The Devil's breath

6

Far to the northwest of the Valley of Bones, beyond the hundreds of kilometers of red sand dunes that lay, scalloplike, towards the coastline, Atlantic fog sucked in by the intense temperature inland shut down any flying Kallie’s father had planned for the next few hours.

Ferdie van Reenen was a big man, with a wild beard and a battered face from being a boxer in his youth. He had survived war, flood and famine on his farm, but it would be his daughter Kallie who would break his heart one day, when she grew older and left home. But until that happened she could also raise his blood pressure. He was due to fly his clients further north, to the Kunene River on the Angolan border. His twin-engined Beechcraft Baron could do the trip comfortably with its fifteen-hundred-kilometer range, and he was all set, now that Kallie had delivered the additional supplies he needed. She had also delivered the news about Max and!Koga.

Van Reenen secured the luggage net in the back of the plane. His voice was as rough as old desert boots, and distinctive: a mixture between a Dutch and a German accent.

“That was a stupid thing to do, my girl. Helping that boy will bring trouble down on our heads, you see if it doesn’t!”

Kallie ticked off the final item on the supply manifest; she always kept accurate records for the farm’s accounts. Legend had it that when her father served in the South African Air Force, he could fly a Hercules C130 transport plane through the eye of a needle at three hundred knots, upside down and with a full cargo; but money and income taxes presented a bigger challenge. And so, at times, did his daughter.

“Pa, don’t start.”

“Start? You fly to Windhoek, you send him off with my old Land Rover, my favorite Land Rover …”

“Pa, it’s the only Land Rover.”

“Exactly. I cherish that thing. That’s not the point. He’s just a boy!”

“He’s fifteen,” she interrupted.

“A boy!” he insisted.

“When you were fifteen, you spent three months in the bush hunting, you rounded up five hundred cattle for your father …”

“It was a thousand head of cattle. Never mind me! He’s an English schoolboy who has probably never even seen the sun, and he’ll fry out here. And now he’s gone off on a scatterbrained expedition to try and find his father, who is nowhere to be seen or heard of!” Ferdie van Reenen angrily wrenched the securing rope tight. Kallie stayed quiet; there was little point in going head to head with her dad. “Do you have any idea what this would mean if anything happened to him? We helped him. We sent him out there-probably to die!” her father spluttered.

“I sent him out there. Me. I made the decision.”

“Wrong one to make!”

“He’s got diesel, water, food-he can reach any of the game lodges by radio if he gets lost or if the Land Rover has any problems,” she replied.

“The Land Rover is in perfect running order. That’s not the point! We will be the ones dragged into court. Accessory to stupidity will be the charge, as well as accessory to careless abandonment, or accessory to manslaughter, or accessory to something! Father missing. Son missing. My daughter’s brain missing!”

Kallie took a deep breath. Her father’s life was stressful enough, trying to keep two planes, a farm and a struggling safari business going. The Beechcraft had been bought with a big loan from the bank, and any mishaps or drop in business could push her father into bankruptcy. “Pa …” She touched his arm. “You taught me to fly when I was twelve; I’ve been able to look after myself for a while now…. Believe me, this boy would have gone off on his own if I hadn’t helped him. And I think he’s capable of handling things. He’s a tough kid. The man from London called, asking if I could help. I picked him up, I did the best I could for him. He thinks his father is in trouble.!Koga thinks he’s been sent by the Great God to be with his people….” She stopped; she could hear herself making matters worse.

“The Bushman was still at the farm?” he asked.

She nodded. “He wouldn’t leave until ‘the fair-haired boy came who was sent to be with them.’ That’s what he said. Pa, you know they have a sixth sense about these things. What could I do? Say no? Tell him to go home?”

Her father pulled up his coat collar. He hated the damp. He hated not flying. But he loved his daughter. He looked at her, the moisture from the fog clinging to his beard. Then he shook his head. “No. He sounds like a brave boy.” He kissed her cheek, turned towards the airfield’s building and pointed a finger at her. “But when this weather lifts, you fly straight back to the farm. Enough is enough. Understand?” She nodded, and he put his arm around her. “Good. Come on, buy your old man a cup of coffee. God, I hate this weather.”

