Blood Trail

by Tony Park

  There were no more bullet casings so Mia presumed only the one man was armed. That made things slightly fairer.

  Mia tried to put herself into the mind of her quarry.

  These men would be desperate and their movement would be slowed by the burden of the girl. They were heading west towards the perimeter fence.

  ‘Julianne, this is Mia, over,’ she said into her radio as she jogged, keeping her eyes down and, as always, scanning the bush ahead – the last thing she needed now was to bump into a pride of lions or a cantankerous old buffalo bull.

  ‘Go, Mia.’

  ‘Julianne, tell our people, or the cops, or whoever you can, to stop any vehicle traffic on the road along the fence line outside the reserve. These guys might have a vehicle waiting for them.’

  ‘Roger, Mia, will do. The police are here now, with more reinforcements on their way and heading to the fence as a blocking force.’

  ‘Mia, Mia, this is Sean. Copy?’

  Mia could hear the urgency in the normally unflappable Sean’s voice. ‘Go, Sean.’

  ‘Mia, sheesh, what are you up to? Find some cover and wait for us, over.’

  Mia kept on her path, alternately following the tracks and checking her surroundings. She was scared, but she was also excited. As tempting as it was to wait for help, she knew that she needed to keep on the trail of these men. She would not be able to live with herself if something happened to Laura. The girl had been in her care.

  ‘Sorry, Sean, you’re coming through garbled,’ she lied.

  Mia turned the volume of her radio down and clipped it back on her belt. She paused briefly to touch some blood spatters on a leaf. When she lifted her finger, she felt its wetness. She was close. What have those bastards done to her? Mia asked herself.

  Horrible thoughts flashed through her mind. Her discussions about umuthi with Bongani and with Jeff had conjured up some terrible scenarios in her head. Some izangoma, operating outside the law, had been known to use human body parts to prepare their potions. Corpses were stolen or bought from morgues, graves had been robbed and, in some awful cases, children or certain adults – people with albinism were particularly at risk in some parts of Africa – had been kidnapped and murdered.

  Was Laura dead already?

  Her fears multiplied inside her. She had not heard the faintest noise, let alone a scream, from Laura since she had been abducted. Had they killed her, silently, on the spot?

  ‘Mia, Mia . . .’ She turned off the radio. If she was close to these men she did not want her position to be given away by noise.

  Mia looked down and saw a long scuff mark, a flattened area of grass, and a wet patch of blood on the ground. At least one of the men had stumbled and fallen. Good, she thought to herself, every misstep by her quarry gave her precious seconds to catch up. Mia dropped some of her caution and broke into a run, her eyes methodically moving from ground to the front and flanks in a continual motion. She held the R1 at the high port across her chest, using it to brush aside twigs and branches.

  Woo-oop.

  Mia slowed to a walk and listened.

  Woo-oop.

  Ringing eerily through the bush came the unmistakable call of a spotted hyena. With their acute sense of smell and sharp hearing, the hyenas had possibly picked up the blood trail and heard her and the men she was pursuing crashing through the bush. While hyenas were excellent hunters in their own right they were also consummate scavengers, often following other predators with the intention of stealing their kills. The hyena clan could very well be on her trail right now, just as they might tail a pack of wild dogs or a lone leopard.

  ‘Shit.’ Animal interference was the last thing she needed right now. Mia picked up her pace.

  Woo-oop. The hyena was louder, closer.

  Mia heard another noise, this one man-made. She stopped.

  A man was talking, low and rapid. There would have been no point in one stopping to lecture the other; this man had to be talking into a phone or radio, although his words were indistinct. Mia brought the butt of Phillip’s rifle up into her shoulder and crept forward, all senses on high alert. She caught the coppery scent of blood and her stomach turned. Her hands tightened on the black plastic handgrip and stock of the military-spec rifle. Mia remembered Bongani’s instructions, belatedly, and quietly spat out the muthi she had been chewing.

  A grey go-away bird mocked her with its eponymous call. It was too late for that. The hyena whooped in anticipation of death to come.

