by Tony Park
Alex pulled his camouflage bush hat down firmly on his head and put his sunglasses back on. Henri and Heinrich walked across the road and took up concealed positions in a drainage culvert, their faces obscured by a tangle of weeds and shrubs. They held their rifles into their shoulders, pointing up the road in the direction from which they’d come.
Alex looked at each of his men, not only to check their positioning but to try to read their faces. There had been little banter or humour at their reunion in Nelspruit when they collected the cached weapons and gathered for the mission briefing. Mitch’s departure had ended the most obvious manifestation of dissent, but Alex still wondered if he could hold their loyalty in the future. He had changed, and they sensed it. The news that there were no diamonds secreted on the Penfold Son brought only solemn nods and, in Novak’s eyes, a silent ‘told you so’. The good news was that Lisa was recovering well, in a private clinic under twenty-four-hour armed guard, and showed no signs of brain damage.
Alex’s life of crime had consumed too much of him. He wanted to prove Jane wrong, that he was not like George Penfold, but the only way he could see out of the mess his life had become was to stage the biggest theft of his career.
‘Ready?’ he said to Novak.
‘That promise I made to God . . . you should make it too, Alex.’
A red Volkswagen Golf hatchback crested the rise and slowed as it neared the crossing. Alex gave a thumbs up and waved the driver on. Alex hoped the army camera team arrived soon, as he didn’t want too many people seeing and remembering the broken-down military vehicle.
They heard a deeper growl next and a white Land Cruiser came over the hill.
‘That’s them,’ Alex said, tallying the make of the vehicle from what he’d overheard at the car rental desk, and then recognising the driver, the Afrikaner soldier. ‘Remember, they’re not armed, but they are soldiers.’
Given the prevalence of car-jacking in South Africa few people stopped to assist others with car troubles. However, Alex had gambled that the team coming towards him would stop for fellow servicemen. Alex stepped out from behind the raised bonnet and waved his hand up and down, slowly, palm facing downwards. He glanced to his left and saw Henri and Heinrich tighten the grip on their weapons. If the men in the rented four-wheel drive did not stop, the two pirates would open fire and shoot out the front tyres.
The driver slowed, and just as Alex tensed, preparing to draw the pistol from its holster under his shirt, he saw the Land Cruiser’s indicator light flash.
Alex started to move forward, then froze as he heard another car’s engine. They had reconnoitred the road and knew it was not busy, but a petrol tanker came over the hill and barrelled down towards them. The driver blew his air horn, perhaps checking if all was in order, and Alex waved him on.
By now the Land Cruiser had pulled over and the driver and the leader of the public relations team had got out of the vehicle.
‘Howzit?’ the driver called. ‘You okes need a hand?’
Kufa and Kevin started to sit up and waved in a comradely way to the new arrivals from their spot on the side of the road.
Alex nodded and reached for his pistol. That was the signal for all of them to move.
Henri stayed in position, still covering the vehicle, but Heinrich leapt from the cover of the bushes just as Kevin and Kufa got to their feet and raised their rifles.
‘Down!’ Alex yelled. ‘Down on the fucking ground. Now! Face down!’
Kevin kicked the officer in the back of the knee, forcing him down, and the white soldier complied without argument. Kufa had the back door of the Land Cruiser open and was dragging out the African, who looked totally confused. Alex noted the white ear buds of an iPod and realised the man had probably been bopping along to his favourite tunes in the back of the vehicle, oblivious to any trouble.
‘Who are you?’ the officer said, then winced as Kevin placed a knee in his spine and jabbed the barrel of his R5 into the back of the man’s head.
‘Shut it,’ said the Australian.
Alex dropped to one knee, behind and to one side of the public relations officer, so he couldn’t see his face. ‘Be quiet, man,’ he said, not unkindly. ‘Nothing’s going to happen to you if you do as we say.’
‘Shit, you’re after the ivory, aren’t you?’
‘Shut up,’ hissed the photographer on the ground next to him.
