by Paul Bishop
“Are you prepared to shoot us? Because we’re prepared to shoot you.”
Dardeniz entered at ninety degrees, his H&K loosely pointed at the ground.
The man with silver hair looked at them with disdain. “You’re joking.”
A python landed on him like a steamer trunk and forced him to his knees. He dropped his gun and the snake wound itself quickly around his torso and neck and began to squeeze. Garretson gaped, frozen. Sewell drew his sidearm, placed it against the flat of the reptile’s head, and shot it twice. It took long seconds for it to relax and its victim emerged pale and breathless.
“Get out of here before you lose any more clients.”
Garretson’s men looked at him. “Maybe we’d better go, Larry.”
“Then get your ass in gear and follow me.”
The three poachers watched them leave.
“Now they know we’re here,” Sewell said. He stood on a hummock, rested his rifle on a branch, and sighted at the pond once more. The first elephant tread water in the middle of the pool and the sniper stared at him through his scope.
Had the beasts learned to recognize gunfire? How? The first one had backed away from the pond and turned toward the jungle. They might not have another chance. It was a calculated risk, but if they killed it now, they’d have fifteen to twenty minutes before the vigilantes made it to their side of the lake. Would that give them enough time to cut the tusks?
Sewell fingered his mic. “Bortz, can you get the Hummer up to this lake?”
The Afrikaner, who monitored their progress through a drone, said, “I think so. There’s a fairly wide game trail.”
“Grab the bone saw and home in on me. We’re going for it.”
“Okay.” The Black and Decker had a two-foot blade that could carve through six inches of bone in thirty seconds. From what they’d seen of the tusks, they were no more than a foot.
The leader pointed to Dardeniz and Zulu Ken and signed that they were to approach the elephant from five and seven. He would take six. They whispered through the forest and brushed off cobwebs and detritus until they reached the water’s edge. Game had flattened the vegetation to four meters all the way around. Dozens of waterfowl floated on the surface, including something that looked like a pelican. Other birds perched on fallen logs or soared overhead.
The great beast stood still in the clearing and watched them warily. Dardeniz was in the best position and the leader signaled for him to take the shot. The man rested the Dragunov’s barrel on a tree limb, snugged it tight, and peered through the scope. The gun was chambered for .404.
Sewell watched from where he knelt behind a fallen tree. He looked out at the lake with a prickle of unease. Something was missing—the other elephant. He did a quick one-eighty. Where had it gone?
A ripple rose at the edge of the pond. The snout emerged like a periscope, followed by the massive body with the sniper clinging to its back. Water poured off his cowboy hat. Panicked, Dardeniz swiveled left to eliminate the newcomer but had to fling himself aside to avoid a well-aimed shot. Seconds later, a report echoed around the lake.
Sewell zeroed in on the sniper, but the elephant rider hadn’t taken the shot. It would have been impossible. He couldn’t get a clear shot because the man lay flat on the elephant’s back and was now three meters in the air.
“Weeeeeeeee-HA!” issued from the jungle at nine o’clock.
He pivoted and scanned the green curtain, but whoever had taken the shot remained hidden. If they killed the elephant now, they had at least two vigilantes on the scene. He had no idea how many were on the way. Now, they had to get rid of them.
15
Two minutes underwater had tested Matthew’s lungs to the limit but he’d had no say in the matter. Melvin submerged like a submarine and he went with him, strapped to the drone. The elephant strode along the muddy bottom of the lake with only the tip of his snout above the water, as unobtrusive as a goose.
He felt the monster’s muscles slide beneath him like tectonic plates and hoped like hell he would hurry so he could breathe. In the next moment, he was out of the water and rising, disoriented. He remained flat, breathed deeply, and scanned a quick one-eighty to locate the other elephant and noticed a flicker of movement in the trees that could have been monkeys. Careful to keep his head down, he checked his two-way to see if it still worked.
