Shooting Butterflies (20 page)

‘I'm happy to have a party, and invite her,' Ebony said. ‘I can wear white and you can pay
roora
to my father, because you respect me enough.'

Jamison looked at her. His heart raced.

Every day since she had moved to the farm, they would walk together, talk after work. Eat supper together. Ebony was a good cook. She made traditional foods like
sadza neNyama.
But also white man's foods, like spaghetti bolognese and shepherd's pie, two of his favourite meals. And never during their time had she ever brought up his marriage proposal. He had feared she had forgotten it.

Apparently not.

Hesitantly, he asked, ‘So is that a yes, you will marry me?'

‘Yes, I'll marry you!' Ebony said.

He threw his arms around her, and the other women in the tobacco shed clapped and began to sing for them, dancing where they worked.

11

Recce Life

Fort Doppies, Caprivi Strip, South West Africa

1990

Wayne dropped his pack on the hard ground. Bevin and two of the other Recces flopped down alongside him under the tarpaulin that shaded the area during the heat of the day.

‘Home sweet home,' Bevin said.

Wayne looked around their home of the last few years, Fort Doppies, a base in the Caprivi Strip on the Cuando River, in South West Africa. It was here that much of the Special Forces training was conducted, because of the area's similarity to the bush in Angola, and its isolated location. This base trained with live rounds. This was one of the last stops before the real combat zone on the Angolan border. This was his base camp.

He'd accomplished so much in the last six years. He'd left Hilton top of his class and had been offered bursaries and scholarships for several of the top universities, which he'd deferred so that he could enter the army and become financially independent from his family
sooner. He'd completed his initial basic training, as every man in South Africa who was called to National Service had. Then it had been suggested to him that he try out for the Special Forces Unit. The Recces.

The week-long selection test had been a bitch, but after training, he'd passed their tests and he was one of the few elite people who could call themselves a Special Forces Operator.

He'd been presented with his red beret, and his Special Forces Operators badge, with its distinctive commando knife within a laurel wreath. He was now so used to doing the legendary ‘Gunston 500s', that he was no longer in awe of the feat. Mockingly nicknamed after the real-life surfing event by the men, the 500-kilometre walk inside the Angolan border was totally completed without air support, with only your pack and your unit for company. A far cry from the glamorous event where hot babes in bikinis lined the beach, covered in coconut oil, while surf pros from around the world competed for a rich prize pool in the cool ocean in Durban.

His unit had just returned from yet another of those epic journeys, but this time their mission had been more than reconnaissance. They had focused on the wildlife trade, not the war that raged on the Angolan border. They had gathered intel on the illegal trade in ivory and live animals, and on the drug trade. Not on rivers, and water supplies, not on suspected terrorist bases. And for the first time in a long time, Wayne had found an area of interest that he could become ultra passionate about. The desperate need for the preservation of Africa's wild animals.

Together with his Recce team, they'd tracked ammunition boxes filled with ivory from Angola, through Namibia and into South Africa. They followed the carnage by the poachers from the bush, through the kraals and into the big city where the fat cats in Johannesburg sat within a society that hid behind high walls and fences, trying to keep out the same drug addicts that they supplied the drugs to.

Wayne was sickened by the corruption he'd seen and by the trade in drugs that was happening. Mandrax was using the same pipeline
to get into South Africa, and the SADF were denying that their trucks were being used in the illegal trafficking.

But as yet they still couldn't prove that it was someone high up in the army who was involved. Every time they came close, every time someone asked questions, they came across the same line, blocking their inquiries.

‘It's none of your business, and you will be sorted out if you continue to stick you nose in where it doesn't belong.'

The SADF had ‘lost' intelligence staff who asked too many questions, and it was now the Recces who were trying to uncover the mastermind behind the drug and animal trade.

Someone was profiteering in the illegal trade, and it wasn't the SADF.

