by Tony Park
‘It’s our master tracker, Ezekial Lekganyane, from the Leopards Anti-Poaching Unit. He teaches the women how to track. I’m getting him to follow the man who did this.’
‘Man?’
Sonja jerked a thumb over her shoulder. ‘There’s spoor on the road back there. It’s been brushed with a branch to make it look like a leopard’s drag mark, but even I could tell it was done in a rush, by a man. I can see a partial print in the bush, but Ezekial will be able to follow it.’
Sannie was annoyed with the way the other woman was taking over her investigation before it had begun, but she knew it would take time to bring in a police tracker. The dog unit based at Paul Kruger Gate had been called out an hour earlier to track another poaching gang inside the national park. ‘All right.’
Sonja had squared up to her as if she was expecting an argument, but simply nodded. ‘Well, I’ll go and meet Ezekial on the road.’
‘Sonja?’
She looked back. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m sorry for the loss of your trainees. Please remember this is a police investigation – don’t do anything rash.’ She took a business card out of her jeans pocket and gave it to Sonja. ‘Call me if you come up with something.’
Sonja nodded, took the card, and turned and walked away.
*
Sonja fumed as she followed Ezekial through the bush. Tema was behind her.
The van Rensburg woman was prettier than she had imagined. She was blonde and blue-eyed with a nice smile. Sonja wondered if she’d been wearing the tight jeans and long brown flat-heeled boots last night. Brand was a ladies’ man and she could picture him flirting with the cop whose husband was away. A sundowner had turned into a bottle of wine and dinner, maybe more.
Ezekial was another man women found attractive. Sonja had reprimanded Goodness and Patience for tittering like schoolgirls and whispering between themselves during their first lesson with the master tracker. He had played up to the Mdlulis but Sonja, standing back during the class, had noticed how Ezekial’s attention kept wandering to the graceful Tema. He had made a show of comforting her when he arrived at the road by the murder scene and Sonja had chivvied him along to get to work.
Sonja was glad he was here. She was reasonably proficient at reading spoor but there was no way she could have picked up the small signs that Ezekial was finding as easily as if they were flashing blue lights in the veld.
Ezekial held up his hand and Sonja and Tema froze. Sonja raised her LM5 slowly. Ezekial looked back, his right hand touching his nose and sticking upwards. Sonja heard a huff of exhaled breath and the large grey bulk of a white rhinoceros trotted across the game trail fifty metres ahead of them. Ezekial grinned, then returned his gaze to the ground ahead and led off.
Sonja thought about the deaths of Patience and Goodness. Patience had been stupid, running from the leopard; she’d been lucky the cat hadn’t chased and caught her, and, eventually, unlucky that she had stumbled into the poaching gang.
Goodness had been cowardly, though running from gunfire wasn’t particular to any race or gender in Sonja’s experience. To run was human; to stand and fight took training and courage. Tema had absorbed the theory and gone with her gut and her heart and advanced on the enemy in the face of danger.
Tema was talking to Ezekial now as they walked.
‘Let him do his job, Tema.’
Tema looked back. ‘Yes, madam, sorry.’
‘Call me Sonja, and do your job. Keep your eyes open.’ She was a good kid, Sonja thought. There was no surliness in her reply. Goodness and Patience, however, had resented taking orders from her and Sonja didn’t know if it was because she was white, foreign or a woman, or perhaps all of the above. But Goodness had not deserved to die, as van Rensburg had taunted.
‘Yes, Sonja.’
Ezekial was leading them further to the west, deeper into the Lion Plains property, closer to the perimeter fence of the Sabi Sand Game Reserve. Lion Plains was on the edge of the reserve and it was no secret locally that the lodge was in trouble.
A few years earlier Lion Plains had nearly been turned into an open cut coalmine. It had been the subject of a successful land claim by the local people, the traditional owners who had been granted ownership of the land by the government. The community had been seduced by the lure of jobs and money to sell the mineral rights to an Australian-owned coalmining company. Tema, who had been working as a maid and studying to be a field guide prior to applying for a position with the Leopards, had told Sonja that the discovery of a breeding pair of rare Pel’s fishing owls on the property had been enough to put an end to the miners’ plans.
