The Delta (37 page)

‘
Need to know?
This is not the goddamned army, Sonja. I
need
to know why I just shot and killed a man, and why he was trying to kill you. Frankly, I'm having just the teeniest bit of trouble with taking a human life, although you seem to be handling it all right.'

She pulled the dead commander's cigarettes from her pocket and lit a second. She held the pack out to him.

‘I don't smoke.'

She shrugged and dragged deep. ‘Booze helps. Maybe see a shrink when you get back to LA. Myself, I find they ask too many
questions and don't give enough answers for what you pay.'

‘How can you joke at a time like this?'

‘It's called black humour, and we're going to end up like those
okes
in the
bakkie
if we don't get a move on. Fire's gaining. Let's move.'

She set off and he dried his eyes on the blood-encrusted sleeve of his shirt.

Sam had followed Sonja's instructions and, on reaching the Okavango, had driven parallel to its banks for a while before hooking left and back through some sparse cattle-grazing areas to the main road. Instead of carrying on to the dam site he had left the others and gone back to look for Sonja. Part of him wished he'd done as she'd first ordered. However, if he had, she would have died and he wouldn't have been able to forgive himself.

The Land Rover was still where he'd left it, parked under a tree. As he followed Sonja towards it he saw blue-grey smoke coming from the tailpipe. Rickards and Gerry were standing outside in the shade, but it looked like Cheryl-Ann was still inside.

There was a pick-up in the dam construction company's livery nearby, and two men in overalls were chatting to the cameraman and sound man. A white Land Cruiser slowed, indicated and turned off the tar to pull up next to the other four-by-four. The white man who climbed out was Deiter Roberts.

Everyone seemed to asking questions at once.

Roberts addressed Sam: ‘What's going on here? We got your call for help. Are you guys all right – you're both covered in blood.'

‘How's Cheryl-Ann?' Sam asked Jim.

‘Was that more gunfire we could hear?' Rickards replied.

‘Who were those guys?' Gerry chimed in.

Sam saw Sonja ignore the cluster and move to the window of the Land Rover. She tapped on it, waited a couple of seconds, then
tapped again. Sam walked over to her as Cheryl-Ann rolled down the window. Her eyes were red and her cheeks streaked with tears. She blew her nose into a tissue. Sonja opened the door, leaned in and wrapped her arms around Cheryl-Ann, holding her face to her chest. Cheryl-Ann recoiled at first, from Sonja's un-expected embrace and her blood-spattered skin and clothing, but then started sobbing again and melted into the other woman's arms.

He was told to ‘man up' and Cheryl-Ann got a hug, Sam couldn't help thinking cynically. He left the women in peace and Rickards placed a hand on his shoulder.

‘Cheryl-Ann's fucked, man. I've never seen someone lose it so quickly and so completely. I had her figured for a hard arse.'

Sam looked back at the sobbing wreck who until recently had been ordering them about with such gusto.

Rickards continued. ‘When you left she told us to leave you and Sonja. I said no, and Gerry said we should wait and she just blew a fuse, man. She started abusing us like you wouldn't believe, then she just kind of made this mooing noise, curled up in a ball and started crying. She was saying she didn't want to die, and shit like that.'

Sam knew he'd been very close to losing it in the same way.

Roberts called for everyone's attention. The red-faced engineer seemed to find the displays of emotion particularly annoying. He clapped his hands. ‘People, listen. I have called the police on my radio and they will be here soon. I also called GrowPower's PR people and Selma Tjongarero spoke to head office. Mr Schwarz, the head of GrowPower, just called me from Windhoek to say you may use his company's aeroplane to fly straight to the capital, if you wish. In the circumstances, that might be a very good idea.'

Sam thanked him. They were supposed to be going back to Ngepi that evening for some filming on the Okavango, and then catching a charter flight from the airstrip at Bagani to Windhoek the next day.

Sonja brushed Cheryl-Ann's hair from her face and murmured a few more quiet words to her. The American woman had stopped wailing, but she stayed in the Land Rover with her head in her hands.

