Blood Trail

by Tony Park

  ‘Not sure,’ she said, trying to sound light. ‘COVID’s affecting everything, including assessments. I’m not sure I’m ready, anyway.’

  ‘You have been ready for that assessment for at least two years,’ Bongani said, without bothering to open his eyes.

  ‘Easy for you to say,’ Mia shot back. ‘You didn’t fail your exam.’

  Bongani said nothing. Mia picked up her phone again and opened Twitter.

  @rajiv_mumbai that bird was beautiful, like you, Mia.

  ‘Fuck.’ Mia threw her phone down on the passenger seat. When she looked up and, as she habitually did, around her, she spotted the twitch of an oversized grey ear.

  ‘What are you upset –’ Sara began, but Mia held up her hand to silence her and pointed at the slow-moving bulk of a white rhinoceros coming into sight. Sara shifted to get a better view, and in the process she knocked over her flask, which fell onto the metal floor of the Land Rover with a loud clang.

  The rhino, which had seemed so ponderous, spun around ninety degrees to confront the noise.

  The sound of a gunshot split the morning’s peace.

  Chapter 2

  Once inside the Kruger Park, Sannie took the turn-off to Lake Panic and the Skukuza golf course. The greens were deserted when she arrived, a low mist hanging over the dam which served as the water hazard. In normal times a couple of golf buggies would have already been on the move, now that it was light enough to keep a lookout for predators and other dangerous animals, such as hippopotamus and buffalo.

  A hippo honked somewhere nearby. She, too, had seen the leopard on Facebook, awake a couple of hours before Tommy, staring at her phone, scrolling through photos of her husband until they ended, abruptly.

  She had not wanted to get out of bed. It was an effort most days and sometimes she just wanted to hide. On her days off the boys either forced her to get up – perhaps they could see what was going on – or, more often than not, she had to be up first to get them organised and moving.

  Sannie stopped by the clubhouse and identified the tree where the leopard had hoisted its kill the previous afternoon. Sannie remembered lunches and brunches here with friends; birthday parties. It was a Kruger Park staff hangout. Tom had played golf, occasionally, with John and Piet, while Sannie drank wine in the sun with Samantha and Elizabeth. Her friends Hudson Brand and Sonja Kurtz had come sometimes, on the rare occasion when Sonja wasn’t off somewhere in the world killing people or bodyguarding.

  ‘Close personal protection,’ Tom would have corrected her. Sannie had done the same job, when they had met, though she never fought the public perception that they were bodyguards.

  Close personal protection.

  Tom had protected all sorts of people – politicians, bureaucrats, heads of state, rock stars. Everyone. Except himself.

  Sannie had buried the man she loved, Tom Furey, former UK police protection officer and loving father, just three weeks earlier, and every day since, when she woke, she had cried when she remembered she was alone.

  Of course, she wasn’t alone – she had her children, and her memories of Tom. Try as she might, however, the reminiscences that rolled over and over in her mind like a continuous video loop were of the fights they’d had and her guilt at letting Tom go back to Iraq. At the end of the day it always came back to one thing.

  Money.

  Stupid, God-cursed money was the reason Tom was dead. Like so many other people in South Africa they had struggled to make ends meet. Sannie had gone back to fulltime work in the South African Police Service after Tommy had started school, and while Tom senior had fancied himself as a farmer, they had been unable to make a profit from her family’s banana farm near Hazyview. They had lost the farm, in any case, to a land claim, and Tom had taken work overseas, as a protection officer for VIPs in Iraq.

  An ISIS rocket, fired at one of the coalition’s last toehold bases in that terrible country, had indiscriminately robbed her of her second husband, as well as taking the lives of three soldiers, including a woman in her twenties.

  Sannie reached to her side and closed her fingers around the grip of her Z88. She drew it out, aware of the whisper of steel against leather. She sat the handgun in her lap and glanced down at it.

  She had only ever loved two men, and now they were both gone.

  Sannie glanced in the rear-view mirror, saw the dyed blonde hair, the crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes. She was too tired and it was too early for makeup. And who would she be trying to impress anyway?

