Chapter 19

The narrowness of the alley channelled the explosion’s orange fireball into a jet of flame, which shot out over the traffic that stood at a standstill on the main road.

Sean, still a hundred metres down the road, pulled over and mounted the sidewalk. Pedestrians, already screaming and running from the blast, dived out of his way. Sean switched off the engine, took the keys and jumped out. He ran towards the alley.

‘Tumi!’ She had been at the dragon’s mouth and his heart pounded in fear as he dodged oncoming men, women and children and fought his way towards where the bomb had gone off.

He checked his phone as he ran. The call had ended. He tried not to think of the bodies he had seen obliterated and quartered by IEDs, the men screaming, the stumps of limbs gushing blood.

Ahead of him he saw a woman walking, dazed, her forehead gashed and blood staining her shirt. A man was on the pavement, lying still. A car was blocking the main road, its side windows shattered by shrapnel or flying debris. Horns and car alarms set off by the shock wave were blaring, and the first ambulance siren was audible, though still some way off. How they would get through the worsening traffic jam he had no idea.

Too late, Sean remembered he had a first aid kit in the bakkie, but he had to get to Tumi.

Ajude-me, ajude-me, meu pai!’ a young woman screamed, asking for help for an old man she was gesturing to, on the ground. The old man’s face was bloodied, but he was groaning, so at least he was conscious. ‘My father!’

Sean grabbed her by the upper arms and moved her to one side. ‘I’ll help you just now. I need to find someone.’

He felt the heat as he approached the entrance to the alley. There was a woman lying on the roadway. He ran to her and rolled her over, drawing a deep breath. She was dead, but she was not Tumi.

‘Sean . . . Sean.’

He got up and spun around. Tumi was on one knee, trying to stand. He went to her, hugged her and drew her to her feet. ‘Tumi. Are you hurt?’

She shook her head. ‘I can’t . . . what did you say?’

Sean knew from experience that the blast might have temporarily robbed her of her hearing. He held her face in his hands and spoke slowly and loudly so she could read his lips. ‘Are you OK?’

She nodded. Tumi patted her body and Sean checked her at the same time. There was a graze on her temple, where it looked like she had fallen, but otherwise he could see no blood on her. Thankfully, Tumi had been hiding just around the corner of the building.

‘Stay here.’

Sean took another deep breath, steeling himself for what he knew he was about to see, and smell.

What was left of the Mercedes was still ablaze and the oily, chemical odours of burning paint and rubber and plastic couldn’t hide the worse proof of death, cooking flesh.

Sean held his right forearm up in front of his face. It seemed no one else had dared walk down here, into this canyon of death. Blazing like candles in the front and back seats were two bodies, one in the driver’s seat. What had Tumi said? The man with the grey hair had been driving, Bandile had been in the back and Li had got out to chase some kid.

He put his hand over his nose and mouth as he passed the funereal pyre. He swallowed hard as his stomach heaved. Through the smoke he looked for David Li. There was no sign of him.

Sean carried on to the end of the lane. While he relied on Benny’s sense of smell, Sean was an accomplished tracker himself and he couldn’t miss the signs on the ground. On the road were two spent shell casings, from pistol bullets by the look of it. A little further on he saw some fresh, wet spots on the potholed tarmac. He knelt again and dipped his finger. Blood. But whose?

At the end of the laneway he saw people starting to cluster around the entrance. Some had their phones out, taking pictures, others were making calls. A woman was crying. Sean looked around. There was no sign of David Li or the boy it seemed he had wounded. Sean turned and went back to the other end of the thoroughfare, averting his eyes as he passed the burning car. There was nothing anyone could do for the man and the boy inside.

Tumi was coming towards him, still unsteady on her feet. He jogged to her and put an arm around her waist.

‘The Indian guy,’ she said, loudly. ‘I can’t hear myself.’

‘It’s OK, Tumi. What about him?’

She leaned so her mouth was closer to his ear. ‘The man who was following me, he’s behind you.’ She pointed over his shoulder.

