The Delta (14 page)

Sonja walked towards the setting sun, with Beauty following contentedly in her footsteps. The moon was rising behind her, its pumpkin orange a pale yet stunning reflection of the sun's crimson. The country here was flat, open grasslands, tinderbox dry and begging for the water that might now never come.

Her arms and legs were brick red from the sun, and the evening cool, when it finally came, was like a reunion with a long-lost friend. Sonja spared the batteries in the GPS and navigated by the stars. As darkness descended the sky lit up and it was easy to believe she and her horse were the only two living things on the planet. When at last fatigue overtook her, she tethered the horse and rolled out her sleeping bag. She was almost too tired to make a fire, but she knew if she did not boil the water she had collected that day then she would have nothing to drink when the sun relaunched its offensive on them in the morning.

Routine, she thought. Roll out bed, make fire. Boil water, decant. Eat, not because she was hungry, but because she had to. Clean and oil rifle, clean and oil pistol. It was like being in the army again. Routine, routine, routine. The orderliness, the mundaneness of it all gave a sense of personal control and discipline to a life that would otherwise be one of pure chaos.

Sonja chewed a stick of biltong and washed it down with lukewarm water while she watched the fire – African television they called it here – and waited for the billy to boil.

The flames were mesmerising and they took her back to Danny
Byrne's living room in his cottage in Northern Ireland, where the pair of them had sat naked, wrapped in a blanket, and gazed at the glowing coals in his hearth. What had she done, and why had she done it; she had asked herself that over and over. It was impossible to extinguish the memory, or forget the guilty warmth that had radiated out from within her.

After that first meeting in the pub she'd been surprised when Martin ordered her to try and get closer to Byrne. She'd half expected a bollocking for getting into a conversation with the terrorist, instead of just keeping him in view. She'd been too excited by the added responsibility to think there was anything seedy about Martin's strategy. The surveillance teams stayed on Byrne and a ‘chance' meeting on a footpath had been orchestrated. Byrne had asked her out for a drink. It had all been so easy. Dinner followed the next night. Martin went through the motions of warning her not to become enamoured by Byrne's charms, but he had also praised her after he and Jones had snapped pictures of Danny kissing her outside the bistro. The more she got to know Danny, and his beliefs and his politics, the more she became convinced that while he might have been a middleman for explosives distribution, he could never knowingly be involved in the deaths of women and children. She could tell there was something bothering Danny, though, and that he needed to unburden himself. It was just a matter of time.

The heat from the fireplace had dried the tears on Danny's cheeks almost as quickly as they fell, as he finally confessed his part in the bombing of the school bus – he had indeed sourced explosives, though had not known the final target – and the remorse and fear he felt when he thought of the man who had planned the operation and planted the bomb.

Sonja had held him to her breast, then kissed away the dried salt.

‘I'm pig sick of it, Sonja. I want out. I want to run away, far, from this place forever. But I'm scared. Will you come with me?'

She'd nodded and kissed his hair as she cradled his head. ‘Scared of who, Danny?'

‘My brother.'

‘It was him?'

‘Yes.' He'd looked up into her eyes and she'd seen the reflected flames burning in his. She wondered if he'd be forever damned, like his brother. For a moment she wanted to believe that hell really existed, for Patrick Byrne's sake. She couldn't hate Danny, though.

Because she thought she might love him.

Vic-torrrrrr, vic-torrrrr
the little brownish-coloured bird called.

It was driving Sam crazy. ‘Shut
up
!' He tossed a green branch he'd stripped from a nearby tree on the pathetic fire in front of his tent and it started smoking. He was too dejected to go in search of more dead wood. Two days and still no contact. He'd eked out the last of the two energy bars that Cheryl-Ann had allowed him to carry, and his stomach was no longer rumbling, it was crying.

Vic
-
torrrrrr
,
vic-torrrrr
.

