by Tony Park
She glanced across the fire at him and raised her eyebrows.
‘I guess I should say thank you. For saving my life, I mean. If you hadn’t come along I would have just lain there in the mud waiting for the bees to go, and by that time the crocodile would have got hold of me and eaten me. What a way to go, huh? The survival expert who flunked out.’ He laughed at his own joke. Lame. Talking to this woman was like walking on hot coals – theoretically possible but likely to cause pain.
She carved another slice of meat, for herself, and began chewing it.
‘What does your tattoo mean? I saw all those letters and numbers while we were walking. Is it a code or something?’ He reached for the knife again.
Sonja swallowed her food. ‘It’s a place.’
‘Oh, OK. I get it. Like a GPS waypoint. That small “o” is a degree symbol, right?’
She looked at him like he was a moron.
‘Where is it, the place on your arm?’
She looked out into the darkness again.
‘Is it home?’
Good Lord, did the man never shut up? If she answered his banal questions it encouraged him to ask more. If she stayed silent he kept on at her until she said something. It was worse than the resistance-to-interrogation course the SAS had put her through before her deployment to Northern Ireland.
‘I wish I knew where home was,’ he said, picking at the gristly leftovers still clinging to the white bone. ‘Time was, I thought I was pretty grounded. I thought I’d grow old in Montana, maybe working for the state in animal management or conservation, or the national parks for twenty or thirty years. I thought maybe I’d go back to college to teach. There’d be a wife and some kids and a nice house, a piece of land outside of town. The American dream, right?’
She unscrewed the lid of the plastic water bottle and took a sip. The American dream? Working as a military contractor she’d seen it die in the faces of too many idealistic young marines and soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Her dream had died in Northern Ireland, with the flash and the bang of the stun grenades; the shouted commands; the tear gas; the thud of nine-millimetre bullets tearing into timber, plaster and flesh.
She held a hand over the coals to see if there was enough heat in them to boil some water. It wasn’t nearly warm enough.
‘Have you ever found yourself at the wrong place at the wrong time of your life?’ Sam asked.
She looked at the American. ‘Yes,’ she said, before remembering to stay silent. She stood and winced. The bullet wound was healing well and didn’t hurt too much during the day, but when she sat for too long, and after sleeping, her leg became stiff.
‘You look like you’re in pain. Are you OK?’ he asked.
He was like a puppy, always seeking attention.
‘Pain is just weakness leaving the body.’
He laughed out loud, the peals echoing off the trees. He wiped his eyes. ‘Wait a minute, you’re serious? Where did you learn that, the drill sergeant’s guide to holistic healing and alternative medicine?’
She felt her cheeks colour. She’d been around soldiers too long. But who was this pampered TV wanker to make fun of her?
‘Pain is not weakness leaving the body, it’s just pain. It’s your body’s way of telling you to take it easy, to rest up.’
When and where exactly was she going to ‘rest up’? she wondered. They had another twelve hours of walking and riding to reach Xakanaxa and precious little food and water. The best hope for them was to reach the camp as soon as possible, but it didn’t seem worth the time or breath to explain it to him. She took her sleeping bag out of her pack and rolled it out on the ground, then laid her M4 on the down-filled nylon. From her daypack she took a compact mosquito net out of its bag and slotted the short, three-piece spreader pole into the loops at the top. She tied it to a low branch of the mopane under which she had made the cooking fire and tucked the white netting under her bag. She dragged two more logs on to the fire and stood by it until they caught, sending an offering of sparks to the stars above. She looked up – the sky was clear as far as she could see. No rain on the way and it was already two weeks past Botswana Independence Day, 30 September. For as long as she had lived in the Okavango swamps it had always rained either on or a day or two on either side of Independence Day. Not a drop had fallen here, though, and the last three wet seasons had been terribly dry.
‘Where should I sleep?’