Sean turned around and saw the man in the Panama hat crouching down near the burning car, as if he was taking a close look at the damage or how it had been caused. Sean thought the man must have preceded him into the alley and had maybe hidden behind one of the other cars while Sean was checking the scene. He must have reappeared, thinking Sean was gone. Sean took out his phone and selected the camera function. The guy was taking way more interest in the car wreck than the average ghoul and it wasn’t as if he was overly concerned about the burning bodies inside.

As Sean was zooming in on him, the man looked over his shoulder and saw Sean was staring at him. The man stood quickly, then ran away.

Sean reached into his pocket, took out the keys to his bakkie, pressed them into Tumi’s hand, then set off in pursuit of the man.

A few brave or curious souls were edging into the alleyway from the far end and Sean had to dodge them as he sprinted. ‘Out of my way.’

He reached the mouth of the lane and looked left, saw nothing, then right. The man had melted deeper into the crowd but their eyes locked for a split second.

‘You,’ Sean called. ‘Stop.’

The man turned and sprinted. Sean had to fight his way through the throng, which was at its thickest here. Sweaty bodies impeded him and people swore at him in Portuguese as he shoved and cursed back. The only consolation he drew was that the man he was after was similarly slowed. It happened like this in Africa – a car accident, a public tiff, anything out of the ordinary was enough to draw an instant crowd. The explosion was pulling an auditorium-sized audience.

His quarry was on the main road now, which was still blocked solid because of gawkers and people who had simply given up, abandoned their cars and run from the blast and ensuing fire on foot. Horns blared unendingly and drivers abused each other and gesticulated wildly. The sirens were getting close, but they might have been in another country for the good that they could do now.

The Indian jumped up on the bonnet of a car and Sean realised he, too, needed to rise above this crowd. He stepped on the rear bumper of a Toyota Fortuner and then clambered up and over the roof then onto the bonnet.

The other man leapt from a Corolla onto a Defender and tiptoed along a roof rack packed with camping gear. Drivers shook their fists at him and Sean as they pounded along metal roofs and slid down windscreens. Sean reckoned he and the man were evenly matched in age, but he believed he would be the fitter of the two. The target looked weedy, not used to a life in the outdoors.

Sean was gaining on the Indian. ‘Stop,’ he cried again.

The man was on the road now, knocking over an elderly woman and palming a man in the chest to get past him. The crowd closed around him and Sean had to fight back the tide. His chest was heaving, but he was used to chasing men through the bush. If only he had Benny, he thought; his Malinois would bring this bastard down in a flash. Benny would actually enjoy it. Sean was just getting mad. This guy was connected to Li in some way, Sean was sure of it. Or was he the bomber, checking on who had been killed in the blast and why someone had got away? Either way, Sean was going to catch him and find out.

*

Tumi’s ears were ringing but her hearing was returning.

She looked around, collecting herself as she walked down the alley. On the ground she saw a Panama hat. She stooped to pick it up. It had to be the one the Indian had been wearing; when she had seen him run off he had been bareheaded.

Tumi ran to where the young street boy had fallen, hit by David Li’s gunshots. In her dazed state she had watched Sean check the blood spots on the ground, and with a bit of searching she found them herself. She knelt and rubbed the brim of the hat in the nearly dry blood.

As she returned past the destroyed car she realised she had been lucky not to have been seriously injured. Turning out of the alleyway, she fought her way up the road in the opposite direction to which Sean had run off.

She found Sean’s truck, parked crazily on the footpath, but it was shaping up to be a morning of traffic madness. Fortunately, not many cars had banked up behind Sean, who had stopped before entering the worst of the gridlock. Tumi got into the bakkie, started the engine and reversed into the road. With some honking of her own she was eventually able to turn around and drive away from the blast zone.

Tumi drove as fast as the traffic allowed, back to the B&B where she had left the dogs. Exchanging a few words with the owner, she soon had Shikar and Benny loaded in the back.

‘Now, be good, you two. We’re going to work.’

Both barked and wagged their tails. They seemed to get along well together, very well, in fact. Benny was sniffing Shikar.

Tumi wagged a finger at Benny. ‘Not now. I just told you, there’s work to be done.’

Before she set off Tumi turned on Sean’s GPS and changed the settings so that she had a bigger view of Maputo. She worked out where the laneway was and decided that if she skirted around the other end of it she would miss the traffic jam that was probably still near the site of the explosion. She entered a new destination and set off.

