Alex took a seat on the bed across from Natangwe. "I will ride with him, if that is all right."
"Sure," Sonja said. "Just keep pressure on his artery. He"s lost a h.e.l.l of a lot of blood."
Brand looked out the door of the camper. Stirling and Sutton were still tossing crates of rhino horn into any spare piece of s.p.a.ce in the Amarok. They had filled the luggage area and were stacking boxes on the rear seat and floor of the double cab.
"Move it," Brand barked. He"d seen good men die, Sonja"s husband among them, over this stupid stuff, and he had no intention of losing Natangwe because Stirling wanted to stage a bonfire of his own in Windhoek or hand over the horn to the authorities at a press conference so he could garner more support for his rhino conservation NGO.
Sonja climbed down from the truck and strode past Brand and the others to the Land Cruiser. She leaned into the back of the vehicle, where the other dead guy was. Brand didn"t know what she was doing perhaps searching his pockets for ID or other intelligence. He busied himself by dragging the body of Andre Horsman under the canvas awning. When Sonja finished what she was doing she backed out of the Land Cruiser and walked past Brand with not so much as a goodbye, then climbed back up into her vehicle. "Leave this vehicle, it"s got no spare wheel, take the Hilux instead," she ordered them.
The Unimog started with a puff of black smoke and Sonja drove off, heading east towards the closest town, Wilfriedstein. It would be cross-country driving most of the way, a hard journey, but it was their best chance of getting away from whoever was coming to collect the horn, and of getting Natangwe to medical care.
Brand got in the Hilux with Matthew while Stirling and Sutton, kindred spirits for the moment at least, were still loading boxes of horn into the Amarok, though there was still an intact bundle left. Brand kept an eye on his rear view mirror and saw, with some satisfaction, the other two moving off before he lost sight of them. They had abandoned the final bundle load of horn, still wrapped for airdrop from the Dakota all those years ago.
The desert stretched out in front of them. Brand thought about the attack on them on the Andoni Plains. "Matthew, keep an eye out above. They used a chopper once before to try to get us, so they"ve got the money to hire another one."
Irina sat in the co-pilot"s seat next to Swanevelder. They flew low, nap-of-the-earth the pilot called it, less than a hundred feet above the undulating contours of the inhospitable land below them.
When Swanevelder had returned from the lodge the Russian seamen had boarded the helicopter, this time all armed and dressed in an a.s.sortment of green and camouflage bush clothing that Mikhail had sourced for them in advance. Ironically, given the trade she was in, Irina had plans to start her own anti-poaching patrols on the game farm and had bought uniforms and military-style combat vests for her future force. She envisaged a day when she would breed her own rhinos to supply the Asian market, either covertly or overtly if the authorities ever decided to legalise the trade in rhino horn. When Swanevelder had asked Irina where Miro was she had replied, simply, that it was a day when casualties could be expected.
Swanevelder checked his GPS. "Coming up to your coordinates."
Irina scanned the emptiness in front of her, seeing nothing at first.
"There," said the pilot, pointing dead ahead. "See the glint? Sun reflecting off metal."
"Circle," she ordered him. "There were supposed to be two vehicles; I see only one."
They flew around the crash site and Irina knew immediately that something was wrong. There were no people milling around, no signal from Andre or his sidekick, Sebastian Lord. "Put down a hundred metres away. We"ll walk in."
When her troops were out Irina formed them into a skirmish line either side of her and, rifles up and at the ready, they advanced on the crashed aircraft while Swanevelder kept the chopper"s engine and rotors turning.
"Andre!" Irina called, but there was no answer.
"Check the inside of the aircraft and the vehicle," she ordered the men closest to her. "The rest of you keep a lookout."
"Irina Petrovna," Mikhail called from the vehicle. "Come, see this." Irina flicked the safety catch on her rifle to safe, a.s.sured at least there was no danger to her. Under the awning attached to the Land Cruiser was the body of her South African partner, Andre Horsman. "Look inside."
Irina stuck her head in the back. It was already starting to reek of flesh putrefying under a desert sun. The body of Sebastian Lord was propped up. A piece of cardboard nestled in his lap. Painted on it in dried blood were the words: You"re next. SK.
"Ah!" Irina walked out into the open, flicked her safety catch to automatic and emptied the magazine of her AK-47 into the air in one long burst. Her men burst from the crippled aircraft or ran for cover until they worked out it was just her venting her rage.
When she had no more bullets and the rifle hung loose at her side, smoking, while a pile of hot bra.s.s lay at her feet, Yuri summoned the courage to come to her. "Irina Petrovna, there is only one container of rhino horn left. They must have taken the others."
