The Prey (2 page)

His stomach lurched as the multi-deck cage he was riding hurtled into the black abyss. Suspended below the platform he stood on were two more decks, each with a further six people in them.

He knew the statistics, and they didn’t make him feel better. The temperature rose by 0.4 of a degree for every hundred metres they descended. He’d checked the thermometer before entering the cage and worked out that the wet-bulb temperature would be 30 degrees – flipping hot – in the
madala
side they were heading to, one thousand, four hundred metres below ground level.

‘You feeling OK, man?’ asked his dreadlocked trainee.

Chris looked beyond the confines of the cage and saw the rock face rushing past. He wished he’d kept his eyes shut. ‘Big night last night,’ he responded weakly

Themba threw back his head and laughed. ‘I thought you were the quiet one in the office?’

Chris supposed he was. He hadn’t been out drinking last night; he had been poring over the environmental impact assessment for a new mine, the one planned for the game reserve. He was one of six people in the South African office of Global Resources who’d been asked to contribute to the assessment when it was in draft form. Most of his comments had been included, some ignored.

Chris closed his eyes again. The truth was he spent very little time underground, but Themba had never been into a
madala
side and it was company policy that no one went into the disused tunnels, or an ‘old’ side or area as the name meant in English, alone. It was too risky. They were also being escorted by a mine security guard, an Angolan named Paulo Barrica, who carried an R5 assault rifle in addition to his lamp and the self-rescue pack they all wore underground.

The smell and heat of the bodies around him added to Chris’s sense of unease, a feeling that was rising steadily with every additional level they plummeted.
Nearly a kilometre and a half
, he thought to himself. It would have been worse if he was working in one of the big goldmines in the Free State; some of them were more than three thousand metres deep. He clasped his hands together to stop them from shaking. He couldn’t let Themba see just how frightened he was.

When the hoist driver stopped Chris and Themba’s deck at level fourteen, bells rang to tell the onsetter controlling the cage it was safe to open the gate. The man nodded for them to get out. Barrica knew the way to the disused workings and he led off, his rifle cradled across his broad chest.

‘Who were you out partying with last night – some of the boys from the office?’ Themba asked him. ‘Get in trouble from the wife?’

‘No. I’m not married.’

‘I am. We have a little girl, just turned six months. Do you have a girlfriend?’

‘No,’ Chris said.

Chris wondered if Themba was making small talk because he sensed that Chris was nervous and was trying to ease the tension.
If so, it wasn’t working. He wanted to be alone with his thoughts and fears.

They left the parade of men and machinery behind them as the three of them turned into an unlit side tunnel. Barrica turned on his lamp and Chris and Themba followed suit.

‘This leads to one of the
madala
sides,’ Chris said. In front of them, in the light cast by Barrica’s lamp, they could see where the tunnel had been bricked closed, and where a man-sized steel door had been fitted at the wall’s centre. Barrica unclipped a key chain from his belt, set down his R5 against a wall and tried three keys before he found the one that opened the padlock on the latch.

‘Although this part of the mine isn’t being worked it still needs to be monitored,’ Chris said, more to stop himself from turning and running back to the cage and begging to be hoisted back to the surface, than from any real need to explain to Themba why they were here.

‘Because of the dead
zama zamas
?’ Themba asked. ‘Why do we even care about them?’

Chris didn’t bother to hide his annoyance. ‘Because our men work nearby. We know some of the bodies the
zama zamas
leave out for us to collect died of cholera and others from carbon monoxide poisoning. Cameron wants us to find out how close the contaminants are to our workers.’ He risked adding, ‘And because they’re human beings.’ The term meant ‘try try’ or to chance, and Chris despaired at the poverty or greed that would make men want to live likes a
zama zama
, slaving away for months on end underground, where death was a more likely outcome than riches.

‘You sure we’re safe down here then, man?’

Chris stopped and turned to Themba. The younger man took half a pace back. Chris saw he carried his own fears. ‘You’re worried about the
zama zamas
?’

‘No.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well maybe.’

