Sam’s back and arm muscles were burning and he was light-headed. He couldn’t lie back in the canoe; every time he tried, the guy using the pole or paddle or whatever behind him would kick him viciously between the shoulder blades. The more he sweated into the hessian hood over his head, the more humid and cloying the limited air available to him became. He felt like he was choking on his own breath.
He’d been wearing a tank top and shorts when they’d dragged him and Jim at gunpoint from the rented Nissan Patrol they had taken from Bagani airstrip, and he could almost hear the exposed skin on his legs, arms and shoulders crackling under the sun’s heat as he roasted. Jesus, he could have been sipping a chilled beer by the pool in the Windhoek Country Club by now, instead of wondering how soon it would be before he died.
No. If they had wanted to kill him and Rickards they would have done it by now. He shifted his butt a little. That ached as well. The man behind him gave him a kick for good measure and said, ‘Still.’
His wrists were bound together behind him with plastic cable ties, and though he could still wiggle his fingers they felt cold against each other now. His shoulder muscles cried at being pulled back at such an unnatural angle and every now and then streaks of pain shot up the insides of his thighs.
Rickards’s idea not to catch the flight to Windhoek with Cheryl-Ann and Gerry, but to go looking for Sonja instead, had been crazy. Oddly, though, Sam hadn’t needed much convincing.
‘I’m a freelancer, Samuel,’ Rickards had told him as they stood by the open door of the GrowPower private aircraft. ‘I go where the news is. And that chick,’ he jabbed his thumb towards the dust cloud Sonja left in her wake, ‘is news with a big N.’
‘What about Cheryl-Ann?’ Sam said.
‘Step away from the camera bags, dude,’ Rickards said to the pilot, who was plainly getting impatient to leave Bagani. ‘Cheryl-Ann’s fucked, mate. She’s busted her last ball. I’ve seen it happen before. Sometimes it’s the toughest, cockiest journos who cry for mummy and make small potty in their pants when the bullets start flying. I’m a news cameraman. I’ve seen stuff that would make a mortician puke, and I know there’s trouble brewing here in paradise. Also, now that your producer’s on her way to the laughing academy, that’s the end of your documentary. It’s OK for you – you’ve still got a contract with Wildlife World – but my gig just ended and I probably won’t see a cent.’
A mange-ridden donkey nosed inside a discarded plastic shopping bag full of rubbish that had been deposited by the last occupant of one of the Nissan rental trucks. Sam rubbed his jaw. ‘I don’t know.’
Rickards walked over to the vehicles and Sam followed, reluctantly. Jim checked the windscreen of the nearest Nissan, which was parked near the tin-roofed structure that served as the airstrip’s terminal and office. The cars had presumably been dropped at the airstrip by GrowPower employees or contractors and the vehicles were awaiting collection by the car rental company whose name and number were on a sticker on the windscreen. It wasn’t a big-name firm, which made it more likely, he reckoned, that they would do a deal over the phone if Sam gave them his Wildlife World expense account credit card details. ‘Are you with me, compadre? Think of the exposure, Sam. With your words and my beautiful pictures we might be able to come up with something that’ll take you off cable and onto the networks. You could be rich and famous, Sam.’
‘I’m not interested in fame or money.’
‘Yeah, right. Spoken like a true TV celebrity. Once more with feeling, dude. Listen to me, Sam. If not for fame or cash, then do it for the only real reason that counts in this godforsaken world of ours, my man.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You want to have sex with Sonja.’
‘I do not.’
His case mounted, Rickards stood there in the dust, leaning against the Nissan, in silence.
‘Give me the number,’ Sam had said.
The company had agreed to let Sam take the car, but only after he’d explained who he was. The consultant from the rental firm was a big fan of Sam and Wildlife World, but her boss insisted on an astronomical deposit and a promise they would drive straight to Katima Mulilo and the company’s nearest branch office to fill out the paperwork, before revealing that the quantity surveyors who usually hired the vehicle had hidden the keys in the tail pipe.
Sonja had a good hour’s lead on them and Sam and Jim had no idea how far she would drive before stopping, or where she would stay. Come to think of it, Sam had no idea what he would say to her when he did catch her. He guessed her reply would be short and to the point – probably no more than two words and one would be a cuss.
