The Delta (44 page)

He was awake with the sun but when he got up and walked around the rest of the camping ground there was no sign of Sonja or her Land Rover.

A different man was now on duty in the reception hut. ‘Ah,
but the lady in the Land Rover she has already left, earlier this morning.'

Sam wanted to scream in frustration. ‘Why didn't the other guy tell me she was here?' he seethed.

‘This lady, she did not have a booking, so I put her in the overflow camp site. My brother did not know about her.'

Sam and Jim packed in a hurry. The drive out through the deep sand drifts didn't seem nearly as long or as challenging as Sam gunned the Patrol's big engine and raced to catch up with Sonja.

When the uniformed policeman strode out into the middle of the road and started flagging him down, Sam was sure he'd been busted for speeding. The fine would have been richly deserved as he'd been pushing the vehicle to its limits.

‘Our luck might be in,' Rickards had said, pointing to the police pick-up on the side of the road with its bonnet open. ‘Looks like these guys might just be broken down and looking for a lift.'

Sam rocked forward then backwards as he felt the nose of the dugout grind to a halt in mud or sand.

‘Up!' the man behind him ordered.

It was easier said than done. Sam couldn't use his tied hands to grasp the sides of the canoe, and when he brought his knees up and tried to boost himself up he found his legs had gone to sleep from staying in the one position too long.

‘Up!' He felt a hand grab the back of his shorts and haul him roughly to his feet. His leg muscles prickled with pins and needles and he lurched forward, bumping into Rickards's back. The Australian swore.

‘Sorry,' Sam said.

‘How fucked do you think we are?' the Australian whispered.

‘It's not good.' Sam straightened up and put one foot tentatively
in front of the other. ‘But I figure if they wanted to kill us they would have done it by now.'

‘Silence!'

Sam cried out in pain as something blunt and unforgiving punched him in the small of the back. At the same time another hand grabbed the shoulder strap of his tank top and dragged him.

‘Lift your feet,' the voice said to him. Sam followed the orders and noted the accent of the new voice was different. It sounded European, maybe Dutch. He hadn't spent any time in South Africa other than transiting through the airport on his way to Botswana, but he thought the voice might have been that of an Afrikaner. The accent was similar to Sonja's, but harsher. Sam stepped into a mush of water and mud but his next footfall was on dry land.

‘Stop there,' the man said. ‘Hold your hands steady.' Sam felt the cold steel of the flat edge of a knife's blade rest against the inside of his wrist and he flinched. ‘I said steady, unless you want me to cut you.'

He heard a snap and then felt the blood pulsing back into his hands and fingers. The relief turned quickly to pain.

‘Rub your hands together. Massage your wrists.
Jissus
man, if you'd put these
bladdy
things on tighter this
oke
's hands would have dropped off,' the man said, presumably to one of the men who had kidnapped them. ‘Strip them.'

Sam swallowed as he felt hands lifting his top over his head. Any hope he'd had that the man with the Afrikaans accent might have been kinder on them was fast disappearing, along with his shorts.

‘Oh fuck, no,' he heard Rickards whine. ‘Please don't rape me!'

‘Shut up!'

Sam heard a chuckle and some words exchanged in an African dialect. The men laughed some more and Sam reddened under
the hood he was wearing. He felt vulnerable and very afraid. This, he figured, was what they wanted.

‘On your knees. Now!' the Afrikaner voice barked.

Sam lowered himself and placed his hands in front of his pubic area.

‘Arms up! Reach for the heavens. You won't protect yourself that way. If you lower your arms you will get a beating, understood?'

‘You're making a …'

The blow between his shoulderblades pitched him forwards and he grazed his palms in the sand trying to break his fall. Rough hands pulled him back up on to his knees again. He heard breathing close to the hood. ‘You don't speak unless you're answering one of my questions. Name?'

‘Sam Chapman. I'm a presenter for—'

A hand slapped the back of his head. ‘Arms up! All I asked you was your name.'

‘You?'

‘Jim Rickards … sir.'

Sam heard a thump and a squeal of pain as Jim received the same treatment.

‘Play smart with me, Aussie boy, and I'll cut your fucking balls off. Understand?'