Kallie returned his hug and fell into step as they set off for the airfield clubhouse. She wanted to make radio contact with Max, to see if he was all right. She was responsible for helping him, she knew that; but now she felt like a big sister towards the English boy. And, from her experience, brothers always got into trouble.

A low-pressure weather front had moved across the North Atlantic, tumbled across Ireland and then punished the Devon coast with torrential rain. Dartmoor High’s granite walls kept the elements at bay, but during storms like these, when the clouds hugged the high ground and enshrouded the school, the long, low-lit corridors and stairwells created an almost sinister atmosphere. And shadows seemed to move when they shouldn’t. It was all in the imagination, Sayid told himself as he skulked along, hugging the gloomier side of the corridor’s walls. Since he had sent the message telling Max that Peterson knew where he was, there had been no contact with his friend. And there had been no chance for Sayid to eavesdrop again on Peterson, so yesterday he had taken matters into his own hands. He needed a piece of equipment from a specialist shop in London that he could buy on the web. And for that he needed a credit card, and there was only one place where he could find one: his mother.

Sayid had been brought up with a strict code of behavior, and theft and dishonesty were considered “heinous crimes” according to his mother and his late father. But Sayid had no choice but to use his mother’s credit card illegally and order what he needed. His mother would have done anything she could to help Max, but then she would have asked why he needed this particular device, and then he would have had to explain that he wanted to bug Peterson’s phone; his mother would have thrown a wobbly, and matters would have got totally out of hand. He had four weeks before his mother would discover the item on her credit card billing, so he would worry about the consequences when the time came. By then, he hoped, Max would have returned safely. It wasn’t that he hadn’t tried another way of doing things. He had tried to hack into Peterson’s computer, but the granite walls, as well as Peterson’s firewall, stopped him. Sayid soothed away his guilt over the card. There had been no choice. Not if he was to help his friend.

He had to discover who Peterson reported to, so that he could relay that information to Max and Farentino. But how to get into Peterson’s locked room was another problem altogether.

Shaka Chang could buy anything he desired, but he could not get the information he needed from Tom Gordon. The scientist had outwitted Chang and hidden the vital evidence which could ruin Chang’s plans for good. He comforted himself with the thought that the scientist was no longer of any consequence; Tom Gordon would not be telling anyone anything. But Chang had a grudging admiration for the boy who had set out from England. Max Gordon’s determination could prove more troublesome than he expected. Once his men had driven him and the Bushman boy into the Valley of Bones, Max had held little interest for Chang; now he began to wonder if he had been too hasty in that dismissal. If by some absolute fluke the boy survived, and if, as he suspected, the boy’s father had somehow told him where to find the information that was so very damaging-then he should not underestimate the emotional strength of anyone trying to save a loved one. Not that Shaka Chang had ever been loved. Feared and loathed, yes. Love was too difficult and complex an emotion to analyze, but he did recognize it as a driving force in others.

Mr. Slye, ever aware of his master’s desire to be in total control of any given situation, muttered that perhaps it would be prudent to double-check on the boy’s survival. Chang agreed. “Send them back again. No excuses. Find either the boy’s body or, if wild animals have had him, his remains.”

“And if by any chance they track him down and he is still alive …?” Slye asked. He would never presume to offer a complete answer to any situation: suggestions were complimentary to his employer’s intelligence; a solution without one being requested, impertinent.

“Kill him on sight. Either result will be a satisfactory outcome, Mr. Slye.”

“The men who failed before? Should I order them to hunt down the boy?”

“Yes. But lessons must be learned.”

Mr. Slye dipped his head slightly in acknowledgment.

“How very wise, if I may say so, sir.”

Chang sighed. Slye’s brazen pandering was, in many ways, repulsive, but in this lay his value to Chang. Absolute obedience and a mind that Chang recognized as being one of the most devious, informed and manipulative he had ever known. Chang gazed for a moment at his weasel-like body. If only Slye’s teeth had not been so pointed and he was more photogenic, he would have made a first-class politician.

The driver who had led those failed hunters was already being taken care of, and the example made of him would be witnessed firsthand by the others. Chang believed lessons should often be taught with a sharp slap on the wrist, so to speak. A little pain never hurt anybody, was Chang’s motto.

