Ben turned his bloodshot eyes to look at them. ‘Good luck,’ he said. ‘The bastard deserves it.’
Steve remained silent. The arms dealer could think what he liked. There was no way he was confirming or denying what they were here for. He could draw his own conclusions.
They’d be heading north later tonight, and the last thing they needed was any word leaking out about what they were really planning. If Wallace suspected they were there to hit the President, they’d be executed on the spot.
Seventeen
DAWN WAS BREAKING AS THE Talek Bridge loomed into view. Steve glanced at Newton, sitting next to him in the front of the Nissan Navara pick-up truck driven by Ganju. The man was leaning forwards in his seat, staring up at the massive steel structure.
‘You’re home,’ said Steve.
‘What’s left of it,’ Newton answered quietly.
They had been driving steadily through the night. David and Nick had brought them two vehicles: the Nissan was for carrying the heavy kit, including the KPV, a massive lump of metal that weighed almost fifty kilos; the Toyota Land Cruiser was for taking the rest of the guys. The kit was in the back of the Nissan, covered with plastic sheeting and thick strips of plasterboard. If anyone asked them, they’d say they were just delivering some building supplies up to their farm. Chris was driving the Toyota, a big SUV with a 4.7 litre engine and enough space to accommodate the other guys. They’d stopped once so far to buy themselves ten jerry cans, filling them with thirty gallons of diesel. Once they got across the border, and from there on into Batota, fuel might be in short supply, warned Chris. The last thing they needed was to run out.
‘Slow up,’ said Steve to Ganju.
The Gurkha brought the Nissan to a stop by the side of the road and Steve stepped out onto the rough tarmac, looking up at the bridge ahead. It had been named after Alfred Talek, the founder of the Talek mining conglomerate and one of the business associates of Oswald Fitzpatrick. Just to look at it, decided Steve, was a reminder that this border had always been about business and trade. And even now, it probably still was.
There were people everywhere. The Limpopo was a big, muddy river that started up in Botswana and snaked its way through Zimbabwe, Batota and South Africa. The bridge was heavily armed, but that didn’t stop a constant flow of refugees risking their lives to make the crossing. Famine and political beatings were now common across Zimbabwe: up to a million people had already fled the country and many more were joining them every day. The situation was the same in Batota: most of the refugees came to South Africa. There wasn’t much food or work for them there either. But at least they weren’t going to get driven into camps and beaten to death by Kapembwa’s thugs.
‘We can drive straight across?’ asked Steve, looking towards Chris in the Toyota.
Chris nodded. ‘Everyone’s coming in the other direction,’ he said. ‘The only people trying to get into Batota these days are soldiers and journalists - and the journalists aren’t trying very hard.’
About fifty yards to Steve’s left there was a mobile film unit, with a satellite dish beaming back reports from the border about the upcoming Batotean presidential elections. No one expected Kapembwa to lose. He never did. But there was still plenty of interest in how he was going to fix the result. At this time of the morning, all the journalists were asleep. The refugees were still moving, however - a relentless flow of bedraggled humanity, trudging wearily towards an unknown destiny. The bridge itself was heavily guarded by the South African Defence Force. The sentries were checking the papers of everyone who came through. Plenty were being turned back: South Africa had enough problems of its own. That didn’t mean that no one could get through. Handing fifty dollars to the border guards was enough to get a man across the bridge. For the girls, it was cheaper, so long as they were attractive. They were taken into the sentry huts: if they didn’t mind having sex with a couple of the guards, they’d be let through as well. Anyone who didn’t have the money or a body to sell had to take a more direct route.
The river, which measured thirty feet across, was swollen at this time of year by the rains further upstream; great torrents of muddy water were flowing through it. On the South African side was a six-foot-high barbed-wire fence. But there weren’t nearly enough soldiers to protect it, and as Steve knew from fighting in Bosnia, a fence without any soldiers next to it was just an obstacle to cut your way through. Strung along the river were small rafts, no more than a few logs tied to air-filled jerry cans, floating across on the current, each with two or three people on board. When they hit the banks, they’d scramble up into South Africa, crawling underneath the fence through holes that had already been dug in the mud. Sometimes they’d have streaks of blood across their faces and chests as they stumbled into their new country. But nobody was trying to stop them; they simply ignored the soldiers and started walking down the side of the road. Where they would end up it was impossible to tell, judged Steve. They probably didn’t even know themselves.