Ivory (49 page)

‘You'll fucking learn to do as you're told,' Mitch said.

‘Indeed she will,' George said from behind the blinding light. ‘She's a smart girl, aren't you, Jane?'

‘What . . .' she coughed. ‘What do you want, George?'

‘Aha. No games now? No misdirections? No one to blame for your predicament but yourself, now, Jane, is there? Good. We'll come to the point then. The boys found the original tape and memory stick in your handbag, along with a copy on a disk in an envelope addressed to your parents. Very clever, but too bad you didn't make it to the post office. Did you make any other copies I don't know about? Did you send or email it anywhere?'

‘YouTube.'

At an unseen signal Mitch moved forward and grabbed a handful of Jane's hair. She screamed and he half pushed, half dragged her so that she rocked back and fell on her bottom, her pants still around her knees. Mitch flashed the torch down on her nakedness and she pressed her thighs together. When she looked up at him she saw he was carrying a compact assault rifle in his other hand. He was also wearing some kind of headset with a cylindrical object attached to it that looked like a small telescopic lens. She guessed it was a night-vision device.

‘Don't bruise her too much, Mitchell. It won't look good on camera.' Mitch retreated, holding the light up into her eyes again.

Jane knew her worst nightmares were coming true. ‘You got the only copy I made when your thugs grabbed me. Who was it, Van Zyl, or this small-pricked psychopath?'

The light moved and Jane heard the squeak of Mitch's rubber-soled
combat boots on the bare steel floor. ‘No, Mitch. Ignore her insults. We've got several days' grace.'

‘You're going to kill me, aren't you?'

Jane heard the groan again as the container door started to swing shut. Mitch switched off the light and the two men stood there, in silence. Jane was too scared to move in case she was hit again. After seconds, or minutes, George spoke, so softly she had to strain to hear him above the throb of the diesel engines. She couldn't see either of them in the dark, though she could smell Mitch's sweat and George's aftershave. She'd never liked either.

‘I may do, Jane. But whether I do or not is very much up to you. Certainly, you won't ever see London, or your family, again.'

A sob escaped her, despite her best attempts to show him no weakness. The sound of his footsteps echoed off the steel walls as he walked around her. She thought about making a move on them. George might be carrying a pistol, or she could try to grab Mitch's rifle in the dark. It would be better to go down fighting, quickly, she thought, than endure whatever they had planned for her.

‘But if you cooperate with us, you will save your own life, Jane.'

She moved silently to her hands and knees and started to crawl towards the sound of George's voice. Her eyes probed the darkness, then she saw the movement of a tiny red light.

Mitch laughed. ‘Hey, George, your bitch is down on her knees coming towards you. Maybe she's hungry for some cock.'

Jane froze and looked towards the sound of the American's voice. She saw the pinprick of red light again and cursed. He must have switched on his night-vision monocular and he'd been watching her every move. Dejected, she sank down on her haunches.

‘She's still now,' Mitch said.

‘Thank you, Mitchell, and, as I said before, keep the obscenities to a minimum – for now, at least. As I was saying, Jane, if you are completely honest with me, I will let you live, if you wish, or I will kill you quickly.'

‘And if I live?' she whispered into the impenetrable gloom.

‘A Chinese business associate of mine has expressed a desire to purchase you from me.'

‘What? You're fucking crazy, George, I wouldn't –'

‘Hush. White slavery is not a thing of fiction, Jane. There are men in the Middle East who would pay good money for a European woman – blondes, especially. Who knows, you may even be well treated.'

‘You're sick. I'd rather die.'

‘As I said, that's also an option. If you tell me what I need to know, I'm happy to kill you quickly, instead of selling you. If not, I'll let Van Zyl and his men use you for a few days. Mitch has expressed a desire to be first.'

‘Yes, ma'am!' Mitch laughed out loud again.

When silence filled the shipping container again George continued his measured monologue. ‘If you still refuse to cooperate, I'll have your mother and father abducted and I'll let you listen, on the satellite phone, while a man who specialises in extracting information and money from people begins severing their joints, starting with the first knuckle joint of each of their little fingers.'