However, the lodge had taken a hit through lost bookings while the mine saga played out, and had never fully recovered. Sonja had seen, and avoided, a reporter and photographer from The Lowvelder newspaper at the scene where she had shot the poachers, and she knew the lodge’s name would once again attract publicity for the wrong reasons. Shootings of poachers were not uncommon in the Kruger and its surrounding reserves, but losses among military, police and anti-poaching operatives were mercifully rare, so the deaths of the Mdluli sisters would be worldwide news.
‘What will happen to us now, Sonja, to the Leopards?’ Tema asked her.
‘I don’t know, in the long term, but training’s been suspended,’ Sonja said as they walked.
Tema clenched her fists. ‘I have a child. I will have to go back to working as a maid, but I may not be able to get my old job back at Hippo Rock. There are too many people looking for work and not enough positions.’
‘You worked there? I didn’t know. I know a man who lives there, Hudson Brand. I’ll see if he can talk to management for you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I didn’t know you had a child.’
‘A girl,’ Tema said. ‘Her name is Shine.’
‘I have a daughter as well, Emma.’
‘Sure?’
‘Don’t sound so surprised, Tema. I am human, you know.’
‘I’m sorry, madam, Sonja. I didn’t think you were married.’
‘I’m not. Long story.’
‘Nor me,’ Tema said, sadly. ‘Long story.’
Ezekial stopped and studied the ground. Sonja moved past Tema. ‘What is it?’
Ezekial took a few steps to his left, then back to his right, casting about. ‘This man is good. He is employing active counter-tracking. See, here, where he has trodden on some long grass, but then straightened it again. Also, where he has crossed game trails he has tried to do so without leaving a track. Where he has had to, he has brushed out the track.’
‘But you’re still following him.’
‘It is not easy and, as I say, he is good.’ Ezekial looked up and grinned at her. ‘But I am better.’
Sonja saw Tema smile and Ezekial winked back at her. She hoped it wasn’t because of her trouble with Hudson, but she really did not have time for these two to be flirting on the job. ‘Is he armed?’
‘Yes, with an AK-47.’ Ezekial pointed back the way they had come. ‘He set the rifle down on the ground at one point and I could see the imprint of the AK’s butt plate in the dust.’
Sonja processed the information she had. The two men she had killed were Mozambicans, both armed with the same rifles as this man. That meant the machine gunner had gone in a different direction, possibly across the Sabie River and back into the Kruger Park and Mozambique to the east. This man, possibly the one who had shot Goodness, given the location of her body, was heading deeper into South Africa.
Ezekial led off again. ‘He was moving faster here,’ Ezekial called over his shoulder. ‘He was getting nervous; perhaps he heard the helicopters again and was running, taking less time to cover his tracks.’
They had increased their pace as well. Sonja and Tema were alternating between a fast walk and a jog through the bush. Sonja kept watc
h for game, though she knew Ezekial was not just looking at the ground ahead of them. His skills were phenomenal, particularly given he was only in his late twenties.
‘The fence.’ Ezekial stopped and pointed to the ground. ‘Check.’
Sonja stopped behind him. Ezekial had led them to a dry watercourse that passed under the Sabi Sand reserve’s perimeter. The fence was a substantial affair of barbed wire, several electrified strands and two rows of coiled razor wire at the bottom. However, the ground at the base of the streambed was irregular. Large rocks had been placed there to fill gaps, but their quarry had pulled them aside and wriggled under the fence.
Ezekial circled a crisp, clear boot print with his finger in the dust. ‘His right boot has a split in the sole. This will be easy to identify.’
Sonja carefully stepped over the track on the road and down into the streambed. She knelt and inspected the razor wire. ‘Threads from a green shirt here, and quite a bit of blood. He’ll have a nasty gash on his back.’
