The Delta

by Tony Park

  She looked up at him. ‘Why not, what’s changed?’

  He smiled again. ‘Mr Steele will explain. We are friends. Please trust us. We are in grave danger from the police and army all the time, so we must take our own precautions. I guarantee you will be safe and I regret any inconvenience to you, but, please, we must leave now.’

  She nodded.

  ‘I regret, too, that I must take certain precautions from now on. We have been betrayed in the past. I am going to have to cover your eyes. Do you wish to go to the toilet or eat or drink something before we leave?’

  ‘No, I’m fine. Can I have my pistol back?’

  ‘When we arrive at our destination. We will stop for water on the way. We must hurry.’

  They walked to the police bakkie and the man who had confiscated her Glock reached into the cab and pulled out a wide strip of cloth. He held it up and she nodded. She wasn’t thrilled about being blindfolded, but at least it wasn’t a hood. Before the rag covered her eyes she saw a second police vehicle hidden deeper in the trees. These men were well organised.

  ‘This way, Ms Kurtz,’ the first officer said. She felt him take her hand and he gave her instructions for climbing into the back to the secure area at the rear of the bakkie. She could tell it was a real police wagon by the odours of disinfectant, urine and vomit. When she sat down she found they had placed a thick foam mattress on the bench seat. Considerate.

  She was tired and decided there was no use trying to time how far they were travelling or in which direction. If the men were genuine members of the CLA and had been in touch with Martin, which appeared to be the case, then she had nothing to fear. If this was a set-up of some kind, then she would soon be dead. The mattress had been placed lengthwise so she found that if she lay back, her head was cushioned from the bumpy ride along the corrugated dirt track. She let the vibrations soothe her to sleep.

  ‘Ms Kurtz.’

  Sonja sat bolt upright and tried to stand, banging her head. For a terrible, tense moment she had no idea where she was.

  ‘It’s all right. We have stopped. You can get out of the bakkie now, Ms Kurtz.’

  Recognition flooded her brain and she realised she was safe. ‘Can I take this bloody thing off, now?’

  ‘Of course. Allow me.’

  She blinked at the harsh light and, looking up, saw the sun was high in the sky. They must have been driving for hours, but judging by the poor condition of the track they might not have covered too many kilometres. They were at the end of a road, at a collection of mudbrick and thatch huts that appeared empty. She looked around, but knew better than to ask where she was. There was only the one police vehicle in sight – the one she had travelled in.

  The man who had pulled her over – she guessed he was the leader – had changed out of his police uniform. He wore a faded and stained blue T-shirt and a pair of torn and tattered shorts. He spoke to the other two in Lozi. One had changed into similarly ragged clothes, while the other was still in his police uniform. The uniformed man nodded, got into the bakkie and reversed up the track before executing a laborious three-point turn and driving off.

  ‘Risky,’ she said, pulling back her hair and refastening her ponytail with its elastic band. ‘Stealing a police car.’

  The leader shrugged, then smiled broadly. ‘Who said we stole it? Come.’

  She followed him through the eerily quiet settlement.

  ‘This was once a thriving community – my home, in fact, but it has ceased to exist.’

  ‘Why?’

  He talked without looking back at her, his eyes scanning left and right as they walked past the stripped, rusted hulk of a VW Golf. ‘AIDS, poverty, the Namibian Defence Force …’

  She’d heard of ghost villages in parts of Africa – communities that had ceased to exist because of the impact of HIV-AIDS. Typically, the menfolk contracted the disease, often by sleeping with prostitutes, then passed it on to their wives. If both spouses and other members of the extended family died off, their children might end up in an AIDS orphanage. Even if a mother survived, without her family’s breadwinner she would probably be forced to move from the village and seek work in the nearest town or city.

  The man continued, ‘In our case, it was much more than a disease. After the last attack on the dam the police and army came to many villages, looking for CLA supporters. Many of our people fled across the border, into Botswana. Some brought tales of rape and beatings by the policemen and soldiers.’ He stopped, and so did Sonja. He looked around him. ‘All I want is to come back here one day, to live. Let us keep moving – there is no time for sentimentality.’