When Tumi got close enough to see the smoke rising from the alley she saw that both ends of the laneway were now crawling with Mozambican police, fire and ambulance officers. Red and blue lights strobed the buildings from afar and it seemed that even more onlookers had gathered. Tumi found a place to park, got out, locked the car and unloaded the dogs.

‘Come, Shikar, come, Benny, and no biting any civilians.’

The presence of the two enthusiastic hounds ensured that Tumi had a relatively easy passage through the army of spectators. She must have looked an odd sight, but no one stopped her and the police were too busy interviewing bystanders, taking pictures and talking on mobile phones to pay her more than a passing glance.

Tumi realised, however, that she would not be able to get to where the bloodstains were as the alleyway was now sealed off at both ends with police tape, belatedly quarantining the scene of the crime. She was pleased she’d had the foresight to grab the Indian guy’s Panama and impregnate it with the street kid’s blood. She didn’t know what the dogs would make of it, but there was one way to find out.

Tumi held the hat to both their noses. Shikar and Benny were instantly alert, straining at their leads. It was tough enough, sometimes, for Tumi to keep up with Shikar on a hot pursuit, but now she had two eager canines tugging her along. They were at the end of the alley where the bloodstains were and Shikar strained as she tried to head towards where the blood was.

‘Good girl, Shikar, but we can’t go up there.’

Tumi tugged on the lead and all but dragged Shikar away from where the boy had been shot. She remembered that he had run left, with David Li in pursuit, so Tumi cast about in that direction.

‘Shikar, soek.’

Benny nuzzled the Panama as well. He looked up at her, seeming confused, which was understandable, as she had presented him with the blood of one person and the sweat-stained hat of another. It would be a challenge for all of them.

Shikar moved on, nose to the ground, then stopped and sat, tail wagging. Tumi moved up, dropped to her knee and saw, in front of Shikar, more tiny spots of blood on the footpath.

‘Good girl!’ Tumi pulled the squeaky toy she habitually carried with her from her pocket and Shikar barked with joy and bit down on the rubber ball. ‘Let’s go. Soek!’

They set off. A little boy shrieked in fear and tripped over backwards trying to get away from the dog on her mission. ‘Sorry,’ Tumi called to the mother, who scooped her child up and out of the way. Benny barked, causing more consternation.

‘Shush, Benny.’

The dogs were in a completely different environment from their usual workplace and Shikar at times seemed distracted by other scents. Benny kept wanting to stop and pee on lampposts, and judging by the smell of them, Maputo’s human population used them as much as did the city’s dogs. ‘Benny, come.’

Shikar sorted through her confusing surrounds and picked up more blood spots. When Tumi stopped to check them she found they were still wet. Benny got a good whiff this time and joined Shikar on the hunt in earnest. They were getting closer. Tumi felt nervous – David Li was armed and had been prepared to shoot the boy who stole his briefcase. Tumi was unarmed, but she did not want to turn back now.

Soek!’

*

The Indian turned down a narrow alley similar to the one where the bomb had gone off, and Sean redoubled his efforts to catch him. The man was fitter than he looked.

Sean had his Glock pistol in a pancake holster but he knew he could not draw it and simply shoot this guy. He didn’t know how or if the man was related to the bomb or the poachers or David Li, but he had been hanging around both the meeting place at the Polana and the alley where Li’s accomplices had been killed. Maybe, Sean thought, he was one of Li’s men and had been working counter-surveillance – looking for people who were tailing his boss – and that was how Tumi had come to his attention.

And where the hell was Li?

‘Hey, stop!’ Sean tried again. ‘I just want to talk.’

He was in luck, he thought. It looked like the man had turned up a cul-de-sac, a dead end.

Seeing his predicament, the man looked around and, spying an open door, ran inside a building. Sean followed him. It appeared to be a run-down block of apartments. The smell inside and unidentifiable but suspect-looking stains on the walls told him he was definitely not in the good part of town.

