The Cull

by Tony Park

  ‘For crying in a bucket,’ Hudson said. ‘He’s bleeding out.’

  ‘There . . . there is an organisation . . . they call themselves the Scorpions . . .’

  ‘Who’s the head?’ Sonja asked. She put her palm over the bullet hole to still his ragged wheezy breathing.

  ‘I . . . I don’t . . .’

  ‘Sonja.’

  ‘Shut up, Brand.’ She slapped her captive’s face with her free hand. ‘Stay with me. Give me a name or I swear I’ll kill you right now.’

  ‘They . . . they will kill me.’

  ‘No, I will.’

  ‘Hey, drop the gun,’ a woman called.

  Sonja looked over her shoulder. Captain Sannie van Rensburg was striding across the fairway holding a pistol up in two hands. Her female partner was a step behind her, also with her weapon drawn.

  ‘Shit.’ Sonja stood and holstered her pistol. ‘Thanks for nothing, Brand.’

  Hudson dropped to his knees beside her. He ripped open Cuna’s shirt and held a balled hand towel, taken from the poacher’s golf bag, to his wound to staunch the bleeding.

  He looked up at her. ‘Dammit, Sonja, I just saved you from a murder charge. What were you thinking?’

  She glared at him. ‘I was thinking I was finally going to find the man who ordered Sam’s killing.’

  ‘Well, this guy would be no use to you dead. His pulse is weak and he’s just passed out.’

  ‘Paramedics are coming now,’ Sonja said.

  ‘I can try talking to him in hospital,’ Hudson said.

  ‘What makes you think he’ll talk to you?’

  Hudson gave a small smile. ‘Well, I did just save his life.’

  ‘Ha!’

  Sannie van Rensburg and her partner reached them. ‘All right, everyone stay put. Vanessa, check those men.’

  ‘They’re all dead,’ Hudson said to her, ‘but this guy needs help.’

  The paramedics caught up, pushing their gurney. They took over from Hudson, who wiped his bloodied hands on the manicured grass of the golf course.

  ‘You’re not on your regular beat in the national park,’ Hudson said to Sannie.

  ‘Vanessa and I had a meeting with the Hazyview detectives; we were on our way back to Kruger when the call came over the radio. Instead of a garden-variety robbery, we find two rhino-poaching kingpins and a team of hired guns. I’m going to see if I can get anything out of Cuna.’

  Ezekial, Tema and Mario jogged over to the group. ‘Are you OK?’ Mario asked.

  Hudson turned at the sound of the voice. ‘Mario Machado?’

  Mario looked from Hudson to Sonja. ‘What’s he doing here?’

  ‘I was about to ask the same question,’ Hudson said.

  Sonja looked from man to man. Neither was smiling, and while they clearly knew each other, there were no hands extended in friendship. It dawned on Sonja that they had both served in the apartheid-era South African Defence Force’s Portuguese-speaking 32 Battalion.

  The two men looked each other in the eye. Sonja saw Hudson’s hands slowly clench into fists. Mario jutted his chin out.

  Sonja was intrigued, but before she could ask either of them what this was about James Paterson showed up.

  Paterson was wide-eyed at the carnage. ‘Sonja, are you all right? How’s the team?’

  ‘We’re fine.’

  ‘I was out by the chopper at the landing pad, on a conference call with Julianne and some of her people in the UK when I heard the gunshots.’

  ‘Well you missed the party. Are you armed?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Then just as well you stayed out of the way.’

  ‘I did call the police. Can I have a word, please, Sonja?’

  Van Rensburg was walking alongside the paramedics, who were wheeling Cuna across the fairway. Sonja walked away from the group with Paterson.

  ‘We need to go,’ James said in a quiet voice.

  ‘The policewoman told us to stay here.’

  ‘Do you want to do that, or would you rather have a shot at catching some criminals who have just killed some of Julianne’s anti-poaching unit operators?’

  ‘In the Sabi Sand?’ She hadn’t heard of an attack.

  ‘No. I’ll explain in the chopper. Or you can stay here and talk to the cops.’

  Sonja cast her eyes over the bodies that lay strewn on the golf course. ‘No, I don’t particularly want to stay here. Tell me, what do you know about an organisation called the Scorpions?’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Where did you hear about them?’

