The Delta

by Tony Park

  She bit the inside of her lower lip. Stay on the offensive, she told herself. ‘Sonja. You’re in a bad way. Do you think something’s happened to the rest of your film crew? You said you tried contacting them by sat phone and got nothing. I can’t believe they’d cut off your emergency comms, can you?’ Sonja saw the turmoil behind his eyes.

  ‘I’m worried, yes.’

  ‘Do you want to get back to Xakanaxa Camp, to check on your people, find out what’s happened? Surely they don’t want you going crazy out here for the sake of a TV program?’

  He made a face. ‘Cheryl-Ann – the producer – would say the verdict was out on that one until the ratings came in.’

  She shook her head. ‘It’s up to you. I’ll leave you some biltong and some drinking water if you want to continue your survival program, or you can come with me. I’m going to Xakanaxa.’ She stood and slung her rifle over her shoulder.

  ‘You are? I thought you said you were based here on the hunting concession.’

  She shrugged. ‘I’ve got an old friend there I’ve been meaning to visit for some time. I’m going. Are you coming with or not?’

  He looked around his meagre camp site, and at the useless satellite phone. ‘Let me write a note, in case someone comes looking for me. I’ll leave the tent and stuff here.’

  ‘Good idea. I don’t want to overburden my horse.’

  He chewed biltong as they walked, talking with his mouth full. Like most Americans she’d met he liked the sound of his own voice and talked in complete sentences. She used words like ammunition – sparingly and for effect.

  When they came to the horse she asked him if he wanted to ride for a while. He was still hungry and she didn’t know how fit he was. Heavily muscled soldiers sometimes had the least stamina, in her experience. ‘I’ll walk,’ he said. ‘How’s your leg? Perhaps it would be best if you rode for a while.’

  She shook her head, then slung both their hiking packs over the saddle and set off, leading Black Beauty. Her stride was long and measured and he had to run a little to catch up, before he got into her rhythm.

  ‘How long do you think it will take us to reach Xakanaxa?’

  ‘A day. Day and a half if you keep stopping.’

  He looked sullen, but at least he was quiet for a few minutes.

  ‘Why would anyone need an automatic assault rifle to go hunting?’ he asked, eyeing off her military-style weapon.

  He wasn’t going to shut up. She knew most people liked talking about themselves. She’d acted the part of a journalist to infiltrate a west African country as a member of the advance party of a coup and had been surprised just how easy it was to get people to open up to her. It was generally the ones who protested initially that they didn’t want to be photographed or interviewed who ended up doing most of the talking.

  ‘Tell me more about you,’ she said, not looking back over her shoulder.

  ‘Aw, you don’t want to hear all about me.’

  She knew the modesty was false, so she held her tongue. A trio of scimitar-billed wood hoopoes was laughing and chattering as they tapped away at the bark of a mopane tree. They reminded her of the unceasing chatter of tourists on a game-viewing vehicle. He would talk. Americans loved to talk.

  ‘You really haven’t heard of me, have you?’

  The arrogance of the man was fitting nicely into the stereotype she had conceived for him.

  ‘I’m sorry, that sounded so arrogant, didn’t it? Don’t say anything. Well, about me. About a hundred years ago I was doing my PhD, working in the field in Montana, studying coyotes. The coyotes in the area I was studying had a reputation for killing lambs on sheep farms. We found out that this only happened when the dominant pair of coyotes in the area had produced pups and this overlapped with the lambing season. We figured if we could change their reproductive cycles, by administering or getting them to ingest contraceptives, we could lessen the problem. As part of my research I started working on a system to get the coyote females on the pill.’

  Sonja wasn’t interested at all, but she was prepared to let him talk if it meant he stopped asking her questions.

  ‘They’re incredibly smart animals and not easily fooled or trapped. Did you know, the Native Americans call the coyote the “trickster”? I guess not, huh. A friend of mine, another researcher, trapped one once and as she was getting the animal out of the underground cage she looked around and saw she was being watched by half a dozen other coyotes. The next day she came back to check her traps and saw they’d all been dug up, exposed by the coyotes that had been watching her, with not a single animal trapped. Amazing, huh?’