She didn’t bother answering him. Sonja knelt and lifted the hem of her mosquito net and slid underneath. She lay on her back and rested her head on her pack. She wished she had a cigarette. On the other side of the fire Sam cursed as he tripped over a tree root. She tried to block his fumblings and babble out of her mind by thinking about Stirling.
How had he aged? Was he seeing someone and hadn’t had time to update his Facebook profile? Was he still happy managing the camp and living his life in contented isolation from the rest of the world? Would he take her back? The way she had treated Stirling had been a mistake; she saw that now in hindsight. But was it an error she could rectify?
As she listened to the rustling and faint curses of the American settling under his mosquito net she thought about what it would be like to live in the camp again, with Stirling, but this time as a couple, perhaps even as husband and wife. She wished she had made this trip years ago, and in different circumstances. She knew that by leaving it so long it would be even harder reconnecting with Stirling and that he may not want to have anything to do with her. There was Emma to think of as well. She wondered if Stirling had found out about her, or even cared that she had a child. God, she thought, she really had left this homecoming too long. She started to feel silly and embarrassed that she was even bothering to daydream that she might be able to pick up again with a boy she’d known so long ago. Yet something was pulling her back to the Delta. The smart thing would have been to get to an airport and fly out of Africa, yet here she was traipsing back to the only place and the only person she had ever associated with a life of innocence and honesty.
She sought out the stars through the close weave of the mosquito net. Bats squeaked like a rusty gate somewhere in the distance. She wished she could travel back in time. Her child should have been Stirling’s, and could have been his, if she hadn’t been so opinionated, so stubborn, so restless. She was coming back to the Delta because she knew, like a territorial animal, that this was where she belonged. She’d known it nineteen years ago when she’d gotten the stupid tattoo on her arm that this was where her home was. So why had she been so determined to leave it? What was wrong with her?
Ambition? That was part of it. Certainly none of the job choices on offer to her at the time she left were appealing to her. But what had she done with herself? She hadn’t become a doctor or a vet or a nurse or even a bloody secretary. Her drive, her ambition, her past and her pride had taken her to war and taught her to kill.
Was it the excitement? Don’t go there, she told herself. Don’t admit the highs – stick with the lows. The depression was easier to understand, easier to live with than the jazz. How could she explain to herself, let alone anyone who hadn’t been through it, the rush from heart to brain to fingertips and toes that came from being under fire; firing back, surviving and winning? It was terrifying, just how intense the feeling was. But it didn’t outweigh the regret. The realisation, deep in the dark of night, that the person who died, no matter how bad they were, how much she disagreed with their cause, left a mother or a father or a sister or a brother or a wife or a girlfriend or a husband or a boyfriend. Or all of the above. And there was her fear for Emma, that she would be left alone.
When Emma was growing up Sonja had at least had the comfort of knowing that her mother, Emma’s grandmother, was there in case something happened. More often than not it was her mother that took Sonja’s place at parent days, recitals, sports days and awards nights. Her mother had been killed just six months earlier, in a hit and run accident. Sonja had been in Dubai, working a t
wo-month contract as a personal protection officer for the wife of an oil sheikh who had received threats to kidnap her children. Sonja’s flight had been turned around because a warning light had appeared on the captain’s console and she’d had to spend an extra night in Dubai. The funeral had gone ahead without her and she’d returned to England to cuttingly snide abuse from Emma and the frowning disapproval of her mother’s friends. She’d grieved for her mother the only way she knew how – in private, with a couple of bottles of wine.
Sonja saw, after the funeral, the woman her daughter was becoming. Emma was very bright academically – the top of her class when she chose to be. There was also a strong streak of independence that had landed her in trouble more than once when she’d spoken back to her teachers. There had been incidents with drinking in the dorms, too, made worse by the fact that Emma had been a ringleader. As saddened as she must have been by her grandmother’s death, Emma had been able to rein in her grief around Sonja and treat her with crushing disdain.
