The Devil's breath

14

Max was totally unprepared for the sudden onslaught when it came.

They had traveled all that day, rested through the night and set off again before dawn.!Koga kept checking the ground, and every few hours he told Max that the vehicle tracks definitely went towards the mountains. They reached the furthermost edge of the rising ground while it was still light. A dry riverbed gave them easy access to the foothills. Max could see the sparse forest of trees in the distance but!Koga kept warning him about the cloud that suffocated the mountaintop. It was now so black, it growled like a bear and the first few stinging raindrops raked them. A bitterly cold storm suddenly roared down the mountainside, as if angered by their presence. The wind hit them first, buffeting them so hard they almost fell, then a line of water, not deep enough even to cover their ankles, trickled towards them across the breadth of the riverbed.

“Let’s make for those rocks, in case this is a flash flood,” Max yelled, because now the wind howled venomously. Splashing through the shallow water, Max saw exactly where they should head for-the boulder was a slab of rock that stuck out like a massive diving board above the river. Within a couple of minutes they were clambering onto its broad back. Max looked behind him; where he had stood moments earlier, the water was now knee deep. Before he clambered any higher it was waist deep, and it surged around the bend, hitting the far bank, where boulders pushed it back directly towards him and!Koga. Max could see immediately what was going to happen. The water was already higher than a man, and the surge at the bend gave it a turbulent power that formed a wall of water that would strike their side of the bank, engulf the flat-bedded boulder and sweep them off.

He yelled at!Koga to run for it, but he was downwind and could not hear him.!Koga was already trying to stand on the boulder, his knees bent, a hand touching the rock face for support. The water roared and, combined with the increasing velocity of the wind, it became a maelstrom of swirling rain, competing with the wind and the river as to which would destroy them first.

Max surged up the rock face, desperation fueling his legs. He reached!Koga in time to see what was happening in the gully that channeled the water down from the mountain, above the rock they stood on. The ever-increasing volume of water churned mud and boulders in a helter-skelter ride. The bottleneck at the foot of the mountain, where it swirled around the corner to the opposite bank, increased its own resistance. As the water buffeted the bank below them, the water from that gully would take the line of least resistance. It would smash mercilessly across where they stood.

Max grabbed!Koga’s arm and pulled him, but the boy resisted. “We have to get higher!” Max yelled.

This was the first time Max had seen!Koga scared. The boy’s eyes were wide and his breath came in short, gulping sounds. He was frozen with fear, looking down at the water. They would be at least waist deep when they jumped for safety, trying to reach dry land less than ten meters away. But if they didn’t jump now, that distance would treble in less than a minute.!Koga shook his head. “No water!”

“Come on!” Max was stronger than his friend and he yanked him firmly towards the edge-he could see a muddy, froth-flecked wave rising up, ready to strike.

“I can’t swim!”!Koga shouted.

Max did not hesitate. “You won’t have to!” he shouted and dragged!Koga with him. They were in midair for a few seconds, then splashed into what, a minute earlier, had been the dry riverbank but which was now chest-deep water. Max kept a tight grip on!Koga’s wrist, surprised by his own strength. As they splashed into the confused undercurrent, it snatched them this way and that, but Max pushed his knees against it, ignored the bruising boulders that banged his shins, and hauled!Koga with him. As they clawed their way up onto dry ground, the wave broke behind them across the flat rock and drenched them in a curtain of water. They were wet, but now they were safe. The surging water would dissipate its own energy, the further away it traveled.

Max did not stop pulling!Koga after him until they were beyond the heaving water. Breathless, they stood and watched the water as it rolled by, now a steady stream. The rain stopped, the grumbling clouds quietened and, other than the gurgle of the water, it was quiet.

“The Mountain God,”!Koga said quietly.

Max nodded. There was no point arguing the case.!Koga had his beliefs and, after what seemed to be an intrusion on their part that caused the storm, Max wasn’t so sure!Koga was wrong.

“Well, he’s quiet now. Maybe he doesn’t like visitors. If someone climbed over my back garden fence and trampled on the flower bed, I’d turn the hose on them as well.” Max smiled but!Koga still seemed cautious, glancing nervously towards the darkened summit.

