The Eye of the Elephant

by Mark James Owens

  "This ban is troublesome," the dealer complains. "For now it has made ivory too cheap. We survive by selling to dealers in countries still trading." He refers, of course, to South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique, Malawi, Angola, and Zambia, which refuse to observe the moratorium. "But we hope this will not last. Countries will vote again soon. So we are shooting elephants and burying ivories, waiting for America, Europe, and Japan to refuse this foolish ban." He leans against the Mog, his hands in his pockets.

  "What if all countries stop trading ivory?" I ask.

  "Ah, but then there will be no market at all and my business will be finished. I will have to go farming. Come, Big Man. Let us do some business. What you want and how much?"

  "Right. Let's see some of your goods." Gary Simutendu spells his name for me and tells me how to get to his house. I promise to stop by in a day or two. Instead, I head straight for Bornface Mulenga, the warden. He tells me Simutendu is no longer dealing, that I should just forget what he said. Instead, I fly to Lusaka to talk to Paul Russell and Norbert Mumba at the Anticorruption Commission. Months later they will break up several dozen illegal ivory-processing factories in Lusaka and indict a Chinese diplomat and three senior administrative officers in the Department of National Parks for smuggling ivory to Swaziland and China.

  Simutendu, drunk as he was, told me all I need to know about how to save the elephants of Luangwa: it will be impossible without a total, long-term, worldwide ban on trading ivory and other elephant parts. We will do everything we can to convince Zambia and other nations to join the ban, but until they do it will be up to us to get rid of poachers like Chikilinti.

  One of our newly recruited agents is an ex-poacher who has hunted with Chikilinti many times. Several days after my encoun ter with Gary Simutendu, we set up this informant with money for beer, four rounds of shotgun ammunition, and the story that he has been jumped by scouts while on his way into the park to poach. We send him to Mpika. Finding Chikilinti at a bar in Tazara, he buys him beer after beer until he is drunk. Then he slips away to the warden's office, asking that he send scouts to arrest the poacher. Two scouts hurry to Chikilinti—and warn him that he is about to be apprehended. Immediately he melts into the crowded street, and we have lost our best chance at nailing the godfather of all poachers.

  Perched in our canvas chairs high above the murmuring Lubonga, we watch the thunderheads tumbling and growling in the bruised sky above the stony rubble of the riverbed. The butter-colored light of the setting sun comes and goes between the clouds, bringing out the brilliant green of the young grasses springing up in the sandbars along the floodplain. The puku are sprinkled like flakes of red cinnamon through the grasses, and now and then a flock of snow-white egrets or a yellow-billed stork soars past, flowing with the river course.

  The color seeps from the sky, and dusk settles over the riverbed community. A flock of guinea fowl rails plaintively to our right; a fish jumps in the pool below our feet, and the puku and waterbuck take tentative steps toward the river for a drink. Pennant-winged nightjars, wispy phantoms of the twilight, trill as they sail above and around us, so close that their wings almost touch our faces. The darkness deepens, and the soft forms of the antelope slowly dissolve into the gray stones across the water.

  An elephant's life is worth about ten dollars.

  We can talk of nothing else. So mostly we don't talk. There is a time to quit, and this is it. We must give up; giving up is survival. Delia leans her head back, looking up at the sky, and when she speaks her voice is far away and very tired. "I can't remember when we last looked for shooting stars. Let's go home for a rest," she pleads. And I agree, it's time to get away for a while.

  Several days later, leaving the guys in charge of Marula-Puku, we drive to Lusaka. Two hours before our flight to the States, we get a radio message from Marula-Puku: gunshots have been heard all around. Poachers are killing elephants within a few hundred yards of camp. The director of National Parks agrees to send paramilitary scouts to protect the camp while we are away.

  In Atlanta, only two weeks after arriving, I take an urgent phone call from Marie Hill in Mpika. Late last night, she tells me, the home of another 'of our informants was raked with AK fire; some nights before that, still others were beaten; and Mathews Phiri, a trusted scout whom we brought from Livingstone in southern Zambia to work undercover in Mpika, is sick in the hospital after being poisoned. We tell Marie to have Musakanya call in all the undercover agents until we get back.

