The Delta

by Tony Park

  He ran a tongue over his lips. ‘No, Sonja,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t have anything in common with you, other than the fact that I passed on to you the ability to shoot well and kill well. To tell you the truth, I’m glad that I was too drunk and too stupid at the time to find work as a mercenary, because it would have been wrong.’

  She leaned back from him, as if trying to readjust her focal length to get a clearer picture of his face. ‘Wrong?’

  ‘Yes, wrong. I know you don’t care what I say to you, and you’re a hundred per cent correct that I forfeited my right to give you parental advice a long time ago, but just let me say two things to you before you leave this place. First, I love you, Sonja …’

  ‘Stop.’ She held up a hand. ‘I don’t care.’

  He grabbed her wrist, though not painfully. ‘I love you, Sonja, and have since the day you were born. The second thing I want to tell you is to give up this life. It doesn’t matter what else you do or even if you’re no good at anything else in your life, but you cannot take money from a man like Martin Steele to fight other people’s wars.’

  She laughed at the absurdity of this man lecturing her on morals.

  He let go of her and held up his hands to still her. ‘You are being paid to wage war on a democratically elected government in a peaceful African nation, and to destroy a vital piece of infrastructure that will provide water and electricity for hundreds of thousands of people who need both. What you are doing is criminal and it is wrong, Sonja.’

  ‘I …’ She searched for the words but again he was stealing them from her, and she hated him for it. She was not a child. ‘What do you think you’re doing, then?’

  ‘I am helping a people – my people, as it now happens – to reclaim custody of a piece of land that has been in their care for generations. The Lozi have nothing in common with the Ovambo or the rest of the peoples of Namibia. They were a proud, independent nation, Linyanti, before the whites even came to this part of Africa. Ethnically, linguistically, culturally, they are and deserve to be a nation of their own once again.’

  ‘Pah!’

  ‘Don’t scoff. These people took me in when my own had abandoned me. I am one of them now.’ He grabbed her arm again. ‘This is my chance to make things right, Sonja. You do not belong here and, quite frankly, now that we have the guns and the air support that the money from the lodge owners in the delta are paying for, we do not need any more white mercenaries here to tell us what to do and how to fight.’

  His eyes were burning with the searing, white-hot intensity and destructiveness of a zealot, or a madman.

  No, she told herself as he stood there, still holding her, letting his words sink in. Not mad, just a believer. She knew which was worse – she’d seen the charred remains of the work of believers on the streets of Baghdad.

  ‘You’re fighting for money, Sonja, and it’s not a good enough reason to kill for or to risk your life for, or to risk your child’s happiness over. Go to her, Sonja. Leave this place now. Steele and the people who work for him are like hyenas, scavenging and growing fat on death.’

  God, she was so confused all of a sudden. She had been on her way to the mekoro, to get her things and paddle herself away from this swamp. The man she had despised for so many years had just compared her to a hyena. She shook her head and almost smiled at his analogy. As well as being scavengers, hyenas were also ruthlessly efficient hunters and killers, and the females ruled the clan.

  ‘Sonja,’ he said, looking deep into her eyes, ‘this isn’t an exercise in reverse psychology. I’m not telling you to go, and that your work is wrong because I want to goad you into staying and proving a point. I know you; you’re like your mother. You’re stubborn and if someone tells you not to do something it just makes you want to do it even more.’

  Damn him, she thought.

  ‘There’s something else.’ He lowered his voice. ‘The general likes Steele and he likes the idea of professional, paid soldiers training his men and going into battle with them. It’s part of the reason why I’m here. However, the general is mad.’

  Sonja snorted.

  He moved closer to her. ‘I’m not mad, despite what you might think. But listen, we don’t need any more mercenaries here. The head of the Okavango Delta Defence Committee, Bernard Trench, has been bankrolling us for months, but I don’t need Steele to tell me how to win in Caprivi.’

  ‘Well, it looks like you’re saddled with him anyway. Trench might be supporting your plan for regime change, but what he and his kind really want is for the dam to be destroyed.’

  Hans nodded. ‘I know. Apparently Steele is providing a team of specialists to blow the dam. We’ve been tasked to arrange covert transport to the dam site for them. The rest of us will … well, we have other targets in mind.’

  She respected the fact that he wasn’t telling her what those targets were, for security reasons. However, she knew from Steele’s concept of operations that he had presented to the safari lodge owners that the CLA would try and take Katima Mulilo, and probably the military and civilian airstrip at M’pacha, an old South African military airbase near the provincial capital.

  ‘That team would be me,’ Sonja said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m the “team of specialists”.’

  ‘Jissus,’ Hans said, running his bony hand through his thinning hair. ‘How much are you getting paid?’

  She smiled at his tone, then became serious again. She didn’t like the way the conversation had turned into precisely that – a conversation. They’d had their confrontation and now they were talking like a couple of professional soldiers about the pros and the cons of the plans they had either made or had forced upon them by their superiors. This was wrong, she told herself. They were not army buddies and, as far as she was concerned, they were no longer father and daughter. ‘I’m getting paid enough to ensure my daughter and I can see out the rest of our lives in peace and anonymity.’

