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

clowns couldn’t control a kid’s party. They should’ve put up an NDB. With this low cover the place is damn near impossible to find – have to fly in on the GPS, and most of those old army planes have nothing but pressure gauges.” He gave the wing a satisfied slap. “They’re flying a right-hand pattern just so as they don’t get wet. Any of the locals come in they’re gonna get a nasty surprise. Head-on kind of surprise. Mind you,” he added with a glance in my direction, “don’t suppose many of the locals that rent space in that hangar are still with us.”

“It wasn’t the entire town,” I said.

“NGK,” he said, pronouncing the letters in the Afrikaans way, with a rolling G like he was clearing his throat, followed with a ‘car’ for the K. “Dutch Reformed … that’s all the farmers would have been there, isn’t it?” He sighed and shook his head. Then with an effort he assumed a bright facade. “OK then, we’re A-OK,” he said. “You can get your comrades loaded up. We’ll be getting up there as soon as this guy hits the ground.” He looked up at the low cloud which had started to spit raindrops at us. I could hear the sound of a distant engine. The man with the binoculars took them away from his eyes and scanned the sky without their assistance. There was nothing to be seen except the heavy cloud base.

“Dakota,” declared the pilot. “They’re bringing in the troops. Show the press they’re doing something.” He gazed at me as if gauging his audience and shifted the pencil to the other side. “Pretending the whole thing wasn’t their idea.”

“Their idea?”

“Sure,” said the pilot, “the final solution, isn’t it?”

“Final solution to what?”

“It’s why you guys are here. I’m not as stupid as I look. You’re not here to assist with the investigation. Quick in and out like this. You definitely aren’t police, and that nice lady,” a glance over to Khanyi, huddled into a sheepskin-lined leather jacket that looked like it had been loaned to her by the hero of a war movie who would not be returning. “That fine lady,” resumed the pilot, after a moment of appreciation, “has never worn a uniform in her life, that’s for sure. You’ve got secret service written all over you.”

Khanyi looked over at us as if she’d heard him say secret service. She was getting ready for the crying scene now and hugged the jacket tighter.

“Final solution to what?” I repeated.

“To having us whities around.” He watched me to see how I took that. I took it pretty well. An understanding nod, as if it was a problem we shared.

“Genocide,” he said. “That’s what they’re doing.”

“You suggesting what happened in the church was state-sponsored genocide?”

“Nah, nothing so obvious. It’s subtle what the wogs are doing. But it’s real. White genocide, the world knows about it, just nobody does anything. They all hold their breath and wait to see how long we last. Then afterwards they’ll build the memorials and say how terrible it was. Like they did with the Jews. That was years of genocide, and who did anything? Only afterwards they put up the plaques and sang the songs.”

“That’s absurd. You can’t compare the Holocaust to a one-off madman with a gun.”

“Nothing one-off about it,” said the pilot, and he stretched his lips into a grimace that looked like he was trying to get the blood flowing in his face again. I wondered whether news of the church graffiti had leaked out. “Six million Jews killed in the Second World War,” he said. “You know how many of us whities there are here? Four and a half million, that’s how many of us are left. You do the math.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but his attention was diverted. “Looks like they’ll make it after all,” he said. Above the trees at the far end of the strip the dark shape of a Dakota had torn a hole in the cloud and was dropping at an alarming rate towards the ground, trailing a flurry of angry swirls of cloud. It looked as if the pilot had misjudged his rate of descent and the plane was going to dive into the field, but at the last moment the nose of the heavy transporter pulled up like a horse shying away from the hard ground. The landing lights threw a shower of sparks through the rain. We all held our breath as the wheels approached to within a few feet of the ground and then miraculously held there as the great beast of a plane floated. Then sprays of water kicked up from the wheels as it subsided onto the grass, and it raced past the hangar with its rear wheel still up in the air. The whine of the brakes bounced back at us from the echoing chamber of the hangar, and Khanyi applauded.

“Only way to do it,” said our pilot, “short strip, high trees. Those guys know what they’re doing, I’ll give them that. Better get your chieftess and the old guy loaded up. They’ll be bringing in more of those babies and we don’t want to get caught between them and this patch of grass.”

Our Beechcraft had the passenger seats arranged in conversational mode, with the front two seats facing towards the tail, and a convenient fold-out table provided for drinks, or for buff folders with photographs of dead people and graffiti painted with their blood. Fehrson insisted that Khanyi and I occupy the rear-facing seats. “I am facing my death head-on,” he said. Which meant that Khanyi and I had to face our deaths with our rear ends.

“Buckle up tight, lady and gents,” called our pilot as we rolled down the strip towards the hill above the town of little hope. “All that cotton wool above us is gonna make things a little bumpy. I’d advise you not to hit the booze until we’re through