Guarding the Princess (18 page)

He continued to stare at her. “You’re not going to marry him?”

She smiled, a little tremulous, excitement glittering in her eyes, exhilaration shining around her.

“No,” she whispered. “If I marry, Brandt, it’s going to be for love.”

He felt as if he was on the edge of a precipice, and she was asking him to jump without a chute. He was so damn afraid that what she was promising wouldn’t work out. The princess and the mercenary.

Was it even possible?

“If you help me kill Amal, Brandt, I can be free.”

“No,” he said. “No way am I letting you do this for your brothers. I can’t allow you to have blood on your hands. It’s not you, Dalilah, to kill a man. You don’t even hurt animals.”

“He’s not a man. He’s a monster. You said it yourself—he’s evil.”

Brandt shook his head.

“I’m not taking you back there. I’m not getting you killed.” He hesitated, his brain racing through options. She was right about one thing—they couldn’t run forever. If Amal did find their tracks off the road and into this controlled game area, there was a very real chance he’d end up tracking Brandt all the way back to his farm, and Amal could reach the farm before reinforcements ever arrived from Omair. This could end in a violent confrontation either way. He cursed inwardly. He’d rather bring the confrontation to Amal, on his own terms.

“I’ll go back myself,” he said. “I’ll hide you here, up in those cliffs.”

“What?”

“You hide out here in the gorge—and if I don’t return, you make your way back down to the main road and start walking south. There’ll be a truck at some point. Stop the truck, get the driver to take you to the first village, find a phone and call Omair. He’ll come get you. Tell him my debt is paid. Tell him I went after Amal.” He opened his door, got out and leaned over into the backseat, began repacking a box.

“What are you doing?”

“Leaving you supplies.”

Dalilah flung open her door, went up to him, grabbed him by the arm. “Brandt, stop. Look at me!”

He stilled, and slowly met her eyes.

“Just how are you planning on doing this alone?”

He said nothing.

Blood drained from her face. “Oh, no,” she whispered. “You’re going to lure him away and drive until Skorokoro runs into the ground? And then he’ll kill you.”

“Dalilah—”

Her face hardened. “That’s rich—make me fall in love with you, make me abandon my country and my obligations, then you go on a suicide mission
?”

“How,” he said very quietly, “can you ever think you could want to be with me on my land in the remote Botswana wilderness, Dalilah? You’re riding on an adrenaline rush. When you sober up in a few days, you’ll see. I’ll be history in your eyes.”

She barked a harsh laugh. “Oh, and here I thought you said you knew me! You know nothing, Brandt Stryker, about my love for this continent, about who I really want to be. Who I
can
be. But you had the gumption to show me—you can’t abandon me now.” Her eyes glittered with emotion, and hot spots of color rode high on her cheeks. “And I’m not going to let you do this alone.”

She placed her hand against his face—skin soft, warm. “Either we do this together or we let those villagers die.”

“If we do it together I might be letting
you
die,” he said.

“Then we go out in a blaze...we go like Thelma and Louise, like Bonnie and Clyde, like...I don’t know—like Brandt and Dalilah.”

He opened his mouth, but she put her fingers to her lips. “I don’t want to face a future without trying to make one with you, Stryker. A team. Like you said back at the cliff, one rock at a time. And then when we’re done, you take me home. Your home.”

Conflict twisted so tight in Brandt he couldn’t breathe.

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. She’d just given him everything...the whole world, a future, to fight for. A reason to live. To try again. Another chance.

And everything to lose.

His eyes burned as he met the fierce passion in her gaze. And he knew—he knew with every molecule in his being, that he loved this woman. This woman who never stopped surprising him, who was his match in so many ways and more. A woman who could challenge him and take him to task when he got out of hand.

She wanted him. This princess who’d never been with any other man—she wanted him to take her home.

To his bed.

Dare he do this?
Could
he ambush Amal, take him out and keep her alive at the same time? All he had was the jeep, one rifle, shells, a panga and a knife.

And his wits, he told himself. He had his smarts. He was a veteran guerrilla fighter.

A rush like thunder exploded through his chest and his brain started firing on all cylinders. It would be dark soon. Amal could have found their camp at the abandoned airstrip by now—or would soon. They were running out of time.

He thought about what he had in the jeep, in the boxes. Petrol. Motor oil. He had matches. A lighter. His brain raced. Then it hit—the man with the wooden crates of empty glass bottles at the side of the road about a klick or two back. Unless a vehicle had come down the road already and picked him up, he might still be there.