  Ilana was a young woman now, pretty and brilliant, strident in her views and independence. She would be fine. Christo was strong-jawed and handsome, fair like his father, in looks and temperament. Tommy was smart, dark, brooding, perhaps a writer-cum-safari guide. A thinker. They were all good kids. The older two had never thought of Tommy as anything other than their blood, and all of them had been exposed to their share of trauma and tears.

  ‘Tom . . .’ she croaked. ‘Why?’

  She knew exactly why. Because of her.

  Deep inside her she knew that Tom had not just gone to Iraq because of the money, but because he was unhappy. She had been part of his problem, because she’d returned to duty in the police force. Tom was a good guy, but he was a man, with an ego, and she had sensed for some time, despite his words to the contrary, that it irked him that she was back in the police service, working, earning money.

  He’d gone back to Iraq because of her. She could have tried harder to stop him, to help him find different work, but the truth, as much as she hated to admit it, was that she was relieved when he went. It was what he wanted, and the fights had stopped. But now, in addition to her grief and depression, she felt a crushing guilt.

  Sannie looked at the weapon. It was old, but loved and well cared for. It had never let her down.

  It was a cliché, she thought, wasn’t it? The cop who put the gun in their mouth and pulled the trigger. Men did that, like the gambler she had seen in the public toilet stall in Riverside Mall. He’d lost too big at the Emnotweni Casino, and then calmly wandered next door to the shopping mall where the poor cleaners and some supermarket worker on his break had had to deal with the aftermath.

  Women used pills. Was that about vanity? It was not about certainty.

  No, she would use a pistol, if her time ever came, like John Karandis had. And because she was the only cop Samantha knew, her friend had called her first. She hadn’t been part of the investigation, but it was clear John had set out to do the job properly.

  Sannie’s heart felt like it would never mend. She did not want to go through the pain of losing someone again, and anyway she couldn’t imagine ever meeting anyone new. The thought was almost too much to bear.

  Sannie looked at her pistol.

  Samantha had a son from a previous marriage, but he lived overseas somewhere, like many of her friends’ older children. Elizabeth was Piet’s second wife and they had never had children. Samantha seemed to have come through her grief – Sannie envied her – and Elizabeth told them both that she was well rid of Piet.

  ‘A handsome younger helicopter pilot is a good remedy for a broken heart,’ Samantha had said last night, looking pointedly at Elizabeth, but when Sannie had gently pressed for more information, Liz had said she could neither confirm nor deny such rumours – just now, at least.

  Thinking about Tommy, Sannie told herself that kids were resilient. Tommy’s hurt would heal with time.

  Her phone rang, jolting her out of her dark thoughts, even more so when she saw it was Tommy.

  ‘Hello, my angel.’ She coughed to clear her voice as she holstered her pistol. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Mom, Mom, someone’s shooting.’

  ‘Where? At the house? I’m coming –’

  ‘No, Mom, on Stayhome Safari, now, check. Have a look at your phone, Mom, Mia’s chasing a rhino poacher rig
ht now. It’s hectic!’

  ‘Mia?’

  ‘One of the guides. Hurry. Sheesh, you might even be able to catch the poacher, or help them. Someone fired a gun at them, Mom!’

  ‘OK, I’ll call you back.’

  Sannie wiped her eyes. This was a first, she thought, even for South Africa – a live-streaming poaching incident. She went to Facebook and found the Stayhome Safari page. Fortunately, the signal was good at the golf course and in a few seconds the live stream loaded. She saw a shaky view of a Land Rover bonnet crashing through the bush.

  ‘We can see him, one adult male, over,’ the young woman driving was saying into her radio as she spun the steering wheel, one-handed, then quickly used the same hand to change gears. Sannie caught a glimpse of a figure darting through the trees as the camera operator managed to focus.

  Sannie’s phone rang, just then. She tore her eyes away from the feed.

  ‘Van Rensburg.’

  ‘Howzit, Sannie? Henk here.’

