Jackal's Dance

by Beverley Harper

  Sean’s voice turned hard. ‘Believe what you like. You’re the one who wants a divorce.’

  Billy ignored that. His eyes bored in to Thea. ‘Whose baby are you carrying?’

  The crude and unfair implication cut through Thea’s shock. She turned white. ‘Don’t,’ she pleaded. ‘You know it’s yours.’

  ‘Do I? You waited long enough to tell me. How do I know it’s mine? From what I’ve just seen, it could be anybody’s.’

  Sean’s fists bunched but he stayed where he was.

  Thea started crying again, great wracking sobs shaking her.

  Billy remained unmoved. ‘Get dressed. Go to the cottage. I’ll deal with you later.’ She didn’t move. ‘Hurry it up. Get out of my sight, you disgusting whore. To think I was looking for you to apologise. One little spat and you head straight for the arms of lover boy. By Christ, you’ll be sorry for this.’

  Sean had been goaded far enough. Physical or emotional abuse, whatever Billy’s meaning, the threat was clear. ‘Touch her, or upset her any more than you already have, and it’s me you’ll be dealing with.’

  By now Billy had worked himself into such a rage that Sean’s words only added fuel. ‘Not before I deal with you, you won’t.’

  Sean had managed to make twenty-six without ever having to use his fists. The prospect didn’t frighten him, nor did it hold any particular appeal. Billy’s injured outrage was probably justified, despite the fact that he didn’t love Thea. If roles were reversed, Sean would have reacted the same way. But Billy wasn’t fit. Sean understood himself well enough to know that in a fist fight he’d probably lose his temper and inflict real damage on the lodge manager. He had two options. Back away from confrontation and make himself look like a coward, or take the initiative and knock the wind out of Billy’s sails. Sean was only human. His right hand shot out and a clenched fist caught Billy squarely under the chin. The result exceeded even Sean’s expectations. Billy flew backwards, hit the wall, slid down it and slumped to the floor.

  ‘Billy!’ Thea screamed, jumping up and rushing to him.

  Sean stood back, rubbing his fist. He hadn’t expected the encounter to hurt quite as much.

  ‘Why did you do that? You hit him when he wasn’t ready.’

  ‘Thea! He’ll be okay. I didn’t think . . . Oh shit, what a mess.’

  ‘How could you?’ She bent over Billy. ‘Billy, darling. Are you . . ?’ She looked up at Sean. ‘You might have killed him.’

  ‘He threatened you.’ Sean stared at Thea. ‘You don’t think . . ? He’s not dead, is he?’

  Billy moaned.

  Thea looked relieved, then horrified, as her state of undress hit home. She seized at her scattered clothes, pulling them on haphazardly. ‘For God’s sake, get dressed.’

  She was still wearing Sean’s T-shirt but he found his shorts and put them on.

  Billy tried to sit up, one hand feeling for blood, opening and shutting his mouth experimentally. He looked at Sean through slitted eyes. ‘You’re out of a job, Hudson.’

  ‘That’s not your decision, Abbott.’ Sean knew he was in the wrong, horribly in the wrong, but he’d be damned if this creep was going to bully him.

  Thea found her shoes. ‘Shut up, both of you. Are you all right, Billy? Here, let me help you.’

  Sean felt like a spectator, involved but not involved. He’d stepped between husband and wife in the worst possible way, and would do it again if Billy hurt Thea, but he was still an outsider. The realisation was painful.

  Thea helped Billy to his feet. With no words, or even a look back, they left Sean’s room.

  Groaning, he sank onto the bed. What a mess! What a damned fool he’d been. He should never have allowed his feelings for Thea to surface. She’d come to him as a friend and he’d betrayed that friendship, taking advantage of her distress. And now? She probably considered him as a dishonourable womaniser who thought nothing of making love to another man’s pregnant wife. Sean buried his face in both hands. What a stupid prick he was. Any chance he might have had with Thea was well and truly blown. Even with her marriage to Billy in tatters, even if she were free to love someone else, it would never be him.

