by Tony Park
Cheryl-Ann leaned across the centre console box and grabbed the steering wheel. She jerked and overcorrected.
‘Hey, careful!’ Rickards said.
‘What are you doing, Sonja?’
She ignored Cheryl-Ann and reached between her legs and under her seat. Her fingers closed around the oily cloth and she slid out the bundle and unwrapped it.
‘Oh. My. God.’
Cheryl-Ann let go of the wheel as though it was red hot and scrunched against the passenger door as if the pistol was going to go off of its own accord as Sonja transferred one hand back to the steering. She placed the pistol between her legs and wound down her window.
Rickards swivelled in his seat. ‘Sam, open that black case. Pass me my camera.’
‘Jim, are you crazy?’ Cheryl-Ann asked. ‘Leave that camera where it is, Sam.’
‘No,’ Sonja said. ‘Let him. Jim, point your camera at them.’
‘Will someone tell me what’s going on?’ Gerry moaned.
In the mirror, Sonja could see Sam passing the camera over the seat to Rickards, who wound down his window. ‘Walkley awards, here we come. Hold on to my belt, Gerry.’
Sonja shook her head. Rickards was insane. He was sitting on the sill of the car door, his shirt snapping in the slipstream as Sonja kept her foot pressed hard to the firewall. Awkwardly, he raised his camera to his shoulder and pointed it at the pick-up.
Her ploy worked. She knew the sight of a TV camera would make them reveal themselves and force the driver to act. The Toyota, much faster than the ageing Land Rover, moved into the oncoming lane and started gaining on them.
‘That’s right,’ Rickards yelled. ‘Smile for the camera, baby.’
Sonja glanced right and saw the black-tinted front and rear passenger windows sliding down. She put her arm out the window so the occupants could clearly see the pistol in her hand.
‘Holy fuck!’ Rickards turned from the viewfinder. ‘He’s got a gun.’
Sonja aimed at the bakkie’s front tyre and fired twice, but the driver swerved and she missed. She glanced ahead as she heard the pop, pop, pop of an AK-47. There was a clang and a jolt as a copper-jacketed bullet punched through the wafer-thin aluminium skin of the Defender.
‘Shit! Ow. I’m hit, I’m fucking hit.’ Gerry slumped down and Rickards flailed in the breeze, grasping for the roof carrier with one hand and holding his camera to his shoulder with the other.
‘Jim, get in!’ Sonja wrenched the wheel hard to the left and the Land Rover careened off the edge of the road, down the metre-high embankment. The white powdery dust threw up an immediate smokescreen behind them. The Toyota overshot, and though the gunners in the front and rear seats fired back at them, none of their shots found their mark. Ahead of them was a trio of thatched huts. A woman ran screaming from her yard, snatching a bare-bottomed toddler by the arm and lifting the child off the ground as she fled the shooting. The dwellings had stopped the black bakkie from leaving the road and the driver was executing a three-point turn further down.
Sonja swung left again and drove straight for a plot of straggly maize. Corn stalks flashed by the windows and were crushed under the bumper bar as the Land Rover bounced over the tilled furrows. Camera cases slid forward onto Sam and the others and Cheryl-Ann kept up a high-pitched, unceasing scream as she gripped the handle on the dashboard with two white-knuckled hands.
Rickards was swearing and yelling insults out the window at their unseen pursuers. Sonja looked back over her shoulder. ‘Gerry, are you OK? Jim, shut up and check him out. He said he was hit.’
Gerry was pale-faced and panting. Sam leaned over from his seat to check. ‘Here,’ he said, holding up fingers sticky with blood. ‘The back of his neck, but it’s only a graze and a burn. You’ll be OK, Gerry.’
The sound man looked far from convinced. Sonja took her foot off the accelerator.
‘What now?’ Cheryl-Ann said.
‘Somebody else drive.’ Sonja opened her door as the Land Rover slowed to a halt in the maize, its engine still running.
‘You can’t leave us!’
‘Yes, I can, Cheryl-Ann. I know what I’m doing. Are you going to drive? We don’t have time to mess about.’
‘Get out of the way, Jim.’ Sam had climbed over the back seat and elbowed his way past Rickards, who was standing next to the Land Rover, still holding his camera. ‘Get back in. I’ll drive.’