  STES fell under the South African Police Service’s Organised Crime Division and Captain Henk de Beer was the organised crime liaison officer at the provincial capital, Mbombela, still referred to by many by its old name, Nelspruit. ‘Fine, Henk. Are you watching this stuff on Facebook, the live safari thing?’

  ‘What? No. What are you talking about?’

  ‘Lion Plains lodge in the Sabi Sand do a live-to-air game drive twice a day. My son’s addicted to it. One of the guides is chasing a poacher right now, live.’

  ‘Serious? That’ll be good for their ratings.’

  ‘I’ll call Sabi Sand security, get an update,’ she said.

  ‘Sure. I was just calling to tell you the boss has asked if you can go to Killarney for us this morning.’

  ‘What’s happening there?’

  ‘Missing girl.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with STES?’ Sannie asked.

  ‘It’s become political. The local community is threatening to protest, like in America. They’re saying poor people’s lives don’t matter. The grandmother of the missing girl says she’ll only talk to a senior female officer. The boss thinks you’re the closest and best person for this one, Sannie, and this time I happen to think she’s right.’

  ‘How old is the missing girl?’ Sannie asked. The crime was serious and would make a change from viewing yet another dead rhino carcass.

  ‘Thirteen. The boss asks if you can please go there now, try to talk to the girl’s family, maybe defuse things before the people gather this morning?’

  Thirteen. Same age as Tommy. ‘OK, I’m heading there now.’

  ‘And keep me up to date on this rhino poacher thing if you hear anything more. I’ll call Sabi Sand security – you drive.’

  ‘Will do; Killarney’s close to the gate so I can head into the Sabi Sand afterwards.’ She started the engine. Sannie knew that with the police stretched so thin during the pandemic there was no way she or any other police could get to Lion Plains quicker than the reserve’s private anti-poaching operators. She set her phone on the dashboard so she could keep an eye on the online hunt to find the rhino poacher while she did a U-turn in order to head back out of the park to Killarney.

  ‘Jissus,’ she said out loud as she drove, ‘only in Africa.’

  *

  The Land Rover bucked like a bronco as Mia drove over a fallen tree trunk. Bongani lurched to one side and for a second looked in danger of falling off. Sara clung to her camera mount.

  ‘Mia, Mia, this is Sean Bourke, over.’

  Mia keyed the handset. ‘Go, Sean.’

  ‘Mia, we’re looking for a breach in the perimeter fence now, over.’

  ‘Stand by, Sean.’ Mia glanced over her shoulder. ‘Kill the audio.’

  ‘No, no, no!’ the producer Janine shrieked in her earpiece. ‘This is going viral. We’re getting thousands of people tuning in, Mia!’

  ‘The bloody poachers will be watching as well and we’re not going to give them any information they don’t have,’ Mia told the producer. ‘Go to channel four, Sean.’

  ‘Roger, Mia.’

  They both switched to the other channel, which was reserved for private talks.

  ‘My dog team is following up,’ Sean continued, ‘I’ve been told Captain Sannie van Rensburg, a senior cop from Kruger, is on her way to Killarney now. Looks like that’s the direction where the poacher has come from.’

  Mia’s phone vibrated on silent in her pocket. ‘Wait one, please, Sean. I’ve got Vulture messaging me.’

  On the screen was a WhatsApp message from Graham Foster, one of Sean’s anti-poaching rangers, who was sitting in an unmarked air-conditioned portacabin hidden away in a small clearing in the bush and surrounded by its own electric fence a hundred metres from Lion Plains’ luxury lodge, Kaya Nghala, which meant ‘home of the lion’. The Vulture system, named for the bird’s incredible eyesight, was an array of sophisticated long-range cameras – which used infrared and laser designators to see at night – trail cameras, radar, and motion-sensitive alarms and cameras positioned along Lion Plains’ section of the Sabi Sand Game Reserve perimeter fence. This impressive and expensive collection of monitoring devices was controlled via a bank of computers and four large screens in the cabin where Graham had been sitting since he crawled out of Mia’s bed at midnight, doing his best not to wake her, when he went on shift.

  ‘I’m getting the messages as well,’ Sean said.