So why had he done it? Maybe Jim was right about him wanting to sleep with her. He wasn’t so sure that Sonja was involved in some mercenary plot to foment war in the region, but Rickards was.
‘Corporate Solutions, man,’ he said as Sam floored the accelerator and raced through the gears. ‘They’re mercenaries. I bet all that shit that guy Steele laid on about her coming along to protect us was just a cover. Were you watching her at the dam?’
Sam admitted he hadn’t been. Well, no more than usual.
‘She was scoping the place out, big time. When we were checking in she was practically counting the cameras and the guards. She was casing the place.’
‘Professional curiosity?’ Sam ventured.
‘Whatever. And let’s not forget the three African gentlemen in the shiny black ute who tried to whack us. Or have they slipped your mind already?’
Sam knew he would see the face of the man he had killed for the rest of his life.
‘Nope, she’s up to something, my friend. And she owes it to us to tell us what it is, seeing as she very bloody nearly got us killed.’
At the first roadblock, at the junction of the B8, the policeman on duty told Sam that the white woman in the Land Rover had driven through about an hour before them, and headed east, towards Katima Mulilo.
Sam and Jim pressed on, winding the Nissan up to a hundred and forty. At the veterinary control point at Kongola, just across the bridge over the Kwando River, they again had the chance to ask after Sonja. It was already dark.
‘No, there has been no woman in a Land Rover through here,’ the woman at the checkpoint had answered.
‘You’re sure? How long have you been on duty?’
‘All day. I am sure. And now I am going off duty.’
‘Say, we passed some signs to a couple of camp sites a little way back,’ Sam said to the woman. ‘What can you tell us about them?’
The woman shrugged. ‘The one at Bum Hill is suitable for two-by-four vehicles, but Nambwa is for four-by-four only.’
Sam turned the vehicle around and headed back over the bridge. ‘What do you think?’ he asked Rickards.
‘I’m thinking Lara Croft is more a four-by-four kinda girl,’ Jim said.
Sam nodded.
The route had challenged his sand-driving abilities but they’d made it, after taking a wrong turn and almost ending up in a swamp. Retracing their tracks they saw the small metal sign they had missed. When they arrived after ten in the evening the sleepy camp-site attendant said he hadn’t seen a single woman in a Land Rover enter the campground.
‘How long have you been on duty?’ Sam asked the man.
‘Only two hours.’
Sam looked at Jim. ‘She could have arrived earlier. I’m going to look for her.’
‘Good luck,’ Jim said. ‘I’m knackered. I’m going to sleep in the truck.’
Sam had stumbled about the camping ground for a while, checking each of the demarcated sites along the river front and although he saw a Land Rover it had South African plates and was part of a trio of expedition vehicles. He started to move away from the water in search of other camp sites, but the sound of tree branches snapping halted him in his tracks. Sam jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder.
‘Sir,’ the African man who had been at reception said, ‘you should go to bed. There are elephant in those bushes. It is not safe for you to be walking around.’ Reluctantly, Sam agreed.
He was awake with the sun but when he got up and walked around the rest of the camping ground there was no sign of Sonja or her Land Rover.
A different man was now on duty in the reception hut. ‘Ah, but the lady in the Land Rover she has already left, earlier this morning.’
Sam wanted to scream in frustration. ‘Why didn’t the other guy tell me she was here?’ he seethed.
‘This lady, she did not have a booking, so I put her in the overflow camp site. My brother did not know about her.’
Sam and Jim packed in a hurry. The drive out through the deep sand drifts didn’t seem nearly as long or as challenging as Sam gunned the Patrol’s big engine and raced to catch up with Sonja.
When the uniformed policeman strode out into the middle of the road and started flagging him down, Sam was sure he’d been busted for speeding. The fine would have been richly deserved as he’d been pushing the vehicle to its limits.
‘Our luck might be in,’ Rickards had said, pointing to the police pick-up on the side of the road with its bonnet open. ‘Looks like these guys might just be broken down and looking for a lift.’
Sam rocked forward then backwards as he felt the nose of the dugout grind to a halt in mud or sand.
‘Up!’ the man behind him ordered.
It was easier said than done. Sam couldn’t use his tied hands to grasp the sides of the canoe, and when he brought his knees up and tried to boost himself up he found his legs had gone to sleep from staying in the one position too long.
