Dictator (35 page)

Carver nodded. ‘Thanks.’ The M11 was the US designation for the Sig Sauer P226. ‘I always feel cosier with one of them around.’

‘For me, what I like best is a good knife,’ said Parkes. ‘A nine-inch Bowie blade, black carbon steel, preferably. I assumed you and Mr Iluko would feel the same way. You may need them.’

Carver grimaced at the thought of a knife slicing through an exposed throat. There were few more horribly intimate ways to kill a man. But Parkes was right: there were also few more effective ways of silently eliminating one’s enemy.

‘The kit’s all in that Defender over there,’ said Parkes, nodding in the direction of a dusty olive-green Land Rover. It’s got a full tank of gas and an extra jerrycan in case you need it. Believe it or not, that gas was much harder to come by than your weapons. Anyway, I’ve got you water, rations, and there’s a winch fitted to the front bumper in case you need to pull yourself out of trouble.’

‘Looks like you thought of everything.’

‘Well, that’s my boss’s niece you’re going after. Nothing but the best, eh?’

‘I appreciate it. Thanks.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ said Parkes. ‘Well, I’d better get going. We’ve got a plane to catch.’

He turned to go, then paused for a second.

‘Hey, Carver … good luck.’

‘Thanks,’ said Carver, ‘but actually there is one thing you forgot.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Beer, a cold one. It had better be waiting when I get across the border tonight.’

‘Count on it,’ said Parkes.

85

Parkes, his men and the two Iluko kids crammed into a Toyota Previa people carrier with blacked-out passenger windows, slipped out of a side gate of the builder’s yard and joined the traffic heading out of town at the start of the afternoon rush-hour. It took a while to get on to the two-lane ribbon of cracked and potholed tarmac that constituted the main route to the South African border, and even then the going was slow. More than ninety minutes had passed before the driver took a right turn on to a much more basic dirt track that snaked away into the flat, featureless expanse of the bush.

A few minutes later, the De Havilland Twin Otter took off from Buweku airport without any passengers aboard. Barely ten minutes into its flight, less than fifty miles from Buweku, the pilot radioed the control tower, reporting multiple systems malfunctions. He said he would attempt to make an immediate forced landing and requested information about nearby landing strips.

The air-traffic controller hesitated. There was, indeed, a full-length runway right under the Twin Otter’s flight path. It was one of the many Forward Air Fields built thirty years earlier by the former white minority rulers of Malemba. Fighting a war in which the enemy could appear anywhere in the country, at any time, they’d wanted to be able to fly troops in and out of battle zones as fast as possible. Today, many of these airfields were derelict and overgrown, but the strips were still there, for all the plants that were pushing through them.

The controller wasn’t sure whether the positions of the forward fields were considered a state secret. Of course, everyone knew where they were, but could one say so in public? In a government based on unreason and downright madness, it was so hard to tell.

‘It is possible that there may be facilities close to your current position, but I am not at liberty to be specific,’ he said, with painstaking caution.

To his surprise, the controller heard laughter in his headphones.

‘Ja,’ the pilot agreed. ‘I have a feeling I may have heard of facilities like that, too.’

Seconds later, the Otter adjusted its course and began a rapid descent towards the crumbling remains of the airstrip.

‘Bang on time,’ said Sonny Parkes with a nod of satisfaction as he watched the Otter coming in to land.

Of the original two-thousand-yard runway less than half was still usable, but that was plenty for a plane with the Otter’s short takeoff and landing capability. It came bumping along the runway, swung through one hundred and eighty degrees and paused, engines still running, just long enough for its seven passengers to clamber aboard before the pilot raced back the way he had come and climbed into the dimming light of the late-afternoon sky. Then he banked to the south and headed for the South African border, some forty miles away.

Watching the Otter reappear on his radar, the air-traffic controller suddenly felt a lot less pleased with himself. He had been conned. The plane had never had anything wrong with it at all. It had landed in order to make a drop or a pick-up. And since it had left Buweku empty, a pick-up was the overwhelming likelihood. For the past two hours he had been hearing snatches of news and gossip about the attack on the prison van. Several prisoners were still missing. Had some of them been spirited away on that plane? Men willing to commit such a crime in broad daylight, in the middle of Buweku’s busiest street, would surely not baulk at such a dramatic escape. Well, they were not going to get away with it.