  Sonja nodded towards the departing medical team. ‘Cuna.’

  ‘Interesting. I can brief you more on the Scorpions – if they exist at all – on the chopper. Bring your people and let’s get out of here while the policewoman is busy.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  ‘Zimbabwe.’

  Chapter 10

  Sannie van Rensburg sat at a table in the golf club, a cooling cup of coffee in front of her, and took notes as Hudson Brand recounted his version of the day’s events.

  She was furious that Sonja Kurtz and the others had run to the Khaya Ngala helicopter and taken off while she was trying to question the injured man, who had drifted in and out of consciousness as the paramedics wheeled him to the ambulance.

  Sannie flipped back a page in her notebook. ‘You say Cuna asked Tracey Mahoney to assign you to him especially.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  Hudson shrugged. ‘It happens sometimes, though usually with people I’ve guided before. I speak Portuguese, so Tracey often gives me Mozambican clients. As you know, most people that side of the border don’t speak English.’

  ‘Yes, but this one does. We know about Antonio Cuna. He’s university educated – three degrees in fact – and speaks Portuguese, Russian – from his time abroad during the civil war being trained as a Frelimo cadre – and English, which he learned in Moscow.’

  ‘I could tell by his clothes he was well off,’ Hudson said. ‘And since you’re in the anti-poaching squad and seem to know all about him I take it he’s a rhino poaching kingpin.’

  Sannie nodded. ‘Alleged, of course. In Mozambique that means he has enough money to buy his way out of any prosecution. He hasn’t committed any crimes, per se, here in South Africa, which is why I can’t hold him. The only break we caught today was that Cuna’s wound looks serious enough to keep him in the Nelspruit Mediclinic for a few days at least. That, and the fact that King Jim got his comeuppance at last. I’ll need to question Cuna about their meeting.’

  Hudson sipped his coffee. ‘Everyone in town knew King Jim was dirty, the local Don of Hazyview. What was this, a hit that failed?’

  Sannie took some cold coffee. ‘Looks like it. The dead gunmen, including the one you got, were Jim’s guys. I recognised one and the Hazyview officers confirmed the others were local. Jim invites Cuna to come and play some golf, talk some business, and has his guys make it look like they were robbing the club and the Mozambican gets killed in the crossfire.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Brand said, ‘but that doesn’t make sense if it’s clearly obvious to the police that the hit men are . . .’

  ‘. . . working for King Jim.’ Sannie nodded. ‘That’s what bothers me about this, as well. OK, Jim wouldn’t have been expecting you and your girlfriend Sonja and her people to be here, following Jim and Antonio and carrying guns, but all the same, it’s amateurish. Jim didn’t stay out of prison this long by being dumb – he was actually a pretty smart cop in his day, before he went bad.’

  ‘Word on the street was that he was still controlling poaching on this side of the border.’

  Sannie knew Hudson was right, and while King Jim had been the subject of ongoing investigations he was dead now, so it didn’t matter
what she said about him. ‘He was. We were sure of it but, like I said, he was clever, so we hadn’t been able to catch him out. Everyone from Hazyview to Kruger who’s worked for him is too scared to help us out. He was ruthless.’

  ‘So maybe,’ Hudson ventured, ‘he was arrogant enough to think he could rub out his rival from across the border in public, in broad daylight, and get away with it.’

  ‘Maybe.’ But there was something else at play here, someone else. ‘What was Sonja Kurtz doing here? And why did she get into Julianne Clyde-Smith’s helicopter? Is she working for her?’

  ‘I guess she is.’

  ‘She’s your girlfriend.’

  ‘Stop saying that, please, Sannie. She’s not.’

  ‘She was staying with you at Hippo Rock. Did you have a falling-out? Is that why she didn’t come to dinner the night that I came over?’

  Hudson looked away, out over the course, where players had already returned to the greens.

  This was South Africa, Sannie thought to herself, even in the wake of a shootout the golfers wouldn’t be put off.

  ‘We were friends,’ Hudson said. ‘We had a thing; I don’t know what else to call it.’

  ‘A thing? English is my second language; do you mean a fling?’