  Sonja smelled stagnant water and, once they passed through the remnants of the village, the man led her into a wall of pampas grass, taller than she was. They were on a very narrow pathway and she saw the deep four-toed indentations of hippo tracks. The black earth beneath her hiking boots slowly became softer, until the ooze was ankle deep.

  ‘Normally this area should be flooded, with the water right up near the village,’ he said. ‘The water here used to be free-flowing and sweet to drink, but now … It is the drought and global warming. Just one more problem for us.’

  Sonja glanced back and saw the other man with them had an AK-47, as well as her Glock, and her pack on his back. Every few paces the man stopped and turned, checking the track behind them and listening.

  Weaver birds chattered as they brushed through the reeds, making the birds’ intricately woven nests dance and sway like Chinese lanterns on flimsy poles. Somewhere ahead she heard a hippo grunting. She was glad it was another scorching hot day, so the sensitive-skinned creatures would be unlikely to be out of the water grazing. If they ran into an angry hippopotamus out of water then even the AK might not be enough to save them.

  The leader paused and held up his hand. The tail-end Charlie stopped and covered their rear. Sonja stayed put as the man lowered his profile and crept forward. Sonja could see the glitter of sun on water through the reeds. He waited for a few moments then waved her on.

  Sonja squelched forwards, the mud and water over the tops of her boots now. The leader was bent over and hauling on something. She joined him and saw he was dragging a long mekoro from its hiding place in the pampas. The mekoro, a dugout canoe usually carved from the trunk of the sausage tree, was the traditional means of transport throughout the swamps of the Okavango Delta and neighbouring wetlands that spilled over into the Caprivi.

  The leader held the mekoro steady for her, and nodded for her to get in. ‘I will sit in the front, then you. My colleague will be the poler.’

  She thought colleague an unusual word for a fellow warrior. She stepped into the narrow canoe and, gripping the sides, sat down. ‘Before this, what did you do?’

  He placed Sonja’s pack further back in the mekoro, so that Sonja could use it as a backrest, then waded to the front of the long, narrow boat, which was barely wide enough to accommodate his quite ample backside. He checked the safety catch on the AK and climbed in, in front of Sonja. ‘I was the village school teacher.’

  ‘And now?’ she probed.

  ‘And now, I am taking you where you need to go.’

  She felt the canoe tip and grabbed the sides to steady herself as the second man pushed the mekoro out into the muddy water and nimbly jumped aboard. He stabbed a narrow wooden pole, its length nearly twice his height, into the bank and the vessel slid quickly and easily into the channel.

  Reeds and pampas taller than the poler shielded them from view as the mekoro glided silently down the waterway, which seemed no more than two or three metres across at its widest.

  ‘Too shallow for hippos to spend the day here, in case you are wondering,’ the leader grinned back at her.

  ‘And crocodiles?’

  He kept his gaze ahead now, adjusting the assault rifle on his lap and wrapping his right hand around the pistol grip. ‘Ah, plenty.’

  Sonja had travelled by mekoro many times in her youth, but she never tired of i
t. To her, it was the only way to travel through the swamps. It was as close, literally, to nature and the delta as a human could be. ‘How long will we be on the water?’

  ‘Two, maybe three hours, depending on the strength of the man behind you.’ The poler chuckled.

  Sonja unzipped her daypack and pulled out her bush hat. One thing she remembered about travelling on the waters around Xakanaxa was how easy it was to get sunburned out on the water. Next, she unlaced her right boot, slid off her sock and rinsed it by trailing it in the water, which was just a few centimetres below the top of the canoe’s sidewall. She squeezed the water out of her sock and wriggled her toes, letting her feet dry.

  The leader looked back, disturbed by her slight movements, and looked down at her pale foot and smiled. ‘One boot at a time, eh? Like a good soldier.’