Emma knew part of what Sonja did for a living – the close personal protection work. Bodyguarding was easy to explain, even though it was the safest and least rewarding of the tasks she had undertaken for Martin Steele. Sonja knew she probably shouldn’t have agreed to the Zimbabwean job, but the money was good and the job itself had been the biggest challenge of her professional life. Assassination was dirty stuff – black ops as governments called it – but if it had come off and the president had been killed, well … Pity it had gone tits up, she thought.
Before leaving for Africa she had changed her will and Martin had agreed to take on the role of Emma’s legal guardian, until she turned eighteen, if something should happen to Sonja. Whether or not he was her real father, Emma liked and respected Martin and he was the closest thing she had ever had to a dad. Emma was headstrong and nearly an adult, but Sonja feared she was still young enough to go horribly off the rails without someone else to guide her for a couple more years. With her grandmother gone Emma would be alone in the world if Sonja was killed.
Sonja hadn’t ever been afraid of being alone and she had certainly been happy enough for some time without a man in her life. She could outshoot, outswear, outdrink and outdrive most of the men she’d met in the army and as a mercenary. She’d raised a child virtually on her own and she was financially independent. Materially or even physically, she didn’t need a man. It was laughably easy for her to get sex on the occasions her hormones told her she needed it. It was occasionally enjoyable, though invariably unrewarding. So why, she asked herself, did she think it was so important to connect with Stirling again?
Was it her version of what Sam had called the American dream? Did she, deep down, want to be part of a family in the traditional sense – husband and wife and child, with maybe another child before it was too late for her? She thought about it. Maybe.
Was she still in love with Stirling? Had she ever loved him? She’d been in love with him when they were both seventeen going on eighteen, although not enough for her to stay put and marry him. Would she still feel the same or even a fraction of the physical and emotional attraction to him when she saw him again?
Or was it, perhaps, the place, rather than the person that she loved more? Perhaps. Her version of the dream didn’t include a mansion in Sandton or a cottage in the Cotswolds or even a game farm in Namibia. She rubbed the tattoo on her arm.
She just wanted to go home.
ELEVEN
Sam slapped himself in the face. A mosquito was inside his net and had been buzzing around his ears for what seemed like an hour. He was hot, but had zipped himself into his sleeping bag partly to protect the rest of his body from the insect, and partly because he remembered the sight of the python sliding its way into the hollow log.
His left side ached from contact with the one rock he hadn’t cleared from the ground under his mat. He rolled over. In his tent he’d had a thick, high-density foam camping mattress covered with green rip-stop canvas. He hadn’t thought it too luxurious on those first two nights but now it lived in his memory alongside the five top luxury hotel beds he’d ever slept on. Sonja had not let him bring it with them because it was too bulky to strap to her old nag.
The ridiculously named Black Beauty neighed nervously from the shadows beyond the fire. Sam coughed as a breath of wind blew smoke into his net. Maybe he should have stayed in his tent, he thought, and waited for someone to come find him. The weird, wired, toned creature sleeping silently beyond the low flames may have saved his life after the episode with the bees, but she might yet get him killed out here in the bush with nothing but a nylon net between him and Africa’s super-predators.
The mosquito let him know he’d missed by landing on the tip of his left ear and buzzing. He swatted again. ‘Goddamn.’
Then he heard the growl.
It was deep, low and continuous and it sounded almost like purring. It was as if someone had put his mum’s house cat in front of a speaker, connected a massive amplifier and turned the treble to zero and the bass to full. He felt it in his chest. He swallowed hard and slowly lifted his head.
Sam looked around but saw nothing. The horse made another sound, higher pitched, and he heard its hooves shuffling in the dry grass. Sam saw something moving. He turned to the left and glimpsed the shadow of a flick of a tail cast briefly against the pale bark of the tree. The noise was still there.
‘Sonja,’ he called softly.
‘Quiet.’
‘But …’
‘Lion. Stay still, and quiet. Under your net. Don’t move.’
Stay still? He pulled the sleeping bag up to his chin and took a breath. When he started to feel light-headed he remembered to breathe again. Quietly. He thought it might have left, but then he heard a galloping sound. Had the horse snapped its tether?
