Death Dealing (26 page)

Ryder threw himself against the door
a second after Thabethe had thrown the bolt. He could hear the key turn in the
lock. Then he could hear the hard metallic
clunk
as the power switch was thrown. He was plunged into gloom and the screeching
sound of the music instantly disappeared. A moment of complete silence ensued.

There was still some daylight coming
through the single window, high up and barred. Ryder didn’t even consider the
possibility of breaking through the window. He had put those iron bars in
himself, after their first burglary, and he knew they were as burglar-proofed
as any bars across a window could be. He had reinforced with metal the concrete
slabs that anchored the ends of the bars. He had overdone it, as Fiona had
remarked all those years ago when he was congratulating himself on a job well
done.
What if, one day, you need to
change the window?
He had ignored her question and sulked.
Why has she always got to find something
wrong with my DIY?
he had thought at the time.

He looked around frantically in the
gloom. Various power tools, now useless. Only naked brute force could work in this
situation, he thought. The side door was out of the question. The bolt and the
key and the metal frame were completely tamper-proof. If there were to be any
hope at all of bending metal, the larger expanse of the front door would be
easier. Fractionally. Perhaps.
With the right tools.

A small
five-pounder hammer on the shelf in the corner.
Too small against the thick
metal of both the bolted side door and the power-operated main door.
Nothing, anywhere, resembling a
crow-bar
.
Hack-saws
? Useless. What else?

Nothing except the
large barrel in the corner.
A
barrel into which he had long ago poured wet concrete around a plastic tube
balanced upright in the centre, so that it would set hard and leave a central
hollowed-out core. So that he could thrust a large umbrella into it on windy
days when the umbrella needed to be anchored. Another useless device, which had
spent its last few years never anchoring any umbrella but serving as a
shelf-space, simply taking up more room as another place to collect junk in the
corner of the garage.

But there was nothing else.

Meanwhile, as Ryder swept off the
junk and manoeuvred the barrel closer to the door, Thabethe strode from the now
locked side door of the garage to the front of the
house,
his bicycle spoke at the ready.

As he rounded the corner he saw
Mgwazeni confronting Fiona Ryder who had run out across the patio and down onto
the lawn.

14.38.

Wakashe slammed the door to the
bedroom on the upper floor, trapping Sugar-Bear inside. The dog barked
hysterically, scratching at the door. The bark turned into a howl, as if the
animal knew that its very reason for existence - to protect the Ryder family -
had been placed in jeopardy. After scrabbling at the door in vain, and leaping
up to the door handle, snarling and snapping at it to no effect, he stopped,
paused an instant, and turned his attention to the window, left slightly ajar
and hooked on the brass stay-fastener. He sprang up against it.

Meanwhile Wakashe turned on the two
Ryder boys, who had dashed out of the adjacent bedroom to see what was
happening.

Jonathan Ryder, at fifteen years,
was no fighter. He was well built, a powerful swimmer and a superb surfer, but
he had never engaged in any activities remotely approaching physical combat.
Jason Ryder, at thirteen, was different. Much smaller than his older brother,
although with biceps and shoulders and thighs also showing the effects of years
in the surf and on the drums, he had found himself in countless scraps in the
playground, to the consternation of his mother. Following the school’s routine
post-mortem consultations with the parents after these events, she had on
occasion come to his defence against what she described as a
totally unreasonable headmaster
. Jeremy
Ryder’s completely unhelpful interventions on these occasions had consisted of
nothing more than taking Jason aside, privately, after the events in question,
to enquire about what blows he had landed on the other boy and how he might
improve his performance on any future occasion.

But this time there was no
difference in the two boys’ approach to the common enemy. What Jonathan lacked
in playground experience he had gained through hours at the computer. He
somehow managed to balance hours of video games - especially those involving
hand-to-hand combat - with superb academic results at school, so his parents
had dealt with his games obsession with little more than despairing shakes of
the head.