His attempt brought no response and he assumed he was on his own—except for Shawn, of course, whom he trusted was watching him now as he always had. They’d pulled each other out of trouble since they were kids. His brother was older by two years and had first assumed the role of protector. They’d played varsity football together at Texas A&M, had enlisted in the Marines on the same day, and saw action in Iraq and Afghanistan. After they’d mustered out, they weren’t ready for civilian life and took a job in South Africa at the Kruger National Park. That was where they met Zebulon, who was touring with a drop-dead gorgeous model. Naomi was five-eight, cafe au lait, and from the Netherlands. The two brothers conducted day-long tours of the far-flung reserve, ferrying a dozen visitors at a time in two open-topped Range Rovers.
Zebulon was cagey about his background but extremely interested in the Montanas, and by the time their stay was up, they’d exchanged contact info. He called them four months later and they’d worked with him ever since for what was now six years.
While his position on top of Melvin gave Matthew a view advantage, it also made him a sitting duck. He was essentially glued to the elephant, which gave him little ability to maneuver. That reality had little appeal so he loosened his straps, slid down the side, and fell the final eight feet into a crouch. Once he’d found shelter amid some lethal thorn bushes, he whistled like a sand bird. Seconds later, Shawn answered from close by.
Matthew merged with the jungle and moved clockwise for two meters inside the protective wall of jungle. His brother whistled and he replied. They came together beside a hollowed-out baobab and he cleared a line of sight with his machete so that they could see the eastern half of the lake. The tip of a rifle poked from the brush, then withdrew. He nudged Shawn, who fired at the position three times.
“Let ʼem know we’re here,” he said.
Drawing his machete, Matthew led the way. “Let’s go.”
They raced counterclockwise back the way they’d come in hopes of encountering the poachers who simply remained hidden, aware that they were almost face to face. He tapped Shawn on the shoulder and winked, using sign language to indicate danger. They were back to playing cowboys and Indians and with the ease of familiarity, they moved in tandem, one behind the other and careful where they stepped.
Matthew leaned into his brother's ear. “Does your two-way work?”
Shawn nodded, hunkered low, and spoke into his throat mic, then rose.
“Zeb, LeGac, and Jean are fifty meters behind us.”
Matt shinnied up the tree with his rifle on his back. Shawn watched him climb about five meters and crouch on a branch to reconnoiter. He stiffened like a bird dog and pointed at an angle toward the lake before he dropped lithely to the ground and leaned closer.
“Two dudes with big guns—they look like mercs—twenty meters up the trail. They seem to be waiting.”
“Waiting for us.”
He bopped his brother on the shoulder. “You got it. Let’s do this.” He crouched and used a stick to indicate a looping maneuver into the forest that would bring them out behind the poachers. Matt drew his machete and Shawn drew his Bowie knife. They’d gone five meters when they reached a dense gray pavilion that turned out to be a spider web in which dozens of creatures struggled, including the locusts, small mammal types, and birds. The bell-shaped web rose three meters, capped by a gleaming black-and-gold dome that rose on eight yellow legs.
The two men retreated and hacked a way around.
Every few feet, they paused to listen. A cough issued from the jungle. Homing in on its source, they worked their way up a creek that zigged toward t
he pond until they were about fifteen meters from where the forest ended.
At another cough and movement, Shawn held up two fingers and pointed for Matt to go one way while he went the other. He drew his pistol and held it low near his thigh as they closed in. When he had gone perhaps ten meters, he paused, certain he’d found where the poachers had hidden. A white cigarette butt gleamed like a diamond among the deep green. A premonition—some atavistic instinct that had saved him so many times in the past—made him jerk back. A machete missed his wrist but knocked the pistol out of his hand. Instinctively, he whirled away and drew his Bowie knife.
The man facing him had a dazzling grin in a howitzer-shaped black head. Muscles bulged through the gaps in his camo muscle shirt and he wore baggy camo trousers and combat boots and clutched a machete in his right hand. He looked like a Mali warrior. Shawn held the Bowie low in his right hand with his left shoulder forward and the blade horizontal. The adversaries circled one another.