Sonja took out her phone and called Sannie van Rensburg. She gave the location and the information about the fugitive being slashed on the fence and his boots with the distinctive split in the sole. Van Rensburg told her the police dog unit was still busy in the Kruger Park, but would be at her location, on the outer side of the fence, as soon as possible.
‘I’ll leave a pile of stones near the spot where the guy went under the fence.’
‘No, wait there,’ Sannie said. ‘I want to see you again as well, ask you some more questions.’
Sonja ended the call without replying. She had another appointment.
Chapter 4
Julianne Clyde-Smith’s lodge, Khaya Ngala, which meant the house of the lion, had raised the bar in an already crowded luxury safari accommodation market in the Sabi Sand Game Reserve.
Sonja was greeted by a man in dark trousers and a pressed white shirt who handed her a cold towel, followed by a glass of champagne once she had wiped her hands and face. Ezekial hefted her backpack out of the rear of the Hilux and a porter whisked it away.
‘I’ll call you tomorrow,’ Sonja said to Tema.
‘Yes, Sonja, goodbye,’ she said, moving to the front passenger seat so she could be next to Ezekial.
As Ezekial passed her Sonja touched him on the arm. She spoke softly. ‘Tema’s been through a lot in the last twenty-four hours. Keep an eye on her, like a brother – at least for now OK?’
He nodded, then got in the truck.
Ezekial, Tema and Sonja had back-tracked to the scene of Goodness’s murder after tracking her supposed killer to the fence line. The South African Police Service dog team would take over tracking the fugitive from the other side of the fence, which was outside the jurisdiction of the Leopards, who were employed only to work within the Sabi Sand Game Reserve.
Before they had left the fence line, Ezekial, whose father was a bishop in the ZCC or Zion Christian Church, asked Sonja if he could say a prayer for the deceased members of the Leopards.
Sonja, feeling slightly self-conscious, had held hands with Tema and Ezekial.
‘Lord, we pray for the souls of our sisters Goodness and Patience. Their lives were too short but we know they are in your arms now.’
Tema had wiped tears from her eyes. Sonja envied her ability to grieve now, on the spot, for her comrades. She knew, from bitter experience, that the Mdlulis would visit her in her nightmares in the days, weeks, months and maybe years to come, along with too many others.
Tema had given her hand a tight squeeze and Sonja had felt her own heart lurch, just a little.
She spared them a final glance outside Julianne’s lodge as they drove off. Ezekial was handsome, professional and devout. Tema could do worse than him, but she had also seen the way women fawned over the tracker. She had meant what she had said to Ezekial; she didn’t want him working his charms on her while she was vulnerable.
Sonja gave the towel back to the man and followed him through the lofty thatch-roofed entrance to Khaya Ngala, sipping her champagne as she walked, taking in her surroundings. She was off duty indefinitely now that training and operations for the Leopards had been suspended.
Although she had been born on a cattle farm in Namibia, Sonja had spent part of her teens living in the staff quarters of a private game lodge in Botswana where her father had worked as the maintenance manager – when he wasn’t too drunk to stand up. Whether tented, or a mix of traditional and modern architecture, like Khaya Ngala, these lodges all set high standards and tried to outdo each other in their quest for luxury, wildlife sightings and dollars.
‘Miss Clyde-Smith is waiting for you on the deck, madam. Lunch will be served whenever you’re ready.’
Sonja had barely slept at the hotel and she was wearing the same camouflage fatigues she’d had on during the contact. She’d put them back on because she’d expected to be walking in the bush again that morning. Her shirt was stained with dirt, blood and sweat, but she cared as little about how she presented to Clyde-Smith as she did about the ostentatiousness of the woman’s lodge.
The location, however, was something else. Khaya Ngala was set atop a granite koppie and the elevation afforded an uninterrupted view out over the best Africa had to offer. A bull elephant guzzled water up into his trunk from a waterhole at centre stage. A trio of elegant giraffe waited nervously for their turn, scanning their surrounds for the predators that would wait to take them when they were at their most vulnerable, drinking. The wildlife was nice, but she was intrigued by Julianne’s offer.