‘Listen to what your NCO says.’ Alex bound the officer’s hands tightly with plastic cable ties. ‘That’s the sort of talk that could get you killed. Don’t make me do something I don’t want to, all right, China?’
The man was silent, but Alex ordered them all gagged with masking tape anyway. Hessian hoods were pulled over their heads and tied at the necks. They lifted the bound soldiers into the back of the bakkie, and covered their prone bodies with the tarpaulin. Alex, Kevin and Kufa travelled in the Land Cruiser, now assuming the role of the army public relations squad, while Novak led off in the bakkie with Heinrich and Henri riding shotgun in the back. Everyone was in uniform now.
Novak led them through the back roads of White River to the R40. Once out of town they turned right and the road meandered up and down through extensive pine plantations.
Novak had worked for SAPPI, the South African paper manufacturing company, for a while after leaving the army, but had soon tired of a life without action. He’d been based in the Lowveld and was familiar with the plantations around the White River area. While Alex had been in Cape Town with Jane, Novak had rediscovered an old forestry hut. He indicated left and Alex turned off the main road onto a gravel logging road.
At this time of year there was little activity in the forest. Novak rounded a corner and stopped outside a mud-brick shack with a flat corrugated-tin roof. They stopped, offloaded their captives and led them inside the hut and pushed them down onto three metal-framed beds. Working on one man at a time, Heinrich pulled out a pocket knife and sliced through the cable ties binding their hands. Henri then handcuffed each to the welded steel head of each bed. The men would be dry, if not particularly comfortable.
‘All of you listen to me,’ Alex said to the captives as his men filed out. ‘I’m leaving an armed man outside to keep watch on the road. He will check on you every now and then, so don’t try anything. When the time comes, we’ll notify the army that you are here. No harm will come to you if you lie still and quiet.’
Alex didn’t know if the men would fall for his bluff. He was taking all his men with him, but even if the soldiers did manage to escape, or if someone found them, it would be too late for them to do anything.
If all went according to plan, Alex and his men would be safely on Ilha dos Sonhos, and out of the pirate business, by nightfall.
25
Alex took the lead again and carried on to the small town of Hazyview. As he headed into town he turned right and followed his map to the Phabeni Gate.
The detailed orders for the elephant culling supplied by Chan specified that all military and police traffic should enter and leave via this lesser-used entrance to the Kruger National Park, so as to minimise the visibility of the operation to local people, visitors and the media.
The public relations plan for the culling operation called for an army PR team consisting of a video cameraman and a stills photographer, under the command of an officer, to gather footage of the collection and loading of the ivory from the slaughtered elephants on to South African Air Force Oryx helicopters.
Military police would be positioned at Phabeni Gate to check the identities of uniformed people taking part in the operation, and to facilitate their entry to the national park without disrupting the normal flow of tourist traffic. The public relations plan specified a three-man detachment, but there were six men in the two vehicles.
A kilometre from the gate, Alex pulled over. ‘OK, end of the line,’ he said to Novak.
Novak, Henri and Heinrich all got out of the Nissan bakkie and Kevin took his rifle and webbing out of the
Land Cruiser and joined them by the side of the road. All wore military uniforms and carried R5s. ‘See you at the Albassini Ruins,’ Kevin said, and gave Alex a smart salute. Alex smiled and waved him off. Kevin checked his hand-held GPS unit and led Henri and Heinrich away from the road, into scrubby bushveld which was slowly reclaiming what had once been a farm on the border of the national park. They would cross into the reserve on foot, cutting through the elephant-proof fence that separated Kruger from the outside world.
Alex took a cigarette lighter from the breast pocket of his fatigues and a plastic soft-drink bottle of petrol from the back of the bakkie. After checking up and down the road to make sure no cars were approaching, he lit the improvised rag wick protruding from the bottle and tossed it into the empty cab. An orange-black ball of flame whooshed from inside and soon the vinyl bench seat was blazing fiercely.
