The Delta (16 page)

Sam righted the camera on its tripod and started recording. He kept the device at arm's length, so that if she looked back at him she wouldn't see him staring into the viewfinder. He could see
the LED screen from where he sat and when her back was to him he zoomed in on her.

She was a looker. No makeup, and he couldn't help but notice as she bent over that atop her nicely shaped legs was an equally perfect arse. He scanned the surrounding bush, the far tree line, and even the air, looking for the camera team. If they were here they were well hidden. Maybe she had a concealed camera on her and she was filming him.

He had to hand it to Cheryl-Ann; this surprise was almost the best yet. Up until now the red-headed chef in the outback had taken the cake. In fact, he remembered chocolate torte in the well of her belly button. This one was different though – she was a hard-body and not a willowy waif like the Aussie girl. She straightened and started wading back towards him. She was fit. She had broad shoulders and a narrow waist, but her hips were still wide enough to give a hint of hourglass. Her auburn hair was pulled back in a ponytail. It was functional, but he bet she'd look great with it teased out. Like her legs, her arms were sculpted. This girl worked out, and then some. As she came closer, he saw that her eyes were green. The way she moved, and those eyes, reminded him of a cat. He'd only seen footage of lionesses – not one in the wild yet – but that's what she reminded him of. Powerful, predatory, pitiless. She could eat him alive – if she played her cards right.

He pressed the stop button on the camera then called: ‘I'm all yours. Take me to your leader.' He winced and reached back between his shoulder blades. ‘Oww.'

‘Bee sting?'

He nodded. ‘I think so. I can't reach it.'

She drew a short-bladed skinning knife from a pouch on her belt.

‘Whoa there, cowgirl.'

‘Relax. Sit still.'

She moved behind him and he did as he was told. He felt her fingertips on the nape of his neck and the collar of his T-shirt stretching against his Adam's apple as she searched. He shivered. Her touch was firm and cool, like gunmetal. He shuddered again as he felt the razor's edge of the blade touch his skin.

‘I said, be still.'

‘OK. You're not going to dig it out, are you?'

She ignored him and he felt the edge of the blade sliding across his skin as she brushed towards the stinger and, he imagined, shaved bare any hairs that might have sprouted since his last waxing.

She pushed his head forward with her free hand, her fingers burying themselves in his hair. Man, he thought, this is hot. He really hoped someone was recording all this from afar. He could smell her. He felt himself start to stir. In his peripheral vision he caught a glimpse of the tan-coloured dressing stuck on her thigh. ‘Did you hurt yourself? Oww!'

‘Still,' she commanded again. ‘Yes. There, it's out. It'll hurt for a day or so.'

He rolled his neck and shoulder muscles. ‘You're telling me.' Free to turn his head he saw the blood spotting the sticking plaster on her leg. ‘What did you do to yourself?'

‘Cut myself shaving.'

‘What did you use, your skinning knife?'

‘Come, crazy man.'

He almost said, ‘Whenever you say the word,' but the gun made him think twice. It also made him nervous. The closest he'd ever come to shooting something – anything – was a tranquilliser dart into a coyote's rump. ‘Can you put that thing away?'

‘No. Get up.'

He sighed and dragged himself up, wiping his sticky hands on
the grass as he did so. All that did was coat them in fine sand. ‘Can I go wash in the river?'

‘The blood from the croc I shot will bring the others – and maybe lion and hyena. We should go now. I've got more water with my horse.'

Her horse? This just got wilder and wilder. A cowgirl in Africa. ‘Giddyup,' he said in his best Kramer voice. She walked off in silence, and he followed.

‘So,' he called to her back, ‘what do I call you? Jungle Jane?'

She ignored him.

‘OK, OK. I'll just play my part as the out-of-depth star then … But we do have food, right? Surely Cheryl-Ann …'

She stopped and turned, her right hand still gripping the business end of the rifle. She raised the barrel a fraction. It was enough to stop him in his tracks. ‘I said I'd get you more water when we get to my horse.'

He chewed his lip. This didn't make much sense. If this starlet was bucking for an Oscar she was wasting her time on Wildlife World. He didn't recognise her, but suspected she might be reasonably well known in South Africa, even if he couldn't place her.