  We needed to get away, but it seems eight thousand miles is not far enough.

  A few days later Delia and I are in a lounge at Atlanta's Hart-field Airport, waiting for a flight to Charlottesville, Virginia. Returning to our table with her drink, Delia staggers and clutches her chest. Before I can jump up to help her she collapses into her chair, spilling her drink over the table, her face twisted in pain, her breathing ragged and shallow. I run from the lounge to the boarding gate nearby, and the attendants call for the airport's paramedic team. Within two minutes they are setting up a portable electrocardiogram machine in the lounge and stabilizing Delia so that we can get her to a specialist.

  In the cardiologist's office the doctor warns her: "Your body is trying to tell you something. I can prescribe some drugs—beta blockers—but the main thing is that you're going to have to change your lifestyle in order to minimize stress." Delia looks out the window and laughs.

  17. The Eye of the Storm

  MARK

  The storm clouds come rolling in, and night is down upon us with a poison wind ... We have all but lost.

  — JIM BARNES

  "ENCOUNTERED A GROUP of one hundred plus poachers moving down Mwaleshi. Group had twelve weapons including automatic military rifles. Surrounded our porters, but released them later. Appealed to Chanjuzi [scouts] for help but they were incapable of raising more than one weapon with four rounds and no mealie-meal. Please assist with antipoaching. As Mulandashi River now unsafe for walks must fly with you to find alternative areas so won't have to cancel rest of safari season..."

  The radio crackles with this urgent telex message from Iain MacDonald. Months earlier he set up a reed and thatch camp on a lagoon near the Mulandashi-Luangwa confluence and organized photographic walking safaris, the first full-time tour operation in North Luangwa. We are anxious for him to succeed.

  After three weeks in the United States we are back at Marula-Puku. In spite of our talk about quitting, we have never seriously considered it. We cannot abandon the park and its elephants. The problem with Delia's heart is a faulty valve, its performance made more inefficient by stress; but as long as poachers are attacking the park and game scouts refuse to work, our lives will never be peaceful. So we have come back armed with beta blockers and a new determination.

  At the airstrip on the night of Iain's message, Kasokola, two guards, and I set out our milk-tin flare pots. We have just lit the last one when a big thunderhead begins grumbling southwest off the airstrip, between us and Chinchendu Hill. Kasokola and I wait in the plane for forty-five minutes, hoping the storm will move on, but it just sits there. After another fifteen minutes, the thunder and lightning start to fade and I decide to take off.

  I taxi to the west end of the strip, run my power checks, take a last look at the sky—and decide to wait again. I can see the black cancroid mass of a broader storm system moving in with the thunderhead. Although the sky to the north is generally clear, I don't want to take off and then not be able to see the horizon properly, especially if the storm moves north again. My plane's vacuum pump is broken, so the artificial horizon and gyrocompass are useless. My radar altimeter, which would give my exact height above ground, doesn't work either; and with the changing barometric pressure associated with the storm, my pressure altimeter will be very unreliable. Some days ago I managed at last to fix my airspeed indicator: Cedric, a crafty mouse who was living in the plane, had chewed through the line from the Pitot head to the pressure canister under the instrument pa
nel.

  It is still almost pitch black, but I think I see dawn growing under the sleepy eyelid of the eastern sky. "Do you see it, Kasokola?" Yes, he thinks he does. I'm going for it. If we wait any longer we will have a hard time spotting Chikilinti's fires after daybreak. For this is Chikilinti, all right; I know by now that any poaching group this large will have been organized by him.

  Almost as soon as Zulu Sierra's wheels leave the ground, I'm sure I have made a mistake. There is no sign of dawn and I can barely make out the horizon to the east. All other corners of the sky are pitch black. If the storm envelops us, I will be forced to fly on instruments, and the ones I need most are not working. I am flying out of the realm of reasonable risk and into the realm of stupidity. As we pass over camp I turn the plane around, intending to get back on the ground as quickly as possible. The new beacon beams at the east end of the strip, but the west end has already been swallowed up by dark clouds and heavy rain. The downpour has drowned six of the nine flares, leaving the south side of the runway in total darkness and only three flares and the beacon on the north side.

