African Sky (32 page)

Not surprising, Bryant thought. He disliked newsmen, considering them little more than leeches who fed on people's misery and swallowed any old guff they were dished out about the war, no matter how inaccurate. According to the English press, Bomber Command had all but pulverised Nazi Germany. Funny, then, how the Germans were still able to field swarms of night-fighters and keep the Ruhr ringed with deadly flak batteries.

He touched the lighter's flame to the wadded second page. He knew how the story ended, but he continued reading.
Mr Du Pleiss could not be contacted by the
Chronicle.
Police said he had been released and would be returning to South Africa at the first opportunity and . . .

The paragraph was broken in midsentence at the bottom of the page. Bryant looked down at the growing fire and saw the rest of the article slowly uncurling as the flames took hold. There was a portrait photograph of a man.

He crouched close to the fire, its growing heat warming his face. He took a closer look at the picture. He reached out and snatched the paper, burning his thumb and forefinger in the process, then dropped the sheet on the ground and stamped out the flames.

Suddenly the pain in his fingers, and from the multiple wounds he had suffered in the parachute landing and the fight with the leopard, were the last things on his mind.

T
he settlement of Gwaai River, if it could be called that, was about as far away from England as a place could be, but that's what Constable Roger Pembroke was thinking about when the door to the police hut creaked open.

Gwaai River, halfway between Bulawayo and Victoria Falls, consisted of a hotel called, not surprisingly, the Halfway House, a few outlying cattle farms, a forestry officer and a policeman.

Roger looked up. ‘What is it?' he asked the elderly African man who stood before him, dressed in tattered trousers and a threadbare white shirt.

‘I saw an aeroplane, boss,' the older man said.

‘Plenty of them about these days.'

The African ignored the implied insult. He had seen the
murungu
policeman about, passing through his village. He thought the man was too young to be taken seriously, but he knew no other white man to whom he could report what he had seen. ‘It fell from the sky, boss.'

Roger sat up straight. ‘The crash? You saw the plane come down yesterday?' He'd received a telephone call from Pip Lovejoy in Bulawayo the afternoon before, alerting him to the Harvard's last known position, and advising him that its pilot was wanted for murder. Roger had
saddled his horse and ridden ten miles up and down the main road in the hope of spotting smoke, but had seen nothing. Pip, who had a rather attractive-sounding telephone voice, had told him the air force would be conducting a full-scale search the next day. Today. He'd heard aero engines sporadically during the morning, and these had fuelled his daydreams about becoming an ace RAF fighter pilot.

‘Yes, boss. I saw it fall. And a man.'

‘A man?' Roger opened his police notebook. ‘What's your name?'

‘Last. Last Mpofu, boss.'

‘All right, Last. Tell me again. You saw a man.'

‘He flew, boss. Slowly to the earth.'

‘Ah!' Roger drew a crude sketch of a stick-figure man under a parachute and held up his notebook. ‘Is this what you saw, Last?'

The older man looked at the picture. ‘Yes. A parachute.'

Roger frowned. ‘Did you go to him?'

‘It was dark. There are lion and leopard in the bush, boss.'

‘The crash happened early yesterday afternoon. You took your time reporting this.'

‘It was a long walk.'

‘I see. Well, you did the right thing coming here. Do you remember where it was that you saw the man land?'

‘Yes, boss.'

‘And the aeroplane. You said you saw it crash?'

‘I saw it fall, boss. Not crash. I heard it, though, and saw the smoke.'

This was big news. With a bit of luck he'd get to meet his first pilot – and his first murderer – today. He flipped back through his notebook, past the reports of stolen cattle, a lion attack on a native farm worker, and a drunken brawl in the hotel, and found the entry he'd made yesterday after being advised of the missing aircraft and wanted man. He picked up the telephone and dialled the number he'd written. Shirley, the receptionist, answered and he asked to be put through to Pip Lovejoy.

‘Is it about the missing flyer? The murderer?'

‘You bet it is. I've got an African chap here who says he saw the plane
and
the pilot come down. He bailed out.' Roger couldn't hold back a smile as he used the air force jargon.

‘Pip's out, Roger. I'll pass on a message to her and Sergeant Hayes as soon as they're back. What's the location?'

Roger silently cursed. In his eagerness to tell someone the news he realised he hadn't gathered enough facts yet. ‘Hold on,' he said, covering the mouthpiece with one hand. ‘How far away is the pilot? Where did he go down?' he asked Last.

