by Tony Park
‘Bongani, Bongani, Bongani?’
Mia leaned over the top of her door, scanning the road for tracks.
She tried Bongani again, but once more, there was just silence. Mia completed a circuit of the block into which Bongani had walked but there was no sign of his tracks exiting the area. The ground was still soft from the morning’s rain and there had been no vehicles on the roads since she had taken Sue and Laura to camp. Even a first-time tourist would have been able to follow Bongani if he had crossed any of the gravel roads; that meant he was still in the block. Mia felt a chill run down her spine.
Mia circled back to where she had left Bongani. When she arrived she drove the Land Rover just off the road and parked it with the nose pointed into the bush in the direction in which she was headed – if something happened to her then any experienced guide who passed would at least know which way she had gone.
From the cradle racks on the dashboard she took the rifle bag, unzipped it, and drew out her .375.
Bongani’s footprints almost leapt off the ground at her. Less distinct, and older, were the poacher’s tracks. She studied them and concluded, as Bongani had, that it was the same man they had failed to find that morning.
How on earth, she wondered, had he eluded them? Whatever the case, Bongani had done well to pick up the poacher’s spoor. Given the condition of the ground, it was easy for her to follow Bongani’s path from the road into the bush. Even amid the thick undergrowth and leaf litter, to her trained eye his trail was as clear as if he had marked it for her.
Mia engaged all her senses. She paused and listened, wondering if she might pick up the low growl of a leopard or lion, or, even worse, the sound of bones being crunched. She sniffed the air; some animals such as elephants were, ironically given their huge size, most easily detected by their musty smell rather than the noise they made. When she came to a flattened pat of buffalo dung she dropped to one knee and touched it – the scat was cold, which was good. Of all the animals that might pose a threat to Bongani on foot, even with his decades of knowledge and experience, a lone male buffalo was the most dangerous.
She carried on, her rifle up and at the ready, but had to stop for a moment as she experienced a painful cramp in her stomach. She drew a deep breath after the spasm passed.
This was dangerous country in which to walk alone and she cursed herself for agreeing to let Bongani set off by himself. What was clouding her judgement? she wondered. She had foolishly agreed to let Sara accompany them when tracking the poacher and now she had abandoned her friend. Had something or someone been distracting her?
Mia felt light-headed.
She stopped, took another deep breath and her vision started to swim.
‘Bongani! Bon . . .’
Mia felt hot bile burning the back of her throat. She doubled over at the waist, planted the butt of her rifle on the ground to steady herself and threw up. She dropped to one knee, coughing and retching.
She had no idea what was wrong with her. Mia wiped her mouth and used the weapon to help her get to her feet. She staggered forward at a jog, feeling her stomach flip with every movement. Her eyes were teary from the effort of being sick, but she forced herself to look for spoor.
Mia heard a groan.
‘Bon . . .’ She could barely form the name.
‘Here,’ a voice croaked from in front of her. ‘Stay back.’
Mia dry-retched, but summoned enough strength to raise her rifle. ‘Where are you?’
‘Go back!’
She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts, and staggered forward.
Bongani lay on the ground, one arm forward, clawing at the dirt, his whole body heaving. The smell of his vomit was harsh and strong in the air and Mia held a hand to her mouth and nose to stop herself from throwing up again. She gagged.
Bongani half rolled and half pointed up at something.
Mia followed his line of sight and saw something white in a young tree.
She went forward, the rifle still up, though she realised there was no dangerous animal here. Something else had laid Bongani – and her – low.
‘What . . .’ she spat, ‘what is it?’
‘Do not . . . do not go close to it.’
Mia half walked, half stumbled to him. Bongani was on his hands and knees now, coughing, but at least he was alive.
Mia went closer to the tree, shaking off Bongani’s hand that grabbed weakly at her ankle, trying to stop her.
Wedged in a fork of branches was a skull.