He stood on the huge balcony. Thirty meters below him, the fort’s gates opened. This would be an excellent start to the day. A juicy slice of melon melted on his tongue. He forked another piece into his mouth from the bowl of chilled mixed fruits that he always had for breakfast and gazed indulgently at his beloved crocodiles by the river. He loved to spoil them. So much so that he had decided to give the monstrous creatures a morsel for breakfast. The driver.

He watched as the small motorboat chugged out into midstream. The crocodiles on the sandbanks lifted their snouts. Who needed guard dogs when any intruder would have to get past them? The screaming man, held firmly by the very men who had accompanied him in the pickup, was unceremoniously bundled over the side, and the vessel beat a hasty retreat. The floundering man was very much the center of attention as half a dozen crocodiles powered towards him. How nice to be wanted, Shaka Chang thought as he squelched a ripe grape between his teeth. He turned to Slye. “I do hope he doesn’t give the crocodiles indigestion-they are a protected species.”

Finally the horrifying screams stopped. The churned water settled. Chang nodded to a white-gloved servant: he would have his coffee now. A low rumble of thunder groaned across the horizon; perhaps there would be some rain in a couple of days. Either that or it was the crocodiles’ stomachs, dealing with their breakfast.

A cool breeze, or even a full-blown storm, would have been welcome so far as Max was concerned. He and!Koga had set out at dawn, heading for the distant mountains, but within a couple of hours the temperature was already over forty degrees Celsius.!Koga reckoned they could reach the foot-hills of the peaks by that night if they moved quickly enough and if they were lucky in the hunt. It was the “moving quickly” that Max was struggling with. Bushmen can chase down a wounded buck for a whole day before they finish the kill, but Max was struggling to breathe the lung-searing air after a couple of hours, and they were only walking.

He had been keen to travel later in the day, but!Koga warned him that this was when the predators would be hunting and, even though Max was a good runner, he did not have the speed or strength of a lion or a leopard.

The Valley of Bones had been formed millions of years ago. Some force of the universe had flung a meteor into this wasteland, and the impact had thrown up jagged mountains and shattered the earth’s crust into fractured veins of gullies and crevasses. The dry scrub and acacia survived only because of the seasonal rains, but if they failed, then the vegetation withered even more. Mud holes and surface roots provided moisture for the grass-eating animals, while they in turn fell victim to the carnivores. It was a hellhole of heat, dust and death.

Max was in danger of dehydration. What helped save him from heatstroke was an ex-army floppy hat his dad had brought back from Iraq, though he never told his son what exactly he had been doing there-another secret. The hat helped keep at bay the brain-frying sun, but it was thirst that would shut him down-and probably drive him crazy-if he did not get some fluids soon. Max felt queasy, his blood seemed to be boiling, a surging wave of nausea gripped him and he was losing control. His mind began to wander.

Everything in front of him was a blur. All he was doing was putting one foot in front of the other, but now even that was proving difficult. He had put a smooth pebble in his mouth to try to keep saliva going, but that had not helped and, despite promising himself to be frugal, the last of the water had already trickled down his throat a couple of hours earlier. The frightening reality of the wilderness was worming its way into him like a tick burrowing under his skin. He had to shake off the fear. He had to be strong. But what he had to have was a drink.

!Koga glanced back and saw Max on his knees, his face dust-caked, his breathing coming hard. A few paces, and he was back with him, coaxing him under the spindly shade from an old hag of a tree.!Koga placed a hand on Max’s shoulder and smiled, reassuring. Then he stepped away and began scuffling through the dust.

One of the stunted trees had a hollow at its base, worn away either by the weather or by animals.!Koga cupped his hands and dug in the sand at the tree’s base, and he kept scooping sand away for the best part of twenty minutes. Then he took a narrow, hollow reed from his animal-skin pouch and, after easing the ruler-length reed into the hole, began to suck. Max remembered one of the boys shoving a length of hosepipe into the petrol tank of a teacher’s car and siphoning off enough fuel to use in his scooter. But he had no idea what!Koga could find in the sand with a thin piece of hollow reed.

After five or six minutes!Koga took another reed from the pouch and came back to Max. He said nothing, but he put his fingers under Max’s chin, gently teasing his head backwards. He put one end of the reed in his own mouth and the other on Max’s lips. Max felt water trickle down into his mouth. He nodded gratefully, immediately feeling better, and!Koga went back and began the process again.