Wayne's heart hurt thinking of all the wildlife that was being decimated for profit. He snorted as he shook his head, trying to dislodge the disappointment he felt just thinking of their last mission, of their losses and their inability to nail the son-of-a-bitch responsible for the desecration of the wild animals across Africa.

He dragged himself upright and moved to the edge of the shade area, looking out over the river that meandered below. The sun was setting. They had pushed hard to make Doppies by sundown.

Terry, the resident lion, wandered into the camp. He chose to sit quietly next to Wayne as they gazed out at the view of the river together.

Unlike many other parts of Africa, the fighting here had been going on for so long, most of the animals had become gun shy and had fled or been hunted by soldiers for fresh meat. Those animals that had once fled to the Caprivi Strip to escape the fighting in the north in Angola had been savagely poached. There were stories told among the older men, about finding elephant ivory stashes of fifty to two hundred tusks. About caches of hippo teeth in tea chests. And the men who had served for many years remembered when game had roamed so thick that you could sight elephant daily.

But now, no one remembered seeing an elephant in the area for at least ten years, and those that were reported were said to limp
from bullets embedded deep into their flesh from attacks in the north. Sometimes when they were crossing through the bush, they would come across an old carcass, its white bones scattered about by scavengers, signs that the tusks had been chopped out clearly visible in the once mighty skull.

Yet Terry the lion remained fat. His diet was often supplemented by the men in the camp who regarded him as part of their operation. Terry had been just a cub when he'd stumbled into their camp, and had chosen to claim the human world of their camp within his territory. The men had never tried to harness him and tame him. He was still a wild lion, he'd just chosen the men as his pride.

Terry licked Wayne's fingers as he reached out to give him a rub in his huge mane.

‘So Terry, how was your day at the office?' Wayne asked, then laughed.

‘One day that lion is going to talk back to you, and then what?' asked Bevin.

‘Then I'll know I've finally lost it,' Wayne said as Terry moved his position so that his large body pressed fully against Wayne's leg, and his belly was accessible for a rub.

Bevin sat in the dirt on the opposite side of Wayne to where Terry was lying. It wasn't that he was frightened of Terry, just cautious. ‘That lion seriously is just a giant pussy cat with you, do you know that.'

Wayne smiled. ‘It's just a shame that one-hundred-and-eighty kilos of kitty-cat is hard to share a regulation army bed with.'

Bevin laughed at Wayne's complaint. Many had experienced the delight of having Terry decide theirs was the bed he was going to sleep on that night. After jumping up onto the bed, and pinning down the occupant, he usually licked their faces with his sandpaper tongue before trying to settle horizontally on top of the person to sleep. Since Wayne had entered the camp four years previously, mostly he'd chosen to sleep alongside Wayne.

He also chose to patrol with Wayne when he was outside of the camp, and would walk the perimeter check with him when he was on duty.

Bevin dug his toes into the sand. ‘It was great having him with us for the first part of that mission.'

‘Yup. I still think we crossed out of his territory on day five and that's why he turned back. That or he smelled a female.'

‘Actually it was quite comforting having him with us while we were out there. I mean, come on, what gook is going to attack someone in the bush with a lion hanging around them? They are too superstitious for that,' Bevin admitted.

Terry rolled back over, and the ever-present flies hummed around him, then settled again.

‘Have you always been good with animals?' Bevin asked.

‘Never really been around them. I guess I like my dog at home, and the barn cats brush up and say hello, but I never thought of it as an affinity with animals.'

‘Perhaps when we get out this shithole of a war, you can do something with them.'

‘Perhaps,' Wayne said, but he thought of Tara and how he needed to find her.

‘Are you thinking of taking Terry with you when you check out?'

‘He's a free lion. This is his territory. I couldn't relocate him without good cause. Even if we suddenly stopped this war by some miracle, he'd still be a wild animal. No one should remove him.'

‘But he's domesticated.'

