You lie.
Their eyes met, the pilot assessing him, glancing down at his wounds and his trembling hands, like a predator eyeing its prey. Mpayipheli listened while the copilot called in the news about the wounded soldier. Oryx Two to Oryx One, we have a casualty, repeat, we have a casualty, we need help immediately.
Where are you, Oryx Two? Mpayipheli recognized the voice. It was the one from this morning, the crazy guy.
Thats enough, he said to the copilot, who nodded enthusiastically.
Listen carefully, he said to the pilot. I need only one pilot. You saw what happened to the soldier. Do you want me to shoot your partner, too?
The man shook his head. No.
I want to see the compass. And I want to see the ground, all the time, understand?
Yes.
Show me.
The pilot touched the top of the instrument. 270, it read.
Do you think I am a stupid
kaffir?
Voices talked on the radio, Mazibukos incessantly calling, Oryx Two, come in. Oryx One to Oryx Two, come in. The pilot said nothing.
You have ten seconds to turn north.
A moment of hesitation, then the pilot turned the helicopter, 280, 290, 300, 310, 320, the instrument swung under its cover, white letters on a black background, 330,340, 350,355.
Keep it there.
He must take care of his wounds. Stop the bleeding. He must drink something, the thirst made his mouth like chalk, he had to stay awake, he must stay ready.
How long to Lobatse?
Hour, hour and a quarter.
* * *
The atmosphere in the Ops Room was morbid.
Janina Mentz sat at the big table, trying to keep the tension off her face. They were listening to the cacophony over the radios.
It is chaos up there,
she thought, chaos everywhere, the meeting with the American was chaos, the ride back with the director was not good, and what she found back here was a demoralized team.
Everyone knew of the death of Miriam Nzululwazi now, everyone knew Radebe had gone, everyone knew one of the RU members was badly wounded, and the fugitive no one knew where the fugitive was.
Chaos. And she had no idea what to do.
In the car she had tried to talk to the director, but there was distance between them, a breach of confidence, and she couldnt understand it. Why had his circle of suspicion extended to include her? Or was it a case of kill the bearer of bad news?
Or did the director see all this chaos as a threat to his career? Was he thinking ahead, to explaining this mess to the minister?
She heard the first Rooivalk arriving at the wounded soldier.
She heard Da Costa report in over the radio of the Rooivalk.
Thobela Mpayipheli had hijacked the Oryx.
Her heart sank.
She heard Tiger Mazibukos reaction, the cursing tirade.
He is not the right man for the situation,
she thought
.
Rage would not help now. She would have to step in. She was about to get up when she heard Mazibuko call the other Rooivalks. The dog is going to Botswana. You must stop him. Get that Oryx.
One by one, the attack helicopters confirmed their new bearings.
What are you thinking, Tiger? Are we going to shoot down the Oryx, with our people and all?
A terrible choice.
And get Little Joe to a hospital, said Mazibuko over the radio.
Too late, Captain, said Da Costa.
What? said Mazibuko.
Hes dead, Captain.
For the first time, the ether was still.
* * *
Vincent Radebe looked at the sleeping child in the sitting room of his Sea Point flat. He had made up a bed on the sofa and put the TV on, skipping through the channels for something suitable.
I dont want to watch TV said Pakamile, but he couldnt keep his eyes off the screen.
Why not?
I dont want to go stupid.
Stupid?
Thobela says it makes people stupid. He says if you want to be clever, you must read.
Hes right. But its too much television that makes you stupid. We are just going to watch a little bit.
Please, Lord,
he prayed silently
let me keep the child occupied, let him go to sleep so I can think.
Just a little?
Just until you go to sleep.
That must be okay.
I promise you it will be okay.
But what do you let a child watch?
And there, on one of the SABC channels, was a series on a pride of lions in the Kalahari and he said, This will make you clever, too, because its about nature, and Pakamile nodded happily and rearranged himself. Vincent had watched as sleep drew an invisible veil over the boys face, slowly and softly, till the eyes fell shut.
Radebe switched off the TV and the sitting-room light. The one in the open-plan kitchen he left on so the child would not be bewildered if he woke up in the night. He stood on the balcony and thought, because it was a horrible mess.
He would have to tell him his mother was dead.
Sometime or other. It was not right to lie to him.
He had to get the boy clothes. And a toothbrush.
They couldnt stay here; Mentz would find out that he had collected the child, and she would take him away to that little room.
Where could they go?
Family was no good. That was the first place Mentz would look. Friends were also dangerous.
So where?
* * *
Allison Healy lit a cigarette in her car before turning the key. She inhaled the smoke and blew a stream at the windshield, watching the smoke dissipate against it.
A long day. A strange day.
Woke up and looked for a story and found a complication.
Moments of truth. Tonight she had wanted to write another intro.
Thobela Mpayipheli, the fugitive motorcyclist, is a former hit man for the KGB.
No.
Thobela Mpayipheli, the man the media had dubbed the big, bad BMW biker, is a former KGB assassin.