‘Sonja, so glad you could make it. Can Charles bring you some wine?’
‘Not for now,’ she said. She took Clyde-Smith’s hand. She was a good-looking woman; handsome rather than beautiful was the word that sprang to mind. She had dark hair, pinned up not too neatly, and wore a simple white loose-fitting blouse untucked over jeans and sandals decorated with African beadwork. From the pictures Sonja had seen in newspapers and online Julianne also affected a casual personal style, a bit like Richard Branson. She was anything but casual, however, when it came to the business of making money.
‘Have a seat, enjoy the view. Water, please, Charles.’ The man who had escorted Sonja in gave a slight bow and went to the bar. ‘I hope the police didn’t give you any grief.’
Sonja shook her head. A family of warthog, a mother and three piglets, trotted disdainfully in front of the elephant. In reply he shook his big head at them and the babies scattered.
‘I fired in self-defence, following our rules of engagement.’
Julianne handed her a menu and she scanned it. When Charles returned with the water he asked for their order.
‘I’ll have the springbok carpaccio and the eye fillet medallion, rare, please.’
Julianne smiled. ‘A fellow carnivore. Excellent. I’ll have the same, Charles, and tell the sommelier to select a nice red.’
‘Very good, miss.’ Charles departed.
‘I’m not staying long enough to drink a bottle.’
Julianne held up her hands. ‘I wouldn’t dare presume, but being in Africa is the closest I get to having a holiday, so I’ll work my way through a red eventually. You mentioned rules of engagement. From what little I know of it, your background suggests you’re open to bending them.’
Sonja leaned back in her chair. A market umbrella gave them shade. ‘I follow the rules, unless they don’t suit me.’
Julianne raised an eyebrow, but didn’t reply. The silence stretched between them.
‘I told you yesterday, I’m not looking for a job.’ Sonja was interested in what Julianne had to say, but there were too many do-gooders with too many harebrained schemes about how to save wildlife and how to stop poaching.
‘Yet here you are.’
‘I heard your menu was worth checking out.’
‘Ha!’
Charles returned with the wine.
>
‘Would you like to taste?’ Julianne asked her.
‘Sure.’ Sonja swirled the wine in the glass, sniffed it and tasted it. ‘Shiraz, my favourite.’ It was superb, and when she checked the bottle the label confirmed it. ‘Saxenburg Select. One of the country’s best.’
‘Life, as they say, is too short for cheap wine.’
Charles poured for both of them. ‘Life’s too short, full stop.’ Sonja looked out at the elephant and the piglets, which had snuck back to the waterhole for a drink.
When the waiter left, Julianne proposed a toast. ‘To life.’
Sonja clinked glasses with Julianne and they sipped.
‘You assassinated one of the top rhino horn speculators in Vietnam, Tran Van Ngo.’
Sonja set her glass down. ‘You can’t believe everything you read in the newspapers and online.’
‘And fomented a civil war in Namibia and blew up a dam in order to save a fragile ecosystem.’
‘You really have to cancel your subscription to Soldier of Fortune magazine.’
‘If they had a centrefold, you would have been it. We can joke all we like, but what my intelligence tells me is you’re a mercenary who chooses to fight for a cause.’
A cause? It was true she’d blown up a dam to save the Okavango Delta, but she’d taken the job for money. She had travelled to Vietnam to assassinate Tran on a mission of revenge and it had cost a good man, a journalist who had helped her, his life. She wasn’t sure it had been worth it, and it hadn’t slowed the trade in rhino horn.
‘Taking out the man in Vietnam didn’t stop rhino poaching,’ Clyde-Smith said, as if reading her mind, ‘but it had an impact. If we hit the man behind the gang that killed your two women last night then you will neutralise a syndicate that takes maybe sixty rhinos a year. That could be the difference between an increase in this year’s poaching figures and a decrease over last year’s. You could help turn the tide, buy the security and conservation forces – and the species – some much-needed breathing time.’