Rickards nodded. ‘I can hear them coming.’
Sonja stepped back as Sam climbed into the driver’s seat. ‘Carry on for about another hundred metres,’ she said. ‘You should be close to the river. Turn left when you can see it. Follow the bank as far as you can. Keep driving then cut left again once you’re clear of the maize and head back to the road. Go back to the dam and ask for Roberts. He’ll take care of you.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’ll be fine.’ She looked at Sam’s belt. ‘Give me your Leatherman.’
He fumbled with the pouch and pulled it out. ‘Why?’
‘I want to trade.’ She held out her pistol to him, but he shook his head.
‘Uh-uh. No way.’
She snatched the pocket tool from his hand and thrust the pistol into his. ‘You’ve got Cheryl-Ann and the others to worry about. You know how to use that?’
He looked down at the pistol like it was an alien ray gun. He looked up at her and shrugged. ‘I guess.’
‘Good man. It’s loaded, but not cocked. Now go!’ She banged on the roof of the Defender, then turned and ran into the rows of corn.
*
‘Benzi!’ Major Kenneth Sibanda screamed in Shona at Sithole, the junior Central Intelligence Organisation operative, as the idiot flew past the Land Rover and found himself unable to turn off the road because of the huts.
The smell of cordite filled the air and hot spent casings rolled about Sibanda’s shoes in the front of the Hilux. He fired twice more at the disappearing dust cloud as the driver executed a slow, clumsy turn. The noise was deafening in the confines of the bakkie.
He turned and looked behind him. ‘And you, Moyo, you fucking fool, who told you to open fire?’
‘The cameraman, comrade Major. He was filming us.’
‘I know that, you cretin,’ Sibanda screamed. ‘But we are not in Harare now! You cannot go executing journalists because one points a camera at you. If we don’t get them I will personally see that you are court-martialled and executed. Understand?’
Moyo nodded and shifted across the back seat of the car so he was on the driver’s side as they sped back towards the maize. Sithole, the driver, pulled off the road and the Toyota bucked and bounced on the uneven ground.
Sibanda banged on the dashboard. ‘Follow their tracks. Faster.’
Two vehicle lengths into the stand of straggly crops the Hilux came to a halt, its rear wheels spinning in soil that had been laboriously watered by villagers carrying buckets from the shrinking river.
‘Engage four-wheel drive! Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to drive properly, you stupid baboon?’
‘I have, comrade Major,’ Moyo said, wiggling the selector gear and stamping on the accelerator. The engine screamed but the rear wheels kept spinning.
Sibanda leaned the barrel of his AK-47 out of the passenger window. ‘Get out and push, Moyo. I’ll cover you.’
The gunman got out, leaving his door open, and peered into the maize.
‘Get a move on, man! We have to catch the murungus. If they get away we are finished. Move!’
Moyo slung his rifle across his back and moved to the rear of the pick-up. Sibanda looked around and when he saw the big man had his weight against the tailgate he ordered Sithole to accelerate again. Still nothing happened. Sibanda opened his door and leaned out, to check the front wheels. ‘The wheels are not moving. Did you lock the hubs, Sithole?’
A look of comprehension dawned on the driver’s face. ‘Sorry, Major. I will do it now.’
Sibanda shook his head. Every second the
y wasted was putting the woman further out of their reach. He got out and locked the free-wheeling hub on the passenger’s side front wheel, and waved Sithole back to the driver’s seat.
‘Moyo?’
Sibanda got back in the vehicle, craned his neck and looked out the rear window of the double cab. ‘Moyo!’ he barked again. He couldn’t see the man, and presumed he was crouching lower, perhaps with his back to the tailgate now to gain extra purchase.
‘Go, go!’ he said to Sithole. When the driver floored the accelerator there was a little more forward movement, but the vehicle only managed to crawl a metre before it seemed to bog again. The fool must have spun the rear wheels so much that they had ploughed into the soil. ‘Idiot. I will help Moyo, but if you can’t get us out and catch the Land Rover I will shoot you here, in this field, and leave your body for the fucking dogs, Sithole.’
‘Yes, comrade Major.’
