The Devil's Breath (31 page)

A twin-engined jet sat, parked at the center of the hangar. Dust bags covered the air intakes. The gleaming black metal sported a thin line of trim that ran like an arrow along the fuselage and up to the tail fin, where it formed the start of Shaka Chang’s corporate logo—assegais and a shield. The upturned wingtips gave the plane a cutting-edge look, and Max reckoned the wings must have spanned twenty-odd meters. But there was still plenty of room for all the other vehicles.
Skeleton Rock must be like an iceberg
, Max thought.
There’s a hell of a lot you don’t see from above. And it’s probably just as deadly, looking at that gear
.

The wheelchair’s tires squeaked as Max turned to the right, hugging the rear wall and ducking low behind a couple of Humvees, painted black and bearing Shaka Chang’s coat of arms. A dune buggy and a sleek helicopter, also black, sat further forward. This looked like Shaka Chang’s personal playroom, and his toys were expensive. Somewhere near the front of the hangar, a couple of mechanics wiped their hands and moved away from the open cowling of a small aircraft. It looked as though they were going for a coffee break. One of the men switched off a portable radio and they disappeared into the glare. Max could see that a glider, the tips of its huge wings balanced tenderly on supporting blocks, lay as still as a moth transfixed by light.

Max hugged the wall, seeing no sign of his dad’s Land Rover. At the far end of a ten-meter passage cut into the
wall—a corridor big enough to drive a lorry through—Max could see a smaller room, if that was what it could be called.

Edging forward cautiously, he found himself inside a smaller version of the hangar. This seemed a more workaday place, though it was just as immaculately clean as the hangar, containing racks of spare parts, a block and tackle, heavy lifting rigs and a couple of inspection pits. In the opposite corner, fairly well tucked out of sight, an engine diagnostic center sat gleaming, its various computer screens dark—a purpose-built area that looked like something out of a Formula One garage. A huge enclosed cooling fan was bolted to the wall, and it turned lazily on a low power setting, massaging the room with cooled air. Half a dozen motorbikes and a couple of pickup trucks stood in a neat row on the far side, in addition to several quad bikes and two very sleek Class 3 sand yachts. These were the ultimate: a steer-able front wheel and two fixed at the rear. That single wing-shaped sail could snag a breeze and rocket the slender Kevlar hull along at up to a hundred and twenty kilometers an hour.

One of Max’s friends had taken him once to help at a sand race in north Devon, and let him try his hand. The thrill of hurtling along that close to the ground under the power of wind was an experience he wouldn’t forget. But those memories were getting in the way now; he had to concentrate on finding his dad’s Land Rover.

At the end of this room was another opening, and Max ran towards it—this and the other hangar might be his way out. Keeping in the shadows, he peered out across the
landscape. The big hangar opened onto the vast plain, but this corner of the fort was on the edge of a plateau, so the ground dropped away to the river. That would make sense. That river must be fed from the Devil’s Breath crater, and he could see the marsh grass and the crocodiles basking on the sandbanks. A narrow set of rails led down a ramp from this opening, where a motorboat was held fast. Matted, tissue-paper-like fiberglass showed a nasty gash below the waterline, and there were signs that someone had been working on the repair. Something sharp and with enormous crushing power had caused that damage. It wasn’t too hard to imagine what.

The boat had obviously been hauled back up the ramp for repairs; it was too risky to work on it down there—those crocs could move too quickly. There seemed no way out except across that desert, in full view of the fort.

Zhernastyn was coming to, but the initial shock of finding himself strapped in a wheelchair gave way to immediate compliance when Max pushed his face into his. “You make a sound, you try anything, and I’ll push you down that desert ski ramp and let the crocs untie you.”

Zhernastyn nodded furiously. He’d seen the driver, and others, fed to those man-eaters. Max pulled the tape from Zhernastyn’s mouth, the whiskers tearing away like a Velcro strap being undone. Tears wetted Zhernastyn’s eyes.

“What did you do to my father?”