  Sonja’s eyes never stopped sweeping left and right as they walked. The long, brittle golden grass could easily hide a predator. The M4 was slung loose over her right shoulder, and she held Black Beauty’s reins in her left hand.

  ‘Amazing,’ he repeated. ‘Well, I started leaving out meat – benign baits – and eventually the coyotes realised there was no danger of them being caught or dying and they kept coming and eating. Eventually we dosed them with contraceptive and the problem of sheep attacks dropped off. A local TV station found out about my research from the university’s PR department and ran a story on me. Part of my other research was trapping coyotes – I used to fire a net over them from a helicopter. Pretty exciting stuff. At least, it made for some good TV. They got me to do a lot of talking and I was able to use the program to correct some misconceptions people have about coyotes being scavengers or cold-hearted killers. Wildlife World saw the program and the rest, as they say, is history.’

  Sonja stopped. There wasn’t a breath of wind, but the tips of the grass had just rippled a hundred metres ahead of them. About twice that distance away, off to her right, a herd of about twenty impala was grazing in the open. He stopped behind her and washed down his partly digested biltong with a swig of her water.

  ‘History that has now landed me in this shit,’ he continued with a half-chuckle.

  She raised a hand and he knew better than to keep talking. Sonja pointed to the long grass, where she’d seen the movement. ‘Cheetah,’ she whispered.

  The impala ram barked a short, sharp warning call and the rest of the herd, all of his females, started running. The cheetah showed itself, then shot across the vlei. The cat used its long tail like a rudder as it turned to follow the herd, anticipating the male’s evasive manoeuvre, and gaining on the impalas.

  Sam held his hand to his brow to shade his eyes from the glare of the afternoon sun. ‘They saw him coming a mile off.’

  Sonja nodded. ‘That’s his strategy. Look. One of the impalas is lagging behind the others. That’s what he was waiting for.’

  The cat drew on every reserve of energy as it made straight for the slowest animal in the herd. Long legs stretched and its non-retractable claws dug into the dirt and grass like a sprinter’s running spikes, propelling it forward, a blurred missile of gold and black fur. It reached out and hooked the flagging impala’s rump with a wickedly curved dew claw. The impala stumbled and the pair of them, predator and prey, disappeared in a cloud of grass stalks and dust.

  Sonja handed him the reins of the horse and unslung her rifle. ‘Stay here. Look after her.’

  ‘Excuse me? You’re not going over there, are you?’

  She walked off in the direction where they’d seen the impala brought down.

  ‘Hey! Are you crazy? Sonja! Come back!’

  She strode through the knee-high grass towards the kill. The mournful braying soon stopped as the cheetah clamped its jaws around the impala’s neck. She knew it was killing the impala by suffocation, the same as a leopard would, to stifle the dying noises that might bring lions or hyenas to the carcass. The cheetah was built for speed, not for fighting, and would have no hope defending its prize from a larger predator.

  ‘Hah!’ Sonja waved her hand and the rifle high over her head as she advanced. ‘Hah!’

  ‘Sonja! Come back!’

  The cheetah looked u
p at her, over the red-brown neck of the impala, fixing her with angry red eyes.

  ‘Voetsek!’ She slapped the side of the rifle’s curved magazine with the palm of her free hand. ‘Yah!’

  The cheetah snapped its tail in annoyance and released its jaws from the impala. The impala was dead, and the cheetah was reluctant to surrender its kill to anyone or anything. The cat bared its teeth, then chirped its incongruous birdlike call in annoyance.

  Sonja showed no fear. She had never heard of a cheetah killing an adult human, but she supposed there was always a first time. This was a battle of wills, but the odds were on her side. Nevertheless, her heart was thumping and she yelled again, louder, as she came to within ten metres of the cat. ‘Fight or flight; you choose.’ Her finger slipped through the trigger guard of the M4 and she flipped the safety catch off with her thumb. She didn’t want to shoot, not even to scare the cheetah away, in case she attracted the attention of any trackers out looking for Sam. It would be easier for her to deposit him at Xakanaxa rather than explain her illegal presence in the concession to a stranger. ‘Hah!’

