The Devil's Horn

by David L. Robbins

  Chapter 33

  Neels pulled off his bush hat. The sun ironed his tunic against his shoulders, but he did not sweat. He ran a hand over his scalp. His skin felt cool. He could stand like this for hours, had done it in his youth and refused to believe he could not now. Only one hour had passed. Macandezulo had not blown up. In the open, in the red ravine, he watched and listened to the east.

  The American captain did not stand near Neels in the mean light of Mozambique but waited on his own. The captain sat some, paced a little, and spoke on his satellite phone, explaining himself, arguing a bit. He ignored Neels and seemed to ignore his sergeant who was off doing the job. Neels would not look anywhere but east until Macandezulo exploded.

  He didn’t worry for the sergeant, not only because he didn’t like him but because the sergeant was a military man and they didn’t always return. Karskie shouldn’t have been asked to go, but the captain had said someone from SANParks added to their cover story. Without Karskie, LB would have been just a solitary fokkol soldier strolling into the village with no identification. He probably would have been shot before he opened his mouth. In truth, the little bastard’s chances of being shot would get worse after he opened his mouth. But Neels hoped to see Karskie again.

  And Promise. The girl had turned her back on everything Neels valued. Why should she get away with it? She was his ranger, a traitor in his sector. Promise was a blunder, an embarrassment and a pain. She had to come back to pay.

  In the distance, buzzards ringed high above something dead elsewhere. Neels wondered what it could be. The animals of the Kruger rarely crossed the border; they knew it to be fatal for them in Mozambique. Probably a human. Some poacher or lost migrant, somebody miserable the buzzards could barely pick. The veld was harder than a man. To die here was no surprise.

  Neels kicked a pebble. It skittered a long way. Without him, without his boot’s toe, the stone might have lay in place for a thousand more years. It took him coming along to move it. Long ago his farmer father and teacher mother had quoted one Sunday’s church sermon at supper. The meek shall inherit the earth. Neels had asked: Inherit from whom? They didn’t know, but he did, and he told them. The ones who act, that’s who. His parents said he was cheeky. Ten years later the proof came. After Neels left for the Scouts, their family’s lands in Rhodesia were nationalized and given to the local people who had no idea how to work the soil that Neels’s grandfathers had settled. Not long after, both his parents died meekly, a factory worker and a teacher in Durban.

  Why had Neels been punished for not standing aside like his parents, like the Bible said? What should he have done? Quit his job, let someone else do the tough work because he had a wife with no stomach for it?

  He should have carried her into Shingwedzi, pushed her close to a rhino freshly dead by a poacher’s hand, gutted by the bush. See that? A murdered animal, a shot poacher, a Cuban corpse, a dead Angolan rebel, a rotting ape tied to a fence. Look what I have done. My acts.

  Who was she to tell Neels who he was? What would have made her happy? The kind of man she needed was not inside him, that man would not do what he was about to. Aloud, Neels said good-bye, but did not believe she heard.

  Macandezulo had not blown up. Juma was not dead. A hundred meters out, the sergeant and Promise pushed toward him along the ravine. They walked on their own warped reflections, shimmering heat ghosts. Where was Karskie?

  The American captain, yakking on his satellite phone, hadn’t seen them yet. He waved an arm to whomever he was talking to, but he seemed incapable of saying the right things. Neels had two rifles across his back. He dropped one of them into his hands.

  “Hang it up.”

  The captain shifted only a piece of his focus to Neels. He kept talking.

  “They’re back.”

  Neels pointed up the ravine. The sergeant and the girl had trod out of their mirages, only dust clouded their strides.

  The captain rang off and stowed his phone. He turned to greet Promise and the sergeant.

  Neels spun the rifle around. He raised it high and clubbed the captain in the back of the head.

  Chapter 34

  LB broke into a run at Neels, with the girl on his heels. When LB was ten strides from barreling into him, the old ranger jammed a boot into the middle of Wally’s back. He dropped the muzzle of his rifle to the rear of Wally’s head, then commanded LB and Promise to stop. Both skidded to a halt.