The African looked back over his shoulder and pointed south. ‘A long way, boss.'

‘Blast,' Roger said aloud. He spoke into the telephone again. ‘Shirley, the bloke can't give an exact location, but he's taking me there now. Get someone in a car to head north. I'll leave a cairn of stones with a note under it when we leave the main road.'

He hung up, then unlocked the gun rack behind his desk and took out a Lee-Enfield rifle. ‘This man might be dangerous, Last,' he said in answer to the African's inquiring look as he pushed five rounds into the magazine and dropped a second clip into his uniform pocket. ‘Let's go.'

Pembroke saddled his police horse and tethered the reins of a second beast to his saddle. When the policeman asked him, Last said he could not ride, so Roger helped him up behind him, onto his horse's rump.

‘Hold on, Last,' he said as he dug his spurs in.

Bryant knew he should have waited where his parachute had snagged in the trees and kept the signal fire going to alert searching aircraft to his presence. Twice since he had set off at daybreak he had heard the drone of single- and twin-engine aircraft overhead but had been unable to signal them due to the density of the bush he was walking through.

In time, if he had stayed put, he was sure the rescuers would have found him. However, he had precious little time, if the pieces of the puzzle swimming in his head were to come together in the way he feared they would.

He knew he had landed west of the main north-south road, so if he headed east he would find it eventually. He had no compass, another oversight he chided himself about, but took his bearings from the rising sun. He knew that he had to find someone – anyone – as soon as possible. He would make another signal fire as soon as he hit the road.

He walked as quickly as his injuries would allow. The bleeding from the gashes to his arm and back had stopped, but the pain in his muscles intensified with every step he took. He shook his head to ward off encroaching exhaustion. The sporadic, mournful rasping of the female leopard pining for her dead mate, and his wounds, which made it impossible to get comfortable, meant his sleep had been confined to a few brief dozes by the fire. After the scare with the cats the previous evening, he ensured he scanned the bush ahead and on either side of him. On three occasions he startled small buck – impala and steenbok, he thought – and the first he'd been aware of them was the flash of their tawny bodies in the bush. His eyes were adjusting to the foreign surroundings, though, and he paused when he saw a flicker of movement.

It was an elephant, perhaps a hundred yards away. No more. He marvelled that the huge grey beast could have remained hidden from him at such a close range. However, he was proud that he had spotted the give-away swish of its tail before the animal had noticed him. He felt a soft breeze on his face. He was downwind of the beast, and that had, no doubt, helped him get so close. Slowly he dropped to a crouch and watched it. The sun was riding high now. Bryant checked his watch. It was nearly eight o'clock. It would be harder for him to keep his bearings once the sun reached its zenith. The elephant was standing at the base of a large tree, in the shade. His big ears flapped back and forth like punkah fans. Bryant vaguely recalled reading somewhere that this was how elephants cooled themselves – something about their blood passing through a network of veins in the ears. The flapping cooled the blood, which cooled the elephant. Clever, though the animal was just plain frightening this close and on foot. Bryant slowly unbuttoned the flap of the holster on his belt and withdrew the pistol. He was out of ammunition but if the animal charged him for some
reason, perhaps the sight of a man waving a hand gun might cause it to have second thoughts. Bryant looked down at the Webley revolver, then back up at the elephant. He shook his head. No chance.

Another movement caught his eye. Another set of ears, but much smaller. The tiny calf emerged from a thicket and passed the bigger elephant. It was so tiny it could have walked under the bigger one's belly. It trotted from bush to bush with the energy that only a youngster could have in such heat. Bryant noticed that its little trunk seemed to have a life of its own, swishing from side to side, and up and down. The baby elephant stopped and sniffed a branch on the ground. The mopani sapling had been stripped clean of its bark, the honey-coloured core of wood all that remained of the mother elephant's latest snack. The youngster nudged it with the tip of his trunk, then gingerly lifted it. He turned back to his mother, proudly holding the new toy aloft, but it fell from his grasp before he could show her.

Bryant smiled. He'd assumed elephants would be born knowing how to use an essential bit of kit like a trunk, but now he realised baby elephants, like baby humans, had a great deal to learn from their elders.

The baby elephant snuffled away from the protection of its mother, looking for new things to pick up. Head down, trunk leading, it started moving towards Bryant. Beyond the baby he could now see even more animals. Every second, it seemed, he noticed another swish of a tail or the flap of giant ears. He had very nearly walked into a herd of perhaps twenty or thirty. There were more young elephants as well. A breeding herd. ‘Shit,' he whispered as the inquisitive baby moved closer and closer. Bryant looked over his shoulder. At least there were no animals behind him. He started to move, backing slowly away from the advancing infant.

