Sundowner Ubunta (28 page)

I glanced over my shoulder at the black swill of water below me and rapidly changed my mind about that swim to shore.

“Who are you?” I called to Cassandra in not the friendliest of tones.

“Russell, I’m sorry,” she said, moving to get up.

“Sit!” Jaegar commanded and she complied.

“My husband is…my husband is Christian Wellness, and we live in Atlanta but…but…I don’t work for a magazine,” she said contritely, but for me, well, it was a little too little a little too late.

I swore under my breath and reconsidered diving into the river, just to get away from these two.

“But I do love to take pictures,” she added brightly. “And I do love adventure, and I do love Africa. It’s just that I need to get away sometime, by myself, to be the girl I was in college instead of this stuffy, proper, southern wife of a stuffy, proper, rich, southern man.” She looked at me and didn’t see what she hoped for and kept going. “You have to believe me, Russell, I had no idea this big oaf worked for my husband or why he was following us. I’ve never seen him before in my life.” She turned and gave Jaegar a disgusted look. “And I hope I never see him again after tonight.” Back to me. “Christian has never done anything like this before.”

“Before?” She’d obviously taken an unannounced powder from her proper, southern life on more than one occasion.

She ignored the question. “Usually when I go away, I have some fun, do some things, then I go back home. I always go back home. He yells, he forgives me, and we go on. But this time…this time…”

“He’d had enough,” I concluded. I didn’t disagree with him.

I looked hard at Cassandra Wellness and wondered why I’d been so attracted to her. Yes, I enjoy her type of personality: bold, brash, adventurous, a force of nature. But, I realized, I hadn’t gotten involved with her because I’d foolishly been drawn to her, pursuing her like some lovestruck puppy, but rather because she had pulled me in with a leash of her own design. As I watched her wring her hands, her brows knitted with worry, I knew I liked her still, but I no longer admired her.

“I suppose so,” she agreed meekly. “I told him I come to Africa because I love the country, the people, the culture, the food, the vibe of its cities, and all of that is true. But I presume he must have come to suspect that I come here for something more-to be with other men. Obviously he sent his henchman to find out for sure.” She turned on Jaegar once more. “But you’ve made a big mistake, you goon. You have it all wrong.” Then back at me. “I guess he saw us hanging around and, well, assumed the worst.”

Oh really, sister? Our short-lived drunken dalliance in Cape Town flashed through my head like a dirty movie. I focused on Cassandra’s face. Her lips were saying one thing, her eyes quite another. She was asking me to protect her, to lie for her, to pretend that what her husband suspected of her wasn’t true, when indeed it was. Regardless of the fact that we hadn’t actually had sex, the lack of touchdown had nothing to do with Cassandra’s unwillingness. Christian Wellness had good reason to be distrustful of his 124 of 170

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beautiful wife. The question was, on whose side would I come down? I regarded Jaegar. I debated trying to convince the big lug that I was gay and could never want what Christian Wellness suspected I wanted from his wife. But really, what was the point? It’s not as if I carry around a gay membership card to prove my preference. There was only one, efficient way out of this mess.

I shifted position and looked Jaegar in the eye. “I’m gonna do what you told me to. I’m very scared and I’m gonna run away very fast and very far.” I nodded towards shore. “As soon as you get us back to dry land.” I heard Cassandra give a squeak of consternation, but I didn’t really care. “How about it?”

Jaegar searched my face for deception, then shifted his gaze to Cassandra. I could have jumped him at that point. But nah, I was pretty certain this was over, that I wasn’t about to become hippo chow. This was all about Christian Wellness hiring a thug to scare the pants off his wife and the man she was fooling around with; this wasn’t about murder. Studying the look on Jaegar’s face closely for the first time, I doubted the big German was even capable of killing anyone.

That’s when the shooting started.

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As we scrambled for cover from the spray of bullets biting the boat, we simultaneously realized there was precious little to be had. We were fully exposed on a flat, floating piece of wood (or whatever the damn thing was made of) with nothing to hide behind except the podium that housed the controls. Jaegar seemed intent on hogging that spot all to himself, and given the look of horror on his face, I was quite certain he wasn’t about to give it up. Fortunately, even though bullets were zigging and zagging all over the place like in a
Dick Tracy
comic strip, the shooters were either particularly bad shots or having a hard time getting a bead on us in the dark all the way from shore.