Earlier that morning, as he'd sat on his sleeping bag taking stock of his meagre supplies, elephants had surrounded his tent. At first he thought they were trying to break through the canvas with the tips of their tusks when he'd heard the scratching on the fabric. In fact, they were feeding on seed pods from the branches above his tent and as they shook the branches the pods were raining down on the tent. It had been a nerve-racking forty minutes as the great beasts gingerly moved around his tent. He heard the whole tree shake at one point and put his hand over his mouth to stop from sneezing as their ceaseless browsing and shuffling enveloped the tent in a mini dust cloud. He could smell their rich mildewy odour through the mosquito gauze and hear them communicating with each other via deep rumbling belly growls that echoed the churning of his own hollow insides.

He had risked unzipping the tent flap just enough to squeeze
the camera lens through and been rewarded with some amazing vision looking up into the pink mouths of the creatures as they daintily popped pods into them. When a trunk had snaked down to inspect the shiny lens he'd hastily pulled it in, but he knew it had been worth the risk. Cheryl-Ann would be pleased, if he ever saw her again.

Sam's imagination, fired by his hunger, had constructed more and more elaborate reasons for the complete lack of contact from his production team. It was either a clever ploy to make him fall back on his rudimentary knowledge of survival in the wild – and produce some great TV at his expense – or something had gone terribly wrong.

At what point, he wondered, should he set off in search of help? In Australia the Aboriginal people he'd worked with had told him stories of German tourists who had died in the desert because they had left their stricken four-by-fours to find help on foot. Inevitably, the search parties found the stranded trucks and the dried-up remains of the occupants a few kilometres away.

How long, he wondered, could he last on foot in the African bush? He knew that despite the heat he would be better walking by day and sleeping by night, making a fire to keep lions, leopards and hyenas at bay. However, and this was a big stumbling block, he really didn't know which way to walk. He cursed himself, Cheryl-Ann and Stirling for not giving him a map. What harm could a goddamn map have done to the program? He knew that the hunting concession was on the southern border of the Moremi Game Reserve and that somewhere to the south and east of where he was he would strike the road that led from the town of Maun to the South Gate entrance of the reserve. But he had no idea how far away that road was or how far north Xakanaxa Camp was.

He'd hoped to hear the sound of gunfire, from a hunting party, and make for it, but the bush had stayed eerily silent. Except for that fucking bird.

Vic-torrrrrr, vic-torrrrr
it cooed on cue.

He looked up at the tree. Why was this little bird with the whitish underparts and spots on its cheeks hanging around him? It fluttered, occasionally, from branch to branch as if it was taunting him deliberately or trying to get his attention.

‘My attention!'

The hunger had slowed him mentally as well as physically, but now he suddenly remembered what the old bushman guide had told him. Sam was no ornithologist, so he'd found it hard to keep up when the man had reeled off names of birds he might encounter, but the story about this one had surprised him.

He craned his neck. ‘You're a freaking honeyguide, aren't you?'

Vic-torrrrrr
,
vic-torrrrr
.

‘Victor.' It was the distinctive call of the greater honeyguide. ‘Stay right there, little guy. I'm with you.'

Sam grabbed the camera and tripod from inside the tent, as well as his daypack containing a half-empty water bottle – the last of his ration – his poncho, matches, binoculars, bush hat and first-aid kit. He'd tied his US Air Force survival knife, the kind immortalised by Sylvester Stallone in the first
Rambo
movie, to a stripped sapling, fashioning a makeshift spear. He set the camera up and angled the lens upwards, focusing on the bird. He hit record.

‘African legend has it that this little bird, the greater honeyguide, deliberately attracts the attention of honey badgers and even human beings to help it feed on honey from wild beehives. This dude has been pestering me all morning and I've only just worked out that he's been trying to get me to come and give him a hand at finding breakfast. Like him, I could use some
food, so let's find out if this bush story is true. I'm counting on it.'

Sam turned off the camera and laid the tripod over his left shoulder. He picked up his spear as the bird took off, and followed it, stumbling as he tried to keep sight of it.

A herd of impala took flight when they saw him, and bounded high in the air, rear legs kicking out horizontally. He tried to keep a lookout for dangerous game at the same time as following the bird. Every now and then he lost sight of it, but it would call, reassuringly, and he would find it again.

