Karskie spit in the dirt.
“The cost of horn’s gotten so high, even private wildlife reserves have been caught poaching their own rhinos.”
Some greedy private-reserve owners pretended to discover the carcasses on their fenced-in grounds, then beat their breasts over how they’d been violated and held fundraisers for anti-poaching charities. They’d buy a replacement rhino from a breeder or another reserve for twenty thousand American dollars.
Some private owners had begun to dehorn their rhinos themselves, disfiguring the animals but protecting them. They registered the horns with the state, then locked them away for the day when selling horn became legal, a movement gaining steam in South Africa. A few speculators had cropped up, breeders raising rhinos not for display or preservation but to harvest the horn, which, if taken carefully, grew back. This was potentially a billion-dollar industry, which would increase the supply of horn and lower the price, pulling the rug out from under the poachers. But Karskie, who’d seen a few carcasses, agreed with the wildlife-preservation community that legalizing horn was a surrender to the poachers and an insult to the beast itself, reducing the rhino to the status of a chicken or a pig. LB saw both sides and said so, a mistake.
Karskie began to squirm, uncomfortable on the ground, his face registering disgust.
“Whatever it is, something’s got to change. You need to understand, the rhino’s just the marquee animal. If we lose them, the same syndicates will wipe out the elephant next.”
Karskie described an awful event a few years ago, in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park. Poachers laced water holes with cyanide, poisoning four hundred elephants at one time for their tusks. The boy tossed more terrible numbers at LB, how Africa was losing four elephants every hour, three rhinos per day.
“Here’s the clincher. After the rhinos and the elephants are finished, the lion will be next, for lion-bone wine. Then the tigers for bone tea, sharks and great tortoises for soup, abalone for their shells. Did you know you can buy an ashtray made out of a gorilla’s hand?”
Karskie had gotten passionate. LB was about to put his hands over his ears to signal he’d heard enough. Just then, finally, Wally stuffed the sat phone into his vest and headed their way. Karskie ratcheted up his intensity, getting in his last licks before Wally arrived.
“There’s a shit ton of money in horn, and frankly, not much risk. The Kruger’s basically a shopping mall for poachers. We should have two thousand rangers on the ground, but we’ve got four hundred. Less than half are on patrol at any time. When we find a carcass, our response is to track them. That’s it, in the twenty-first century. That’s the extent of our technology. Yeah, we have a few shot towers to catch the sounds of gunfire, we fly a drone here and there. But essentially, we catch poachers because men like Neels bloody track them down. When we do manage to catch poachers inside the park, all we can do is prosecute the poor bastards or shoot them. Either way, their families get paid off by the syndicate. There’s no shortage of villagers who can fire a gun or swing a panga. In the end, there’s not a lot of disincentive to poaching.”
Neels had finished his agitated reverie and fallen in behind Wally. Promise, without being called, got to her feet. With dusty hands, she drifted away from her partner’s rock pile.
LB aimed his chin at the girl.
“What’s going to happen to her?”
“Jail, for a long time. Poaching. Accessory to murder.”
“And what’s his deal?”
“That man there? He’s gone bossies, I’ll give you that. Crazy. He’s got rhino fever. Seen too much, been in the bush too long. But he understands this is a war. Neels is the disincentive.”
Promise shuffled behind Neels, bowed and shamed. She was a plucky and clever girl, even pretty. If this was a war the way Karskie described it, no wonder Neels wanted to shoot her. She wore the same uniform as he did, a Kruger ranger, and had defiled it.
Still energized, Karskie hopped to his feet. The big boy had worked himself into a state and looked like he was raring to go. Wally walked past, curling a finger for LB to follow. LB took only one stride before Neels hooked a hand inside his elbow to drag him to a stop.
“Where you going?”
Wally answered while LB yanked his arm free.
“I’m going to brief my sergeant. If you don’t mind.”
“I do mind. Let me tell you a little something.”