  "Mark, are you there?" Delia is calling over the radio. "It's really blowing hard down here. Do you read me?"

  "Roger, Boo, it looks a little nasty to the south, so I'm coming down right now. Over."

  But for some reason Delia cannot hear my transmission. "Mark! Do you read me? Do you read me, Mark?"

  "Roger, I am coming down right away."

  "Mark, I repeat, there's a bad storm moving in. Do you read me?"

  "No time to talk now, love. I'll see you when I get down."

  "Mark, I cannot read you. Are you okay? Answer me, please ... Oh God..."

  A giant fist of wind slams into the plane, flipping it on its right side. Rolling the controls to the left, I try to steady it. Maybe I should buzz camp, to let Delia know I haven't gone down. No time. Two, maybe three, minutes is all I have to get back on the ground before the entire strip is buried in cloud and rain. I shove the control wheel forward, diving toward the runway. At the same time I reach behind my head to turn up the red instrument panel light so I can see the altimeter unwind. Whatever else, I must not go below 2300 hundred feet. If I do, we're dead; for I have previously calculated the airstrip's elevation at 2296—where soft sky turns to hard ground.

  Descending through 2900 feet, I turn on my landing light. But the rain pitches the beam back at my face, a white sheet that totally blinds me. I quickly switch off the light and steepen my dive for the friendly, mesmerizing beacon, pulsing like a firefly at the end of the strip.

  Then the spluttering flares and the beacon are gone. The storm is shouldering its way up the airstrip toward me. Pulling the nose of the plane up a bit, I slow our rate of descent while trying to find the beacon or flare-path. I glance at my altimeter again. Its white needle is nearly touching 2300! My God, we're almost on the ground! But where is it? I can't see a thing.

  Rain and hail hammer the fuselage like buckshot, and my windshield is black. I fumble for the landing light switch. Suddenly the beacon reappears out of a paunch of cloud, beaming cheerily atop its twelve-foot pole—in front of my right wing. I throw the control wheel over, lifting the wing, and pull it back to bring us out of the dive. With my finger I stab the switch. The powerful beam of light cuts through the darkness.

  And there is a tree ... right in front of me ... not fifty yards away. We are below its crown, within ten feet of the ground. Without a lighted flare path I have misjudged not only our height but also our alignment with the airstrip. We are landing crabwise at about a thirty-degree angle to the strip. Traveling at a speed of seventy knots, in exactly 1.27 seconds we are going to hit the tree.

  I ease the controls back and shove the throttle forward. The engine roars and the plane surges, as if someone has booted her in the backside saying, "Come on, baby; now is the time to show us you can fly." She points her nose bravely at the storm, and as she claws her way up, her landing light lifts. The tree disappears from view.

  I grit my teeth, listening to the tearing sound as some part of the plane rips through the tree. But we are still flying. Later I will find shrubbery caught in the left main wheel, and green stains on the undercarriage.

  Now I can see nothing, and Zulu Sierra is bobbing and jerking. Wrestling with the control wheel, I watch the turn and slip indicator, trying to keep its miniature wings level so that we won't spin out and crash. This instrument was never meant for flying blind, but it's all I've got. "Keep climbing! And don't overcontrol! Get away from the ground!" my mind shouts at me.

  The racket of the rain drumming on the skin of the plane becomes a dull roar. Through the windows all I can see is the blackest black I've ever seen: no flares, no beacons, no moon or stars. But minutes earlier the sky to the north was clear. Careful not to overcontrol and spin out, I push right rudder, ease on a little bank, and begin a very gradual northward turn from my southwest heading.

  For several minutes I fly through air like lumpy ink, feeling my way out of the black belly of the storm. Finally I see a faint amber glow in the windshield—the beacon on the airstrip. Damn! I'm diving into the ground again! No ... I force myself to believe my altimeter. It shows 4000 feet and climbing. Anyway, flying north, the light should be behind us. Looking around, I see the beacon through the right rear window. It is reflecting in the windshield. We have flown out of the storm. A string of yellow flares is growing along each side of the airstrip. The guys, God bless them, are busy trying to get us home.