‘You don't want to hang around for the police investigation,' Sonja said to Sam. Deiter nodded in agreement. ‘Also, I think Cheryl-Ann needs to be sedated. The quicker you get her back to civilisation, the better.'

Sam looked hard at her, wondering where this sensitive, compassionate soul had been hiding when the blood-streaked killer lit a dead man's cigarette and torched his body. She caught his eye then turned quickly to Roberts. ‘You agree, Deiter?'

The engineer rubbed his jaw. ‘With the way the police work in this part of Africa you could be stuck here for days. May be better to write a couple of quick statements at the airstrip and leave them with me. I know the chief of police. I also know GrowPower and the government won't want to make too much of this incident. It sounds like a car-jacking attempt to me, Sonja. What do you think?'

She nodded.

‘That's not what happened,' Sam said.

‘Leave it, Sam. Forget about it.'

Roberts held up his hands. ‘Sonja's right, Sam. Whatever this was, you don't want to stick around for the aftermath. Car-jacking is nowhere near as prevalent in Namibia as it is in South Africa, but it is not unheard of. You two should clean yourselves up, get rid of those bloody clothes and get out of here, fast.'

Sam held his tongue. He, too, wanted to get away from this place, especially the pall of smoke behind him which reminded him of what he had just done. He couldn't see a way in which the publicity surrounding his shooting of a man in a remote corner of Africa could be turned into a good thing.

‘I spoke to the pilot just now,' Roberts said, as if delivering the argument's clincher. ‘The GrowPower aircraft will be ready to leave in thirty minutes. I suggest, for Cheryl-Ann's sake, we get a move on.'

Jim and Gerry compared stories as they scribbled statements in Cheryl-Ann's notepad during the drive back to Ngepi camp, where they hurriedly collected their bags. Cheryl-Ann was still too shaken to walk far, so Sonja collected her luggage from her room for her then hurriedly loaded the lot into the Rover. Then they headed straight to the nearby airstrip at Bagani.

‘Um, what do we call you in our statements, Sonja?' Gerry asked, as he checked his notes.

‘Field guide and security consultant,' she said.

‘Cool. So our “field guide and security consultant” fired back at the suspected car-jackers, probably injuring the driver, right?'

‘Whatever,' Sonja said, watching the road.

Gerry wrote some more and then looked up again. ‘And then their pick-up went off the road, crashed in the cornfield and caught fire, is that how it went down, Sam?'

‘Like the lady said, Gerry.'

‘Awesome.'

Sonja pulled up at a lean-to that was roofed with corrugated iron, which passed for a terminal in this part of the continent, next to a battered old blue Bedford refuelling truck, and a pair of white Nissan Patrol four-wheel drives which looked incongruously clean and new. Roberts's Land Cruiser and the other vehicle from the construction site were behind them and stopped next to the Land Rover.

The pilot, dressed in navy shorts and a white short-sleeved shirt that somehow remained crisp and clean in the heat and dust, introduced himself as Dougal Geddes and said he was ready to go as soon as they were.

Sonja had to coax the producer from her cocoon in the Land Rover while the others waited by a twin-engine aircraft which had the green stem and single-leaf logo of GrowPower emblazoned on its tail. Sonja supported Cheryl-Ann with an arm around her waist as she walked her across to the aeroplane, and emerged from inside the aircraft a short time later.

‘She's buckled in. Make sure she has some water to drink on the flight and get her to a doctor as soon as you get to Windhoek,' she said to Sam.

He nodded. ‘And what about you?'

‘I have to get the Land Rover back to Botswana, remember? The sooner I get going, the better. It's a long drive.'

‘Right.'

She stood with her hands on her hips, not reaching for him or offering her cheek for an air kiss. What was the protocol, he wondered, for farewelling a partner-in-murder in the middle of the African bush?

‘Well, goodbye then,' Sam said.

She nodded, turned, and started walking towards the Land Rover, past the mountain of camera gear and backpacks still to be loaded onto the aircraft. When she reached the vehicle she opened the door, but paused for a moment.

Sam wondered if she was going to look back at him and say something, after all they'd been through. Instead, she climbed up into the driver's seat, started the engine, and drove off.

