The Delta (53 page)

Steele levelled the pistol and fired twice.

Sam checked his watch. It was less than twenty minutes until the helicopter was due to collect them, and there was no sign of Jim.

Six heavily armed men sat or stood in the tree line at the end of the grassy clearing where the helicopter had been taking off and landing. Sam knew they were the ready reaction force, which would be dropped at the secret border crossing to cover the withdrawal of the rebel troops who should have been attacking Katima Mulilo. One of them was a tall, fit-looking lieutenant named Edison. Sam had learned the man was the son of a chief, and it was clear by his bearing and the way the other soldiers deferred to him that he was born to rule.

Sam hoped Sonja's father had somehow survived the ambush, but he knew the chances were remote. Even if he did, Hans Kurtz had even further to go than the main force of his men in
order to get back to safety in Botswana. The Caprivian soldiers smoked and talked in low voices. Edison was moving from man to man, checking their weapons and equipment. He made each soldier jump up and down a few times on the spot, in order to check if their gear rattled and made too much noise. There was none of the exuberance he'd witnessed when the others had set off. These men had been defeated without firing a shot, and they had no doubt lost comrades in the fighting at M'pacha. One of the men sat on the ground with a belt of machine-gun bullets draped across his lap. He seemed to be checking them, perhaps for dirt or mud, but the way he fingered the copper and brass made Sam think of someone fondling worry beads. The man looked up and Sam saw the fear in his eyes.

‘Don't leave without me,' Sam said to Edison. He tapped his watch. ‘Five minutes, OK?' The lieutenant nodded.

Sam strode back through the deserted camp, past the commander's tent and the smoking remains of the camp fire, which had been doused with water. It was quiet, except for croaking frogs, the squeak of a night bird somewhere nearby and the occasional grunt of a far-off hippo.

Sam trod the sandy path to the huts on the fringe of the camp. He knew what Rickards was up to – the Australian had been crude enough to tell him. He had no idea which hut the woman would be in, but only one of them showed a light. A dog gave a low growl from somewhere. He heard a small cough, perhaps from a child. Sam looked around and moved closer to the hut. He heard the hiss of a gas lantern. Insects clouded around the chink of light that bordered a blanket that was hanging over the entranceway.

‘Jim,' he called softly. ‘Jim, it's time to go, man. You in there?'

Sam licked his lips. The last thing he wanted to do was walk in on them while they were in the act. He paused by the door
and listened, but there was no sound. Maybe they had fallen asleep.

‘Jim?'

Sam grabbed the edge of the tattered blanket and pulled it to one side. ‘Holy shit!'

He moved in and dropped to one knee beside the two bodies. Jim lay on his back, with a dot of red blood on his forehead and his eyes wide open. There was another bullet hole in his chest, near his heart, and blood all over the coarse mattress. The African woman was face down and both of them were naked. ‘Oh, Jesus, no.'

Sam reached over to the upturned beer crate that served as a beside table and grabbed the metal swinging handle of the gas lantern. He placed it on the earth floor next to Jim's face as he reached out and touched Jim's neck. There was no pulse, but there was the faintest trace of warmth on his fingertips. He checked the woman and saw there was nothing he could do for either of them. He started to retch, but swallowed hard. Why hadn't he heard gunfire? He took a deep breath to steady himself and moved back to Rickards. He slipped a hand under the Australian's head. There was no blood on the back though; no exit wound. It was a tiny hole in Jim's forehead. He wondered who could have been responsible. Perhaps, he thought, it was a jealous husband?

Sam looked around the room and saw the red light on the video camera that was pointing at him and the two bodies. He shook his head, then stood and went to it. He picked the camera up and pressed the ‘record/pause' button on the hand grip. He knew a thing or two about cameras and located the ‘play', ‘fast forward' and ‘rewind' buttons on the side of the Canon. He pressed ‘rewind', waited a few seconds, then hit ‘play'. In the small flip-out LED screen he saw Jim and the prostitute having
sex. At one point the woman slid forward onto the mattress. Jim stood and looked at the camera, shock plain on his face. Sam was too slow to press ‘stop' before he saw the sickening vision of the Australian's death. As he replayed the scene, Sam saw Jim raise a hand. His lips were moving, then he crumpled to the ground. Sam felt nauseous and light-headed. He put the camera down. He needed to hear what Jim had said.