  Mia put down the radio handset and dialled Graham on WhatsApp as she continued to drive, using Bongani’s hand signals to navigate by.

  ‘Mia, hi,’ Graham said as soon as he answered. There was no time for small talk. ‘We’ve got movement. I’m trying to raise Sean on the radio, but he’s not copying.’

  ‘He’s in the north of the reserve checking for breaches in the fence. Sean’s getting your WhatsApps and I’ve got radio comms with him, so I can relay. Is our target on the move?’

  ‘I think so, yes.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I just spotted him, moving two hundred metres northwest of your position – I can see you both on the radar and camera, towards the perimeter fence, but it looks like he doesn’t have his rifle any more.’

  Mia stopped the Land Rover and turned off the engine. Bongani looked over his shoulder and gave her a questioning look. To her tracker partner she said: ‘He’s on his way to the fence, not far from us.’

  Mia put the phone back to her ear. ‘Maybe he cached the rifle, doesn’t want to get caught with it.’ That way, Mia thought, the man would claim he was simply setting or checking snares and get off with a small fine and a slap on the wrist.

  ‘We should follow him on foot,’ Bongani said. ‘The bush is so thick here we’ll be faster than in the Land Rover, and he won’t hear us coming and hide. If he is unarmed, he is not a problem.’

  Mia glanced back at Sara, sitting behind them but leaning forward, straining to hear what was being said on the radio.

  ‘She will be fine. I will look after her,’ Bongani said.

  Mia raised her eyebrows. ‘You?’

  He smiled. ‘You will be tracking. I’ll watch over you, and Sara will be behind me, safe and sound. It will be good practice for your assessment.’

  Mia wasn’t sure. ‘Graham’s got a visual on him. We can relay the message to Sean and he can send some guys, or call the police, to intercept this guy wherever he tries to get over or under the fence.’

  Bongani held his tongue, but Mia could see the hunter in him was itching to go after this man. Bongani had grown up in the bush when there was still enough wild space and game for him and his siblings to track and catch small animals and birds to supplement the family diet, the way his people had always lived. If his circumstances had been different, he might very well have been a poacher, but as someone whose living depended on wildlife in a diffe
rent way, he was more than ready to track down this intruder.

  ‘Stand by, Graham,’ she said into her phone.

  ‘OK, babes.’

  She frowned at Bongani’s grin and called Sean on the radio.

  ‘Go, Mia,’ Sean said.

  ‘Graham picked up the poacher on the Vulture system. He gave me a rough direction in which the guy is heading.’

  ‘I’ll send a patrol down the fence line. We’ll catch him on his way out.’

  ‘Roger, Sean.’ She took a deep breath. ‘We’re going to track him on foot.’

  There was a pause. Sean eventually keyed his microphone. ‘This isn’t your responsibility, Mia.’

  ‘Graham says the guy’s ditched his rifle. We’ll follow him, keep him in sight, but we won’t engage.’

  ‘Copy,’ Sean said. ‘Just be careful.’

  ‘Come,’ Bongani said, impatient. ‘Let’s see if we can pick up some tracks.’

  Mia was undecided. This was not a good idea, particularly with a volunteer in tow, but a poacher was on the move and Mia hated the idea that a rhino might die because she did nothing, or was afraid to go after an armed man. She lifted her rifle from its cradle on the dashboard, unzipped the green canvas padded carry case and drew it out.

  ‘Yes!’ Sara said.

  As Sara took off her headset Mia could hear their Stayhome Safari producer, Janine, yelling into the earpiece, demanding an update.

  ‘Switch off the camera and leave it,’ Mia said. Sara nodded and complied.

  Bongani slid off his tracker seat, stowed his poncho, and then took a panga, a wickedly sharp machete, from where he kept it wedged behind the vehicle’s plastic radiator grille. The blade was in case they came across low-hanging thorny branches when tracking big game off-road or small trees that had been pushed across roads by elephants.

  ‘I wish I had a rifle,’ Sara said.

  ‘I wouldn’t let you bring it if you did,’ Mia said. ‘You’re a volunteer, not an anti-poaching ranger. If you shot someone you’d end up in prison.’