“It was a flash flood. Look.” He pointed to the riverbed. The water was lower now; somewhere downstream the ground had swallowed the river. Mud and debris scarred its path. “And we’re not going up there, so don’t worry.” He put an arm on!Koga’s shoulder. “Let sleeping gods lie.”

Once they had skirted the mountain slopes, Max saw the place he instinctively knew to be their destination: a flattened area between the high grass and the tree line. The savannah grass was high enough to hide a man, but a narrow strip had been pummeled by generations of elephants as they shuffled on their endless journeys, foraging for food and water. Max scanned the area. Animals probably moved from this flash-flood area to the wetlands further north. Somewhere down there was the captured dove he had seen in his mind’s eye; he didn’t like to call it a vision, it was still something he could not explain to himself. What he did know for certain was that this was where those images in his head had brought him.

An eagle’s screech snatched him from his reverie. He looked up at the circling bird that had swooped from the mountain’s sheer face. Gazing up at the eagle, he felt a chill squirm from his chest to his stomach-it seemed the eagle was calling to him, like one eagle to another. Or perhaps it was a warning? The bird was lifted away by an updraft and a sudden flurry of wind swirled dust, forcing them to turn their faces, hands covering their eyes against the stinging sand. As the wind dropped, Max found himself facing away from the trampled grass. His peripheral vision gave him another angle, which allowed him to see a shape in the trees. It was a slightly different shade of green from the others, and a smaller shadow skirted the fringe of scrubland.

For a moment, Max thought he saw a jackal. What was it he failed to remember about one of the constant clues in this whole thing: that wraithlike figure of the jackal? His father’s Egyptian stories came back to him-as well as being the God of the Dead, the jackal was the guide between the two worlds. It would show the way. That made sense. Even in the cave drawings, it was the jackal’s figure that had led him to the images of himself and his father on the wall.

Eagle, dust swirls and a specter-all directed him to that one place.

The flattened grass felt like straw beneath their feet. With the high grass to one side and the low trees to the other, Max sensed a mixture of dread and expectation. The place was comforting, like a secret den he’d had when he was younger-a place where you could hide and not be seen; one of those special places no one knows about-but it also felt like a baited trap. The further they went along that elephant track, the higher the grass, the more dense the shrubs and trees.

Max stopped.!Koga had moved ahead and went down on one knee. Max looked around him. A small flock of chattering birds scattered across the treetops. Was that a warning, or were they simply irritated by Max and!Koga’s presence? Max joined!Koga and stared into the undergrowth-there was something in there-it brooded in the shadows. Something fluttered, rasping, like leaves on a beech tree.

“There are no tracks,”!Koga told him. But that didn’t mean an animal could not have pushed its way into the undergrowth from another place. What little breeze there was came from behind them, so there was no apparent scent of anything, but whatever was in there would catch their scent. There were no sounds of feeding; elephants would be ripping the branches apart. What else? Buffalo were not supposed to be in this part of the country, but they had already experienced a rogue herd, the night of the stampede. Farmers had tried and failed to domesticate this most dangerous of animals, so there were still small herds scattered around. And a buffalo could wait until an unsuspecting hunter was almost nose to nose before charging and killing.

!Koga put an arrow onto his bow string and Max followed suit. Such a flimsy defense would be useless against a big animal, but it gave them courage.

Walking a couple of meters apart, they stepped cautiously into the undergrowth. The shadow was ten meters in, at the end of a broken path of shrub and low branches.

The sunlight flickered through the tree canopy; they were upon it now. Max lowered his bow, reached out to the irregular shape in front of him and touched a dried branch. He gave a tug and it fell away. Another step forward, another cut branch. That too he pulled back. Someone had cut branches down to hide whatever it was in this glade. Now his hands touched what felt like coarse string and plastic. He yanked, but it would not give. It was a net, snared over thorn branches. A camouflage net. The small, dull plastic panels fluttered differing shades of green. Max had seen plenty of these on the army training ground; an armored vehicle’s outline could be disrupted to make it very difficult to see. But now the shape behind the net was obvious.