‘I found your tent,' she continued, ‘but no sign of a vehicle. There aren't any of your tracks, either – except to the beehive. What did you do, come by helicopter?'

‘You know it, sweetheart.'

‘Don't call me sweetheart. Are you some kind of filmmaker?'

Sam tried to run a hand through his hair, but it had solidified. ‘Look, Jane of the Jungle, for the record, and for whoever, however, this is being filmed,' he cleared his throat again, ‘boy, am I glad you showed up. Lead on, I'm ready for the next scene, and a decent meal.'

She remained silent, staring at him down the barrel of her rifle.

‘Oh, come
on
. Enough, already. Shit, I'm fucking filthy, I'm fucking hungry, I've been stung by a bee, and I was
supposedly
almost eaten by a fucking crocodile.' He raised his fists to the sky and threw back his head. ‘WHAT MORE DO YOU FUCKING WANT, CHERYL-ANN?'

He screwed his eyes shut tight, hoping, praying that when he opened them Cheryl-Ann and the crew would emerge from behind that big old leadwood tree in front of them with an ice bucket full of Perrier and Budweiser. What were they trying to do, break him? Turn him mad for the sake of ratings? ‘For Christ's sake, this is Wildlife World, not the Military Channel, and …'

He felt his right wrist gripped and pulled behind him. ‘Hey!' He spun around, trying to see her, but she sidestepped faster than a rattler striking. ‘Ouch!' She wound his arm back up into the small of his back and forced him to double forward. When he clawed back at her with his free hand she grabbed it. He heard a zip and felt his wrists being drawn together. ‘What the fuck is that?'

‘Snap ties. I need to restrain you until you start talking sense.'

‘OK, that's it! You are so fucking fired, lady. This prank has gone far enough and you can tell …'

The last thing he felt was her fingers digging into the skin behind his collarbone, at the base of his neck.

He was heavy. Not fat – far from it – just a big build, and when his shirt rode up she saw the carefully sculpted abs that could only be purchased in a gym. And no chest hair. She shook her head. Gratefully, she lowered him to the grass, in the afternoon shade cast by his dome tent.

His breathing was steady. The effects of the hold she'd applied to the pressure point would wear off shortly. She'd carried him the two hundred metres to his camp site over her shoulder, in a
fireman's carry, her right hand still gripping her weapon. It reminded her of special forces training, but she forced the memory from her mind. She drew her knife and cut the ties that bound his wrists behind his back. She'd overdone it a bit, as the skin was red and his hands were cool. She massaged the life back into them, but used a new tie to bind them in front of his body, though looser than the first.

She fetched a dirty, smelly T-shirt from his tent and moistened it with water. She cleaned his face. He was a good-looking madman, she would give him that. He had thick, black wavy hair that reminded her of an actor – one of the two guys from the Pearl Harbor movie. She couldn't remember the man's name. She didn't have much time for TV in her job, except for the twenty-four-hour news channels, which were always reporting on some war or other.

When she checked the white T-shirt she saw a skin-coloured stain in amidst the black silty Okavango mud and the amber of the wild honey. She sniffed it, then wiped a finger over his forehead and checked it. ‘Makeup?'

He blinked, then groaned. She rocked back on her haunches as he tried to sit up.

‘What? Where … You!'

She raised a palm, not touching him, but when he saw his wrists were tied again he lay back, closed his eyes and screamed.

‘Hush. Listen to me, mister. I don't know who you think I am, or even if you know who you are, but I have no idea who you are or what you are doing here and that is not from some script or some movie or some television show. Now, tell me who you are, for real, and how you got here.'

He looked into her eyes and she could tell he wasn't insane – just frightened. When he told her his story she shook her head at the absurdity of it all, but it explained what he was doing here
alone in the bush, covered in mud and makeup and toting a video camera.

‘
Fok
,' was all she could say.

‘Does that mean what I think it means?' he asked.

She leant forward and cut the plastic cable tie between his wrists. ‘Yes, in Afrikaans.'

‘So, you know who I am. Who are you?'

The lie came quickly to her lips. Always base it on truth, Steele had drummed into her. ‘I'm a professional hunter.'