‘Um … yes.'

Sam heard footsteps behind him and again sensed the man close to his face. ‘I see from your passport that you are a Mr Samuel Charles Chapman, citizen of the United States of America. Now, Mr Chapman, I want you to tell me who you are working for.'

‘I'm a television presenter for the Wildlife World documentary channel. I'm in Africa making a film about the Okavango Delta and—'

Sam doubled over and felt only pain when he tried to draw a breath. He fell to his side and clutched his chest.

‘Up!'

Hands dragged him up. He was gasping but couldn't get any air in his lungs. He thought he might pass out.

‘Hands up!'

A hand grabbed his hair through the hood, forcing the coarse fabric against his mouth as he managed a ragged breath.

‘No bullshit, American. I don't want your fucking cover story – who do you work for?'

‘I told you, I work for Wildlife World it's a—'

‘Shut up, you fucking liar.' Sam heard the slick sliding of metal on metal then felt something press against his temple hard enough to ingrain the weave of the hessian on his skin. ‘Feel that? It's a Browning nine-millimetre pistol. But don't worry, I'm not going to shoot you with it.'

Sam was too scared to utter another word. He felt the pressure removed from the side of his head.

‘I'm going to shoot your Australian friend here. Mr … James Edward Rickards.'

‘Don't shoot,' Sam heard Jim wail. ‘He's telling the truth, you fucking psychopath. This dude's a TV talking head and I'm—'

The gunshot shook Sam's whole body. ‘JIM! Nooo!'

All Sam could hear was a muffled, gurgling sound. He felt the gun pressed against his head again. He could feel the heat of the barrel through the hood. ‘He's wounded, Samuel, but not dead … yet. Want me to put another bullet in him and finish him off, or are you going to tell me the truth? Who are you working for and why were you following the woman?'

‘I TOLD YOU, I'M SAM CHAPMAN AND I WORK FOR—'

‘Papa? What the fuck are you doing, you bloody idiot …'

The pistol was moved and Sam tried to shrug away from the fingers he felt at his throat.

‘Sam, it's me, Sonja. Relax. It's OK, Sam.'

He was almost hyperventilating but her words stilled him. He felt the fingers again. Soft, delicate, as she unpicked the knot at his throat. He smelled her through the bag. Not perfumed, but a raw, woman's smell. He coughed. ‘Son … Sonja?'

‘
Ja
, hush for a moment while I get this off.'

He risked the wrath of the other man and dropped his hands to his groin again.

‘Get this man's clothes. Now! And the other one's, you fucking maniacs,' she said.

Sam blinked as the hood came away from his head. He saw Sonja, though her face and ponytail were a black silhouette against the sun streaming through leaves above. He coughed and spat fibres that he'd sucked into his mouth and throat over the past hours. He looked to his side and saw a black man in camouflage uniform struggling to remove the hood from a thrashing, swearing Rickards.

Sam stood and snatched the shorts from the man who held them out to him, then stepped into them. As he pulled his singlet top over his head he twisted around and saw an old man with a Santa Claus beard holding a black pistol at his side. He felt Sonja's hand on his arm.

‘Jesus, Sonja, do you know these madmen?' he asked.

‘Hands off, motherfucker,' Rickards said as he wrenched his hood the rest of the way off and hopped from one leg to the other as he tried to pull on his pants.

‘That one,' Sonja pointed to the man with the beard, ‘is my father.'

The man looked at Sam and shrugged.

*

Sam and Jim sat on a log in front of a camp fire. Scattered around the clearing were more tents hiding beneath trees and nets. Every now and then an armed African man in uniform wandered past and gave them a suspicious glance.

Sonja lifted a blackened kettle off the embers and poured boiling water into three tin cups. She took a pewter hipflask from the pocket of her shorts and poured a shot of something into each cup.

‘Make mine a double, GI Jane,' Rickards said.

Sam saw that, despite the bravado and wisecracks, Jim's face was still very pale. Sonja handed them each a steaming mug.

Sam smelled coffee and brandy. He sipped it, closed his eyes and let the double-barrelled heat work its way through his tortured body. He opened his eyes and looked at Sonja. ‘That man is your
father
?'