  The talking ahead of her stopped.

  Mia looked around her, searching for landmarks. There was a granite koppie, a cluster of boulders piled into a hill, which she knew well and told her she was less than two hundred metres from the western boundary fence of the Sabi Sand Game Reserve. On the breeze she heard the faint hum of a motor vehicle engine.

  Got you, you bastards.

  Mia heard the voice again.

  ‘Hi ta vonana.’

  ‘I will see you,’ the man had just said in Xitsonga, but then he ended his call.

  Mia lowered herself into a crouch and watched each footfall, concentrating on not treading on a dry twig that might snap and give her away. She peered through the bush, just as she told her guests to on game drives, only this time the stakes were life and death.

  She risked taking one hand off the stock of the R1 to take a fresh pinch of Bongani’s muthi from the paper packet in her pants pocket, put some more of the concoction in her mouth and chewed on it, then spat out a little.

  The ritual of chewing and spitting, and maintaining her noise discipline, focused her, calmed her a little.

  The foresight and tip of the barrel of the AK-47 came into view.

  Guests were sometimes amazed that either Bongani or Mia could spot a chameleon after dark, on their evening drives back to the lodge. The tiny reptiles had such a distinct silhouette that, with practice, they were easy to pick out in the beam of a spotlight, silhouetted on the branch of a tree. Mia’s eyes were so attuned to the shapes, colours, surfaces and movements of the natural world that something so stark, angular and unnatural as a rifle leapt out at her.

  Whoever was holding that gun had shot Phillip and Askari and tried to kill Bongani and her.

  A girl, someone who had been in her charge, was missing, most likely bleeding.

  The toll on rhinos and other animals was mounting.

  Mia raised the R1 and peered down the sights. She knew that if she aimed about a metre to the right of where she could see the tip of the rifle barrel she would, most likely, hit the man holding it. There was a very good chance that the heavy 7.62-millimetre slug waiting in the breech of Phillip’s weapon would kill.

  She knew one thing for sure: Whoever sees the other first has the strongest magic.

  She chewed the last of the potion and spat it out as she took up the pressure on the trigger.

  A cool, calm energy flooded out from her heart and her soul to her fingertips. The power of life or death was in her right index finger. She had tracked this man and his companion, and now she had the power to kill him.

  Mia knew she should call out to the man to drop his weapon. She knew she should wait for Sean.

  The tip of the rifle started to move, swinging in a slow arc until it was nearly pointed at her.

  Mia squeezed the trigger.

  Chapter 13

  Sannie heard the shot through the open window of her car and accelerated. She saw the camouflage-painted Sabi Sand anti-poaching vehicle parked up ahead and pulled over in front of it.

  Julianne Clyde-Smith had been on the road behind her, in the open game viewer, with Sue, Elizabeth and Samantha on board. Sannie had told the women to go back to the lodge, where they would be safe, to await news, but Julianne and Sue would not listen and Sannie’s friends, whether they liked it or not, were along for the ride. This was too many civili
ans in an area where gunshots were being fired, but in these crazy times there seemed to be nothing she could do to control them. As Sannie got out of the vehicle and drew her pistol she was annoyed but not surprised to see the game viewer also pulling to a halt. She could not waste time on them now.

  She ran through the bush. Even with her very novice tracking skills she could not miss the path made by the poachers, Mia and Bongani, the dog team and Sean Bourke and the rest of his men. They had trampled a virtual freeway through the yellow grass and mostly denuded, khaki winter vegetation.

  There was yelling up ahead.

  Sannie ran as fast as she dared, her pistol pointed down at the ground.

  Ahead of her was a pair of men, one sitting, one lying. The able-bodied of the two stood, raising his hands.

  ‘Police,’ she said.

  ‘I am from Kaya Nghala,’ the African man said.

  ‘You’re Bongani, the tracker?’

  ‘Yes. This man is injured.’

  The man on the ground looked up at her. His leg was bandaged. ‘I’ll live.’

  Sannie gave a curt nod. ‘There’s an ambulance on the way. Stay here.’

