See No Evil

30

The ground was rough and bumpy, with stones and holes hidden under the yellow grass. It was possible to make a path through the scattered trees, bushes and termite mounds, but Calder soon realized he wasn’t moving in a straight line. He had only gone a few yards, but he could no longer see Benton and Phyllis. He glanced up at the sun and decided he needed to aim just to the right of it. He estimated the airstrip was less than a mile away. Zan ran marathons; it wouldn’t take her long.

It was hard running on that terrain, and his chest was soon rasping for breath. He wasn’t sure what he would do if he caught up with Zan, but he knew that after what she had done to his sister he couldn’t let her get away. He dodged round a thorn bush and caught his sleeve in one of the branches, which pulled him up short. He tugged, but the thorns were barbed and wouldn’t let go. He brushed his left hand on one and it scratched him badly.

He stopped and carefully ripped at his shirt, making sure that he kept the rest of his body away from the bush. It took him a full minute, but eventually he broke free, leaving a strip of cloth attached to the thorns.

He checked the sun for his bearings and saw, right in front of him, an elephant watching him. It was only a baby, about five foot high. It turned and moved rapidly away from him towards some trees twenty yards away.

He didn’t move.

Behind one of the trees was what looked at first like a huge grey wall. There was an explosive trumpeting sound, and a crashing of leaves and snapping wood as the tree was brushed aside and a massive elephant erupted towards him, ears flapping wide. Don’t run, Phyllis had said. Calder planted his feet apart and raised his arms. The elephant kept coming. Calder kept his eyes open and focused on the tusks, which must have been more than six feet long and sharp. The elephant was close, too close, such a heavy beast moving at such a speed couldn’t possibly stop in time.

He closed his eyes. Then opened them. Somehow the elephant had halted. It was only ten yards away, a huge tower of grey muscle. Calder’s arms were still outstretched. He didn’t move. For a moment he looked up and caught the elephant’s eyes. Angry, threatening: don’t mess with my kid.

He lowered his gaze, fearing that he might antagonize her. The calf had trotted to a safe distance behind its mother, together with three other elephants that had stopped and were watching.

It was difficult, but he stood his ground. The elephant continued to stare at him, ears flapping, for a minute, maybe two. Then she turned and moved halfway back towards the calf.

Calder shifted sideways, always facing the animal. The elephant reached up to some branches with her trunk and snapped them angrily. They were thick branches: her strength was extraordinary.

It took him another minute to move into the cover of the nearest trees, and even then he walked slowly backwards for fifty yards or so, listening to the snap of branches, and the occasional angry trumpet.

Behind him an aircraft engine sputtered into life. It was close. He was now what he judged to be a safe distance away from the elephant, so he turned and ran towards the noise. He broke into the clearing to see one of the Piper Warriors lining up on the runway. A small herd of antelope were scattering in front of it, leaping in all directions to confuse this strange predator. As the aircraft began its takeoff roll, Calder sprinted to the small hut near the remaining parked aeroplanes. Sure enough, the door was open, and inside was a metal cupboard, also open. Calder grabbed the two sets of keys and ran over to the Cessna 172. He looked up and saw Zan’s plane clearing the trees to the west, towards the mountains.

He climbed up on to the fuselage and quickly checked the tanks for fuel. He could barely see any, but it was notoriously difficult to assess visually how full a Cessna’s tanks were. He heard the sound of a vehicle and saw a Land Rover speeding towards him, driven by Darren, the ranger, with a bare-chested Cornelius in the passenger seat. Calder started up the engine. Cornelius jumped out of the Land Rover carrying one of the game reserve’s rifles and ran towards the aircraft. Calder opened the passenger door for him and he climbed in.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

Calder did as many of the take-off checks as he could while taxiing to the threshold of the runway, lined up, and opened the throttle for full power. As the aircraft began its take-off roll, he glanced at the fuel gauges. Half full.

‘How’s Benton?’

‘We got him back to the main lodge. Phyllis is binding up his shoulder, she seems to know her first aid. An ambulance is coming, and the police, but they’ll take a while to get here.’