Sean ran up the stairs, calves and thighs protesting – stairs were one thing he did not encounter patrolling the Sabi Sand Game Reserve. He looked up as he ran and saw the man’s face. The next thing his mind registered was a hand appearing over the stair rail and the sight of a pistol. The firearm boomed in the confines of the building and there was a clang and sparks as a bullet ricocheted off the metal banister. Sean paused and flattened himself against the grimy wall.

‘Hell.’

He took out his pistol, racked it, and drew a deep breath. The shit, as the Americans he had served with in Afghanistan liked to say, was about to get real. Sean took his phone out and dialled Tumi.

‘Sean?’ She sounded as puffed as he was.

‘Tumi, the dude’s shooting at me.’

‘Hectic,’ Tumi said.

‘An understatement, but yes. What have you got?’

‘Shikar and Benny are hot on the trail of the young guy that David Li shot. I’m getting closer.’

‘You’re not armed.’

‘Right.’

‘Then don’t get too close, Tumi. These guys mean business. If you see some cops, get them in on the chase.’

‘OK, will do. What about you?’

‘Wish me luck. I don’t appreciate being shot at. I’m going to SMS you a picture of the Indian guy. Email it to Christine for me. If this guy was involved with the bombing somehow then maybe someone can ID him.’

‘Will do, and good luck. Be careful, Sean.’

Sean ended the call, quickly sent the message and put the phone back in his pocket. He continued up the stairs, cautiously, Glock up and ready. ‘Where are you, you bastard?’

*

Zohair could see light above, from an old-fashioned leadlight skylight, some of whose panes were broken. He stopped and heard soft footsteps below. The man who was following him was close, but he was being cautious.

He fought a losing battle to calm his breathing; his deepest fears were catching up with him, but the chain of events was confusing. After their meeting, Zohair had followed Li, partly out of curiosity, but also because their conversation had aroused his suspicions. There was something Li wasn’t telling him, he felt sure, and Zohair wondered if Li were not meeting someone else in Maputo. He had not come to collect an IED this time and their discussion could very well have been carried out by WhatsApp or one of the other online messaging systems that even the Americans had trouble cracking.

Americans. That was his first thought when he had seen Li’s car explode in the alleyway. For an instant he had been transported back to the time when the Hellfire missile had screamed out of the sky and almost killed him. Professionally, however, he knew a fraction of a second later that Li’s Mercedes had been destroyed by a car bomb, not a drone strike. But who had killed Li? Given his own history he had not discounted the possibility that it was the CIA, and that they had mistakenly presumed he would get into Li’s car at some point.

He ducked his head over the staircase railing for a fraction of a second and glimpsed the white man’s face and his gun. He was rewarded with two quick shots in his direction. Zohair stuck his hand over the banister, fired two blind shots from his own pistol, then powered on up the stairs.

Zohair reached the top of the stairs and barged into the door. It was locked. He kicked, but it refused to budge, so he shot through the lock. The door yielded and he ran out onto the sun-scorched flat rooftop.

From the streets below Zohair heard the unending cacophony of horns and sirens. Maputo was well and truly roused from its afternoon siesta and the area would be crawling with police by now.

That was of no help to him. Who was this man following him? Zohair presumed it was whoever had set the bomb and that the man knew of his association with Li. But who had been the prime target, him or the Chinese gangster? Was his pursuer from the CIA or some underworld rival of Li’s?

Zohair ran to the low wall that divided the roof of this building from the high-rise Portuguese 1960s concrete apartment block adjoining it.

‘Stop!’ The man behind him fired.

Zohair vaulted the wall and landed hard, two metres below, and rolled. He saw a face appear over the wall and fired at it. The man ducked for cover. Zohair scrambled to his feet and charged towards a structure and door that led to this block’s internal staircase. Thankfully he could see that it was ajar.

Glancing over his shoulder he saw the man jump and also lose his footing. Instead of turning to fire he pushed the door open, but his flight was checked when he stumbled into the first of two young boys who had apparently been coming up the stairs to investigate the noise coming from the roof.

The first boy screamed when Zohair grabbed him and, ignoring his frantic Portuguese, shoved him out through the door before entering the stairwell himself and slamming the door shut. From inside, he heard the boy scream again, no doubt from coming face to face with a second man carrying a gun.