‘Lions can't be domesticated. He'll want to take on a pride soon, now that he's fully mature. Apparently when he came into camp he was just small, and the guys who encouraged him in with milk and meat and attention, they never realised he'd stay around. But it's eight years since he came here, almost time for him to find a real pride of his own. He's strong, he'll fight for his own harem soon.'

‘You see any other lions on patrol here? He's been left behind. They all moved out long ago. The area is too hot, even for the lions.'

‘Bevin, seriously I think you underestimate the instinct that lions have to survive. If they can't eat the wild animals, they will turn on unsuspecting humans and eat them.'

‘Maybe, but that survival-driven pussy cat is eating your bush hat.'

‘Terry, drop!' Wayne commanded. Terry just looked at him with eyes of molten gold, with his eyebrows up in a questioning position, and continued to tear the hat apart. ‘What will we do with you?'

Bevin laughed.

One of the support staff walked over to the tarp area. ‘Wayne, the lieutenant is looking for you.'

‘What did you do this time?' asked Bevin. ‘You only just got back to camp.'

‘Dunno,' Wayne said as he stood up. Terry stood next to him. He came up to halfway between Wayne's knees and his hip. The lion put his front feet forward and stretched backwards, just as a domestic cat would do. ‘Come on, let's go see what he wants,' Wayne said to Terry.

He heard Bevin as he left. ‘I think you and that lion look like George Adamson in
Born Free
.'

Wayne showed him the middle finger and continued walking. He followed the staffer to the lieutenant's office and knocked on the door. Terry sat outside, waiting.

‘Enter,' Lieutenant Upton shouted.

Wayne opened the door. ‘You wanted to see me, sir?'

‘Sit.' He motioned to the visitor's chair the other side of his desk.

Being summoned to the lieutenant's office was almost as bad as being called into the principal's office at school. It wasn't something he had to do often. Mostly their lieutenant would speak with them as a group, or under the tarp while having a beer.

The lieutenant stood and retrieved two glasses and a bottle of brandy from the top of a filing cabinet. He put them on the front of his desk and poured a shot of about two inches into each glass, careful not to spill the golden liquid. He screwed the lid back on the bottle, and lifted a glass, passing it to Wayne.

‘Drink this, you are going to need it.'

Wayne downed the brandy and felt the burn all the way from his mouth into his stomach. ‘What?' he asked, putting the glass next to the lieutenant's empty one.

‘You need to pack for condolence leave. I received this yesterday.' He passed Wayne a message that had obviously been written by someone in the comms office.

‘Regret to inform Special Forces Operator Wayne Simon Botha of the death of his father, passed on 10 January 1990. Mother requesting only son to return to civilian life to take over the responsibility of the family farm.'

Wayne sat at the breakfast table at Kujana Farm.

He shovelled another spoon of banana ProNutro into his mouth. His father, who should have sat opposite him, reading the newspaper and grunting every now and again, or chuckling, was gone. Never again would he share a joke at the table from his morning papers.

His mother would always come in and turn the conversation to the bad articles in the paper. But his father had liked to share the jokes. How they had stayed together all these years, Wayne still didn't understand.

He stared at the milk carton on the breakfast table. The pictures of the blonde children who were going missing in South Africa stared back. He turned the carton so he couldn't see the black and white pictures. They reminded him too much of the young Tara who'd walked into his classroom in Standard 6. The younger Tara with the worried eyes, and the touch-me-not attitude.

He hated to admit that he was no closer to finding Tara than he had been after they had been forced apart all those years before.

She had left so quickly that week. And her family had refused to talk with him. Then while his life was still in turmoil, and he was sent to boarding school, her mother and sister had moved away from Hluhluwe too, and no one knew where they had gone. He'd asked everyone in their old school, had even asked the staff at the railway station.

He knew that she had family in Durban and had looked in the phone book for her there, with no success. He'd looked in the phone book of every major city and found nothing.