The Devil's Horn

by David L. Robbins

Wally hooked a thumb across his shoulder at the second HC-130, Kingsman 2, thirty yards away. Its GAARV had already been loaded and stowed. Wally, LB, and Doc would ride on that plane, Jamie and Quincy here on Kingsman 1.

  “All loaded. We spin up in five.”

  LB rubbed his hands together. “I’ll get the boys moving.”

  He tucked two fingers into his mouth to loose an earsplitting whistle. Under the wing, Doc sat up in the shade. LB twirled a finger beside his head. Doc rose to his boots and began to rouse the team.

  Wally peered down on LB from behind his opaque lenses.

  “What do you need, LB?”

  “Are you pissed at me?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “You haven’t said two words to me since yesterday.”

  “Busy.”

  “Or pissed. I figure you’re pissed.”

  Wally exhaled through his nose, stuttering, a private chuckle.

  “No more than usual.”

  “Good. Sorry about yesterday. That guy was a dick.”

  “He didn’t start out that way.”

  “Fair enough.”

  The team clambered upright. Lugging their jump containers, Quincy and Jamie lumbered over the tarmac to climb the lowered ramp of Kingsman 1. Doc shouldered both his chute and LB’s. Today’s jump would be without weapons or med rucks; the PJs would simply follow the twin GAARVs down to the ground, cut them loose from their chutes and straps, rev them up, then tear up more of the air base’s infield, all to cheers.

  Kingsman 1’s engines whined, caught, and coughed greasy puffs. The propellers turned, the prop noise mounted. LB had to shout.

  “You and Torres set a date yet?”

  Wally shrugged. He hefted his own container over his shoulder.

  “We’re waiting.”

  “For what?”

  “Got some decisions to make.”

  “Like what?”

  Wally raised his free arm and slapped it down against his hip.

  “First you give me a hard time. Now you’re pushing me.”

  LB raised his volume higher, increasing it more than enough to be heard over the rising engines.

  “I’m just saying. If you’re gonna do it, do it.”

  “And what do you know?”

  LB lifted his hands with his voice.

  “Whoa. What does that mean?”

  “It means you got no idea about marriage and a family. As in none. Okay? LB?”

  “I?” LB rammed a finger into his own burly chest. “I have no idea about family?”

  Then what was all this? What was every scar he bore; every nightmare; every story, laugh, and worry; every person and thing he loved? Who were these men around him?

  Before LB could answer, Doc joined them. Wally and LB both froze with hands up, pausing their gesticulating and punctuating.

  Doc looked from one to the other, then dropped LB’s chute on the runway.

  “No. Not doing it.”

  That was all Doc said. In the swelling pitch of the spinning propellers, he climbed the ramp into Kingsman 1, to jump instead with Quincy and Jamie.

  LB and Wally sat opposite each other in the thrumming cargo bay of Kingsman 2. Over in his mesh seat, Wally leaned his helmet back against the fuselage, reflective sunglasses down. LB couldn’t tell if Wally’s eyes were shut or if the man was staring at him. It didn’t matter which; stared at or ignored, both bothered LB. He wanted to chat, he always got keyed up before a jump. They could find other things to talk about than Torres and marriage. They could act like friends. Sitting here, bumping along with stoic, quiet Wally made LB uneasy.

  They had the big cargo bay to themselves; the loadmaster had disappeared into the cockpit. Deep in the rear of the hold, the GAARV hunkered in yellow tie-downs and cardboard cuffs, looking ready to leap out of its restraints. LB was itchy to go, too.

  They were coming up on fifteen years, him and Wally. LB’s first sight of Wally Bloom had been Wally as a bony boy at the Air Force Academy. The third-year cadet had been assigned to jumpmaster for LB’s eight-man Ranger team for a high-altitude, high-opening training jump, a HAHO. Wally was the leader of the Academy’s competitive parachute team. To be on the team, cadet jumpers had to cover a three-inch dot with their boots ten times in a row from different altitudes. To run the team, a cadet had to do it twenty times. Wally was that good. All that summer at the Academy, whether young Wally Bloom stepped out at twenty-five thousand feet or eight hundred, LB leaped into thin air behind him without hesitation. The kid was so thorough and locked down that LB requested him for some dark ops in South America later that autumn. Because all air force cadets were on active duty, Wally Bloom spent much of his fourth year studying by flashlight in the back of a cargo plane or dangling in the air over one jungle or another with LB and his team drifting down at his backside.