“The lamp!” I called out to Jaegar, who was closest to it. “Extinguish the lamp!” My hope was that with no light to draw attention to our position in the water, maybe they’d give up their midnight hunt as hopeless.

But Jaegar was useless, frozen with fear into a balled up position. I was right about the guy; he really
was
just a big old teddy bear on the inside-a useless, pansy-ass, fluffy-eared, cotton-hearted teddy bear. I would have to do it. The boat wasn’t that big. Jaegar and the lamp weren’t that far away.

I laid a hand on Cassandra’s head, which was plastered against the floor like gum to a shoe, and laid my lips against her exposed ear. “It’s gonna be okay,” I whispered.

She turned her head ever so slightly and gave me an “Are you insane? People are shooting at us!” look.

Justified, I suppose.

“Stay here,” I ordered. “And don’t move a muscle.”

“Don’t worry,” she managed through lips squashed against the bottom of the boat.

“I’m going to try to get to the lamp,” I said to no one in particular.

She mumbled something that did not sound anything like, “Be careful, Russell” or “You’re my hero, Russell,” but I could be wrong about that.

Leaving Cassandra’s side, I slithered off, as close to the ground as I could get, and alligatored my way toward Jaegar and the offending lamp. The big guy’s eyes were shut tight, probably with the childish hope that if he didn’t see them, they couldn’t see him. Idiot. I noticed his hands were wrapped around himself.

Where was the gun? Jaegar might not be in the mood to do any shooting back, but I certainly was. But the firearm was nowhere to be seen. Was he lying on it? I finally reached his side and lay next to him like a reluctant lover, waiting for cessation in gunfire before reaching up for the wick knob of the lamp, positioned on a ledge just above his head.

“How’re you doing?” I asked him. I wasn’t totally devoid of sympathy for the bruiser, even though he had just threatened to push me overboard.

“They’re not trying to hit us,” Jaegar managed to get out from between gritted teeth, his eyes opening a sliver. “If we stay down and out of the way we won’t be shot.”

Uh, excuse me, did you notice the bullets? “What are you talking about?”

“They are aiming for the engine. Easier to hit.”

“Oh shit,” I heard Cassandra proclaim.

I agreed, but wasn’t quite up to snuff on the import of what he’d said.

“They want us dead in the water,” Cassandra uttered, a trail of dread following her words like slime from a snail.

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The phrase sounded worse than the reality. So what if our engine got knocked out? Given the choice, I’d rather the engine take one for the team than me get a hot piece of lead in my butt cheek. Or worse.

“Couldn’t we just release the anchor,” I suggested, “or whatever it is that’s keeping us tied to this bloody island, and float away from these guys?”

“If the boat goes adrift, if we cannot use the motor and steer it away, it will float into hippopotamus territory,” Jaegar explained, sounding a lot like Arnold Schwarzenegger with a particularly difficult script line to deliver.

“I thought we
were
in hippo territory,” I countered, then added with a bit of sass, “Remember when you were gonna feed me to them?”

Jaegar shook his head. “I lied.” He motioned with his head to somewhere up river and closer to the shoreline. “Over there is where the hippopotamus live. They are everywhere. They float below the water…”

“Did you know hippopotamus can hold their breaths for several minutes?” This helpful bit of information came from the prone body (but not so prone lips) of Cassandra. It was beginning to dawn on me what it was they were getting at, but I didn’t want to let it in just yet.

“You never know they are there,” Jaegar continued as if telling a scary story around a campfire. “They come up below boat. Without motor we cannot get away. If boat is small enough-a boat like this-they will capsize it, and throw us into the water. And they will attack. And we will die.”

I did not particularly like this story. “So we stay here then. We won’t let the boat go adrift.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Cassandra said with resignation.

“They will come,” Jaegar agreed. “The hippopotamus will come for us. Without motor, we cannot escape.”

Oh dear.

“So, we can’t drive this thing outta here because they’ll shoot us. If we set ourselves adrift the hippos will get us. If we stay the way we are and they shoot out our engine the hippos will still get us. Do I have the situation pretty much summed up? Basically you’re saying, we’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t? Is that about it?”

