An Empty Coast

by Tony Park

  Sonja was taking a turn driving and she pulled over and climbed into the rear compartment. Natangwe was barely conscious.

  ‘This is the second dressing,’ Alex said, pointing to the blood-soaked pad on Natangwe’s thigh. ‘We’re keeping pressure on the artery, but the blood keeps flowing. I think it’s getting worse.’

  ‘Emma, do you have any tampons?’ Sonja asked.

  ‘No, mum, not on me.’

  ‘Tea bags,’ Sonja said. ‘Alex, search the cupboards.’

  Sonja kept pressure on the sopping dressing while Alex ransacked the internal storage cabinets.

  ‘Got some,’ he said, shaking out the contents of a packet.

  Sonja lifted the pad and packed the wound with half a dozen teabags. ‘These act as a mild coagulant, and absorb plenty of blood. Fresh dressing.’

  Emma passed her another and Sonja tied it in place. The dressing stayed dry, for now, but Natangwe’s eyes were closed.

  Sonja slapped Natangwe’s face. ‘Natangwe? Natangwe, can you hear me?’ Alex and Emma were right, he was slipping away. ‘We’ve slowed the bleeding but he’s lost too much. He needs saline, something to keep his fluid volume up, otherwise he’s not going to make it.’ It was time to stop pretending otherwise.

  ‘Take some of my blood, give him a transfusion,’ Alex said.

  Sonja did a mental inventory of the medical supplies they had on them and had inherited from the owners of the campervan. ‘I don’t have anything to collect the blood in. Besides, you might be different blood types; you could kill him if you’re not matched correctly, and he’s not capable of telling us his blood type, even if he knows what it is.’

  ‘I’m O negative,’ Alex said.

  Sonja nodded. ‘Universal donor. You can give your blood to anyone.’ She ran a hand through her hair. ‘The only thing we can do is set up a patient to patient donation. Tell me, Alex, honestly, have you been tested for HIV-AIDS? Hepatitis?’

  Alex nodded. ‘I have been. I am clear.’

  Emma put a hand on his arm and looked to Sonja. ‘Is it safe, Mum?’

  Alex took Emma’s hand. ‘Natangwe put himself between you and Sebastian. He took a bullet for us, Emma. He was ready to die for you and me, so this is the least I can do for him. If it buys him a couple more hours until we can get to a doctor, then it is worth trying.’

  ‘Emma, help me,’ Sonja said. ‘Get some sterile wipes and clean their arms – Alex’s wrist, where his artery is, and Natangwe’s elbow, where I’ll find a vein.’ Sonja rummaged through the well-stocked first-aid kit and found two IV lines. It was a shame the German couple hadn’t packed saline solution as well. However, she could rig something up. She snipped the cannula from one of the tubes and was able to attach it to the end of the other line and fasten it in place with tape. The line was just long enough to connect Alex’s left arm, if he was lying on one bunk, to Natangwe’s right.

  Brand had caught up to her and stopped his vehicle. He climbed up into the cab. ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘Only just. Alex is giving Natangwe a transfusion; without it I think Natangwe might not make it.’

  Brand looked at the two men, the line between them, and the bloodied rubber gloves Sonja was now snapping off. ‘Gutsy move all round, but we still need to get him to the doctor.’

  ‘Brand, can you ride with me?’ Sonja asked.

  He nodded. ‘Matthew should be OK for a while.’

  Brand climbed aboard the Unimog and they set off again with Sonja driving as fast as she dared given the delicate situation in the back. The two men were OK, she told herself, as long as neither one of them rolled out of his bunk, and Emma was sitting on a cushion on the floor between them, reassuring them both. Sonja glanced at her daughter, whose head was still bandaged, and saw the way Emma stroked Alex’s brow while still being positive and tender with Natangwe. She was so proud of Emma, and so angry that greedy men had put her only child’s life at risk. She shivered when she thought of how close she had been to losing her. If the bullet fired by Sebastian had been a fraction of an inch closer to the mark, Emma would have been dead.

  ‘You OK?’ Brand asked her from the passenger seat.

  ‘Just thinking about Emma.’