  He could smell the scent of her on his hands. It was almost more than he could bear.

  Chester had switched on the walkway’s soft, low voltage lights which were powered by a solar-boosted battery. As they heard the group approaching, the trackers supplemented this with the vehicles’ headlights. By the time everyone got back to the Land Rovers, beyond the circle of illumination it was a fully dark, black velvet night.

  Gayle, so excited by the proximity of elephant and lion that she’d completely forgotten about another drink, was talking quietly to Matt about making a return trip next year.

  ‘Just imagine,’ James said to Mal. ‘Those animals could be no more than a few feet away on the other side of this fence.’

  Caitlin heard and smiled. There was no mistaking nervousness in the American’s voice. She knew, however, that perceived danger in the man’s mind would grow with time and translate into sparkling dinner conversation, emotive stuff that could very well result in others wanting to come and see for themselves. It happened time and again. There was sound business wisdom in allowing a degree of fear to roam through a tourist’s imagination – not too much, just enough to stimulate some embellishment and improvisation in the tales taken home.

  Philip settled himself beside Felicity and asked, ‘If you had two lines only to describe those lion, what would they be?’

  ‘The trouble with lion is that

  They’re not just an overgrown cat.’

  Felicity hadn’t hesitated, horribly misquoting Ogden Nash.

  Philip wasn’t familiar with the American poet’s work and laughed delightedly. ‘Very good.’

  ‘Not strictly my own,’ Felicity admitted. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Poetry?’ Philip pulled a face.

  ‘Give it a try.’

  He frowned, pretending to think hard. Then,

  ‘I once met a lion in the bush,

  And ran like hell.’

  Felicity groaned.

  ‘I’m reliably informed that poetry doesn’t have to rhyme.’

  ‘True,’ she grinned. ‘But it does have to flow. Want some good advice?’

  ‘Don’t give up my day job?’

  ‘Took the words right out of my mouth.’

  Three engines roared into life and the vehicles drove off, each taking a different route back to the lodge.

  Twelve pairs of eyes watched the Land Rovers leave. Twelve men hidden in the bush just fifty metres from the enclosure. Once the tourists were out of sight, their leader rose and gestured that the others should follow. Their destination lay thirteen kilometres to the east – Logans Island Lodge.

  They walked in single file, heavily weighed down with backpacks and weapons, and they made scarcely any sound at all. These men, hardened by years of living rough, were members of the National Union for the Total Liberation of Angola, or UNITA as it was more commonly called. Declared enemies of the state in Angola, all were accustomed to the inconvenience of life in hiding.

  The 1994 British-brokered Lusaka Peace Accord had been successfully negotiated and signed by UNITA’s leader, Dr Jonas Savimbi, and the Angolan government. But Savimbi was a man without a conscience. He ignored the accord’s intent and UNITA went underground, recruiting in secret, paying for modern weapons with diamonds stolen from mines in areas of Angola where they still carried clout. Despite being certified as demobilised and disarmed by the Tripartite Commission of America, Russia and Portugal, UNITA actually built up a fighting force of some sixty-thousand loyal followers.

  Realisation of UNITA’s strength came late to the Angolan government, but when it did, they vowed to wipe them out. Their problem was finance. Health, education and food supplies had to be sacrificed. People were forced to live off a land unable to keep pace with demands. UNITA, no longer recognised as a legitimate organisation,
also found itself facing United Nations sanctions. South Africa had long ago withdrawn support. Jonas Savimbi’s forces began to suffer.

  Cross-border forays into Namibia for food and supplies were on the increase. As a result, Namibia formally declared logistical support for the Angolan army in its attempt to annihilate UNITA. Predictably, the incursions took on a retaliatory flavour. Acts of sabotage accompanied raids for sustenance, and attacks on Namibian civilians became more frequent. The Namibian Defence Force responded by establishing military bases inside Angola. Botswana too, aware that their country’s proximity to Angola meant they could very well be targeted as a source of supply, set up two Botswana Defence Force camps just inside their country’s north-western border. UNITA threatened to retaliate.