He turned to Dalilah, heart thudding a tattoo against his ribs, sweat dampening his shirt, a wild, mad exhilaration racing through his blood.

“I have an idea. Get in.”

“What—”

“Get in!” He jumped back into the driver’s seat and fired the ignition as Dalilah scrambled into her seat. Hitting the gas, he spun his wheels and did a one-eighty turn, heading back toward the main road. They thumped over the cattle grids and as he hit the road, he turned north.

The man with the bottles was still there. Brandt screeched to a stop beside him, leaped out of the vehicle.

Using rapid-fire Setswana, Brandt exchanged a hundred-dollar bill for the two crates of empty cola bottles.

Dumping them in the back of the jeep, he got back in and swung onto the road. Dusk crawled over the land as the sun slid below the distant ridge. Night was almost upon the bushveldt—the violence was about to begin.

Chapter 15

B
randt pulled off the road into a low gulley. In the dark, out of sight, they worked silently with headlamps, quickly filling the cola bottles with petrol, stripping the blanket and soaking the fabric strips in gas. They used the strips to make wicks into the bottles. The Molotov cocktails—twenty-four of them—were now stocked in the two wooden boxes, safe until they were lit. Brandt then filled the cooking pot with rifle shells, and he made sure the camping stove was in working order.

About an hour later, not far from the village, Brandt reversed Skorokoro carefully up a slope, ready for a quick getaway. Leaving the keys in the ignition and Dalilah in the passenger seat, he cupped the back of her neck. In the moonlight her eyes shimmered with liquid excitement, fear. He felt the tension in her body.

Silently, he kissed her.

Then he placed his knife in her hand, took his rifle and some spare shells, and trotted up to the lip of a ridge. If Amal was following their boot tracks from the abandoned airstrip, he and his men would pass underneath this cliff on their way to the village. It was a sheer cliff, no vehicle access up the front.

Hours ticked by. The moon and stars shifted. Night sounds filled the air.

Suddenly lights appeared in the distance. Brandt heard the purr of engines—Amal’s posse. It had to be. They were moving slowly. The vehicles stopped and a shadow moved in front of the headlights. Brandt’s pulse quickened—they had a tracker out front on foot. He had to time this just right.

Skorokoro had speed, but if the engine packed it in, they were dead.

The jeeps started to move again, coming closer. Brandt could make out horses in the silver moonlight.

He aimed his rifle, curling his finger around the trigger. Breathing in, he counted to three, then softly squeezed.

A gunshot cracked through the night.

Beetles fell silent, then rose in a wild crescendo again. Brandt fired again.

There was yelling. A horse reared, then jeeps started to move directly toward the cliff, veering away from their tracks that led to the village. It was definitely Amal and his crew.

Brandt scrambled down the slope, jumped over the door into the driver’s seat. “They’re coming.”

Firing the ignition, he raced for the road, leaving clear skid marks as he swung onto the paving and barreled south. Both were tense, silent, Dalilah gripping the door.

The moon was low, big, and stars bright—all good. Brandt was thinking several steps ahead while focusing on the road. Amal would reach the ridge, realize he had to drive around it, and be delayed. They’d also come slowly along the road, looking for tracks off it. This would give Brandt and Dalilah the window of time they needed to set up, but barely.

The game fence appeared, shimmering in the moonlight as they bombed down the road.

He glanced up into the rearview mirror. No lights in sight yet. Brandt wheeled off the paved road and Skorokoro bounced and thudded over the sets of cattle grids. He made sure he left deep tire marks pointing their way. This was where Amal would have to lose his horses—they’d be unable to cross the grids and enter the game-controlled area. Either he’d have to tether the mounts near the road and pack the horsemen into his two jeeps, or he’d instruct the men on horseback to continue down the road, looking for a way into the fence, which they would not find for another fifty kilometers or so.

And leaving horses tethered was not really an option if Amal didn’t want them eaten by night predators.

The rock walls of the Valley of Ghosts loomed suddenly into view once again, black shadows etched with scrub on top. He veered off the track that would have led them out of the wide part of the gorge, and entered the narrowing part instead. From this point the cliff walls began to funnel inward.

Brandt spun Skorokoro’s wheels for good measure, making sure their change in direction was easily visible in the silver moonlight. Then he drove down the gorge, along the dry riverbed of sand. Cliffs started to close tightly in on either side of them, blocking the moon. In his rearview mirror he could clearly see Skorokoro’s tire marks in the sand.