  After graduating the Academy, Wally followed LB into the Rangers, just as LB was giving up his captain’s commission to become a PJ. LB had seen enough of combat from the search-and-destroy side. He’d done his share, a bit more, and wanted—needed—the pararescue mission to save lives instead of take them. By the time Wally Bloom followed him again, LB was a master sergeant and a pararescue jumper. Wally stayed a captain and became a combat-rescue officer, LB’s CRO.

  That flip in roles had not been healthy for their relationship.

  Ten years later, here Captain Wally Bloom sat in the back of another cargo plane, either staring at LB or asleep.

  Didn’t matter which.

  Wally folded his arms over his chest and crossed his long legs at the ankles. So he was awake behind those opaque shades. LB mirrored him, crossing his own arms and feet.

  The two sat like this, a Mexican standoff of silence and mimicry. The loadmaster came down the steps from the cockpit. With the punch of a button, he lowered the HC-130’s gate; air and white light gushed in around the widening edges. LB and Wally did not move for another minute, until LB surrendered, because it was his job. He tapped his own ear and shouted across to his captain over the propeller noise.

  “Hey! Radio check.”

  Wally stirred but slowly. The two hailed each other over the team freq, answering five by five. Doc, Quincy, and Jamie checked in from Kingsman 1. Wally tested his ground-to-air radio with the pilots of both planes, while the loadmaster started to blade away the webbing around the GAARV on its cardboard crush pallet. Only one nylon restraint was left to hold back the big package.

  The ramp dropped all the way, yawning into the bright afternoon. Rolling green plains, black ribbon roads, and patchwork hills carved into hamlets and farmland slid by three thousand feet below. The jumpmaster waited with his knife behind the GAARV, ready to shove the pallet over the casters in the deck. Above the open portal, the red ready light came on; this marked the final minutes before the jump.

  LB covered the short distance to Wally, who got to his feet. The man was eight inches taller than LB, lean and lithe, more things the two of them did not have in common. LB circled Wally, checking his straps and chute container, then came to a standstill so Wally could tug and prod at him. When they were done, both pounded fists on the other’s shoulders to say, You’re good.

  The GAARV would go out first. One good shove and a slice from the loadmaster and the rollers would do the rest. Wally and LB would dive out behind it. The massive crowd below was going to be amazed at the American pararescuemen leaping and landing with a pair of truck-sized GAARVs. On the ground, the team would free the badass, cutting-edge rescue buggies from their pallets in under a minute, fire them up, and roar off to the make-believe rescue.

  LB shrugged his equipment into place. Waiting for the green light, Wally ignored him. LB shrugged at this, too. In these moments before the jump, anticipating the drop and popping chute, the thrill and action and cheers, all for being a PJ, Wally’s snit was petty. LB would deal with it later.

  LB fixed his eyes on the red bulb, waiting for it to extinguish and the green to flick on. He stood to the r
ight of the loadmaster and the big GAARV, Wally to the left. The roar of the plane’s twin engines, the whoosh of rushing wind, the blue and green world all flooded in the opened ramp. LB tapped his toe, impatient. He loved the first moments of the drop, the sudden stark silence, the focus and freedom of having his whole life on his back and in a handle in his fist.

  The crimson light blinked out.

  The green one glowed.

  The loadmaster snipped the lone yellow strap. Lowering his shoulder, he heaved two short strides, rolling the GAARV to the lip of the ramp and out. Instantly, the package was snatched away by the wind. Two round, white cargo chutes blossomed.

  A hundred yards behind and off to one side, Kingsman 1 spat its own GAARV out into the African sky. Doc, Quincy, and Jamie followed. They jumped as one, plunging with arms and legs wide.

  LB took a step.

  Wally’s balled fist, the symbol for stop, appeared right in front of LB’s goggled eyes.