  Wally lay facedown in the ravine. Neels loomed over him, one foot between his shoulder blades. Wally groaned and clutched at the dirt. Neels held his rifle one-handed, standing it on end in the cleft beneath Wally’s skull. Neels’s finger curled over the trigger.

  “I didn’t hear anything blow up, Sergeant.”

  LB had nothing, no gun or blade, not a rock to throw. Neels wasn’t wearing his bush hat. He looked to be baking, red faced.

  “Wally, you alright?”

  Neels’s foot stopped Wally from turning his head to answer. He spoke facing away from LB, lips in the dust. His sunglasses had been knocked off.

  “Not really.”

  Promise inched forward. LB held her back. He held an open hand to Neels.

  “What are you doing, man?”

  Neels licked his lips. He looked thirsty. He held out his free arm to LB, seeking answers. Neels looked frustrated, like he’d been forced to do this.

  “Where’s the boy?”

  “They kept Karskie.”

  “Did you see the missile?”

  “It’s in a basement.”

  “Is Juma close?”

  “He’s in the same building.”

  “Is Karskie why you didn’t blow it?”

  “He is. And there’s women. Eight of them.”

  “You mean whores.”

  “I mean women.”

  Promise stepped back from LB, circling away from him. Out of his reach, she approached Neels. He cocked his head at her.

  “Far enough.”

  Promise crossed her hands over her breast.

  “This is all my fault. You’re mad at me. Don’t do this.”

  Neels laughed, a bit hyper.

  “I don’t give a fok about you, girl.”

  With Neels’s attention on Promise, LB stole inches closer. He stopped when Neels’s eyes slashed like knives across him. LB held out both palms, placating.

  “Okay. What’s this about?”

  Neels shifted the rifle barrel from the back of Wally’s head to Wally’s shoulder. He raised all his weight onto one boot over Wally’s spine, and pulled the trigger.

  The report was muffled by the meat of Wally’s shoulder. Wally howled and rippled like a carpet with wind under it. Neels’s boot pinned him to the red dirt.

  With a fuming glare, Neels dared LB to move toward him again. Promise barred her mouth with one hand, her heart with the other.

  The old ranger slid the barrel back where it had been, under Wally’s skull. Wally’s ruined left arm lay bent next to his head with trembling fingers.

  “Turn around, Sergeant. Go back to the village. Make sure Juma’s inside that building. Then blow up your missile and go home. I should hurry, your captain’s bleeding.”

  Neels stabbed a hand back toward Macandezulo.

  “Do what I tell you. Turn around, or I kill your captain. Then I’ll tell you again.”

  LB worked his jaw, desperate for something to say. Nothing came, not a word to find a way out of this. His jaw hung while his fists balled, useless as his tongue. Any move he made, any word he uttered, was going to cost lives.

  Neels answered LB’s silence by tapping his finger on the trigger.

  “I’ll shoot him, Sergeant. Then the girl. Then you, if I have to. I’ll claim you were all done in by poachers. I barely got away with my life. Trust me, I’ll be believed. The buzzards will do for you. The sun and wind will finish the rest. You’ll stay unidentified a bit longer.”

  The hole in Wally’s shoulder bled into a rusty mud. Above him, Neels wobble
d. Wally groaned when Neels balanced himself on the rifle like a cane. Neels thrust a pale finger at LB.

  “You come to the Kruger to fix some cock-up your country made. You stay for a few hours, and you tell me, you tell me, who lives and dies.”

  Neels ground his boot into Wally’s ribs. Wally gasped into his own blood.

  “See your captain here? He’s doing what I’ve done for forty years. Bleeding into Africa. You want to save Karskie? You don’t know Karskie. The boy wants to be a ranger. Good for him. I’m going to let him.”

  Neels swung his finger at Promise.

  “He’ll be a hero like Wophule. Remember him, jou poes?”

  Neels mopped his white brow with the back of his hand. He found it dry, noted this, and carried on.

  “Juma’s women? Their lives are shit. You want to save eight. I say there’s eight hundred we save.”

  Neels teetered again. He had heatstroke, LB was sure of it. He’d seen it in the Kush and the hot plains of Iraq. Dizzy, ashen, disoriented, no sweat, cool skin.