  ‘My father taught me that.’ The memory came from her subconscious. It was a pleasant one of them going for long walks on the cattle farm at Okahandja, tracking kudu and impala and other wild game that also lived on the property. Sometimes he would shoot for the pot, and on other occasions they would go just to watch the graceful antelope. He’d told her, when she wanted to stop and massage her aching and blistered feet after wearing some new boots, to take off one at a time, and replace and lace the one boot before taking off the other – in case she had to suddenly run from danger.

  ‘But Papa,’ she’d said to him, ‘you always told me not to run from lions or leopards.’

  ‘People, my girl. In case of bad people.’

  It was her first, but not her last lesson in the art of war and bushcraft from her father. As much as she despised him now, some of what he’d taught her had saved her life.

  The leader returned his gaze to the front.

  By two in the afternoon she could tell from the sun’s position that they were more or less heading south, which figured. She pictured the map of the Caprivi Strip in her mind. South of the highway, the B8, on this eastern side of Caprivi, was a series of wetlands not unlike the country in the Okavango Delta. On the Namibian side of the border were Mamili and Madumu national parks and this seasonally flooding environment continued across the border into the Linyanti swamps of Botswana. It was a good place to hide a rebel army – remote, inaccessible and easy to get lost in if you weren’t a local.

  Many refugees from the Caprivi region had settled in Dukwe, which was where she had been supposed to meet Martin, but that was a long way south of the border, well into the dry heartland of Botswana. She wondered if the Botswana government had deliberately chosen a spot so far from the border in order to avoid the refugees fomenting trouble too close to their former homeland.

  Pop, pop, pop.

  Sonja swivelled to look up at the poler. ‘My pistol. Give it to me!’

  The leader looked back over his shoulder. ‘Relax. It is all right. We are near.’

  ‘That was an AK-47,’ she said, suddenly feeling naked and trapped in the boat without her sidearm.

  ‘Very good,’ replied the leader.

  A faster burst of gunfire erupted somewhere up ahead.

  ‘And that?’ asked the leader.

  Sonja cocked her head and waited for the next burst. ‘Seven point six two millimetre, again. A PKM, this time, I think.’

  ‘Close,’ the teacher corrected her, ‘Good guess. But it’s actually one of the new MAG 58s that have just arrived. We are conducting weapons training today. I prefer the RPD myself – it’s lighter and easier to move with.’

  Sonja agreed. ‘The drum magazine is simpler to change during an assault.’

  The leader laughed, deep and loud, obviously relaxing a little as they neared their destination and no longer having to worry about making too much noise. ‘I can see we are going to have much to talk about. Perhaps we can learn a few things from you. I understand you have been in many battles.’

  ‘A few. And you?’

  He stayed looking ahead, but she could see his shoulders sag ever so slightly. ‘Only two,’ he said softly. ‘The raid on the Katima Mulilo police station more than ten years ago, and the attack on the dam. Both went badly.’

  She wanted to say something encouraging, but she had already decided that she wanted no more of this operation. Once she had briefed Martin on her recce she was still determined to turn her back on Corporate Solutions and take no part in bringing war to a country at peace, no matter what injustices these separatist rebels may or may not have endured.

  The machine-gun continued to fire in desultory bursts of three to five rounds at a time. Above and in between the cacophony was the even louder voice of a man screaming in a local language, which sounded like Lozi.

  ‘Is ammunition a problem for you?’

  The leader shook his head. ‘No, we have plenty of ammunition and weapons, though by now you may have heard that we could use more men. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Those are machine-guns that are firing. Those men need to be told to use them like machine-guns. They need to get used to firing twenty-round bursts. It’s an area weapon, not a popgun.’

  The leader turned and looked at her, and she read a look of surprise on his face. He’d obviously just been making conversation when he’d mentioned that a woman might be able to teach them something about war.

  ‘But surely it is better to conserve—’

  The voice was screaming now and it had lapsed into heavily accented English. ‘Cease fire. Listen to me, you stupid bastards … I won’t tell you again. THIS IS A MACHINE-GUN. FIRE IT LIKE A FOKKING MACHINE-GUN, NOT LIKE A BLADDY POPGUN!’

