by Andy Briggs
The Russian’s senses started to tingle. Having spent his whole life hunting, he relied on his instincts for guidance and he’d developed a sharp intuition. The faintest sound, the stillness of the air, the slightest break in the natural rhythm of the landscape around him would set alarm bells ringing in his head. He scanned the dry flat grassland for telltale signs of movement. Grass moving against the wind, birds suddenly taking flight. But nothing stirred. As great a hunter as he was, Rokoff was not foolish enough to ignore the advantages high-tech security systems gave him. He had ensured Okeke’s ranch was fitted with the very latest—nothing could get through without him knowing.
He leaned forward in the swing chair, unblinking eyes watching for the subtlest hint that an enemy was approaching. Although he couldn’t see it, he sensed something was heading his way.
•••
“So why should I believe you?” said Milton Muwanga, chief officer at the Uganda Wildlife Authority.
Robbie and Jane had rehearsed their alibi before entering the UWA, but Jane was having difficulty sounding convincing because she was so exhausted and worrying about Tarzan following through with his part of the plan. Luckily, Robbie was more accustomed to lying.
“We could hear the gorilla in the back of the truck the moment we landed in the dock.” They had told Milton a story of how they were hiking for charity across Tanzania and into Uganda. It wasn’t such a far-fetched explanation; people often did it. The details they could provide about life in the savannah added texture to their story, but Milton was still having difficulty believing there was gorilla smuggling going on right under his nose.
“And nobody else heard this racket?”
“Sure, but it looks like we’re the only ones to come forward and tell you about it.”
Milton leaned back in his chair and studied them thoughtfully. Then he stood up and paced the room, pointing at a map of Uganda behind him.
“Bwindi is here in the southwest. It borders the Congo. We have mountain gorillas there. Why would anybody cut across Tanzania to smuggle in a gorilla?”
“Probably because you protect so well!” said Jane. “It must have been stolen to order.” She was beginning to think asking for official help had been a mistake. This officer seemed reluctant to spring into action. “This is happening right now. You’re supposed to be protecting animals within your borders, not turning a blind eye! How do you think the Western media will react if they found out you’re doing nothing? I bet your own government would also wonder where all their funding was being spent.”
Milton went rigid, bristling with indignation, but to his credit he didn’t allow his temper to snap. Instead he took a deep breath and leaned on his desk, staring hard at Jane.
“I run an honest organization. Africa is a tough place for business, but I allow no corruption here! We do our job with diligence and to the best of abilities.”
“I didn’t mean to imply—” Jane began.
“And you come here without any evidence and expect me to believe such atrocities are taking place on my watch?” Milton slammed his fist on the desk. After everything they had been through, an angry UWA officer didn’t scare them much and Jane was pleased to see disappointment on Milton’s face. He had hoped to shock them into admitting they’d made the whole thing up. He changed tack. “If we were to embark on an investigation and it proved to be fraudulent, then I would have no alternative but to contact your embassy and have you thrown out of my country.”
Jane felt Robbie tense at the suggestion, but he kept his cool. His voice was casual and carefree.
“Fine. If you think we’re messing around, deport us. But if you want evidence, then I have two lots of proof you can start looking at: an apartment right here in Kampala and a ranch ninety minutes’ drive away.” Robbie unfolded a map they had taken from Okeke’s apartment and pointed to the location of the ranch. “Which do you want to check out first?” said Robbie firmly.
•••
Rokoff watched the giraffes being led back to their pens. He could see Okeke shaking the hand of the hugely overweight collector who had just made the purchase.
The okapi was pulled out next. The animal grunted and strained on the rope around its neck. The handlers hit its rump with a stick, hard enough to make it relent, but not enough to leave any mark that could lower the price during the auction.
Rokoff’s radio suddenly squawked to life. “Alarm twenty-six. Southeast wire’s just been tripped.”
Rokoff’s hand shot to the volume control and turned it down. He rose quickly and strode across the dusty drive, stopping short at the tall brown grass that stretched to the rolling hills in the south. He took the safety catch off his rifle and hunched over as he entered the long grass.