They arrived at the end of the gorge—barely the width of three jeeps. Here, the ground fell away into what was a thundering waterfall in the height of the rainy season. Brandt maneuvered the jeep behind an outcrop of rock. Unless Amal was checking topographical maps as he pursued them, which Brandt doubted, he would not be aware the ground fell away here in a dead end. Amal’s presumption would more likely be that Brandt had continued through the gap.

He cut the ignition and turned to Dalilah.

“This is it.” His eyes met hers. “Ready?”

She nodded, reached for his hand, squeezed.

“Let’s do this, then,” he said.

Brandt carried one of the boxes of handmade grenades, picking a fairly easy route up through the rocky gorge wall, Dalilah right behind him. Near the top of the ridge, beside a flat rock, he set the box down. Brandt balanced a bottle of petrol on the rock, checking it was level enough—it was.

“Remember, as you light the Molotovs, throw them immediately, and gravity will do the rest. You going to manage with that arm?”

She nodded. “I’ll position the Molotov on the rock, light, then throw.”

He handed her the lighter. “Be careful, concentrate.”

She took it from him and he realized she was shaking.

“You’ll be safe up here, Dalilah,” he said, holding her gaze with his own. “Just stay down behind the rocks. I’ll be on the opposite side of the gorge over there with the gun—I’ll keep them busy. When you hear my whistle, toss the first grenade.”

“I got it.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

“I will be.”

He turned to head back down.

“Brandt—”

He stilled.

“Promise me that you’ll take me home after. To your farm.”

Brandt held her gaze in the moonlight and his chest hurt. “I promise,” he whispered. And it solidified his intent—his plan was suddenly crystal sharp in his mind and he knew from the bottom of his soul that he was going to get her out of this alive. And once it was done, they’d both be free, in so many more ways than one.

“Good.” She smiled. “Because I know you don’t break a promise.”

Brandt hurried down through the rocks, and this time he took two boxes from the jeep—the other container of cola bombs and a box that contained the small camp stove, a tin of kerosene and the pot filled with rifle shells.

He found a good spot that was protected by rocks and there he set down the cola bottles filled with petrol. He then trotted along the ridge about a hundred meters in the direction from which they’d come and set up the stove with the pot of bullets on top. He poured kerosene over them and steadied his breathing as he watched the darkness. It wasn’t too long before he saw the flash of headlights in the distance, coming along the gorge bottom. Then came the second set—both vehicles going slowly enough so as not to lose Skorokoro’s tire marks in the sand. No horses, just as he’d figured.

Brandt waited until they got a little closer. Then he turned the knob on the camp stove and lit the gas. The bullets would explode and the men would think they were being fired on from behind. He ran back to where he’d left his handmade grenades.

Taking one of the bottles out of the box, he readied his match. The headlights came closer and he could hear the purring of the engines. His heart jackhammered. Across the ridge, he caught the gleam of Dalilah’s hair in the moonlight. Tension whispered through him, but he settled it—putting his mind in the zone, a place he was familiar with. And waited for his prey to arrive.

* * *

Jacob felt something was wrong as soon as the jeeps entered the dark gorge—the sixth sense of a hunter. A sense of foreboding. This was a trap—he was sure of it. But he said nothing from his seat in the back of one of the jeeps. Jock’s head rested on his lap. Amal sat in front of him.

Jacob scanned the black cliff faces that were closing in on either side of them. Then suddenly a glint of reflected moonlight up on the ridge caught his eye. His heart began to pound and sweat beaded on his brow. Still, Jacob said nothing to the man in the front seat, but he quietly removed the leash from Jock’s collar so the dog would be able to flee.

Suddenly gunfire sounded in the ridge behind them. All the men in the two jeeps spun around. Amal yelled for his driver to speed up.

The drivers gunned forward, but the cliff walls grew very narrow. Jacob heard a sharp whistle. Then a flare of orange fire came arcing down from the sky. The fireball hit the bonnet of their jeep and a bottle exploded into a raging burst of flame.

Another fireball came down from the other cliff wall, hit behind them. Then more bombs, followed by gunfire. The jeep engine caught fire. Amal and his men dived out of the vehicle, seeking cover in the rocks.

Jacob bailed, leaping from the backseat. Jock followed him. Mbogo was barking orders, trying to shoot up at the cliff face from behind rocks on the canyon floor.

More Molotov cocktails rained from the sky. The second jeep exploded into flames.