Feeling personally insulted, somewhat humiliated and very, very angry, the air-traffic controller got straight on the line to the air force.

In the aftermath of the coup, all of Malemba’s armed forces had been put on an ultra-heightened state of alert. Everyone from the lowliest cadet to the highest-ranking officer knew of the glory and preferment that would be heaped on anyone responsible for capturing Patrick Tshonga, or any of his associates. They also knew of the terrible price to be paid if, by chance, they missed the opportunity to apprehend him. So three Malemban Air Force interceptors were airborne less than five minutes after the call came through from Buweku control.

They were Chengdu F-7 interceptors, a Chinese fighter plane based on the Russian MiG-21. They were twenty-year-old models of a fifty-five-year-old design, and as modern combat aircraft they were a sorry joke. They would have been as helpless as Wendell Klerk’s clay pigeons against any twenty-first-century fighter. But the Malemban F-7s were not going up against an RAF Typhoon or an American F-22 Raptor. Their prey was an unarmed, propeller-driven passenger aircraft. And they could deal with that just fine.

Their turbojets blasted them through the sound barrier as they hurtled towards their target. There had not been time to arm the planes with air-to-air missiles, but each was equipped with a pair of thirty-millimetre cannons. The three pilots, all honed by years of combat missions during Malemba’s participation in the Congo’s endless civil wars, chattered happily on the radio. If modern rockets were not available, they were happy to do this the old-fashioned way.

86

In a cellar beneath a government building in the capital city of Sindele, Moses Mabeki watched the sight presented before him with eyes that glittered with greedy excitement.

The man whose arms and legs were currently being strapped to a long wooden board was a senior official in Patrick Tshonga’s political party, the Popular Freedom Movement. He and Tshonga were known to be close friends as well as allies. He had thus been one of the first enemies of the regime to be rounded up when Mabeki initiated the counterstrike against Tshonga’s attempted coup. For the past twenty-four hours he had been deprived of food, water and sleep. He had been stripped naked, repeatedly hosed in icy water and beaten savagely at random, unpredictable intervals, so that he remained in a state of constant fear of when the next agonizing assault might come. Now his interrogators, their skills honed by twenty years of experience working for a psychopathic dictatorship, were moving in for the
coup de grâce
.

This was a moment for connoisseurs, a display of artistry that was guaranteed to produce the desired results. Mabeki would not have missed it for the world.

The board upon which the man now lay was tilted at an angle of twenty degrees, so that his head was below the level of his feet and, more importantly, his heart. His mouth was covered in black masking tape so that he was unable to cry out. But his terror was evident in his bulging eyes, their lids stretched so wide apart that the whites were clearly visible right around the deep brown iris; the sweat that glittered on his forehead and ran between the veins that had distended beneath his skin; and the involuntary spurt of urine that was so cruelly and humiliatingly exposed for all to see.

Looking at the man, Mabeki thought that what was about to happen was probably superfluous. He was ready to talk, regardless. But it was always worth taking that extra little bit of trouble, just to be sure. Especially when the trouble was also such a pleasure.

Mabeki nodded to one of the men standing by the board. He, in turn, clicked his fingers at an underling, who handed him a white cotton towel. It had been soaked in water. With an almost tender solicitousness, the towel was draped across the face of the man on the board.

Another click of the fingers: a second towel, also wet, was handed over, and it was placed on top of the first.

The body on the board jerked from side to side, desperately struggling to break free from its restraints. The man’s back arched in a taut rictus of agony. He tried to thrash his head, to shake off the towels, but strong, gentle hands pressed down and kept them in place.