Walking on his heels minimized the sounds he made, but he was still far too noisy for his liking. For several hundred feet he pushed through the grass, relying on instinct alone. He knew where the tripwires were located along the perimeter of the ranch and the southeast sector provided the fewest possible hiding places for a predator to lurk.
Up ahead, something rustled in the scrub. Rokoff crouched low, only the top of his head visible over the long stalks. Something was moving toward him. He readied his rifle and took aim.
Out here it was a battle of wits. Predator and prey were on equal terms. He could hardly believe his opponent would blunder so blindly into a trap, yet here it was.
The grass parted and Rokoff’s finger pressed against the warm steel trigger. Then he paused. A fat warthog trotted through the grass and stopped short of Rokoff as it picked up the hunter’s scent. The warthog’s comical tail wagged vertically, before it suddenly changed direction and bolted through the grass.
Rokoff felt a pang of annoyance. He must be on edge if he’d allow a stumpy little warthog to catch him out. Then three gunshots sounded from the ranch. Rokoff turned sharply around, no longer concerned about maintaining cover. From this angle, he could see no sign of movement at the mansion. He twisted the volume control on his radio to ask what was happening—and was rewarded with chaotic screams. Then silence.
They were under attack.
•••
Milton Muwanga kicked the debris of Okeke’s apartment with a well-polished boot. The rare pelts crumpled on the ground and the precious ivory collection was more than enough to convince him their story was true. Still, something bothered him.
“It’s like a cyclone blew through here,” he said, looking carefully at Robbie.
“I know. Amazing, huh?”
Milton examined the window. “I would say the intruder came through there and tore the place apart.”
Robbie made a pretence of looking at the sofa Tarzan had hurled through the wall. “I think you’re right. It must have been somebody incredibly strong to do this. Wish I was that powerful.”
He patted his own arms for emphasis. While Robbie wasn’t weak, Milton had to agree there was no way he could have done this damage.
“Now do you believe us?” asked Jane.
Milton was torn. He had fully expected to find nothing amiss in the apartment, but now he looked again at the map Robbie handed him and wondered just what these kids had led him into.
“If you’d like us to go through it all again, fine. But if they’re at the ranch selling that gorilla as we speak then your time is running out,” Jane insisted.
Milton nodded. He hated being dictated to by a pushy foreign girl, but she had been right so far. He pulled out his mobile phone and called the UWA office.
“This is Milton. Put me through to the Minister. I need immediate authorization for a field operation.”
•••
Rokoff sprinted toward the mansion. He was as fit as a man half his age, but running in the heat still drained his energy. He broke out of grass to see one of the bidders had been thrown through the glass viewing window and the okapi was running free.
Inside the house, furniture had been tossed aside and a businessman had his head thrus
t into a television set, which sparked and popped. Okeke was outside, hiding behind a jeep, his eyes fixed on the house. Rokoff ran to his side.
“What has happened?”
“A wild man! He’s tearing the place apart! He’s killed two of my customers!”
Rokoff couldn’t hide his smile. Tarzan had somehow used the warthog as a distraction so he could get past him. The Russian felt a hint of satisfaction that the ape-man must consider him a worthy opponent.
“Where is he now?” said Rokoff.
Okeke pointed to the house as a skinny Asian man ran out. With a crack, a rope whipped out and coiled around his neck. The man was yanked back into the house. Rokoff heard a roar that he swore could only be the battle cry of a bull ape. The Asian man’s screams were swiftly silenced.
Okeke shoved Rokoff in the back. “Do something!”
Rokoff refrained from rifle-butting his employer to silence him. Instead he stalked to the side of the mansion, keeping behind the parked vehicles as he did so. He was aiming for a door midway along the building when another man was flung through the wall, wood splintering around him. It was one of Okeke’s security team.