  Combining a need to demonstrate strength with an even more pressing requirement – cash – UNITA came up with a strategy that would prove to the world it was still a force to be reckoned with. If the tactics worked, headlines around the globe would be focused on them. And if all went according to plan, ransom money would contribute to the cost of maintaining UNITA’s army.

  Five months earlier, in a secret meeting between their leader, Jonas Savimbi, and officers of DEP – Departmento do Pessoal (Personnel Department), the branch of UNITA responsible for assigning soldiers to specific areas – the mood had been one of doom and gloom.

  ‘We hold the whole country,’ one general blustered in an attempt to lift spirits.

  ‘But not the cities,’ another countered. ‘What use is a country with no cities?’

  ‘Patience,’ the first replied. ‘Already supplies are running short in Luanda. Since we have made the roads unsafe they have no option but to bring everything in by air.’

  ‘Are you blind?’ someone else asked harshly. ‘There is no trading and no farming in the areas we control. Our soldiers have to steal what they can from the villages. It is true, we can starve those in the cities but what use is that when we ourselves cannot eat?’

  ‘If we could pay our soldiers many government troops would desert and join us. The police too, they do not get paid either.’ Jonas Savimbi had the attention of every other man in the room. Their leader was undoubtedly an intellectual and, as such, enjoyed enormous respect in a country where the large majority were peasants. Who else had command of French, English, Portuguese and German, as well as the old tribal languages? Who else could recite Marx on one hand, Machiavelli, Churchill and Clausewitz on the other? Who else had sat with President Reagan at a cosy chat session in the White House, something usually bestowed only on heads of state? Who else carried a walking stick tipped with silver? On the upside, Jonas Savimbi was impressive.

  The downside was a somewhat different story. This man, so loved by western countries because of his denouncement of communism, admired for his elegance, lauded for his dedication to free Angola, this charismatic, educated hero, UNITA knew a different Savimbi.

  It was he who ruled a broken and terrified population with the threat of even greater depredation, even worse atrocities than they had been suffering for forty years. And he who was lightning quick and totally remorseless in punishing dissenters, irrespective of their rank. A tribal leader in every sense of the word, demanding respect, obedience and loyalty. Despite paying lip-service to religious leaders as a means of gaining approval and support, he detested Christianity. Irrespective of a benign facade, women who refused to sleep with him were, more often than not, executed. Jonas Savimbi was a man aching for power, his rhetoric a cover-up for this one all-consuming passion.

  And so the generals listened while he outlined a new and desperate plan. When he fell silent, despite their many misgivings, the only question asked was, ‘You have a man in mind to lead this mission?’

  Ace Ntesa was thirty-six years old. A member of and active soldier with UNITA since he was thirteen, addicted to marijuana from the age of fifteen, a murderer by the time he was nineteen, HIV positive at twenty-three and wounded in action three times, Ace had nothing to lose. No home, no family, no hope. He lived for the soft oblivion of a joint or the harsh adrenalin rush of violence.

  When UNITA troops raided his village and killed his mother, father, brothers and sisters as MPLA supporters – they had been supporters but only because to do otherwise would have resulted in an even earlier demise – young Ace escaped a similar fate because he had fallen asleep in his favourite hideout some distance from the village. He’d disappeared to avoid the task of rounding up those few goats remaining in his father’s herd, the majority of which had been slaughtered and eaten by MPLA soldiers.

  When he woke, the sweetish smell of burning human flesh had warned him, way before his eyes and ears, that there had been trouble in the village. Ace knew what to expect. It had happened before. MPLA soldiers looting, raping, burning those considered to be traitors. Whether they were or not didn’t seem to matter. As he made his way cautiously through the bush, the possibility that it might be his own family was one calmly and fatalistically considered. That it turned out to be so was accepted with a sense of stoic inevitability. In a land where life expectancy was only forty-six years, every day became a bonus and violent death a way of life.

