Silent Predator (17 page)

Tom nodded. ‘An old vehicle, you think?’

Duncan nodded too. ‘There was one more set of footprints – the driver. There were drag marks and footprints at the back of the vehicle, and footprints only on the sides of the vehicle where they got in.’

Tom was already building a mental picture of the getaway car. ‘That’s five suspects, plus the two victims. Drag marks at the back, you say? That means Joyce might still be unconscious. Were they loading him into the rear of a vehicle?’

‘Yes, a
bakkie
, I think.’

‘A what?’

Sannie interjected, ‘What you would call a pick-up or a utility vehicle. Sounds like a double cab. Two men
in the front, two or three in the back. Maybe one guy in the load-carrying area to keep a gun on the two victims.’

‘That makes more sense. The rear area could be enclosed with a canopy, probably with tinted windows. That narrows down the possible range of vehicles.’

Sannie shook her head. ‘A double-cab
bakkie
with a canopy on the back, old enough to be dripping oil from the engine and the rear diff? Tom, that describes about every second vehicle in South Africa!’

‘It’s something, damn it. Not every holiday car in this park is going to have five or six men crammed into it.’

Sannie was already on the phone to Isaac, giving a description of the likely vehicle and number of occupants, along with a suggestion – she couldn’t issue orders – that the description be radioed to all police officers in the park and all entry and exit gates. ‘There are security guards at every gate,’ she explained to Tom after hanging up. ‘They check vehicles on the way out for plant and animal products that people might have illegally picked up.’

‘I need a map.’

‘There’s one in the Cruiser. I’ll go and get the vehicle,’ Duncan said, sprinting off.

Sannie looked as though things were rapidly moving out of her control, but she was not quick enough to stop Duncan. It was incredibly frustrating for Tom to think that he had possibly missed Greeves and Joyce by mere minutes. ‘I’ve got to get rolling, Sannie. There’s mobile phone reception in most of this part of the park – you told me that – so you can keep in
touch with me and I can keep in touch with London. If I
do
catch them – and that’ll be a miracle – I’ll call for back-up.’

‘Okay.’ Sannie pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers and closed her eyes for two seconds. She took a deep breath. ‘You know it’s the wrong thing to do in this situation, but it also makes the most sense.’

Duncan pulled up and jumped from the Land Cruiser but left the engine idling. He opened his Kruger map book to the pages that showed the southwest corner of the park and laid it on the vehicle’s bonnet.

Sannie pointed to Tinga Legends Lodge, just north of Skukuza, near the border of the park in a section that bubbled out to the west, like the toe of a long boot. Otherwise, the park was roughly a long, narrow rectangle stretching north along the Mozambican border. She traced the route out from the lodge to the tar road, which was shown in red on the map. ‘Okay. They’re heading north-east, possibly towards Mozambique, though we’re basing that on a discarded matchbox. From here there are two official border crossings within a day’s drive. They could head south-east,’ Sannie’s finger moved off the map at the bottom right-hand corner, ‘and leave the park via the Crocodile Bridge Gate and cross into Mozambique at Komatipoort. That’s the main crossing for people travelling from South Africa and very busy.’

‘Would that make it harder or easier to smuggle through two guys bound and gagged in the back of your vehicle?’ Tom said.

‘Harder. The customs guys are thorough on the
other side. They hate South African holiday-makers taking their own drinks and groceries into Mozambique instead of buying locally, so they always check the boot looking to make you pay duty on something. The other crossing is up here,’ she flipped over a couple of pages of the map book and traced a route to the north-east, ‘about midway up the park, through the new Giriyondo border post. This one was created to allow access into the new transfrontier national park which has been set up opposite Kruger. It’s quieter and the customs guys might be more relaxed, but I can’t imagine kidnappers risking using the official crossings.’

‘Could they just drive through the bush?’

‘Not drive all the way, but maybe walk.’

Tom was surprised as Sannie briefly described how many Mozambicans illegally crossed into South Africa via the wilds of the Kruger Park, in search of work and a new life. ‘Some are killed by lions and other game on the way, but enough of them think it’s worth the risk.’

‘So they could cross anywhere, if they abandoned their vehicle?’

