David Gilman - The Devil's breath

The gunmen had stopped. The Land Rover had a higher ground clearance, so the pickup could not follow. Those men knew this was not the place to be stranded-without a radio and with one man dead, they were already at a disadvantage. To risk damaging their vehicle beyond repair was a risk too far. All Max had to do now was get across the ridge, so temptingly close, which would put them out of sight and range. And then keep going.

The men were aiming badly, failing to consider the rising ground in front of them, so their shots fell short. With a surge of acceleration Max pushed the Land Rover over the top and out of harm’s way.

Except that in that last, crucial moment, they suddenly jolted to a dead stop.!Koga was off-balance-he was looking back, watching the men. His head whipped forward and cracked against the dashboard and he groaned, slumping forward. Max floored the accelerator, but all he could hear was the screaming engine. They were wedged, straddling a broad, flat boulder, and the wheels could find no purchase.

Max checked!Koga. He was unconscious. Max had to get the Land Rover free. He piled out of the cab, scrambled onto the canvas roof and started to rock the vehicle backwards-pushing his weight down, trying to give the back wheels some grip. The gunmen were still a long way down the hill, but their firing had stopped-because the 4?4 driver was clambering upwards towards Max, a pistol in one hand and a hunting knife in the other. This was personal. The man stumbled, cursing his clumsiness and the pain as his shoulder slammed into a boulder. But rage powered him on, his eyes fixed on Max. His prey.

Max was defenseless, the man less than ten meters away now, and Max could hear him grunting with exertion and see the sheen of sweat on his face. The man’s gun hand hung limply at his side-he had caught it a punishing blow on the rock-but the knife he wielded would be enough to do the job. The man slashed at Max’s feet and the tough canvas slit as if it were tissue paper.

The driver’s injured arm stopped him from coming aboard, but there was no way Max could keep his own balance on such a flimsy roof. He needed a weapon. The radio aerial! It was in a podlike bracket on the rear bulkhead. The man slashed again and spittle shot from his lips as he snarled in frustration, but Max jumped over the cab, found his footing on the spare wheel that was locked on the bonnet and jinked to the left as his feet hit the ground.

The driver was on the far side of the Land Rover, near the right-hand headlight. He would have to come all the way back to reach Max, who had reached the aerial and had both hands pressing down on its base. He twisted it free from its locked position and held what was now a three-meter-long metal whip. The man lunged, but he was a couple of meters away. Max slashed at him and the stinging metal cut across the top of his neck and shoulder. He cried out, but then snarled and spat even more, like a tormented scrapyard dog. If he ducked beneath Max’s swinging arc he would gut him like a fish.

Max was well balanced-a slight bend in his knees, his feet edging up onto his toes, waiting for the rush of his opponent. His fists were clenched around the aerial’s base as a warrior would hold a double-edged sword. The driver waited, Max watched his eyes; the man stabbed forward, but that was a feint-he intended to swing his arm back and plunge the razor-sharp blade into Max’s stomach. Max yelled, giving himself a surge of energy, ridding himself of the last vestige of fear, and whipped the aerial across his body-left and right and back again. Welts of blood suddenly appeared on the driver’s arms, chest and face. An almost surgical cut suddenly ran from above his left ear, down across his face and onto his neck. He was blinded. Max stepped back, nausea welling inside. He had caused the man serious injury, it felt terrible, and his feeling of guilt almost made him lower his guard. A voice shouted from his own mind- He was going to kill you! Max recovered and tightened his grip, but there would be no further attack-the man was defeated. He fell, picked himself up and went down the hill at a stumbling run, blinded by blood.

Max’s efforts on the back of the Land Rover had rocked it free, and it had slid off the flat-topped rock. He threw the aerial into the back. They needed help and the radio was their only means of contacting anyone. Kallie. He would radio Kallie. She would send the police, or the army, anyone. Max felt the icy fear of being completely out of his depth.

But as the physical exertion of coaxing the Land Rover diagonally down the reverse slope of the ridge focused Max’s panic, his doubts swept away like the dust behind him. He would radio for help, but he was not going to stop. He would find his father. The bouncing Land Rover jolted!Koga. Max was steering with one hand and holding the Bushman’s shoulder with the other, keeping the boy’s head from banging against the dashboard. By the time they reached the flat road!Koga’s eyes had opened.

“What happened?” he asked.

“We won!” Max shouted. He laughed, though the steering wheel had a life of its own and demanded less celebration and more concentration as they lumbered across the uneven ground.!Koga smiled and said something Max took to be the Bushman equivalent of “Let’s get out of here while the going’s good.”

They were on the cooler, moister side of the hills, which offered more vegetation, the reason why animals trekked here. The boulders gave way to gentler ground with the hills to one side; they were now in a valley, heading towards the guardian mountains. As the ground leveled, Max let the tension ease out of his hands-he had been gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles were white. With a backwards glance and the thought that it would take their attackers at least an hour, probably longer, before they contacted the other group, he allowed himself a sigh of relief. Fear had dried his mouth and he was parched, but he made a deal with himself to stop and drink only when they were in the lee of the mountains, which had already lost the sun and which would offer them safety and shelter. A good vantage point, a safe haven for the night, was all he wanted now. And that drink.

As they drove towards the mountains, now purple in the evening light, he gazed in wonder at the amphitheater which lay before him. Perhaps this was a small corner of the Garden of Eden. He could not know its beauty concealed a treacherous place of death, where bones of the dead already lay.

A satellite link between Shaka Chang and his man in England beamed their voices across the thousands of kilometers between them. Things were not going as planned. There was no friendliness when they spoke, only irritation that the simple task of eliminating a boy was taking so long. Chang was on the first level of his desert fortress. It was a proper fort, huge and square, with battlements, like the French Foreign Legion had had in the Sahara, only this one had been built by a deluded German count in the nineteenth century. He had imagined himself to be a king and he built the castle as a fortress. It was impenetrable, riddled with underground chambers, escape routes, cellars, dungeons and a gravity-fed water system from a deep well. Unbeknown to the count, the castle lay on a fault line that a future owner-Shaka Chang-would develop into a mini-hydroelectric power supply. One day, the count told his wife and children he was going for a walk to admire the flowers along the riverside boulevard, and his wife realized that he had finally gone mad. There were no flowers, no boulevard and, by that night, no count. They found his blood-smeared, silver-topped cane next morning. She and the children went back to Bavaria, to the cold, the snow and everything she had missed, including the count’s wealth, which she inherited. The fortress lay empty until the First World War, when the German army took control. A bitter war of extermination was levied against the indigenous people and the fortress’s reputation for housing mad and then cruel people was embedded.