“Explosives?”
“More than enough.”
“We need to blow the drone.”
“You’ll do it in the morning.”
“Sir—”
Neels cut him off. “I’m not going to make a crater until I’ve examined the site.”
Neels raised a palm to stop more objections from the American officer.
“You’re in my park. One of my boys was murdered because your fucking missile was more important than his life. Now go sit where I showed you. I want a private word with my ranger.”
Neels didn’t give Bloom time to respond. He turned sharply away.
“Promise.”
Karskie led the Americans to the backpacks and dynamite he’d left at the hedge. The girl came to Neels but kept a notable distance.
“What happened here?”
In the dark, Neels kept an eye on her hands and feet, an ear fixed to her tones, watchful for hesitation, a misstep, a falsehood while she related the events of the crashed drone: She and Wophule stumbled on the wreck late in the day; then, while they were investigating, two poachers showed up; they shot Wophule right off and made her surrender. The poachers dislodged the missile from the aircraft and left, taking it and both ranger rifles. Promise sat with Wophule as he died. Before she could think to call in a report, the Americans dropped out of the dusk. They demanded her phone, saying the crash was a big secret. She could have run from them but would not leave Wophule. Neels had taught his rangers to sit with the bodies of men, even poachers, until they could be recovered.
Neels would not have trusted the tale from any of his rangers but her. The surrender to poachers, not reporting the crash, handing over the phone to the Americans, helping them. He was inclined to believe the girl, all the failures fit her. Promise, too, was aware of her breakdowns, she inched away from Neels as she described them.
“Go sit with your new friends.”
The girl stopped her slow retreat, she did not go at his order. None of her timidity showed when she spoke.
“What are you going to do?”
“Stay with the boy. Make sure nothing bothers him. Dawn’s in four hours.”
“I’ll do it. He was my partner.”
Neels took a seat beside the pile of rocks, crossing his boots beneath him. The girl sat on the other side.
They did not speak, the rocks separated them like a wall. Neels knew very little about Wophule; the Xhosa boy’s death did nothing to increase his interest. That wasn’t required for loyalty, to keep a vigil for a ranger against the bush.
Neels lowered the brim on his hat and faced the wreckage. Soon, at sunup, he would see for himself what happened.
The girl’s chin slumped to her chest, she dozed sitting upright. Promise shivered in the night, and Neels, cursing under his breath, unbuttoned his khaki tunic to mantle it around her. She awoke enough to look up, wordless, blinking black eyes at him. In his T-shirt, Neels awaited and greeted the sunrise.
The Americans slept curled on the ground beneath the hedge, Karskie, too. PowerBar wrappers and empty water bottles lay around them. The sleepers looked uncomfortable and homeless. This was good, because the Kruger was not their home. Neels, the only one awake, didn’t move until the sun had cleared the horizon. Shadows raked the ground, and the golden light put the tracks all around him into crisp relief. Neels rolled to his cranky knees and stood. He went first to the drone.
The wrecked vehicle was an eerie contraption, guided but untouched by men. Neels expected to hate it as he closed in but did not, patting the broken wing as he passed. The drone was a technological marvel that did no more than what Neels could do: track, find, and kill. The machine was a validation of him, a colleague of sorts.
When the drone had plowed into the earth, it sprayed loose soil and sand on every side. The ground around it was a confusion of fresh tracks. The big Americans’ knobby soles bit deep into the soil. Neels knew well the prints made by ranger boots, lightweight Promise and small Wophule. Surprisingly, the paws of a big cat had crept close. With care, Neels ducked under the drone’s one intact wing. He bent low, eyes to the earth, searching for tracks he did not recognize.
A set of sandal prints emerged. This wasn’t unusual for poachers. It was incredible how they traveled so far over hard land in such cheap thongs, sometimes barefoot. Neels gleaned nothing from the sandals except that they supported Promise’s story.
Neels shifted his focus closer to the fuselage, imagining the taking of the missile. The Americans had stood here, Wophule and Promise, too. Neels leaned lower to the dirt.
