting and pulled back on the stick until the nose was up, thirty degrees over the horizon. Once there, he centred the stick then snapped it fully over to the right.

Reitz let out a scream as the aircraft flipped over on its back. ‘Stop!' G-forces pushed him into his seat and made his arms feel as though they were encased in lead. He struggled, unsuccessfully, to chamber another round into the Mauser's breech.

Reitz had stowed the two sarin bombs under his seat. When Bryant had first released the stick and the Harvard had dived, one of the bombs had rolled forward between his legs, coming to rest against the rudder pedals. As the Harvard reached the top of its roll, the bomb flew past Reitz's face, a tail fin scratching his cheek before it came to rest on the inside of the closed canopy over his head. ‘You'll kill us both!' Reitz had not retightened his restraint straps after leaning forward to check on Bryant earlier, and he hung now below his seat, the straps the only thing stopping his head crashing into the canopy.

Once the wings were level with the horizon, Bryant calmly moved the stick to slightly left of centre and then back to the central position, so they were flying level, but still upside down.

Bryant looked in the rear-view mirror and saw Reitz, one arm dangling, trying to retrieve the evil-looking bomb, which still rattled and rolled against the glass, just out of reach. Bryant gave another vicious tug on the Mauser and felt it come free of the Afrikaner's grasp.

Like Reitz, he knew he needed two hands to load the weapon. He chanced letting go of the stick and dragged the long rifle across his body. He worked the bolt, pulling it rearwards.

Having lost his weapon, Reitz gave up trying to recover the bomb and reached awkwardly for the control column. Unsure what would happen upside down, he pulled the stick hard back towards his groin.

Bryant gasped as they entered a steep dive, inverted. He knew he needed to get a hand back on the stick, but one was not enough to regain control. He let go of the Mauser and, with the aircraft still upside down, the weapon sailed past his face and was snatched away into the sky by the slipstream.

Bryant heard a bounce and a clatter above his head and looked up just in time to see the bomb slide towards him with the changing angle of the dive. Reitz struggled clumsily with the stick and the deadly device suddenly dropped into Bryant's lap. He winced in pain as the snub-nosed mass hit him. ‘Shit!' he said as he looked at it sitting there.

Bryant fought against the crushing forces of gravity as the brown bushveld raced up to meet them. He took a breath and held it hard in his chest, trying to stop all his blood draining from his torso to his legs. Still, he felt his vision starting to grey out. ‘Help me . . .' he gasped, hoping Reitz knew what he meant.

Reitz, too, was being forced back into his seat as they entered a vertical dive. Summoning every reserve of strength in his arms he slowly reached out to grab the stick. He grasped it and pulled back, adding his effort to Bryant's. The Harvard whined and vibrated around them, protesting audibly at the terrible strain of the manoeuvre, reluctant to let the men save her.

Bryant felt his head clearing, his sight returning as the unbearable pressure started to ease. He saw clearly the detail of individual dried, dying leaves on a tree in front of him, and was convinced they were too late. God help Pip, he prayed.

Then they were level, the same leaves brushing noisily along the bottom of the fuselage as they screamed fast and low across the trees. Bryant needed altitude and he brought the nose up again, searching for the road below as he did.

Freed of having to help save the aircraft, Reitz, his face red with rage, undid his restraints and half stood in the rear cockpit. He reached around the seat in front of him and locked his fingers around Bryant's throat.

‘What . . .' The protest faded on Bryant's lips as he felt his windpipe being crushed. He glanced down at the altimeter. They were at nine hundred feet. Not high enough, his mind registered as he fought a losing battle for breath.

‘I am going to kill you!' Reitz screamed. He knew Bryant would have to release the stick to try to claw the hands from his throat, but Reitz
was certain he could kill the Australian and then quickly regain control of the aircraft.

Bryant kept one hand on the control column and, with the other, punched the release buckle on his restraint straps. He looked at their height again. Eleven hundred feet. He felt his vision fading once more. With his free hand he grabbed one of the tail fins and lifted it up, so the blunt nose was cradled in his lap again. He hooked a finger into the pin at the centre of the tailpiece and yanked it out.

Reitz craned forward, trying to see what the other man was doing. Wind from the bullet hole in the windscreen and the open front cockpit stung his eyes, but he knew Bryant was up to something.

Grinning, despite the pain in his throat, Bryant held up the pin and dangled it, from the ring, in front of Reitz's eyes.

‘No!' Reitz screamed. He let go his grip on Bryant's neck and tried first to reach across the other man, to get to the bomb.

‘Die!' Bryant croaked, his voice weak with pain. He rolled the bomb off himself, onto the floor, pushed the stick forward, then let go of it. The Harvard started to dive again.

Reitz fell back into his seat and tugged on the control column, trying to arrest the dive. The only thing he could do was to try to roll the Harvard again, to get rid of the deadly cargo, whose fuse whirred unheard on the floor in front of the pilot's seat, way out of his reach. Having unclipped his harness to get his hands on Bryant's throat, he was no longer attached to his parachute either.