Zhernastyn scrunched his face up and bared his teeth, like a baby about to burst into tears. “It wasn’t me,” he blubbered. “I only did what I was told to by Mr. Chang.”

“Oh, that’s all right then, I won’t hold it against you.”

“You won’t?” Zhernastyn said, eyes open wide now and surprised at the boy’s leniency.

“No, of course not. I’ll pin a note to your chest to tell the crocodiles they mustn’t hurt you because I said so.”

There was the briefest of moments while Zhernastyn seemed to think about that proposal, but then fear swallowed him again.

“What was the drug?”

“Different ones. He’d taken something from the Bushmen. I couldn’t identify it in his blood tests. It seemed to block out parts of the memory. I tried everything. But he was very, very stubborn. So stubborn, I doubled the dose. He was
so
strong-willed, he resisted
so much
, he made me
so angry
, I …” Zhernastyn got carried away by the memory of his patient’s ability to withstand his efforts. He saw Max’s eyes narrow and felt the wheelchair nudge towards the ramp. He sucked in air so quickly he nearly choked. “No!” he spluttered. “Paradyoxinalthymiate! It’s an experimental drug!”

Max stopped the wheelchair and faced him again. “There’s an antidote?”

Zhernastyn grimaced and cringed. “I could try and develop one,” he whispered, in a vain attempt to save himself.

OK, if Max could get his dad out, there had to be a scientist somewhere who could help him. “Where’s my father’s Land Rover?”

“Through there.” Zhernastyn nodded towards the wall on the far side of the small hangar. The light from outside threw a glaring sheen across the rock face, disguising the next chamber whose entrance, another passage cut in the wall, was engulfed
in shadow. These huge underground chambers must have needed tunnel-boring machines to excavate them, but that would have been no problem for Shaka Chang; he had everything he needed for the massive dam project, further north. Max grabbed a roll of duct tape from a workbench and wrapped it across Zhernastyn’s mouth.

Max had seen photographs and films of air-crash investigators as they pieced together the wreckage of air disasters, and this was exactly how it looked, on a smaller scale, as he pushed Zhernastyn into this next chamber. A Land Rover had been completely dismantled and every piece, every nut and bolt, every panel and welded seam, had been taken apart. As if by a pathologist’s postmortem the vehicle had been thoroughly dissected and lay, spread across the floor, on a massive tarpaulin. The engine block had been cut in pieces and lay at the center of it all. Max parked Zhernastyn and walked slowly around the dismembered carcass. This had obviously been done by experts, and if they’d found nothing then what could he do? He let his eyes wander over the bits and pieces, then he concentrated on each portion of the jigsaw puzzle. There was nothing that could possibly hold any secret.

It had been picked clean by Chang’s vultures.

Shaka Chang grunted with exertion. The man had attacked him from behind, taking Chang by surprise as he dealt with another assault from the front. The first man slashed upwards with a knife, but Chang stepped inside the knife thrust, blocked the man’s arm in a scissor grip, pushed his shoulder hard into the other’s chest and felt his breath expelled. He kept hold of the man’s wrist as he fell, twisting it in a swan-neck grip. The knife dropped, the man yelled in pain and, just as Chang was going to use his considerable strength and kick the man hard to keep him down, the other assailant had run in from the room behind him.

Slye stood in the doorway, frozen by the violence. Hating the brutality of it. He could barely move, in case he was somehow caught up in the assault.

Chang took the blow to the back of his neck and it stunned him momentarily. He sagged, nearly going down on
his knees, and then the man had an armlock around his throat. A knee in his back and one arm pressed in just the right place to cause unconsciousness and death. And the attacker was as big and as strong as Chang. Chang hadn’t heard him approach. But that was exactly why he paid these men so much money to be his bodyguards. They were very good at their jobs, but he wanted to be better than the professionals. He wanted to be better than anyone at everything.

Chang rolled, letting the man’s weight carry them, and jabbed him hard with his elbow. It took three or four severe blows, but finally the man succumbed.