Mabeki was fascinated by the perfect simplicity of waterboarding. A couple of planks, some cheap towels and a bucket of water were all it took to reduce anyone to a helpless wreck. The stifling press of the towels and the water that passed into the victim’s nose with every inward breath created a perfect simulation of drowning. And if the towels were left in place long enough, the man would actually drown. Even if he tried to hold his breath – and only those with ice-cold nerves had the self-control to do that – he would have to breathe again eventually and the drip, drip, drip of water into his lungs would work its inexorable magic.

A minute went by. The thrashing body was reduced to feeble twitches.

Ninety seconds.

Mabeki gave another nod.

The towels were removed and the tape torn from the man’s mouth. With a rasp like tearing canvas, he breathed again, dragging air into his starving lungs with desperate intensity.

‘Again,’ said Mabeki.

More strips of tape were stuck across the man’s mouth. Two more wet towels were placed over his head. Another minute and a half went by before Mabeki signalled his satisfaction. This time the towels were removed but the tape stayed on, forcing the man to breathe through his nose.

Only then did Mabeki walk across to the board. He stood for a moment, contemplating his victim. Then, frowning thoughtfully, as though contemplating the possible outcomes of a scientific experiment, he placed his right thumb and forefinger over the man’s nose and squeezed them firmly, shutting the nostrils tight.

Keeping that hand in place, Mabeki squatted down on his haunches so that his mouth was level with the man’s ear.

‘So, you snivelling, treacherous jackal, do you know where Patrick Tshonga is hiding?’

The man gave a series of rapid, frantic nods.

‘And are you going to tell my colleagues here everything you know?’

More nods.

Mabeki let go of the man’s nose and gave him a gentle, almost affectionate pat on the cheek.

‘Excellent,’ he said, rising to his feet. ‘Console yourself with the thought that your last act before dying was to serve your country.’

Mabeki turned to the chief interrogator who had earlier applied the towels. ‘Find out everything he knows. Inform General Zawanda. Tell him that I wish a detailed plan for Tshonga’s capture to be drawn up as fast as possible. I want him taken before tonight is out. But no one is to make a move until I give the signal. Do you understand me? No one!’

87

‘How far to the border?’ asked Sonny Parkes. He was standing in the Twin Otter’s cockpit, resting his hands against the back of the co-pilot’s seat.

‘A little under two minutes,’ the pilot replied. ‘One and a half if I push it.’

‘So push it, then.’

‘Ja, well, easier said than done. Top speed in this crate is barely two hundred miles an hour. It’s a workhorse, not a racehorse.’

Parkes grunted dismissively and looked at his watch, following the second hand as it swept, or rather crawled, round the dial. Eighty seconds … seventy … a minute. They were almost safe, but still his back was crawling with prickly tension.

‘There you go,’ said the pilot. ‘Look out of the left-hand side window, about five clicks up ahead – see those long lines of trucks? They’re waiting to go through customs, either side of the border. We’re almost— Shit!’

The noises seemed to come at once: the chatter of thirty-millimetre cannons, the shattering clatter of rounds tearing through the Twin Otter’s wings and fuselage and the deafening roar of three fighter jets as they shot past their prey, throwing it around the sky as it was caught in the chaos of the displaced air they left in their wake.

‘Hang on!’ the pilot shouted as he flung his aircraft to the left, then plunged it into a precipitous dive.

Parkes was hurled against the side of the cockpit, then flung backwards, ending up on the floor, jammed up against a bulkhead and barely conscious, as the Twin Otter headed nose-first towards the ground.

Down they went, the windscreen filled with nothing but the onrushing earth. The pilot remained impassive as he maintained his suicide dive. But back in the passenger compartment, Farayi Iluko screamed with terror as the plane hurtled towards obliteration. For a few seconds her brother Canaan maintained the pretence that he was not equally terrified. But as the dive went on and on, and the brutal earth drew ever closer, he started screaming too.

Up above, the three Malemban fighters were coming to terms with an unwelcome consequence of the vast disparity between their power and that of their target. They were going so much faster than the Otter that they’d had very little time in which they could bring their guns to bear before they overshot it. Even so, their advantage was overwhelming.

The three planes looped up into the sky, twisting as they went until they were facing the way they’d come. Then they headed back towards the desperate evasions of the Twin Otter.