Clay let go of the boy’s hand and dropped his head slightly, feigning sleep.
He’d been about the same age as this boy, a little more, when he’d last done this. He’d pretended to be asleep in the car that time when he’d driven to Durban with his mother and father, the summer they’d visited his uncle at his place near the beach. They’d arrived late at night, and he remembered smelling the warm sea smell and feeling the salt already on his skin and the way the air felt heavy and full of water. He’d been awake when they arrived but he wanted his father to carry him. Maybe it had been because he’d realised, then, that this might be the last time his father would ever carry him from the car, through the door and then strong and smooth up the stairs to lay him on the bed. And the whole time he could hear his father’s voice and smell the heavy tobacco smell on his skin from the cigars he smoked, and feel his strong miner’s arms around him like nothing would ever be able to hurt him.
‘I would move away from him, if I were you, trooper.’ The voice was cracked, as if scarred by some adolescent illness, Skeleton Coast dry.
Clay looked up. Dark eyes peered out over a white hospital mask. Doctor Death.
Clay didn’t move.
‘Cholera.’
Eben was there now, standing beside Clay.
‘I heard you boys were sent to bring this kid out,’ said the doctor. ‘I’m afraid that will not be possible. Quarantine rules apply. That’s why we are burying at sea, so to speak.’
‘He’s still alive,’ said Clay.
‘He won’t be for long.’
‘Are you a doctor?’ said Clay.
The man nodded.
‘Then help him.’
The doctor shook his head. ‘I’ve already done all I can, for all of them.’ The doctor fixed his gaze on Clay. ‘You look dubious, trooper.’
‘They…’ Clay hesitated. ‘No one said anything about cholera.’
‘What did UNITA tell you?’
‘Nothing,’ said Eben.
The doctor closed his eyes a moment, reopened them. ‘It has become very serious,’ said the doctor. ‘We have been helping UNITA combat the disease for some months. We believe MPLA is deploying it as a biological weapon.’
‘Jesus,’ said Clay.
‘We are working on some experimental treatments for those who have already contracted the disease, and we have been vaccinating the healthy.’ He pointed at the boy. ‘This one, I am afraid, must be disposed of.’
Clay stood, trying to reconcile what he’d just heard with what he’d witnessed back at the makeshift airstrip. If the communists were using biological weapons, as had been persistently rumoured over the past few months, the war was entering a deadly new phase. ‘You’re not touching him.’
The doctor adjusted his mask. ‘You are in danger yourselves of contracting the disease.’ He looked back at his assistant. ‘We could inoculate you now, if you like.’
‘We’ll take our chances,’ said Eben.
The doctor coughed. ‘I am sorry, trooper. We cannot land until the body is safely dealt with.’
Outside, Clay could see the red dunelands of the Namibian coast, the blue ocean beyond. ‘Our orders are very specific, sir.’
‘Whose orders?’ said the doctor.
‘Can’t say, sir,’ said Eben. ‘Classified. I’m sure you understand.’
The doctor stared hard into Eben’s face, coughed into his mask then turned away and shuffled back across the empty deck and through the bulkhead door, assistant in tow. Every one of the paramilitaries was staring at them now.
‘Do you believe him?’ said Eben in English. ‘All this bullshit about biological weapons?’
‘He was trying it on. Fishing.’
‘What about all the rumours?’
‘If it was true they would have issued us B&C gear,’ said Clay.
Eben raised his eyebrows. ‘You think so?’
‘Yes I do, damn it.’
‘If he’s in radio contact with Mbdele, he’ll know pretty soon that our story is bullshit.’
Just then the bulkhead door reopened and the doctor appeared with Cobra beside him.
‘Kak,’ said Eben. ‘Didn’t take him long.’
‘Not going to be able to talk our way out of this one, broer,’ said Clay in English, just loud enough for Eben to hear.
Eben adjusted the sling of his R4, palmed the pistol grip. ‘Just don’t let him see your face.’
Cobra, flanked by two paramilitaries, the doctor and his assistant, stopped about five metres away, hands on hips. ‘You men,’ he shouted in Afrikaans. ‘Whoever you are, move away from the boy and lay your weapons on the deck.’
Eben and Clay stayed where they were, saying nothing.
‘Step away,’ said Cobra again, louder this time. ‘Lay down your weapons.’
Looking back, they never really had a choice. Earlier, of course, there had been all kinds of options – other decisions which could have been made, each with its own trajectory of action and result and consequence. But as soon as they’d decided to set foot on that plane, they’d carved away almost every alternative. Clay raced through the possibilities in his mind. Most ended with them both dead. The boy, too.
It was Eben who acted first.
Cobra was filling his lungs, preparing for a third and, most likely, final vocal challenge when Eben raised his R4 and flicked it to automatic.
‘We’ll do it the other way around, gentlemen,’ Eben shouted.
