by D.I. Telbat
Four men lifted the wounded soldier, as young as twenty, and positioned him in the shade of the vehicle. Blood seeped through the man's torn boot. His fingers trembled inches from his foot.
"Clumsiness is a liability!" Geza glared at his troops. "If you're clumsy, you'll be left behind." He drew his sidearm. "I'm saving this fool hours of suffering and bleeding to death. The hyenas would finish him off otherwise. We are moving out!"
Geza took the wounded man's canteen, placed it in front of his gun muzzle to silence the shot, and pulled the trigger. The handgun still made a loud noise, but nothing that would attract the rangers. Besides, the rangers were most concerned about poachers inside the reserve, not outside.
With his boot, Geza kicked the body into the mopani scrub. Trumpeter hornbills, startled by the commotion, darted into the sky and flew toward the mid-morning sun. The rest of the soldiers stared at their dead comrade.
"Don't ruin this for me!" Geza holstered his weapon and tossed the ruined canteen onto the body of its owner. "Move out!"
While Geza returned to his vehicle, he happened to glance behind the convoy. Movement! He stared at the tan hillside. A bird or a dog, perhaps? No, this was not the time to dismiss his instinct, which told him enemies were closing in on what he wanted. He had sixty men with him. No one else could muster that kind of firepower without his government contacts calling him to warn him.
He turned away from whoever was following him and started the truck. It was time to do what he did best: take what he wanted so others couldn't have it!
*~*
Chapter Twelve
Annette exhaled with relief as the convoy of vehicles moved out of sight.
"That was close." Noah lowered his rifle. "He shot his own man! We have to turn back. This is madness!"
"No, we keep going." Annette brushed off her knees and climbed the next hill. "Even with vehicles, they aren't traveling faster than us."
"Even if we do find the bodies first, we can't remove them without a vehicle of our own. Annette, we achieve nothing by claiming the bodies first if it means we die in the process. They're just bodies! Their souls are with the Lord."
"I know that!" She slid down a boulder and waded through dying bushes. The drought was killing everything, but the drought hadn't killed the young man in the scrub to her left. She paused a few seconds to remember the image. "I thought we were saving Titus and Meikles' bodies from wild animals. It was a mission of respect. I want to bury Titus in Arkansas where he grew up. But now this is also about morality. The Bible says to stand for justice, to speak for what is right. This has turned into a COIL mission as much as it is a body recovery operation. We can't allow those murderers to claim Titus' body as a trophy."
"A COIL mission? I'm a pilot. You're a new COIL agent. Neither of us is—"
"Look!" She pointed at the sky, far to the northeast. "Are those buzzards?"
"Let me see this." Noah took the GPS from her hand. He tilted and shook it, as if it displayed the wrong signal. "That's a half-kilometer off my flight path."
"Yeah, but buzzards! They're circling around something on the ground, right?"
"This is Africa. It could be a deer killed by the dogs."
"I say we investigate. The army hasn't changed their course yet. Maybe they haven't seen the birds. It could be the bodies!"
"We should turn back." Noah's voice sounded increasingly strained. "The proper military should be out here doing this. At least, if we had some of the reserve rangers, we could do this more safely. Maybe tomorrow we could return."
"The wovits will have the bodies by then, if the jackals haven't already gotten to them." Annette stepped closer to Noah. He was tall, but Annette's six-foot frame was fit. She hoped her determination showed on her face. "Turn back if you want to, but I'm going toward the buzzards. I may be an idiot, but this is about more than recovering bodies now. It's about stopping those men from winning. It's a matter of principle that compels me now. I'm sorry, Noah, that you don't see this. Just because we're in Africa doesn't mean we sit idle while evil claims another victory."
They stared at each other for a moment, then Noah offered the GPS back to her.
"Those birds are about three miles away. If we run we can be there in thirty minutes, long before the soldiers get there in their vehicles, even if they change direction now. But if it's not Titus and Meikles, then you need to agree to leave with me. We can come back with rangers from the reserve."
"That's your condition?"
"Titus wouldn't want you to die for his empty shell, Annette."
