Red Earth by Tony Park

Author:Tony Park
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Published: 2016-08-24T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Mike and Nia drove through the night. She had collected him at the Nyalazi Gate to Hluhluwe–iMfolozi Park and he had driven from there.

Mike had spent a frustrating afternoon at the gate, on the periphery of the action. Jed’s South African police liaison contact in Durban had arranged for the CIA men to ride along in a South African police vehicle, but there had been no room for Mike. In the gate office he had monitored the progress of the search as best he could by listening in on the national parks’ radio system. It was in desperation that he’d asked Nia to fetch his truck, rather than hitchhiking back to Durban.

He felt bad, now, dragging her back into this nightmare, but at the same time pleased he was back in the hunt. No sooner had he taken over the wheel than she had fallen asleep in the passenger seat of the Defender. She was cut and bruised, and while he had seen her injuries and helped attend to them at the scene of her helicopter crash, he could see as soon as he looked into her eyes that she was carrying more wounds than just the physical ones.

Mike had wondered if it was a delayed reaction, a deeper level of shock seeping into her. He glanced at her now. Occasionally she jerked in her sleep, as if having a bad dream. She had been what he had come to know as her normal feisty self when she had walked away from her crash, but the woman who had greeted him at the Nyalazi Gate had looked more than tired or battered: she’d looked sad.

He had thought, for a moment, as she got out of his Land Rover and greeted him, that she’d been almost about to cry. Again, it was an understandable reaction, but when he had thanked her for collecting his car and asked if there was anything she needed, she had fobbed him off with a curt, ‘Sleep.’

Her whole body was racked by a spasm, as though she’d imagined falling over in a dream, and she sat upright in the passenger seat. ‘Where …’

‘We’re on the way to Mkhuze. Not far now.’

‘OK,’ she said.

‘There were reports of shots fired in the camping ground there, and the gate attendant reported seeing a shot-up caravan being towed by a Discovery. I called Jed while I was waiting for you and he’s waiting for another helicopter. The South African police seem to be trying to keep him out of the action.’

‘Great,’ Nia said, ‘more gunfire.’

‘There are rangers out looking for the kids. Hopefully we’ll have them soon. You looked like you were having a bad dream.’

She peered out of the side window, then back at him. ‘It was no dream. It was reality.’

‘What was?’

She shook her head. ‘Nothing. None of your business, anyway.’

‘OK.’

He drove on. She was fully awake now, but silent. Her phone beeped and she looked at a message, then tapped the screen. ‘I’m forwarding Angus Greiner’s contact details to you.

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