The Prey by Tony Park Read Free Book Online

him in the back with the barrel of his rifle and Chris stumbled and fell yet again. His knees were wet with blood and his ankle throbbed in pain. ‘I can’t
fokken
see, you
poes
,’ he yelled into the hood.
    The man obviously spoke Afrikaans because calling him a cunt earned Chris a rifle butt in his kidneys as he tried to stand. He groaned and staggered to his feet. His hands were unbound, but there was no point trying to disarm the man, as he would need to remove his head covering first and he doubted the man would have any hesitation about pulling the trigger, given that he’d just killed Paulo Barrica and Themba Tshabalala. Chris felt nauseous when he remembered the gore oozing from the back of Themba’s head. Why had he agreed to come underground again?
    He tried to picture where they were heading. He knew the
madala
side in this part of the mine stretched for a kilometre before it ended at the disused face. The
zama zamas
could be working the old face or they could be using this tunnel as a base.
    Chris had read hundreds of reports about the shady activities of the
zama zamas
in this mine and others. Sometimes they reopened old workings, blasting with their own explosives when they could get them, but more often than not they piggybacked on a mine’s legitimate operations.
    During a shift in the legal mine the miners would drill holes in the stope face, where the gold was found, and charge them with up to two hundred kilograms of explosives. At the end of the shift, a fuse was lit and it burned slow enough to allow the workers time to return safely to the surface. The next shift would not start work to retrieve the dislodged ore until the workplace was clear of deadly gases, such as carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, ammonia and methane.
    The
zama zamas
, who cared nothing for safety, would either leave their underground hideouts to cut the fuses and steal the explosives for their own use, or wait for the blast and then go to the stope and steal chunks of ore with high-grade visible gold. As well as disregarding their own wellbeing, the
zama zamas
would also blast away pillars of rock that the legal miners would leave in place to stop the roof caving in, thus making the workings too dangerous ever to mine again.
    Chris heard noises ahead of them, voices and the clang of tools striking ore. He smelled excrement and urine as he passed a hole in the rock the illegal miners used as a latrine. He gagged on the stench of it. The man behind him laughed and prodded him again. Chris could only imagine the litany of environmental health and safety breaches he would uncover in ten minutes, if he could see, and if he could stop his hands from shaking.
    ‘Move,’ the man said, and jabbed him again.
    There were voices around him now and he heard shuffling feet. The language was a mix of Portuguese and Fanagolo, the lingua franca of the mines. Most of the legal miners at Eureka were South African Swazis from the local area, which bordered the Kingdom of Swaziland, an independent country bordering South Africa and Mozambique. The ranks of the
zama zamas
were filled with illegal immigrants from the poorer neighbouring countries of Zimbabwe and Mozambique, as well as local criminals.
    ‘Boss?’ the man behind Chris said.
    ‘
Lapa
,’ said a voice in front of him.
    He was being taken to a boss of some kind. Chris knew the
zama zamas
operated an organisational structure similar to that of the legal mining world. There would be shift bosses and miners, and working crews, but no environmental safety people like himself. The risks were high for these pirate miners, but the rewards were great.
    The hessian in front of his mouth was getting moist from his breath and he felt sweat running down his face in rivulets. His breathing was rapid and shallow and his legs started to feel like jelly. ‘I need to sit down,’ he said into the hood.
    The man prodded him in the back again.
    ‘I. Need. To. Sit. Down.’
    The man loosed a stream of