‘That’s why Paulo’s here,’ Chris said, nodding towards Barrica’s broad back. The security guard now held his rifle at the ready, the tip of the barrel leading the way. He didn’t bother looking back at
them. Paulo had been hired because of his military skills – he was a veteran of years of fighting in the Angolan civil war – and because as a foreigner there was less risk of him being bribed or coerced into working for the local
zama zamas
. He would also have no qualms about killing them if he had to.

‘Come on then,’ Chris beckoned Themba with false bravado. ‘We’ve got work to do.’

As they trudged behind Barrica in the subterranean heat, Chris was sweating and a little short of breath. He stumbled every now and then as his gumboots slipped on an irregular chunk of rock. As they rounded a bend, he smelled something.

Barrica stopped and held up a hand. Chris gave Barrica a nod, and the Angolan started moving forward again, at a careful pace, rifle at the ready.

‘
Eish
! What is that
stink
?’ Themba put a hand over his mouth and coughed.

The rank odour grew stronger as they moved down the tunnel. Chris forgot his fears of the roof of rock falling on him, or of the side walls closing in on him. There was something very real waiting for them in the blackness ahead. The stench reached out for them.

‘What
is
that?’ Themba asked again.

Barrica stopped and turned to fix the young man with the hard stare of a warrior. ‘Ssssh. That smell, it is death.’

S
YDNEY
, A
USTRALIA

Kylie set down her takeaway latte on the boardroom table and looked into the lens of the video camera.

‘OK, please tell us your name and position in the company as a tape identification and sound check,’ said the thin man operating the camera. ‘And look at me, not into the lens.’

She shifted her gaze. ‘Doctor Kylie Hamilton, EGM, HSEC for GR.’ She’d been interviewed a few times for real, for mining industry
magazines, some country newspapers in the Hunter Valley where she had managed a coalmine for five years, and twice for regional television. Kylie wasn’t nervous about the media training course she’d been volunteered for by corporate affairs, but given the choice she would have been back at her desk – she had a mountain of work to get through before her flight to South Africa the following morning.

‘EGM HSEC?’ The media trainer smiled condescendingly. ‘GR?’

‘Executive General Manager, Health, Safety, Environment and Community, Global Resources,’ Kylie said with the patience of a teacher taking extra time for the slow learner.

‘Window-dressing, in other words.’

Kylie sighed inwardly. So this was how it was going to be. There were three other people on the course, her CEO, Jan Stein; the human resources EGM, Jeff Curtis; and the new South African corporate affairs manager, Musa Mabunda, who was in Australia for four days of familiarisation with the business. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Musa put his hand over his mouth to hide his customary smile. Let him smile. ‘I wouldn’t say window-dressing, I’d say –’

‘
Environment
?’ the thin man said over the top of her. ‘How
environmentally friendly
is a company that destroys the pristine bushland of the Kruger National Park, South Africa’s flagship game reserve?’

‘I’d say we’re very friendly. The land we’ve been exploring on is hardly pristine and –’

‘The land you’ve been exploring,’ the trainer paused for a moment to check his notes and Kylie was about to jump back in and finish her sentence when he silenced her again, ‘is home to a denning site of the endangered African painted dog, as well as black rhino, cheetah, lion, leopard, and a host of other threatened animals.’

‘Actually, it’s –’

‘Why is Global Resources
raping
South Africa’s iconic national park?’

Kylie was getting annoyed at the trainer. She knew it was only role-play and she had been in more stressful situations before – both
in training and in real life – but she suspected he was going harder than was useful, possibly because she was the only woman in the room and on the exec team. ‘We’re not raping anything. If I could just finish what I was –’

‘Yours is the same mining company that’s recently been exploring in other parts of Africa, isn’t it? How much does Global Resources expect to make off the backs of poorly paid African workers this year?’

‘Our mines in South Africa were spared the strikes and violence that plagued other operations in that country last year because our workforce is treated with respect and we have negotiated mutually agreeable pay packages with our people.’ Finally, she thought, she was getting it together. She added: ‘Our financial position is particularly strong given the demand for resources in developing countries.’