Zohair levelled his pistol at the second boy, the smaller and younger of the two, who had remained in the stairwell. The boy raised his hands, his face frozen in terror.

‘Stay down,’ the man outside yelled to the first boy.

Zohair held the index finger of his free hand up to his mouth. The boy in front of him stayed silent, but his lower lip started trembling. Zohair lowered his pistol and he thought he saw a momentary look of relief in the boy’s face. Instead of putting the gun away, however, he took aim and shot the boy in the foot. As he ran down the stairs he heard the younger boy’s howl of pain. The door burst open above, but Zohair had reached the landing below and was gone.

*

The dogs led Tumi to an urban park, the Jardim dos Professores, by Maputo’s Natural History Museum. They sniffed about, apparently at a loss. Tumi wondered if the boy they were following had got in a car or a taxi here, taking his scent and blood trail with him. But it was unlikely, she thought, that a taxi driver would pick up a person with a gunshot wound. Tumi cast the dogs in a circle and looked around herself. There was a cafe called Acácias on the far side of the park, where half-a-dozen patrons were seated at tables sipping coffee. Someone read a newspaper, but she couldn’t see behind the pages if it was a man or a woman.

Then a red-haired middle-aged man carrying a bicycle helmet, muscles showing through stretched lycra, appeared in the cafe from inside the building. Tumi guessed he had been using the bathroom. He looked across at her then strode purposefully towards her and the dogs.

‘Oh no,’ he said aloud. He turned to Tumi. ‘Did you see my bicycle?’

‘Sorry?’ she said. He sounded Australian. She wondered if he was a diplomat, maybe, or a businessman.

‘My bicycle, it was resting against that tree, near where those dogs are.’

‘No, sorry, I didn’t see it. You say it was parked there? Was it locked, with a chain or something?’

He shook his head and held up his hands in frustration. ‘I was two minutes. Isn’t anything safe in this bloody town?’

Tumi gathered the dogs and took them further from the tree, casting about in a bigger circle. She figured that if the injured youth had stolen the Australian’s bike then the next spots of blood from his wound would be further than the intervals the dogs had been tracking when he was running.

Soek!’

Shikar moved ahead of Benny, nose to the ground. She stopped and sat down, indicating a spot on the side of the road.

‘Good girl, Shikar!’

The man in lycra came to her side. ‘They’re your dogs?’

‘Yes. Sorry, I have to go. I’m pretty sure the person who stole your bike is a guy I’m tracking.’

The man looked at her curiously. ‘Then I’m coming with you.’

‘OK, but we’re going to have to run.’

‘Let slip the dogs of war!’

Tumi told the dogs to chase and they bounded away, downhill, around a bend towards the harbour. Tumi and the man, his riding shoes clattering on the pavement, sprinted after them.

Shikar and Benny loved the hot pursuit, tongues lolling as they ran. It was only due to the fact that Shikar had to stop occasionally to check the blood trail that Tumi and the man, who breathlessly told her his name was John Roberts, were able to keep the dogs in sight.

*

Sean pushed the startled boy on the rooftop out of the way and kicked open the door to the stairwell, pistol up and ready to shoot.

On the floor was another child, screaming and clutching his foot.

Sean took a quick look over the handrail but saw no sign of the Indian man. He dropped to his knee beside the boy, his friend or brother now standing behind them.

The boy needed emergency medical treatment. ‘Shit.’

Sean told the other boy to take off his T-shirt and then he wrapped and tied it around the younger child’s wound. Sean put his pistol in his belt and lifted the boy in his arms. It was a long walk to ground level and the child writhed, screamed and cried in his arms.

The second boy tagged along, holding on to Sean’s shirt tail. Sean looked over his shoulder. ‘Speak English? Doctor? Ambulance?’

The boy nodded and seemed to understand. He ran ahead of them, leaping several stairs at a time, and then out into the street. When Sean emerged from the building he could see that the boy was already mobilising people to help. A woman came to him and started roaming her hands over the child.

She spoke to the boy in Portuguese, then turned to Sean and said: ‘I am nurse, I will take care of him.’

‘OK,’ Sean said. ‘Obrigado.’ He looked up and down the busy streetscape. There was, predictably, no sign of the man he had been following.