‘Up!’ He felt a hand grab the back of his shorts and haul him roughly to his feet. His leg muscles prickled with pins and needles and he lurched forward, bumping into Rickards’s back. The Australian swore.
‘Sorry,’ Sam said.
‘How fucked do you think we are?’ the Australian whispered.
‘It’s not good.’ Sam straightened up and put one foot tentatively in front of the other. ‘But I figure if they wanted to kill us they would have done it by now.’
‘Silence!’
Sam cried out in pain as something blunt and unforgiving punched him in the small of the back. At the same time another hand grabbed the shoulder strap of his tank top and dragged him.
‘Lift your feet,’ the voice said to him. Sam followed the orders and noted the accent of the new voice was different. It sounded European, maybe Dutch. He hadn’t spent any time in South Africa other than transiting through the airport on his way to Botswana, but he thought the voice might have been that of an Afrikaner. The accent was similar to Sonja’s, but harsher. Sam stepped into a mush of water and mud but his next footfall was on dry land.
‘Stop there,’ the man said. ‘Hold your hands steady.’ Sam felt the cold steel of the flat edge of a knife’s blade rest against the inside of his wrist and he flinched. ‘I said steady, unless you want me to cut you.’
He heard a snap and then felt the blood pulsing back into his hands and fingers. The relief turned quickly to pain.
‘Rub your hands together. Massage your wrists. Jissus man, if you’d put these bladdy things on tighter this oke’s hands would have dropped off,’ the man said, presumably to one of the men who had kidnapped them. ‘Strip them.’
Sam swallowed as he felt hands lifting his top over his head. Any hope he’d had that the man with the Afrikaans accent might have been kinder on them was fast disappearing, along with his shorts.
‘Oh fuck, no,’ he heard Rickards whine. ‘Please don’t rape me!’
‘Shut up!’
Sam heard a chuckle and some words exchanged in an African dialect. The men laughed some more and Sam reddened under the hood he was wearing. He felt vulnerable and very afraid. This, he figured, was what they wanted.
‘On your knees. Now!’ the Afrikaner voice barked.
Sam lowered himself and placed his hands in front of his pubic area.
‘Arms up! Reach for the heavens. You won’t protect yourself that way. If you lower your arms you will get a beating, understood?’
‘You’re making a …’
The blow between his shoulderblades pitched him forwards and he grazed his palms in the sand trying to break his fall. Rough hands pulled him back up on to his knees again. He heard breathing close to the hood. ‘You don’t speak unless you’re answering one of my questions. Name?’
‘Sam Chapman. I’m a presenter for—’
A hand slapped the back of his head. ‘Arms up! All I asked you was your name.’
‘You?’
‘Jim Rickards … sir.’
Sam heard a thump and a squeal of pain as Jim received the same treatment.
‘Play smart with me, Aussie boy, and I’ll cut your fucking balls off. Understand?’
‘Um … yes.’
Sam heard footsteps behind him and again sensed the man close to his face. ‘I see from your passport that you are a Mr Samuel Charles Chapman, citizen of the United States of America. Now, Mr Chapman, I want you to tell me who you are working for.’
‘I’m a television presenter for the Wildlife World documentary channel. I’m in Africa making a film about the Okavango Delta and—’
Sam doubled over and felt only pain when he tried to draw a breath. He fell to his side and clutched his chest.
‘Up!’
Hands dragged him up. He was gasping but couldn’t get any air in his lungs. He thought he might pass out.
‘Hands up!’
A hand grabbed his hair through the hood, forcing the coarse fabric against his mouth as he managed a ragged breath.
‘No bullshit, American. I don’t want your fucking cover story – who do you work for?’
‘I told you, I work for Wildlife World it’s a—’
‘Shut up, you fucking liar.’ Sam heard the slick sliding of metal on metal then felt something press against his temple hard enough to ingrain the weave of the hessian on his skin. ‘Feel that? It’s a Browning nine-millimetre pistol. But don’t worry, I’m not going to shoot you with it.’
Sam was too scared to utter another word. He felt the pressure removed from the side of his head.
‘I’m going to shoot your Australian friend here. Mr … James Edward Rickards.’