Chapter 10
Mia and Bongani sat on the ground next to each other, slumped against the same tree.
Mia spat bile into the grass and wiped her mouth. ‘What was that all about? And don’t say evil spirits.’
Bongani coughed. ‘I was going to say the smoked salmon bagels Pretty packed us.’
Mia’s stomach churned. She leaned to one side and heaved, but, mercifully, nothing came out. ‘I think you’re right.’
‘We’ll have to tell Alison,’ Bongani said.
‘Agreed.’ Mia rolled over onto her knees and used the tree trunk for support as she stood. She picked up her rifle and looked at the skull. ‘What does this mean?’
Bongani, also slowly standing, shrugged. ‘A warning? To stay away?’
‘From what?’
‘He’s carrying this muthi with him, leaving it, to discourage us,’ Bongani said, looking briefly at the skull, which they could both see, on closer inspection, belonged to a baboon. Bongani took two steps back from it.
‘You’re not scared of this?’
‘Of a baboon skull? No. But it is a little unnerving, it’s not something a poacher would normally carry around the bush. It’s too big.’
Mia shook her head. ‘This is bullshit. Theatrical, almost.’ She was talking braver than she felt. She had initially panicked when she’d started throwing up, not even considering the possibility that it was food that had caused her illness. ‘What did you think, when you were sick?’
He blinked. ‘That someone had poisoned me.’
‘Deliberately? Pretty?’
He smiled. ‘No, not Pretty. As I was being sick I saw the skull. I thought it was related to that. Not the skull itself, but that a spell had been left for me, to throw me off the trail.’
‘Well, that worked, for both of us, even if the salmon was the cause. Has anyone ever been sick from Pretty’s food in the past?’
Bongani didn’t pause. ‘Never. She is scrupulous in that kitchen. Her staff sometimes complain about how strict she is. She supervises the cleaning herself, every day.’
Mia checked her watch. ‘Either way, whether Pretty’s food made us sick or we were subjected to some magic spell, we’ve been thrown off the track.’
Bongani cast about, though every couple of steps he put a hand to his stomach. Mia felt like she was through the worst of the attack, though she had only eaten half her bagel and had a recollection of Bongani wolfing his down on the way to the airport.
‘I have lost him, again.’
Mia came up behind Bongani and looked where he had been searching. She, too, found no obvious spoor that she could follow and, besides, they needed to be back at the lodge soon.
‘Let me check the road,’ Bongani said.
He went on ahead of her. Mia examined the skull up close, and looked around the base of the tree. There was no obvious sign of recent disturbance. Mia looked up, but there was no poacher clinging to an upper branch.
The sickness had brought on a headache and she realised that the vomiting had probably left her dehydrated. They were both in need of water, to drink and to rinse their mouths out. They could hardly undertake the afternoon game drive smelling of spew.
‘Bongani?’ she called.
‘Yebo?’
‘I’m going back for the Landy.’
‘All right. Drive around the block. I’ll wait for you on the road.’
‘Affirmative.’
Mia retraced her steps, checking the ground for spoor. She saw Bongani’s footprints, here and there, and traces where he had passed – flattened grass, a broken twig – but there was no sign of the poacher he had been looking for.
Mia heard a rustling noise off to her right. She stopped and listened. Slowly, she turned her head. She saw nothing, but heard the crunch of dry leaves.
Animals were quiet.
It was not scientific, but it seemed to her that there was an inverse relationship between the size of an animal and the amount of noise it made when passing through the bush. The biggest, the elephant, was one of the quietest, literally tiptoeing on spongey, cushioned feet. At the other end of the spectrum the first indication she’d had of the presence of animals close to the ground – honey badgers, porcupines and even a cape clawless otter – was the sound of them stomping through the vegetation. Small birds such as robins tossed leaf litter about, searching for insects, and made more noise than a buffalo.
And then there were humans.
