Free Red Earth by Tony Park Page B

broadcast what she had seen, and the fact that she had been shot at. As she did so, she thought that even if the police couldn’t respond immediately at least members of the news media, who monitored the police channel, might pick up the story and this would put pressure on the police to devote some resources to saving the kids. To her it seemed that the gunman had taken the schoolgirl as his hostage as he had kept the gun on her and not on the boy, who was armed with an AK-47. He could have been threatening the boy in some other way, but something about the way they had interacted made Nia think the two young men knew each other. Her phone rang.
    â€˜Five minutes away,’ the vulture man said.
    â€˜Hurry, but be careful. Sheesh, I don’t know. Maybe don’t come at all, there are people killing each other down there!’
    â€˜OK, keep the phone line open . ’
    The passenger behind the wheel of the taxi had turned the bus around and it was disappearing back towards Mtubatuba. Nia saw the Fortuner start to move. She followed it, bringing the R44 down low, closer than she had ever come to a moving vehicle. Slowly, she pulled ahead of the Toyota. The boy at the wheel accelerated to ninety kilometres an hour.
    She thought of the boy and wondered how skilled he was at driving. He hadn’t looked more than sixteen or seventeen. Nia thought she might be able to slow him down, but she was acutely aware of the girl and the baby in the car. The last thing she wanted was for the guy to crash and injure the innocents on board.
    Nia was terrified of engine failure, but she had to try something. She eased sideways with the pedal, trying to keep the aircraft level to avoid sloshing the fuel. She was as low as she dared, her skids at windscreen height as she tracked right just ahead of the stolen car. The driver braked, but rather than giving up, as Nia had hoped, he turned off the narrow gravel road and into the veldt.
    â€˜I see you on the horizon. Nearly there. What’s the status?’ asked the vulture man.
    Nia spoke into the headset. ‘The status is, this is fucked. I’m in pursuit, but I have to land ASAP, I’m nearly out of fuel. The kid driving has just gone into the veldt . That’s slowed him down. If you hurry you might be able to catch him.’
    â€˜All right. I’m just coming to the kraal . I see the two men down. I called the ambulance like you asked but it looks as if it’s too late and … wait a minute.’
    Hurry up , Nia urged the man silently.
    â€˜One of these guys is still alive. I have to stop and help him.’
    Nia exhaled, puffing her cheeks. This was crazy. ‘There’s a baby and a kidnapped schoolgirl in the car ahead of me.’ Nia waited for a reply, then tried again. Nothing. She wheeled the helicopter in a wide climbing turn, keeping the bank angle as shallow as possible to keep the remaining fuel in her tanks steady. She looked down helplessly at the vehicle ploughing through the grass. The boy was driving fast, competently, heading for the trees. She saw what he was doing now. He was going to drive amid the thorny acacias, where he would know she couldn’t land to block him, and then cut back out onto the road on the other side of the hill.
    The low-fuel light glared solid now, demanding that she put down. Reluctantly she turned back to the kraal. Running on vapours, she set down about five metres from the side of the road, near a Land Rover Defender with pictures of vultures on the doors. A man was kneeling over one of the shooting victims, covering the wounded man with his body to protect him from Nia’s rotor wash. Nia closed her eyes and permitted herself a short sigh. She had been closer than she’d ever come in her flying career to having to make a forced landing. She tugged on the rotor brake handle, attached to a short chain hanging from the cockpit ceiling, unbuckled, took off her headset, unplugged her phone