Zambezi (48 page)

‘We’re losing him,’ the doctor yelled at his colleagues. He pushed the intern aside and started thumping Moses’s chest. Chris turned away at the sight of blood being forcibly pumped from the man’s many wounds by the doctor’s ministrations.

Jed led her across the cockpit to the far side of the gutted aircraft. ‘Miranda’s alive, Chris, I know it. I can still feel her, in here,’ he said, tapping his heart.

‘How can you know?’

‘Don’t ask me how. Call it father’s intuition or some crap like that. We know bin Zayid’s involved in this now. We know Miranda was with him …’

Chris saw the longing in his eyes. ‘He was seen with two coffins, Jed.’

Jed turned away from her and looked upriver. He tore the cigarette from his mouth and threw it into the water. ‘Oh no,’ he breathed.

‘What is it?’

‘Something you just said.’

‘What? About Miranda?’

‘The coffins! The bastard had been digging at the hunting camp. Moses found a shovel with fresh earth on it, just before the booby trap got him. I forgot about it while I was treating him. That’s it. I’m going back.’

‘Wait, Jed.’

‘No.’

‘Listen! It’s the helicopter.’

Jed heard the distinctive
thwop-thwop
of a Huey and saw the reflection of the lowered landing light as it raced up the Zambezi River. He looked down at Moses, whose face looked peaceful as the morphine kicked in. From the beam of a medic’s flashlight he could see Wylde’s boat was awash in pink: blood mixed with river water.

‘Your friend is stable, but I can make no guarantees. He must go into surgery – now,’ the doctor said as he stood and peeled off bloodied rubber gloves.

Jed felt the wind from the chopper’s rotor blades and looked up. The light blinded him. ‘Stupid bastards,’ he said out loud. There was enough moonlight to fly by and the landing light only made them all a better target. He looked away from the bright beam and turned on his night-vision sight again. He scanned the river.

There was a movement.

‘Chris, get away!’ Jed shouted. ‘Wave them off!’

‘What?’ Chris could see Jed yelling but couldn’t hear what he was saying.

Jed waved at the descending helicopter as it approached them. The copilot waved back and Jed cursed.

The man was standing on the riverbank, in the open, not more than a hundred metres from him. He was holding something long in his arms. Jed flicked his SLR’s safety catch to fire and turned and pointed the rifle towards the helicopter. He aimed off and fired three warning rounds. He saw the shock in the pilot’s and copilot’s eyes and the aircraft bucked as the pilot flinched at the brilliant muzzle flashes and sound of gunfire.

Jed turned back to the shore and looked down the barrel of the rifle. The man had raised the long object onto his shoulder. Jed fired instinctively at him, one, two, three shots, but he lost sight of his target in a blinding flash of light that whited out the night-vision monocle’s view.

He heard the missile’s scream and, as his sight returned, saw it heading towards them. He turned and ran for Chris, who was now only a few paces from him, along the wing. He hit her in a flying tackle and they fell, entwined, into the river.

The Agusta-Bell 205, an Italian-built version of the ubiquitous Huey helicopter of Vietnam fame, had started to climb, away from Jed’s warning shots. The projectile lit the night sky as it closed in on the chopper at a speed of five hundred metres per second. The missile veered slightly upwards to compensate for the change in its target’s altitude and buried itself, exactly as its makers had intended, in the hot, inviting orifice of the helicopter’s jet engine exhaust. The high explosive detonation destroyed the whining turbine immediately.

Jed held Chris close to him as she coughed river water from her lungs. He dragged her under the comparative safety of the aeroplane’s wing. They watched as the helicopter rocked in the air like a bucking bronco.

Someone inside the stricken aircraft wresded with the rear cabin’s sliding door and Jed saw at least three people either jump or fall out of the hatch. Shattered engine parts sprayed the river surface on the way down, and Chris and Jed ducked as metal pieces ricocheted off the wing above them. A wave washed over their upturned faces as the chopper flopped, belly first, in the river.

The rotor blades, which had still been spinning, sheared off when they touched the river’s surface and careened into the night in two different directions. Fire flared in the helicopter’s cabin, and Chris and Jed heard tortured screams. Hippos started a panicked chorus up and down the river, and flocks of birds, alarmed by the chaos of the rocket and the exploding helicopter, erupted noisily from their roosts.

‘Let’s save who we can,’ Jed said, half wading, half swimming.