  LB lifted his own palm against Neels’s accusations, wanting to tell him he needed to get out of the sun. Everything could be figured out if they all stayed calm.

  This angered Neels even more, the idea that LB might have something to say. He stomped on Wally’s back, squeezing out an agonized curse.

  LB did everything in his power to root his boots to the ravine and keep from bull-rushing the man. Neels ignored him.

  “Poachers take twelve hundred rhinos a year. More. The beast will be gone before the decade’s over. You don’t have rhinos in America, why the fok should you care? Don’t tell me Juma lives. Don’t you fall out of a plane, spend one night in my park, then come tell me Juma lives today for Karskie and eight whores. No.”

  Neels shook his extended hand, panning for LB’s radio.

  “Give it to me. With the code. I’ll do it.”

  LB traced fingers over the radio stuck in his vest. He’d been ready to die in Macandezulo. But that was with Juma, not instead of him.

  In agony beneath Neels’s boot, Wally managed to turn his head. Dust clung to his lips and chin.

  “Don’t do it.” Wally couldn’t lift his eyes, only his voice. “LB. Don’t.”

  Neels dropped his appeal for the radio, placing both hands on the rifle.

  “Sergeant.”

  Neels’s features, already colorless from the heat, went blank. His hands firmed on the rifle and trigger. Standing over Wally, he seemed like a clock ticking seconds.

  Again, Wally spoke into the red dirt.

  “Don’t.”

  LB plucked the radio from his pocket, to do something, anything to string out a few more moments. Neels reached for it, easing his weight off Wally. LB hefted the radio. What a small thing it was, small as the time left to him.

  What was next? Tuck the radio back in his vest, or give it to Neels? Either brought terrible consequences. If LB kept the radio, Neels would pull the trigger. The old bastard was crazed and sun sick, but zeal convinced him he was right, and sacrifice told him he was justified. Wally wouldn’t survive him, no doubt.

  If Neels shot Wally, LB would charge him. Too much rage, LB would do it. The mission would fail, with one murdered GA, two dead rangers, and an unexploded Hellfire. Juma and Lush Life would walk away scot-free with two hundred million dollars.

  If LB gave Neels the radio and the code, the cost to take out Juma would be Karskie and eight blameless, sad women. How many rhinos would that save? How many lives would be saved by ridding the world of Juma’s weapons, poaching, drug- and human-trafficking operations?

  Neels was right.

  What would Karskie say? Would he make that trade? Neels didn’t speak for him. And the women, would they throw their lives on the fire to stop Juma? Would they die today to defend other unknown women on another day? Did Neels speak for them?

  Neels was wrong.

  Wally lay under the muzzle of Neels’s gun. Wally had made the decision for himself. He’d made the brave and right choice of a Guardian Angel.

  What would Torres say? Did Wally speak for her?

  Could LB?

  Neels spit in the dirt. LB had taken too long holding the radio.

  Time was up.

  “I’m sorry, Captain. Your sergeant prefers Juma.”

  LB tensed to speak, leap, something! What a fucking awful thing for Wally to hear, to be told that LB would let him die. A lie, a lie that would stand. He couldn’t get to Neels fast enough.

  Promise—LB had forgotten her—threw out her arms.

  “Wait. There’s someone else.”

  Neels hesitated. LB hugged the radio to his chest, not putting it away, not offering it, just clutching it. Wally exhaled what was almost his last breath. Neels tipped his head toward the girl.

  “Who, Promise? Who else is there?”

  “An old man. In the village. A white man.”

  “A white?”

  Neels looked to LB, as if for some reason this might be his department.

  “Who is he?”

  Again, as in Macandezulo, LB couldn’t keep up with the careening of his fate and emotions. Seconds ago, he was prepared to kill or die trying, to either see Wally executed or sentence Karskie and Juma’s women to death. Neels asked questions coldly, fact-finding, as though all of them did not stand on the edge of many unmarked graves. LB was in no frame of mind to answer Neels while he sorted out what to do.

  “Promise, shut up.”

  Neels tutted, detached and mercurial. He turned to Promise for answers.