Beside the camera was Jim's black nylon backpack. Sam unzipped it and rummaged around until he found a set of headphones. He located the audio jack on the side of the camera and plugged them in. When he hit ‘play' and ‘rewind' again he heard the high-pitched squeal of voices. He went back past the scene of Jim's death and caught a few seconds of the two people having sex. Sam drew a deep breath to steady himself as he watched the woman fall limp on the mattress.

‘
Don't stop now, baby
…' Sam heard Jim grasp.

After screaming out his orgasm, Jim seemed to grasp what had happened. ‘
Holy shit!
' Sam saw Jim jump to his feet on the tiny screen, then turn and say: ‘
You?
'

Sam heard an English-accented voice, delivering a final insult before a silenced pistol coughed twice. Sam couldn't see the man who had uttered the words, but he recognised immediately who it was. ‘Steele,' he said out loud.

‘Very clever, Sam.' Sam turned to look at the doorway. ‘Silly of me not to check the camera.'

Chipchase was panting by the time they made it back to the construction site's administrative compound. Twice they'd had to lie low in the bush as a Namibian Defence Force Land Rover and a BTR 60 armoured car had raced past on their way to the gate. Sonja kept the pistol pressed to his ribs to make sure he didn't try and alert the soldiers.

‘I can't believe Steele would have had you killed,' Chipchase said between ragged breaths. ‘What's going on between you two?'

‘I wish I knew,' Sonja said. An innocent man and woman had been gunned down because the security guards at the gate had mistaken them for Sonja and Gideon. ‘I didn't think he was going to kill them. I thought the idea would have been to arrest them – us.'

‘So Steele's working for GrowPower – for Schwarz – not the Caprivians.'

Sonja knelt in the moon shadow of the site office, catching her own breath while the Irishman wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve. ‘Yes. There was something about Schwarz's recorded message in the presentation that didn't sound right and I couldn't quite put my finger on it until I spoke to my father.'

Chipchase nodded. ‘Steele told Schwarz that you were going to the dam site on a secret reconnaissance mission, using the American film crew as cover.'

‘Yes.' It was Schwarz's reference to
ladies
and gentlemen in his recorded message to them during Selma's briefing that had been
the clue she had subconsciously picked up. ‘Schwarz knew I was going to the dam, but no one else on site – not even Roberts, the construction foreman – was expecting me. Schwarz changed his message to include me, as well as Cheryl-Ann in his opening remarks. He was a victim of his own obsession with getting his presentations correct. He knew there would be two women in the audience at the briefing, but no one else did. Even the smartest criminals make mistakes.'

‘Well he'll be in big trouble now – from both the Namibian and the German governments for ordering the killing of innocent civilians. He's overstepped the mark this time.'

‘I'm not so sure,' Sonja said.

‘What do you mean?'

‘If it'd been Gideon and me in that ambulance then Schwarz and the Namibian government would have had the world's media there tomorrow. They would have been able to show the bodies of a mercenary and a Caprivian rebel. My guess now is the wreckage of that mobile clinic and those two bodies are going to disappear very quickly.'

‘You could testify, and—' Chipchase said.

Her look silenced him. ‘Who do you work for, Sydney? The Namibian government?'

‘I told you. I'm a missionary.'

‘Bullshit. I thought for a while that maybe you worked for GrowPower, but you wouldn't have let me witness the killing of the nurse and the driver if you were secretly in cahoots with Steele. You didn't know about any of it, did you?'

He stared at her, but she knew she was right.

‘I give you my word, Schwarz and GrowPower – and Steele – will pay for the murder of that young woman.'

Sonja started nodding. ‘Not the black African driver? The German government doesn't care about him, does it?'

Chipchase was silent again, but she'd worked it out. ‘If you didn't work for the Namibians, which was unlikely in any case, and you weren't employed by GrowPower, then who else has an interest in everything that goes on in Namibia? The Germans, of course. I understand now. I'm sure you had an arrangement with Schwarz and the Namibians, though. What did you do, Sydney … have little meetings every now and then?'