Willy Wylde, who had sheltered behind the aeroplane’s cockpit as the rocket hit, called out to Jed.

‘Watch out for the crocs!’

‘No,’ Jed answered, looking back over his shoulder, ‘you watch out for the goddamned crocs.’

‘Grab a torch – a flashlight,’ Wylde ordered Chris.

Chris spotted a light used by the medical team, who were all now cowering in the bottom of their boat. A nurse was bent over Moses, protecting him. ‘Give me that,’ she yelled at the doctor. He tossed the spotlight to her.

‘Rake the water with the beam. You’ll see their eyes soon enough,’ Wylde said. He had picked up Jed’s SLR and was watching the water intently. ‘See? There! Hold the light steady.’

Chris saw the glowing, beady red eyes in the water and followed them with the bright beam of the battery-powered spotlight. The beast was about five metres behind Jed, who had nearly reached the downed, smoking wreck of the helicopter.

Wylde fired twice. ‘Got the bastard. Find me another target.’

Chris saw the water roil as the crocodile rolled in its death throes. She swept the beam of light back and forth behind and around Jed. ‘There’s another!’ she cried.

Wylde swung and fired. ‘Two down.’

Jed was guided to the wreck by a burning object inside. When he reached the chopper he saw it was the body of the copilot. The pilot was in the back, unbuckling the harness of an injured man.

‘This one is unconscious but alive,’ the African pilot said. ‘This other one here is dead. Broken neck. The others fell or jumped as we came down.’ The man gagged at the smell of his dead comrade’s burning body, but kept at his work.

Jed could not help but be impressed by his bravery ‘Let’s get you out before the whole thing goes up in flames,’ he said as the pilot passed the unconscious man through the cargo hatch.

Together, they dragged the man into the water. Wylde had started his second boat and motored out, with Chris, to meet them. They dragged the wounded man aboard, then helped Jed and the pilot in.

‘Mort!’ Chris said.

‘You know him?’ asked Jed, wiping water from his face.

‘He’s kind of my boss. He was the team leader.’

‘Looks like he’s hit his head, out cold,’ Jed said. Blood welled from a cut on Solomon’s temple.

‘Might not be serious, but he’s no use to you now.’

‘I’m afraid it’s back to us,’ Chris said.

‘And them?’ Wylde interrupted.

Two men were swimming towards the boat, waving. Jed could hear their calls now. ‘Thank God for small mercies,’ he said.

Wylde turned the high-powered flashlight on the men.

‘Turn that light out, for Christ’s sake!’ Jed yelled.

They all heard the shot from the riverbank and ducked low into the boat.

The head of the man caught in the spotlight snapped back and his body floated motionless.

‘The shooter’s still out there,’ Jed hissed. ‘Bastard.’

‘Oh my God, I didn’t realise …’ Wylde began.

‘Quiet,’ said Jed. ‘It’s not your fault. Let’s pick up the other guy and get these boats out of here. We can’t land here.’

‘We can go back to my camp, set up a base there,’ Wylde said.

Jed guessed that Hassan bin Zayid – he was certain that was who was doing the shooting – wanted them to do exactly that. ‘I think bin Zayid’s left something behind at the hunting camp. I’m going back,’ he said to Chris as Wylde hauled the survivor from the helicopter crash over the gunwale of the boat.

‘That’s crazy, Jed. I won’t let you go alone.’

‘Ms Wallis?’ the bedraggled man said from the floor of the boat.

‘Yes?’

‘It’s Jones, ma’am, from the embassy security detachment.’

‘Oh, yeah, right. Harvey?’

‘Harold, ma’am. If this guy’s going after the bastard who did all this then he’s not alone.’

‘You still armed?’ Jed asked him. He suddenly realised he had seen the man before. It was the intruder he had fought with at the hotel in Johannesburg, the man who had tried to delay his trip to Zimbabwe by planting the bullets in his bag.

Jones reached around behind his back and shifted a squat black submachine-gun back in front of his chest. ‘Still got my MP-5 and two hundred rounds of ammo.’

‘Good. Dry and clean your weapon as best as you can. We’ll forget the ass-kicking I owe you,’ Jed said.

‘You hit me pretty good, too, Sarge.’

Jed gave the man a quick smile then said to Wylde, ‘Willy, I want you to let us off onshore a couple hundred metres downriver, once we’re out of sight of here. Me and Harold are going hunting.’