Mia brought her rifle up, painstakingly slowly, aware that movement was one of the big giveaways for man and beast in the bush. She saw it, now, a glimpse of brown moving through some thick vegetation, roughly where she thought she had heard the sounds coming from. Mia held her breath. She brought the butt of the rifle into her shoulder.
She looked down the open sights of her Brno, her finger sliding through the trigger guard. A bush moved, as if someone or something was brushing it aside, or holding it down. The twig bounced back up into place. All of Mia’s attention was focused on the spot where she had just seen the bush disturbed.
A ray of afternoon sunlight pierced the trees as an errant cloud was blown to one side, and it glinted, for just a fraction of a second, on burnished metal. Mia made out the barrel of a rifle, poking through the leaves, maybe thirty metres from her.
‘Contact!’ a man yelled, and three shots rang out.
Bullets whizzed past Mia and one thudded into a tree next to her. She dropped to her belly. ‘Don’t shoot! Cease fire!’
Footsteps pounded towards her and Mia struggled to bring the rifle up from her position on the ground. When she looked up she saw it was Graham running towards her.
‘Mia? Hell, I nearly killed you!’
‘I know that, you idiot!’
She stood and brushed herself down. Graham and Oscar came to her.
‘Don’t call me an idiot. What are you doing out in the bush at this time of day?’
‘Looking for the poacher who disappeared. Bongani picked up some spoor, then lost it again. What are you doing here now?’
He set his rifle down, butt first, on the ground, wiped sweat from his brow and took a breath – to try to compose himself, she thought. ‘Same thing. Sean’s as pissed off as you two that we all lost the poachers, so he sent us out again. Did you find some new spoor?’ Graham asked.
Mia shook her head. ‘No. I was looking for his tracks, the ones Bongani had seen, just before you tried to kill me.’
Graham frowned. ‘Sorry.’
‘It’s OK.’
Graham looked at his boots. ‘And for before.’
‘What?’
‘For walking out on you. I love you, babe,’ he said.
Oscar looked away, giving them a moment.
Her heart softened, a little. She found it weird telling him she loved him, especially in public, though she was sure, deep down, that she did have strong feelings for him. There was just so much going on in her life right now. ‘Thanks.’
‘So what do we do now?’ Graham said, not seeming to notice or care that she had not responded in kind.
‘Let’s go find Bongani, see if he’s had any luck.’
They walked through the bush, still mindful of the presence of dangerous game, to Mia’s vehicle. Bongani, having heard the shots, called her on her radio and Mia explained what had happened.
‘Any luck?’ she asked him.
‘Aikona,’ he replied, which meant he’d found nothing.
Mia gave Oscar and Graham a lift to their vehicle and they drove in convoy to where Bongani was waiting on the side of the road.
‘You look like hell, man,’ Graham said to Bongani.
Mia leaned over and opened the passenger-side door for Bongani, but he shook his head and, instead, climbed slowly up onto the tracker’s seat on the fender. ‘I will keep searching.’
*
Back at the camp, Alison Byrne, the manager, was waiting for them, hands on hips. ‘What happened to you two?’
‘Ask Pretty,’ Mia said. ‘Food poisoning. We both ate the fish.’
‘I’ll take it up with the kitchen, if you’re sure that’s what it was?’
‘That’s all we ate in common,’ Mia said.
‘I must go to the bathroom,’ Bongani said, and excused himself.
‘Your guests are at lunch,’ Alison said. ‘Quite a handful, if you ask me.’
Mia nodded. ‘They should count themselves lucky they’re out here in the bush before all the international hordes return.’
‘I hear you,’ Alison said, ‘but try telling that to the mum. She’s high maintenance.’
Graham, who had been lagging behind Mia to stay out of the dust wake of her vehicle, pulled up under the impressive thatched portico in front of Kaya Nghala.
Alison took a step closer to Mia and lowered her voice. ‘The boss lady is here. She wants to see you.’
As if on cue, Julianne Clyde-Smith walked out of Alison’s office behind the curio shop.
