All at once, from being ahead of the clock, we were under pressure. I was determined to be on target at first light. Fifteen kilometres to go, and less than three hours in which to cover them. Before we started, I had to get the coordinates of our position, so that we’d be able to find the vehicle again. The wait for satellites was agonising, but in fact three came up pretty fast, and I pushed the button to save the figures as Waypoint Eleven.
Then, rapidly, we stowed essentials into belt-kits and Bergens: GPS and spare batteries, satcom, ammunition, explosive, det cord, food, water bottles, mozzie nets, torches. My final act was to pull out the ignition key and hide it under a flat stone a few metres away.
‘See that?’ I said. ‘If either of us ever comes back here, that’s where it will be.’
With that we set off uphill, walking hard across the contours as the lie of the land became steadily steeper. Thin as he was, Jason moved easily under his loaded pack. He was as wiry and tough as anyone I’d ever seen.
Somehow, the problem of getting out of there, of returning to civilisation, didn’t worry me. I was so hell-bent on nailing Muende and Inge that nothing else seemed to matter. At the back of my mind was the fact that I had the satcom, and could always call for help if I had to; but the urgency of the task in hand stopped me pursuing the idea of exfiltration very far.
We were coming off the ridge when first light began to break in the sky ahead of us. At ground level the dark was still too intense for any landmark to be visible, but as soon as we started down over that series of ledges, the terrain felt familiar, even though we were approaching the site from the opposite direction. When the GPS began giving us four hundred metres to target, I put it away so that I could concentrate on eyeballing the slope ahead.
I knew the remains of the Beechcraft were lying in one of the hollows beneath us. The more I’d thought things over during the night, the more I’d convinced myself that we were going to find Muende and the woman bashaed up on the site. I just felt sure they’d reached the place as dark was falling, and made a camp beside the wreck. The danger was that we’d come on them suddenly, with our heads showing over the skyline, so we moved down inches at a time. As I’d expected, Jason was excellent at stalking: his feet made no sound, and his eyes never stopped ranging about.
In the end, it was the smell that told us we’d reached journey’s end. Jason, a step ahead of me, turned his head, pointedly holding his nose between thumb and forefinger. Then I got it: a stench of rotting meat foul enough to make my gorge rise. When he held out a hand, indicating to our right, I just made out the hunched form of a hyena skulking away up the hill.
The light was still grey and thick when I eased my head round a rock and peeped over into the hollow, fifty metres below. There was the wreck, just as I remembered it. I was seeing it from above rather than below, but everything corresponded to the images in my mind: the broken fuselage, upside-down, with its nose high off the ground, the crumpled tail fin, the skeletal, blackened wings with the left tip ripped away, the scorched grass. The sight brought back a searing memory of Whinger on fire. I fought it down and continued to search.
The only pieces missing from the picture were the bodies of the South Africans. They’d been moved. No — they’d been torn apart. In the growing light I made out a scatter of bones and, further off, a heap of what had been sand-coloured clothes. That was the source of the stench. The bundle contained the last small remnant of a body, no doubt now heaving with maggots.
For five minutes I stood still, watching for any movement in the hollow or on the hillside below. The eastern horizon was flaring crimson. Then, I whispered, ‘Stay here and cover me while I take a closer look.’ Jason nodded, and settled his 203 over a rock.
I was just starting to move when a noise brought me to a halt. It was very faint — a soft, distant pop — but definitely not natural.
‘That sounded like a shot,’ I said. ‘A long way off, but a shot all the same.’
Jason didn’t answer. After another wait, I set off. Carefully picking my way down, I came out into the hollow — and part of my fantasy died. Nobody could have bashaed up there: the smell of death was suffocating. Trying to ignore it, I moved towards the front of the plane.
I stopped short. Under the nose cone was a pile of rocks. With horrible certainty I knew they hadn’t been there before; somebody had collected them and piled them to a height of half a metre to make a platform, so that he or she could reach up to the front of the fuselage. I looked up. Sure enough, the small door in the side of the nose, giving access to the luggage compartment, was slightly open. I slipped off my Bergen, stood on the rock pile, reached up, pulled myself up on my hands and looked in. The small, white-walled compartment was empty.
Bastards! They’d beaten us to it. Disappointment and anger crashed down on me like a ton of lead. All the fantastic effort we’d made, only to reach the site too late.
I looked up towards Jason and waved at him to come down. In a few seconds, he was beside me.
‘They’ve been already,’ I said, quietly. ‘That pile of stones wasn’t there before. They built it so they could reach up high enough.’
Jason said nothing, but dropped into a squat and studied the ground intently, first round the stones, then in a wider circle. I moved off and got behind a rock that commanded the immediate area. As I leant on it, feeling knackered, the sun burst over the horizon with its usual flamboyance and flooded the hillside with light. My mind flew to Genesis and his final utterance.
Presently, Jason moved up to me, and said, ‘Three persons come.’
‘Three?’
‘Yassir. Two mens, one woman. Woman with bad foot.’
I felt the hair on my neck bristling. The woman with the bad foot was Inge, presumably with Muende. But who was the second man?
‘How can you tell?’ I asked.
Leading me, he pointed at a faint mark in a patch of dust. ‘This woman foot. Left side, turning in.’ With his hand he demonstrated a twisted ankle. Then he moved on and showed me two other marks, one in some grass, one among pebbles, both almost invisible. ‘One man here, one here.’
‘When were they here? Yesterday?’
‘No sah. In the night-time.’
‘Just now?’
‘Yassir.’
‘Jesus! Let’s get after them. They must have gone down. And listen, Jason.’
‘Yassir?’
‘If we catch up with them, we’re going to drop all three. Okay?’
‘Sure, sure!’
That was the most enthusiastic remark I’d ever heard him make.
SEVENTEEN
We went forward to the next little ridge, scanning down. By then the sun was fully up, shining right in our faces, making it difficult to see.
‘That’s where the rest of you waited while we came to investigate the crash,’ I said, indicating the stand of trees under which Alpha had parked.
Jason nodded, but he seemed disinclined to head that way. I stood still, on the lookout, while he made a few casts downhill. He came back frowning and moved off in the opposite direction, going left-handed along the contour. Almost at once he looked back with a grin and beckoned me forward.
Once again, I could scarcely make out the evidence he’d spotted, but he was confident. ‘All come this way.’ He pointed ahead decisively. He was speaking in a very low voice, as if he thought our quarry was close in front.
Soon I realised how phenomenally sharp his eyes must be. He would point to a single stalk of grass bent over, the faintest impression in dry gravel, and read a whole story from it. His method was basically the same as mine, but his perception was on a different level. It was as if he could see everything through a magnifying glass — and, of course, he’d been practising every day of his life.