Jaegar shrugged his agreement.

“Who are these bastards who are shooting at us anyways?”

Cassandra demanded, as if one of us should know. It was obvious they weren’t friends of Jaegar’s. And certainly not mine. “Why are they doing this? Are they marauders of some sort?”

“Not robbers,” Jaegar said. “They would want the boat, and the engine, for themselves, not destroyed by their guns.”

“Then who?”

Jaegar and I exchanged looks.

“These might be the same people who blew up the Jeep,” I said, knowing Jaegar had seen exactly what we had. “They want us dead. They want
me
dead. By gunfire or hippo; one way or the other.”

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needed to stop the shooting and save our engine.

“Where’s the gun?” I asked Jaegar.

He didn’t answer immediately, which I took to be a sign that he either didn’t know or didn’t want to tell me. The bullets were whizzing through the air with alarming regularity. I’d been unable to find a break in the gunfire to reach up to extinguish the lamp. I feared our time was running out. I repeated the question.

“Jaegar, where is the gun? We have to defend ourselves; we have to defend the engine!”

“I don’t know,” was his mumbled reply.

“What do you mean? You just had it. I saw it. It was very close to my face as a matter of fact.”

“It is gone.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to be a little bit more specific than that,” I said through tight lips, barely keeping my frustration in check. “I don’t have to do the shooting if you don’t want me to have the gun. If that’s the problem, I can understand that, but somebody needs to start shooting back. Now!”

Another especially vociferous volley of gunfire punctuated my point.

“It is gone,” he said, “overboard.”

Cassandra weighed in with an, “Oh fuck.”

“It fell into water when I hit the floor,” he explained.

I had to concur with Cassandra’s take on the situation.

The shooting stopped momentarily. Maybe they were reloading. It was time for Plan B, which, come to think of it, was why I was spooning with this German hooligan in the first place.

Finding my mark first with my eyes, I rapidly reached up, found the lamp’s knob and turned it to extinguish the flame, throwing us and the boat, mercifully, into total blackness. “Shhh,” I told the others.

They shushed and we listened.

Immediately the sound of gunfire resumed, filling the air with its deadly retort, then began to peter out, and, eventually, halted.

For a moment, the echo of bullets zipping over our heads remained with us, then that too was gone.

Plan B had worked. I was tentatively and quietly elated. I’m sure the others were too, but the only thing I could hear in the damp, dark air was the jagged, uneasy breathing of Jaegar and Cassandra. Mine too.

For a long time we lay there in the belly of that boat, not daring to move because there was a chance the shooters were still out there, waiting for us to show ourselves. We did not talk, afraid the sound of our voices would carry over water and act as a targeting device. We breathed. In and out. In and out.

We waited.

And waited some more.

Although my head told me it might still be too soon, my aching muscles could no longer stay in the same position. Inch by painful inch, I raised myself up until I was resting on numb forearms and elbows. My head bobbed above my shoulders, at the ready to disappear like a turtle into its shell at the first sign of gunfire. It was still black as crow out there, and scanning the horizon did little to appease my concern that 128 of 170

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we might still not be alone.

“It will be light soon,” I heard Jaegar whisper from the shadows.

“He’s right,” this from Cassandra.

Obviously neither of them had fallen asleep either. Who could?

I slipped back down into my position as a human rug and waited for dawn.

In the end, despite the seemingly endless barrage of bullets, all of us-the engine included-came away without injury. The distance from shore to boat must have been too great for whatever type of weapons they were using, and I guessed there were probably a good number of unfortunate fish with lead in their bellies in the water below us.

In some peculiar way, our harrowing escapade had knit us together as a trio with a common goal rather than the original gun-toting maniac against two captives. With the first light of dawn, Jaegar recovered enough to get us and the boat to shore, returning to the same spot at the base of the Chobe camp where we’d left from the night before. It might not have been the wisest move, but none of us knew the river well enough to know where else to go. Jaegar’s original plan was to take Cassandra and me to the little island in the middle of the Chobe River, scare me into agreeing to stop seeing Mrs. Wellness, scare Mrs.