Novak climbed into the driver’s seat of the Land Cruiser. As an Afrikaans speaker he would play the role of the white photographer from now on, while Kufa, in the back seat, was the video cameraman. As the ranking officer, Alex took the front passenger seat. In his wing mirror he saw the Nissan, now surplus to their requirements, burning fiercely.
At Phabeni a uniformed military police corporal waved them over as soon as he spotted their uniforms.
Novak spoke in fluent Afrikaans before the man could say anything, explaining who they were. The corporal, an African, leaned his head into the cab and looked around. ‘Let me see your IDs,’ he eventually said in English.
By speaking English, this young noncommissioned officer was saying that he was of a different generation to Novak, when white South Africans dominated the army and Afrikaans was the official language. Those days were long gone.
‘Howzit, my man. Would you like to be in Soldier magazine?’ Alex said to the man while Novak searched in his pocket for the stolen identity card of the man whose place he had taken.
The corporal looked at Alex and said, ‘What . . .’ then added, ‘sir?’ when he saw the captain’s rank insignia.
‘Pictures! We need photographs of as many SANDF personnel involved in this operation as possible, for your local newspaper, and for our own Soldier magazine. You’ll be famous, bru! Dirk, get your camera, man, and take a picture of this warrior for us.’
Novak nodded and reached for the Nikon in the console between them and opened his door. The military policeman stepped back to make room and automatically began straightening out imaginary creases from his uniform shirt and adjusting the red beret on his head to a more rakish angle.
‘That’s it, man.’ Novak made a show of checking his camera settings and began snapping away. ‘Hand up, like you’re taking charge of these bladdy soldiers. That’s it. Lekker pose. Work it, work it.’
The corporal was laughing now and Novak said, ‘No smiling!’ and this made him double up. When he’d composed himself Novak said, ‘You’re an MP, man. Show the folks at home how you won’t tolerate law breakers.’ The man posed, hands on hips, in front of his military police vehicle for a few more snaps.
‘Hey,’ called a tourist, who had just pulled up at the gate’s reception office. ‘Are you a policeman? There’s a bakkie on fire just up the road there.’
They all turned and saw the column of smoke, dark against the blue sky.
‘Hey guys, I’m sorry, but I have to go and report this,’ the corporal said.
‘Duty calls, man. Don’t let us stop you,’ Alex said, clapping the NCO on the shoulder. ‘Thanks for your time.’
‘Nice work,’ Novak said to Alex when they were back in the car.
‘He didn’t even check our IDs,’ said Kufa from the back seat.
‘It’s not over yet.’
They entered the park proper, crossing a low-level concrete bridge. Off to their right three old male buffalo wallowed in a puddle of mud, barely lifting their heads to register the passing of the four-wheel drive. ‘Pull over on the left up here,’ Alex said to Novak.
Just inside the park was a historical site called the Albassini Ruins. Joao Albassini had been a pioneering Portuguese trader in this part of South Africa in the nineteenth century and the foundations of his home and store were still visible at the site.
Alex got out. This was one of a few public places outside of the main rest camps in Kruger where visitors were allowed to alight from their vehicles. A minute later, Kevin emerged from the bush, followed by Heinrich and Henri. They climbed into the Land Cruiser. With all of the camera gear it was a tight fit, but Alex knew he would need every one of them, especially if their run of good luck came to an end.
From the Albassini Ruins they drove on the sealed Doispane Road, named after an early black ranger who had been given the disparaging name of ‘Dustpan’. The park was busy with local and overseas visitors and it wasn’t long before they were passed by open-sided, game-viewing vehicles, converted Land Rovers packed with tourists in an array of designer safari gear and leopard print.
A few kilometres on they found what the radio-equipped vehicles had been racing towards – a pride of eight lions. A black-maned male lay panting in the shade of a marula tree. His four female companions, arrayed around him, were more alert to the traffic jam of private cars and safari vehicles that had stopped to photograph them. Novak edged off the road onto the verge and skirted the phalanx of vehicles. The tourists were too intent on the big cats to pay any mind to the soldiers in the Land Cruiser.