Wally’s shining shades flattened his features when he turned to LB, who could only shrug. The two of them were helpless without Neels and had no power to compel him. Neels would gun Promise down before letting her out of his sight. Karskie was brainy but sure to be useless from this point forward.
Neels tapped his own breast.
“You see, lads, I’m going to Macandezulo whether you come or not. Me and the girl, even Karskie, we’ve got authority to cross the border in pursuit of poachers. I’m in pursuit of Juma. And Promise there? She’ll have a word with the moer who shot Wophule.”
Neels sauntered closer, pointing east to the Mozambican border, where he knew the way.
“I don’t give a fok about your missile. That’s your problem. So understand. I’m not going with you. You’re going with me. And that’s only if I say so.”
Neels took a last stride, stepping between LB and Wally. He lapped heavy arms across their shoulders as if in a huddle. He volleyed a happy glance between them.
“See, if you two do tag along, you know my mission, but I don’t know yours. Doesn’t seem fair, ja? Or smart. So tell me what I need to know right now. Then let’s light the fuses and get to it. Or good luck to you.”
Neels did not pull down his arms until Wally and LB pushed them off. The old ranger folded his arms across his chest. Something out in the bush hooted; it was easy for LB to hear it as a laugh.
“Your call, Wally.”
Neels waited only moments in Wally’s reflecting glare before turning on his heels, heading for Macandezulo as he’d warned. Wally spoke to his back.
“There’s a self-destruct charge on the missile.”
Neels pivoted with a curious expression.
“I thought that was just in the movies.”
“Not this time. It’s so they could blow the drone over the ocean.”
“Makes sense, since one of your missiles was on a South African drone. Why was that?”
“That I can’t tell you. But use your imagination.”
“I already have, lad. I’ve done a few covert missions in my time.”
“Then you can figure out why we can’t leave it with Juma.”
“No, you can’t.” Neels liked this. “What’s the range on the charge?”
“Fifteen miles line of sight. Ground to ground, I don’t know. Depends on the terrain.”
“Why not just walk a few more miles east? Macandezulo’s not that far past the border. Blow it up. Kill the bastard for me.”
Wally pursed his lips. He didn’t answer Neels quick enough, so LB jumped in.
“It’s not what we do. We’re rescue. We don’t endanger civilians, even at our own risk.”
Neels swept the back of his hand at LB, dismissive.
“Civilians? Juma’s no civilian.”
“The people around him might be.”
“Anybody with Juma is a fokken criminal. Period. Blow it.”
Wally said nothing but seemed to replay something in his head. What that was struck LB. He whirled on Wally.
“That’s what you were arguing with Torres over. That’s what she wants you to do. Blow the missile from a distance. Don’t go after it. She wants you safe.”
“Yeah.”
“What did you tell her?”
Wally lifted his chin off his chest.
“What you just said. It’s not what we do.”
This was no small thing. How could Wally put himself in harm’s way, how could Torres send him there, if they were involved, if they were to be married? The complexities of this threatened to draw focus away f
rom their present dilemma. LB patted Wally’s shoulder to say he was sorry and he was proud that Wally had argued with her.
“What’s our move?”
Neels and Karskie sensed nothing of the tug-of-war inside Wally. Promise gazed at him sadly, but her heart was gone, so the sadness was likely for herself.
Wally pointed at Neels, giving him the order, taking command.
“Light it.”
The drone blew apart with a thunderclap and a concussion in the ground. No pieces sailed above the gouts of dust, at least none that LB could see, too pulverized were they by the twenty sticks of dynamite. A fireball of scorched black and shades of orange unfurled, feeding on the drone’s fuel. The boom dissolved across the plains, plainly heard for miles in every direction. The bush was not startled by the blast but took the jolt into its vastness and reasserted silence and heat even while the red dirt rained and the fire burned out.