Bryant allowed himself one last glance at the wide-eyed terrified face behind him as he stood on his seat and vaulted out of the cockpit, into the rushing slipstream outside. As soon as he knew he was clear of the tailplane he wrenched the ripcord. They were back below safe jump altitude, so it would be a fast, dangerous ride down.

Reitz yanked the stick over to the left and the Harvard slowly started to roll.

Bryant heard the explosion as his parachute deployed, and swung around under the silken canopy in time to see smoke streaming from the open front cockpit.

*

Reitz screamed in fear and frustration as he tried to yank open the rear cockpit cover. He had finally realised, too late, that there was no way he could shake out the first bomb, and that the mission was doomed. All he could do was save himself. The explosion was not enough to destroy the Harvard, though the controls were suddenly slack, as the charge had severed cables and shattered gauges. Far more dangerous was the payload that the small blast had released. He fumbled with the parachute harness straps.

Most of the sarin was sucked out of the aircraft, along with the smoke from the detonation, but as Hendrick Reitz finally released the rear sliding canopy a mist of remnant vapour hit him full in the face. He slumped back down into his seat – paralysed by the realisation that hit him, as surely as if he had been felled by a bullet. One drop, he knew, was all it took to kill a man.

His agonised screams died on the wind.

K
enneth Ngwenya put his hand over his mouth as he peered through a crack between two of the rough planks in the hangar's walls. Catherine De Beers, his father's employer, had a knife in her hand and was standing over the body of another woman who was tied down on a workbench.

He had no idea what was going on here, but he had finally been able to coax from his father the truth about who had hit him. It was not a man, but the woman standing with her back to him. She had struck her feeble though devoted servant with a riding crop over some minor incident involving an unlocked gate. His father had said the madam had been acting increasingly strangely in the preceding week.

Kenneth had never harmed a woman in his life, but he seethed with rage over his father's treatment. He had been fully prepared to report Mrs De Beers to the police, but it looked very much like a policewoman's skirt that her captive was wearing. How was he to know, however, that the prisoner was not a wrongdoer herself?

What he saw next, though, galvanised him into action. Catherine De Beers leaned over the woman, slipped the blade of the knife under one of the buttons on her captive's blouse and, with one deft movement, sliced it off. The woman screamed. Kenneth had armed himself with a
spade, which he had found beside a freshly dug hole behind the hangar. He strode through the open door of the hangar, swung back the shovel and slammed the flat of the blade into the back of Mrs De Beers' head, just as it appeared she was about to terrorise the other woman with another knife stroke.

‘Are you all right, miss?' Kenneth Ngwenya asked the obviously relieved woman.

‘Oh, God, thank you, whoever you are,' Pip said, fighting back tears.

‘I am Kenneth Ngwenya. My father works for Mrs De Beers,' he said as he laid the spade against the bench. ‘I don't think things are as they should be here at Isilwane.'

‘That's the understatement of the century. Untie me, quickly. Before she comes to. I'm a policewoman, and Mrs De Beers is guilty of murder, along with plenty of other things!' Catherine had tired of waiting for Reitz to return, and Pip feared she was about to become the woman's next victim.

‘Hurry, Kenneth!'

‘I am trying.'

‘The knife! She dropped it when you hit her. It must be on the floor somewhere, along with her pistol.' Catherine had laid her pistol on the workbench when she'd pulled out the knife, and both weapons had fallen to the floor when she had staggered against the bench before collapsing.

Kenneth bent over and looked around Catherine's prone body.

‘Here is the knife,' he said, beaming as he stood. He started sawing at the ropes binding Pip's hands. The razor-sharp blade sliced smoothly through the strands and in less than a minute her wrists were free.

‘Give it to me. I'll do my ankles. You look for Mrs De Beers' pistol, please.'

Kenneth dropped onto his hands and knees, his head under the workbench, and began searching in the shadows.

Pip hacked at the ropes around her legs. She needed to get Catherine tied up as soon as possible, and to make her way to the house. ‘We need to get to the telephone, as quickly as we can.'

*

Tears filled Catherine's closed eyes, but she willed herself to stay silent. When she regained consciousness she heard a man's voice close to her. An African.

She heard him crawling around on all fours like the animal he was, searching for the pistol, but she had already located it. Ever so slowly, she reached out with her right hand. Her fingers brushed the grip of the Walther. Thank God, she thought. She grabbed the pistol and rolled hard to her left and started to sit up. Her head rang with pain from the blow to the back of her head and her vision swam.

Pip was sitting up on the workbench, swinging her freed legs over the edge. Catherine blinked and aimed at the swimming image of the policewoman, pulled the trigger twice.

The first bullet sailed wide, but the second punched through Pip's upper left arm. Pip screamed but didn't fall. She regained her balance, jumped off the bench and delivered a vicious kick with the toe of her heavy police-issue shoe into Catherine's bandaged leg.

Catherine howled like a cat and her vision went grey. She pulled the trigger blindly again.

Pip turned and sprinted for the sunlight. ‘Run, Kenneth!'

The schoolteacher hauled himself to his feet. He saw the lady in the uniform running for the doorway, and Mrs De Beers raising her hand, aiming the gun. He lunged from out of the shadows, throwing his body in front of her.

Outside, Pip heard another gunshot and the immediate thud of a falling body.