‘Don’t shoot,’ Sam heard Jim wail. ‘He’s telling the truth, you fucking psychopath. This dude’s a TV talking head and I’m—’
The gunshot shook Sam’s whole body. ‘JIM! Nooo!’
All Sam could hear was a muffled, gurgling sound. He felt the gun pressed against his head again. He could feel the heat of the barrel through the hood. ‘He’s wounded, Samuel, but not dead … yet. Want me to put another bullet in him and finish him off, or are you going to tell me the truth? Who are you working for and why were you following the woman?’
‘I TOLD YOU, I’M SAM CHAPMAN AND I WORK FOR—’
‘Papa? What the fuck are you doing, you bloody idiot …’
The pistol was moved and Sam tried to shrug away from the fingers he felt at his throat.
‘Sam, it’s me, Sonja. Relax. It’s OK, Sam.’
He was almost hyperventilating but her words stilled him. He felt the fingers again. Soft, delicate, as she unpicked the knot at his throat. He smelled her through the bag. Not perfumed, but a raw, woman’s smell. He coughed. ‘Son … Sonja?’
‘Ja, hush for a moment while I get this off.’
He risked the wrath of the other man and dropped his hands to his groin again.
‘Get this man’s clothes. Now! And the other one’s, you fucking maniacs,’ she said.
Sam blinked as the hood came away from his head. He saw Sonja, though her face and ponytail were a black silhouette against the sun streaming through leaves above. He coughed and spat fibres that he’d sucked into his mouth and throat over the past hours. He looked to his side and saw a black man in camouflage uniform struggling to remove the hood from a thrashing, swearing Rickards.
Sam stood and snatched the shorts from the man who held them out to him, then stepped into them. As he pulled his singlet top over his head he twisted around and saw an old man with a Santa Claus beard holding a black pistol at his side. He felt Sonja’s hand on his arm.
‘Jesus, Sonja, do you know these madmen?’ he asked.
‘Hands off, motherfucker,’ Rickards said as he wrenched his hood the rest of the way off and hopped from one leg to the other as he tried to pull on his pants.
‘That one,’ Sonja pointed to the man with the beard, ‘is my father.’
The man looked at Sam and shrugged.
*
Sam and Jim sat on a log in front of a camp fire. Scattered around the clearing were more tents hiding beneath trees and nets. Every now and then an armed African man in uniform wandered past and gave them a suspicious glance.
Sonja lifted a blackened kettle off the embers and poured boiling water into three tin cups. She took a pewter hipflask from the pocket of her shorts and poured a shot of something into each cup.
‘Make mine a double, GI Jane,’ Rickards said.
Sam saw that, despite the bravado and wisecracks, Jim’s face was still very pale. Sonja handed them each a steaming mug.
Sam smelled coffee and brandy. He sipped it, closed his eyes and let the double-barrelled heat work its way through his tortured body. He opened his eyes and looked at Sonja. ‘That man is your father?’
She nodded. ‘It’s complicated.’
‘Seems pretty straightforward to me,’ Rickards said, coughing as his first mouthful hit home. ‘Crazy little fucker tried to kill me because he thought Sam was some kind of spy.’
Sonja smiled. ‘If he wanted to kill you, you wouldn’t be sitting here now. He was just trying to scare you.’
‘Well it worked. I thought he’d shot you, Jim,’ Sam said. ‘I didn’t know what to say.’
‘One of the other dudes put his hand over my mouth just as Kris Kringle shot his wad into the ground by my foot, is what happened. Your dad is one sick fuck, Sonja.’
She rocked her head slightly from side to side, as if weighing up the observation, but didn’t say anything. Sam wondered whether Jim had hit the nail on the head.
‘He was trying to protect me. They were watching you from the time you left Bagani airfield. You shouldn’t have followed me.’
‘Who are they, Sonja?’ Sam took another slug of medicine.
‘I’m not at liberty to tell you that.’
Rickards stood up and tossed the dregs of his coffee in the fire. A small blue flame danced in the coals. ‘Enough with the “need-to-know” bullshit, Sonja. You owe us an explanation.’
She crossed her legs and looked up at him. ‘Really, Jim? How do you work that out?’
He ran a hand through his greasy black hair. ‘How do you feel about telling me to hang out the window of the Land Rover to film those clowns following us in the black Toyota? Did I draw their fire OK for you?’