"There are tracks leading east," Mikhail said, pointing to the blurred furrows in the sand that led away into the dunes. "They will be easy to follow from the air."
"We must catch them," Irina said.
Mikhail pointed to the remaining bundle of rhino horn. "What about those?"
"We"ll get them on the way back. How long ago did they leave?"
Mikhail looked around and sniffed the air. "Bodies decompose fast in this heat, but I would say these men were killed this morning."
"Back to the chopper, everyone!" Irina waved both hands, including her rifle, above her head, and Swanevelder gave her a thumbs-up out of the window, signalling it was safe for them to approach.
Once back on board Irina pointed out the tracks in the sand to the pilot. "Follow them."
"They won"t get away from us," the pilot a.s.sured her.
Irina clenched her teeth for a moment, then nodded. "They had better not."
Chapter 32.
They drove out of the Skeleton Coast National Park and back into the northwest of the Palmwag Conservancy, the landscape changing from dunes to rocky desert.
Using a combination of memory, the GPS and dead reckoning, Stirling directed Sonja towards the Hoanib River and finally, to his relief as much as hers, they found the dry watercourse. If they followed the Hoanib east it would take them to a turn-off to the remote outpost of Wilfriedstein, between Sesfontein and Purros.
"I think we"re losing Natangwe, Mum," Emma called from the back of the camper. "He"s really weak."
Sonja was taking a turn driving and she pulled over and climbed into the rear compartment. Natangwe was barely conscious.
"This is the second dressing," Alex said, pointing to the blood-soaked pad on Natangwe"s thigh. "We"re keeping pressure on the artery, but the blood keeps flowing. I think it"s getting worse."
"Emma, do you have any tampons?" Sonja asked.
"No, mum, not on me."
"Tea bags," Sonja said. "Alex, search the cupboards."
Sonja kept pressure on the sopping dressing while Alex ransacked the internal storage cabinets.
"Got some," he said, shaking out the contents of a packet.
Sonja lifted the pad and packed the wound with half a dozen teabags. "These act as a mild coagulant, and absorb plenty of blood. Fresh dressing."
Emma pa.s.sed her another and Sonja tied it in place. The dressing stayed dry, for now, but Natangwe"s eyes were closed.
Sonja slapped Natangwe"s face. "Natangwe? Natangwe, can you hear me?" Alex and Emma were right, he was slipping away. "We"ve slowed the bleeding but he"s lost too much. He needs saline, something to keep his fluid volume up, otherwise he"s not going to make it." It was time to stop pretending otherwise.
"Take some of my blood, give him a transfusion," Alex said.
Sonja did a mental inventory of the medical supplies they had on them and had inherited from the owners of the campervan. "I don"t have anything to collect the blood in. Besides, you might be different blood types; you could kill him if you"re not matched correctly, and he"s not capable of telling us his blood type, even if he knows what it is."
"I"m O negative," Alex said.
Sonja nodded. "Universal donor. You can give your blood to anyone." She ran a hand through her hair. "The only thing we can do is set up a patient to patient donation. Tell me, Alex, honestly, have you been tested for HIV-AIDS? Hepat.i.tis?"
Alex nodded. "I have been. I am clear."
Emma put a hand on his arm and looked to Sonja. "Is it safe, Mum?"
Alex took Emma"s hand. "Natangwe put himself between you and Sebastian. He took a bullet for us, Emma. He was ready to die for you and me, so this is the least I can do for him. If it buys him a couple more hours until we can get to a doctor, then it is worth trying."
"Emma, help me," Sonja said. "Get some sterile wipes and clean their arms Alex"s wrist, where his artery is, and Natangwe"s elbow, where I"ll find a vein." Sonja rummaged through the well-stocked first-aid kit and found two IV lines. It was a shame the German couple hadn"t packed saline solution as well. However, she could rig something up. She snipped the cannula from one of the tubes and was able to attach it to the end of the other line and fasten it in place with tape. The line was just long enough to connect Alex"s left arm, if he was lying on one bunk, to Natangwe"s right.
Brand had caught up to her and stopped his vehicle. He climbed up into the cab. "Everything OK?"
"Only just. Alex is giving Natangwe a transfusion; without it I think Natangwe might not make it."
Brand looked at the two men, the line between them, and the bloodied rubber gloves Sonja was now snapping off. "Gutsy move all round, but we still need to get him to the doctor."
"Brand, can you ride with me?" Sonja asked.
He nodded. "Matthew should be OK for a while."
