She grinned, pure l.u.s.t in her eyes. "Boy scout?"
"Bad boy."
She grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled herself back up to him as he fumbled with the foil wrapper and rolled on the latex sheath, one-handed. She reached for him, taking him in her hand, spreading her legs wide. Sonja guided him and grunted as he started to push. He held back but she grabbed him, harder, and pulled him into her. Brand needed no more encouragement and he was overcome by the primeval need to f.u.c.k, or to forget, or both.
Sonja kept kissing him, her tongue matching his thrusts, drawing him into her, taking his face in both hands one instant then digging the fingers of both hands into the flesh of his bottom the next, drawing him deeper into her body. Any thought of discovery vanished; he was consumed by her eyes, by the noises she made, by the taste and smell of her.
Her cries became quicker, shorter, higher-pitched, almost out of character with the steely controlled warrior he"d seen that day. "f.u.c.k, yes," she said, too loud, and he smothered her mouth with his own. She bit him, on the lip, almost in protest at his attempt to silence her. He tasted blood and she sucked on the wound. Brand felt her muscles squeezing him and it was more than he could take.
Sonja locked her legs behind him and drew him in, even deeper than before, as her whole body clenched around his. He shuddered and held the violent, pa.s.sionate kiss with her as he felt her gasps.
He was exhausted, and when the shaking had stopped and their heartbeats slowed a notch he rolled off her, landing heavily in the cool sand and gra.s.s. Sonja lay her head on his chest, her breath still coming in short, hot bursts.
Brand put an arm around her, but she shrugged him off, not resentfully, but gently.
"We need to get up before someone sees us," Sonja said.
"Now you think of that?"
Sonja found her shorts and pulled them on, lifting her hips off his jacket so she could zip and b.u.t.ton up. She got to her feet and looked around, then reached out a hand to him and he clasped it. "Come on, up you get, old man."
"Hey, go easy on the "old"," he said, though he felt every one of his considerable years right now.
When they were both standing he took her in his arms again and kissed her. She pulled back a little and looked up at him, then raised a finger to his lips. "Shush, no talking now. I wouldn"t know what to say."
"You took the words right out of my mouth." He bent and collected his jacket, shook it, then held it out to her.
"No, thanks, I"m still warm."
He smiled. When they walked back to the hide, and the light, he could see that her cheeks were flushed, and it made her look better, happier, healthier. He was pleased. Brand felt the night air chill the sweat on his back and he shrugged on his jacket. It was still warm from her, and he liked the idea of keeping her close to him, feeling her, a little longer.
She walked ahead of him, leading the way from the hide to the chalet, not bothering with a torch. When they got back the unit was dark, Matthew having turned in. Brand opened the door and switched on the light. He wasn"t one to feel awkward around women, but he knew Sonja was calling the shots this time.
Sonja went to her door, put her hand on the handle and turned to him. "I"m going to take a shower."
"OK."
"Alone."
He nodded. "Fine."
He walked towards the door of the room he was sharing with Matthew, but Sonja moved across the small living area to stop him. She put a hand on his chest. "Hudson . . ."
"Yes?"
She looked up at him, and he looked into those eyes that he"d just devoured. "Thank you."
He said nothing.
"What happened just then; I don"t know what it was, but it can"t distract us from the mission."
"Agreed."
She stood up on her toes and he bent his head and kissed her.
"Get some sleep."
She left him and went into her room. He watched her through the open door. He wanted to go in there and lie down again with her on the bed, but he knew he needed to let her be. She couldn"t be forced; she would either come back to him or not, but she was right for Sonja at least, the mission would always come first.
Chapter 24.
They drove hard through the long, hot day, Sonja at the wheel most of the way, and when Brand took over she used her down time to sleep. She didn"t feel the need to while away the hours with small talk.
Sonja was keyed up for the mission ahead. Although she didn"t really know their enemy, there was no doubt that someone or some organisation was out to stop Brand and Allchurch finding the missing aircraft, and, by a.s.sociation, she was marked for a.s.sa.s.sination as well. At least that was how it seemed, but not everything was adding up.
They had, true to her plan, been the first vehicle out of Namutoni Camp when the gates opened at six in the morning. Sonja had taken them through the park at the maximum legal speed she didn"t want to get caught by rangers or traffic cops for speeding inside a protected reserve with a Land Rover full of a.s.sault rifles, pistols, hand grenades and ammunition. Their stops had been few and brief, only for the call of nature and refuelling.