  I circle in the clear air for several minutes while the storm drenches the runway and moves on. Then I turn back and land on the soggy strip, the plane's main wheels spraying the underside of its wings with mud and water. I taxi Zulu Sierra to her boma, switch off, and slide from my seat. As the guys tie her down and pick up the flares, I stand alone on the brow of the hill, sucking in the sweet, wet air, listening to the last grumbles of the dying storm. I've had enough; finding Chikilinti can wait for better weather. Before heading down to camp, I give each of the guards a pat on the back and a fat bonus.

  Delia is sitting on the bed of our stone and thatch cottage, crying in the dark. I switch on the solar light and try to hold her. But she pushes me away.

  "Mark, I thought you were dead! I actually thought you were dead! There were no trucks here and my radio wasn't working, so there was nothing I could do about it. And this happens night after night! Do you know how that feels? Do you care?"

  Turning to the window, I part the curtains and watch the heavy clouds turn silver above the rising sun. "I'm sorry, Boo. I just don't know what else to do. You know my flying is the only thing standing between the poachers and the elephants."

  "Yes, but I'm not sure this is worth dying for anymore. If your dying would change anything, then maybe it would be. But it won't. And I don't want you to die for nothing! I want to stop the poaching as much as you do, but you've crossed over the line, and I can't go on like this. I just can't. I know you can't change; you're doing what you believe is right, and I respect you for that. You'll keep after the poachers until you either drive them out or fly into the ground trying. But I cannot sit here night after night, day after day, waiting to see if you make it back, knowing that someday you won't, waiting for that moment."

  I look at Delia sitting on our bed, her face swollen from crying, her eyes shut tight. Taking her in my arms again, I try to squeeze the poison out of her. But there is this thing between us now, this difference in how much risk we should take to rid the valley of poachers. I can no longer get as close to her. She is slipping away from me.

  "And so, I am leaving," she says, shoving me off again. And I am suddenly more afraid than I was of the storm.

  "Look, Boo, we can work this out...," I try again.

  "No," she interrupts. "I'm going to the Luangwa River to build a little camp of my own, a place where I can radio track Bouncer and his pride; do something more constructive than sit around waiting for you to kill yourself."

  "That's fine," I
say firmly. "But it's a long way from here to the Luangwa. Your portable radio won't reach camp from there, and you won't have anyone to drive you out if something goes wrong. What happens if poachers attack your camp? Or if you are bitten by a snake, get malaria, or sleeping sickness? There won't be anyone to treat you or get you out."

  "Don't talk to me about risks! It won't be half as risky as flying through treetops at night with people shooting at you, or taking off in a thunderstorm without any instruments."

  "Okay, I know, but those are necessary and..."

  "So are the risks I'll be taking!" she counters. "I have to find a life of my own, so that if something happens to you I'll have some reason for living. Can you understand that?"

  Looking at her face, drawn and haggard under the harsh glare from the light over the bed, I can see her aging before my eyes. I cannot remember the last time we laughed, really laughed, together.

  "I understand, Boo. Do it if you have to." I have to let her go now, or lose her forever.

  The next morning I take off again, to fly a patrol over the northern sector of the park. When I get back to camp, one of our trucks is gone and the kitchen and the office are closed up. Delia has already packed and gone. As I head down the footpath through camp, Marula-Puku seems hollow, empty of spirit, deserted. That night as I get into bed, I discover her note propped against my pillow.

  Dear Mark,

  I love you. Maybe if we survive this, we can start over.

  Love, Delia

  The next morning I'm off on a three-hour flight to Lusaka, to have our airplane inspected. Halfway through the journey a strange sickness comes over me: I am feverish; my arms are suddenly as heavy as lead; and my heart is pounding. I'm not fit to fly and should land, but there is no serviceable airstrip much closer than Lusaka. I take Zulu Sierra down to a thousand feet above ground, so that I can make a quick forced landing if I begin to black out.