  He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. ‘Money won’t buy you peace, Sonja, any more than it will buy you love or happiness. Go now and make a new life for yourself and your child.’

  He made it easy to stay angry at him. ‘Don’t tell me what to do. You forfeited that right, remember?’

  He nodded, then put his glasses back on. ‘But don’t kid yourself that what Steele is doing is right because it’s supposedly about striking a blow for the environment. Money’s the only thing that matters to that man. Myself, I think we should capture the dam intact and hold it, along with the rest of the Caprivi Strip. If we can hold the Caprivi for long enough to start negotiating with the Namibian government we can use the dam and the hydro-electric plant as bargaining chips.’

  ‘But Steele’s contract is based on the dam being destroyed. He’s only using your liberation movement to provide the manpower to make this operation a success.’

  Hans pulled out the last cigarette and inspected it. It was broken. He looked disappointed. ‘Using us as a diversion, more like it. He’s hoping that when we attack Katima Mulilo and the NDF is in chaos, trying to reinforce its garrison there, his “specialist team” will be able to infiltrate the dam’s perimeter and blow it up. That’s the price we have to pay for the arms, ammo and air support he’s providing.’ He screwed up the cigarette and threw it away. ‘You should leave, Sonja. This is the CLA’s last roll of the dice and it’s going to be bloody. I don’t want this granddaughter I’ve never met to be left without a mom. People are going to get killed.’

  She was still mad at him, and his show of concern for her welfare. She saw that the colour of his shaking fingers matched the beard around his mouth and imagined nicotine was the only drug left for him. Sonja pulled the cigarettes from her shorts and offered him the pack.

  His eyes brightened. ‘Newbury, from Zimbabwe?’ He took one and lit it, pausing to greedily inhale, then spat some flecks of tobacco from his tongue. ‘These things will kill you.’

  ‘You should tell that
to the guy I took them off.’

  The smell of it made her want one and she was angry at herself for starting again. She pulled one from the pack with her lips and he raised his lighter. She had to lean close to him. Damn him, she thought. She nodded as she took her first drag.

  ‘I heard you had some trouble at Divundu,’ he exhaled. ‘The general said that according to police radio chatter there were three Zimbabweans braaied in a Hilux not far from the dam. Did you kill them?’

  She saw the purple grime under her fingernails as she brought the cigarette to her lips. Lady Macbeth had it right. ‘Yes.’

  ‘How many men have you killed over the years, Sonja?’

  It was the question everyone wanted to ask, but very few people dared. ‘More than most people; not as many as you. You taught me well.’

  He’d finished his cigarette already and he pinched off the end and put the butt in his pocket, in the way that old soldiers do, not wanting to leave anything behind for the enemy to track them by. Her left hand went to her pocket and she felt the three stompies in there. Curse him for coming back into her life; for never leaving it.

  ‘Yes, I did, and may God forgive me.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  Sam’s back and arm muscles were burning and he was light-headed. He couldn’t lie back in the canoe; every time he tried, the guy using the pole or paddle or whatever behind him would kick him viciously between the shoulder blades. The more he sweated into the hessian hood over his head, the more humid and cloying the limited air available to him became. He felt like he was choking on his own breath.

  He’d been wearing a tank top and shorts when they’d dragged him and Jim at gunpoint from the rented Nissan Patrol they had taken from Bagani airstrip, and he could almost hear the exposed skin on his legs, arms and shoulders crackling under the sun’s heat as he roasted. Jesus, he could have been sipping a chilled beer by the pool in the Windhoek Country Club by now, instead of wondering how soon it would be before he died.

  No. If they had wanted to kill him and Rickards they would have done it by now. He shifted his butt a little. That ached as well. The man behind him gave him a kick for good measure and said, ‘Still.’

  His wrists were bound together behind him with plastic cable ties, and though he could still wiggle his fingers they felt cold against each other now. His shoulder muscles cried at being pulled back at such an unnatural angle and every now and then streaks of pain shot up the insides of his thighs.

  Rickards’s idea not to catch the flight to Windhoek with Cheryl-Ann and Gerry, but to go looking for Sonja instead, had been crazy. Oddly, though, Sam hadn’t needed much convincing.

  ‘I’m a freelancer, Samuel,’ Rickards had told him as they stood by the open door of the GrowPower private aircraft. ‘I go where the news is. And that chick,’ he jabbed his thumb towards the dust cloud Sonja left in her wake, ‘is news with a big N.’

  ‘What about Cheryl-Ann?’ Sam said.

  ‘Step away from the camera bags, dude,’ Rickards said to the pilot, who was plainly getting impatient to leave Bagani. ‘Cheryl-Ann’s fucked, mate. She’s busted her last ball. I’ve seen it happen before. Sometimes it’s the toughest, cockiest journos who cry for mummy and make small potty in their pants when the bullets start flying. I’m a news cameraman. I’ve seen stuff that would make a mortician puke, and I know there’s trouble brewing here in paradise. Also, now that your producer’s on her way to the laughing academy, that’s the end of your documentary. It’s OK for you – you’ve still got a contract with Wildlife World – but my gig just ended and I probably won’t see a cent.’