Sonja watched her rear view mirror and scanned the air for tails, but if there were more hit men out there, they hadn"t zeroed in on them yet. They would be careful next time, she reasoned. Brand had outgunned them on the road between Windhoek and Etosha and she had brought down their helicopter Namibia was a small country with a low crime rate and incidences like these would eventually come to the attention of the local police. Sonja couldn"t call in the cops even if she wanted to. They were on their own, but she was happy with that. Brand was a good man.
And that was a problem.
Perhaps she was aware of her feelings because she had been sober the evening before, at the Namutoni waterhole. I like you, Brand, she had said to him. It was a statement of fact, and she was sure, or at least she hoped, that he had read nothing more into it, but something told her he had, and that she had meant more than the mere words expressed.
It was crazy, she thought, as she glanced at him in her peripheral vision. She had only just met the man, and he had brought down a world of hurt on her nearly got her killed in fact. Sonja reached for the map and flitted her eyes between the road and the paper.
"Here, let me navigate," Brand said in that deep voice of his, just a trace of southern United States drawl still evident. He wasn"t handsome in the clean-cut, chiselled way that Sam had been, but he was easy on the eye, if a little weather-beaten. He was a man who had been through h.e.l.l, just as she had, and survived, but was still able to wink and smile every now and then. She thought that in him she saw, perhaps, hope for herself. He"d alluded to losing a woman in the Angolan war. Not losing, she reminded herself, more like having your heart cut out.
"I"m just looking for the next turnoff is all," she said to him, not meaning to sound as petulant as it came out.
"I reckon it"s about ten kilometres from here. Have you been to this part of Namibia before?"
She shook her head. "No. This is new to me."
"Amazing landscape, what with all these flat-topped mesas and valleys. It reminds me a little of Monument Valley."
Sonja checked the mirror. Still no one behind them, and Allchurch was sleeping in the back seat. Matthew"s supposed ally, Andre Horsman, was shaping up as their princ.i.p.al enemy and, in Sonja"s book, that made him her number one target. If he had harmed Emma in any way there would be no mercenary"s gift for him; he would die slowly and painfully.
"What are you thinking about?" Brand asked her.
"Killing people."
He chuckled, but she silenced him with a glare. "Lighten up."
She was offended. "Lighten up? You"re the one with the contract out on you you and Matthew."
"I"ve been thinking about that," he said.
Brand had a spa.r.s.e way of talking, as if he were a fisherman casting out a line, waiting for her to bite. "Thinking about what?"
"If Horsman"s the Mister Big of this operation, I can understand him wanting to rub out me and Matthew. We both know almost as much about the missing aircraft as he does, and if he"s got a line on it, he wants us out of the way."
"Yes," she said. He was stating the obvious.
"But what about you? Why would he want to kill you as well? The guy you shot said he was told to wipe out everyone at the dig site, right?"
Sonja nodded. "A vague order. What if we"d been escorted there by national parks officials or police? Would he have killed them as well?"
"Exactly," Brand said. "I think that guy Viljoen might have kept something back."
Sonja thought about what Brand was saying. If he was right, if the gunman, Viljoen, had been told specifically to kill her, then there was more to this than met the eye. It also meant she had f.u.c.ked up by not interrogating him in a more effective manner, and perhaps by killing him prematurely. "But why me?"
In the back of the Land Rover, Matthew Allchurch awoke. "Sorry, was I snoring? Where are we?"
Sonja checked the pastor"s satellite navigation device. "Close, ten minutes away from Palmwag Lodge."
"OK," Allchurch said.
"Say," Brand said, looking over his shoulder, "your pal Horsman you said he was into import-export."
"Yes, that"s right. He brings in electronics from Asia, exports some South African specialty food products. There are South African shops around the world thanks to the diaspora."
"What part of Asia? Wouldn"t include Vietnam by any chance, would it?"
Allchurch rubbed his chin. "Yes, I think so. I remember him talking about his last trip to the Orient; he went to Thailand and I"m pretty sure he said he was going to Ho Chi Minh City, or that he had been there."
Brand looked at Sonja. "Are you thinking what I"m thinking?"
"I am," she said. Brand clearly didn"t believe in coincidences, and neither did she.