She frowned and Sam could see Rickards had scored about half a point.
‘I thought if they saw you filming they’d be too scared to do anything and would back off.’
Sam shook his head. ‘Now I’m really confused. Who the hell are “they”?’
‘None of your business, Sam.’
It was his turn to lose it with her now. ‘I killed one of those men, Sonja. I think that kinda makes it my business.’
Rickards was pacing back and forwards. ‘OK, so Miss Plausible Deniability here isn’t going to tell us anything, Sam. Let’s do a little deducing. What’s the only armed rebel group that’s been active in this part of the world in the last few years?’
Sam searched his memory for the acronym. ‘The CLA, right?’
Rickards nodded. ‘Caprivi Liberation Army. I actually came up here years ago, in the nineties, when the CLA tried to take over the police station at Katima Mulilo. I got squat – the war was over before it began – but I remember a rumour going around had it that the CLA was being trained by bitter and twisted whites from the old South-West Africa looking to get a little payback against the Namibian government.’
‘How about it, Sonja?’ Sam asked. ‘We getting warm?’ She ignored him.
‘And so Sonja’s dear old dad,’ Jim went on, ‘is one of those old soldiers looking to refight the war against the SWAPO terrorists who now run his former home.’
Sonja said nothing.
‘Lion got your tongue, Xena?’
She glared at Rickards, but didn’t rise to the bait. Sam thought he might have to put a restraining hand on the Australian soon if he didn’t calm down – not that he could blame the guy. He had, after all, just nearly been shot.
‘So you,’ Jim pointed between Sonja’s eyes, his fingers cocked like a pistol, ‘work for Corporate Solutions. Cheryl-Ann swallows the line that you’re a bodyguard, but no one wants to listen to Jim Rickards when he points out that CS is a mercenary outfit that specialises in wreaking havoc on the African continent.’
Sonja turned to Sam, still blanking Rickards. ‘Why did you follow me, Sam? Why not just go off to Windhoek?’
Sam looked up at Jim, who returned the glance and drew a breath. He answered for Sam, his voice calmer and lower now that the fear-induced adrenaline was subsiding. ‘I’m looking for the story, Sonja, but Sam here was genuinely worried about you after those goons tried to kill us.’
She looked at the camp fire.
‘What’s CS doing up here, Sonja?’ Jim pressed. ‘Are you training the CLA? Running guns?’
‘If you expect an answer to that then you should know it’ll be followed by a bullet.’
‘You going to deliver it, or are you going to leave that up to psycho-daddy?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I’m not going to hurt you. I was trying to leave this place when you two showed up.’ She leaned forward in her chair and motioned with a hand for Jim to resume his seat on the log, which he did. ‘I don’t think my father will harm you now that he knows who you really are, but I can’t be sure about everyone else here.’
‘Are you leaving?’ Sam asked.
She sucked her lower lip between her teeth and chewed for a second. ‘I wanted to, but I can’t see them letting you go right now.’
‘Right now?’ Jim whispered. ‘What’s going on here?’
She shook her head.
‘The dam?’ Sam asked.
‘Don’t ask any more questions,’ Sonja said. ‘They already think you know too much. You’re a liability to them.’
‘There we go with “them” again,’ Rickards said. ‘Who are they? Who’s pulling the strings on the puppets with the guns here?’
The three of them sat in silence, thinking about their next move.
‘I can try and get you out of here. Quietly. Tonight,’ Sonja said.
Rickards surprised Sam by shaking his head. ‘No way. I want in.’
‘You want what?’ Sonja beat Sam to the question.
Jim stood again. He seemed to feel better asserting himself when he was on his feet. ‘This could be the African story of the decade. Sam – let me ask you a question. Before you came to Africa and that guy Martin Steele told you and Cheryl-Ann about the so-called security situation in the Caprivi Strip, had you ever heard of the Caprivi Liberation Army or the Free Caprivi movement?’
Sam shook his head.
Jim snapped his head around to stare at Sonja. ‘See?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t follow.’
‘PR. These dudes have been fighting a silent political and military battle to regain sovereignty over their ancestral homelands, against an unfeeling and allegedly cruel government dominated by a different tribe. Right?’
‘Pretty much,’ she agreed.