‘Sure,’ Sannie agreed, ‘but there aren’t many roads on the Mozambican side and they wouldn’t want to be on foot with two prisoners for several days.’

Duncan leaned in to study the map. ‘I know this area. My parents were from Mozambique originally. The nearest towns on the other side are Machatunine, Macaene and Mapulanguene.’

Sannie peered closer at the map. ‘There’s a tar road south of Kruger’s Satara rest camp that ends very close
to the border, near the Singita private lodge – the old N’wanetsi National Park camp. That last village you mentioned is not far across the border from there.’

‘Mapulanguene,’ Duncan repeated, nodding. ‘No more than twenty kilometres.’

‘
Ja
. The N’wanetsi River cuts through the Lebombo Mountains there, but it’s overlooked by Singita and a public national park picnic site, isn’t it?’

Tom looked at the map to where they were pointing. ‘What about this dirt road, just to the north?’ The parallel route, called the S100, was a little south of Satara camp.

Duncan rubbed his chin. ‘Yes. Perhaps they could take the dirt road, cross the border into the bush, and cut down to the N’wanetsi, out of sight of the tourists.’

Tom asked Sannie if she could task police or national parks patrols to cover the three points in the park where there were roads and villages within striking distance on the other side of the border in Mozambique.

‘I’ll do what I can, Tom. It’s the closest thing we’ve got to a plan. Of course, if we’re wrong about the Mozambican connection, we could be heading in the wrong direction.’

‘Right now, I just want to be heading somewhere.’

‘Tom, be careful. These men must know the bush, particularly if their plan is to set off on foot through the park. They’ll be armed, and that area is lion country.’

‘I’ll look after him,’ Duncan said, climbing into the Land Cruiser as Tom got into the passenger seat.

‘You should probably be staying here, Duncan, but I didn’t see a thing.’

‘Let’s go,’ Tom said.

‘Tom, wait.’ Sannie placed a hand on the sill of the vehicle’s cut-down door. ‘Good luck.’

Sannie walked back down the driveway to Tinga’s reception area. Carla was in the foyer. ‘I need somewhere to set up a command post. It needs to be private, have telephone access, a TV with DSTV, and somewhere to set up a computer.’

Carla had found time to do her hair and makeup. ‘The function centre’s booked for a seminar all day today. It’s one of the banks from Jo’burg. I can’t put them anywhere else, and the delegates are taking up all our spare rooms tonight. Why don’t you use Tom’s room? He’s going to want to be in on the action whenever he gets back from wherever he’s gone.’

‘Okay. I’m going there now to set up. Call me when Captain Tshabalala arrives.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Carla said, giving her a mock salute.

Sannie was in no mood for humour, or Carla. She strode down the walkway and let herself into Tom’s room. When she got there, she couldn’t ignore the rumpled bed, or the smell of perfume. She grimaced. As sorry as she felt for Tom, she was still annoyed at him for trying to smooth-talk her all day and then bedding that tramp Carla without a second thought. She left the front door ajar and slid open the glass sliding doors to get a draught going through the room to expel the odours.

Sannie helped herself to a Coke from Tom’s mini-bar, sat down at the polished wooden writing bureau and pulled her notebook out of her handbag. She started writing a timeline of everything that had gone on since she left for bed last night, through to Tom’s late arrival not long ago. She also noted Duncan’s preliminary findings about the number of suspects, his assessment of the type of vehicle used, and the gang’s apparent modus operandi.

She wondered about motive. With the exception of some bombings a few years back which had been linked to local Muslims, South Africa had so far been free of terrorism linked to Islamic extremists. However, there were sizable Muslim communities in Mozambique and South Africa. Their origins dated back to Arab traders who plied the coast of Africa, trading everything from spices to slaves. In the past she had worked as a liaison to American secret service teams protecting a former president on a visit to South Africa, so she had sat in on security briefings which alleged there were al-Qaeda support cells and affiliated groups already established – though probably ‘sleeping’ – in southern Africa. Greeves was not a high-profile minister, but he had made recent statements in parliament, reported even in South Africa, about Britain’s ongoing commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Terrorism aside, the other possible motive was good old-fashioned money. Sannie knew from Tom, and Nick before him, that Greeves was a very wealthy man. Perhaps the kidnappers were criminals after a ransom. The complicating factor in this theory, of course, was that Bernard Joyce had also been abducted.