The Russian slipped through the door as quietly as he could. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloomy corridor; the only light came from a pair of narrow curtained windows. Floorboards creaked underfoot but the noise was masked by a scream of another unfortunate victim and the crashing of furniture. He raised his rifle, fitting the stock snugly against his shoulder. From this range he wouldn’t even have to aim.
Rokoff entered the room expecting Tarzan to be standing amid total carnage. But the room was bare. The hunter froze—he had heard the sounds just seconds earlier . . .
Then the hairs on the back of his neck rose and he turned slowly. Tarzan was suspended over the doorframe. One hand gripped the rafters, his feet firmly planted at an angle on the wall to keep him steady. He had blood on his fingers and across his face. Rokoff didn’t care what savagery he had committed. One thing was certain—like all seasoned hunters, Tarzan had anticipated his prey’s movements.
“Greystoke!” breathed Rokoff. “We finally meet face-to-face.” Rokoff showed no fear. If this was his time to die, so be it.
But it wasn’t.
With murder in his eyes, Tarzan dropped from the rafters at the exact moment that a blast of compressed air catapulted a steel net that wrapped around the wild man mid-flight.
Rokoff stepped aside as Tarzan crashed to the ground. The impact shook everything in the room. He flailed wildly, but the steel net contracted and made movement impossible, even for the mighty jungle warrior.
Tarzan howled with rage. Paulvitch stood in the opposite doorway, holding a bazooka-like device over his shoulder from which the net had been fired. The side of his face sported a deep fresh scar from a cheetah’s claw, while his right hand was a stump, bitten off by the same beast. Rokoff gave him a small nod of recognition, then crouched next to Tarzan as the wild man struggled uselessly.
“Got you at last, ape-man.”
“Tarzan kill you!”
Rokoff laughed and shook his head. “Now, now, don’t make promises you are unable to keep. You don’t know how long I’ve been searching for you. The White Ape, the wild man—the heir of Greystoke.”
Tarzan snarled and continued struggling.
“And here you are . . . and you’re very real. I started to have my doubts,” Rokoff said dreamily. “I see D’Arnot was telling the truth, after all. He refused to reveal your location so, as instructed, I shot him and left his body for the jungle to hide your secret.”
Rokoff took pleasure at the loathing in Tarzan’s eyes. He knew, before the day was out, Tarzan would die and he would have concluded the ultimate hunt.
21
The tungsten and steel net bit into Tarzan’s biceps and calves as he struggled to free himself. Rokoff and Paulvitch dragged him from the house and threw him into one of the animal pens. As soon as they entered the enclosure, Karnath went wild, hooting and shaking his cage. Tarzan responded with a series of low grunts that calmed the ape down.
Feeling it was now safe to come out of hiding, Okeke joined them and stared incredulously at Tarzan.
“What is he?”
“Somebody I’ve been searching for for some time,” said Rokoff. “He’s mine.”
“He killed my clients back there! Dump his body and be done with it.”
Rokoff shot Okeke a foul look. “I said he’s my business. Go back to your little auction. They’ll enjoy the experience of being alive all the more after looking death in the face—they’ll bid twice the price.”
One of Tarzan’s victims had just clinched an extravagant deal for the giraffes, and that was money Okeke would never see. He glowered at Tarzan before going to salvage what he could from the remaining bidders.
Paulvitch leaned over the pen wall as he watched Tarzan struggle.
“I want to kill him.”
“No,” stated Rokoff firmly. “This one is mine.”
“Look what he did to me!” Paulvitch held up his stump. “I’m owed revenge!”
After Tarzan had broken the Russian’s hand on the boat, Paulvitch consumed painkillers by the fistful to keep the pain at bay. When Tarzan and the animals had ambushed their convoy, Paulvitch had made the mistake of using his broken hand to fend off the cheetah; its ferocious jaws had severed his hand clean off.
Rokoff had done his best to stem the blood by tying a tourniquet around Paulvitch’s forearm. When they arrived at Lake Victoria, Rokoff had sent his companion on the back of one of the trucks to Mwanza, where he knew a doctor who could treat his injuries, no questions asked.