"Fine." She adjusted her beret for the jostle ahead if they were to run for thirty minutes. "Give me a thirty meter lead. And one more thing."
"What is it?"
"Thank you." She forced a smile, though she felt it would be a long time before she smiled genuinely through her grief. "Thanks for not tranquilizing me and carrying me back to Malilangwe."
"Now, there's a thought . . ."
"Very funny. See you at the birds."
Annette jogged away, thankful she wasn't continuing alone.
*~*
Chapter Thirteen
Titus noticed the carrion-eating birds above him a moment before he saw the hyenas. Two of the black-spotted, rust-colored carnivores trotted down the bottom of the wadi. Their attention had been on the birds as Titus held perfectly still, but their noses were too keen. They sensed him and stopped to investigate.
Ten feet below him, they whined and sniffed at the clay where he'd bled the day before. Normally wary of humans, these creatures, with snouts stained red from past kills, remained close, scouting for a way up the steep slope. Titus licked his cracked lips and took a practice swing with his club.
Suddenly, he set the club on his lap and inserted his fingers into his mouth to blast a shrill and loud whistle. Meikles needed to be warned. Wild dogs could usually be heard as they approached, romping and yelping along the way. But hyenas were stealthier, squealing and whining only when their prey was cornered.
Meikles should've been back already. Titus checked the rim of the wadi. The boy had scrambled up the clay wall a short distance away, a little north from where the bank was steepest, to approach the muddy marsh above. Had the dogs already attacked him? Or other hyenas? If Meikles had indeed been killed, the birds above would've descended, yet they remained observant from their soaring height.
Titus whistled again, then grabbed his club as one hyena lunged up the slope at him. Unable to get a running start, the animal returned to the bottom of the wadi. Another foot closer, and the beast would've felt a direct strike on the muzzle.
One hyena wandered up the draw, patient, it seemed, to wait and search for another route to their prey.
"Hey!" Titus called, not wanting the large male to pick up Meikles' scent. "Get back here. We're not finished with each other!"
The hyena paused and looked back. But the wanderer continued out of sight. Titus was left alone with the smaller female, her mouth open and panting as she watched him.
"It doesn't matter how much you foam at the mouth, your brain is still smaller than mine." She tilted her head at his voice and yelped. "You really don't need to do this. Just wait till tomorrow, and I'll be dead. You're wasting energy on me unnecessarily."
The hyenas' eyes shifted toward something above Titus. Pebbles trickled against his bad leg. He frowned at the male hyena as it pranced anxiously at the edge of the wadi bank thirty feet above him.
"It ain't easy underestimating the genius of you two." Titus pointed his club at the larger and apparently smarter killer. "Stay! No, you stay there! Don't move!"
But the male didn't stay. He nimbly stepped off the bank and slid on all four paws down the slope, directly at Titus.
Titus glanced down at the female, who licked her jowls expectantly, as if she'd been fed precisely this way a thousand times. In seconds, Titus would be knocked off his narrow shelf by the male, into the jaws of the female.
The angle was awkward,
but Titus sat up and cocked his clubbing arm over his head. The male hyena weighed over forty pounds, and he had nothing to lose. Titus' club weighed less than ten pounds, and he had everything to lose if he didn't swing the club with enough force.
The hyena skidded on his paws until he was within ten feet of Titus. Then, the male surrendered to his downward momentum and took several strides. With his powerful hind legs, he launched himself at Titus. Titus fell backward as he swung his club. He struck the hyena where he aimed, high on the left shoulder, knocking him sideways. The hyena's momentum carried him with a yelp over Titus' extended legs.
Titus felt himself sliding. He dropped his club to cling to the hillside. Coughing painfully, he waited for the dust to settle. After stabilizing himself again on his shelf, he looked down at the creatures. The male rolled over and found his feet, though he favored a foreleg. The female yipped at Titus, apparently ignorant that her mate had been injured while trying to feed her.
"What?" Titus chuckled and reached for his club. "You thought I'd give up without a fight?"
But his club wasn't there; it had rolled down the slope to the bottom of the draw.
"Well, that isn't very fair."