  The family hut had been reduced to smouldering rubble. Ace was more upset by a loss of possessions than the brutal murders. His own miraculous escape from the same fate left him untouched. Destiny had dished out a hit-or-miss hand that could have gone one way or the other. Someone told him that the village was now under UNITA control. It made no difference to Ace, one soldier was as bad as the next. Nevertheless, he decided the time had come to join either a Marxist MPLA or the democratic UNITA. Despite the fact they were directly responsible for his current predicament, two things had him leaning towards the latter. He was of the Ovimbundu people and it was they who accounted for most UNITA members – the MPLA consisted mainly of northerners, Kimbundus and Bakongos. The other reason was more practical. With his village now controlled by UNITA he’d probably live longer if he joined them. Political ideology had nothing to do with the decision.

  Owning nothing more than the clothes he stood up in, and herding five goats to offer in exchange for his life, Ace easily located a group of soldiers. There was nothing to differentiate them from the MPLA but Ace took a chance, boldly announcing that as he was now thirteen it was time to do his duty. He never saw the goats again. Taken by truck to a training camp, Ace was shown a bed in a pousada, or guesthouse, advised when lunch would be ready and told someone would come for him after that. They forgot to tell him how long after. Ace was left to his own devices for three days before training began.

  Camp life wasn’t too bad. Everyone was treated equally, as men, and Ace was no exception, despite his tender years. He didn’t mind the four-thirty whistle that woke them every morning. Ace found the physical exercises of running, jumping, crawling and climbing easy and picked up quickly on the basics of throwing grenades, planting mines and weapons instruction. What he didn’t like were lessons in map-reading, the theory of war or endless lectures on politics. Never having been to school, and speaking only his own tribal language, many of the lessons were carried out in Portuguese and went straight over Ace’s head. The instructors soon tired of his blank stare. He was marked down as suitable for active duty and sent into action three weeks after his fourteenth birthday. Expectations that he would last more than a few months before being killed, maimed or captured were nil.

  Ace surprised everyone. Not only did he survive, he showed every sign of possessing an inventive, conscience-clear sadism. After six years with UNITA, he no longer tried to hide the fact that in the absence of an enemy, civilians would do just as well. He was promoted and led a number of successful sorties on MPLA strongholds. When Jonas Savimbi and the officers of DEP were choosing someone to lead a raid deep into Namibia, Ace was their unanimous choice.

  The men under his command were seasoned soldiers. A few of them had served with Ace in the past. Those who hadn’t knew of his reputation. Not one of them thou
ght twice about taking a life. Threat of death or injury had long since lost its ability to turn them around, any spark of human kindness was snuffed out many years ago. Cynicism, hatred, corruption and cruelty rode with practised ease on the shoulders of these men.

  Considering the difficulties attached to their assignment, Ace’s briefing had been ridiculously short and rudimentary. Illegally enter Namibia on foot, remain undetected, cross Owamboland between the border and Etosha National Park then make your way to Logans Island Lodge – a total distance of one hundred and fifty kilometres. Once at the target, take prisoner anyone considered to be rich or important, kill everyone else, and return with the hostages to Angola.

  Pre-raid intelligence had been surprisingly good. UNITA had the lodge’s coordinates, its visitor capacity, seasonal close-down dates and the number of staff likely to be present. DEP even told Ace that a university professor and some students would be camped in the vicinity. They knew the cost of staying at the lodge would exclude those on limited budgets, that guests came from all over the world and that by targeting governments as well as anxious families, UNITA could extort enough money to pay its soldiers long enough to attract defectors from the Angolan army and police force.

  And now twelve UNITA soldiers walked through the Namibian night in absolute silence. Not one of them gave any thought to the forthcoming action, other than to be relieved that the days of waiting were over. Ace was actually thinking of what he’d like to do to that mulatto bitch he’d lain with ten days ago on his way out of Angola. She had given him a dose of clap. He was experiencing all the symptoms of gonorrhoea – a yellow discharge from his penis and pain when he urinated. He’d had it before. Most times it cleared up after a few days of discomfort. Occasionally a doctor had to be consulted. He hoped that this would not be one of those times – he was a long way from medical assistance.