"You haven"t visited Vietnam lately, have you, Sonja?"
Brand was teasing her, she thought, or perhaps just fishing. "Where I"ve been is none of your business, Brand."
He held up his hands in mock surrender. "Well, a friend of mine in the South African National Parks criminal investigation services told me a certain Vietnamese kingpin in the rhino trade had been a.s.sa.s.sinated recently."
"That so?" Sonja tightened her grip on the Land Rover"s steering wheel. She checked the sat nav.
"Yup. He asked me if I had any idea who might have been responsible. You know, people sometimes talk, especially people in the South African ex-military world, about taking the law into their own hands. Crime"s bad in SA, but the whole rhino poaching thing really seems to bring out the vigilante side in some folks."
Sonja gritted her teeth. "Well, I wouldn"t know anything about that."
"From what I read in an article by that author and journalist, Ross c.o.o.nan, the guy in Vietnam was probably going to be the end user of the rhino horn that was taken the night your husband was killed."
She glared at him.
"That same Ross c.o.o.nan was also killed in Vietnam, same time as the kingpin."
Sonja was seething inside. The fact was that she did feel guilty about c.o.o.nan"s death, even though she told herself, time and time again, that she had given Ross the chance to pull out, several times. She thought about what Brand was saying. If Horsman was involved with the rhino horn trade then maybe his partners in Vietnam had called on him to take out a hit on her. That, however, would a.s.sume someone had already tracked her down. She had entered Namibia quietly and illegally so she didn"t see how that was possible, but another thought crossed her mind. If she was a target then so, too, was Emma; perhaps someone had located her daughter and knew that Sonja would come to Emma"s rescue if something happened to her.
"You think they"re still after us?" Brand asked her, breaking into her thoughts.
"Wouldn"t you be?"
Brand nodded. "I would. But hey, they must be running short of manpower now; we"ve taken out four of their guys."
"And a helicopter."
He smiled. "Yes, and a helicopter."
"If this is a war, Brand, it"s only just beginning."
"Yup."
The GPS announced they were arriving at their destination, Palmwag Lodge, on the edge of the Palmwag Conservancy.
They turned off the main gravel road and stopped at a thatch-roofed access gate, where they signed in.
"What is this area?" Allchurch asked from the back.
"It"s a wildlife conservancy," Brand told him. "Back in the day this was all cattle land, but the Namibian government took it over and set it aside for wildlife. The local communities around the conservancy benefit from tourism here, and it"s a sanctuary for endangered animals such as the desert rhino, desert elephant and the desert lion."
Sonja hadn"t been to this part of her home country before. The lodge looked well set up, with a sign to a swimming pool and bar beyond the reception area. In the car park, near where she pulled up, was a Volkswagen Amarok four-by-four bakkie with a rhino conservation charity logo and the names of various corporate sponsors plastered on its sides. Stirling Smith walked out of the reception building, a map in one hand, and Sonja took a breath to still herself.
His clothes were dusty and sweat stained, his eyes soft and blue. He walked to her.
"Sonn."
He always called her that. He didn"t seem to know if he should hug her so she extended her hand between them. "This is Hudson Brand, Matthew Allchurch."
The men all shook hands and Stirling suggested they go into the lodge. They pa.s.sed through reception and followed a path to the bar and swimming pool, where plump tourists were turning their pale European skin pink on sunbeds. Stirling led them to a table under a thatched umbrella-shaped lapa, and a waiter came over and took their order for a mix of c.o.kes and coffees.
"Thanks for seeing us at short notice, Stirling." Sonja was determined to keep this businesslike. They had lost their virginity to each other, but that hadn"t been enough to keep them together forever.
"No problem at all," Stirling answered.
"As I told you on the phone, we"re looking for some men who might be flying over this part of Namibia."
He nodded vigorously. "I"ll stop you there, Sonn. I think I"ve got some news for you." He unfolded a map of northwestern Namibia on the table. When the waiter arrived with their drinks they set them down on the stone pavers beneath them and Stirling arranged the map so they could all see.
"Our scouts and the conservancy"s rangers are always on the lookout for suspicious activity, because of the presence of the rhinos. Here in the northwest of the conservancy," he said, stabbing the map with his forefinger, "our guys have seen an aircraft flying over the last couple of days, west, then east again, then back to the west."