Tom swore again as the Volkswagen’s front wheels clanged in and out of a pothole as wide as the car’s axle.
‘Careful!’ Sannie reached out and braced herself on the dashboard with one hand.
He barely checked his speed, keeping the needle close to the one hundred and twenty mark. They raced along the darkened EN1 north of Xai Xai and Tom kept a close eye on the odometer, counting off the kilometres as they neared the thirty-five mark.
When he’d gotten off the phone with Bernard he’d taken down precise directions from the Afrikaner owner about how to get to the beach resort. He’d told Bernard to wait there — once he’d ascertained the man’s injuries weren’t life-threatening — rather than try calling a Mozambican ambulance or the local police. He wanted Bernard Joyce back under his protection as soon as possible and Sannie was a hundred per cent in agreement.
Tom braked hard as a truck loomed large in his windscreen. The vehicle was travelling with no lights. He cursed and swerved around it, his foot flat to the floor.
Tom recapped his brief conversation with Bernard as he shifted back down to fourth and revved the underpowered engine into the red before ramming the gearstick viciously into fifth. Bernard had already spoken to Greeves’s office — to Helen, the press secretary — and she had passed on Tom’s mobile phone number to him. Bernard’s next call, when Helen found the number, was to the SAS commander in South Africa. Tom hadn’t wasted time, or Bernard’s satellite phone battery, when they spoke. Bernard had been jogging along the coastline somewhere in Mozambique, his breath heavy from the exertion, and Tom had listened in silence as he explained that Greeves was alive, and the circumstances of his lucky escape.
‘I couldn’t overpower them, Tom. There were too many of them in the end and Robert told me to go… It wasn’t my choice…’
Tom cut him off, seeing where Bernard was heading. ‘You did the right thing, and Greeves was right sending you to get help, and we’re on our way but you have to give us an indication of where you are. I’ll stay online with you or you can call me back.’
At that point Bernard had reported that he could see lights in the sand dunes ahead and to the left of him. Tom waited breathlessly as Bernard laboured up a path through the dunes. ‘It’s a bloody pub!’
Dressed only in stained boxer shorts, his feet caked in sand and blood, and his eyes wild with relief and lingering terror, he’d stumbled into a beachside bar attached to a small coastal resort. Tom heard the amazed response — loud talking in Afrikaans — as Bernard burst in on the owner, who was tending bar, and a half-dozen fishermen on holiday. There had been a pause as explanations were given and Tom heard one of the men saying they had just been watching a news item on CNN about the abductions.
Bernard had passed the phone to the bartender, whose English was passable but halting, so Tom had transferred the phone to Sannie, who spoke rapidly in Afrikaans as Tom bundled their gear into the back of the Chico. It turned out the resort was less than forty kilometres from Xai Xai and while the owner had been about to close the bar — in order to send the drunken fishermen to bed — he would certainly wait for their arrival. Not only that, but he would have to meet them on the road into his encampment as the last kilometre was through deep sand.
‘This is it,’ Sannie said, spotting a property development sign and another marking the end of the Distrito do Xai Xai, which the resort owner had described. Tom swung hard and skidded into a right turn onto the unmarked sandy track. It seemed the lodge’s owner was happy to promote himself by word of mouth only as there was no sign to his property, which was called Paradise Cove.
‘The police would never have come down here looking for them,’ Tom said.
Sannie nodded in agreement. Their luck had been in, though neither of them dared predict what the kidnappers would do with Greeves now that they knew their hideout had been compromised. Tom’s very real fear was that even though Bernard had escaped less than an hour ago, his abductors might have already shut up shop and be on their way to a new location.
They had called in at Xai Xai police station, but the female officer on the night shift, who had been dozing at the front desk, spoke no English or Tsonga Shangaan. Sannie and Tom had said Capitao Alfredo’s name over and over again and pantomimed using the telephone, but the female officer had steadfastly refused even to try to understand them. ‘Fuck it,’ Tom had said at last, unwilling to waste a second more. They were on their own again.
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.’
Sarel smiled. ‘Walk up the track for two hundred metres and you’ll see the farmhouse on the top of the next dune back from the ocean.’
Tom climbed the sandy pathway. He kept to one side, close to the cover of the low bushes that covered the dune.
Near the top of the dune he found a little-used side track leading off to one side and decided to take that rather than sticking to the main route. His luck was in. The detour took him to the top but allowed him to stay in cover. He thought the path must have once been a shortcut used by farm workers or fishermen. He crouched when he saw a light.
As his eyes adjusted he made out the angular form of the old Portuguese farmhouse. The light in one of the windows was weak. At first he thought it was from a lantern, but as he crept closer he saw that a curtain had been drawn across the window and the light was shining through it. A shadow flickered on the fabric, as someone passed between the source and the drape. Tom dropped to one knee again and nestled into some bushes.
His spirits soared — they were still in there. But then a piercing scream made him catch his breath. It was a shriek of pain the likes of which he’d never heard before, despite all the fights he’d seen and been involved in as a copper. ‘Bastards,’ he whispered. They were torturing Greeves. Perhaps they were trying to find out if Bernard had spoken to him before he left.
Tom risked moving a little closer and his every instinct told him to rush the place now, kick the bloody door in and nail the swine who were abusing a defenceless human being. He took a deep breath and forced his pulse rate down. Shuttleworth had not only given him a direct order, he’d been right about it.
From behind the trunk of a tree that stood nearly as tall as he was, Tom saw moonlight playing off the windscreen of a Toyota pick-up that had a canopy covering its rear compartment. The vehicle description had been spot on. He considered moving in and disabling the pick-up, but checking his watch told him he needed to be getting back with the updated information asap. He comforted himself with Sarel’s advice that it was four kilometres of hard driving through sand in and out of the farmhouse. The US Navy jet would be overhead soon, and if they got word that the abductors were leaving, Tom and Sannie could head them off before they reached the main road. He winced as he heard another screech from inside, then quickly retraced his steps back over the dune and down to the water’s edge.
‘They’re still there,’ he said to Sarel. ‘Let’s move.’
Tom sat his mobile phone on the bar and pressed the loudspeaker button so that by crowding around the device he, Bernard, Sannie and Sarel could all hear Major Jonathan Fraser’s voice tinnily coming through.
Fraser was dialling in from Hoedspruit, and the Defence Secretary and other senior military officers and bureaucrats were on the secure link-up from the Cabinet Office briefing rooms in Downing Street. Nicknamed COBRA, this was the government’s emergency response nerve centre.
Despite the presence of his superiors on the conference call, the major was running the virtual meeting. ‘Well done for getting eyes-on, Tom, but the FA-18 has already confirmed the same information — in a bit more detail.’
Tom tried to ignore Fraser’s condescending tone and held his tongue as the SAS man continued.
‘The Hornet’s FLIR — that’s Forward Looking Infrared camera to the civilians among us — picked up the heat signatures of four people in the house. One was stationary in a room — presumably, Mr Greeves still chained to his bed — and three X-rays moving about the house, quite briskly, according to the pilot.’
Sannie mouthed the word ‘X-rays’.
‘Bad guys,’ Tom whispered in explanation.
The major continued, ‘My concern is that they may be preparing to leave the house. This calls for a fast direct action. As we speak, the C-17’s engines are warming up and my men are enplaning. We will be in the air within minutes of the end of this briefing, so listen in and keep any further questions until the end.’