  ‘Affirmative.’

  As she left the men, she radioed police emergency control and gave them instructions to pass on to the paramedics. She had called for an ambulance just in case, hoping they might find the girl.

  A little further on she came to a green-clad ranger who half raised his rifle as she approached.

  ‘Lower that weapon.’

  The man did so, on seeing her uniform.

  ‘Afternoon,’ the ranger said. He looked downward. ‘This man, he is dead.’

  Sannie, panting a little from her run, stopped next to him and looked down. A barefoot man dressed otherwise in black lay sprawled on his back, an AK-47 in the dust by his right hand.

  ‘Who shot him?’ Sannie asked. There was no time for pleasantries.

  ‘Mia, madam.’

  ‘The guide?’

  He nodded. ‘Yebo.’

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘She and Mr Bourke and the others are now following the other poacher together.’

  ‘Just the two poachers?’

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  ‘There are four women in the game viewer back there. Don’t let them see this body. All right?’

  He nodded. Sannie ran off again, following the tracks, now minus one poacher.

  There was more yelling, more gunfire ahead, and Sannie caught a glimpse of another man in green. He was bare-headed and she recognised the red-brown hair. ‘Sean!’

  He paused and turned, his face streaked with sweat and grime.

  ‘Sannie. Howzit. Mia’s gone ahead again. She thinks there’s one more kidnapper on the run. I’ve sent two of my guys with her as backup.’

  ‘And Laura?’

  He shrugged. ‘They say from the tracks the suspect’s by himself. I’ve been looking for Laura in case . . .’

  Sannie swore to herself in Afrikaans.

  They both stopped talking as they heard an eerie, almost other-worldly cackling noise.

  ‘Hyena?’ she said.

  Sean nodded. ‘Yes, but that’s not good. That laughing sound is the call they make when they’re in a frenzy.’

  ‘Like, feeding?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Sannie’s heart lurched as she followed Sean at a run, in the direction of the bizarre noise. Fortunately, Sean had an LM5 rifle.

  Sean powered ahead of her, heedless of the whip of thorny acacia branches. Sannie stayed close to him.

  ‘Sheesh,’ he said, stopping. He raised his rifle and fired three shots in the air.

  Sannie peered around Sean and drew a breath as she saw four hyenas, almost comically posed in the midst of their gory business. Two were frozen in a tug of war, a piece of skin stretched between their powerful jaws.

  Sean fired again and the animals dropped their prize and loped off.

  ‘It isn’t . . .’ She was too scared to finish her sentence.

  Sean moved forward, rifle still at the ready, and checked the blood-spattered grass and bushes. He shook his head. ‘No, thank God. An impala.’

  Sannie exhaled. ‘And Mia?’

  Sean reached for the radio at his belt and spoke to one of his men, Foster, asking for a sitrep, a situation report.

  ‘She’s at the spruit. Not far from here.’

  As they set off again, Sean continued talking into his radio, the handset pressed to his ear.

  ‘My guy, Foster, says they’re looking for the other man. He went into the drainage line, but because of the recent rain there’s water in it and they haven’t been able to pick up his tracks. They’re casting up and down the bank looking for him.’

  ‘Is he armed?’

  ‘We don’t know, Captain.’

  ‘No sign of the girl?’

  ‘Negative,’ Sean said. ‘No tracks and no visuals.’

  They ran on, but both slowed to look up when they heard the sound of a helicopter pass over their heads.

  ‘Any lower and he’ll be cutting the branches,’ Sannie said.

  ‘That’s Julianne’s pilot, Mike, from Lion Plains,’ Sean said. ‘At bloody last.’

  The radio squawked. ‘Sean, Sean, this is Mike, over?’

  ‘Go, Mike,’ Sean said into his radio, while Sannie waited next to him.

  ‘Checking something on the ground. There’s a clearing here.’

  ‘Roger.’ Sean turned to Sannie. ‘Let’s go take a look.’

  They ran, following the noise of the chopper, but just as they arrived at the clearing Mike had mentioned they saw his white Robinson R44 helicopter lifting off.