He stared back at her for a few seconds, not moving, lying back in the grass. ‘I just told you the truth, so please do me the same courtesy.'

‘It is the truth. I come out here on the concession in my spare time to go horse riding and game viewing and to shoot my quota for the pot. You do know you're on a hunting concession, don't you? There are people with
guns
here. It's not a smart place to be filming.' The other thing Steele taught her was that when your cover was challenged go on the attack. Turn the tables on the questioner.

He shook his head. ‘If you worked on this concession you'd know we've been planning this film shoot for three months. You'd also know there are no hunts scheduled this week because we've made a block booking and
we've
bought the quota to shoot what
we
need for the pot to make this documentary. You're not who you say you are. What's your name?'

She bit the inside of her lower lip. Stay on the offensive, she told herself. ‘Sonja. You're in a bad way. Do you think something's happened to the rest of your film crew? You said you tried contacting them by sat phone and got nothing. I can't believe they'd cut off your emergency comms, can you?' Sonja saw the turmoil behind his eyes.

‘I'm worried, yes.'

‘Do you want to get back to Xakanaxa Camp, to check on your
people, find out what's happened? Surely they don't want you going crazy out here for the sake of a TV program?'

He made a face. ‘Cheryl-Ann – the producer – would say the verdict was out on that one until the ratings came in.'

She shook her head. ‘It's up to you. I'll leave you some biltong and some drinking water if you want to continue your survival program, or you can come with me. I'm going to Xakanaxa.' She stood and slung her rifle over her shoulder.

‘You are? I thought you said you were based here on the hunting concession.'

She shrugged. ‘I've got an old friend there I've been meaning to visit for some time. I'm going. Are you coming with or not?'

He looked around his meagre camp site, and at the useless satellite phone. ‘Let me write a note, in case someone comes looking for me. I'll leave the tent and stuff here.'

‘Good idea. I don't want to overburden my horse.'

He chewed biltong as they walked, talking with his mouth full. Like most Americans she'd met he liked the sound of his own voice and talked in complete sentences. She used words like ammunition – sparingly and for effect.

When they came to the horse she asked him if he wanted to ride for a while. He was still hungry and she didn't know how fit he was. Heavily muscled soldiers sometimes had the least stamina, in her experience. ‘I'll walk,' he said. ‘How's your leg? Perhaps it would be best if you rode for a while.'

She shook her head, then slung both their hiking packs over the saddle and set off, leading Black Beauty. Her stride was long and measured and he had to run a little to catch up, before he got into her rhythm.

‘How long do you think it will take us to reach Xakanaxa?'

‘A day. Day and a half if you keep stopping.'

He looked sullen, but at least he was quiet for a few minutes.

‘Why would anyone need an automatic assault rifle to go hunting?' he asked, eyeing off her military-style weapon.

He wasn't going to shut up. She knew most people liked talking about themselves. She'd acted the part of a journalist to infiltrate a west African country as a member of the advance party of a coup and had been surprised just how easy it was to get people to open up to her. It was generally the ones who protested initially that they didn't want to be photographed or interviewed who ended up doing most of the talking.

‘Tell me more about you,' she said, not looking back over her shoulder.

‘Aw, you don't want to hear all about me.'

She knew the modesty was false, so she held her tongue. A trio of scimitar-billed wood hoopoes was laughing and chattering as they tapped away at the bark of a mopane tree. They reminded her of the unceasing chatter of tourists on a game-viewing vehicle. He would talk. Americans loved to talk.

‘You really haven't heard of me, have you?'

The arrogance of the man was fitting nicely into the stereotype she had conceived for him.

‘I'm sorry, that sounded so arrogant, didn't it? Don't say anything. Well, about me. About a hundred years ago I was doing my PhD, working in the field in Montana, studying coyotes. The coyotes in the area I was studying had a reputation for killing lambs on sheep farms. We found out that this only happened when the dominant pair of coyotes in the area had produced pups and this overlapped with the lambing season. We figured if we could change their reproductive cycles, by administering or getting them to ingest contraceptives, we could lessen the problem. As part of my research I started working on a system to get the coyote females on the pill.'