It was a small plane.

And on its tail fin was the drawing of a dove.

The plane had been manhandled into the trees, turned, and then camouflaged. It looked as though someone wanted to be able to take off in a hurry, and that would be achieved by pulling off the cut branches and lifting the front of the netting clear of the propeller. Within moments of starting the engine, the pilot would be able to taxi forward, turn the plane onto the trampled grass, and take off.

Max and!Koga edged their way around the aircraft. The air was cooler under the trees’ canopy and the netting added a lot of shade. Max felt a guilty sense of trespass; this was someone else’s secret. As far as he could see, the plane was undamaged and was about the same vintage as Kallie’s, so, although it was unsophisticated, with only bare rudiments for comfort, it looked perfectly serviceable. Tentatively he reached out for the cabin door latch. It was unlocked. The door creaked a little and cool air from the interior touched his face.

!Koga had moved back into the sunlight and the entrance to the trees which, from where Max now sat in the pilot’s seat, looked like the mouth of a cave, with the inside of the plane and the shadows being the cave itself. Max let his fingers touch the controls, holding them in his palms like a flight simulator joystick on his computer at home. The unmoving dials waited for electrical current to spur them into life. Fuel gauge, airspeed indicator-in knots, not miles per hour like Kallie’s-this plane was a slightly newer model. Vertical speed dial, altimeter, a row of flip switches for lights and fuel pump, warning notices to check contaminants in the fuel and to make sure the seat was locked into position before takeoff and landing. A red master switch was in the Off position, waiting for the ignition key to be inserted and the magnetos switched on. Without thinking, he flipped down the sun visor and found a well-worn key with brown cardboard tag attached. An almost illegible call-sign number, faded beneath years of handling and grime, was written on the tag.

Max put the key in the ignition and turned it. There was a hum of power from the battery and the dials swung into life. Max quickly turned the key off.!Koga opened the other door as Max pushed the key back under the elastic band on the sun visor.

“Someone wanted this ready for a quick escape,” he said.

“There are tracks, on the grass. I think it is the same truck that was at the place of the dead.”

“That means the plane landed, the pilot met someone else in a Land Rover or whatever, hid the plane, and then they drove off again,” Max said. Suddenly he remembered the paintings on the cave wall. The dove hidden; the white man injured. This plane had to be the one his father used! It was!Koga’s father who had taken Tom Gordon’s notes from where the Bushmen died, and he had said there were two white men in a pickup. Dad and Anton Leopold. So perhaps his dad had got a message from Leopold on the ground, who then met him here. Leopold would have told him about the dead Bushmen and, knowing his father, Max realized they would have driven off after the men responsible.!Koga’s father had told them that the two white men went off after the other men. His father had probably concealed the plane for a quick getaway.

Max twisted in the seat to look in the back of the plane. A couple of empty plastic water bottles, a box of field rations. No clothes or luggage. Nothing to prove the pilot was his dad. There was a blackened stain which made a neat outline, showing where the small white-and-green sticker said First Aid. The box itself was missing, probably taken from its mounting for the first time ever, given the dirt outline.

He clambered into the back. His fingers touched the bare metal carcass, tracing the shape of the cabin. Was anything hidden? Any clues to be found? His father had made those drawings to bring him here to the dove. There must be something. Then his finger found what his eyes had missed. He winced and withdrew his hand, looking at the small tear in the skin and the dribble of blood. On the edge of the plane, where the floor met the sides of the cabin, three holes were torn in the metal. The flare of impact was minimal, almost no mushrooming inwards; it was these ragged edges that had snagged his finger. He sucked the blood, then noticed the angle where the light came in. He eased out a reed-thin arrow from its quiver and placed it in the hole. The angle showed him that the bullet which made this hole would have passed between the seat and controls. The pilot would have been hit in the leg. Max bent down and realized that the dark stain on the floor was not dried mud. Beneath the passenger seat he saw a grubby edge of paper. It looked like a map.

He slid his hand beneath the seat and, as he teased it out, he heard the gentle rolling of something he had touched. Working blind, his fingers found a small glass ampoule. It was an empty morphine phial.

