by Tony Park
Sam stood, stooping a little in the confines of the tent, and took the space that divided the two stretchers to sit down beside her. The springs squeaked and the canvas creaked. Sam picked up the AK-47, gingerly, in case the thing accidentally went off.
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out as she watched him move the rifle to the other cot. ‘You should go.’
‘Deal.’ The stretcher sagged beside her and he felt her roll, slightly, involuntarily, closer to him. ‘But only if you come with me.’
She looked at the nylon mosquito mesh of the tent flap, as if worried someone might come barging in any second. Or was she, Sam wondered, looking for an escape route? Maybe a little of both. He moved an arm around her and placed his hand down on hers, on the canvas, behind her. She didn’t move her hand.
He could smell her now. No perfumes or body lotions, just the cheap soap and damp hair from an outdoor shower. She was a wild thing – a predator as at home in this hostile environment of men, animals and guns as a lioness, and just as dangerous. He didn’t want to tame her – he’d die trying – but he wanted to be with her. She reminded him of what he could have been. Honest.
She moistened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. No gloss. No need. ‘I want to go, Sam, but I can’t.’ Her voice was hoarse.
He leaned closer. ‘You don’t have to do this for money. If you’re in trouble I’ve got plenty …’
She widened her eyes and shifted away a little, maintaining the distance.
Shit, he thought. ‘That came out wrong. It’s just that … it’s not worth …’
She reached up and smiled as he recoiled. He thought she might be about to slap him, but instead she placed the tip of her right index finger on his lips. ‘Hush,’ she whispered, ‘I know what you mean, and I’m touched, but I take hand-outs from no man.’ She licked her lips again; left them parted ever so slightly.
‘Sonja?’ said a voice from outside.
She unzipped the tent and exhaled noisily. She ran a hand through her damp hair and hoped her cheeks weren’t as flushed as they felt, or that her scent wasn’t as strong as she imagined. She felt the trickle and the warmth, and the ache.
‘Oh, hello,’ Martin said when Sam followed her out of the tent.
Martin wasn’t crass enough to say he hoped he hadn’t interrupted anything, but his raised eyebrow did the job anyway. ‘Do you have a minute?’
‘Of course,’ she said to him. ‘Sam, perhaps we could finish our chat later?’
He nodded, turned on his heel and walked over to where Rickards was filming a line of CLA rebels queued outside the open-sided mess tent.
‘Let’s walk.’
She fell into step beside him.
‘Chatting? Is that what they call it these days?’
‘It was nothing, Martin, and none of your business anyway.’
He nodded. He carried an AK-47, and she wondered if it was to compensate for the fact her father had been armed during the briefing. ‘I thought I’d better brief you on the dam job.’
‘It might be a good idea,’ she said, ‘since I’ve never blown up a dam before. It had better be a good plan or I’m walking away.’
They moved out of earshot of the camp, down a narrow path between stands of reeds and papyrus, towards where the boats had landed. She forced the image of Sam’s handsome face from her mind. The temptation to make a run for it with him had been almost overpowering, despite what she’d said. What was he suggesting, she wondered, with the crack about money? He didn’t seem the sort who would have a kept woman on tap. Was he talking something more? He knew about Emma, and that, in her experience, was normally enough to kill a first date. ‘I take it there’s no one else from CS about to show up?’
‘No. It’s just you and me. Bigger share of the loot that way. I’ve already had your share wired to your account.’
‘Thanks, but do you expect me to carry ten tonnes of explosives in a backpack as I climb over the razor wire around the construction site and sneak past the Namibian Army, or will you be coming along to help me carry it?’
‘Very funny. I’ll take questions after the briefing.’
She stayed silent. It was the army way.
‘There’s a mobile HIV-AIDS testing clinic that visits the dam construction site once a month. It’s a converted truck with an airconditioned cab on the back. There are two people on board – a registered nurse and a driver who is qualified as an ambulance paramedic. Because of other stops it makes on the way, the truck normally arrives at the dam at last light – sometimes after dark. The clinic’s only been going to the dam for the past three months – it’s a relatively new initiative and a bit of PR window-dressing funded by the German partner in the dam project, Grow-something or other.’