‘Bloody hell, I’m glad we’ve got our guns with us,’ Kevin said, as the largest of the lionesses, a huge beast with rippling shoulder muscles, stared contemptuously at them through her golden eyes.
‘Ja,’ Novak agreed. ‘A ranger I know says that most of the prides in the Kruger Park have tasted human flesh. They catch Mozambican illegal immigrants coming across the border. More effective than our own army patrols, that’s for sure.’
It was a reminder that danger awaited them at every turn on this operation. As well as police, soldiers and national parks officers, all alert for theft of the precious ivory and disruption by environmentalist protesters, there was a host of other creatures big and small out here in the veldt that could kill a man.
The others nodded.
‘Elephant,’ Novak said.
All the men looked where Novak was pointing. It was amazing, Alex always thought, how the great grey beasts could sometimes be so hard to spot. But once he saw one swishing tail, and the flapping of a huge set of ears, he was able to pick out the rest of the herd. Novak switched off the engine and they could hear the snapping of branches as the elephants fed, and hear the deep rumbling of their stomachs as they communicated with each other.
They did not have a great deal of spare time to make their rendezvous at the culling operation’s field headquarters, but Alex knew they could spare a few minutes to prepare, psychologically, for what they were about to do.
‘I could never kill one of these things,’ Kevin said.
‘I could,’ Kufa said. ‘In Zimbabwe they trample the maize, and an uncle of mine was killed by a bull that gored him with a tusk then crushed him.’
‘I hunted one in the Congo once,’ Henri said. ‘I tracked him for two days. When it was done, I felt empty.’
Alex said nothing, but was transported back with vivid clarity to the misty morning when he was five years old. Again he heard his mother’s voice as she warned his father not to get too close to the matriarch. He saw the tiny female with the ragged V notched into her left ear, felt her breath on his hand again.
‘You say that this thing that we do, it may stop the culling from proceeding?’ Heinrich said.
As military men they had not dwelled on the ethics of what they were about to do, but Alex had voiced the same argument to them that Chan had put to him. It was a thin justification for a crime.
Alex watched a baby elephant, which he knew was less than a year old, as it could still walk easily under its mother’s belly. The youngster had not yet learned to use his trunk and it flopped left and righ
t and up and down – a useless but amusing appendage until it could be taught otherwise by his mother. Alex started to speak; the words would not come.
He felt ashamed.
‘Start the engine. Let’s get on with it.’
They passed a herd of zebra and a forest of giraffe heads watched them as they turned right towards Skukuza, Kruger’s main camp and administration centre. As they drove in through the thatch-roofed gatehouse Alex pulled out his mobile phone and sent an SMS message: Waiting at reception.
Alex had Novak park the Land Cruiser away from the main reception building, behind the camp library. Skukuza was a busy place at any time, thronged with tourists, national parks employees, safari guides and, occasionally, police. They opened the doors to let a breeze in and Alex got out of the vehicle when he saw Kobus van Vuuren walking up the main road, from the accommodation area.
The helicopter pilot who had flown them during the raid on the Penfold Son had made his own way to Kruger and had been waiting in Skukuza for them to arrive. He walked into the men’s toilets, and Alex followed him. They stood side by side at the urinal and, with no one else inside, Alex passed Kobus the sports bag he was carrying. Without a word, Kobus disappeared into one of the cubicles while Alex dallied at the washbasin.
Kobus re-emerged dressed in one of Kim Hoddy’s husband’s national parks honorary ranger’s uniforms. It was a good fit, and Alex was pleased, as he’d judged the two men’s sizes from memory. Kobus’s civilian clothes were in the bag, which he passed back to Alex. The soldier and the ranger strode purposefully to the Land Cruiser.
The vehicle was now packed, with two men in the front, three in the back, and two on the jump seats, facing each other over the pile of camera gear and accessories.