  “Who is the white man?”

  “A friend of Juma’s.”

  “A friend. What’s his name?”

  “He called himself Lush Life.”

  “Really? What did he look like? How was he dressed?”

  “His clothes were dirty. But they were from the city. Expensive.”

  “Odd. Sergeant, isn’t that odd?”

  Under Neels’s boot, Wally was fading, blanching. Judging by the puddle of blood, the bullet had gone all the way through his shoulder. It might have hit a vessel. Another ticking clock.

  “Sergeant.”

  “Yeah. Odd.”

  “How did he behave? Who is he?”

  “He’s Juma’s partner. It was fucking obvious.”

  Neels’s face lit up as if the sun had flared on it. His mouth opened, eyes lifted from LB to the sky, fathoming something and thankful.

  LB edged one boot closer. He leaned on his toes.

  Neels had the instincts of the bush. His attention flashed back to LB.

  “Sergeant.”

  “What?”

  “I might shoot you first.”

  LB shifted his weight back to his heels.

  Neels stepped down. He lowered the rifle to his waist and retreated. Out of range, he squatted on his haunches, weapon across his knees, ready.

  “Do you have a first aid kit?”

  “In my pack.”

  “Take care of your captain.”

  LB hustled to his pack. He tore into it for the small med kit from the plane. Promise rushed to help Wally roll onto his back. She set to unbuttoning his tunic. By the time LB had alcohol, gauze, and antibiotic ready, she’d stripped Wally’s shoulder bare. He sat upright, woozy, gritting his teeth.

  His shoulder was a scarlet mess, but the wound cleaned up well. Both entry and exit holes were neat. Fired at close range and high velocity, the round was a through and through, in and out; it hadn’t bounced off a bone into a lung or anything vicious. LB moved his face close to Wally’s to check him for shock.

  “Hey.”

  Wally’s cheeks had gone pallid, but his eyes focused.

  “Don’t worry.”

  LB scooted behind him to patch the entry wound. A red ring, the imprint of Neels’s gun, showed just below Wally’s hairline. While LB stuffed gauze into the open wound, Wally stiffened with a deep, pained grunt.

  LB spoke to the back of his head.

  “Worry about wh
at?”

  “I know.”

  Behind him, where Wally could not see, LB nodded. A lot welled up in him that he could not name or separate into categories or years, just a lot. LB swiped away a tear so he could do his work.

  “Man, I’m sorry.”

  “I said I know.”

  Promise knelt to hold Wally up. LB skidded around to deal with the exit wound. Wally blinked with every touch, sucking in his cheeks, until LB wrapped his arm to his chest with an elastic bandage. When LB finished, Wally closed his eyelids to rest for moments. His blood loss had weakened him, but he was clearheaded. Ten yards away, Neels hunkered, waiting and observing like one of the buzzards.

  “Captain.”

  Wally opened his eyes. He didn’t answer right off but stared back, drawn and tired. Under Neels’s gun he’d made his decision, just as LB had in the village. Everything else about being alive seemed faraway and temporary.

  “What?”

  LB took a knee beside Wally. The girl remained standing, always ready to bolt.

  Neels patted the rifle in his lap.

  “I want you to understand. I need your radio and the code to the missile.”

  “You’ve made that clear.”

  “This white man, Lush Life, has to die. He has to. More than Juma.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he’s a tier three. A financier. These are the right bastards. They drive all this, the poaching, organized crime. For money, Captain. Lives are nothing to them. Nothing. Just things to steal and sell. We never see them. They kill and spoil and do it all from inside corporations and bank accounts. But this one. Lush Life. I don’t care why or how, but he’s come out where we can see him. And he’s one kilometer away from me. You’re going to let me kill him. Or I will shoot all three of you. By God, I will.”

  The sun had soared well past its peak. Neels’s shadow in the ravine crept at LB and Wally. Its outline was sharp in the bright, unbroken light. Neels wavered. He put a hand in the dirt to steady himself.

  “Captain. Juma and this white man are blackmailing your country. They’ve ruined the girl there. Your own lives are at risk. You’ve got reasons to see them dead, too.”