‘GrowPower,’ she corrected him. ‘Their PR person’s pretty sharp.’
He frowned at the interruption, but nodded. ‘Whatever. I don’t know anything about her or them. Doesn’t matter. The point is that it hasn’t been the same two people driving the van onto the site more than once, so the gate guards, while accustomed to the visits, don’t know who will be driving it. As long as their credentials are in order they’ll be let through. The next visit is due tomorrow night. The van is going to arrive at the front gate, at 1900 hours local time, but it’s not going to be the same nurse and driver who set off from the last stop. It’s going to be you and the CLA’s RSM-type, Gideon. You’ll intercept them at a bogus checkpoint on the B8.’
‘If you’re planning on killing the nurse and the driver, then this briefing ends now.’
‘I said no interruptions.’ He swatted a mosquito on the back of his neck. It was getting dark. The path led them beside the river and its surface rippled with molten gold leaves. Frogs began warming up for the evening chorus. ‘They’ll be pulled over by CLA dressed as police – they’re good at that, as you found out – tied up and left in a hut in the bush somewhere. They’ll be set free after the show’s all over, unharmed if they don’t try anything stupid.’
‘But—’
He raised a hand. ‘Before you interrupt me again, let me explain. The nurses are provided by a German-backed AIDS charity. They’re travellers – white girls who squeeze in a month of do-gooding and then go back to backpacking and shagging anything that moves. The drivers are rotated, as well, so Gideon won’t raise any suspicions.’
‘How do you know all this?’ Sonja stopped on the path, hands on hips.
He sighed, as if resigning himself to the fact he couldn’t stop her interruptions. ‘Trench, the chairman of the Okavango defence committee, told me about it. He’s got a safari lodge in Namibia and the mobile clinic visits his place as well as the dam.’
‘What about the site manager, Deiter Roberts? He knows me. You made sure of that by telling me to make eyes at him.’
Martin shook his head and they resumed walking. ‘Herr Roberts’s nice home in Windhoek is going to catch fire in the next few hours and the fire brigade is going to get a call a short time later. I predict our Deiter will be on the road or the first flight out of Divundu some time tomorrow.’
She studied his face – the small smile, the thin cruel lips. She knew he could be a thorough bastard when he put his mind to it, and he was in his element tonight. ‘Who’s taking care of the arson?’
He shrugged. ‘Some freelancers in Windhoek. Don’t worry about it – they’re cheap. They won’t be cutting too much from our pie.’
‘You’ve been busy these past couple of days. So once inside the construction compound – presumably with an AIDS testing van full of explosives – how do I blow the dam?’ Sonja asked.
‘Have you seen that old war movie, The Dambusters?’
‘You’re going to drop the van from an aeroplane and it’ll bounce down the river, right?’
‘Very funny. The reason those bombs skipped along the water was so they could clear torpedo nets the Germans had erected, and then come to rest against the dam wall, where they would slowly sink to th
e bottom of the lake and then detonate at precisely the right depth. The force of the water in the lake, behind the bomb, enhanced its effectiveness and the power of the shock wave. So you, in the same way, need to get your bomb to the bottom of the dam wall, under water.’
‘How? And in any case, I doubt I’d be able to cram enough explosives into an AIDS testing van, no matter how big it is, to blow up a dam.’
‘You’re right. In fact, you’ll only be smuggling in about eight kilograms of high explosives in the van.’
‘Eight?’
He held up a hand. ‘Let me explain. Was there an explosives truck in the vehicle compound at the dam construction site?’
‘Ahh.’ She nodded. ‘Roberts told me GrowPower’s into blowing holes in the ground, as well as planting crops.’