  The cheetah rose and backed away from the kill, annoyance plain in its snarling jaws and glowering eyes.

  ‘Thank you,’ Sonja said. She dropped to one knee and drew her knife. Keeping a close watch on the cheetah she lay her rifle down in the grass next to her, well within reach, and began hacking away at one still-warm leg.

  The horse whinnied behind her and she looked around to see Sam, in the saddle, looking down at her. ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘Keep an eye on him.’ She nodded towards the cheetah as she sawed through sinew and cartilage. ‘There, that should do us nicely for dinner.’ She stood, the severed haunch dripping blood into the grass and her hands smeared red. She wiped the knife on the fur of the dead animal and stepped back. ‘All yours, my friend,’ she said to the cheetah.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything so foolhardy in my life,’ he said from his lofty perch. ‘You could have been killed.’

  She thought about the number of times in her life that she could have – should have – been killed and couldn’t help smiling.

  NINE

  ‘I think fashion and shopping are best left to the ladies. Sabrina, how would you like to take on the role of choosing the colours and lettering for our “demolish the dam” T-shirts?’ Bernard Trench said from the head of the table.

  Stirling glanced at Sabrina Frost and saw the scowl colour her face in the candlelight. Trench had a justifiable reputation for being a lecherous, sexist, chauvinistic bore. He’d told Stirling after the last meeting that he thought Sabrina, a staunch environmentalist and president of the Southern African branch of the international group GreenAction, was a lesbian. Stirling suspected this was based on her rejecting Trench’s ham-fisted advances and her desire to be referred to as Ms rather than Miss in committee meeting minutes. As bedfellows they didn’t come any stranger.

  ‘I didn’t join this committee to be the ladies’ auxiliary or bake cakes or shop for T-shirts, Bernard. But, all right, I suppose I can get one of my volunteers to look into it.’

  The meeting of the Okavango Delta Defence Committee was dragging into its third hour and Stirling knew that Sabrina wasn’t the only one frustrated that the pace and agenda of the meeting reflected perfectly on their campaign against the dam upriver. They had been too slow to action and now they were tinkering at the edges of the issue talking about T-shirts when the dam had already been built. In a way he was pleased Cheryl-Ann wasn’t here to see how fractured and impotent the committee was.

  The Xakanaxa catering and waiting staff had been dismissed and the eighteen lodge owners, managers, consultants and activists pushed aside the remains of their desserts or set down their drinks as Trench cleared his throat. They might not all like him – indeed some, such as Sabrina, probably loathed him – but the sheer physical bulk of him, topped with his massive, bearded, cannonball-bald head commanded attention, if not respect. Trench was a florid-faced Englishman who spent half the year on his wildlife properties dotted across southern Africa and half in the Cayman Islands tending to his offshore investments. His passion for young African women was surpassed only by his zeal for the conservation of Africa’s wildlife. Rumour had it that no fewer than four of his female staff at Hippo Island, his luxury lodge in the Moremi Game Reserve, had been paid to drop sexual harassment charges.

  ‘Item thirteen,’ Trench put down his agenda and raised a hand to his mouth in a failed attempt to muffle a burp, ‘public relations and lobbying. I’ll now hand you over to Sheldon, our PR expert from Johannesburg. Sheldon?’

  Stirling felt for the young man with the steel-rimmed glasses and pallid complexion. Stirling had offered to take the consultant out on a game drive that afternoon – he’d wanted a bit of time in the bush to get his own head in order before the meeting – but Sheldon had complained of a headache, brought on, he said, by the heat. Stirling had made him drink a litre of water, but he’d still spent the afternoon in his tent.

  ‘Thank you, Bernard.’ Sheldon opened a folder in front of him and paused to swat away a moth with his linen serviette. ‘We still have a number of avenues to approach in our lobbying of the Namibian government and the United Nations—’

  Trench smacked the table with an open palm. ‘Enough of the spin, Sheldon. Facts. Give us the facts. What was the outcome of the meeting at the UN?’