His jaw went slack at what the ground gave him, what rose like flotsam out of the crisscrossing tracks. He dropped to his knees to be sure. In awe and anger, Neels touched a fingertip to a flat expanse of impressed dirt—not the spoor of a stranger but a broad, large print he knew and had sworn to find again and follow.
The leather dress shoe of an outsized man.
The baas, Juma.
What was he doing here? For the second time in a week, he’d made himself visible. Juma had appeared out of the Mozambican hills to meet a rhino-horn crew at the border. Now he’d come personally into the Kruger to steal an American rocket off a downed South African drone, a dangerous thing to do. Why? What drew Juma to the two places? What was the connection? How did he even know the drone was here?
Neels inspected the hole gutted in the vehicle’s fuselage where something had been ripped out. He searched for more tracks in the tossed-up dirt around the wreck: Juma’s flat soles and the single pair of sandals left the marks of poachers, mingled with four sets of boots, the Americans and rangers. Neels moved to the open ground where the earth was weedy and dry. What few tracks he could spot in the clean morning light covered and scuffed each other, including his own. No patterns emerged, no story in the dirt, just the players.
No one had stirred. Karskie and the Americans lay beside the acacia hedge next to their trash. Promise sat upright in Neels’s tunic beside Wophule. Neels took a knee beside the stones. He rolled the first, the biggest, aside. Promise jerked awake.
“What are you doing?”
“Help me, or go back to sleep.”
Neels scrabbled at the rock pile. He worked to clear only the top half of the mound, leaving the body’s waist and legs covered. The girl was of little use, halfheartedly brushing at the sand covering the boy.
When the black, bloody chest appeared, then the shoulders and head, Neels pushed away Promise’s hands. He paused to rest, to gaze down on the ranger boy’s dark features. Neels had no illusion that Wophule looked restful. He’d died coughing blood; grit mottled the rusty crust around his lips. Terror had left its trail on his face.
With a pocketknife, Neels snipped the buttons from Wophule’s jersey. He peeled back the shirt, exposing the dark skin.
A single round in the center of the chest, an expert shot, had done him in. The mouth of the wound was collapsed, pouty, but it had been lethal. Neels tucked both hands under the boy’s torso to lift him into a sitting posture. Wophule had been small, but death made him heavy, as if the soul was what made a man light. One quick glance at the back told Neels the bullet had not gone through. He eased Wophule down in the dirt.
The commotion of moving the rocks had awakened the Americans and Karskie. All three stood; Neels told them to stay on the perimeter. They called back no questions. Promise kept her place beside her partner.
Neels spread the entry wound to hold the channel open. He inserted the pocketknife’s blade to dig past ragged bone and rigid tissue, pressing down until the tip scraped metal. Withdrawing the knife, he patted the dead boy’s shoulder in case the black Africans were right, the souls of the dead did linger until they were sent on. Neels sliced the wound wider, making an X cut, to make room for his hand.
He wormed into the hole. The meat of the boy felt chillier than the morning. Just under the skin, ribs barred his wriggling fingers; Neels forced his way past the bones until they bent and he could shove in his hand to the knuck
les. Over his thirty years in the park, he’d gouged bullets out of uncounted rhinos, elephants, lions, antelope, all killed as wrongly as this, but never a man. Neels stilled his breathing, focused only on the crime as he delved deeper, reaching out his middle finger to root for the bullet.
Down in the hole his wife waited; she sprang, another ambush, to tell him she could not love a man who could do such sordid things. Neels dug in harder, probing for the bastards who’d stolen his life as surely as they’d taken Wophule’s. She was right, he could not be loved, and if he did not catch Juma, he’d be left with nothing in the end. The gaping wound sucked at his wrist. Sinew and vessels, the boy’s dry heart and cool lungs, his stiffening muscles crowded Neels’s fingertips as if to clutch the bullet to themselves, their last relic of living. Neels sensed Wophule’s strength in this dead struggle against him and considered that perhaps he’d thought too little of the boy. Neels groped deeper, then touched the round. His wife did not understand why that was so important.
When he plucked it out, she was quick to leave.