It took another hour before!Koga had enough water to fill the small water bottle they carried. The Bushmen depended on tubers and other plants for their water supply in these arid places, but when these were scarce they had to find a sipping hole-a place where some boulders and hollow trees allowed dew to accumulate and seep beneath them.

Max felt the strength return to his body. Now the mountains did not seem so far away.

There was still no sign of anything to eat, though!Koga spent most of his time gazing down, looking for spoor. If they did not find food here, it would be a cold, hungry night spent on the mountain-and it seemed unlikely that there would be anything to hunt up there. Max knew he would grow progressively weaker in these conditions. And then he would falter. Nature shows no favor. He would be the one eaten by hyena or lion.

The hours passed in the near-silence of the valley. There was the occasional scream of an eagle and sometimes a rattle of pebbles as something, probably a small animal, dislodged loose stones on the slopes.!Koga had picked up speed, but Max kept pace as the Bushman loped effortlessly ahead. Max realized that the air was cooling; the mountain peaks on the western side of the valley would soon protect them from the blazing heat because the sun was slipping lower in the sky.!Koga suddenly crouched down in the bleached scrub and slowly raised a hand. Max crouched as he covered the last few meters to join him.!Koga pointed through the brush. Max couldn’t see anything. Then a slight movement caught his attention. A small buck stared at them from about twenty meters away. Its skin shivered, shrugging at a bothersome fly. Warily it kept its head up, not feeding on the poor offering at its hoofs, looking cautiously towards them. It had not yet picked up their scent.

!Koga eased an arrow onto his hunting bow. Max gazed at the beautiful creature. The large, liquid eyes distressed him. They were going to kill him. Another reality check. This was about survival. There was no prepacked, plastic-wrapped cut of meat on a chilled shelf around here. If he were at home and they had told him to go and kill a lamb, to slit its throat, he would have become a vegetarian overnight. Here, this creature was going to give him life.

The buck jolted and ran as the arrow plunged into its flank, near the heart. Max could hear its hoofs clatter across the rocky surface and caught a glimpse of a white flash-the erect hairs along the buck’s spine-as it bounded away. It was a springbok, which could leap more than three meters in the air from a standing position.!Koga did not hesitate. In a few strides he was where the buck had quivered in uncertainty, moments ago. It was important to identify that particular animal’s hoofprint. Bushmen would often spend hours chasing their prey, and they needed to make sure they were following the right animal.!Koga was on one knee, his eyes scanning the ground. Retrieving his arrow shaft, he glanced over his shoulder to make sure Max was following.

“Come! It’s good!” A skilled hunter could keep his family and clan members alive, and!Koga’s joy at his success was not to be diminished by any queasy feelings Max might be experiencing.

!Koga sprinted away. Max may have been fit, but he was not in the same league as this seemingly undernourished boy. Revitalized by the water, however, he pounded after the Bushman, determined to give a good account of himself; also, he didn’t want to let!Koga down.

A small pride of lions, three females, two cubs and a male, had their sanctuary on a small outcrop of rock beneath acacia trees that clawed their way out of the ground. The lions were three kilometers downwind, and though the air barely moved, they had caught the scent of the distressed animal, and another smell-human beings. Only once before had they killed a man but the taste had stayed with them-as sweet as warthog and much easier to kill. They were unafraid of the man-scent that stirred them from their slumber. This was their territory and there were intruders. In addition to the wounded animal there was now the bonus of human flesh. If there was a kill to be had and they failed to hurry, hyenas and vultures would get the best pickings. Leaving one female to care for the cubs and the male to saunter down at his leisure, the two other females began a slow, loping run. The pride would eat that night.

* * *

The slow-acting poison finally weakened the young springbok and it lay, helpless, on the ground. Max, grunting with effort, arrived in time to see!Koga slit its throat. The poor beast gave a single spasm and died.!Koga offered his knife to Max.

“Can you skin?” It seemed less of a question and more of a challenge and Max felt it keenly. The Bushman boy was going to keep them alive by his hunting skills. What exactly could Max contribute? He nodded, ignoring the homemade knife!Koga offered, and pulled out his own fifteen-centimeter bush knife.