  Brand glanced over his shoulder. ‘Great kid. You should be proud.’

  ‘I can’t take much of the credit. My mother and an expensive boarding school raised her. I was lucky to see her even during the holidays, and when I did she didn’t want to know me.’

  ‘Just a teenage thing, I guess. You seem to have made up for it.’

  Sonja sighed. ‘I hope so, Hudson.’

  He did a double take, theatrically turning his head from the dry, alternately rocky and sandy bed of the Hoanib, to face her. ‘What?’

  ‘What do you mean, “what”?’

  ‘Did I just hear incorrectly, or did you call me by my first name?’

  ‘It won’t happen again.’

  ‘I kind of liked it.’ Hudson paused. ‘Did you want to talk about the other night, or should we discuss strategy?’

  Sonja knew he was making fun of her. ‘God, was it only two nights ago?’ She had been running on adrenaline, and their lovemaking at Namutoni, while still vivid in her mind, seemed like an age ago.

  ‘I had a good time, did you?’ Hudson said.

  ‘That’s not the point.’ She slowed to take a bend, gearing down, trying to make the turn as gentle as possible on the young men behind her. Sonja glanced back into the cabin again. If Emma could hear their conversation she gave no sign. She seemed totally besotted with Alex. Sonja wondered if they were in love.

  ‘What happened, happened, Brand.’

  ‘We’re back to Brand again, I see.’

  ‘The way it should be.’

  Sonja brushed a strand of hair from her face. ‘I can’t get involved with another man. Not now. Maybe not ever again.’

  ‘Because of Sam?’

  She looked at him. ‘Because of my fucking life. Look at us. Someone tried to kill my daughter, kill us. I’m a magnet for this kind of shit.’

  ‘I’m not looking for a wife, Sonja. I’ve got too much baggage of my own.’

  Sonja stared out the windscreen again as she drove, deliberately not looking at him. ‘I think the best times of my life were when I had no baggage, just a backpack.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ he said.

  She glanced at him again. Who was he to tell her what was right or not right in her life? ‘How would you know?’

  Brand gestured to the back with a flick of his head. ‘What about her?’

  ‘She’s not baggage, she’s my daughter. She’s growing up – grown up. Soon she won’t need me at all.’

  Brand took up his AK-47 and unloaded it, removing the magazine and working the cocking handle to eject the chambered round, which he deftly caught with his free hand. Sonja could do that trick. ‘Come see me in South Africa, when this is all done.’

  They’d be lucky to survive. They had two wounded and a truck full of rhino horn, and the people after them didn’t leave witnesses. Sonja wasn’t scared of a fight – she was only concerned for Emma’s safety – but she realised she was worried about what might happen if they did survive and Hudson Brand came courting, or whatever it was Americans called it. ‘I don’t think so.’

  *

  Green reeds in the bed of the Hoanib told Brand there was still water there, not far beneath the surface, and just before they came to the turnoff to Wilfriedstein they started coming across shallow pools. They also saw a desert elephant munching contentedly on the riverine vegetation.

  Time was of the essence but even Sonja couldn’t avoid instinctively slowing to a crawl as they passed the great creature, whose body, white with desert dust, was splotched black here and there where he had been cooling himself, hosing himself down with water.

 
Alex was sitting up. He smiled at the sight of the desert elephant. His face was pale from the loss of the blood he’d donated to Natangwe, but the other man looked better now. Alex had a bandage around his arm.

  Wilfriedstein revealed itself anticlimactically. A herd of goats, tended by a young boy, and a few straggling cattle told Brand they were getting closer to habitation. They had left the bed of the tributary and were on a rough dirt road.

  The town itself was one street, dusty and listless in the midday heat. Sonja barrelled past the modest collection of shops – a general dealer, a Chinese trader’s shop selling cheap consumer goods, a shebeen and a pharmacy. At the town’s limit, past a mechanic’s shop where men worked on a couple of cars outside a mud hut, she executed a U-turn and stopped at the stores. The other vehicles followed and pulled over. Sonja told Emma to go to the pharmacy and buy whatever bandages and dressings they had, as well as packets of painkillers. ‘And find out where the local doctor is.’