Neels got to his feet. His hand dripped jellied blood. Promise stayed beside the body, hands covering her mouth. Neels hefted the round. Three hundred grains. Holland & Holland magnum .375.
“Karskie, come here. Bring the Yanks.”
Neels walked to meet them. He held out the bullet to Karskie. The big lad was slow to offer his palm, then did so with disgust. The Americans seemed somber, peering past Neels’s gory fingers to the boy’s exposed and spoiled body, the tunneled chest.
“I think this will match the round Opu and I dug out of the Shingwedzi rhino this week. Put it in your pocket.”
Karskie looked about for something to wipe the bullet clean before pocketing it. He used his pant leg.
Neels turned on Promise. The girl had gotten to her feet. Her stance was wide, hands out from her sides. She looked ready to jump left or right, like someone caught in a searchlight. Her breathing came quick and shallow, a rising panic.
Near her boots lay Neels’s rifle.
He spun on the Americans faster than they could react. With one hand shoving the captain backward, he snared the pistol from the man’s belt. Whirling again on Promise, Neels raised the gun. She had not moved.
He stomped toward her, paying no attention to the noises behind him, the Yanks objecting, questioning, chasing him. Promise did not back away when he stuck the pistol’s muzzle into the center of her chest, exactly where Wophule had been shot.
Neels called over his shoulder.
“Captain.”
“Neels, what are you doing?”
“If I pull the trigger, how long will this girl live?”
“Put it down. She’s one of your rangers.”
Promise stood at the end of Neels’s arm. He saw no ranger there.
“Answer me, Captain.”
The American did not comprehend. Karskie prodded him.
“Go ahead. Tell him.”
“Not long.”
“An hour?”
The captain paused to figure.
“Probably not, no.”
“Did you see the boy’s wound?”
“Neels.”
“Did you see it?”
“No. The sergeant did.”
“Sergeant, how long did that boy live?”
“Minutes, man. Less.”
Neels lowered the pistol. With the back of his bloodied hand, he clouted Promise across the face. The blow turned her shoulders, but she did not stagger. She came erect, her cheek stained red but without tears.
Neels whispered.
“Run.”
She wagged her head, slow, sad, and knowing.
With cautious treads, the Americans approached. Karskie stayed back.
The captain held out both hands, palms down.
“Stay calm. What’s going on?”
“She said she didn’t report the drone because she was sitting with the boy while he died. That’s a lie. He was dead when he hit the ground. You know it.”
Promise had gone wooden. The blood smeared on her face and the accusations hardened her.
“She says poachers showed up, shot the boy, and took the missile. But one of the bastards Karskie and I know. I’ve seen his tracks before. He’s a syndicate boss named Juma. He would never have been in the park poaching. Others do that for him.”
Neels returned the captain’s pistol and moved around Promise to snatch his FN off the ground. He was done speaking to the girl. He addressed the Americans.
“He had to get rid of witnesses, but why not shoot her, too? Why did Juma come himself, why risk being seen by a ranger? How did he even know the drone and the missile were in the Kruger?”
The sergeant indulged him.
“How?”
“He wasn’t in the park poaching. No, Juma didn’t just happen on your missile like she says. The bastard was called here. Called by someone who works for him. Someone he could trust not to tell. Maybe someone he wanted to protect.”
Neels raised the scarlet hand that had struck Promise.
“Her.”
Chapter 20
Neels bored in on Promise. She turned her back even as he barked questions. The girl knelt beside her partner and lifted the first rock to cover him again; Neels surged to spin her around to face him, to answer him. She snarled and slapped at him, coiling against the corpse. LB slid a hand inside Neels’s elbow to tug him back. Neels fought him off but stepped away, boiling mad.
LB knelt with the girl. As before, they stacked stones over Wophule. LB closed the boy’s tunic across the grisly hole where Neels had reached into his chest. Wally and Karskie stayed back. Neels walked a growling circle.
LB set a heavy stone in place.
“Did you do it?”
Without breaking her labor, the girl nodded.