Satisfied with the fear in the driver’s eyes, Sibanda got out, slung his rifle and slammed the door.
‘Moyo!’
Sibanda trudged through the cloying mud and saw that below the dry crust they had broken through to a thick, gluggy porridge, probably fed by subterranean water. The rear of the Toyota was resting on its springs. ‘Moyo!’
Sibanda placed a hand on the hot black metal of the truck’s side panel for balance as he reached the rear. There was no sign of his other operative. Sibanda felt something sticky under his fingers and when he inspected his hand he saw the redness.
Flies buzzed around her face and feasted on the dead man’s blood on her hands.
Sonja blew them away with a quick breath from the side of her mouth. Her heart was pounding and she was breathing fast as she squinted through the AK-47’s rear sight. Her heart felt like someone was squeezing it, and her mouth was dry. Sonja heard the man yelling his dead comrade’s name and she had a good idea what he would do when he saw the blood.
For the moment, though, she concentrated on the driver’s face. He was a target, an enemy combatant. She didn’t hate him. He was, she imagined, an underling. She took up the pressure on the trigger and when the green stalks behind her shook under the storm of lead she squeezed the trigger, firing one shot into the driver’s temple. The predictable fusillade fired into the bush by the other man had masked the sound of her single aimed shot.
Sonja was on her feet, running at a crouch. She had been no more than ten metres from the car, so there was no way she would miss. The driver must have stamped on the accelerator as he died, because the Toyota’s engine blew a cloud of black smoke.
She assumed the man who was spraying indiscriminate fire into the maize was the commander of the detachment. He wasn’t driving and hadn’t got out to push when they’d become bogged. The man held his finger on the trigger and swung the rifle left and right, covering the direction of the blood and drag trail that led from the vehicle.
But Sonja had circled forward and across the tracks made by the Land Rover as soon as she had killed the first man. She’d wrapped her left hand around the big African man’s mouth and drawn the wicked, saw-toothed blade of the Leatherman through his windpipe before he could utter a sound. His blood had soaked her as she dragged him into the corn and unslung his rifle.
The commander emptied his magazine, just as she guessed he would. He trudged back towards the vehicle, which was still blowing smoke.
‘Stop revving the engine, you fool!’ As he walked he pulled the empty magazine from the rifle, then tossed it into the back seat through the open door. ‘Sithole?’
‘Down!’ Sonja yelled, pressing the barrel of the dead man’s AK-47 into the soft skin behind the commander’s left ear.
He started to turn so she jabbed the rifle harder into his head. ‘Drop your weapon and get down on your fucking knees.’
He complied. She backed off half a step. ‘Turn your face to me. Slowly.’ She looked him in the eyes. ‘Major Kenneth Sibanda, Zimbabwean CIO.’
Sibanda nodded. ‘Miss Sonja Kurtz, mercenary.’
‘I prefer Ms.’
‘It appears you have bested me again, Ms Kurtz. You don’t die easily.’
‘You set up the bogus hit on your president.’
He said nothing.
‘You posed as a member of the opposition and paid my principal, Martin Steele, to organise the hit. I want to hear you say it.’
He shook his head.
She pressed the rifle home again. ‘You’re an animal, Sibanda. You sacrificed and jeopardised the lives of your own men – police, soldiers, the drivers of those limos – to discredit the opposition and protect a man who has bled your country dry.’
‘You killed them, not me.’
Sonja reversed the rifle and smacked the steel butt plate against the side of Sibanda’s head, drawing blood. He lurched to one side, but regained his balance, still on his knees.
‘Who are you to lecture me on right and wrong, woman?’ He spat the last word and she was tempted to hit him again.
‘Whose idea was it to set up the assassination? Yours? The president’s? I’m curious, what kind of a monster uses his own loyal foot soldiers as bait?’
He laughed, long and loud.
‘Shut up. I should just kill you now, but I want your story, on tape, for the world to hear.’
He shook his head. ‘You may as well kill me now. If I told the lies you want, my life would be worthless.’
‘They’re not lies.’
‘Be that as it may, I am not saying anything to you, woman, on tape or otherwise. And if you do decide to kill me I will look for your daughter in the otherworld. Since she is the spawn of a murderess I might bump into her in hell – and enjoy her.’