One of the men caught a bullet in the neck, and fell, his gun flying from his hands. Jacob scrabbled over the sand, grabbed the automatic rifle. And from the cover of a rock he aimed at five of the men now huddled in a group behind an outcropping to avoid being shot from above—they were sitting ducks the instant they moved. Jacob squeezed the trigger, his thin, old body jerking as he raked a barrage of bullets over the men. Then he shot them all again, to be sure.

Breathing hard, he stilled. Jacob quickly did the math—there’d been eleven men in total in the posse, including the one-armed Arab and his giant sidekick. But four of the men on horses had headed south when they’d been stumped by a series of cattle grids.

He’d shot five. There were two left somewhere. Jacob’s heart hammered. Where were the others?

Suddenly a gleam caught his eye—the shiny bald pate of Mbogo climbing the cliff, using rocks as cover from whoever was above, and he was moving fast. Jacob’s gaze shifted farther up the cliff face. His pulse kicked—
the woman.
He saw her move, moonlight on her hair, the shape of her silhouette as she darted from one rock to another.

Mbogo had almost reached her.

An explosion rent the air as one of the jeep’s fuel tanks blew. Bitter smoke billowed through the gorge as flames roared and crackled. Jacob crept quickly through the shadows and smoke, wanting a clear line to Mbogo. He’d lost sight of the Arab who’d leaped from the vehicle without a gun.

Crouching, Jacob pressed the rifle stock to his shoulder, aimed and squeezed the trigger.

The big man’s body jerked and spasmed under a hail of bullets. Then he tumbled, thudding down like a giant rag doll between the rocks.

But before Jacob could move, he heard Jock’s low, throaty growl, and suddenly the animal was beside him, snarling. Jacob realized too late why—the Arab leaped down from a rock above him. And he felt the dagger go deep into his side.

Amal yanked the dagger out, but before he could plunge it in again, Jock lunged at the man’s throat. Amal screamed, a terrible sound, followed by sick wet tearing, growling as he struggled with one hand to fight off the dog.

Jacob put his hand to his waist. Blood was soaking through his shirt, through his fingers. He pressed his hand to the wound, tried to crawl away.

Then his world went black.

* * *

Brandt stilled. Beneath the roar of flames he detected human screams that chilled him to the bone. He listened carefully, trying to separate the sounds. He thought he could hear animal snarls, like a wild dog attack. Nausea washed over him as an image of his son’s body slammed through his mind.

Then suddenly there was silence. Deadly silence, apart from the crackle of fire. He wasn’t sure what had happened, but someone down there had killed five men of his own party in a hail of bullets, then shot another who had been climbing up toward Dalilah, just as Brandt had been about to fire on the man himself.

He put his fingers into his mouth, issued three shrill whistles. In the moonlight on the other side he saw Dalilah wave her arm up.

Relief bottomed out of his stomach. Her orders were to stay hidden until he’d scoped out the place properly—there could still be someone down there alive.

Brandt waited another few beats. Still no sound. Heart thudding, he made his way carefully down between the rocks, gun in hand.

Five bodies lay in a twisted mess at the bottom of the cliff.

Amal, however, was not among these five dead. Brandt crept along the gorge bottom, staying in shadows. Smoke was thick and acrid down here, the smell of fuel strong. Then out of the blackness between rocks, something came at him.

He spun around, gun leading, and then his heart stalled. An animal—a dog. Advancing toward him, blood on his mouth—like a ghost. A ghost from his past.

Jock.

For a nanosecond Brandt couldn’t think as past looped into present. Then he snapped back, curling his finger around the trigger as he aimed at the animal.

But the dog lowered his head suddenly as he neared, its tail tucking in as it edged toward him sideways, wiggling, whining. That’s when Brandt saw Amal’s body behind the rock—throat ripped out. Arm mauled.
Dead.
This dog had killed the one-armed bandit? Another body lay in the sand a few metres away from Amal.

They were all dead, every single one of the men who had entered the ambush.

Confusion raced through Brandt’s mind as he crouched down and took hold of the animal’s collar. He reached for his flashlight, shone it on the tag.

Jock.

His heart began to hammer overtime, his life flashing before his eyes—images of Stefaan, mauled. His own dog, blood on its mouth. Yolanda. His brother. He was beyond exhausted—he hadn’t slept for days, he told himself. He was hallucinating, here in the Valley of Ghosts—seeing a dog from his past.

Fatigue was catching up with him, that’s all this was. Brandt tried to shake the ghostly sensation as he whistled for Dalilah.

While he waited for her to come down, he read the name on the dog’s tag again, just to be certain he’d seen it right the first time. “Hey, buddy,” Brandt said, crouching. “What happened here? Where are you from?”