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.’