  Brand got down from the Unimog and headed for the shebeen.

  ‘A little early for celebrating?’ Sonja called to him.

  ‘Whiskey, for anaesthetic, surgery, molotovs.’

  ‘Roger that,’ she said to him.

  ‘And I’m going to the cops,’ Brand said.

  ‘OK. You’re on your own then. Do me a favour, don’t mention me.’

  Brand went to the small police station and found the door locked. A man with several layers of filthy tattered clothes and bloodshot eyes, presumably homeless, sat on an upturned dustbin. ‘No police,’ he said.

  ‘Where have they gone?’ Brand asked.

  ‘Bus crash,’ the man replied.

  With the shopping finished and no prospect of immediate help or sanctuary from the law they turned back to the other side of town and the side street that led to the town’s sole filling station and the castle beyond. ‘Emma checked on the doctor – he’s out of town, not due back until tomorrow,’ Sonja reported.

  Brand thought about that. Natangwe needed help. ‘So we refuel and keep going, maybe north to Opuwo – they’ll have a clinic there – or we stay here and call in an aerial medical evacuation.’

  Sonja nodded, weighing up the pros and cons as they pulled up next to the single island of fuel pumps shaded by a small tin roof. A woman sitting in the shade of a square mud-brick building across the road held up her hands and shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘No fuel?’ Brand called.

  ‘No electricity,’ she replied.

  ‘They can’t run the pumps. Shit,’ Brand said.

  ‘I think that solves our dilemma,’ Sonja said. ‘We stay here, make a stand, and call for a casevac for Natangwe.’

  ‘The castle’s just up the road,’ Brand said.

  He’d been here once before and Schloss Hähner, for all its quirkiness, still had the look of an oasis in the desert, right down to the towering palm trees and manicured emerald lawns at the gate. They parked and an African man in white shirt and dark trousers came up to them.

  ‘I am very sorry,’ he said after they had exchanged greetings.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Brand asked.

  ‘We are closed for the next two days. We have no water. There is a problem with the mains, and as you may have heard at the filling station, there is no electricity. We have a generator, but we are out of diesel . . .’

  ‘And you can’t refill because the filling station is closed because there’s no electricity.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said the doorman with a smile.

  ‘We need a phone, urgently,’ Brand said. ‘We have a man who has been wounded and needs aerial evacuation.’

  The smile left the man’s face. ‘I am sorry. We have no landline. We rely on cellular phones here, but we need a booster to get signal. I am afraid the booster is not working . . .’

  ‘Because there’s no electricity. Shit.’

  ‘We can’t keep running and at least Natangwe’s stable – for now,’ Sonja said.

  Brand looked at Sonja. ‘I vote we stay here at the castle. We can take one of Stirling’s jerry cans of diesel and get the generator running.’

  Sonja nodded. ‘Good place for a last stand.’ She took the doorman aside and explained to him that despite the lack of water and electricity they still wanted to stay the night. When the man tried to politely decline her request, twice, Brand heard Sonja raise her voice. In the end, he complied.

  Sutton and Stirling arrived, followed by Matthew, who was bringing up the rear alone in the Hilux. ‘You know there’s no fuel at the filling station. I can’t go on.’

  ‘We know,’ Brand said. ‘We’ll park the vehicles in the courtyard and entryway to the castle. We need to block that entrance.’

  Emma, Alex and Dorset lifted Natangwe down from the Unimog and carried him inside the hotel. Stirling reversed his Amarok as far into the courtyard as he could, and Brand backed the Unimog in until its rear bumper was almost touching the Amarok’s front. Matthew was able to park the Hilux halfway under the castle’s ornate arched entryway.

  Brand collected the rest of their arsenal and marched inside the B&B, ignoring the protests of the doorman. He found a staircase that led to the roof and walked up, the doorman in tow.

  ‘Really, sir, I’m concerned by all these firearms, and . . .’

  Brand put the rifles down, along with a rucksack full of spare ammunition. ‘Look, what’s your name?’

  ‘Isaac.’