Max held the folded map. The words Sector Search were scrawled in the margin. It was his dad’s handwriting. There was no doubt now that this was his father’s plane.

And it seemed obvious that he had been shot.

The map’s creases were even dirtier than his own map. He opened out two folds. An area was defined by boxed, faded pencil lines. Max couldn’t determine just where the area was, but a dozen or more marks-small red crosses-were scattered across the map. Max unfolded another panel.

His finger traced contour lines, the mountains, the rivers. The map was getting too big to read properly.

As he climbed out of the cockpit, a smaller folded map fell from the bulk of the larger one. It was a hydrology chart. Moments later, he and!Koga had opened both on the ground next to the aircraft. The bigger sheet related to Max’s own map, but the emptiness of the country allowed for little detail. The northeastern part was where the red crosses were distributed. Max traced a finger back to Kallie’s area, from where he had started his journey. Brandt’s Wilderness Farm was shown. It was like gliding across the country, peering down at the landscape from space. Farm names, small airfields, settlements and towns, they had all been surveyed over the years. Max worked out where they had originally been attacked when they left Kallie, their trek across the mountains, the sacred cave, the Bushmen’s area. It brought him ever closer to the marked crosses. Comparing the hydrology map was more difficult. There were no place names, just the veins of water, like leaf shapes and patterns. Two or three areas looked as though the map maker had taken a blue pen and slashed a dense pattern backwards and forwards. Max realized these were the swamps. To the left of these was a dark, spiderlike patch with a strand suspending it from what was obviously a big river to the north. This was a feed, and from that darkened patch the spider’s legs reached out, multiple strands of water seeping into the swamps.

“I think we’re about here,!Koga,” Max said as he tapped the area southeast of the spider’s body.

“What are these things?”!Koga asked, pointing to the red crosses.

Max hesitated. “Well … I think these are the places where people have died. Look …” And he traced their own journey until they skirted half a dozen markers. “I think this is the place where the earth bleeds. Where your people died and where our fathers met.”

“So your father has found many dead people.”

“Yes, I think so.”

“But why did they die?”

“Maybe because of the water. These are water maps. All those thin lines might be underground streams. My father specialized in them.” Max got quickly to his feet, climbed back into the cockpit and sat staring at the radio. They needed help. People were dying, his dad was injured. His fingers reached for the On switch. He hesitated. This was his chance to radio for assistance. He could get Kallie, the police, he could have messages sent back to Angelo Farentino. Max was on the verge of finding his father. They’d come a long way, but now he faltered.

In the stillness of the shade Max tried to picture his father and his helper manhandling the aircraft. His father, injured after someone had tried to shoot him out of the sky, and Leopold, about whom Max knew nothing. He was obviously a good field man, or Max’s dad would not have used him. It didn’t matter. What did matter was that they had hidden the plane and readied it for a quick escape. How much power was left in the battery? Max might drain it in one broadcast. No one knew where his father was. Max could not stay at the plane, he had to keep searching. If their paths crossed and his dad got back here and still needed to escape, Max would have ruined everything. Come on, think! What would Dad have wanted? The message on the cave wall was to bring him here. Had he left the maps for him? Was that deliberate? Or were they tucked away and forgotten in the urgency of the moment? What else had he drawn in that cave? The dove under the scratchy cover, the injured man, the morning star-every picture guiding him. Then he remembered that there was a gaping hole drawn on the cave wall, like a whirlpool, with a cloud hovering over it. He jumped back down to!Koga, who was gazing at the unfamiliar landscape, seen from a surveyor’s eye, of the big map.

“There is a line here. Like a snake,”!Koga said.

“Show me.”

!Koga’s finger was on the coastline at Walvis Bay. The red line meandered towards the darkened area which, on the hydrology map, would have been the spider’s body. “It’s a road,” Max said. “From the coast to this area, whatever that might be. Maybe that’s the route my father’s field assistant took. I can’t tell. Never mind that for now. Do you remember on the cave wall, there was a drawing, like a hole in the ground, a big hole, with something swirling around it?” Max grappled for a description, hoping the Bushman boy might recognize the picture he was trying to describe. “Maybe a dust bowl, or something, y’know, a place where the wind might gather speed and twist itself up into a tornado.”

