Hyena Dawn by Christopher Sherlock Read Free Book Online Page A

mother.
    He got a job at Lanseria airport outside Johannesburg, a small air terminal that handled light planes and private business jets. Then, in the autumn of 1973, the pictures started arriving. Explicit pictures of him and one of his lovers which the sender threatened to show to Lois’ mother.
    Lois met the blackmailer, a Lebanese runt who smelt of stale sweat and cheap cigars. The Lebanese told him that if he would sabotage a plane, they would destroy the pictures. Lois capitulated. There was another meeting, with a different man.
    The night after he’d fixed the plane, he drank himself sick in a bar and staggered home. That was when they tried to finish him off. They’d sent in a hit-man who attacked Lois as he was drunkenly wending his way up a side street. They obviously hadn’t done any research, or they’d have known he had a 2nd Dan black belt in JKA-style karate. At six five in his stockinged feet he weighed in at a lean 200 pounds. The paid assassin had badly underestimated his strength. But Lois had received a savage kick in the balls - a very bad blow - before he’d killed the hitman.
    Lois had packed his bags, given his mother his considerable life-savings, and then driven for the Rhodesian border. He’d seen the news of the plane accident on a television at the Beitbridge Motel on the border. The plane had crashed in the Transkei, killing the pilot but not the two passengers - the son of prominent Johannesburg advocate Bruce Gallagher, and the daughter of multi-millionaire mining magnate Sir George O’Keefe.
    Lois had made it to Livingstone Hospital the next day . . .
    ‘ Mr Kruger, are you listening to me?’
    Lois had stared at Dr Forsyth.
    ‘ And if I don’t have them removed?’
    ‘ Quite simply, the pain that you are experiencing now will get worse. You will have difficulty in moving at all. Then the same operation will have to be performed or you will be a cripple. Believe me, Mr Kruger, your wisest course is to have the operation as soon as possible.’
    ‘ All right. I take your word for it.’
    Lois had decided then and there that he would make sure whoever had done this to him paid for it. First he would need money and time to get better after the operation. He would have to lie low for a few years; the South African police would be after him for sabotaging the plane, and there might be more hit-men waiting to have a go at him. But whatever happened, he would get his revenge.
    The operation had taken place some four hours later.
     
    ‘ What’s on your mind, Lois?’ Gallagher’s voice brought him back to reality. ‘Listen to what I’m saying. I might need you for something soon. Something big.’
    ‘ You’re not going back into the bush again?’
    ‘ No. This is different, Lois. I can’t tell you any more now, but you’ll hear from me soon.’
    ‘ Whatever it is, sir, I owe you.’
     

 
    Rayne was discharged from Livingstone Hospital after another week. He moved into Sam’s studio cottage in Salisbury and waited for Major Long to contact him. He told Sam nothing about this. He knew she wouldn’t want him to go into action again, especially not into something that promised to be so dangerous.
    The cottage Sam lived in was a single huge room with a kitchen in the far corner and a bathroom to one side. The whole of one wall consisted of giant panes of glass set in wooden frames. In a corner of the room an enormous table held scattered papers and a portable typewriter.
    All across the wall at the back of the room were photographs, some black and white, some in colour. Most of them were of a war that Rayne had heard about but never known - Vietnam. Many of the pictures were horrifying - men lying mutilated, close-ups of faces in agony - pictures that captured the very essence of war. They sent a shiver up Rayne’s spine. There was no doubt that Sam had a unique gift. No other photographer in the world had achieved the same understanding of violence and exceptional danger.