The hospital’s motor boat chugged towards them and slowed beside Wylde’s craft. The doctor’s face was white with fear. ‘How many more are wounded? We have to get this man to the hospital or he will bleed to death,’ he said, nodding towards Moses, who had passed out.

‘We’ve got one unconscious guy here, but he can stay with us. We might want him when he wakes up. Take him – Moses – back to your hospital, but come back or send another boat as soon as you can.

We might need you again before the night’s out.’

The doctor told his staff to sit tight and he gunned the boat’s engine.

Chris spoke up. ‘I’m going with Jed and Harold, Willy. Look after the casualty. His name’s Mort Solomon.’

‘Chris, you’ve got to stay with Willy,’ Jed said.

‘Says who? You’ve got no standing here, Jed. By rights I should be sending you back across to Zimbabwe before you trigger a major international incident.’

‘It’s a little late for that.’

Chris picked up Moses’s rifle from the bottom of the boat and shook the bloody water from it.

‘Think this thing will still work?’

‘Only one way to find out. You got a weapon, sir?’ Jed asked the Zambian helicopter pilot, who sat silent in the rear of the boat, staring blankly into the night. ‘Sir?’ Jed said again, louder.

‘No, sorry. I think I should go back to the base camp, if that’s all right with you, and make my report,’ he said in a plummy, British-educated voice.

‘Fine, sir, we understand,’ Chris said. ‘Maybe you can get us some more people from the Zambian armed forces. Another helicopter or two would help.’

‘I doubt we have enough helicopters to waste on a foe armed with surface-to-air missiles,’ the pilot said candidly. ‘But I’m sure the army and police will be here in force later this evening. I’ll call headquarters and make sure of it.’

‘OK,’ said Harold Jones, ‘payback time?’

‘If we’re not too late,’ Jed said.

Miranda Banks-Lewis woke up and screamed.

Her world was pitch-black. She scratched at the fabric lining of the box centimetres above her face, kicked her legs and banged on the wooden wall beside her. Her hands were tied in front of her with plastic cable and her ankles felt as if they were bound with rope. As her mind cleared she suddenly realised exactly what kind of box she was imprisoned in.

A coffin! She screamed again, a high-pitched, animal shriek that no one heard. As a child, she and her friends had read with morbid fascination horrific tales of people who had mistakenly been buried before death. Ever since then she had nursed an irrational, but all-consuming fear of being buried alive.

Miranda breathed deep and felt the plastic oxygen mask covering her nose and mouth. She traced the tubes from the mask to a steel canister between her legs. The cylinder was cold between her thighs. Her head ached and her back and bottom were slick with her sweat. She forced herself to stay calm and remember. She was wearing a dress, one of only two she had brought to Africa. She touched the thin straps on her shoulders, felt for the hem. Her feet were bare but she remembered she had packed her heels. Especially for him. She almost cried now at her own stupidity.

Hassan. The boat. Zanzibar. She realised now that she had been drugged. She recalled, with vivid clarity, the last thing he had said to her. She saw again his smile as he reached under his jacket and withdrew the pistol from his waistband. Her initial thought was that he was going to kill her, that he had found out the truth about her. Then she had seen it was a gas-powered tranquilliser gun, the kind he used on his cheetahs at close range. She closed her eyes and remembered the sting of the dart. She felt her belly, where the projectile had hit, and noted it was still tender. How long had she been out?

A day, maybe two? That really didn’t matter now. The important thing was that he had kept her alive.

But for what purpose?

She felt around the casket again, looking for some kind of weapon. Shit. She wasn’t trained for this sort of thing. Not trained for intelligence work at all. Miranda thought of Chris Wallis. Funny, pretty, intelligent Christine. Her mentor and role model in the field of scientific research and animal conservation. How thrilled she had been to receive the email from Professor Wallis inviting her to take part in her predator research in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

‘Welcome to Africa. Every day’s an adventure here,’ Chris had said to her as she greeted her at Johannesburg airport. Miranda smiled in the dark confines of her underground prison, pleased with herself that she could laugh at the irony of those first words.

Miranda had worked with Chris for a month before the academic had let on that her work involved more than studying animals. Ostensibly Chris was researching the prevalence of man-eating lions in the Kruger National Park, in the areas bordering Mozambique.