His eyes betrayed him as he looked away from her.

‘It was you who infiltrated the CLA, wasn't it? You were the freelance white mercenary who helped them with their training and then sold them out. Your information allowed the NDF to almost wipe the rebels out, didn't it, Sydney? I bet you set up some innocent Caprivians to take the wrap as spies. Their blood's on your hands … you're no better than Steele and Schwarz.'

‘Don't lump me in the same category as Steele,' Chipchase said. ‘Namibia has friends in Europe and it's in Europe's interest for this part of Africa, at least, to be at peace. This region also needs the water and electricity the dam will bring. GrowPower might be rotten, but that doesn't change the fact that this dam will save lives. We knew you and Steele were active in the area from information MI6 supplied us. No one knew about the Zimbabwe job, but I was ordered to keep tabs on Corporate Solutions. I figured, rightly, that Steele was going to hawk himself – and you – to the CLA. What I didn't know was that he was doublecrossing them and working for Schwarz.'

Sonja stood and looked down at Chipchase, who stayed lying in the grass. ‘Get up, you're coming with me. I've got work to do and you're my insurance policy if we get stopped.'

‘I'm not going anywhere, Sonja, and I'm not going to be a party to the destruction of this dam.'

‘Fine,' she said. ‘Then I'll have to kill you.'

*

‘Strip,' Martin Steele said to Sam.

Sam stood in the hut with the two dead bodies and the man who had killed them. The nine-millimetre Sonja had given him was in the small of his back, in the waistband of his pants, but if he reached for it Steele would shoot him dead. He guessed Steele wanted him naked so it would look like he'd been killed in some sort of ménage à trois with Rickards and the prostitute – perhaps by a jealous boyfriend. ‘You're going to a lot of trouble.'

Steele drew on his cigar, while keeping the pistol pointed at Sam. ‘You're an American TV star. The rest of the world won't give a fuck about what happened to the Caprivi Liberation Army, but this place will probably be swarming with the bloody FBI forty-eight hours after you're gone.'

‘Why should I make killing me any easier for you?'

Steele shifted the aim of the pistol and fired. The report was a silent cough, and Sam flinched. His left arm felt like someone had grabbed the skin near his biceps with a pair of pliers and yanked it back. Other than the immediate sharp sensation there was no pain, but there was blood. He lifted his right hand to the wound and blood pulsed through his fingers. He stared at it.

‘Because if you don't, I'll kill you very, very slowly. The next shot will be in your balls. The twenty-two is a small round, but it's still very deadly. The quickest way for me to kill you is a head shot, but there's nothing to say a jealous lover wouldn't have taken his time with you. Now take your kit off.'

Sam started to sweat and feel unsteady. He licked his lips and glanced down at the wound again, but then looked away. The sight of the blood, as much as the wound, was making him woozy. ‘I … I feel …' He staggered and went down on one knee.

Steele shifted his position. ‘I'm still watching you.'

Sam nodded and moved his hands to his belt buckle. His right
was slippery and sticky with blood, so it wasn't easy. He reached out for support, towards the makeshift bedside table.

‘Steady. Hands where I can see them.'

Sam swayed and nodded. Steele took a step back.

Sam grabbed the lantern, ignoring the burning sting of the glass mantle, and hurled it straight at Steele. The light shattered on the arm that Steele raised instinctively to protect himself. Steele, however, was an SAS officer, trained in close-quarter battle, and his other reflex action was to fire two snap shots at his target.

Rolling away, Sam felt one of the small-calibre bullets snatch at his billowing bush shirt. He wasn't nearly as weak or shock-affected as he had made out. He swung his legs in a wide arc, feet together, and kicked through the flimsy grass and reed wall of the hut. Behind him there was darkness and Steele's cursing. He rolled once more then got to his feet, blindly crashing through jungle outside the back of the hut. His eyes were still partially blinded by the sudden change from the light to dark, but Steele would be suffering the same disability. Sam got to his feet and drew the pistol from his trousers. He pivoted at the waist and fired three shots back in Steele's direction. He doubted he would hit anything, but the thunderous crash of the unsilenced weapon would alert the Caprivian troops waiting at the helipad.