Brand climbed aboard the Unimog and they set off again with Sonja driving as fast as she dared given the delicate situation in the back. The two men were OK, she told herself, as long as neither one of them rolled out of his bunk, and Emma was sitting on a cushion on the floor between them, rea.s.suring them both. Sonja glanced at her daughter, whose head was still bandaged, and saw the way Emma stroked Alex"s brow while still being positive and tender with Natangwe. She was so proud of Emma, and so angry that greedy men had put her only child"s life at risk. She shivered when she thought of how close she had been to losing her. If the bullet fired by Sebastian had been a fraction of an inch closer to the mark, Emma would have been dead.
"You OK?" Brand asked her from the pa.s.senger seat.
"Just thinking about Emma."
Brand glanced over his shoulder. "Great kid. You should be proud."
"I can"t take much of the credit. My mother and an expensive boarding school raised her. I was lucky to see her even during the holidays, and when I did she didn"t want to know me."
"Just a teenage thing, I guess. You seem to have made up for it."
Sonja sighed. "I hope so, Hudson."
He did a double take, theatrically turning his head from the dry, alternately rocky and sandy bed of the Hoanib, to face her. "What?"
"What do you mean, "what"?"
"Did I just hear incorrectly, or did you call me by my first name?"
"It won"t happen again."
"I kind of liked it." Hudson paused. "Did you want to talk about the other night, or should we discuss strategy?"
Sonja knew he was making fun of her. "G.o.d, was it only two nights ago?" She had been running on adrenaline, and their lovemaking at Namutoni, while still vivid in her mind, seemed like an age ago.
"I had a good time, did you?" Hudson said.
"That"s not the point." She slowed to take a bend, gearing down, trying to make the turn as gentle as possible on the young men behind her. Sonja glanced back into the cabin again. If Emma could hear their conversation she gave no sign. She seemed totally besotted with Alex. Sonja wondered if they were in love.
"What happened, happened, Brand."
"We"re back to Brand again, I see."
"The way it should be."
Sonja brushed a strand of hair from her face. "I can"t get involved with another man. Not now. Maybe not ever again."
"Because of Sam?"
She looked at him. "Because of my f.u.c.king life. Look at us. Someone tried to kill my daughter, kill us. I"m a magnet for this kind of s.h.i.t."
"I"m not looking for a wife, Sonja. I"ve got too much baggage of my own."
Sonja stared out the windscreen again as she drove, deliberately not looking at him. "I think the best times of my life were when I had no baggage, just a backpack."
"That"s not true," he said.
She glanced at him again. Who was he to tell her what was right or not right in her life? "How would you know?"
Brand gestured to the back with a flick of his head. "What about her?"
"She"s not baggage, she"s my daughter. She"s growing up grown up. Soon she won"t need me at all."
Brand took up his AK-47 and unloaded it, removing the magazine and working the c.o.c.king handle to eject the chambered round, which he deftly caught with his free hand. Sonja could do that trick. "Come see me in South Africa, when this is all done."
They"d be lucky to survive. They had two wounded and a truck full of rhino horn, and the people after them didn"t leave witnesses. Sonja wasn"t scared of a fight she was only concerned for Emma"s safety but she realised she was worried about what might happen if they did survive and Hudson Brand came courting, or whatever it was Americans called it. "I don"t think so."
Green reeds in the bed of the Hoanib told Brand there was still water there, not far beneath the surface, and just before they came to the turnoff to Wilfriedstein they started coming across shallow pools. They also saw a desert elephant munching contentedly on the riverine vegetation.
Time was of the essence but even Sonja couldn"t avoid instinctively slowing to a crawl as they pa.s.sed the great creature, whose body, white with desert dust, was splotched black here and there where he had been cooling himself, hosing himself down with water.
Alex was sitting up. He smiled at the sight of the desert elephant. His face was pale from the loss of the blood he"d donated to Natangwe, but the other man looked better now. Alex had a bandage around his arm.
Wilfriedstein revealed itself anticlimactically. A herd of goats, tended by a young boy, and a few straggling cattle told Brand they were getting closer to habitation. They had left the bed of the tributary and were on a rough dirt road.
The town itself was one street, dusty and listless in the midday heat. Sonja barrelled past the modest collection of shops a general dealer, a Chinese trader"s shop selling cheap consumer goods, a shebeen and a pharmacy. At the town"s limit, past a mechanic"s shop where men worked on a couple of cars outside a mud hut, she executed a U-turn and stopped at the stores. The other vehicles followed and pulled over. Sonja told Emma to go to the pharmacy and buy whatever bandages and dressings they had, as well as packets of painkillers. "And find out where the local doctor is."
Brand got down from the Unimog and headed for the shebeen.
"A little early for celebrating?" Sonja called to him.