They left the taxi five kilometres from the airstrip and walked in under a vault of stars. By the time they reached the strip, the sky was ash above them.
They crouched among the sickle wood and cassia and watched the sky lighten. From their position, they could see the whole of the runway and back along the cut road that led to the red-dirt clearing that served as the apron. Two aircraft – single-engine high-winged Cessnas – stood next to a small corrugated-steel shack, a fuel bowser nearby. A ragged windsock hung limp from its post at the far side of the strip.
‘There it is,’ said Crowbar. ‘The larger of the two. Cessna 172. Cruises at about one hundred and ten knots. Range about nine hundred nautical miles.’ He handed Clay a pair of binoculars. ‘Glass the perimeter, ja.’
Clay tracked the tree line, looking for anything that might signal that they were being watched. He shivered despite the heat. She was being hunted. He could still hear the terror in her voice. Two thousand, five hundred miles separated them. That meant at least three refuelling stops on the way, four to be safe. Assuming twelve hours of flying a day, they could be in Cairo in three and a half days. But this was Africa. He doubled it, immediately crushed the calculation. All you could do was take each mile as it came, each day. Anything else was a prescription for failure, for pain.
Crowbar pulled out a handgun, checked the magazine, pulled back the slide. He looked at Clay. ‘Jericho 941, up-chambered to forty-five cal, ja. We get a lot of our stuff from the Israelis these days.’ Crowbar had spent almost a decade sourcing weapons and equipment for the SADF during the late eighties and nineties, when apartheid South Africa was under economic sanction. Back then, Israel had been a key supplier – indirectly, of course. ‘Anything?’ he asked.
‘Looks clear.’
‘Check again.’
The sky was lightening quickly now. Clay swung the glasses back over the same ground, looking for any indication of concealment, of linear geometry among the fractal chaos of the bush, but could see none. He set the binoculars on the ground, gazed out across the airstrip to the low, dark hills beyond and the red edge of the world as dawn came.
‘Will he show?’ Clay said.
‘Ja, definitely. G wouldn’t miss a chance to make this kind of money.’
Clay picked up the binoculars, scanned the tree line again.
He was halfway through when Crowbar nudged him. ‘Here they come.’
A solitary vehicle was speeding toward the airfield, trailing a cloud of red dust. An old Land Rover stopped next to the shack and three men got out: G, another white man dressed in coveralls and a blue cap, and a black man. The man in coveralls and the black man started wheeling the hand-pump bowser towards the larger of the two Cessnas while G unlocked the shed.
‘The kaffir is carrying,’ whispered Crowbar.
Clay could see the bulge under the black man’s shirt front, hear the men’s voices across the fifty metres or so of open ground. A giraffe wandered out from the bush, strode past the aircraft and disappeared into the trees at the far side of the airstrip. The men paid it no attention.
G had re-emerged from the shed and was opening the plane’s engine cowling. The other white man was up onto the underwing strut and was holding the fuel nozzle in the overhead tank opening as the black man pumped.
‘Your friend’s carrying too,’ said Clay.
‘If it all goes to kak, you take the kaffir,’ said Crowbar.
Clay nodded, checked his G21. ‘Is the other one the pilot?’
‘Hell no,’ said Crowbar.
‘Who then? G?’
Crowbar grinned.
Clay shook his head. ‘Didn’t know you could fly.’
‘I learned in the service. Flew Bosboks for a while, coordinating with the parabats. After about a year I realised I wanted to be on the ground where the fighting was. I’m better at it. Haven’t flown for years.’
‘How’s your navigation?’ said Clay, searching the tree line again. ‘It’s a hell of a long way.’
‘Was counting on you for that, seun.’
Clay handed Crowbar the binoculars. ‘Should have brought my sextant,’ he said. ‘All clear.’
Crowbar stood, pushed the Jericho into his waistband. ‘Here we go, seun. Follow my lead.’
So many times had he followed this man into danger, that this – here, now – seemed nothing more than a continuation, as if he had never done anything else, as if all of the rest of his life had been nothing but preparation for these moments. And as he followed Crowbar across the coarse stubble towards the aircraft, the lower terminus of the sun’s disc separating from the surface of earth, the Glock’s barrel pushed up against his spine, he realised that this was what he was meant to do. Rania was right. His fate, and those of the people he cared for, and of all those he did not, was governed by forces completely beyond his control. He could just as easily stop the sun from rising before him as change what he had become. And the future, as much of it as he might have left, was being hungrily gobbled up by the present and shit out as the past.
As they approached G turned to face them, raised his hand. ‘Lekker, eh?’ he called out, indicating the plane as if it were a television game show prize.
‘Depends,’ said Crowbar.
‘You got the kite?’ said G, wiping his hands on his trousers.
‘Start it up,’ said Crowbar.
G frowned, climbed up into the cockpit. The four-cyclinder Lycoming coughed, turned over, roared to life. Crowbar stood there a moment, let the motor run then signalled G to shut it down.
Crowbar handed G an envelope. ‘Count it.’
G peered inside and started flicking through the notes. Satisfied, he stashed the envelope in his jacket then produced a plastic file folder and handed it to Crowbar. ‘Manifest, ownership deeds, Kenyan pilot’s licence, registration, charts. Everything’s there.’
Crowbar took the documents and stashed them in his pack ‘Longrange tanks?’
‘Forty-eight US gallons useable,’ said the man in the coveralls. ‘Should get you about eight hundred miles. More in the jerry cans.’
Crowbar nodded. ‘I owe you.’
‘You sure as hell do, china. Manheim came to see me yesterday.’
Clay’s pulse quickened.
‘How’s he feeling?’ said Crowbar.
‘Sore.’
‘I hope so.’
‘He was asking about you,’ said G. ‘You and Straker.’
Crowbar nodded.
‘He’s offering a lot of money.’
‘How much?’ said Crowbar.
‘Fifty grand US. Each.’
Crowbar stood hand on hips. ‘How about I just kill you now?’
G shrank back. ‘Shit, Crowbar, no need to get like that, man. I didn’t tell him anything. I’m just saying, he’s offering a lot of money.’
‘What did your ma always tell you, G? Money isn’t everything.’
The black man laughed.
Crowbar hefted his pack and pushed it into the back seat of the 172.
G kicked the dirt. His boot sent a puff of laterite dust spiralling into the air. ‘He had a message for you. Both of you. In case I saw you.’
‘And I’ve got one for him,’ said Crowbar. ‘In case you see him. Tell him he still has a choice. He owes me, and I’m not going to forget it.’
‘What was his message?’ said Clay.
G switched his gaze to Clay. ‘Have fun. That’s what he said. Have fun in Cairo.’ G smiled his gap-toothed grin. ‘You okes have a lekker glide.’