The man feinted, blindingly fast, but Shawn had practiced for endless hours with wooden knives, with his brother, and with members of his team. He watched the man’s chest. The warrior feinted again, and he threw a right front kick in response, turned for maximum extension, and caught the big man in the chest. His opponent grunted and fell back but the grin never wavered.
“You are good, my friend,” he said softly.
“You with Sewell?”
“You could say that.”
“Why don’t you come over to our side? It’s much safer.”
“But it doesn’t pay nearly as well.”
“What’s your name?”
“Ndugu.”
“Shawn Montana.”
Ndugu’s grin grew wider. “You are one of the cowboy brothers!”
“You seem like a nice guy. I hate to kill you.”
The man crouched. “Do it!”
He sprang. Like a cat, he twisted to his side in mid-air and delivered a roundhouse kick that caught Shawn on his shoulder, which went numb. Ndugu landed on his feet and lunged. He threw himself sideways but left his leg out and his attacker tripped and fell hard.
Matthew stepped into the clearing, leveled his Sig, and shot the man twice in the head.
“What did you do that for?” Shawn demanded.
His brother merely looked at him. “Come on.”
16
Sewell peered through the scope on his CZ to where two people crouched behind a thorn bush in almost perfect concealment. It was only their movement that gave them away, and only for a second. Anton LeGac was well known to him. They’d played poker in Abu Dhabi and he had even tried to hire him once, but the man was loyal to Zebulon and despised poachers. He wasn’t exactly subtle about it either. When they’d played poker, the house threatened to kick him out if he didn’t cease his insults.
The poacher did not take it personally.
The other person was an unknown woman. What was she doing there? She probably an ancillary purpose, like research. Zebulon was such a Boy Scout and she could be a weak link. He could easily eliminate them both, but that would likely spook the tusker and they’d never see it again. A hasty glance to his right confirmed that it was still there—the rarest animal that ever lived and nothing short of a miracle. There was no limit to what people would pay for its tusks, believing they cured impotency, bad luck, shingles, cancer, and stuttering.
The jewelry alone would net millions. What prince wouldn’t give his princess the priceless blue ivory?
They’d considered tranquilizers, but one group had already tried that with the jaguars and the results had been catastrophic. The beasts went on a rampage and killed twenty-four people. To this date, no one had acquired one of the new jaguar skins. The few that were shot disappeared by the time their hunters arrived as if dragged off by kin or turned liquid and seeped into the porous earth.
Maybe he could use LeGac and the woman as bait.
There was no way around it. He had to kill Zebulon before he could reach the elephant. He cursed himself when he realized this should have been the plan. At the time, it seemed as if reaching the elephant first was paramount. But as always, once out in the field, things happened that they simply had to adjust to.
Sewell slithered through the forest like a snake to come up behind the couple. He butted LeGac in the head hard enough to knock him down and held the rifle on Jean. She wrinkled her nose in distaste.
“You must be Sewell.”
“Where’s Zebulon?”
“He’ll be along.”
“Who are you?”
“Jean Jan Jean.”
He drew four heavy plastic wire harnesses from one of his cargo pockets and tossed them to her and gestured at her companion. “Elbows behind the back. And the knees.”
She let the plastic strips fall to the ground. “Or what?”
Sewell stepped forward and backhanded her savagely. She whipped like a willow in a gale and straightened with a hand to her mouth. It came away red and without a word, she dropped to her knees and did as she was told. She rolled onto her rump.
“Now what?”
He retrieved four more harnesses. “Turn around. Keep quiet.”
Once he’d secured her, he backed away and found a blind behind a dense thicket of what looked like cattails and a saber-like leaf with a razor edge. Within seconds, they started talking. By a twist of acoustics, he could hear them whispering.
“What do we do?” Jean asked calmly.
“I have a dagger in my boot. If you can reach it, maybe we can cut these harnesses.”
“I’ll try.”
Birds cried from the trees, the locusts thrummed, and the monkeys screeched.
“I think I’ve got it.”
Sewell wasn’t worried. Zebulon would be there before they freed themselves. He read the motion in the reeds. “Come here.”