  ‘Your English is just great, Sannie. No, it wasn’t a fling; it was more of a thing. We met in Namibia. I was there on an investigation, she was trying to find her daughter, who had been kidnapped. It was messy. We kind of connected and I guess we thought it was worth giving it a shot, seeing each other again. But . . .’

  ‘But?’

  ‘She’s got issues, and that’s an understatement. She thought I was cheating on her and she walked out.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Day after the gunfight she and her female anti-poaching unit, the Leopards, got into.’

  Sannie was taken aback. ‘What? The day after you and I had dinner? Don’t tell me she thought you were sleeping with me?’

  Hudson held up a hand. ‘Hold your horses. I told her there was nothing between you and me. She’s still hurting, Sannie. I think she finds it hard to trust men – people. She saw me with a female reporter at the Protea Hotel.’

  Sannie raised her eyebrows. Hudson was a handsome guy and she’d heard talk around the park that he was a ladies’ man, but she thought him a fundamentally decent person.

  ‘No, no. Nothing like that,’ he said. ‘There was a leopard in the hotel grounds and I escorted Rosie, the reporter, back to her room.’

  ‘Rosie? Not Rosie Appleton?’

  Hudson took a moment to recall. ‘Yes, that was her surname. Do you know her?’

  ‘She’s from that travel magazine, Escape. But she’s a hard hitter, very pushy, and her stories often get picked up by the national newspapers and television. She’s been trying to get permission from the Joint Operations Command to interview undercover operatives who infiltrate poaching gangs. She’s said she won’t reveal anyone’s identity, but the powers that be don’t think it’s worth the risk. She’s a snooper.’

  ‘She told me she was here on vacation.’

  ‘She was talking rubbish,’ Sannie said. ‘I knocked back two requests from her to ride along on our sensitive operations.’

  ‘She also asked me if I had any contacts in the security forces, police or anti-poaching teams.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘I’ve been around enough reporters to know to stick to my name, rank and serial number.’

  ‘Anyway,’ Sannie said, ‘forget her. Tell me, why was Sonja here? Why was she threatening Antonio Cuna?’

  He shrugged. ‘Like I said, we’re not together. We’re not really talking much at the moment. She was offered a job with Julianne Clyde-Smith at Khaya Ngala, that much I do know.’

  ‘Anti-poaching?’

  Hudson nodded and finished his coffee.

  Sannie couldn’t help but feel annoyed. ‘Clyde-Smith’s like all foreigners – she thinks she knows better ways to fight poachers than we do. She’s always in the news media talking up the problem and how she spends more than anyone else on anti-poaching.’

  ‘And does she?’

  Sannie had to concede. ‘She does. She’s proof of the fact that if one reserve, one national park, one farm spends more on anti-poaching or comes up with a new initiative, then the problem moves on somewhere else.’

  Hudson signalled the waitress. ‘So Julianne Clyde-Smith enlists Sonja Kurtz to further protect her estate from poaching? I’m thinking aloud here.’

  Sannie considered what she knew of Sonja Kurtz, from what Hudson had told her, briefly, and what the Joint Operations Command knew of her, gleaned as a result of the killing of Sam Chapman by poachers a few years ago and her recent engagement to train and mentor the all-female Leopards Anti-Poaching Unit. ‘Sonja’s a mercenary, with experience in Northern Ireland with the British Army, and in Sierra Leone, Angola, Iraq, Afghanistan and the flare-up in Namibia a few years ago, all via the private military company Corporate Solutions, which went out of business after one too many scandals. She’s between jobs, but she doesn’t come cheap.’

  ‘Because she’s good at what she does,’ Hudson continued.

  ‘And in the space of the last few days,’ Sannie ordered a Coke Light in response to Hudson’s second cappuccino, ‘she and her girls have killed a couple of poachers, taken out two more who probably killed two of their own operators, and very nearly assassinated Mozambique’s top rhino poaching boss, Antonio Cuna.’

  ‘I never said she was about to assassinate Cuna,’ Hudson said.

  Sannie shook her head. ‘Of course not, Hudson. I was late arriving, but I saw her with her pistol pointed at his head.’

  He puffed his cheeks out.