Steele smiled. ‘The AIDS van, according to Trench’s sources, is usually parked overnight in the yard with the other valuable construction vehicles. There’s a twenty-four-hour security presence and the nurse and her driver usually sleep in a demountable building allocated for overnight site visitors. At precisely 0300 hours Gideon’s going to engage in a bit of arson himself. One of the demountables housing construction workers is going to catch fire. The buildings, you’ll recall, are near the vehicle park. While you organise the security guard who watches the park to help fight the fire, Gideon is going to be allowed into the vehicle park to fetch the AIDS van, which doubles as an ambulance. Once he’s brought the ambulance to you he’s then going to slip back into the unlocked compound and get to work on that truck full of explosives.’
‘Get to work on it?’
‘I’ve had two high explosive charges rigged up, in sequence, for the job. Gideon will fasten these to the underside of the truck. The first charge is what’s called a kicker, and the second, which is the larger of the two, is the initiator, which will blow a hole through the steel tank containing the Nitropril and detonate it.’
She gave a short shake of her head. ‘But how do we get the truck full of explosives in place?’
‘I was coming to that,’ he said. ‘Get in your ambulance and tell whoever will listen that you’ve got a burns victim or two in the back and you need to take them to the clinic in Divundu. Gideon, hero that he is, will have started the explosives truck by now. He’ll tell the security man that he’s moving the truck away from the fire in case it catches light, which is nonsense, of course, but no one’s going to argue with him. Gideon’s the sort of person people listen to in a crisis and if they don’t, he’ll dispose of them, quietly. Gideon will drive into the inky night, but instead of heading for the administrative compound he’ll drive on to the dam wall and you’ll follow him.’
Sonja nodded. Despite her earlier misgivings she was impressed by the simplicity and audacity of the plan. Some things were being left to chance, but that was inevitable in what was essentially a two-person operation. It might just work. ‘And halfway along the dam wall Gideon takes a left, jumps out, and lets the truck roll over the edge into the water.’
‘Precisely.’ Steele grinned. ‘The truck will sink or roll down the rear face of the dam wall, underwater. There’s a barometric detonator on the high explosive charges which will go off at the right depth to do maximum damage. The first charge, the kicker, will actually roll the lorry onto its side, so that the maximum surface area of the container carrying the Nitropril will come into contact with the wall. The initiating charge will go off a couple of seconds later, blow a hole in the tank, and detonate all that lovely bulk explosive inside.’
They stopped again, pausing naturally as the sun disappeared beneath the bottom of the layer of dust haze. At another time, in different circumstances, it would have been romantic. ‘Bang goes the wall – hopefully,’ Sonja said.
‘It won’t happen right away. The blast should weaken the dam wall, but it will actually be the force of the water that breaks through the damaged section.’
She gazed out over the darkening river and thought about the havoc they were planning on wreaking in one of the most beautiful parts of the world. Was Sam right? Was it worth it? Still, part of her felt the tingle of excitement, as real and as hot as the touchpaper Sam had lit in a different part of her body. The plan was simple, daring and mad. The best kind. ‘How do I get out?’
‘Picture the scene. It’s going to be chaos. You’ll have picked up Gideon in the ambulance and you’ll be off the dam wall before the barometric detonator sets off the explosives. Shortly afterwards, the dam will be no more and most of the army garrison will be on the opposite side to you. You’ll just slip away.’
She laughed. ‘Slip away? Just like that? Pfft … gone, like a will o’ the wisp.’ She clicked her fingers.
‘I’ll be in the air, in one of the choppers, circling nearby just across the Botswana border, with our trusty TV crew on board, and a ready reaction force of six of the CLA’s finest. You and Gideon will both carry search and rescue beacons, a GPS and handheld radios. Ditch the AIDS van, find a quiet spot in the perimeter fence, cut your way out and head into the bush. Find a safe-ish LZ and talk us in.’
She stared at him, hands on her hips. ‘Sounds like you’ve skimped on the planning of our escape. Don’t you think we’ll make it that far?’
‘You don’t think you can manage it?’ he countered.
She bit her lip and thought about it for a few moments. ‘I could do it blindfolded, and you know it.’
