“To cull competition?” Jack asked.
“And to increase their own inventory. Plus, it’s a matter of pride. If you’re going to be a merchant of death in Africa, you can’t be shy about using violence. You must walk the walk.”
At least Effrem hadn’t taken the Land Cruiser, Jack thought.
With Jack behind the wheel, they toured the city. Though he occasionally glanced at the foldout map in his lap, René spent most of the time gazing out his window, telling Jack to turn in here, circle back there, pull to this curb or under this tree, where they would watch the people for a while before moving on. At open-air markets and cafés René would leave Jack behind in the Toyota, then walk around and chat with locals. Though Jack didn’t understand what exactly René was seeing or asking, it was clear the soldier was getting a feel for Windhoek’s pulse and rhythm.
“Do you think he’ll be there?” René asked after a while.
“Who, Rostock?”
“Yes.”
“I doubt it. Rostock’s a general. As much as they may want to, generals know better than to go into the field. Möller is his captain. We’ll be dealing with him and however many RSG operatives he brings along. At least eight that we can count on.”
“So be it,” René murmured, staring out the window.
After another hour of scouting, René declared that Katutura Township Central, the heart of Windhoek’s worst slum, was their best chance for finding what they needed.
Jack took the Western Bypass highway north to the edge of the city, where he turned west onto the perhaps sadistically named Independence Avenue, which took them into the slum proper. Everywhere Jack looked there was nothing but dirt and rolling, rock-strewn hills, all packed tightly with sheds and huts made from a mishmash of materials, from cardboard to aluminum to massive highway signs that had been bent into open lean-to or A-frame shelters. Everywhere smiling black children ran and played while women waited in quarter-mile lines at a water pump.
“Seventy percent of Windhoek lives right here, Jack,” said René. “About a hundred and forty thousand people.”
Jack had the urge to stop the Land Cruiser, get out, and empty his pockets, but he knew it would likely cause more harm than good. A problem like Katutura wouldn’t be changed by simply throwing money at it. Jack didn’t know what the larger solution was, but looking at the faces of the kids waving as they passed made his heart ache.
After a few brief stops to ask for directions they found the neighborhood they were looking for, the aptly named Soweto. Given the conditions here, Jack imagined most of its occupants would prefer living in its South African namesake.
The road took them over a hill and down into a shallow valley whose slopes had been tiered into lots for huts. Soweto’s business district was a hundred-yard-long stretch of mom-and-pop businesses that offered food, repairs, and medicines. At René’s direction Jack pulled the Toyota to a stop beside a brick building painted bright red. The sign over an open garage bay said SMARTY’S REPAIRS.
They got out and went into the cool of the garage. In German, René asked one of the mechanics something. The man pointed to an open door to their right. Inside, they found a potbellied middle-aged man sitting at a desk. His head was shaved. He was rubbing lotion into his scalp. He raised a hand in greeting, then wiped his hands on his pants and walked up to the counter.
“English?” René asked.
“Some good, some not.”
“Tell him what you want, Jack.”
“Just like that? Can we trust him?”
René chuckled. “You think he’s an undercover cop, so dedicated he chooses to live here year round and run a business? No, this is Smarty, the owner, and the most honest arms dealer in Windhoek.”
“Who told you that?”
“Everyone… no one,” replied René. “Go ahead, tell him what you want. If he has it, he’ll give you a price. There’s no haggling. His prices are fair.”
Jack had been assembling an equipment list in his mind. He shrugged. When in Rome… As Jack spoke each item, Smarty would say either “yes” or “no.” He had eighty percent of what Jack requested, including a trio of AK-47s and a thousand rounds of ammunition.
Smarty wrote a price on a strip of paper and slid it over to Jack, who said, “That’s fair. You take dollars.”
“Everything but Discover card,” Smarty replied.
It was late afternoon by the time they put Windhoek in the Land Cruiser’s rearview mirror and began the two-hour journey up the Western Bypass. Assuming that at some point he would be returning to Khorusepa Lodge, Jack spent some extra time studying the area’s topology and road systems, if they could be called that. As he’d learned during his first reconnoiter, once off the Western Bypass the roads were all dirt and often little wider than a vehicle. Still, looking at the Google Earth screenshots he’d stored on his phone, he counted at least four ways in and out of the Khorusepa Lodge area.
They were twenty miles south of Osona Airstrip when the sun began dipping behind the mountains to the west. René, whose window had borne the brunt of the afternoon sun, said, “Thank God,” and returned the visor to its overhead position.
Jack’s phone chirped. “What’s the screen say, René?”
“It says ‘tracking.’”
“That’s the GPS I planted on the Pilatus. The app icon is on the home screen, lower-left corner. Call up the map. The tracker will show up as a pulsing blue dot.”
“Yes, I have it.”
“Tell me where it’s going.”
“South.”
South. That was wrong. Midgard’s runway ran east to west. “Let me see. Take the wheel.”
René grabbed the wheel and Jack studied the phone’s screen. The tracker was indeed moving south, away from the runway and onto the same road he’d taken into Khorusepa Lodge. When the dot reached the fork in the road, it turned left toward the lodge itself.
Clearly it wasn’t the Pilatus taxiing down that narrow ravine road. Someone found the tracker and planted it on a vehicle. Who? It had to have been either Effrem or Möller — Effrem in an attempt to aid Jack’s pursuit of Möller; Möller hoping to make it look that way and lure Jack into an ambush. Here was another classic “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario. Either Effrem was aboard this vehicle or he was still at the lodge.
Jack watched the dot until it came to a stop in what he estimated was the lodge’s lobby turnaround.
Jack retook the Toyota’s wheel and handed the phone back to René, who asked, “Well? What do we do?”
“Nothing’s changed. We keep going.”
They drove in silence for five minutes before René said, “It’s moving again, back the way it came… Now turning north toward Swakoppoort Dam Reservoir.”
“It’s heading for the Western Bypass.”
“Can we intercept them?”
Jack checked his watch and did a quick calculation. “Maybe. It’s going to be tight.”
Jack pressed harder on the accelerator.
The miles and minutes ticked by as Jack and René kept heading north and the blue dot west toward the Western Bypass. The sun’s upper rim finally slipped behind the hills and Jack turned on the Land Cruiser’s headlights. Bugs began to strike the windshield with rapid, overlapping clicks.
The sign for Osona flashed past the windshield, followed soon after by the sign for Okahandja. Ten miles to the turnoff. Jack asked René, “Where is it?”
René turned the phone so Jack could see the screen. “Still heading west, closing toward the Western Bypass. He’s got maybe four miles to go.”