Master of the Game

Jamie and Banda turned. At the top of a dune about a hundred yards away was a uniformed guard carrying a rifle. Jamie looked back at the shore. The mis was closing in fast.

"You! You two! Come here," the guard yelled. He lifted his rifle.

Jamie raised his hands. "I twisted my foot," he called out. "I can't walk."

"Stay where you are," the guard ordered. "I'm comin' to get you." He lowered his rifle and started moving toward them. A quick look back showed that the mis had reached the edge of the shore, and was coming in swiftly.

"Run!" Jamie whispered. He turned and raced toward the beach, Banda running close behind him.

"Stop!"

A second later they heard the sharp crack of a rifle, and the sand ahead of them exploded. They kept running, racing to meet the great dark wall of the fog. There was another rifle shot, closer this time, and another, and the next moment the two men were in total darkness. The sea mis licked at them, chilling them, smothering them. It was like being buried in cotton. It was impossible to see anything.

The voices were muffled now and distant, bouncing off the mis and coming from all directions. They could hear other voices calling to one another.

"Kruger!...It's Brent...Can you hear me?"

"I hear you, Kruger..."

"There're two of them," the first voice yelled. "A white man and a black. They're on the beach. Spread your men out. Skiet hom! Shoot to kill."

"Hang on to me," Jamie whispered.

Banda gripped his arm. "Where are you going?"

"We're getting out of here."

Jamie brought his compass up to his face. He could barely see it. He turned until the compass was pointing east. "This way..."

"Wait! We can't walk. Even if we don't bump into a guard or a dog, we're going to set off a land mine."

"You said there are a hundred yards before the mines start. Let's get away from the beach."

They started moving toward the desert, slowly and unsteadily, blind men in an unknown land. Jamie paced off the yards. Whenever they stumbled in the soft sand, they picked themselves up and kept moving. Jamie stopped to check the compass every few feet. When he estimated they had traveled almost a hundred yards, he stopped.

"This should be about where the land mines start. Is there any pattern to the way they're placed? Anything you can think of that could help us?"

"Prayer," Banda answered. "Nobody's ever gotten past those land mines, Jamie. They're scattered all over the field, buried about six inches down. We're going to have to stay here until the mis lifts and give ourselves up."

Jamie listened to the cotton-wrapped voices ricocheting around them.

"Kruger! Keep in voice contact..."

"Right, Brent..."

"Kruger..."

"Brent..."

Disembodied voices calling to each other in the blinding fog. Jamie's mind was racing, desperately exploring every possible avenue of escape. If they stayed where they were, they would be killed the instant the mis lifted. If they tried moving through the field of mines, they would be blown to bits.

"Have you ever seen the land mines?" Jamie whispered.

"I helped bury some of them."

"What sets them off?"

"A man's weight. Anything over eighty pounds will explode them. That way they don't kill the dogs."

Jamie took a deep breath. "Banda, I may have a way for us to get out of here. It might not work. Do you want to gamble with me?"

"What have you got in mind?"

"We're going to cross the mine fields on our bellies. That way we'll distribute our weight across the sand."

"Oh, Jesus!"

"What do you think?"

"I think I was crazy for ever leaving Cape Town."

"Are you with me?" He could barely make out Banda's face next to him.

"You don't leave a man a lot of choice, do you?"

"Come on then."

Jamie carefully stretched himself out flat on the sand. Banda looked at him a moment, took a deep breath and joined him. Slowly the two men began crawling across the sand, toward the mine field.

"When you move," Jamie whispered, "don't press down with your hands or your legs. Use your whole body."

There was no reply. Banda was busy concentrating on staying alive.

They were in a smothering, gray vacuum that made it impossible to see anything. At any instant they could bump into a guard, a dog or one of the land mines. Jamie forced all this out of his mind. Their progress was painfully slow. Both men were shirtless, and the sand scraped against their stomachs as they inched forward. Jamie was aware of how overwhelming the odds were against them. Even if by some chance they did succeed in crossing the desert without getting shot or blown up, they would be confronted by the barbed-wire fence and the armed guards at the watchtower at the entrance. And there was no telling how long the mis would last. It could lift at any second, exposing them.

They kept crawling, mindlessly sliding forward until they lost all track of time. The inches became feet, and the feet became yards, and the yards became miles. They had no idea how long they had been traveling. They were forced to keep their heads close to the ground, and their eyes and ears and noses became filled with sand. Breathing was an effort.

In the distance was the constant echo of the guards' voices. "Kruger...Brent...Kruger...Brent..."