Rokoff had little sympathy. “It was your own stupidity. At least your face is an improvement.”
Paulvitch swore in Russian under his breath. Rokoff was feeling too satisfied to let it bother him. He met Tarzan’s gaze. The killer instinct was still alive on the wild man’s face. Being caught and bound had done nothing but inflame it.
“All my life I’ve searched the world for creatures that live on the fringes of legend. To hunt something that has been hidden from mankind all this time . . . I consider that an honor. And you, the mythical White Ape, the lost heir to a fortune, the wild lord of the jungle . . . you make the deadliest of foes. Finally, an opponent worthy of me. Why did you think I didn’t just kill you when I had the chance? On the riverboat I had you in my sights. Across the savannah I could have shot you a hundred times over. Yet you are here, you live only because I decreed it.” Rokoff spoke faster, his pitch rising with passion. “You live only because I am the better hunter, only because I wanted you to drag yourself here to my territory for our final face-off. You outsmarted me in the jungle, I’ll give you that. I hunted you for a long time and the jungle nearly killed me.”
Rokoff leaned against a post and lit a cigarette. The smoke agitated the animals. He deliberately blew it across Tarzan’s face.
“I’d heard the rumors of the White Ape. Like others, I assumed it was a rare albino. But I could not find it. Then I heard a French soldier, who was presumed dead, had stumbled from the jungle claiming that the White Ape was not only real but he was also the nephew of Lord Greystoke, missing after all these years.
“Of course Lord Greystoke was not happy about this, not happy at all. He had no intention of relinquishing the estate, so he set about discrediting your friend, Paul D’Arnot. If D’Arnot’s claims proved to be true . . . then you were not to live.”
At the mention of D’Arnot’s name, Tarzan stopped struggling. Rokoff blew more smoke across Tarzan, enjoying the moment.
“More importantly, Lord Greystoke needed to see if there was any truth in the Frenchman’s ramblings so he hired me to follow him to find out. D’Arnot was driven back to the jungle, hounded by the media who claimed he was only after Greystoke’s riches. At least that was the story reported by the media. You see, I knew D’Arnot had discovered the truth. He was a soldier after all, and had co
nnections in military circles. He also discovered that Greystoke had hired me to track and kill the upstart heir to the estate. That’s the real reason D’Arnot fled. To warn you that your own family was out to kill you. To warn you that I was coming.”
Rokoff let the statement linger. He was not sure how much of this was getting through to the wild man. He suspected that Tarzan understood a lot more than he was able to vocalize.
“So I set off on D’Arnot’s trail. For weeks I followed him before I realized he was leading me in circles. He was far more astute than I gave him credit for. He knew I was pursuing him. Time was running out, I could not stay in the jungle forever so I confronted D’Arnot to find out where you lived.”
“You kill D’Arnot,” Tarzan stated flatly.
Rokoff barked a harsh laugh. “Not at first. Initially I applied certain techniques to induce pain. Techniques that get most men’s tongues wagging, but not his. Your friend endured unbelievable agony to protect you. There is no sport in torture, and I took no pleasure from it so I put a bullet in him to end his suffering and you fell back into legend. At least until your friends decided to contact the Greystokes and tell them they’d found you.”
Rokoff sucked the cigarette in one long inhalation, then stubbed it out on the post, tossing the butt in the dirt.
“So once more the Greystokes called me. For me it was a matter of professional courtesy to finish what I’d started. I have a reputation to uphold after all. Okeke’s job to get your little furry friend here,” he gave Karnath’s cage a kick, “was nothing more than serendipitous timing; the perfect bait to lure you to my turf. After all, I had no desire to let you hide in the jungle again.”
“Rokoff kill Tarzan?”
Rokoff smiled and nodded. “Rokoff capture Tarzan; Rokoff kill Tarzan. Of course, I’ll only do that after I prove to the Greystokes that you really do exist. I think they would prefer to see your execution live. As soon as Okeke sells your little pal I will set up the video link and Tarzan will die.”
