Murderous by David Hickson (best ereader for comics .txt) 📕

“What on earth is the problem?” said Fehrson. “He has taken our IDs, for goodness’ sake.”

None of us said anything.

“Close the goddamn window, will you? I will catch my death of cold with it open.”

“Better open,” said our driver, and a nasty silence descended upon us.

“What on earth is he doing with our IDs?” asked Fehrson, and he leaned forward to see what was happening in the box. Our soldier was speaking to a man dressed in a different uniform. Unlike the earthy tones of the standard army camouflage, the second man’s uniform was all black. There were a multitude of pockets and straps, with dull burnished buckles. Not a very practical uniform, I knew from personal experience. I had worn that uniform briefly myself. It was a uniform designed to instil fear in the hearts of your enemies, and I have to say it did that fairly effectively.

“He is showing our IDs to Breytenbach’s man,” I said.

“Breytenbach’s man? What on earth do you mean?”

I bit my tongue. I should not have mentioned it. Riaan ‘BB’ Breytenbach was a gold-mining magnate, one of the wealthiest men in the country, who was still in hospital following a shooting incident on his private game farm. He had survived, less one leg, with a badly bruised ego.

“Well?” persisted Fehrson.

“It’s part of their agreement. With the Gold Mining Conglomerate.”

“Why that suspicious tone?” said Fehrson. “The Gold Conglomerate are providing resources to the army. There is nothing sinister about it. Frankly, it was about time. The private sector will suffer terribly if the country falls apart. Only right that they should do what they can to help.”

“What do you mean, part of the agreement?” asked Khanyi.

“Breytenbach has one of his men in every one of these mobile roadblocks around the country.”

“One of his men?” scoffed Fehrson. “What men?”

“The private security he uses on all his gold mines. Their numbers have been boosted recently. An investment in unstable times.”

“Are you sure?” asked Fehrson, and he squinted through the window on my side to better see the black-suited man studying our identity cards.

“Gabriel knows a good deal about Breytenbach’s private security,” said Khanyi. “Doesn’t he use his game farm as a training ground?”

“He does.”

“And the injury Breytenbach sustained,” persisted Khanyi. “The accidental shooting. Didn’t they say the man who shot Breytenbach was wearing the uniform of his private security?”

“They did.”

“He was shot accidentally three times,” said Khanyi. “They had to amputate his leg. He’s still recovering in hospital.”

“Indeed,” I said. The man in black looked towards our military jeep as the rain poured down around us. He seemed to be weighing up the advantages of thoroughness against the disadvantages of being soaked to the skin.

“And the gold,” said Fehrson. Then he cleared his throat because he could never mention BB’s gold without doing so. “He lost his leg, and all that gold.”

“He said it was only a few bars,” said Khanyi.

“We all know that is nonsense.” Fehrson gave a wheezy laugh. “Millions of dollars. Tens of millions of dollars. That is what they say on the street.”

I didn’t ask what Fehrson meant by ‘on the street’. It was hard to imagine anyone less connected with the common people than Fehrson, but I was not keen to pursue the conversation about BB’s gold bars.

“You think that Breytenbach has put a man in every roadblock in order to catch the ‘gold-heist gang’?” said Khanyi, using the term the newspaper journalists had coined in their grossly misinformed articles about the robbery of BB’s gold bars.

“Seems a bit far-fetched,” said Fehrson. “Ah, there we go. He is coming back.”

The soldier returned with our ID cards. He handed them to our driver and gave a nod to indicate that we could proceed. The driver closed our windows and accelerated away.

“No heist gang here,” said Fehrson with false bonhomie, and he avoided looking in my direction.

“You’re such a conspiracy theorist, Gabriel,” said Khanyi as the brightly lit interior of the mobile command centre floated past in the rain. BB’s black-suited man was standing at the window, a phone to his ear and his eyes on our jeep.

Two

The rain stopped as abruptly as if someone had flipped a switch as we came over the escarpment above the airfield. But the clouds were still low and looked as if they were planning a rousing encore. The Minhoop airfield was a few acres of relatively flat farmland boxed in by tall eucalyptus trees. The strip pointed straight at the hill that wanted to be a mountain.

“Makes it uni-directional, see?” said the pilot past the stub of pencil he was chewing as he completed his inspection of the twin-engine Beechcraft. “Can’t take off into that lump of rock, those trees prevent an early turn, so it’s one-way in and one-way out.”

“Is that a radio station they’ve set up to control traffic?” I asked, indicating the old farm table standing just inside the open doors of the rusty hangar beside the strip. The jumbled assortment of crop sprayers and other barely airworthy machines had been pushed into the gloomy depths of the hangar, and an informal operation centre had been established around the entrance where the soldiers could see out onto the field without spoiling their hairstyles in the rain. On the table was a large radio transmitter that looked as if it dated back to the Second World War, with a handheld microphone on the end of a long spiral cord. A soldier with a face so dark all one could see was a beret floating above some teeth was speaking into it, while a colleague scanned the sky anxiously with binoculars. Beside the table stood Khanyi and Fehrson, the expressions on their faces betraying a distinct lack of confidence.

“Manned radio,” said the pilot, and transferred the pencil to the other side of his mouth. He held up the small tube of fuel he’d drawn from the wing and studied it for traces of water, then tossed the contents onto the ground. “Those