TWENTY-FIVE
Sonja wanted to find Sam, but first she had to go and see her father.
The CLA had apparently been using this camp for some time, because many of the men had built traditional huts of mudbrick with reed thatch for themselves and their families a short walk from the military tented camp, at the far end of the island in the swamp. Her father wasn’t the only member of the force who had a wife and children with him, though his son – her half-brother – was the only one of mixed race. She saw the boy toddling along with a stick in his hand, trying to keep up with two older boys, of seven or eight, playing at soldiers. The others ducked in and out of the bushes around the cleared compound between the huts.
‘Bang, bang,’ her father’s son called.
‘Where’s your dad, hey Frederick?’ She dropped to one knee and gently took the stick from his hand. ‘You don’t need this at your age, my boy.’
The child started wailing. Sonja knew, from her own experience, what that sound would do.
‘Frederick?’ Miriam emerged from a hut wiping her hands on a tea towel. Sonja was a little surprised if this was where her father was living. She would have expected him to have a more substantial house than the rest of the men. In truth, she thought he would have had a white man’s house. ‘Oh, Sonja! Hello.’
Sonja bobbed her head in greeting and looked down at the little boy, then up at his attractive mother. ‘My father … is he here?’
‘Come, Frederick, your dinner is ready. No, he has gone out with the men, into the swamps. Some last minute training and rehearsals, he said. He works them day and night, so much that even the young ones look like they will die sometimes, but your father, he has the strength of a man a third his age.’
She made a quick calculation – he would be sixty now. ‘Well, it was nothing important anyway. I’ll see you, Miriam.’
‘No. Wait, Sonja. Let me get Frederick settled and we can talk. It’s good that you came to see your father.’
‘You don’t know what it was I was going to say to him.’
Miriam scooped the little boy up into her arms and headed back towards the hut. She said, without looking back: ‘The anger is going from you. I think you came to find out who he has become.’
Sonja bit her lip. What did this bloody woman know? ‘I don’t care who he’s become. You didn’t know him as he was.’
‘No. When I found him he was a dead man. Still breathing, but dead.’
‘He never hit you.’
Miriam set the child down at the entrance to the hut. ‘No. But he told me, soon after
he was sober, what he was capable of when he was drunk. He told me what he remembered of the day he lost you, and how it broke his heart so badly that he thought he would bleed to death on the inside. He loved you,’ Miriam said. ‘He still does.’
Sonja felt out of place here. She was not one to turn the other cheek or forgive and forget. In her world the meek didn’t inherit the earth – they had their villages burned and their husbands killed. But when she glanced around she saw green T-shirts and camouflage uniforms drying on a washing line. Perhaps she was wrong about Miriam. What kind of a woman took herself and her small child into the swamps to join a rebel army; sent her man off to work with his gun and his ammunition in the knowledge that he was probably training to die to make a political point? Maybe Miriam was stronger than she gave her credit for.
‘He drove my mother away,’ Sonja said. ‘He drove me away, even when I decided to stay with him.’
Miriam knelt by a blackened pot just outside the door and spooned a mound of white maize meal onto a battered enamel plate. Next she scooped a rich, thick sheba sauce of beans, meat and gravy from an aluminium saucepan.
With Frederick seated and clumsily feeding himself by taking a handful of maize meal and dipping it into the sheba, Miriam straightened and looked at her. ‘He was sorry, but he knew it was too late. He started his life again and I just hope – I pray – that he lives long enough to see Frederick grow to manhood, in a country of his own.’
She looked down at the little boy, contentedly stuffing his mouth. She remembered Emma at the same age. ‘Why, Miriam? Why do you love him? You’re different ages, different colours, from different worlds. What do you see in him?’
Miriam wiped her hands again. ‘I saw a man imprisoned by his demons and tormented by his past sins. Then I saw that man – that prisoner – set free when he found the Lord and gave away alcohol. You have never met this man, until the last two days. You don’t know him at all. Your mother must have known him, a long time ago, before the war changed him. She must have loved the man that I love now.’