!Koga shook his head. Max knew he wasn’t explaining things properly. He quickly made a model with sticks and stones, and bits of leaf and dry lichen, in the same manner as!Koga had once shown him the route they had planned to take.!Koga was part of the land; these tactile representations might carry more meaning than lines on a map.

“This is where we left your camp, where I was hurt….”

!Koga nodded. Max needed to understand!Koga’s own ideas of where they were.

“Can you show me where the people died, the place where the earth bleeds?”

Without hesitation!Koga cleared the dirt. He scratched a line in the sand and gouged deeper scratches into the dirt to represent the ground where the water seeped. “It was here.”

“Where are we now?” Max asked, starting to get his bearings on this dirt map.

Again!Koga drew a line away from the last markings; he pulled some grass and thorn to show the elephant tracks and the trees where they now sheltered, and he made a small stick cross-the plane.

Max made a broad semicircle around their position. “What is here?”

!Koga seemed uncertain. Then he turned a thumb downwards, indicating different places in Max’s semicircle. “Here there are lions. Five families. They are brave lions and my people have hunted near them. To this side the salt lake is hard and takes many days to cross and there is no water and no place to go and no reason to cross it. But here we hunt wild pig and it was here that Ukwane hunted wildebeest and the wildebeest did not forgive him and lifted his head before he died and killed Ukwane. He was a great hunter. There are police at this place where the trucks stop here, it is a garage.”

“How far?”

“Five days.”

“What else?”

“Here is a place we cannot hunt. It is protected for the tourists.”

“A game reserve?”

“Yes. It was the place where we hunted, but the government said we must not kill.”!Koga’s hand now swept further across. “This place we do not go.”

“Why not,!Koga? Is it the police, or the army?” Max remembered that both the police and army, usually made up of tribes other than Bushmen, harassed the nomadic hunter-gatherers.

!Koga clicked words under his breath and shook his head. “There is death there. There has always been death there.”

Bushmen did not like talking about death. Evil spirits were real, tangible forces of nature that could take them without warning.

“Have you been there?”

“No. It is not good.”

“How far is it?” Max persisted.

“Two days-if we run like the wind”-he laughed quickly-“like you! But we cannot go to this place. It is … I do not know the words.”

“Is it sacred for your people? Like a burial site?” Max asked, trying to tease a more exact answer.

“No, it is not sacred. It is bad. It is a bad place.”

!Koga scooped up a handful of dirt and shaped the small hole. His hand darted quickly, gathering stones; anything sharp or irregular he pushed down into the throat of the hole; then, choosing smoother pebbles, he laid them around the edge. Finally he crumbled dried leaves and lichen, dressing the area with a softer, greener covering. “Only some hunters have been to this place. They say there is a great monster who lives beneath the land. He breathes the stench of the dead. He tries to live with us and the animals. He is trapped beneath the ground. He is angry and wishes to be like men, but he cannot.”

If there was anything as frightening as that on, or under, the face of the earth, then Max knew it was bound to have something to do with him finding his father. He sat quietly for a moment, then looked closely at the map, gauging the direction and distance from what!Koga had shown him on the ground. For the first time he noticed that there were still many references to place names from when the country was occupied by the Germans before the First World War. His finger took his eye across the creased paper, where he found a small, almost indistinguishable image which, if it had been necessary to check the map’s legend, would have told him it represented a fort. But Max knew what the word Schloss meant. Angelo Farentino had shown him aerial photographs of the fort built by the crazy German aristocrat in the nineteenth century. The fort that now belonged to Shaka Chang. An awful moment of certainty struck him. Less than half a kilometer from the fort was a small wavelike image, neither lake, nor swamp, nor river, for it couldn’t be described as any of these things. The map’s writing had to be typeset even smaller than most other names because it was longer than most and it read der Atem des Teufels-the Devil’s Breath.

That was!Koga’s monster, and that was where Max knew he must go.