  A mange-ridden donkey nosed inside a discarded plastic shopping bag full of rubbish that had been deposited by the last occupant of one of the Nissan rental trucks. Sam rubbed his jaw. ‘I don’t know.’

  Rickards walked over to the vehicles and Sam followed, reluctantly. Jim checked the windscreen of the nearest Nissan, which was parked near the tin-roofed structure that served as the airstrip’s terminal and office. The cars had presumably been dropped at the airstrip by GrowPower employees or contractors and the vehicles were awaiting collection by the car rental company whose name and number were on a sticker on the windscreen. It wasn’t a big-name firm, which made it more likely, he reckoned, that they would do a deal over the phone if Sam gave them his Wildlife World expense account credit card details. ‘Are you with me, compadre? Think of the exposure, Sam. With your words and my beautiful pictures we might be able to come up with something that’ll take you off cable and onto the networks. You could be rich and famous, Sam.’

  ‘I’m not interested in fame or money.’

  ‘Yeah, right. Spoken like a true TV celebrity. Once more with feeling, dude. Listen to me, Sam. If not for fame or cash, then do it for the only real reason that counts in this godforsaken world of ours, my man.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You want to have sex with Sonja.’

  ‘I do not.’

  His case mounted, Rickards stood there in the dust, leaning against the Nissan, in silence.

  ‘Give me the number,’ Sam had said.

  The company had agreed to let Sam take the car, but only after he’d explained who he was. The consultant from the rental firm was a big fan of Sam and Wildlife World, but her boss insisted on an astronomical deposit and a promise they would drive straight to Katima Mulilo and the company’s nearest branch office to fill out the paperwork, before revealing that the quantity surveyors who usually hired the vehicle had hidden the keys in the tail pipe.

  Sonja had a good hour’s lead on them and Sam and Jim had no idea how far she would drive before stopping, or where she would stay. Come to think of it, Sam had no idea what he would say to her when he did catch her. He guessed her reply would be short and to the point – probably no more than two words and one would be a cuss.

  So why had he done it? Maybe Jim was right about him wanting to sleep with her. He wasn’t so sure that Sonja was involved in some mercenary plot to foment war in the region, but Rickards was.

  ‘Corporate Solutions, man,’ he said as Sam floored the accelerator and raced through the gears. ‘They’re mercenaries. I bet all that shit that guy Steele laid on about her coming along to protect us was just a cover. Were you watching her at the dam?’

  Sam admitted he hadn’t been. Well, no more than usual.

  ‘She was scoping the place out, big time. When we were checking in she was practically counting the cameras and the guards. She was casing the place.’

  ‘Professional curiosity?’ Sam ventured.

  ‘Whatever. And let’s not forget the three African gentlemen in the shiny black ute who tried to whack us. Or have they slipped your mind already?’

  Sam knew he would see the face of the man he had killed for the rest of his life.

  ‘Nope, she’s up to something, my friend. And she owes it to us to tell us what it is, seeing as she very bloody nearly got us killed.’

  At the first roadblock, at the junction of the B8, the policeman on duty told Sam that the white woman in the Land Rover had driven through about an hour before them, and headed east, towards Katima Mulilo.

  Sam and Jim pressed on, winding the Nissan up to a hundred and forty. At the veterinary control point at Kongola, just across the bridge over the Kwando River, they again had the chance to ask after Sonja. It was already dark.

  ‘No, there has been no woman in a Land Rover through here,’ the woman at the checkpoint had answered.

  ‘You’re sure? How long have you been on duty?’

  ‘All day. I am sure. And now I am going off duty.’

  ‘Say, we passed some signs to a couple of camp sites a little way back,’ Sam said to the woman. ‘What can you tell us about them?’

  The woman shrugged. ‘The one at Bum Hill is suitable for two-by-four vehicles, but Nambwa is for four-by-four only.’

  Sam turned the vehicle around and headed back over the bridge. ‘What do you think?’ he asked Rickards.
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  ‘I’m thinking Lara Croft is more a four-by-four kinda girl,’ Jim said.

  Sam nodded.

  The route had challenged his sand-driving abilities but they’d made it, after taking a wrong turn and almost ending up in a swamp. Retracing their tracks they saw the small metal sign they had missed. When they arrived after ten in the evening the sleepy camp-site attendant said he hadn’t seen a single woman in a Land Rover enter the campground.

  ‘How long have you been on duty?’ Sam asked the man.

  ‘Only two hours.’

  Sam looked at Jim. ‘She could have arrived earlier. I’m going to look for her.’

  ‘Good luck,’ Jim said. ‘I’m knackered. I’m going to sleep in the truck.’

  Sam had stumbled about the camping ground for a while, checking each of the demarcated sites along the river front and although he saw a Land Rover it had South African plates and was part of a trio of expedition vehicles. He started to move away from the water in search of other camp sites, but the sound of tree branches snapping halted him in his tracks. Sam jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Sir,’ the African man who had been at reception said, ‘you should go to bed. There are elephant in those bushes. It is not safe for you to be walking around.’ Reluctantly, Sam agreed.

  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.