Jane swallowed her tears. She knew, then, that he had won. He would live, as a free man, and she would die, her body tossed overboard into the Indian Ocean.

She wished, now, with all her might, that she hadn't been so harsh on Alex, hadn't forced him out of her life, and not just because he might have protected her from these men. The truth, which she would never be able to tell Alex, was that she was fairly sure she loved him.

C
olonel De Villiers looked around the tent for someone to blame.

As commanding officer of the military component of the operation, the buck stopped with him. He'd thought it would be a good way to end a thirty-five-year career in the South African Army – a high point that would set the benchmark for future culling operations. Instead, it was his ticket to ignominy. He had summoned all the senior police, army, air force and national parks representatives to a crisis meeting. People were talking on cell phones, their frantic reports filling the tent with nothing more than hot air. De Villiers ran a finger around the neck of the T-shirt under his camouflage battle-dress shirt. He looked at Jacob Mandile, from national parks' investigative services, raising his eyebrows hopefully as Mandile snapped his mobile phone shut.

Mandile shook his head. ‘Our helicopter is still at Skukuza refuelling. It's doubtful they'd catch the Oryx, even if Mozambican radar is able to pick it up.'

‘Thank you, Jacob.' De Villiers turned to a female African staff officer. ‘Winnie, where the hell is Captain Steyn?'

‘I'll –' Before the officer could give an excuse, Steyn strode into the
tent, threading his way through the crush of men and women in blue, khaki and camouflage.

‘Sir! Good news.'

‘It had better be, Steyn,' the colonel said. ‘Where the hell have you been, man?'

Steyn fought to slow his breathing. He wiped sweat from his forehead and eyes. ‘Sir, I regret that there was something I didn't tell you, something the air force was planning today.'

De Villiers gritted his teeth and balled his fists. ‘Get. On. With. It.'

‘Yes, sir, sorry, sir. When I found out that the army camera team was going to be travelling with the Oryx to Skukuza, I made some calls to a friend of mine who's the operations officer at Air Force Base Bloemspruit. I knew that one of their helicopters was going to be arriving at AFB Hoedspruit today, to refuel, after taking part in an exercise with Seven SA Infantry Battalion at Phalaborwa, and –'

Everyone in the tent was silent now, watching the red-faced man. ‘Steyn, you're wasting valuable minutes. We've just heard that the parks helicopter wouldn't be able to catch up with the poachers from Skukuza, so how can another Oryx catch up with them from further away?'

‘It's not an Oryx, sir. And it's already on its way here. In fact, it should be here any minute now. It was going to rendezvous with the aircraft carrying the ivory, so the cameramen could get pictures of it in flight, over the Kruger Park. I thought it would be good public relations for the air force and I was going to tell you, but then . . . well, all this happened.'

De Villiers could feel his cheeks reddening with rage. He was going to throttle this air force
poephol
if he didn't give him some good news soon.

Steyn drew a deep breath and held up both hands, palms outwards, as if trying to ward off the salvo he knew the colonel was about to fire. ‘Sir, it's a Rooivalk!'

De Villiers's mouth opened and he stared at the air force captain, but the younger man had stopped talking. He was beaming at him like a
child who thinks he has just done something monumentally impressive and is awaiting a word of praise. ‘Tell me it's armed, Steyn.'

The captain nodded, still grinning broadly. ‘Eight Mokopa laser-guided antitank guided missiles and an F2 twenty-millimetre cannon in the nose with seven hundred and fifty rounds, sir.'

‘How far away is it?'

The air force officer looked at his watch. ‘It should be here any minute now. I ordered the pilot to divert here to Satara immediately. I hope that's all right, sir.'

De Villiers's face showed the merest hint of a smile for the first time since the Oryx had taken off towards Mozambique. He started issuing orders to half-a-dozen staff officers, telling them to contact a general in Pretoria and the office of the Minister for Defence, among others who would need to authorise the action they were about to take. He was asking Mandile to find out from his superiors what would happen if the ivory was destroyed when the whine of turbine engines and the
thwap
of rotor blades cleaving hot air silenced all conversation.

