Tony Park - Silent Predator

The first six kilometres from the main road were on a sandy but firm track through gently undulating dunes which were well stabilised with grass and small trees. With his window down, Tom caught the sound of cattle lowing in the distance. They passed a coastal lake, the light from the now risen moon reflecting off its mirrored surface and illuminating a raft of water-lilies. At another time he might have slowed to admire the countryside.

‘Right fork here,’ Sannie ordered, but Tom had already seen the sign to Paradise Cove. ‘Another kilometre and then he should be there waiting to meet us.’

Lights flashed ahead of them and Tom slowed. There was a cluster of three mud huts with thatched-reed roofs, a sleepy-looking African man and a white man. The white man stood next to a rusting red Nissan Safari four-wheel drive, whose headlights were turned on. Squinting, Tom could make out another figure in the front of the vehicle. The passenger door opened and Tom saw Bernard Joyce step out, holding a hand up to his eyes. Tom switched off his own lights and coasted to a stop.

Bernard hobbled three steps towards Tom as he got out of the Volkswagen and put his arms around him and hugged him.

‘My god, Tom. I never thought I’d see another Englishman again.’ Tom felt the sting of hot tears on his cheek. They were Bernard’s, not his, though he felt a lump rise in his throat. Bernard was wearing a pair of garish board shorts and a golfing shirt with the name of the resort embroidered on the left breast.

‘Sarel Bezuidenhout,’ the big white man said as Tom eased himself away from Bernard. They shook hands and Tom introduced Sannie to Sarel.

‘Was that you chasing us in the bush, in the gun-fight?’ Bernard asked Tom.

Tom nodded.

‘Bloody good show, Tom. Too bad the bastards got away, but I can’t tell you how good that felt, to know someone was coming after us. Did you get any of them?’

‘Two,’ Tom confirmed.

‘Arseholes. Have you got a spare pistol with you?’ Bernard looked to Tom and then Sannie.

‘I’ve got a two-two in the bar for monkeys and a nine-mil for the human thieves,’ Sarel said in heavily accented English. ‘I come with you.’

Sannie held up a hand. ‘Look, this is not my decision to make, but I think we at least need a plan.’

Tom agreed and suggested they all get inside. He had already spoken to Shuttleworth on the drive to the coastal lodge and had been told in no uncertain terms that he was expressly forbidden from launching any ad hoc rescue mission.

He had, however, told Shuttleworth that he was going to find the terrorists’ lair and get ‘eyes-on’ the target to confirm they were still there; his superior had not argued with this commonsense suggestion. ‘Just don’t go charging in there by yourself. You know the terrorists will kill Greeves as soon as they think someone is coming in.’

On the short drive in the old four-by-four down one steep sand dune and up another, Bernard filled Tom in on his discussions with the coordinator of the rescue mission, Major Jonathan Fraser.

‘Turns out I know him,’ Bernard said. ‘I worked with him and his chaps when he was a captain a couple of years ago, before I left the navy. Landed him on a coast somewhere in the Middle East. Good man. A hard bastard.’

Bernard had hand-drawn a map of the layout of the house where he had been imprisoned and faxed it from Sarel’s bar to the operations base at Hoedspruit. Bernard said that from his description of the surrounding area and the distance he had run — he’d had the presence of mind to count his paces as he ran through the water — Sarel had been able to identify the property.

‘It’s the only old house in the area for five kilometres. Used to belong to a Portuguese cattle farmer in the old days. It’s been empty since I came here three years ago. Good place for a hideout. Only accessible by four-by-four for three kays in — that’s why no one has developed it as a resort.’

Tom nodded.

‘Fraser’s calling back in thirty minutes with an outline plan. He said that if you were here, he wanted you in on the conversation,’ Bernard said to Tom.

Sarel navigated the Nissan around a tight bend and up yet another dune until they arrived outside his timber-clad bar. They all followed the owner up a flight of steps that creaked and groaned under his enormous weight. There was a verandah out front overlooking the inky, calm Indian Ocean. Inside, the bar smelled warm and musty, the building still holding some of the day’s heat. Sarel switched on the lights and turned on the ceiling fans. He also pressed a button on a remote control and a television high on a wall in the corner furthest from the bar came to life.

‘How long would it take us to get to the old farmhouse to check it out?’ Tom asked Sarel.

The Afrikaner scratched his beard. ‘Thirty minutes if you walk along the beach, ten if we take the quad bikes. Tide is going out now, so we can make it on the bikes.’

‘And from the beach?’

‘Another ten minutes’ walk.’

‘Sannie,’ Tom said, ‘you stay here with Bernard and wait for Fraser’s call. Tell him I’ve gone to check the place out. The best plan in the world is no good if they’ve already left the house.’

Sannie looked doubtful. ‘Perhaps I should come with you.’

‘They’ve got a US Navy FA-18 on its way to do a reconnaissance flight,’ Bernard said. ‘Fraser reckoned it would be overhead within forty minutes of his last call, which was fifteen minutes ago.’

Tom checked his watch. ‘High tech stuff is okay, but someone needs to get in on the ground and suss things out.’

‘Then let me come too,’ Bernard said.

Tom looked down at the bloody scuff marks on the timber floor of the bar. ‘Stay here and rest, Bernard. You’ll need to be here to talk Fraser through the layout of the house again. He’ll want to know it inside out and back to front, and he’ll have more questions for you.’

Bernard looked down at the floor. Tom could seen he was emotionally and physically spent, though he, like Tom, obviously felt he couldn’t rest until Greeves was safe.

‘I’ll be back in less than an hour. After that there’ll be a role for all of us in this rescue. Sarel, I’ve no right to ask you for your help, but…’

The Afrikaner reached under his wide wood-topped bar and pulled out a nine-millimetre automatic pistol. It looked like a toy in his huge hands as he pulled back the slide and chambered a round. ‘We go now,’ he said, stuffing the weapon in the waistband of his shorts.

‘Tom,’ Sannie said as he turned to leave.

‘Yes?’

‘Be careful.’

The exhaustion and feelings of hopelessness that had started to cripple him in the stultifying heat of the camping ground at Xai Xai had disappeared, replaced with a continuous transfusion of pure adrenaline. Tom revved the throttle of the four-wheel-drive quad bike and followed Sarel down the steep incline of the sand dune.

The still-wet sand left in the wake of the receding tide felt as solid as concrete when they turned onto it and Tom gunned the bike to catch up with Sarel, whose curly hair looked even wilder as he accelerated.

So as not to alarm the occupants with the sound of engines so late in the night, they would leave the bikes a couple of hundred metres from the base of the dune where the track led to the old farmhouse. Sarel pulled his quad into the moon shadow cast by a tall dune and Tom parked behind him.

‘It’s about one kay from here. We go this way,’ he whispered, pointing upwards.

‘No, I go that way,’ Tom said, shaking his head. ‘Just give me the directions.’

Sarel looked as though he was about to argue, but Tom told him, ‘If you hear gunfire, get back and tell the others. Take Sannie back to the main road and tell her to set up a roadblock. If you want to use your gun then, be my guest, as I’ll already be dead.’