A trio of giraffes peered down at him from behind a crop of thorn trees, their long faces moving in unison as they studied the strange creature stumbling and jogging after the bird.

Sam felt jazzed. He was excited and a little nervous as he walked, but pleased to be doing something instead of squatting outside his tent wondering what had gone wrong, and generally feeling miserable for himself. Cheryl-Ann had told him to be ready for a surprise. Some surprise! He'd show her … he'd show Stirling … he'd show the whole goddamned world. He was Coyote Sam, survival expert and outdoorsman. ‘Freakin' A.'

Sam was feeling light-headed and his mouth was parched by the time he caught up with the bird. The honeyguide was hovering beside a tree and when it came to rest on a branch it was silent for the first time that morning. Sam stopped, set down the camera and shrugged off his pack. He took a moment to admire the natural paradise the bird had led him to.

He'd sensed they were heading towards water as the bush had become progressively thicker and slightly greener. Around the camp site the colours had been khaki and gold, but stretched out before him now, from his vantage point at the edge of the tree line, was a wide floodplain, perhaps a kilometre across, carpeted in a rich covering of emerald green.

Meandering through the middle of the open area was a glittering serpent of water. He wanted to rush to it and immerse his sweat-and dust-streaked stinking body in it; to gulp until he was too full to move. But that would have to wait. He was light-headed with hunger and the plain was dotted with animals. Hundreds of them.

He counted fifty or more zebra in loose herds of eight to ten queuing for their turn to drink. A herd of elephant munched in the shade of the trees on the far side of the plain. He saw the tiny babies in their midst and knew the herd should be given a wide berth. The same went for the four old male buffalo that wallowed in the mud and reeds at the edge of the river.

Sam looked up again and saw the honeyguide was still sitting silently in the same branch. He approached the towering mopane tree cautiously. Craning his head he heard the hive before he saw it. The bees buzzed busily in and out of a hollow in the trunk. The cavity, which looked large enough for him to get his upper body inside, was almost four metres above the ground, but he'd been climbing trees since he was six years old.

The Khoisan bushman had said his people smoked wild bees out of their hives by burning elephant dung. Sam didn't have to look far to find some. The trunk of the tree that held the hive was worn smooth from elephants rubbing themselves against it, and piles of their dried, yellow-brown droppings were everywhere. He inspected a couple of samples, settling on a stack that seemed not fresh, but not completely dried out. ‘The smokier the better, I guess,' he said to himself.

He positioned the camera and held a softball-sized lump up to the lens. ‘This stuff has many uses. When you light it,' he placed the clod down and struck a match, ‘the smoke can be used to keep mosquitoes at bay.' He bent over and blew on the flame until the aromatic smoke began wafting around his face. ‘And if
you breathe it in, it's supposed to cure a headache or a hangover. As my producer and camera crew haven't left me any food, let alone booze, I can assure you I'm not hung over. But I
am
hungry, so I'm going to use this stuff to send those bees up there on their way.'

He stoked the dung fire at the base of the tree and the bees above him increased the volume and pitch of their buzzing. They weren't happy. Sam selected the largest chunk of dung, which was big enough for him to hold with one hand without burning himself. He angled the camera up a little more and started climbing the tree, one handed, with the smoking mass in his other hand.

The bees seemed to be calming and he noticed many of them were already drifting away from the hole in the tree. Awkwardly, he hoisted himself higher, grabbing onto a branch with his free hand and pulling. All those early mornings in the gym were paying off, and not just because his agent said he needed to look buffed on TV. His feet found purchase on a thick bough and he was able to reach the entrance to the hive, holding the smoking dung in front of him as more bees took flight. He swallowed, hoping nothing else was living in the cavity, and reached in. He raised himself up a little more, on his toes, and could see the prize – football-sized chunks of wild honeycomb oozing with sweet golden honey. His mouth watered. He reached in and started breaking off lumps of the treasure and tossing them down to the ground. ‘A little dirt won't kill me, and I'll probably eat it anyway, I'm so hungry,' he said for the camera's benefit.