The interviewer nodded. ‘Yes, and China and India’s hunger is going to cost South Africa one of its great wilderness areas.’

‘You’re putting words in my mouth,’ she said. He smirked at her and she felt like punching him in the face. She could feel the sweat pricking at her armpits and beading on her top lip. She’d stared down unionists over enterprise agreements, green activists over open-cut mines, and politicians over the mining tax, but those were real negotiations, where Kylie had at least been treated with respect, even if her views weren’t popular. Kylie was also conscious that her boss and the rest of the exec team were watching her, like Roman spectators at a one-sided gladiatorial contest.

‘How safe are Global Resources’ mines?’ the trainer asked, changing tack just as she was formulating something to say about profits and demand for minerals worldwide.

She reached for a lifeline. ‘I’m pleased you asked,’ she said, smiling. ‘Our mines are very safe. Safety is our number one priority.’

‘In Australia perhaps, but what about Africa? Isn’t it true, Ms Hamilton, that nine workers were killed in workplace accidents in South African mines last year?’

She stared at him.

‘Well?’

He trotted out his make-believe questions like he was some hotshot investigative reporter, but the truth was he hadn’t worked as a journalist for years. Kylie, on the other hand, had seen what was left of a man when his remains were dug from the cab of a truck that had just had five tonnes of coal dumped on it by mistake. This was bullshit.

‘Ten,’ she said.

‘Sorry?’ said the trainer.

‘Regrettably, ten people were killed in our coal and goldmines last year, not nine, and that is ten too many.’ She paused. ‘And it’s
Doctor
Hamilton, if you don’t mind.’

The man glanced at his notes, then looked up at her, this time meeting her eyes for the first time. ‘Thanks for your time.’

Kylie unclipped the microphone from the lapel of her jacket, picked up her now lukewarm coffee, stood up and went back to her seat.

The trainer rubbed his hands together. ‘Next victim.’

Kylie had volunteered to go first but now Jan Stein and Jeff Curtis looked at each other. They’d just seen her demolished on camera by a one-man wrecking ball and neither wanted to go next. Kylie thought Jan would have had bigger balls. She opened the workbook the trainer had given each of them; as a senior member of the team she would be required to face the media more often and now that the shock of the pretend interview was over she was looking forward to mastering a new skill. If she had a chance at a second interview, and she suspected this would be part of the training, Kylie wanted to be able to nail it. She had not got to where she was in this male-dominated industry by backing down from confrontational situations.

‘My turn,’ said Musa. He was beaming. Kylie looked up from the course notes as Musa got up, adjusted his silk tie and buttoned his suit jacket. He was the smartest dressed man in a head office full of suits – some of them very expensive. By contrast, Kylie’s approach to her wardrobe could be described as pragmatic at best. While she had
an office in the company’s Sydney headquarters, in Macquarie Street with a view out over the Botanic Gardens to the Heads, she spent most of her time on the road and on-site at the company’s mines. There she wore steel-capped boots not stilettos, and the standard uniform of blue overalls with a yellow high-visibility vest ringed with reflective panels – a uniform she felt far more comfortable in than the navy A-line skirt suit she’d thrown on for today’s training session.

Musa took a seat in front of the trainer, threaded the lapel microphone up under his jacket and carefully attached it to his perfectly tailored grey suit jacket. Kylie felt sorry for the man already, he was about to be eaten alive.

‘OK,’ said the trainer, ‘we’re rolling. If I could just start by getting your name and –’

‘My name is Musa Mabunda,’ he spelled in a clear, deep voice, his delivery slow and precise, yet not laborious. ‘I am the Manager of Corporate Communications for Global Resources in South Africa.’

‘Mr Mabunda, how can your company rape –’

‘Perhaps I could start by giving you an overview of our plans for a new mine in South Africa – a mine that will uplift an impoverished community, provide valuable resources and income which will aid the development of the new South Africa and be a world-class model for safety and environmental protection.’

The trainer tried to interject, but Musa had the ball and he was running with it. Kylie smiled. The former journalist tried again to ask one of his barbed questions, but Musa raised his voice ever so slightly and continued his monologue.