  Sannie continued. ‘This was a military operation, Hudson. Sonja and her team of hired guns arrive, flown in with James Paterson, Clyde-Smith’s ex-military intelligence officer head of security, and twenty minutes later Hazyview’s number one organised crime figure is dead and Mozambique’s top poaching kingpin is in hospital. Am I the only one who sees a link here?’

  Hudson didn’t answer so she asked another question. ‘Who was the guy in Sonja’s team? Older, dark-haired, good-looking?’

  ‘Mario Machado.’

  ‘I saw you two sizing each other up. Who is he?’

  ‘He’s a sculptor, a pretty good one.’ Hudson looked away from her again. She could tell he was clenching his jaw because of the movement of the muscles beneath his tanned skin.

  ‘A sculptor and . . .’

  Hudson took a breath. ‘An asshole. Back in the day he served in 32 Battalion, in Angola.’

  ‘Your old unit.’

  Hudson sipped his coffee then put it down. He wasn’t looking at her, still gazing out over the greens, but Sannie felt like instead of manicured golfing greens, he was seeing a killing field on the other side of Africa. ‘You know what they called us, our Portuguese nickname?’

  Most people Sannie’s age or older knew of the battalion’s fearsome reputation and kill ratio. ‘Os Terriveis, the Terrible Ones.’

  ‘Yup. It was people like Mario Machado who gave us that name.’ He looked back to her, into her eyes. ‘None of us were saints, but that guy was a demon.’

  ‘So what’s Sonja doing with another trained killer, a pretty girl who’s handy with a gun, and a master tracker? Has she put together her own “A-Team”?’

  Hudson seemed to mull over her words. ‘I don’t know. Let me ask you a question.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Do you think Shadrack, the labourer from Hippo Rock, was really up to being part of a highly organised rhino poaching team, and shooting a female operative in the back?’

  ‘That’s called changing the subject,’ Sannie said.

  ‘What’s your gut feeling?’

  ‘This isn
’t an American cop show, Hudson. I work on evidence and fact, not on hunches.’

  ‘Come on, you know what I mean – every investigator also has to trust their instincts from time to time.’

  She shrugged. ‘I was surprised, but the evidence so far points squarely at him.’

  ‘And the guy he was with, his cousin?’

  ‘Oh, now him I have no doubts about. He was known to us. He had a string of fines dating back to when he was a juvenile and he’d done prison time for car theft and firearms offences. You know, plenty of the car hijackers from Joburg have become involved in rhino poaching. They’re violent men who know guns and they’re not afraid of anything. The return for taking a rhino far outweighs the gain and even the risk of taking a car these days. Shadrack’s cousin’s career path was always leading towards rhino poaching.’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘So what’s your point?’ Sannie asked.

  ‘I’m not sure, and that’s the truth. Do you have the postmortem results on Shadrack yet?’

  ‘No. Given the circumstances it’s not a priority.’

  ‘Tell that to his mom, Anna. If your forensic evidence – blood types, the wound on his back, gunshot residue on his hands – all matches the circumstantial evidence, then I think we owe it to her to explain as soon as possible that her son was a criminal.’

  ‘I feel sorry for Anna, but it’s not up to “us”, it’s up to me. Hudson, we’re friends, and I respect that you make your living as an investigator, but this sounds more like a grieving mother clutching at straws. Don’t lead her on, please, or get in my way.’

  ‘Understood.’

  Sannie sighed. ‘The fact is I did talk to the Hazyview detectives today about Shadrack.’

  Hudson raised his eyebrows. ‘And?’

  ‘And it’s not great news. His late father was a bushmeat poacher who snared antelope to sell for food.’

  ‘That doesn’t make Shadrack a criminal,’ Hudson said.

  ‘No, but you and I both know someone has been setting snares inside Hippo Rock to catch our buck.’

  Hudson nodded. Illegally trapping and killing buck for bushmeat was a big problem in most of Africa’s national parks, but one which was often overlooked because of the coverage given to rhino and elephant poaching. Curious predators, such as lion, wild dog and leopard also fell victim to wire snares set to catch herbivores. The State Veterinarian based in the Kruger Park had recently been called to Hippo Rock to dart and treat a hyena that was being slowly strangled by just such a trap. ‘You think Shadrack could be the culprit?’