Tony Park - Silent Predator

Sannie was in no mood for humour, or Carla. She strode down the walkway and let herself into Tom’s room. When she got there, she couldn’t ignore the rumpled bed, or the smell of perfume. She grimaced. As sorry as she felt for Tom, she was still annoyed at him for trying to smooth-talk her all day and then bedding that tramp Carla without a second thought. She left the front door ajar and slid open the glass sliding doors to get a draught going through the room to expel the odours.

Sannie helped herself to a Coke from Tom’s mini-bar, sat down at the polished wooden writing bureau and pulled her notebook out of her handbag. She started writing a timeline of everything that had gone on since she left for bed last night, through to Tom’s late arrival not long ago. She also noted Duncan’s preliminary findings about the number of suspects, his assessment of the type of vehicle used, and the gang’s apparent modus operandi.

She wondered about motive. With the exception of some bombings a few years back which had been linked to local Muslims, South Africa had so far been free of terrorism linked to Islamic extremists. However, there were sizable Muslim communities in Mozambique and South Africa. Their origins dated back to Arab traders who plied the coast of Africa, trading everything from spices to slaves. In the past she had worked as a liaison to American secret service teams protecting a former president on a visit to South Africa, so she had sat in on security briefings which alleged there were al-Qaeda support cells and affiliated groups already established — though probably ‘sleeping’ — in southern Africa. Greeves was not a high-profile minister, but he had made recent statements in parliament, reported even in South Africa, about Britain’s ongoing commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Terrorism aside, the other possible motive was good old-fashioned money. Sannie knew from Tom, and Nick before him, that Greeves was a very wealthy man. Perhaps the kidnappers were criminals after a ransom. The complicating factor in this theory, of course, was that Bernard Joyce had also been abducted.

Sannie wished she could have gone with Tom; he was right — at least he was doing something. Having made her notes and called all the appropriate people, she felt next to useless now, sitting in Tom’s empty suite. She got up to go to the toilet.

As she moved through the bathroom, the morning sun slanting in from the window bounced off something on the vanity benchtop. She stopped and looked down on it. It was a small, square travel mirror. She bent closer. Running down the centre of the glass was a thin line of white powder. Sannie sucked in a deep breath.

‘Sannie?’ She heard the deep voice of Isaac Tshabalala and remembered leaving the door open.

She emerged from the bathroom.

‘Is it as bad as I think it is, Sannie?’ Isaac asked.

‘Have a look at this, Captain. If possible, I think it just got a whole lot worse for someone.’

Tom Furey wasn’t praying. He was swearing.

In front of him, despite the early hour and the fact that they were in the middle of the African bush, was a traffic jam. In London the cause might have been a car accident, but here it was a lion. Three lions, in fact. And it was gridlock.

Ahead of them was a line of four cars, parked bumper to bumper, waiting their turn to get onto a bridge across a mostly dry river. On the structure itself four cars were parked side by side, effectively blocking it. The canvas canopy over the open-sided Tinga Land Cruiser was high enough for Tom to stand up in the passenger seat, to get a better view of the mess ahead. He caught a glimpse of a big, shaggy mane as one of the trio of lions raised its head from the tar. It lay down again, out of sight.

‘The lions like the warmth of the tarred roads in the early morning. They’ll sleep there until they eventually get sick of the cars, or the sun gets too hot for them. Then they will move into the shade of the trees,’ Duncan explained.

‘How long will that take?’

The guide shrugged. ‘Five minutes, an hour?’

‘We don’t have that much time.’

Up ahead a horn sounded a short, sharp blast. Tempers were rising along with the sun. The bush on either side of them was painted a warm orange-gold by the morning rays, the grassy flood plain dotted with stunted ilala palms. It would have been beautiful, if not for the traffic jam and the fact that two men’s lives were hanging in the balance. The source of consternation, from what Tom could see, was a tour vehicle, a minibus towing a luggage trailer, which had pulled up sideways, blocking the bridge on the far side. Even if the drivers in the queue on their side of the river had their fill of lion photo opportunities and wanted to move on to allow the next in line a chance to see the cats, they were prevented from doing so. Tom watched through Duncan’s binoculars as the driver of the tour van gave someone the finger. ‘This is fucking ridiculous.’ He leaned over and honked the Land Cruiser’s horn. This brought a flurry of sympathetic hoots and catcalls from some of the other drivers, but both the tour bus and the lions remained stationary.

‘What will the lions do if they see a man on foot?’ Tom asked.

Duncan looked over at him. ‘You are not serious?’

‘Tell me.’

Duncan scratched his chin. ‘Well, one of two things. They will either run away or they will attack and kill that man.’

Tom drew his Glock and opened the passenger door. Duncan reached out to grab him, but was too slow. ‘Tom! Don’t be an idiot, man!’

Tom walked along the left-hand side of the first line of vehicles. Duncan started his engine and squeezed past them, driving on the dirt verge, directly behind Tom. ‘Get back in,’ he shouted.

People were starting to look back now and a child called out something in Afrikaans. Tom imagined it was something like ‘Look at that stupid bloody man about to be eaten’. A woman screamed and ducked behind the sill of her car door when she saw his gun. ‘Get back in your bloody vehicle,’ an elderly man yelled at him. Tom ignored him as he closed on the bridge. Duncan drove as close as he could to him, but there was no way the Land Cruiser could get onto the bridge itself.

Tom could see the lions now, but they were lying facing the other way, towards the tour van. The guide driving the bus saw him now and pointed, alerting his tourists to the madman approaching. Tom saw four lenses swing in unison to face him. ‘Police!’ he yelled. ‘Back off that bridge, now!’

The driver stared at him, hardly believing what he was seeing. The lions raised their heads as one at the sound of his voice. One stood and uttered a throaty, bass growl that sent a chill up Tom’s back.

‘Get in,’ a woman said to him, leaning back and opening the rear door of her BMW. Tom sidled up to the car but did not take up the invitation.

He held his gun up, pointed in the air. ‘Back up, now!’ The tour operator driver finally saw sense and started his engine. As he tried to reverse, however, he jack-knifed his trailer and had to engage first gear to move forward again. All three lions were on their paws now, growling and facing outwards in different directions. The van’s erratic movements were spooking them, but the cats, like the other drivers on the bridge, were trapped. ‘Move it!’

The lion that had spotted Tom caught sight of him again. Cornered, it had only one option. It bounded between two cars and started running directly at Tom. Women screamed and cameras whirred as the lion closed the gap, charging for the kill. Tom had moved to the front of the BMW better to communicate with the van driver, but now he saw the flash of tawny fur streaking towards him. ‘Get in!’ the woman behind him yelled again. He needed no further prompting. He took three paces back and dived, headfirst, onto the rear passenger seat. The woman was trying to close the door but his foot was in the way. He yelped as he felt the door crush against his ankle but, turning around to look back over his shoulder, he saw it was not the woman who was closing the door any more. She was bent double in the front seat, screaming maniacally. The lion was standing on its hind legs, roaring. The pressure on the door was coming from two massive paws, and the leathery pads, each the size of a dinner plate, were pressed against the car door’s window. The beast’s foul breath fogged the glass. Its deep, wheezy growls rocked the car almost as much as its massive weight as it fought to get inside the vehicle.