The wheels left the runway and Calder entered a low climb at full power. Zan had about five minutes on them, which in a Warrior equated to about eight miles. But she would not necessarily be flying at maximum speed. He hoped to be able to catch her before she realized he was on her tail.

As they climbed, he and Cornelius scanned the horizon ahead of them. It was hot in the small cockpit and there was a strong smell of Calder’s burnt hair, mixed with sweat. He opened up all the vents. The sky was mostly clear, with a few white puffy clouds about 6,000 feet up. Calder had been trained to scan the sky for small dots, but it was Cornelius who spotted Zan, about seven miles ahead and 1,000 feet above them. They were gaining on her. She was climbing; in a few minutes she would reach the Drakensberg escarpment.

‘Where’s she going?’ Cornelius asked.

‘I don’t know. Maybe she’s looking for a quiet airfield somewhere a long way from here where she can land and disappear. Has she much flying experience?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Cornelius. ‘She’s flown all over the country.’

‘Let’s follow her and see where she lands. Then at least we can tell the police. Here, pass me that.’ Calder pointed to a map on the coaming in front of Cornelius. He handed it over.

Calder glanced at it. South Africa was a huge country, covered in small landing strips. She could be going anywhere.

‘I’ll see if we can get some help,’ he said, pressing the mic button on his radio. He had no idea of the local channels: the radio was tuned to 119.0. ‘Mayday Mayday Mayday. This is...’ He glanced at the aircraft registration taped to the instrument panel ‘... Zulu Sierra Romeo Tango Oscar.’

‘Mayday, Zulu Sierra Romeo Tango Oscar, Lowveld Information, go ahead.’

‘Lowveld Information, I’m a Cessna 172 about fifteen miles west of the Kupugani game reserve. I’m pursuing a Piper Warrior about five miles ahead of me. The pilot was involved in an attempted murder at Kupugani. The local police have been informed. My intention is to track her and watch where she lands.’

There was a brief silence as the controller digested what must have been a very odd radio call.

‘Tango Oscar, squawk two-one-zero-seven for identification. We’ll contact the police now.’

Calder twiddled the knob on his transponder to 2107. The transponder would send out a signal that Lowveld Information could monitor to find his position.

‘Tango Oscar, we have you identified.’

‘Can you see the aircraft in front of me?’ Calder asked.

‘Negative, we have secondary radar only.’ That meant they wouldn’t pick up a signal from Zan’s aircraft unless her own transponder was switched on, which was highly unlikely.

‘Have you contacted the police yet?’

‘Tango Oscar, stand by.’

‘She’s changing direction!’ Cornelius was pointing up towards Zan’s Warrior. It had indeed altered course about thirty degrees to the north.

‘She must have heard our radio transmission,’ Calder said. ‘She’s looking for us.’

While they were directly astern and below Zan, it was impossible for her to see them, and they had been able to catch her on full power setting. Now they were no longer gaining as Zan, too, put on full power.

‘Damn. She’s heading for that cloud!’ They were climbing past 6,000 feet, the level of the white puffs of cloud. Zan’s aircraft was heading for the largest of these. Within a minute it had plunged inside. Calder throttled back and stayed beneath the cloud, craning his neck from side to side. No sign of Zan. They passed the length of the cloud, but the Warrior hadn’t emerged.

‘She must be circling in there,’ said Calder.

‘There she is!’ said Cornelius.

She was now heading south-west, climbing towards a larger cloud bank that was forming just above the Drakensberg escarpment. Calder turned tightly to follow her. Once again she entered the cloud. The mountains were too close below, so Calder climbed to try to get above the layer. A thousand feet higher he set up a wide circle pattern.

He couldn’t see her.

She’d got away.

‘Tango Oscar, this is Lowveld Information. We’ve spoken to the police and they have confirmed your story. Do you still have visual with the Warrior?’

‘Negative,’ said Calder. ‘I’m still looking but we lost her in cloud. She was heading south-west on two-three-zero, but God knows where she is now.’

‘I’ll see if Hoedspruit can help,’ said the controller.

‘Hoedspruit?’

‘It’s an air-force base with primary radar. Stand by.’

Thirty seconds’ more circling and then the radio crackled into life. ‘Tango Oscar, Hoedspruit has identified the other aircraft on their radar. It’s heading zero-four-zero about fifteen miles away from you, descending.’