  After a brief pause the gun started firing again and it kept going until the whole belt of seventy, eighty, maybe a hundred rounds was finished. Sonja heard the metallic clunk as the empty breech block locked itself in the open position.

  The leader was saying something to her but she wasn’t listening. She was gripping each side of the mekoro tightly. Her head was spinning and her blood was pumping so hard and fast its noise was deafening her.

  She told herself she had to be wrong. It couldn’t be him.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The poler pushed them towards a chink in the curtain of papyrus and when Sonja looked up she saw a man in uniform waiting for them.

  ‘Good afternoon, madam.’

  ‘Gideon!’ It had taken her a couple of seconds to recognise him. His head was shaved and he was wearing a smartly pressed short-sleeve camouflage shirt and trousers. He braced up into a position of attention, then shuffled carefully down the muddy bank to catch the bow of the mekoro as it slid between the long stems of grass. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I am fine, madam, and you? Are you well?’

  ‘Yes, I am well.’ The leader stepped out and Sonja politely waved off Gideon’s hand and stepped off the canoe. It was good to stretch her legs again. Gideon did look fine. As she shook his hand, three times in the African manner, she saw the whites of his eyes were clear and his breath no longer smelled like a Sunday morning shebeen. Gideon exchanged a few words with the leader, who bowed to Sonja and told her again he was sorry for her inconvenience, and that he must rejoin his men. The poler pulled her Glock from his shorts and handed it to her.

  ‘Come, madam,’ Gideon said. ‘I am to take you to the general, our commander. He is with our senior instructor and operations officer, who also wants to meet you.’

  She felt her legs weaken, as though they might give out from under her, and mentally cursed herself for her weakness.

  It couldn’t be.

  Gideon made small talk as he led her on a well-trodden path that became firmer and drier with every step. They were on a sandy island and ahead of her was a cluster of mature sausage trees and mahoganies. She heard an authoritative deep voice speaking loudly in Lozi.

  The reeds gave way to long grass as they approached the shade of the trees. Sonja saw thatched roofs and as the grass became progressively shorter she saw the dwellings were actually open-sided lapas, or shelters. They were long and narrow and beneath the thatch were chair
s and tables, like an open-air bush schoolroom.

  Gideon motioned for her to wait, with a gentle hand on her arm. Sitting cross-legged in the clearing, facing them, were a dozen young men in camouflage fatigues. Her arrival had been noted and the men couldn’t help glancing at the white woman who had emerged from the long grass. Addressing the trainees was an older African man, also in uniform, with a cap of tight grey curls and a black swagger stick tucked under one arm. His deep voice was rising to a crescendo, as if he was fighting to keep their attention. Eyes dutifully flicked back to the general.

  Beside the pontificating commander was another old man, but this one was white. There was much less hair on top than she remembered, and what there was now hung long and lank and grey almost to his shoulders, which seemed a little rounded with age. The legs were bandy, but the calves muscled. His exposed skin was nut brown, except for the top of his head, which was red and mottled with dark sunspots. He wore a faded T-shirt in the camouflage pattern of the old South African Defence Force, denim shorts and rafter sandals.

  She could tell by the way his head was moving slowly from side to side that he was watching the eyes of the young recruits. He would have noticed their distraction.

  When the general finished his address he turned to the white man, who turned sharply to his right and saluted the African general. The commander reciprocated and turned and walked away.

  ‘Course,’ the white man said.

  There were no more doubts, and hearing his voice up close merely confirmed her worst fear. She wanted to turn and run away.

  ‘COURSE! On your bladdy feet, you useless pack of bastards!’ The recruits scrambled to stand and snapped to attention. ‘Course, dis-missed.’

  He turned away from the troops, who milled around in the clearing chatting to each other, and walked towards her.

  He smiled and she took in his face as he approached her. He wore rimless glasses now and his beard was long and white, except for the yellow tobacco stains around his mouth, which matched the colour of his teeth as his mouth contorted into a wide grin framed by deep wrinkles. He spread his arms wide as he closed the distance between them.