Sonja shifted the barrel and pulled the trigger.
The bullet tore through the muscle atop Sibanda’s left collarbone and the impact sent him sprawling forward so that his forehead clanged against the side of the Toyota. He screamed and rolled in the mud, frantically reaching for the wound with his right hand.
‘Don’t kill me,’ he wailed, ‘or your daughter will die. I promise you.’
Sonja dropped to one knee beside him and pushed the hot barrel back behind his ear, pinning him like an insect. ‘What do you know about my daughter?’
‘Everything.’ His voice was high-pitched, but it chilled her. ‘Her school. The address of your apartment in London.’
She pushed harder. ‘You’re bluffing.’
‘She goes to fencing practice, in Amersham, on Wednesday evenings.’
Sonja licked her lips. They were following her child. Her fist began to squeeze, involuntarily, around the pistol grip of the AK-47, the tension increasing on the trigger.
‘If I die my superiors will not let you live. They know the best way to catch a parent is to grab the child.’
‘You bastard.’ They were onto her. The CIO had been better organised and better resourced than she’d thought possible. She’d been arrogant, thinking they would have lost her trail after Kasane. Perhaps she’d been safe at Xakanaxa, but they would have had people looking for her in the major towns and airports in Botswana – including Maun. There was a huge population of expatriate Zimbabweans – legal and illegal – living in Botswana and she was foolish to have ignored the possibility of the CIO having a spy network in the country.
Sibanda winced. ‘We can negotiate. You do me a favour and I will do you a favour. Let us talk, like rational people, please.’
‘You threaten my child and want me to be rational? You’re bluffing. I should kill you now.’
‘Please … you know I know things about Emma …’
‘If you so much as whisper her name again I will cut your manhood off and leave you to bleed to death.’
‘… things about your daughter. My government needs assurances you will not go to the press, as you have threatened to do so. You killed innocent men in Zimbabwe.’
‘Yes, but it was all part of your plan. You killed them, you bastard.’
He ignored her accusat
ions. ‘In exchange for my life I will organise for you and your daughter to be left in peace … as long as you and your employers remain silent. Please … I am bleeding to death.’
She grabbed his shirt collar and he twitched away, but she wanted to inspect the wound. Blood was flowing freely. It would take time for him to bleed out, but if she did nothing for him and kept him held like this it would happen. He was starting to shake.
‘I want money, as well,’ she said.
‘I am offering you the life of your child.’
‘Yes, and I have your life in my hands. I have people I can call on who might be able to protect my daughter, before your thugs can get to her. But you have no one, Major Sibanda.’
He was silent for a few seconds. ‘One hundred thousand. US dollars.’
‘Two hundred thousand. British pounds.’
‘One hundred thousand pounds. That is all I have in my contingency budget. We are a poor country.’
She wanted to shoot him for that remark alone. His president, his party and men like Sibanda had grown fat by scavenging Zimbabwe’s corpse like a pack of hyenas. As much as she hated dealing with this odious piece of scum she would do anything to protect Emma. ‘Deal.’
Somehow or other she would see that the money got to the families of the men she’d killed in the convoy ambush in Zimbabwe.
‘Thank you. My shoulder?’
‘Keep still. Move and I’ll kill you.’ She laid the dead man’s AK-47 in the grass behind her and pulled Sam’s Leatherman from her pocket. It was sticky with the congealed blood of the first man she had killed. She unfolded a blade and cut Sibanda’s shirt from his body. She placed her booted foot in the small of his back so she could pull the remnants of it from him.
He yelped and his broad black back was shiny with sweat. Sonja balled the shirt and pressed it down on the wound. ‘Hold this. Keep pressure on the wound. Do you have a first-aid kit in the bakkie?’
Sibanda shook his head. She heard footsteps behind her and looked around.
‘Sonja? My God, what happened here?’
‘Go back to the Land Rover, Sam. Get the medical kit from my daypack and—’
Sibanda rolled from under her and smacked his right fist into the side of her face as he rose. Sonja reeled from the blow, landing in the grass. She flailed out with her right hand, dropping the Leatherman as she tried to regain her balance and reach the rifle. Her vision was clouded with shiny silver spots as he kicked her right side.