The canvas walls of the tent were snapping and billowing against their poles as the colonel walked outside, a hand shielding his eyes from the glare of the afternoon sun and the stinging wall of dust. He looked up. Ordinarily he would have cursed the pilot for such a reckless, ostentatious show, coming in low over the headquarters to land.

Now he could have kissed him.

Steyn and De Villiers ran, heads bent, to the Rooivalk. The name was Afrikaans for ‘Red Kestrel', but the colonel thought South Africa's home-grown two-seat attack helicopter looked more like a shark. Long, sleek, fast and deadly, the Rooivalk had had its detractors over the years it had taken to get the aircraft from the drawing board to the air, but De Villiers now thought it the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

A refuelling truck pulled up beside the gunship and two airmen got out.

The pilot who opened the cockpit hatch was a tall, broad-shouldered African man who looked no older than twenty-five. He had a narrow
moustache and perfect teeth and he gave crisp, authoritative orders to the refuellers before turning his attention to the two officers.

‘Howzit,' the pilot said to Steyn, extending a hand.

‘Colonel De Villiers,' Steyn said, ‘this is Lieutenant Oliver Msimang. He's one of the finest helicopter pilots we've got.'

Msimang ignored the compliment and shook the colonel's hand.

‘Steyn's explained the situation?' De Villiers asked.

‘Yes, on a secure back channel,' Msimang yelled above the noise of the still-turning engine.

‘I'm waiting on final approval from the powers that be,' De Villiers said. ‘But if it comes through, can you shoot down the Oryx, Lieutenant? Can you pull the trigger and down one of our own helicopters?'

‘I've been waiting all my life for the chance, sir.'

De Villiers ran his eyes along the camouflage panels of the helicopter. Msimang had clambered down from the pilot's cockpit, which was situated above and behind the weapons officer, a white man who was busy checking displays and instruments in front of him. Hot exhaust gases from the twin Makila turbo-shaft engines billowed around them. ‘Can you catch them, though? I've read that the Rooivalk and the Oryx have the same powerplant.'

Msimang nodded. ‘That's true, sir, but we're lighter and sleeker than he is. Also, from what Steyn tells me, they're carrying a tonne or more of ivory in a net. That'll increase their drag and reduce their speed dramatically.'

De Villiers pointed to the stubby wing on their side of the helicopter, from which four missiles hung. ‘What about those?'

Msimang shook his head. ‘They're antitank missiles – air to ground only. We can carry air-to-air missiles. If we had those I'd be able to blow this guy out of the sky before he even saw me.' Msimang walked to the nose of the aircraft and slapped a palm on the long barrel of the twenty-millimetre cannon that jutted forward from a turret mounted in the helicopter's chin. ‘It'll have to be this baby. And Jaco – that's my weapons officer – never misses.'

The white man knew they were talking about him. He looked across at De Villiers and grinned, giving him a thumbs up.

‘The 16 Squadron motto is
Hlaselani
. It means ‘attack', sir. We'll find that Oryx and we'll slaughter it like a lion taking a buck.'

De Villiers nodded, but his face remained grim. He'd spent enough time in the bush to know that the desert-dwelling oryx with their long pointed horns were dangerous when attacked, and that lions often shied away from them.

 

Jose drained the dregs of his bottle of Manica beer as the chartered twin-engine turboprop executive aircraft taxied under the control of the African marshaller and pulled up outside the Vilanculos International Airport terminal building.

Jose left a crumple of Meticas notes on the table and winked at the pretty waitress, who scooped up the generous tip and stuffed it into the lacy bra poking out from the open top of her white blouse. Jose would have liked to linger longer, but business was business.

He excused himself as he stepped over the bucket of the cleaner who was kneeling scrubbing the steps which led to the terminal's rooftop bar and restaurant. He moved through the small terminal with confidence and greeted the customs and immigration officials with a friendly ‘
Ola
'. One was his brother-in-law, the other a cousin. As he shook hands with each man he palmed them green fifty-dollar bills, which were secreted as hastily and expertly as the waitress had done.