As a consequence, when Wakashe
stepped forward to slash at the Ryder boys with the machete, clasped only
loosely in the uncomfortable grip necessitated by the disabled two fingers, he
encountered two quick-as-lightning responses. Jonathan kicked out at his
panga-wielding hand. He struck the partial cast of the right wrist at exactly
the same moment Jason smashed his mother’s favourite vase against the full
plaster cast of the assailant’s left hand with its still-healing recently
crushed carpus buckling once again under the pressure. The panga went flying
forward, over the balcony, and the Ryder boys, as one, kicked out at Wakashe’s
legs, both of them striking each shin just above the ankle. The effect was to
send both of Wakashe’s legs backward and off the ground at the precise moment
his body weight was leaning forward over the balcony in a vain attempt to grab
back the falling machete.

Wakashe plummeted over the balcony,
landing on his head on the floor below, and lay completely still. The formal
autopsy report would indicate spinal shock, and would state that his spinal
cord had been transected at C4-5, leading to an immediate loss of nerve supply
to the entire body, and sudden demise.

The boys immediately thought of
their mother, and started for the stairs.

‘Jonathan! Wait!’ shouted Jason.
‘Sugar-Bear!’

He stopped and ripped open the door
to the bedroom containing the dog. It was empty. The window onto the balcony
was wide open. They turned and ran for the stairs. The boys had barely started
when they heard their mother scream.

Mgwazeni and Thabethe had trapped
Fiona Ryder in the middle of the front lawn. Thabethe held his bicycle spoke
ready for an underhand thrust as he advanced on her from the edge of the
driveway. Mgwazeni was advancing from the opposite direction, his dagger held
in the right hand, prepared for an overhead downward stab. She was caught, with
nowhere to go. All three of them paused. Then she suddenly broke forward,
deciding to take her chances against the dagger rather than the more
lethal-looking spoke.

Mgwazeni’s right arm shot skyward,
with the gleaming Okapi blade held high.

14.40.

Ryder was desperate. He could hear
screams from the house, and he could hear Sugar-Bear barking frantically in the
distance. The screams seemed to inject superhuman power into his psyche and
into his muscles. He planted his feet into the ground, braced himself, took a
deep breath, and clasped the giant barrel laden with concrete. He raised it
slowly above his head, muscles and tendons screaming at him as they burned with
the effort, while veins and arteries bulged in his face, neck and arms.

As he strained, holding the enormous
weight above his head, an image flashed into his brain. Ryder remembered that
in the 2012 London Olympics the Clean and Jerk record for his weight class was
slightly more than two hundred and twenty kilogrammes. This barrel, exceeding
two hundred, was some twenty kilogrammes short of that, but it would have put
Ryder well into the competition on the day. With all the strength he could
muster he hurled the barrel against the door.

The barrel buckled the metal,
causing the door to spring partly out of its tracks on the right-hand side. It
gave enough for Ryder to work on. He kicked at it and caused it to spring
further out of the rails. Another kick and he had forged a gap large enough to
break through.

He threw his full weight at the door
and it finally gave way on the right-hand side.

14.41.

As Fiona Ryder made her move,
Sugar-Bear sprang seemingly out of nowhere, bursting through the
flower-bed
at the far corner of the house and onto the tiled
strip below the patio. From there, without a moment’s hesitation, he leaped
into the air like a dolphin breaking the surface of the water and flew across
three or four metres of space. He bounced once on the luxurious bright green
lawn as if it were a sprung diving board and from there hurtled up onto the
attacker. He seized Mgwazeni’s wrist just as the lethal weapon was slashing
downward onto Fiona Ryder’s chest.