Sannie wished she could have gone with Tom; he was right – at least he was doing something. Having made her notes and called all the appropriate people, she felt next to useless now, sitting in Tom’s empty suite. She got up to go to the toilet.

As she moved through the bathroom, the morning sun slanting in from the window bounced off something on the vanity benchtop. She stopped and looked down on it. It was a small, square travel mirror. She bent closer. Running down the centre of the glass was a thin line of white powder. Sannie sucked in a deep breath.

‘Sannie?’ She heard the deep voice of Isaac Tshabalala and remembered leaving the door open.

She emerged from the bathroom.

‘Is it as bad as I think it is, Sannie?’ Isaac asked.

‘Have a look at this, Captain. If possible, I think it just got a whole lot worse for someone.’

Tom Furey wasn’t praying. He was swearing.

In front of him, despite the early hour and the fact that they were in the middle of the African bush, was a traffic jam. In London the cause might have been a car accident, but here it was a lion. Three lions, in fact. And it was gridlock.

Ahead of them was a line of four cars, parked bumper to bumper, waiting their turn to get onto a bridge across a mostly dry river. On the structure itself four cars were parked side by side, effectively blocking it. The canvas canopy over the open-sided Tinga Land Cruiser was high enough for Tom to stand up in the passenger seat, to get a better view of the mess ahead. He caught a glimpse of a big, shaggy mane as one of the trio of lions raised its head from the tar. It lay down again, out of sight.

‘The lions like the warmth of the tarred roads in the early morning. They’ll sleep there until they eventually get sick of the cars, or the sun gets too hot for them. Then they will move into the shade of the trees,’ Duncan explained.

‘How long will that take?’

The guide shrugged. ‘Five minutes, an hour?’

‘We don’t have that much time.’

Up ahead a horn sounded a short, sharp blast. Tempers were rising along with the sun. The bush on either side of them was painted a warm orange-gold by the morning rays, the grassy flood plain dotted with stunted ilala palms. It would have been beautiful, if not for the traffic jam and the fact that two men’s lives were hanging in the balance. The source of consternation, from what Tom could see, was a tour vehicle, a minibus towing a luggage trailer, which had pulled up sideways, blocking the bridge on the far side. Even if the drivers in the queue on their side of the river had their fill of lion photo opportunities and wanted to move on to allow the next in line a chance to see the cats, they were prevented from doing so. Tom watched through Duncan’s binoculars as the driver of the tour van gave someone the finger. ‘This is fucking ridiculous.’ He leaned over and honked the Land Cruiser’s horn. This brought a flurry of sympathetic hoots and catcalls from some of the other drivers, but both the tour bus and the lions remained stationary.

‘What will the lions do if they see a man on foot?’ Tom asked.

Duncan looked over at him. ‘You are not serious?’

‘Tell me.’

Duncan scratched his chin. ‘Well, one of two things. They will either run away or they will attack and kill that man.’

Tom drew his Glock and opened the passenger
door. Duncan reached out to grab him, but was too slow. ‘Tom! Don’t be an idiot, man!’

Tom walked along the left-hand side of the first line of vehicles. Duncan started his engine and squeezed past them, driving on the dirt verge, directly behind Tom. ‘Get back in,’ he shouted.

People were starting to look back now and a child called out something in Afrikaans. Tom imagined it was something like ‘Look at that stupid bloody man about to be eaten’. A woman screamed and ducked behind the sill of her car door when she saw his gun. ‘Get back in your bloody vehicle,’ an elderly man yelled at him. Tom ignored him as he closed on the bridge. Duncan drove as close as he could to him, but there was no way the Land Cruiser could get onto the bridge itself.

Tom could see the lions now, but they were lying facing the other way, towards the tour van. The guide driving the bus saw him now and pointed, alerting his tourists to the madman approaching. Tom saw four lenses swing in unison to face him. ‘Police!’ he yelled. ‘Back off that bridge, now!’

The driver stared at him, hardly believing what he was seeing. The lions raised their heads as one at the sound of his voice. One stood and uttered a throaty, bass growl that sent a chill up Tom’s back.