The male hyena sniffed at the club that had hurt him, then he turned and trotted away. Seeing the hyena disappear up the wadi would've been cause for celebration, except Titus knew the crafty animal intended to try another sliding assault from above.
Looking around him, Titus realized the hyena had even knocked his football-sized fruit down the slope. He had nothing with which to fight. Exasperated, Titus squinted at the late blue and bright morning sky.
"You're kind of dragging this out, aren't You?" He sighed. "It's okay. I have a little strength left. I won't give up."
He drew his good leg under him. Though it was his good leg, it felt terribly bruised, and the knee was swollen. With some effort, while leaning against the slope, he stood upright. His head swam from the new position as his heart pumped more vigorously. His broken leg hung limply, throbbing painfully. If he thought he had time, he would've removed the leg splint stick to use it as a club, but there was no time, and the splint-stick was only two fingers thick.
The male hyena again appeared on the ledge above.
"Showdown, huh? That's right!" Titus barred his own teeth. "You think about this real carefully. Remember how you got hurt last time you got smart with me."
On his one good leg, Titus hopped to his left on the narrow shelf. If the hyena began his descent on target, Titus guessed the animal wouldn't be able to correct himself when he start down. Maybe, if Titus could shuffle his body aside at the last instant, he could dodge the hyena once he projected himself.
"Come on!" he screamed. "Let's do this! You're ready, I'm ready. Apparently, God's got a room up yonder for me. What's holding you back?"
The male pranced back and forth. Titus knew the carnivore would come eventually. The instinct to kill would win over the need to be wary. And below, the female squealed with the anticipation of warm blood.
*~*
Chapter Fourteen
Gezahgne kicked the tire of his lead vehicle and cursed the African savanna. His men stood aloof as he threw his canteen at the side of the Land Cruiser, then drew his sidearm to shoot the half-filled container. But he stopped himself there. He limited his tantrum, aware that a shot fired now would draw rangers, if they were in the area; he didn't like operating this close to the reserve.
The ruined tire wouldn't have been such a tragedy, except it was the second flat he'd gotten in thirty minutes. He had no more spares, and the seven other vehicles were already limping on their own spares.
Worse yet, they had found no sign of what had dropped from the plane the day before. Geza didn't think he was remembering wrongly, but he'd heard the whispers from his men. Some thought they'd seen the object with no parachute fall farther to the east, and some thought it had hit ground to the west. The parcels with parachutes had drifted on the wind currents several miles to the southeast, where the hungry Zimbabweans had aptly gathered the offerings from the sky.
The east. Geza shielded his eyes from the noonday sun. Even without a parachute, maybe the wind had carried the object east. He would've asked his men for input, but one of the consequences of their fear of him, he realized, was that they'd tell him what they thought he wanted to hear, but not what he needed.
"What's that?" He suddenly pointed to the east. Birds circled something beyond a rocky bluff. Geza dove into the truck and grabbed his rifle, then signaled to his men. "You ten, come with me on foot. The rest, follow us in the trucks. Move!"
He didn't wait to answer questions about the disabled vehicle. If his men were brighter, they might have noticed one of nature's most telltale signs of pending death: the circling birds of prey.
The crashing noises behind him told him the ten men were following on foot through the scrub brush. Once they reached the top of the rocky bluff, they'd be able to see whatever the birds saw.
In his haste, Geza realized he'd forgotten to recover the canteen on which he'd taken out his frustration, so now he had no canteen! Pausing in his uphill climb, he eyed the ten men behind him. They were hard, ruthless men. Not one of them was particularly special to him which was good, since he'd kill one for a full canteen as soon as he needed a drink.
Geza was the first to reach the top of the bluff. There was more happening five hundred meters away than even his trained senses could comprehend right away. But he realized he wasn't too late to insert himself into the situation—whatever that was.
A deep wadi snaked from north to south. A man stood against one bank of the wadi. Geza used his rifle scope to see him clearer. A shirtless man? And a hyena below him. The man seemed to be unarmed.