Sonja slowed behind a cement mixer as she approached the checkpoint on the B8, near the bridge over the Okavango River.

She'd dragged a good, innocent man into her world of war and killing and now she would never see him again. If she'd been a normal person with a normal life she would have been mad not to reciprocate the attention Sam had showed her. He'd been brave enough to come back for her when he'd thought she was in trouble, and strong enough to kill the man who had a gun pointed at her. Despite their polar opposite backgrounds she'd begun to find him attractive – admirable even – and not just in a sexual way. Why did she always have to push away men who wanted to get close to her? Sonja felt the lump rise in the back of her throat and she sniffed and rolled down the window.

‘Good afternoon, madam,' the policeman said. ‘How far are you going today?'

‘Livingstone, Zambia,' she lied.

‘Have a safe journey.'

Sonja noted the machine-gun emplacement at the end of the bridge over the Okavango that she had spied the other day. Beneath the cover of the dashboard she selected the camera function on her mobile phone and held it to her ear as she accelerated slowly past the sandbagged bunker. She snapped off a few frames, blindly, as she passed the bored-looking soldiers.

The
O
on the
Okavango River
sign on the bridge had been scratched out. The Lozi-speaking peoples who made up the
United Democratic Party and its military arm, the CLA, spelled the river Kavango. It was a reminder of the job ahead of her, now that the immediate threat from the Zimbabweans had been neutralised. Even though she had killed again, not to mention dragging Sam into the bloody mess, she still had a job to do. She thought about the dam and its inevitable impact on this beautiful part of Africa she'd once called home – and she thought about the money, and her daughter. She needed to get herself focused again, and stay in the zone. It was her way of coping.

She breathed a little easier, knowing there was nothing but open road now until she reached the Kwando River, at Kongola, where she would have to pass another checkpoint. She was grateful to the policeman for forcing her to get her emotions in check.

Her phone rang. ‘Yes.'

‘Laidlaw and Regan picked Emma up an hour ago,' said Steele. She's en route to Heathrow and she'll be on the evening flight. Business class, British Airways, I might add.'

‘Good. Thank you.'

‘Are you OK?' he asked.

‘Fine.'

‘Good. Don't forget our next RV.'

‘I won't.'

‘I'm worried about you.'

‘That's very sensitive of you, Martin.'

‘I'm serious. After this, well … after this one is all over and the money's in the bank, I was wondering if you wanted to get away for a while. With me. And Emma, of course.'

She said nothing. She couldn't think of the right words. She hated being off guard; losing the initiative.

‘Martin, I don't know what to say …'

‘Think about it. I know I've been a bit of a prick in the past, but we had some good times, didn't we, Sonn?'

He hadn't called her that in a long time.

‘Remember that private game reserve near the Kruger National Park?'

She remembered. There was so much beauty, following almost too soon after the horror in Sierra Leone. She could never forget their time at the game lodge. It was sensory overload and even now the memories, the visions, good and bad, flashed across her brain like a high-speed video cut to the deep bass pounding of American rap – the chosen music of their enemy.

After the killing of Danny Byrne in Northern Ireland, Steele and Sonja had been flown to Aldershot military base in England to face a board of inquiry into the deaths of the IRA quartermaster and his bomb-making brother.

Steele sought her out, and while they couldn't socialise on base, he took her to a pub in town where they corroborated their stories about the Byrne brothers pulling guns on the SAS men during an impromptu operation. Sonja was numb over Danny's death and lied to the inquiry about her relationship with him. She felt torn, as though she had betrayed both Danny and her country, by sleeping with the enemy in the first place. Martin plied her with booze in the evenings and eventually, inevitably, she ended up in the bed of the only man she could talk to about the nightmares and the pain.

The British press, with the help of some spin-doctoring from Downing Street, hailed the killings as the unfortunate endgame of a well-planned operation by security forces to capture the men responsible for the heinous school bus bombing. There were no tears for the Byrne brothers. Even the republican cause had largely disowned them. Behind the scenes, however, the
army was looking for explanations as to how and why Steele and the Det had staged a rogue operation. The end, it seemed, did not always justify the means.