The mound over Wophule grew. The boy faded once more beneath dirt and rock, his pained face the last to disappear under cupped handfuls of dirt. LB struggled to stay silent, to not ask in whispers, Why? What about your oath, to the rangers, your partner, the Kruger? How could you break it? For what? Money? LB could imagine but could not understand. Since becoming a pararescueman he’d poured his own life into the Guardian Angels’ oath, “That others may live,” the last patch he’d removed for this mission. He’d hardened in the mold of that vow; without it he’d be formless. Wally, the team, all the men and women who served alongside them, the isolated and endangered warriors they rescued, the wounded they saved and the dead they could not, all those who risked or gave their lives for duty, mission, mates, and country . . . What would it mean for him to turn his back on them? Who would he be then? The man he was before the GAs, a soldier with bloody dreams. LB watched Promise lay the last stones over her partner and didn’t believe he could ever do what she had done. His oath was specific on this point. Never quit. Die first.
Wally’d said that LB had nothing left but the Guardian Angels; he’d made it an accusation. To live without ever feeling what Promise was going through, to never know that anything in the world might be stronger than his oath, LB would admit Wally was right.
Once Wophule was enclosed, Promise turned to face Neels. She stood in the immensity of the Kruger and under the blue of the early morning sky, having done for her partner what she could. The girl squared her shoulders at Neels, who came at her like a boxer. The old ranger shouted into her face.
“Who is Juma?”
She would not answer, uncringing, almost nose to nose with his fury, until he pulled back.
“My grandmother’s brother.”
“That’s why the boy was shot, not you.”
“Yes.”
“Do you work for him?”
“Only once.”
“The rhino in Shingwedzi.”
“Yes.”
Neels pivoted on LB and Wally like they were his jury, dishing both hands back at Promise as if to say, See? See this?
LB didn’t know what this meant, “The rhino in Shingwedzi.” But
her admission made Neels shake fists at her, enraged over this even more than the death of the boy. Here was the breaking of her oath, the rangers’ pledge to safeguard the Kruger animals. Neels bared his teeth, fighting for the control to continue.
He raised one finger between himself and Promise, breathing hard. He wanted one answer. So did LB.
“Why?”
Promise did not wither but drew back her shoulders.
“My family.”
Neels leaned forward as if he might charge the girl. He bellowed, and the vast Kruger did not flinch.
“Your fucking family?”
The two rangers, boss and traitor, glared their hatred. To LB, it did not seem new.
Like Neels had done, Promise appealed to him and Wally with her arms extended at Neels. Do you see?
Wally only shrugged. LB spoke.
“What about your family?”
Neels threw up a white palm to tell him to stay quiet. LB ignored it.
“Go ahead.”
“My grandparents raised me in a poverty you would not tolerate. My grandmother wants a house, on a hill. Do you know how much money there is in rhino horn?” The girl pointed behind LB and Wally to the downed drone. “How much your rocket is worth?”
Again, LB could picture the crippling poverty she was talking about; he had seen it firsthand around the world, but he’d always been in uniform, passing through it. He could shower it off later, bear his own hunger because the pangs wouldn’t last, never feel the depths of that kind of lack and need beyond curiosity and sympathy.
“My grandmother went to Juma for help. He said he would, but I had to do something for him. I would guide his poachers into the park. He said there was so much money in horn there would only need to be three or four rhinos. After that, I would have the money.”
Promise turned back to Neels. The rest of her story seemed to be for him.
“They’re dying. Two and three a day. We can’t save them. I only wanted a house for my grandmother.”
The old ranger’s knuckles whitened on his rifle, and he ground his teeth, wanting to scream back. Promise pressed on.
“I led two of Juma’s men to the rhino in Shingwedzi. I had to kill it myself, with a machete. It was terrible, and I said I was done, I could not bear that again. But I had to keep my word to my grandparents. They have no hope without me. When Wophule and I found the drone, I hoped it might be worth enough for me to stop poaching. I called Juma. He came, and Wophule was shot dead. Juma lied to me. I swear to you, I did not know that would happen.”
The Devil's Horn Page 20