  The GAARV fell fast behind the speeding cargo plane, plummeting from sight. The open gate, rushing air, falling package, all of it drew LB to the leap and the job. But Wally’s fist did not move from in front of his face.

  LB whirled, expecting to yell something he should not. Even the loadmaster, in his emptied bay, turned to stare.

  Wally lowered his hand to press it over his earpiece, to better hear one of his radios. He gave the loadmaster an officer’s scowl and pointed at the ramp. Raise it.

  The loadmaster did as he was told. Even before the button was punched to lift the ramp, before LB could fling up his arms at Wally or insist on an explanation, big Kingsman 2 banked sharply away from the air show and the crowd below. The cargo bay tilted, but Wally was rangy enough to grab a piece of the superstructure and hold his ground. He kept one hand to his ear. The tilting deck spilled LB back into his seat, without an answer.

  Chapter 8

  Wophule pedaled ahead of Promise, gaining distance on her up the two-lane road. The boy was happy today and showed it. Before setting out, he’d told Promise about a girl he’d met over the weekend, a waitress at the Shingwedzi tourist station. Wophule had watched her chase a begging monkey away from the restaurant’s deck. He liked the way she did it, scolding like an unina, a mama. The girl wore an apron and a dark dress, like all the waitresses, in a uniform like him. The monkey hung around in the low trees, charming the tourists, still begging. The girl relented and tossed it a tidbit. Wophule thought that was kind and told her so. She answered him gently. Her name tag read “Treasure.” They talked not long, as she was working, but he learned she was Xhosa, too, and a few years older than him, in her twenties.

  Promise did not pedal harder to catch up to him. She let him be playful and go. Besides, the midday temperature was scorching. The tarmac road sucked up the heat and breathed it out beneath Promise’s spinning tires. Wophule would slow in a little while. A tourist car whisked past, over the speed limit, but on a bicycle there was nothing she could do.

  Around a bend she caught up with Wophule, who had stopped alongside the tourist car. A small pack of elephants—a bull, three females, and a pair of calves—grazed in marula trees beside the road. Wophule straddled the crossbar of his bike, explaining to the white tourists how elephants could get drunk on marula fruit if it became overripe and fermented. Promise had never seen this and did not believe it, but said nothing to correct Wophule, who was enjoying himself. Before the car pulled away, he asked the driver to observe the speed limit in the park.

  They pedaled deeper into Shingwedzi and the sun. Wophule told her more of the girl. He’d not asked to see her outside her job, but he planned to soon. He wondered if Promise might go with him to the restaurant when Treasure was on duty, to advise him. This was the first girl Wophule had ever mentioned. Promise agreed to go. She’d been with a few men, all from the township. She had gotten away from there, but they had not, so Promise waited. The right man would come, though she’d not yet seen his tracks.

  “How do you know she likes you?”

  Wophule scrunched his brow, as if the answer was obvious. “She kept her eyes down while we talked.”

  The older rangers could tell the roar of a hunting lion from a warning, a frightened elephant’s trumpet from an angry one. They knew where a leopard might sleep, when a warthog might charge, how to creep up on a herd of antelope without spooking them. The boy Wophule had a quiet sweetness about him. He could read animals as well as the old hands, and the children of the bush seemed to take to him as if they could smell his sweetness, like lavender or honeysuckle. It pleased Wophule to believe he could read Treasure, too. Promise poked him.

  “She was looking at her watch.”

  Wophule answered the jibe by riding away again. This time Promise pedaled after him, and the wind they made cooled them both.

  They cycled side by side down a long straightaway, with no cars coming or going, until the road entered a pan of scrub and ocherous earth. Promise pulled off the highway, Wophule followed. Together they stashed their bikes inside an acacia bush and locked them. Promise checked her radio, cell phone, extra ammunition, rations, and flashlight. When Wophule had done the same, she slid her panga inside her belt. They headed into the bush on foot, where they would stay until sundown.

  Insects chittered in the tall brush as Promise led the way into Shingwedzi, moving eastward along a game trail. On every side, spindly trees had been knocked over by elephants grazing, playing, fighting. Roots and branches withered in the sun, their green baked to gray, making them look like tumbleweeds scattered over the plain. Before long, sweat trickled down Promise’s bare legs into her green kneesocks. She scanned the orange dust of the trail for prints, pausing to challenge Wophule to identify the animals, the bushbuck, cape mongoose, kudu, and hyena.