The powerful jaws clenched like a
vice on the target, the sharp teeth cutting through skin and blood vessels. The
long vicious canines penetrated the scapholunate joint, fracturing the scaphoid
bone and eliciting an agonising scream from Mgwazeni. The sharp curved teeth from
both the upper and lower jaws locked together right through the assailant’s
wrist. Blood spurted from the severed radial and ulnar arteries. He dropped the
dagger instantly and swung the dog one hundred and eighty degrees through the
air in an attempt to wipe him off against the patio wall. Sugar-Bear held on as
if his jaws were welded to this enemy who had dared to harm his mistress.
Nothing was going to make him let go.

Except the
unexpected attack from behind.

Fiona screamed in agonised horror as
Thabethe ran forward with his sharpened bicycle spoke and plunged it into the
animal’s side. It penetrated deeply. So deeply that Thabethe lost control of
the weapon as Mgwazeni’s spinning movement took with it both the dog still
attached to his wrist and the spoke now protruding grotesquely from the
animal’s body. As dog and spoke both struck the wall, Sugar-Bear’s jaw finally
loosened its grip and Mgwazeni broke free. Both he and Thabethe paused for a second
to see whether the animal would stay down. It didn’t. Sugar-Bear snarled,
seemingly treating the bicycle spoke sticking out from his body as if it were
no more than a mere splinter, and clambered ungainly to his feet for another
attack. The two men ran.

Had they paused for another second
they would have seen that they had already wreaked the damage necessary to stop
the animal in its tracks.

Fiona Ryder emitted a sound of deep,
anguished despair as she saw her beloved dog look at her with a final check on
her safety. Then, as if recognising that she was free of danger and he could
now finally let go, his front legs collapsed, their paws bent inward. Then his
back legs gave way, and he fell.

Fiona screamed and fell to her
knees. Sugar-Bear lay spread-eagled on the lawn, as still as death.

14.42.

Ryder smashed through the garage
door and sprinted in the direction of his wife’s piercing scream. As he
approached the front corner of the house he could see, at the far end of the
driveway, the fleeing Thabethe and Mgwazeni. But his thoughts were only for his
wife. As he rounded the corner he was struck instantly by two devastating and
conflicting emotions. A wave of horror engulfed him as he saw the deadly spike
protruding from his beloved Sugar-Bear, who lay prone on the lawn.
Simultaneously, instant relief flooded over him as he saw Fiona, on her knees
before the dog, distraught but alive.

Fiona Ryder’s eyes made contact with
those of her husband the instant he appeared. She screamed at him.

‘Get them, Jeremy! Get them! We’re
OK. Please get them!’

Ryder needed nothing more. He leaped
for his car, right hand searching for the car keys in his pocket.

As the two men tore up to the top of
the road in the Opel Astra, Ryder ripped open the door of the Camry. Within
seconds the engine was screaming as he tore up the lawn with a rapid reverse,
spun the wheel, and took off down the driveway. He lurched into the road and
pulled the wheel hard over to his left. Within seconds he had burned his way to
the end of Essex Terrace and over the Rockdale Avenue
bridge
spanning the King Cetshwayo Highway, up Jan Hofmeyer Road and into Westville,
in hot pursuit and gaining rapidly.

He caught up with the fugitives’ car
when they reached the top of the hill. As they crested it and started on the
downhill, Thabethe and Mgwazeni, realising they could never outpace the Camry,
panicked and swung onto the verge, seeking to abandon the vehicle and escape on
foot. It was a fatal error of judgement. Mgwazeni, at the wheel, saw too late
the unexpectedly sharp rise on the verge. He tried to swing the wheel back
again, but his right wrist was far too weak, the damage wrought by Sugar-Bear
having rendered it almost completely useless. There was no strength at all in
his right hand as he pulled on the wheel, and the left hand could manage only a
fraction of what was needed to swing the steering wheel back. It was too little
too late.

The vehicle struck the verge and
somersaulted once, then twice, then a third time, and then with a sickening
crunch of metal it came to a shuddering halt, upside-down. Pedestrians screamed
and evaporated from the scene to positions of safety some thirty paces away.