‘Zero-four-zero!’ said Calder, examining the map. ‘That’s, towards Zimbabwe.’

‘Affirm,’ said the controller.

‘We’re going after her,’ Calder said, and turned his aircraft to the north-east. ‘Can you scramble a jet or something to intercept her?’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ said the controller. ‘But scrambling fighters is a big deal.’

They were once more over the low bush, miles and miles of it stretching forward as far as the horizon. Although they couldn’t see Zan’s aircraft, the controller gave them bearings. She had descended to 300 feet, which would make her more difficult to spot, but it did slow her down. Calder stayed at 2,000, where the air was that little bit thinner, hence providing less resistance and better fuel consumption. The Cessna and the Piper had broadly similar cruising speeds, but they had a weight disadvantage in the shape of Cornelius, two hundred and something pounds of him.

Calder pulled back on the throttle a little. Maximum power meant maximum fuel usage. They could continue to follow Zan only if they had enough fuel to keep them up in the sky. Of course, Calder had no idea how much Zan had left.

‘You know, it’s a terrible day when you realize your daughter’s a monster,’ Cornelius said.

‘Don’t blame yourself,’ Calder said. Cornelius might not have been the perfect father, but he hadn’t deserved what his daughter had visited on him.

‘She had me completely fooled,’ Cornelius said bitterly. ‘I thought she loathed apartheid. I never realized she was manipulating me; they were manipulating me. And I thought all these years she was angry with me for not supporting the struggle.’

‘She was certainly angry,’ Calder said.

‘You know, I’m sure the Laagerbond did kill Hennie, despite what she says,’ Cornelius said. ‘They just didn’t tell her they’d done it because they knew she was so fond of him.’

‘Too many people have died, one way or another.’

‘I’m sorry about your sister, Alex. After all you have done for us.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Calder said through gritted teeth. ‘Zan will pay. I’ll make sure of that.’

‘I think she’s lost touch with reality,’ Cornelius said. ‘The way she was talking back there. The idea that I would go with her.’

‘You could have humoured her on that one.’

‘I didn’t think she was going to try to kill us!’

‘She’s desperate and she’s dangerous,’ said Calder. ‘At this stage I don’t think she cares who she kills.’

They continued northwards, passing over a river, the Olifants according to Calder’s map. The landscape beneath them changed, the trees became sparser and their trunks became thicker, squat baobabs. Between them were the black specks of game: elephant, antelope, wildebeest and the odd giraffe, recognizable even from that height.

Then Calder saw a shadow skimming the grass in the distance. Next to it was a white speck.

‘Lowveld Information, we have visual contact,’ he said.

‘Good,’ replied the controller. ‘She’s flying too low; Hoedspruit are losing radar coverage. She’ll reach the Zimbabwe border in ten minutes. There is a police helicopter on its way to intercept her, but it won’t make it before then.’

‘Can you get us clearance to enter Zimbabwean airspace?’ Calder asked.

‘I can try, but I don’t hold out much hope. Stand by.’

Minutes ticked by. The fuel gauges were low. The trouble with any light aircraft’s fuel tank is that there is no way of being sure exactly how much fuel is left in it. The gauges are only a rough indicator. The calculation is usually made by considering time flown and hourly rate of fuel consumption. But since Calder had no idea how long the Cessna had been in the air during its flight to Kupugani, that wasn’t a calculation he could do with any accuracy. He ran through some figures in his head. Assuming the aircraft was half full when they took off and assuming a high level of fuel consumption at maximum power for the flight so far, they might have a couple of hours’ flying time, give or take half an hour. They had been in the air for an hour and forty minutes.

Calder thinned the fuel mixture some more. He did not want the engine to cut out here. He didn’t fancy a forced landing into a baobab, especially now the sun was plunging towards the western horizon.

The radio crackled into life. ‘Tango Oscar, you have been refused permission to enter Zimbabwean airspace. Estimate the Zimbabwe border in three minutes. What are your intentions?’

Calder glanced at Cornelius. Crossing international boundaries without a flight plan was a major sin as far as air-traffic controllers were concerned, however generally helpful they were. He decided it was best to be vague. ‘Lowveld Information, this is Tango Oscar leaving your frequency. Thanks for all your help.’ With that he turned the radio off.