The horse whinnied in pain.
Sam sat up and looked around him. The horse was thrashing, causing leaves and seed pods to rain down from the branches of the tree to which it was tied. There was a ripping sound and a deep, guttural growling.
Sonja’s mosquito net twitched as she shrugged out from under it. She stood there, bare arms and legs glowing bronze in the reflected firelight, the ugly, squat assault rifle in her hands. She grasped the cocking handle and pulled it back viciously, letting the working parts fly forward with a menacing rattle.
‘Voetsek!’ she screamed into the blackness but the lion or lions were not nearly as easily scared as the panting cheetah.
What happened to stay still and quiet? Sam wondered. He watched Sonja stride away from the fire into the darkness, her rifle up and ready. ‘Sonja!’
She ignored him and pointed the barrel skywards.
Bang, bang. Sam flinched with each shot. He saw her again, momentarily illuminated by the lightning flashes from the rifle’s muzzle. The growling and tearing ceased, replaced by a snarled challenge.
Sonja fired again.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ Sam said. He lifted the hem of his mosquito net, then had second thoughts, so he set it down again. He peered into the darkness but saw nothing. The horse was whinnying but its noises were fainter and he heard Sonja speaking soothing words. At least she was still alive. He lifted the net again, took a deep breath and got up, wearing only his boxer shorts. He looked around for a weapon and grabbed the end of a dead branch whose tip was in the fire. He hefted the improvised torch and walked into the nothingness.
He found her, kneeling in the dark. The horse was on its side, writhing in the grass. He ran the flame the length of its body and saw white bone showing through a rip on its right hind leg. Far worse, though, were the ghastly wounds at its throat, which bubbled and frothed with blood.
Sonja stood, pointed the rifle at the horse’s thrashing head and pulled the trigger.
Sam flinched again.
She stood there, just staring down at the horse, which was at peace now.
‘The lions?’
‘Lioness,’ she said. ‘Just one. She was …’
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nbsp; Sam held up the flaming end of the log. Sonja held her rifle loose in one hand now and wiped her eyes with the back of the other.
‘Are you OK?’
She turned and stared at him. ‘Of course I’m OK.’
He said nothing, and looked down at the horse to avoid her glare. ‘Um … sorry.’
She looked down at her hands and seemed to see the blood on them for the first time. ‘I’m fine. It was just a horse.’ She rubbed them on her shorts three, four, five times. ‘The lioness was on her own, which probably means she’s got cubs somewhere close by. They leave the pride to give birth and return once the cubs can look after themselves. She’ll be dangerous. We should get back to the fire. Stoke it up.’
He nodded and they walked back to the relative safety of the flames. Sam busied himself dragging more logs onto the fire until it was blazing again, sparks shooting high into the clear night sky.
Sonja fetched her bedroll and dragged it to the same side of the fire as his. She laid it out between the bonfire and his mosquito net and sat down. She flicked the safety catch on the M4 to safe and laid it down on her sleeping bag, then sat down. ‘She’ll come back to finish off the horse. If she’s well fed she’ll leave us alone, but females with young are unpredictable, aggressive. I’ll keep watch.’
‘Let me—’
She silenced him with those green, feline eyes. ‘Get some sleep.’
‘You really think I can sleep after all that? After discovering there’s an unpredictable aggressive lone female nearby?’
That made her smile, reluctantly, and he grinned back at her.
‘Adrenaline’s a funny drug. You feel pumped, jazzed now, but you’ll be unconscious in twenty minutes’ time. The low’s as incredible as the high.’
‘You sound like you know.’ He didn’t know where to sit and couldn’t go back to his bed right now, whatever she said, so he stood with his back to the flames, looking out into the night.
Her silence was a challenge to him. He didn’t know why. Maybe he wanted her to stop treating him like an encumbrance or a stupid child. She stared into the flames. Beyond the ring of light cast by the fire he thought he heard movement in the bushes. No way could he go lie down now, whether she was keeping guard or not.