‘And no one has ever heard of them. The CLA needs some good public relations and you, young lady, are going to arrange with your dear old dad for me to be embedded with whatever hit squad these rebels are putting together.’
Her laugh burst like a grenade. ‘You’re insane.’
Rickards nodded enthusiastically. ‘Agreed. It’s part of the job description for a TV cameraman. But think about it. Unless your dad is going to kill us – which somehow I doubt – we’re going to leave here and sex symbol Sam is going to sell his story for a mint to OK or New Idea or Entertainment Tonight or whatever, about how he was captured and psychologically tortured by this loony rebel commander. Right Sam?’
He shrugged. ‘I’m sure there will be questions about what happened and I’ll answer them as objectively as I can.’
‘Bullshit. Stop being so polite, Sam. I mean, I know you’ve got a crush on Sonja and all …’
‘Jim,’ he hissed.
Sonja turned to him and Sam looked away into the fire.
‘Whatever.’ Rickards started pacing again. ‘Well, speaking for myself, I am going to get in front of every print, cable and free-to-air journalist in southern Africa when we get out of here and tell them my tale of woe. Win, lose or draw, your pop and his rebel army are going to come off looking as bad as Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now. Wasn’t he a Kurtz as well?’
Sonja ignored the levity. ‘I can see where you’re going, Jim, but my father – not to mention the general commanding the CLA – won’t agree to taking a civilian cameraman with them on any operation. Not that I’m saying there is an operation.’
‘Sonja. Listen to me … from what I know the Namibian government has done a far better job convincing the world that Africa needs this dam to give electricity and water to the teeming masses. Correct?’
‘It’s going to be the same once your war starts in the Caprivi Strip. The Namibians are going to brand these guys as terrorists and criminals. They’re going to lock the strip down and not let any foreign media in. The CLA will have lost the information war before it even begins. I want to be the one who shows the world the other side, the truth – the first pictures of the freedom fighters of the CLA in action, taking back their homeland from a heavy-handed oppressor. And Sam here can tell their story.’
‘I can?’
Jim kept looking at him, waiting for an answer. ‘Think of it, Sam. The ultimate reality program – Coyote Sam Goes to War. You don’t look convinced.’ Rickards paced to the edge of the fire pit and back. He raised his right hand as if seeing letters in thin air in front of him. ‘I can see the headline … “CHAPMAN TELLS – MY TIME WITH THE ECO WARRIORS WHO BLEW UP A DAM TO SAVE PARADISE”.’
Corny, Sam thought, but he could see there was something in this for the CLA rebels. As Rickards had said, other armed forces – both insurgents and government-led around the world – used the media to help fight their wars. He looked at Sonja, trying to read her face. He was coming around to Rickards’s point of view and he wondered how much of that was due to him searching for a way to spend a little more time with the woman next to him.
‘Sonja,’ Sam said, ‘do you think the CLA has a legitimate grievance against the government?’
She shrugged. ‘Maybe.’
‘Yet you’re willing to risk your life to help them fight a war and blow up that dam on a “maybe”.’
‘Wait a minute.’ She raised her hands. ‘No one said anything about a dam or a war. Besides, I just told you, I’m not even staying here. I’m leaving. I was kidnapped off the road – just like you two.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ Sam said. ‘Jim was watching you at the dam and now that I think about it, I thought your behaviour was a little odd as well. You used us as a cover to get on to the construction site and you work for a mercenary outfit. What do you think about the dam?’
She chewed her lower lip again and sat with her elbows on her knees, staring into the fire once more. ‘I don’t have to tell you anything.’
‘You’re right. You don’t. But tell me, in case I get dragged into this thing any deeper, in your heart of hearts do you believe that dam should be destroyed?’
She looked across at him. ‘I don’t know if I believe in the CLA’s cause or if they have the right to take on an elected government in an armed struggle, but I do know that from what I saw in the delta – the lack of water in places that should still have had some, even in a drought – that the dam has to be destroyed or the world will lose a piece of its heart and its soul.’
Rickards shifted from foot to foot. ‘I want to be there when that fucker blows. The world will call the CLA environmental heroes – green commandos.’
She turned to Sam. ‘Do you want to be part of this?’
Sam stared at her and knew it was madness to go along with what Rickards had suggested. His answer would depend on hers. ‘Do you?’
She closed her eyes and nodded.