  Trench knew the answer, as did the rest of them, but he wasn’t going to let Sheldon off the hook.

  ‘As you may have seen on the news last week, the Namibian government delivered a very emotive and very slick presentation to the UN’s environmental commission—’

  ‘Their PR company did a better job than ours,’ said Jan Nel, the Afrikaner manager of another lodge. His sun-and tobacco-weathered face showed no sympathy for the city boy. ‘Himba babies with distended bellies … pah! It’s their own damn fault half their people are starving, not the weather’s.’

  Sheldon grasped for a lifeline. ‘We know that the Namibian government spent a small fortune hiring one of New York’s best PR companies.’

  ‘You want more money, Sheldon?’ Trench interrupted. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Sheldon opened his mouth to speak, but Trench silenced him with a wave of his stubby fingers. ‘Thank you. There will be no more money for PowerPoint presentations and taking politicians to dinner in New York, Sheldon.’ He looked at the faces around the table. ‘The world sees this issue – thanks to the Namibians’ fast-talking spin doctors – as about people versus animals. We know,’ he looked up and down the table, ‘that lodges such as ours and local businesses that serve us employ thousands of Africans who might otherwise starve. But we’re fighting a losing battle trying to convince people half a world away that saving animals and the environment is also about protecting people.’

  Stirling nodded, but like the rest of them around the table he’d seen and heard it all before. He also had other things to worry about, such as the still-missing American TV star and the injured and impatient film crew who were due back at Xakanaxa tomorrow, with a replacement cameraman. A search aircraft had spotted Sam Chapman’s tent in the bush but the ground party the pilot directed to the site had found that the American had left. I’m doing fine and walking to Xakanaxa Camp. I have a guide with me who knows the area, Chapman had written in a note, which had been relayed by satellite phone to Stirling by the searchers. Chapman had also left an estimated time of arrival – this evening or tomorrow morning, but Stirling cursed the American’s stupidity. As a so-called survival ‘expert’ he should have known the best thing to do was to stay at his camp. Stirling wanted to get this meeting over with and as secretary of the committee he needed to ensure they stuck to their agenda. Bernard had another consultant to introduce later, an Englishman by the name of Martin Steele, who sat quietly at the far end of the table.

  ‘Bernard, excuse me,’ Stirling said, tapping his printout of the agenda. ‘Perhaps we could hear Sabrina’s rep
ort now.’

  Trench exhaled and Stirling could smell the wine two places away down the table. ‘Good idea.’

  Sabrina Frost was a few years older than Stirling, somewhere in her mid-forties, with steel grey hair cut short. She wore jeans and a black T-shirt. No makeup and no jewellery, save for three piercings in her right ear. She was tall, nearly six foot, and she towered over the portly Trench. He could see why some men might think she was gay, but Sabrina always sat next to him at the meetings and somehow her left leg always seemed to end up touching his right. It could have been that she was unaware she was invading his space, or that he was reading too much into the gesture, but Stirling didn’t think she was a lesbian at all. Perhaps bi.

  ‘We’ve got the report from our environmental consultants and there’s some interesting stuff in it,’ she said. Trench stifled a yawn, but Sabrina ignored him. ‘The agronomist – that’s a soil doctor, Bernard,’ there were laughs around the table, ‘makes a compelling case in relation to siltation.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ Trench said.

  ‘It is. As well as depriving the delta’s ecosystem of water, the dam’s also going to prevent the carriage of silt from the upper reaches of the Kabango in Angola into Botswana. The silt carried by the Okavango is important for the support not only of indigenous plants and grasses, but also for farming on the Botswana side of the border. The report also concludes that so much silt is carried by the river that the dam will eventually fill up with it and become useless.’

  ‘How long would it take for that to happen?’ Stirling asked

  Sabrina looked at him, then at her notes and shrugged. ‘Thirty years? Fifty? By then Moremi and the rest of the Okavango Delta will be nothing but Kalahari sand and animal bones.’

  ‘It does give us some new ammunition, though,’ Sheldon in terrupted.