She nodded. ‘It's complicated.'

‘Seems pretty straightforward to me,' Rickards said, coughing as his first mouthful hit home. ‘Crazy little fucker tried to kill me because he thought Sam was some kind of spy.'

Sonja smiled. ‘If he wanted to kill you, you wouldn't be sitting here now. He was just trying to scare you.'

‘Well it worked. I thought he'd shot you, Jim,' Sam said. ‘I didn't know what to say.'

‘One of the other dudes put his hand over my mouth just as Kris Kringle shot his wad into the ground by my foot, is what happened. Your dad is one sick fuck, Sonja.'

She rocked her head slightly from side to side, as if weighing up the observation, but didn't say anything. Sam wondered whether Jim had hit the nail on the head.

‘He was trying to protect me. They were watching you from the time you left Bagani airfield. You shouldn't have followed me.'

‘Who are
they
, Sonja?' Sam took another slug of medicine.

‘I'm not at liberty to tell you that.'

Rickards stood up and tossed the dregs of his coffee in the fire. A small blue flame danced in the coals. ‘Enough with the “need-to-know” bullshit, Sonja. You owe us an explanation.'

She crossed her legs and looked up at him. ‘Really, Jim? How do you work that out?'

He ran a hand through his greasy black hair. ‘How do
you
feel about telling me to hang out the window of the Land Rover to film those clowns following us in the black Toyota? Did I draw their fire OK for you?'

She frowned and Sam could see Rickards had scored about half a point.

‘I thought if they saw you filming they'd be too scared to do anything and would back off.'

Sam shook his head. ‘Now I'm really confused. Who the hell are “
they
”?'

‘None of your business, Sam.'

It was his turn to lose it with her now. ‘I
killed
one of those men, Sonja. I think that kinda makes it my business.'

Rickards was pacing back and forwards. ‘OK, so Miss Plausible Deniability here isn't going to tell us anything, Sam. Let's do a little deducing. What's the only armed rebel group that's been active in this part of the world in the last few years?'

Sam searched his memory for the acronym. ‘The CLA, right?'

Rickards nodded. ‘Caprivi Liberation Army. I actually came up here years ago, in the nineties, when the CLA tried to take over the police station at Katima Mulilo. I got squat – the war was over before it began – but I remember a rumour going around had it that the CLA was being trained by bitter and twisted whites from the old South-West Africa looking to get a little payback against the Namibian government.'

‘How about it, Sonja?' Sam asked. ‘We getting warm?' She ignored him.

‘And so Sonja's dear old dad,' Jim went on, ‘is one of those old soldiers looking to refight the war against the SWAPO terrorists who now run his former home.'

Sonja said nothing.

‘Lion got your tongue, Xena?'

She glared at Rickards, but didn't rise to the bait. Sam thought he might have to put a restraining hand on the Australian soon if he didn't calm down – not that he could blame the guy. He had, after all, just nearly been shot.

‘So you,' Jim pointed between Sonja's eyes, his fingers cocked like a pistol, ‘work for Corporate Solutions. Cheryl-Ann swallows the line that you're a bodyguard, but no one wants to listen to Jim Rickards when he points out that CS is a mercenary outfit that specialises in wreaking havoc on the African continent.'

Sonja turned to Sam, still blanking Rickards. ‘Why did you follow me, Sam? Why not just go off to Windhoek?'

Sam looked up at Jim, who returned the glance and drew a breath. He answered for Sam, his voice calmer and lower now that the fear-induced adrenaline was subsiding. ‘I'm looking for the story, Sonja, but Sam here was genuinely worried about you after those goons tried to kill us.'

She looked at the camp fire.

‘What's CS doing up here, Sonja?' Jim pressed. ‘Are you training the CLA? Running guns?'

‘If you expect an answer to that then you should know it'll be followed by a bullet.'

‘You going to deliver it, or are you going to leave that up to psycho-daddy?'

She shook her head. ‘No, I'm not going to hurt you. I was trying to leave this place when you two showed up.' She leaned forward in her chair and motioned with a hand for Jim to resume his seat on the log, which he did. ‘I don't think my father will
harm you now that he knows who you really are, but I can't be sure about everyone else here.'