She had broken off-the-record agreements before.
It was a nebulous agreement at best. People didnt always mean what they said. The source talked and talked and talked, and somewhere along the way said, You cant write that, and in the end no one remembered what was on the record and what was off. Of course, the really juicy bits, the real news, lay in those areas. Some people used it as a cover my ass mechanism but actually wanted you to write it as long as they could protest, I told her it was off the record.
Sometimes you wrote regardless.
Sometimes you trespassed knowingly, weighing up the consequences, and
publish and be damned
and if people were angry they would get over it, because they needed you, you were the media. With others it didnt matter let them be angry, they got what they deserved.
Tonight the temptation was exceedingly strong.
What had prevented her?
She took out her cell phone. She felt her heart bump in her chest.
She searched for the number under RECEIVED CALLS. Pressed the button and put the phone to her ear.
Three, four, five rings. Van Heerden.
There is something you said that I dont understand.
He did not answer immediately. In the silence there was meaning.
Where are you?
On the way home.
Where do you live?
She gave him the address.
Ill be there in half an hour.
She put the phone in her bag and pulled deeply on the cigarette.
Dear God, what am I doing?
35.
I
t was difficult to watch the compass, to gauge their altitude, keep an eye on the crew, and get the sports bag out of the luggage case while juggling the HK in one hand.
He did it step-by-step, aware of the need to concentrate. Nothing need happen quickly, he just had to stay alert and monitor all the variables. He placed the bag next to him.
He pulled up the shirt to get at the wound. It did not look good.
He heard the first Rooivalk arriving at the scene, listened to the reports. Heard the Rooivalks orders to come after them.
They knew he was going to Botswana.
It was the voice from this morning.
My name is Captain Tiger Mazibuko. And I am talking to a dead man.
Not yet, Captain Mazibuko. Not yet.
Mazibuko barking out,
And get Little Joe to a hospital.
Too late, Captain.
What?
Hes dead, Captain.
It was the pilot who looked around, disgusted at the Xhosas presence here. The injustice registered with Thobela, but that was irrelevant now.
But his status
was
relevant. And that had changed dramatically. From illegal courier, in their perspective, to murderer. Although it was in self-defense, they would not see it like that.
He looked down at the wound.
He must concentrate on survival.
Now more than ever.
He could see now that it was more than one bullet: one had taken a chunk of flesh out just below the hip bone, the other had gone in and out on a skewed trajectory it must have struck the hip bone. Blood was thick over the wounds. He pulled a shirt from the bag and began to clean it up, first looking up to see the copilot watching him, seeing the wounds, the man was pale. Checked the compass, looked outside, below he could see the landscape flashing by in the moonlight.
He looked around the interior. Some of the soldiers gear had been left inside: backpacks, two metal trunks, a paperback. He pushed the backpacks around with his left foot. Got hold of two water bottles and loosened them from the packs.
I need bandages, he said. The copilot pointed. At the back was a metal case with a red cross painted on it screwed to the body of the helicopter. Sealed.
He stood up and unplugged the headset. He broke the seal of the case and opened it. The contents were old, but there were bandages, painkillers, ointment, antiseptic, syringes of drugs he did not recognize, everything in a removable canvas bag. He took it out and moved back to his seat, replaced the headset, went through the checklist of crew, altitude, and direction. He placed the bandages aside, trying to make out the labels on the tubes of ointment and packets of pills in the poor light. He put what he needed to one side.
He had never been wounded before.
The physical reaction was new to him; he vaguely recalled the expected pathology: there would be shock, tremors and dizziness, then the pain, fatigue, the dangers of blood loss, thirst, faint-ness, poor concentration. The important thing was to stop the bleeding and take in enough water; dehydration was the big enemy.
He heard his mothers voice in his head. He was fourteen, they were playing by the river, chasing iguanas, and the sharp edge of a reed had sliced open his leg like a knife. At first all he felt was the stinging. When he looked down, there was a deep wound to the bone, he could see it, above the kneecap, pure white against the dark skin, he could see the blood that instantaneously began seeping from all sides like soldiers charging the front lines. Look, he said proudly to his friends, hands around the leg, the wound long and very impressive, Im going home, so long, limping back to his mother, watching the progression of blood down his leg with detached curiosity as if it wasnt his. His mother was in the kitchen, he needed to say nothing, only grinned. She had a shockThobela, her cry of worry. She let him sit on the edge of the bath and with soft hands and clicking tongue disinfected the wound with snow-white cotton balls, the smell of Dettol, the sting, the bandages and Band-Aid, his mothers voice, soothing, loving, caressing hands the longing welled up in him, for her, for that carefree time, for his father. He jerked back to the present, the compass was still at 355.
He got to his feet, pressed the HK against the copilots neck. Those helicopters. How fast can they fly?
Aah
uum
How fast? And he jabbed the weapon into the mans cheek.
About two-eighty said the pilot.
