David Gilman - The Devil's breath

Max put the key in the ignition and turned it. There was a hum of power from the battery and the dials swung into life. Max quickly turned the key off.!Koga opened the other door as Max pushed the key back under the elastic band on the sun visor.

“Someone wanted this ready for a quick escape,” he said.

“There are tracks, on the grass. I think it is the same truck that was at the place of the dead.”

“That means the plane landed, the pilot met someone else in a Land Rover or whatever, hid the plane, and then they drove off again,” Max said. Suddenly he remembered the paintings on the cave wall. The dove hidden; the white man injured. This plane had to be the one his father used! It was!Koga’s father who had taken Tom Gordon’s notes from where the Bushmen died, and he had said there were two white men in a pickup. Dad and Anton Leopold. So perhaps his dad had got a message from Leopold on the ground, who then met him here. Leopold would have told him about the dead Bushmen and, knowing his father, Max realized they would have driven off after the men responsible.!Koga’s father had told them that the two white men went off after the other men. His father had probably concealed the plane for a quick getaway.

Max twisted in the seat to look in the back of the plane. A couple of empty plastic water bottles, a box of field rations. No clothes or luggage. Nothing to prove the pilot was his dad. There was a blackened stain which made a neat outline, showing where the small white-and-green sticker said First Aid . The box itself was missing, probably taken from its mounting for the first time ever, given the dirt outline.

He clambered into the back. His fingers touched the bare metal carcass, tracing the shape of the cabin. Was anything hidden? Any clues to be found? His father had made those drawings to bring him here to the dove . There must be something. Then his finger found what his eyes had missed. He winced and withdrew his hand, looking at the small tear in the skin and the dribble of blood. On the edge of the plane, where the floor met the sides of the cabin, three holes were torn in the metal. The flare of impact was minimal, almost no mushrooming inwards; it was these ragged edges that had snagged his finger. He sucked the blood, then noticed the angle where the light came in. He eased out a reed-thin arrow from its quiver and placed it in the hole. The angle showed him that the bullet which made this hole would have passed between the seat and controls. The pilot would have been hit in the leg. Max bent down and realized that the dark stain on the floor was not dried mud. Beneath the passenger seat he saw a grubby edge of paper. It looked like a map.

He slid his hand beneath the seat and, as he teased it out, he heard the gentle rolling of something he had touched. Working blind, his fingers found a small glass ampoule. It was an empty morphine phial.

Max held the folded map. The words Sector Search were scrawled in the margin. It was his dad’s handwriting. There was no doubt now that this was his father’s plane.

And it seemed obvious that he had been shot.

The map’s creases were even dirtier than his own map. He opened out two folds. An area was defined by boxed, faded pencil lines. Max couldn’t determine just where the area was, but a dozen or more marks-small red crosses-were scattered across the map. Max unfolded another panel.

His finger traced contour lines, the mountains, the rivers. The map was getting too big to read properly.

As he climbed out of the cockpit, a smaller folded map fell from the bulk of the larger one. It was a hydrology chart. Moments later, he and!Koga had opened both on the ground next to the aircraft. The bigger sheet related to Max’s own map, but the emptiness of the country allowed for little detail. The northeastern part was where the red crosses were distributed. Max traced a finger back to Kallie’s area, from where he had started his journey. Brandt’s Wilderness Farm was shown. It was like gliding across the country, peering down at the landscape from space. Farm names, small airfields, settlements and towns, they had all been surveyed over the years. Max worked out where they had originally been attacked when they left Kallie, their trek across the mountains, the sacred cave, the Bushmen’s area. It brought him ever closer to the marked crosses. Comparing the hydrology map was more difficult. There were no place names, just the veins of water, like leaf shapes and patterns. Two or three areas looked as though the map maker had taken a blue pen and slashed a dense pattern backwards and forwards. Max realized these were the swamps. To the left of these was a dark, spiderlike patch with a strand suspending it from what was obviously a big river to the north. This was a feed, and from that darkened patch the spider’s legs reached out, multiple strands of water seeping into the swamps.

“I think we’re about here,!Koga,” Max said as he tapped the area southeast of the spider’s body.

“What are these things?”!Koga asked, pointing to the red crosses.

Max hesitated. “Well … I think these are the places where people have died. Look …” And he traced their own journey until they skirted half a dozen markers. “I think this is the place where the earth bleeds. Where your people died and where our fathers met.”

“So your father has found many dead people.”

“Yes, I think so.”

“But why did they die?”

“Maybe because of the water. These are water maps. All those thin lines might be underground streams. My father specialized in them.” Max got quickly to his feet, climbed back into the cockpit and sat staring at the radio. They needed help. People were dying, his dad was injured. His fingers reached for the On switch. He hesitated. This was his chance to radio for assistance. He could get Kallie, the police, he could have messages sent back to Angelo Farentino. Max was on the verge of finding his father. They’d come a long way, but now he faltered.

In the stillness of the shade Max tried to picture his father and his helper manhandling the aircraft. His father, injured after someone had tried to shoot him out of the sky, and Leopold, about whom Max knew nothing. He was obviously a good field man, or Max’s dad would not have used him. It didn’t matter. What did matter was that they had hidden the plane and readied it for a quick escape. How much power was left in the battery? Max might drain it in one broadcast. No one knew where his father was. Max could not stay at the plane, he had to keep searching. If their paths crossed and his dad got back here and still needed to escape, Max would have ruined everything. Come on, think! What would Dad have wanted? The message on the cave wall was to bring him here. Had he left the maps for him? Was that deliberate? Or were they tucked away and forgotten in the urgency of the moment? What else had he drawn in that cave? The dove under the scratchy cover, the injured man, the morning star-every picture guiding him. Then he remembered that there was a gaping hole drawn on the cave wall, like a whirlpool, with a cloud hovering over it. He jumped back down to!Koga, who was gazing at the unfamiliar landscape, seen from a surveyor’s eye, of the big map.

“There is a line here. Like a snake,”!Koga said.

“Show me.”

!Koga’s finger was on the coastline at Walvis Bay. The red line meandered towards the darkened area which, on the hydrology map, would have been the spider’s body. “It’s a road,” Max said. “From the coast to this area, whatever that might be. Maybe that’s the route my father’s field assistant took. I can’t tell. Never mind that for now. Do you remember on the cave wall, there was a drawing, like a hole in the ground, a big hole, with something swirling around it?” Max grappled for a description, hoping the Bushman boy might recognize the picture he was trying to describe. “Maybe a dust bowl, or something, y’know, a place where the wind might gather speed and twist itself up into a tornado.”