He was a flyer, not a bushman. He didn't see the dead branch behind him. It snapped with a crack that might as well have been a gunshot for the effect it had.

The baby elephant squealed, a noise like that emitted from a toy horn on New Year's Eve. Its mother answered, but with a trumpet blast that Bryant felt in his guts. From others in the herd came deep, ominous rumblings, a noise like approaching thunder.

Bryant swore. The mother elephant saw him and started towards him. She had her trunk curled between her tusks and her ears back. It looked like she meant business. He turned and ran, his arms and legs pumping as he tried to gain some speed. He still held the Webley revolver in his right hand. He waved it high over his head, but when he risked a glance over his right shoulder he saw the big cow was gaining on him.

Ahead of him was a dry riverbed. Without slowing he leaped off the edge of the embankment and landed three feet below in thick sand. Instead of crossing to the other side he turned hard left. The river snaked around to the left again, and he followed its course. The elephant came to an abrupt halt at the edge of the watercourse. A cloud of dust rose around her and she bellowed, long and loud. Bryant kept running through the sand, not risking a peek this time.

‘Something's spooked those jumbos,' Constable Roger Pembroke said. He swivelled in his saddle to face the African behind him. ‘You're sure this is the place?'

‘Yes, boss,' Last said.

‘Well, let's get off and start looking,' Roger said.

Nearby, an elephant bellowed again. ‘She is not happy, boss.'

‘How do you know it's a female?'

‘Are you married, boss?'

‘No.'

Last smiled and climbed awkwardly down off the horse.

Bryant noticed the bush on either side of the dry riverbed was starting to thin out ahead. He slowed and allowed himself to catch his breath and look over his shoulder. The elephant that had been chasing him had given up. He heard a rumbling to his left. ‘Fuck,' he whispered.

The bull elephant had been happily scratching his itchy rump against the leadwood tree he usually used for this purpose when he'd heard the matriarch's cries to her baby. The source of the discontent had
just come into view. One of the two-legged creatures. He took a few steps towards the human, raised his trunk and flapped his ears wide. That usually did the trick. For good measure he released a mighty blast from the end of his trunk.

Bryant had had enough of elephants to last him a lifetime. He resumed his sprint, charging down the gully. To his surprise, he nearly ran smack into a man-made stone drainage culvert. He looked up and saw the road. ‘Thank Christ,' he said. While a road wouldn't protect him from a charging pachyderm or a hungry carnivore, at least it meant he was on his way back to civilisation. The watercourse had brought him back on his easterly track and he had found the main north-south road. He turned right, towards Bulawayo, and started off at a steady jog.

Roger Pembroke slid the .303 from the leather holster on the right side of his horse's flank. Elephant worried him. Always had since the death of his brother when they were both still teenagers. Gored and trampled, and Roger had witnessed the lot. He slid back the bolt and chambered a round. A Lee-Enfield might not stop an elephant dead in its tracks, but a round through an ear was sometimes enough to scare one of the giant beasts off.

Roger patted the horse, which had shifted from side to side after the African's ungainly dismount. ‘There, there, girl,' he said. As he grabbed the saddle's pommel he saw a man round the bend in the road ahead of him, running along one of the tar strips.

‘Hey!' the man called.

Roger took in his appearance. Right height, right build, wearing air force uniform. He looked dirty and his shirt was ripped and bloodied. He was carrying something in his right hand. A pistol!

‘Drop the gun!' Roger called out. He brought his rifle to bear.

Bryant lifted his arm to wave at the mounted policeman. Never in his entire life had he been so pleased to see a copper. The man had called
something to him. ‘What?' Bryant replied. The blood was still pounding in his ears from his narrow escape from the elephants, which for all he knew might still be on his tail. With his rescue at hand he felt every one of his wounds start to throb in pain, as if his body were telling him it was safe to hurt now.

For some reason the copper was now raising his rifle. Instinctively, he started to raise his hands in a gesture of surrender. Perhaps the man thought he was a spy or something. ‘I'm Bryant, Royal Australian Air Force!'

‘Stand still!' the policeman yelled.

Bryant heard the sound of twigs breaking in the bush beside him. The bloody elephants were still on his trail. ‘I can't stop now!'