The two men stopped to rest and check the compass every few minutes, then moved on, beginning their endless crawl again. There was an almost overwhelming temptation to move faster, but that would mean pressing down harder, and Jamie could visualize the metal fragments exploding under him and ripping into his belly. He kept the pace slow. From time to time they could hear other voices around them, but the words were muffled by the fog and it was impossible to tell where they were coming from. It's a big desert, Jamie thought hopefully. We're not going to stumble into anyone.

Out of nowhere, a large, furry shape leaped at him. It happened so swiftly that Jamie was caught off guard. He felt the huge Alsatian's teeth sinking into his arm. He dropped the bundle of diamonds and tried to pry open the dog's jaw, but he had only one free hand and it was impossible. He felt the warm blood running down his arm. The dog was sinking its teeth in harder now, silent and deadly. Jamie felt himself begin to faint. He heard a dull thud, and then another, and the dog's jaw loosened and its eyes glazed over. Through the mist of pain, Jamie saw Banda smashing the sack of diamonds against the dog's skull. The dog whimpered once and lay still.

"You all right?" Banda breathed anxiously.

Jamie could not speak. He lay there, waiting for the waves of pain to recede. Banda ripped off a piece of his trousers and tied a strip tightly around Jamie's arm to stop the bleeding.

"We've got to keep moving," Banda warned. "If there's one of them around, there are more."

Jamie nodded. Slowly he slid his body forward, fighting against the terrible throbbing in his arm.

He remembered nothing of the rest of the trek. He was semiconscious, an automaton. Something outside him directed his movements. Arms forward, pull...Arms forward, pull...Arms forward, pull...It was endless, an odyssey of agony. It was Banda who followed the compass now, and when Jamie started to crawl in the wrong direction Banda gently turned him around. They were surrounded by guards and dogs and land mines and only the mis kept them safe. They kept moving, crawling for their lives, until the time came when neither man had the strength to move another inch.

They slept.

When Jamie opened his eyes, something had changed. He lay there on the sand, his body stiff and aching, trying to remember where he was. He could see Banda asleep six feet away, and it all came flooding in. The raft crashing on the reefs...the sea mis ...But something was wrong. Jamie sat up, trying to figure out what it was. And his stomach lurched. He could see Banda! That was what was wrong. The mis was lifting. Jamie heard voices nearby. He peered through the thin mists of the dissipating fog. They had crawled near the entrance to the diamond field. There was the high guard tower and the barbed-wire fence Banda had described. A crowd of about sixty black workers was moving away from the diamond field toward the gate. They had finished their shift and the next shift was coming in. Jamie got on his knees and crawled over to Banda and shook him. Banda sat up, instantly awake. His eyes turned to the watchtower and the gate.

"Damn!" he said incredulously. "We almost made it."

"We did make it! Give me those diamonds!"

Banda handed him the folded shirt. "What do you - ?"

"Follow me."

"Those guards with the guns at the gate," Banda said in a low voice, "they'll know we don't belong here."

"That's what I'm counting on," Jamie told him.

The two men moved toward the guards, drifting between the line of departing workers and the line of arriving workers who were yelling at one another, exchanging good-natured catcalls.

"You fellas gonna work your asses off, man. We got a nice sleep in the mis..."

"How did you arrange for the mis, you lucky bastards...?"

"God listens to me. He ain't gonna listen to you. You're bad..."

Jamie and Banda reached the gate. Two huge armed guards stood inside, herding the departing workers over to a small tin hut where they would be thoroughly searched. They strip them down mother-naked and then they look up and down every hole they've got. Jamie clutched the tattered shirt in his hand more tightly. He pushed through the line of workers and walked up to a guard. "Excuse me, sir," Jamie said. "Who do we see about a job here?"

Banda was staring at him, petrified.

The guard turned to face Jamie. "What the hell are you doin' inside the fence?"

"We came in to look for work. I heard there was an opening for a guard, and my servant can dig. I thought - "

The guard eyed the two ragged, disreputable-looking figures. "Get the hell back outside!"

"We don't want to go outside," Jamie protested. "We need jobs, and I was told - "

"This is a restricted area, mister. Didn't you see the signs? Now get the hell out. Both of you!" He pointed to a large bullock wagon outside the fence, filling with the workers who had finished their shift. "That wagon'll take you to Port Nolloth. If you want a job, you have to apply at the company office there."

"Oh. Thank you, sir," Jamie said. He beckoned to Banda, and the two men moved out through the gate to freedom.

The guard glared after them. "Stupid idiots."

Ten minutes later, Jamie and Banda were on their way to Port Nolloth. They were carrying with them diamonds worth half a million pounds.