Neels didn’t turn for the border until the cloud settled. Little remained of the drone or LB and Wally’s parachutes, only a blackened crater and bits that the wind and rains would soon comb into the ground. Neels said nothing but clapped a hand on Promise’s shoulder, pushing the girl east for Mozambique. He made her walk in front, to either shame her or keep a better eye on her. The girl was the only one of their company without a weapon. Next came Karskie, not so fierce behind the trudging girl; his was the first rifle in line should they meet something, or if the girl broke her word and bolted. Neels did this just to screw with Karskie, knowing he’d do nothing.
Neels strode in the middle. He told them not to worry about their tracks; his Shingwedzi extended patrol was certainly hurrying to the explosion, but they wouldn’t follow any footprints away from the site. The Kruger boys would do as Neels had trained them, what Promise did not: call in the irregularity in their sector and wait. They’d stay with the body of their fellow ranger.
At the rear, LB and Wally walked side by side. Promise kept to the game trails, wending past weather-beaten shrubs, dense spiny hedges, and twiggy trees, many of them knocked crooked. Dung of every size and shape made their path a slalom. They dodged oblong beads, ebony balls, and green-tinted loafs. A smoldering pile of elephant dung burst into flame right in front of LB, ignited by gasses and the African sun. Neels turned back to stomp it out without comment; Karskie brightened and thought this marvelous. Promise kept walking. The old ranger shouted for her to stop until they could catch up.
Wally set the back of his hand against LB’s gut to signal they should hang back, slow their gait so they could talk.
When Neels was far enough away, Wally checked his watch.
“We got ten hours.”
For what? Was the tritonol charge inside the Hellfire on a timer? That made no sense. Wally raised a finger for LB to let him explain without questions.
“The White House got a call this morning.”
Wally had to be kidding. Had the stolen missile gone that far up the chain?
“Somehow, the president of Zimbabwe’s gotten involved.”
LB kicked at pieces of crap on the trail that looked like brown pickles.
“This gets more fucked up by the minute.”
“LB, let me get it out.”
Without clarification or reason, the president of Zimbabwe, neighbor to both South Africa and Mozambique, had informed the White House that he’d been asked by an anonymous party to broker a negotiation over a South African drone and an American Hellfire that had gone missing in Kruger National Park. The Zimbabwean asked for no explanations and offered none about how or why he’d been brought in. He said only that in good faith he wished to inform his counterpart, the American president, that this potentially embarrassing matter would be made to go away for a payment of $200 million paid in secret by midnight tonight.
Yesterday, on the plane, LB and Wally hadn’t been able to contain their laughter at the outrageousness of this mission’s machinations. Neither man cracked a smile now. Once the CIA’s Pandora’s box of plots was thrown open, no one could predict what craziness would fly out.
Rhino poachers had linked up with the president of Zimbabwe. Together they were actually blackmailing the United States. And the whole unlikely comedy of errors had landed in LB’s and Wally’s laps.
The official credo of the Guardian Angels was “That others may live.” But the unofficial motto, grumbled among the GAs at times like this, was “You fuck up, we clean up.” LB ran both hands through his crew cut.
“Who the hell is running this syndicate, Al Capone?”
“Torres says all we have to do is get close enough. She gave me the freq and the key code. Cover story is the poachers screwed up and blew themselves to pieces. Done. No one’s expecting anything else from us.”
“That’s not our ROE. She knows it.”
The rules of engagement governed the Guardian Angels’ response to hostiles. These were made clear before every mission. Usually they were to evade, and engage only as a last measure. Regardless of what Torres or anyone three thousand miles away from the Kruger, the drone, dead Wophule, bat-shit Neels, broken Promise, Mozambique, Juma, and the stolen Hellfire said, every GA—including Wally and LB—had sworn to lay down his own life before endangering innocents.
“Why don’t they just pay it? Two hundred million’s lunch money.”
Wally didn’t answer, and LB didn’t expect him to. The United States couldn’t finance blackmailers, poachers, and crime syndicates, especially one that had already shown itself to be powerful and connected.