The men, now on the floor, groaned, each recovering from the hurt inflicted on him. Shaka Chang rubbed his neck and reached for a towel as he spotted Mr. Slye, nervously waiting to be summoned closer.

These weekly workouts in the fort’s dojo kept Chang in good shape; he was determined that people should never forget that he came from a warrior breed. Chang dabbed the sweat around the jade and Moldavite bracelet, linked by gold. He never took that off. It was his talisman. Jade from his mother’s homeland, China, meant protection, the gold mined from his homeland, its chain forged and crafted so tightly that the bracelet should never break. And the Moldavite droplets held fragments of life—entombed secrets—from before man walked the earth. Legend had it that the green translucent meteoric glass, fragments from a massive impact fifteen million years ago, carried the energies between those of extraterrestrial origin and those inhabiting Earth. He never tired of gazing at the bracelet’s beauty.

Mr. Slye tried not to wrinkle his nose as Chang nodded for him to come closer. There was always the smell of sweat. It was pungent, like a dressing room after a football game, or a stable full of horses after a race.

“Mr. Chang, sir. Might I have a moment?”

Chang rubbed himself down with the towel. “What is it? You speak to Zhernastyn? He get anything yet?”

“Most disappointingly, he has not.”

“We’re only hours away from opening the control gates of the biggest hydroelectric scheme in Africa; tribes have been displaced, billions of dollars have poured in, and people are going to die when I poison their underground sources of water. I will control the complete water supply for southern Africa. I can hold governments to ransom—diamond fields, gold fields, farming, wildlife, tourism—they all need water! And because one man—one man!—knows my plan, all of this is in jeopardy! I will not be stopped!” Chang’s voice had become harder and louder until he was roaring at a quivering Mr. Slye, who stood full in the blast, eyes squinting as if facing a hurricane. Which well described Shaka Chang’s temper.

And then suddenly the eye of the storm settled as Shaka Chang calmed down, the near silence almost more threatening than the tirade. His face was close to that of Slye, who had somehow managed to hold on to his dignity and remain stoically upright. “Listen to me, Mr. Slye. No man’s memory is buried so deeply that it cannot be dug out using crude, painful instruments. I want Tom Gordon’s memory of where he hid the evidence, and I want it served up on a plate—and I don’t care how bloody it becomes. I like my steak rare. You understand?”

Slye nodded. Tom Gordon would have a great deal of pain inflicted on him now.

“Anything else, Mr. Slye?”

“A boy. We’ve spotted a Bushman boy, heading this way. Directly towards Skeleton Rock.”

“Why would a child do that?” Shaka Chang waited a moment, his dark eyes seeming to creep into Slye’s soul. “Unless …,” he said almost tenderly, “he was the boy who was with Gordon’s son. You assured me those boys were dead.” His eyes never left Slye’s face as his arm pointed towards the open window and the desert beyond. “You did make a note in your personal organizer that those boys were dead. Didn’t you?”

Mr. Slye’s Adam’s apple made a jerking motion, like a chicken about to cluck. “The odds I calculated, based on the extreme conditions—the temperature alone was fifty degrees; even a scorpion would think twice about venturing out—indicated certain death. Then there was their lack of food and water, their inability to contend with attacks from wild animals and their complete lack of knowledge of who we are and where we are. All of this, Mr. Chang, sir, determined that they died more than three days ago.”

“But?”

“But … Bushmen are … Bushmen.”

“So they could have survived?”

“The Bushman boy, perhaps. Max Gordon, definitely not. Otherwise, why is the Bushman boy coming towards us on his own?”

Shaka Chang smiled at his factotum. The perfect white teeth glistened like freshly painted tombstones. “Why?
Perhaps because Max Gordon is near here. Because he is alive. Because he has learned the secret we have been so determined to find. Perhaps you have underestimated everything, Mr. Slye.”

Slye, a trifle indignant at being insulted by the suggestion of incompetence, was silent.

“Check the boy’s father, tell Zhernastyn there are no holds barred, and capture that Bushman boy. If necessary, bring me his body. I want to see it for myself this time.”