Zulu Ken appeared next to him. “Dey got Ndugu. He dead, mon.”
“Who got him?”
“Them cowboys, mon.”
“Shit. He was a good man. We’re waiting for Zebulon.”
Zulu Ken did a quick three-sixty. “Funny he don’t come. I can smell those two.”
The elephant had stood still for so long they took it for part of the landscape like a smooth wet rock face. The earth shook as the other beast approached them from the lake.
“What de fock, mon?”
Sewell chambered a round and rested the rifle between a thorn and a branch. The colossus raised its trunk, trumpeted, and broke into a run. His finger began to squeeze but a locust erupted in his face like a pocket buzz bomb and beat him with its plastic-like wings. He grasped the rifle like a baton and clubbed the insect before he stamped it into the ground.
Their quarry swept past like a trumpeting freight train and hurled him down. It thundered on and narrowly missed the hostages. He sat and grimaced at his cut knee and aching shoulder. Zulu Ken mirrored him three meters away, his mouth open. They listened to the elephant sing, its voice gradually receding.
The leader used his throat mic. “Dardeniz! Where are you?”
“Don’t worry, boss man. I have it in my sights.”
“There’s another headed your way.”
“I think I’ll take my shot now.”
“Don’t do it, Dardeniz.”
The line went dead.
17
Zeb was fairly sure it was Melvin because every now and then, he had a glimpse of the drone glued to its back. The mechanical was still broadcasting and he was able to track him through the forest via his wrist monitor. He followed the behemoth toward the dense cone of vegetation that was the very center of the Biodome, the spindle around which life sped at seventy-eight revolutions per minute.
“Shawn, get over to where LeGac and Jean are in the weeds and help them up.”
“I got ʼem. Matt’s with me.”
“I’ll go after Melvin. That’s where we’ll find Sewell.”
“You wanna wait up?”
“No.”
/> He ran. Although he’d done so all day, he could run all night if need be. He leapt over a python and sidestepped a skunk. The monster thrashed through the landscape ahead of him and trumpeted like an Albert Ayler solo with the volume receding.
Instinct told him he needed to catch up and he quickened his pace.
Leaping from log to rock, he surmounted a ridge that snaked across his path and stopped. Before him was a natural clearing, a nearly perfect circle about a football field in diameter. The two elephants faced each other across a ten-meter span and exchanged a sequence of call and response, surprised and delighted to learn that each was not alone. Zeb’s eyes automatically swept to the nose of a Humvee that protruded from the jungle like a surprise guest. In the next moment, it pushed out and parked, and a huge black man stepped out with a rifle.
He wondered if he should warn him but instead, went to one knee, used the other as a brace, triangulated his rifle, and squeezed the trigger. The shot missed its target by an inch and pounded into the windshield, which exploded in flying glass. The poacher automatically dropped and rolled. He sensed, rather than saw the man roll under the vehicle and come up on the other side.
Zeb slid down the slope to a narrow depression, lay prone, and peered through the reeds. If he could only see beneath the Hummer, but it wasn’t an option. The weeds were too thick. He worked his way on elbows and knees to his right where the depression gave way to a low ridge surmounted by a dense feathery grass like an endless Mohawk.
“This is Shawn. Got ʼem. Our team is fine.”
“I’m in a clearing looking at two elephants. I’m in a stand-off with one of the poachers. I think it’s Dardeniz.”
“We’re on our way,” the other man said. “When we get there, Matt will circle clockwise and come in from the other side.”
He stayed low and ran counterclockwise through the field to come up behind the Hummer. It reminded him of his boyhood in Colorado when he and his pals would run through the wheat or the August corn, giggling and hiding from one another. He kept his eye on the tan roof of the vehicle. A root caught his toe and he went down hard and barely managed to position his hands in time to break his fall. He grunted as he landed and the rifle spilled from his grasp. With a low curse, he sat and drew his ankle toward him. He’d sprained it, obviously, and grimaced as he scooted on his butt to fetch his rifle.