Above the man and to the northwest was a pack of wild dogs gathered around a baobab tree. The tree stood on dry ground in the midst of what appeared to be marshland where tall phragmites reeds grew. The dogs surrounded the tree—something or someone obviously in the tree, though Geza couldn't see what from that distance.
But there was more. He swung his scope south fifty meters. Two men approached on foot. A white man was in front, and armed. The American!
"Flank them!" Geza ordered his men. "You three, left. You three, right. The rest with me. Take them alive. Go!"
They charged down the hill. A foreigner dared to invade his country? Whatever this American had come for—Geza intended to take it and make him pay. This was certainly more exciting than hunting for rhinos!
*~*
Chapter Fifteen
Annette approached from the east, avoiding a vast ravine on her left. She ran ahead, drawn by the yips of wild dogs. Green grass waved in the breeze, standing taller than her head. Though she was hesitant to charge blindly through the wetland grass, the noise of the dogs caused her to feel great urgency.
"Wait for me!" Noah yelled, but she didn't look back.
Instead, Annette circled toward the wadi, searching for a path through or around the barrier of grass. Her boots sank an inch into sticky mud, tugging at her soles every step.
Brown flashed to her left. She saw a large male hyena now standing forty yards away, overlooking the wadi. Seeing her, he sauntered confidently toward her, his head low. Annette sighted down her NL-3 and pulled the trigger. She vaguely remembered her COIL training in Mexico, where master instructor Brody Sladrick had explained that tranquilizer pellets did have some effect on animals, depending on body mass.
The hyena snapped at the pellets that stung his muzzle as Annette fired another five-round burst. The vicious male charged with a snarl, then slowed suddenly and lay down.
"What's going on?" Noah asked, winded from catching up to her. "A hyena? There could be more nearby. Don't go ahead without me!"
"Don't get left behind!" Annette said, then corrected herself. "Sorry, Noah. Just please stay with me."
Barrels first, they edged through the grass toward the sound of the wild dogs. Daylight ahead brought the
m to a stop.
"They'll attack." Noah moved to her right shoulder. "We go together. I'll shoot the ones on the right, you shoot the ones on the left."
"Just push them away from the bodies." Annette drew a flash-and-bang grenade from her pack. "They're just dogs, right?"
"Nothing is that simple." Noah shook his head. "This is Africa."
Together, they moved through the wall of grass. The marsh mud was deeper, almost over their boots. Noah used his free hand to hold Annette's elbow, guiding her with him as they struggled ahead.
They emerged from the grass twenty yards from dry ground where a baobab tree grew. Two dozen wild dogs, their coats a variety of brown, white, and black, surrounded the tree. Two dogs had managed to climb into the lowest branches of the tree, which seemed to excite the others into a frenzy.
A sizeable baobab fruit dropped forcefully from the upper reaches of the tree. The hard shell struck one dog. The dog yelped as it was knocked from the tree.
"In the tree!" Noah yelled over the ruckus, perhaps too loudly since his voice drew the dogs' attention. He fired at one dog that faced him on the right, then another.
Annette couldn't shoot effectively with one hand still gripping the grenade. She tossed it underhanded toward the base of the tree.
"Grenade!" she yelled, then covered her ears and shut her eyes, praying Noah did the same.
The explosion rattled her teeth and shook her bones, then she and Noah fired into the white smoke. The dogs dashed about in chaos, fleeing, their predatory senses disrupted by the stinging smoke, loud noise, and bright flash.
Noah moved toward the tree. The last dog darted past Annette, tail between its legs.
In seconds, Annette was out of the mud and on dry ground. The tree loomed above them thirty feet high. Whatever was in the tree was alive, moving lower, branch by branch. Noah hung his rifle over his shoulder as he reached up to the lowest branches.
"Come to me. I've got you!"
Annette eyed the grass with concern. Two tranquilized dogs lay still in the mud, but for how long? The hyena worried her, too. For the moment, they were safe, along with whomever they'd rescued in the tree.
But there were no bodies, which left a hollow feeling in Annette's soul. She struggled to hold back a sob. Now seemed like a good time to cry. There was no Titus. He might never be found. Even if she would've found his body torn apart by animals, at least there would've been some closure.