  ‘Listen, Isaac, I suggest you and whatever staff are here take the rest of the day off. We’ve got some people coming to visit us and they’re not exactly going to be the most polite guests of all time.’

  Isaac looked down at the pile of rifles and swallowed hard. ‘It is my duty to stay here and care for the hotel, even though we are empty. I will, however, tell the non-essential staff that you will not be needing them today. What about dinner?’

  Brand could tell Isaac still wasn’t getting it. ‘We might not be alive in time for dinner.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Go, Isaac.’

  ‘I must stay.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’

  Brand stuffed as many banana-shaped thirty-round magazines in his cargo pants pockets as he could. He tucked in his bush shirt and dropped another two down the front. He left a spare AK and a pile of three magazines on the roof and took the other two rifles downstairs.

  First he went to Stirling and handed him a rifle. ‘You good with this?’

  Stirling stared at the AK-47, rotating it in his hands, a pained expression on his face. At last he looked up at Brand and met his eyes. ‘I’ve never killed a man, but yes.’

  ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.’ He handed Stirling three loaded magazines.

  Alex and Emma had put Natangwe on a leather lounge in the bar and dining room area. Brand went to him and gave him the nine-millimetre pistol. ‘You know how to use this, son?’

  Natangwe blinked at him. ‘Sort of.’

  ‘I’ll show him,’ Emma said. ‘Mum taught me.’

  Brand had seen Emma’s handiwork, the legacy of her mother’s training. He handed Alex an AK-47 and fished four magazines from the backpack. ‘You know how to use a rifle?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Alex said.

  Brand gave the remaining rifle and half the spare ammunition to Emma, and handed Matthew some more magazines. ‘This,’ he said, waving the end of the barrel of his own rifle around the room they were in, ‘is our last point of defence. Matthew, Alex, I want you two on the roof with me. Professor Sutton, have you had military service?’

  ‘Before these young people were born, but yes.’

  ‘Good,’ Brand said. ‘There’s an AK and ammo for you on the roof as well. Emma, you stay here and look after Natangwe.’

  ‘No way,’ Emma said, her voice rising. ‘I’m not a bloody nurse. You need me up on the
roof, with you. I’m probably a better shot than any of you.’

  Brand squared up to her, noting that Emma had the same forged steel look in her eyes as her mother, not to mention her beauty. ‘I saw what you did back at the crash site. You don’t have to convince me you can shoot.’

  ‘Then why leave me down here, out of the action?’

  It irked Brand to have to explain himself. Of everyone present only Sonja could match him on combat experience; he knew what he was doing. And he now cared for Sonja, so he cared for her daughter as well – though he couldn’t tell the girl that. ‘We need someone, a shooter, in reserve. If we lose a man up top, or the enemy masses on one part of the fort, I need a firefighter to hose that hotspot down. I figured it’d be a tie between you and Alex as to who could move the fastest, but I know you’re a good shot. Plus, you got a good man down, here in the bar, and the way I hear it he took a bullet for you. I’d say that means you owe him some watching over.’

  She looked to Natangwe, who rested with his eyes closed, then back to Brand. ‘But –’

  ‘But nothing, Emma,’ Sonja said. ‘Hudson is correct. You are our strategic reserve. Alex?’

  ‘Yes, Frau Kurtz?’

  ‘I’m not a Frau. Check the kitchens and talk to Isaac. Find us some food while we still have time. Tell Isaac I’ll pay.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Emma, go help him,’ Sonja added.

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  Brand gestured with a flick of his head for Sonja to join him outside in the bright sunlight of the courtyard. It was a nice hotel, and he hoped it stayed that way. ‘When the bad guys come, you’re in charge, here at the castle.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she asked him.

  ‘I mean that whether they come on wheels or by chopper they’re either going to come down that road,’ he pointed towards the small fuel station, ‘or land on the road to get here. I’m going to be there to try to stop them.’

  Sonja shook her head. ‘I’d already thought of that. I’m going to be outside the castle.’

  ‘Your place is inside, with your daughter.’

  She put her hands on her hips. ‘I don’t have a fucking place, mister. The best way I can protect my daughter is to kill as many of these bastards as I can before they get to you and your ragtag army.’