Also, unknown to the blackmailers or the president of Zimbabwe, the American president knew where the missile was.
LB had no issue with getting rid of bad guys. The challenge on this mission was making sure no one else got hurt. The danger was that only LB and Wally seemed to care.
Walking ahead of them, Neels glanced over his shoulder. He seemed displeased to be left out of the conversation but strode on, staring backward at them.
“We’ll need eyes on.”
Wally agreed with a nod. LB stepped around a fresh dung heap reeking a grassy odor.
“How do you figure to do it?”
Wally gazed far ahead, past scowling Neels and soft Karskie.
“The girl.”
Chapter 25
Promise knew the way east to the border. She could lead them across to Macandezulo, too, but Karskie said he would find the village. He’d told her this while walking at her back. He said he knew it from looking at maps for hours every day. Karskie needed a role, and Promise had no reason to take it from him.
She wasn’t leading the Americans and Neels to Mozambique. Not yet. She headed northward, but trended east so Neels wouldn’t notice and stop her.
The first sign had been a midden; lumps had been kicked around and busted open, releasing the scent. Soon after, snapped branches showed in the heavy brush where only a thick-hided thing could go, followed by the aroma of wild sage and rosemary from broken leaves. Then, where the game trail joined another, two fat, new prints crossed her path.
Promise glanced behind her. Karskie followed closely, as if he were in charge of her. He smiled. What was this large, wobbly boy doing here? Why did he smile? Didn’t he know she was to be despised? Twenty strides behind him, Neels had tugged down the brim of his hat against the climbing sun. Promise could be gone in a flicker, into the acacia thorns again, and then run all the way. There she’d wait for Neels, who would quickly catch up. But why risk running? Neels was paying more attention to the Americans than the ground; he’d missed the rhino’s tracks. He hadn’t noticed that Promise was not leading them to the border. She could walk, and they would follow, to the water hole.
White balls of dung on the path told Promise the first beast she would meet was a hyena. Promise found her in a clearing beside the trail. The hyena reclined in a hole she’d scooped out to have her pups. Promise stopped at a distance when the spotted creature showed her teeth. The hyena was patience, she did not judge, she was the eater of death.
Karskie came beside Promise and muttered in amazement. Neels and the Americans stopped, too. Neels told them a story about the time he’d seen a hyena snare red-hot cans of beans out of a campfire and bite them in half.
Neels told Promise, “Go around.” Then, lightly, he shoved her. She did not check the Americans’ faces for sympathy but walked on, heading more northward than before.
Promise crossed an open field where the earth ticked with heat. The stringy branches of grazed-out trees gave little shade to the grassy ground. The sapphire sky was an open eye on her. The stench of a days-old kill hinted a carcass was near the trail. She found it beneath a bush where a lion or cheetah had dragged it, the skull and horns of an impala and an empty, sun-leathered hide.
The second beast was an elephant far across the plain, a medium male out on his own. Strolling, he flapped his great ears. The elephant was wisdom. He knew the day he would die.
Drawing closer to the water hole, the grassland gave way to fever trees and a cooler breeze. A family of baboons gathered on a fat branch, hiding in the leaves. The baboon was the cheater and trickster. Promise opened her mouth wide to them, a sign of submission. A young one dropped to the ground, curling fingers at her, begging. The rest of the baboons scratched blandly and watched her pass.
Two hundred meters from the water hole, still unseen behind the brush, a warm dampness sifted into the air with the smell of mud. Neels stomped past Karskie.
“What the hell are you doing?”
This time Neels pushed Promise to the ground.
“You got an ambush in mind, girl? Uncle Juma out there waiting for us?”
The Americans ran up. Karskie stayed back from trouble. Neels raged over her. Promise stayed in the dust.
The captain and LB hurried in front of Neels, walling him off. She scooted on her backside, retreating enough to climb to her feet. LB turned on her.
“What’s up?”
Neels growled before she could answer.
The Devil's Horn Page 23