‘Mia.’
‘Ma’am.’
‘I’ve told you, Julianne is fine.’
Mia gave a small nod. Julianne was dressed in her characteristically casual style – jeans, open-necked white blouse with wooden beads, and an elephant-hair bracelet, although Mia guessed the billionaire’s sandals were worth more than what she earned in six months as a ranger. Julianne’s hair was natural grey; she was attractive, and affected the same air of laidback confidence as Richard Branson, to whom she had often been compared, but Mia knew her boss could be as hard-nosed and demanding as any man in a three-piece suit.
‘I hear you were looking for this morning’s poachers,’ Julianne said.
‘Yes . . . Julianne.’
‘And?’
‘Nothing, I’m afraid.’
‘I’m always being told what a good tracker you are, Mia. It’s one of the reasons the company paid the expenses for your attempt at gaining your master tracker’s qualification.’
The emphasis on ‘attempt’ was ever so slight, but nonetheless unmistakable. Mia felt miserable, and not just because of the salmon bagel.
‘If we are to survive this current crisis, if the jobs of everyone here are to be protected, then Lion Plains needs to be in pole position when the world starts travelling en masse again. We need to uphold our reputation as the safest game reserve in Africa, for guests and for rhinos and other endangered game.’
‘I understand,’ Mia said. What did the woman think, that she was an idiot, or didn’t care about rhino poaching?
‘I’ve spent a fortune on the Vulture system and we’ve invested time and money on your education, and that of all the trackers and rangers and anti-poaching patrol members. And yet, I am told that once again a man has vanished into thin air on my reserve.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Julianne didn’t bother correcting her again. She took a deep breath. ‘Sorry, I’m not blaming you personally for the rise in rhino poaching, or for the fact that Facebook is awash with armchair experts telling each other it’s not safe to go on safari even if COVID disappears.’ She exhaled. ‘I know that’s not your fault and I’m just pleased that neither you nor Bongani were
hurt and that Sara is OK. Tell me what’s going on, Mia. Is there something more at play here?’
‘The weather didn’t help,’ Mia said, knowing the words sounded lame as soon as she uttered them.
‘A little unseasonal rain should help you find tracks, shouldn’t it?’
‘Yes, for a time, but then it washes them away, as it did this morning.’
‘Yes, and the poacher disappeared. I’m not an idiot, Mia.’
Mia looked her in the eyes. She was not going to be cowed by this woman. ‘I don’t think anyone thinks that.’
‘Good. So, tell me, what else is going on here?’
‘He’s good.’
‘The poacher? An old guy, yes?’
Mia nodded. ‘We think so, yes, and we think it’s the same man who has given us the slip several times now.’
‘So, we know he’s experienced. As are you.’
Mia drew a breath. ‘Today, just now, if we had more time, Bongani and I might have been able to pick up his trail and work out how he’s been avoiding us.’
‘What else?’ Julianne asked again.
‘What do you mean?’
Julianne lowered her voice. ‘Could this be an inside job? Is someone on our staff tipping off the poachers, or maybe turning a blind eye to tracks, or even covering them up?’
It took a split second for Mia to comprehend what Julianne was asking, and a moment longer for her to stop herself from exploding. ‘Bongani is not a criminal. He’s the closest thing I have to family.’
Julianne brushed a hair out of her eye. ‘Yes, well, one hears of experienced rangers in the Kruger Park being corrupted, and Lord knows, the money . . .’
Mia stared at her. ‘Not Bongani.’
‘Very well. I gather you were both ill.’
The woman was on top of everything. ‘Yes.’
‘Did that impede your ability to track?’
That and my boyfriend nearly killing me, Mia thought, but she said nothing as she had no wish to get Graham in trouble. ‘Yes.’
‘A coincidence?’
Mia thought for a moment. ‘You think Pretty might have poisoned us so we wouldn’t find the poacher?’
