Tony Park - Silent Predator

Sannie looked up at him. ‘I’ll take Mom and Christo to the Du Toits next door. Then I’m coming back to help you.’

Tom nodded. He didn’t want any of them out of his sight, but he and Duncan had to pick up the trail of whoever had taken Ilana. She was a happy little girl and he was under no illusions that she might simply have run away from home and would come back when she was hungry. Tom got through to the police and told them what had happened.

He walked outside with Sannie, Elise and Christo, and put them into the Land Rover. When he looked at the terror on the little boy’s face, he hated himself for bringing more misery to this family. No, his family. They were his responsibility now.

‘Call me when you get to the Du Toit farm and stay there, Sannie.’

The four-by-four blew diesel smoke as she started the engine and revved it. ‘Don’t tell me what to do. Once I’ve dropped Mom and Christo, I’m coming…’

Two shots from the darkness made Elise scream. Christo started to cry. The noise came from down the hill, away from the track that led to the main gate.

‘Go!’

The wheels spun for a second until the chunky tyres dug into the mud, and the Land Rover hurtled away from the house.

Tom had seen the footprints in the mud, but had not pointed them out to Sannie, in case she decided to send her mother off with Christo and join him on the hunt. He needed to know that they, at least, would live, even if he couldn’t save Ilana. Sannie wouldn’t think that way, though.

Tom raised his weapon and moved towards the noise, staying in the first few rows of banana trees rather than using the pathway. It didn’t take him long to find Roxy’s body. She lay on the path, her throat cut. The kidnapper must have lured her close — perhaps with food — and been ruffling her head, keeping her silent, when he cut her throat. Tom knew it was a white man. An Englishman.

Further along, he heard groaning from the grove on the other side of the path. ‘Duncan?’

‘Tom… I’ve been hit.’

‘Stay quiet; save your strength,’ Tom whispered.

He peered out from the banana trees and looked down the track. It seemed clear, and he sprinted from cover and slid in the mud to Duncan’s side. Duncan winced as Tom opened his bloodstained shirt. ‘Shoulder and gut.’ He pulled off his T-shirt and pressed it to Duncan’s stomach wound, which was the more serious of the injuries. ‘Hold this. I’ll call an ambulance.’

‘He… he has Ilana… He is a white man.’

‘I know. I’m going to get him.’

‘Tom… she was not moving. He was carrying her over his shoulder. I couldn’t get a clean shot.’

Tom nodded. He called the ambulance service and spoke quickly, quietly, to the operator, then hung up.

‘That way,’ Duncan croaked and raised a hand to point. ‘He is running.’

Leaves slapped Tom’s face as he ran parallel to the track, following the lengthened stride of his quarry’s footprints in the mud beside him.

Sannie stopped the Land Rover outside the front gate, got out, and told her mother to get behind the wheel.

‘But Tom said…’

‘Just do it, Mom! Take Christo next door and stay there.’ Sannie shut the door and walked down the fence line, her body hunched like that of a stalking lioness tensed for the kill. Her mother drove off into the night, in the opposite direction from where the gunfire had come.

The man, or men, must have climbed or cut the fence, as there were no fresh footprints on the driveway, and the gate had been locked. If Sannie found the person who had taken Ilana, she would kill him.

Off to her right, the farmhouse, visible on the hill, was still in darkness. Good old Eskom, she thought. If the power came on now, the security lights placed at intervals along the fence might illuminate her. She prayed, for the first time ever, for the darkness to continue.

Sannie saw the break in the wire mesh and stopped to listen.

Footsteps.

She heard rustling in the banana trees and dropped to one knee. Steadying her shooting hand by cupping it in her left, she aimed through the gap in the fence at the noise.

Was he carrying Ilana in his arms or over his shoulder? Sannie would have little time to decide whether to aim for the head or the centre body mass. She was a good shot. She would not miss.

Sannie could hear the man’s laboured breathing now. She saw the hand holding the pistol. She started to squeeze the trigger, taking up the slack.

‘Tom!’

He broke from the cover of the banana trees and stopped in front of her, holding his weapon up. ‘Jesus, you scared me.’

Sannie stood and fought to calm her breathing. She looked at the ground and cursed herself for not having done so before. ‘He’s already gone.’

They scanned the mud and flattened grass more closely, then walked across the tarred road. There were no corresponding footprints on the other side. ‘He’s headed up the road,’ Tom said.

They started to jog, side by side, on opposite sides of the darkened country road, but slowed when they heard the revving of an engine, the grinding of gears.

A double-cab bakkie crested the rise in front of them. Its headlights were out and the driver was weaving, as if he wasn’t concentrating fully.

Sannie held up her free hand, gesturing for the driver to stop, but the vehicle accelerated towards them, its engine whining. ‘Tyres, Tom,’ Sannie called. ‘Ilana’s somewhere inside.’

Tom nodded and stopped, feet apart, his right hand resting on his left. Sannie mirrored his stance and they opened fire as the vehicle bore down on them.

The bakkie jinked left and right, and when Tom saw Nick Roberts’s wide-eyed face he wanted to put the next bullet through his head, but it wasn’t worth the risk. If Nick lost control completely, Ilana might die. He fired twice more, and knew that either his or Sannie’s shots had found their mark. Rubber screamed on bitumen, and the pick-up slid off the road, ploughing through mud and grass, and heading for the gum trees planted on the other side of the road from Tom and Sannie’s bananas.

‘No!’ Sannie yelled, as she ran down the embankment after the vehicle.

The pick-up slammed into a tree trunk and the force of the impact activated the driver’s side air bag. The vehicle’s horn blared continuously and steam hissed from the ruptured radiator.

Tom was at the driver’s side, pulling the door open with one hand and covering Roberts with the other. ‘Out!’

‘Ilana? Ilana?’

Tom glanced in the back as he dragged Nick out of the car by his shirt collar, and saw that Sannie had found her daughter lying on the floor in the back of the truck.

Roberts knelt on the ground. When Tom had grabbed him he’d been dazed, but now he started to laugh.

‘She’s breathing. She’s alive, Tom!’ Sannie clutched the little girl, to her breast. She took her cell phone from her shorts and called her mother, telling her to bring the Land Rover.

Tom held his Glock under Nick’s chin as he quickly searched him for weapons. ‘What did you do to the girl, you bastard?’

Roberts shook his head, as if to clear it. ‘Relax, relax. It’s only chloroform. She’ll wake up soon.’

‘His pistol’s in the cab, Sannie,’ Tom said. Still holding her child, she retrieved Nick’s weapon from the front-passenger-side floor.

‘Why, Nick?’ was all Tom could think to say as he stood and took a pace back.

Roberts smiled up at him, then shrugged. ‘Man’s got to eat, Tom. You fucked my life up, old mate. But I reckoned I could earn enough to live nicely from the sale of a little white girl.’

Tom closed the gap between them again and used the butt of his pistol to smack the side of the man’s jaw.