  They left the paved road behind and walked six, seven kilometers. As day rangers they patrolled their sector to mingle with the beasts, report on births, spot sickness before it could spread, track the movements of herds, and watch for the spoor of poachers. This last duty seemed unfair. Promise and Wophule, like all the Kruger rangers, hadn’t signed on to be soldiers but to care for the wildland and preserve its creatures. They’d arrived trained in conservation; Neels trained them further, teaching them to track and shoot. Neels taught them that only a few years ago, the ranger’s job was 80 percent conservation, 20 percent anti-poaching. Now, because of the waves of criminals flooding over the border, the work had become 100 percent and 100 percent.

  Behind her, Wophule took to whistling, merry and very young. Sweating down her back beneath the rifle, gradually Promise began to begrudge the boy his ignorance and happiness. On foot, the Kruger could be a dangerous place, and they needed their senses alert. Their purpose was to enter and disturb the vast park as little as possible. The Kruger, the duties of a ranger, love, these were not things to skip over with a whistle. All had teeth.

  Promise spoke across her shoulder.

  “She won’t love you, you know.”

  Wophule stopped whistling.

  “She doesn’t know me yet. She might.”

  “Even if she does, you’ll just be poor together.”

  “Why are you being so mean?”

  Promise walked on. Wophule quit whistling. The dust and thirst of the day, which normally did not bother her, caked in her throat.

  What would Wophule do if she told him of the blood on her hands, the carcass she’d made, her disloyalty to her duty? She was leading him far from the remains of the great rhino; she didn’t want to see the beast with its organs eaten, blood drunk, in a patch of dirt worn bare by the eaters. What would Wophule say if she told him her reasons for killing it? If she said the Kruger was losing over a thousand rhinos a year; a few more would make no difference. A few more, that was all. In return, she could get enough money from Juma to lift her grandparents out of the slop of the township, up the green hill to a home with a breeze and a blue view. There, her gogo would not need to raise her bed high off the ground, because the black
ghost would not follow. Khulu could stop working and let his hardness soften. Only a few more rhinos for Promise, and those would have died anyway, because the poachers could not be stopped.

  Step after step, Promise planted her heels, meaning to whirl on foolish Wophule, scream at him what she had done and learn how’d he’d answer. He would yell back and turn her over to angry Neels. Or he would be meek, keep her secret, and beg her to stop poaching.

  Either way, she would not stop. Stopping made no difference. She’d already taken one rhino. Two, three more would make no difference, would be no worse.

  Promise halted on the path. She didn’t know why, perhaps to say these things to Wophule and see.

  She turned to face him. Wophule stopped, too. When Promise said nothing, he raised his hands from his sides, seeming a little frustrated with her mood, to prompt her.

  “What?”

  To confess that she was a poacher was not something she could do. That burden could not be set down or lightened, only carried further. Promise fixed the only wrong she could right now.

  “I’m sorry. She will love you. I’m sure she will.”

  Promise walked on before Wophule could reply. She didn’t care for his thanks or forgiveness, these things were too small to help her.

  They took a northern route, away from the water holes, into the drier plains of Shingwedzi. Promise let Wophule take the lead while she recorded notes on the number and locations of animals in their path. They came across small herds of kudu, skittish giraffes, scuttling bushpigs, ambling elephants, and a rotting eland carcass that showed the presence of lions. Their training had taught them to tread lightly, disturb nothing, alarm nothing, for on foot Promise and Wophule moved through the bush as equals with the beasts.

  They crossed in and out of the brush, walking for a kilometer or two on game trails out in the open, then ducking for passages through branches and scrub. Wophule was not wary of the animals so much as he wanted to surprise a poacher. This, he believed, was how he would be promoted off his bicycle.

  With two hours left until nightfall, Wophule turned them west, a return to the road and their bicycles. They shared little conversation, and their patrol today had not been a pleasant one. Promise took the blame for this, Wophule had started out in a sunny frame of mind, and she had rained on it. She’d not been ready for the constant gnawing of guilt.