They were still at 2,000 feet. Zan remained at 300 and was pulling away. She was very hard to see. Calder checked his map. She was making a direct line for a small airport at a place called Chiredzi. That was where she probably hoped to refuel and stay the night. Calder did not warm to the prospect of chasing her over the African bush in the dark.

Ahead, her plane skimmed across a lake, sending up a swarm of hundreds if not thousands of large white birds, cranes of some kind. Calder and Cornelius lost her. By the time the flock had peeled off to the west her aircraft was too low and too far away to be seen.

Time passed. Two hours. Two hours five minutes. Two hours ten minutes. Any moment Calder expected to hear the cough of the engine cutting out. He kept his eye on the ground looking for clearings where he could make an emergency landing without doing too much damage. The sun was glowing red in the west and the light was going.

Two hours fifteen minutes. On the horizon they spotted smoke, chimney stacks, some kind of large processing plant. Then they made out the shape of a runway in the twilight. Calder had no idea whether Zan was there or not, at this point he just wanted to get on to the ground before his fuel ran out. He decided not to call up the airfield on the radio, in case they refused him permission to land.

Two hours twenty minutes. The fuel gauges of both tanks were on empty. The engine coughed. Calder switched the tank selector to the right and the engine restarted. The left tank was finished. It wouldn’t be long before the right failed too.

They were nearing the runway. Ideally he should join the circuit overhead to inspect it first, but he had no time for that, and he lined up the aircraft for a straight-in approach, keeping high. The engine coughed again, sputtered and died.

Everything went very quiet. Below him were fields of sugar cane, not comfortable if he landed short.

He trimmed the aeroplane to its best rate of descent and glided towards the runway. The numbers on the threshold drifted up in the windshield, a sign that he was sinking. He resisted the temptation to raise the nose; that would just cause the aircraft to lose speed and sink even faster.

They weren’t going to make the runway, but there was a stretch of brown grass a hundred yards before it. In front of that was the airfield perimeter and the sugar-cane field.

‘There she is,’ said Cornelius. Calder could just see the Warrior on a taxiway a few yards from the runway, but he was focusing on getting the aircraft down in one piece. They skimmed over the perimeter fence and he flared the aeroplane for a bumpy landing on rough grass. At least they were down. They rolled to a halt on the runway threshold.

Silence from the aircraft, but they could hear excited chattering thirty yards to their left. Zan was standing by her aircraft in front of a group of three angry Africans, shadowy figures in the gathering darkness. She was screaming at them and waving her rifle. A uniformed policeman was marching towards her from the control tower, shouting. He seemed to be unarmed.

Zan turned towards their Cessna and raised her rifle. Calder and Cornelius ducked. There was a crack followed by the explosion of the windshield shattering.

‘Jesus!’ muttered Cornelius. He reached behind him for the rifle which was lying on the back seat.

They raised their heads gingerly over the coaming. The policeman had stopped, but he was still shouting at Zan. The other Africans, one in shirtsleeves and two in overalls, were backing off.

Zan screamed something at the policeman and raised the rifle to her shoulder, pointing it directly at him. He shut up.

She pressed the trigger. The round sent the policeman flying backwards.

‘Here!’ said Cornelius, handing the rifle to Calder. ‘You’ve got to stop her. I can’t.’

Calder hesitated. He had never killed anyone before, let alone a woman.

‘Quick, man, before she shoots someone else!’ Cornelius’s eyes were full of pain — pain and desperation.

Calder took the rifle, unlatched the aircraft door and pushed it open. On the taxiway the Africans were running away. Zan lifted the rifle to her shoulder again, aiming at their backs.

Calder chambered a round, flicked off the safety, threw himself on to the tarmac and rolled once. He stared down the sight of the rifle and moved it downwards and to the right, so that it covered Zan’s upper body. She had seen the movement from the aeroplane and was swinging her own weapon round towards him.

He pressed the trigger. A gaping hole appeared in Zan’s chest as she staggered backwards, an expression of total surprise on her face.

By the time Calder and Cornelius had run over to her felled body, she was dead.