The doctor’s eyes bulged. He looked like he was going to shit himself.
Clay raised his rifle too.
‘Drop your weapons, please,’ said Eben, ‘and take a step back.’
Cobra held his ground. The doctor’s mouth was pursed tight. Clay was pretty sure no one had ever pointed a gun at him before.
‘Now,’ said Eben.
Cobra raised one hand, pulled his sidearm from its holster at his waist, laid it on the deck. The other two paramilitaries did the same. The doctor’s assistant stood motionless.
‘You, too,’ said Eben, motioning to the doctor’s assistant with the muzzle of his rifle.
The assistant slumped his shoulders, placed his sidearm on the deck.
‘Grab two chutes,’ said Eben in English out of the side of his mouth.
Clay was already doing it, one hand still on the R4’s pistol grip. By now the other men had seen what was going on, were collecting their rifles and moving aft.
‘Tell your men to stay back and put their weapons on the deck,’ shouted Eben in Afrikaans. ‘Or your doctor friend here gets it first.’
The doctor was trembling now. Sweat beaded on his forehead and above his pursed lips. He swayed a moment and flexed at the waist. A look of surprise came over him as a dark stain spread down both trouser legs.
Cobra glanced at the doctor, frowned, held up his hand. ‘No shooting,’ he said. ‘Put down your weapons.’
His men stopped where they were, about halfway along the cargo bay, and placed their weapons on the cargo deck.
Clay hoisted a parachute onto his back and started securing the straps.
‘There is no need for this,’ said Cobra. ‘We have no quarrel with either of you, or your mission. But the boy cannot go back.’
Clay tossed the other chute onto the deck at Eben’s feet, went to the aft loadmaster RECP control panel, R4 still aimed at Cobra. Beyond, ten men faced them, weapons at their feet. At this range, even on automatic, Clay and Eben might be able to take out four or five, no more, before the rest returned fire. He keyed the RAMP/ DOOR switch to ON, grabbed the pendant control and started lowering the ramp. At cruise speed, the noise from the slipstream was deafening. They were going too fast.
‘We’re not going to let you go,’ shouted the doctor at the top of his voice, barely making himself heard over the buffeting from the open rear door. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
‘Cover me,’ shouted Eben.
Clay secured the ramp in the DOWN position, stood with the wind whipping at his trouser legs and through his hair, two hands now on his R4. Eben threaded on his chute and tightened the straps.
Just then, one of the pair standing with Cobra reached to his back and pulled out a handgun. It was small, compact, designed for concealment. Clay reacted first, fired just as the man was raising the weapon for a shot. The 5.56 mm round cut through the man’s shoulder and he fell to the deck in a heap. The pistol clattered across the deck.
No one moved. Cobra’s men were all poised, ready to pick up their weapons. The doctor was down on the deck now, too, beside the wounded man. At first Clay thought he might have hit him by mistake. But there were no wounds that he could see, no blood. The doctor was curled up, whimpering in a puddle of his own piss.
Eben was backing towards the ramp.
Cobra held up his hand again. His men tensed, line abreast.
‘Grab the kid and jump,’ Eben yelled in English.
Clay reached for the boy with one hand, the other still on the R4. ‘We go together.’
‘Go,’ yelled Eben. ‘You need two hands to hold the boy.’
Eben was right. At this speed, the force of the slipstream might rip the boy from his arms. Clay picked up the boy. As he did, his bandana fell away from his face. He stood. Cobra was staring right at him.
For a moment their gazes locked. Cobra’s eyes flashed with recognition. His hand was still raised, as if waiting to give the signal to his men to grab their rifles and open fire. Clay let his rifle hang from its strap around his neck and shoulders, clutching the boy in his arms.
And then Cobra lowered his hand. He did it slowly, backing away. ‘Stand back,’ he shouted to his men.
‘What are you doing?’ shouted the doctor’s assistant.
Eben stood blinking, R4 still at the ready.
‘Let them go,’ shouted Cobra.
‘You can’t do that,’ shouted the assistant, crouching beside his boss. ‘You don’t have the authority.’
‘I’m not risking a firefight,’ said Cobra. ‘Not here. We could all end up dead.’
Clay took a last look at Cobra, those strange gunmetal eyes flashing in the light from the open cargo-bay doors, and jumped.
The slipstream hit him like a speeding car and he tumbled out of control, the world spinning red and blue around him. For a moment he thought he was going to lose his hold on the boy, but he clamped down hard, fighting to right himself.
For an eternity he spun earthwards, the boy’s naked body clutched to his chest. Then slowly he managed to stabilise himself. He pulled the rip cord and heard the drogue deploy, and then the jerk as the main chute opened. Below, the ochre and haematite dunelands of the Namibian coast, and high above, the solitary white puff of Eben’s chute opening out against a blue Benguela sky.