!Koga expertly made a small incision into the springbok’s belly; then, using his thumb, he eased the skin aside, being careful not to contaminate the meat by piercing the stomach.!Koga’s deft movements allowed him to ease out the animal’s gut, which slithered and slopped onto the sand. He reached into the cavity and cut away the heart and liver; this was his by right: the hunter who made the kill chose the best pieces for himself. It was not a selfish act, but one of practicality. The hunter needed endurance for stalking and the strength to run for many kilometers after wounded game; heart, liver and tongue were rich in fat and protein.

Max was struggling to do what was expected of him. The groundsman at Dartmoor High used to shoot rabbits, and Max had seen him skin those. It seemed a fairly straightforward process, but Max did not know where the entry point for his knife should be on an animal this size.!Koga took his hand and good-naturedly guided it, showing him where to place the point of the blade. But then the Bushman stiffened.

“What’s wrong?” Max asked.

!Koga was looking back along the valley, his eyes squinting in the glare, his head turned a little as he listened. A sudden flurry of air, a small dust devil no taller than the boys themselves, scurried and died.!Koga waited and Max, deferring to his bushcraft, stayed silent. He couldn’t see or hear anything that might be a cause for alarm.!Koga whispered, “We must go quickly now.”

Fear sharpened Max’s senses. He scanned the valley again, but there was nothing to indicate impending danger. By the time he looked back!Koga had cut a strip of skin from the springbok’s leg and fashioned a pocket to carry the heart and liver. Max obediently took the meat thrust into his hands as!Koga tied it fast with strips of sinew, as a butcher would tie a joint of pork. Creating a sling, he pulled it over his shoulder like a bag. Then he grabbed Max’s arm. “You run hard?”

“What?”

“There.” He pointed to rising ground, beleaguered with boulders fallen from the higher peaks. “We run, we cannot stop. You run that far? That hard?”

Max gauged the distance; that had to be at least a kilometer. The sandy ground would make it heavy going, and there would be an almighty scramble to get up among those boulders, to shield them from whatever it was that had spooked!Koga. “Piece of cake,” he lied. The boy did not understand. “OK. Yes,” Max told him.

“Do not make noise. No shouting. You fall down, you do not cry out. You must be quiet. Yes? Understand?”

“I understand,” Max replied. He did not know why!Koga was giving him such precise instructions, but his instincts told him not to question them.

!Koga grabbed one of the springbok’s horns. Max grabbed the remaining back leg and hoped!Koga wasn’t planning to drag it all the way. They carried it for a couple of hundred meters, straining in the heat and stumbling with their unwieldy burden, leaving a clear blood trail. When they reached a clearing,!Koga nodded. “Here. Drop it.” Without waiting for Max to ask any questions, he turned and ran. Max was going to struggle to keep up.!Koga darted and jumped like a gazelle, running flat out across the broken floor of the valley towards the boulders. The ground, shattered from millennia of the earth’s pressures and contortions, now had gaping cracks in it, anything from a few centimeters to more than a meter wide. Max’s leg muscles ached-it was impossible to find any rhythm in this crazy race against time. A sprint, a jump, then a weaving run, suddenly another small chasm to get across. He did not have!Koga’s agility, but he had a grim determination to reach their objective. Just don’t trip and tumble into one of those crevices, he kept telling himself-that would be a one-way ticket to hell. He jumped. Sweat stung his eyes and the heat sapped his energy, but he stayed focused on the receding figure of the Bushman boy. Bloody hell! He was leaving him well and truly behind. He urged himself to put more effort into it, but his mind was a bigger challenge than the hard going. It badgered him, taunting his efforts. You’re too tired for this. You’ll cripple yourself if you fall, then what good will you be to anyone? Just stop for a breather and a drink. For a moment.

* * *

The lions had picked up the pace; blood scent from the kill filled their nostrils, but the dead springbok was not their primary target. It was the shuffling, ungainly gait of the humans that attracted them. And one of the humans had stopped, flapping his hat to cool his face. To them he was an animal in distress, weakened by heat and exhaustion. Vulnerable. The perfect target. The lionesses were in attack position; one of them moved to block any chance of escape while the other hurtled forward in a timeless display of killing efficiency. The human had his back to her; her gaze never faltered. She charged and leaped. Her huge claws raked his back, her jaws clamped on his neck, crunching through his skull and spinal column.

He was dead before he hit the ground.