  ‘False alarm,’ Mike said into the radio. ‘I saw a flash of colour, but it was just a plastic bag.’

  They crossed the clearing and saw the brightly coloured yellow bag. Sannie picked it up, inspected it and sniffed it. ‘There was food in here, maybe some pap or something like that.’ She balled it and stuffed it in a pocket. ‘Maybe we can get some prints off it.’

  Sean nodded. He received a message Sannie didn’t catch, then spoke into his handheld again.

  ‘My two guys, Oscar and Graham, are down by the spruit,’ he reported back to her.

  They cut through some thick bush lining the watercourse, between some wild date palms that were probably nurtured year-round by underground water. The two rangers were standing by a stretch of water that was flowing.

  ‘Graham?’ Sean said when he got to them.

  The white man, young, fair-haired, muscled and sweating, shook his head. ‘Lost him, boss.’

  ‘Damn,’ Sean said.

  The other ranger, Oscar, pointed along the watercourse. ‘He ran into the water here, to try to shake us off his trail.’

  ‘And it worked?’ Sean asked.

  Oscar looked down at the ground. ‘Yes.’

  Sean turned to Sannie. ‘It’s a classic tactic. They go into some water and run either way along the spruit.’

  ‘We’ve cast up and down the banks for a hundred metres in one direction and two hundred in the other,’ Graham said. ‘No sign of where he exited.’

  ‘Why only a hundred metres that way?’ Sannie asked, looking where the young ranger had just been pointing.

  ‘The natural flow ends there this time of the year, and there’s no sign of tracks beyond or around it.’

  Sean glanced around. ‘Well, keep searching. Don’t come back until you find this ou. Understood?’

  ‘Yebo,’ Graham said. ‘And Sean?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s Mia, she’s . . .’ Graham nodded and Sannie and Sean both looked to see the woman sitting under a big jackalberry tree, her back to the trunk, her head between her drawn-up knees.

  ‘We�
�ll take care of her,’ Sean said. ‘You two, go!’

  Oscar and Graham set off.

  ‘Mia?’ Sannie said softly as they came to her.

  She looked up, her face streaked with tears.

  ‘Mia, this is Captain Sannie van Rensburg,’ Sean said.

  ‘Hello, Mia,’ Sannie said. She did not need to ask how the woman was.

  Mia just looked up at her and blinked. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

  Sannie dropped to one knee, beside her. ‘Mia, I need to ask you a couple of questions.’

  Mia nodded as Sannie took out her notebook.

  ‘You shot the man, the one who is deceased?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her lower lip was trembling. ‘I’ve lost them all, I’ve lost Laura.’

  ‘There are others searching . . . a helicopter,’ Sannie said.

  Mia shook her head. ‘She was my responsibility. I’m supposed to be able to track . . .’

  ‘The man you shot,’ Sannie said. ‘Tell me about him.’

  Mia brought her hand up to her mouth. ‘I saw his gun. He shot Phillip, and the dog, Askari, and fired at Bongani and me.’

  Sannie patted her arm. ‘I’ll need to interview you later, but in cases of self-defence we open an inquest docket into the shooting.’

  Mia looked up at her and blinked. ‘I took a man’s life, Captain.’

  ‘Yes, but he was trying to kill you.’

  Mia shook her head. ‘You don’t understand. The reason doesn’t matter; I killed a man. I’ve seen what that does to the person who pulls the trigger. My father . . . he was in the war, in Angola. You don’t know what it’s like.’

  Sannie held her tongue. She did not want to tell this girl about what had happened in her own life. ‘I have used my pistol in the course of doing my duty. You should talk to someone, Mia. I’ll speak to Julianne. She should arrange for you to see a counsellor. It’s only natural, what you’re feeling.’

  ‘Natural? I’m not Graham, or Oscar, or you, Captain. It’s not natural to kill someone. I’m not cut out for tracking people.’

  ‘You did your best, Mia.’

  She nodded. ‘And a man is dead and a girl is missing.’