Safari

by Tony Park

11

  Shane had seen little of Michelle Parker since their trip to Livingstone and that was just fine by him. He’d recognised the early signs of attraction to her and was embarrassed by how easily she had opened a window onto his private concerns about himself. While he had no idea if she had any other interest in him, it was against his personal code – and common sense – to entertain feelings for his employer’s girlfriend.

  Michelle had lost contact with the pack of dogs that had moved from the north of Hwange into the Matetsi Safari Area, and had returned to her normal base in the south-east. Fletcher had invented a couple of excuses – or so it had seemed to Shane – to visit her in between client bookings.

  ‘Hell, this place is looking lekker now,’ Dougal said between sips of tea.

  Shane and the pilot sat at a wrought-iron table in the garden of the manager’s house, though Dougal had been gesturing to the main lodge. A quartet of African workers was busy rethatching the building’s roof, while a new gardener raked a truckload of gravel across the driveway. The lodge had been painted, inside and out, the clean smell of it still strong. ‘Yep, it’s in good shape,’ Shane agreed. He explained that Fletcher had been reinvesting a sizeable proportion of his newfound wealth in the property, and on the anti-poaching patrol’s equipment.

  ‘I just wonder how he’s doing so well while other hunters are struggling,’ Dougal mused.

  ‘PR.’ Shane had finished his tea and was cleaning his SLR, the pieces spread out in a neat row on the garden table. He and Wise had returned from a five-day patrol the previous afternoon, and Shane had spent the morning checking and repacking his gear. ‘Word’s getting around that Isilwane Lodge is in the front line of Zimbabwe’s war on poaching. Rich Yanks and Euros like to be on the fringe of the action, see the battle up close, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, he hasn’t killed a poacher for weeks, so I hope the clients don’t get bored and stop coming.’ Dougal laughed at his own joke.

  Business – if that’s what it could be called – had been quiet for Shane, Wise, Caesar and Charles. To keep them busy, Shane had taken his men on sweeps around the north and eastern borders of the concession, looking for snares set by subsistence poachers. The work was mundane but necessary. He explained to Dougal that much of this petty theft was being done by ‘new farmers’ – veterans of the country’s liberation war and, more commonly, faithful members of the ruling party who had taken over the former white-owned farms on the border of the hunting concession. ‘They can’t feed themselves because they’ve let the farms go to ruin, so they poach game from the fringes of the national park, or fish illegally in the rivers.’

  ‘Perhaps a few shots over their heads might clear them off.’

  Shane shook his head and started reassembling his rifle. ‘Fletcher’s not dumb. He doesn’t want to pick a fight with the government’s cronies.’ Shane slid the gas piston, spring and plug home, cocked the empty weapon and raised it to his shoulder. He took aim at a tree. ‘In the meantime we keep looking for the gang that killed the rhino. They’ve slotted a few elephant in the park lately. That’s what Wise and I were doing the last few days, trying to get a fix on them, but so far,’ he pulled the trigger and it clicked on the empty chamber, ‘hapana.’

  ‘Nothing, hey. You’re starting to talk like a Zimbo again, shamwari,’ Dougal said, slurping his tea. ‘Maybe we should go for a flight, see if we can pick up anything from the air?’

  ‘Needle in a haystack’ didn’t do the difficulty of the task justice. Fletcher had imported some drums of aviation gas and a pump from Botswana, specifically so that Dougal had extra fuel on tap if he had the time to assist with the anti-poaching operations, though so far they hadn’t had enough of a lead to justify using the fuel. Fletcher had left on safari with a trio of the rich American dentist’s national guard buddies from Chicago. Doctor Chuck Hamley the Third had been the best thing to happen to Isilwane for decades.

  Charles Ndlovu announced his arrival with the hacking cough that now punctuated most of his sentences. ‘News, boss,’ he said to Shane. ‘Parks and wildlife at Matetsi just called. A callsign from Hwange has advised they are crossing into the safari area in pursuit of a gang of up to nine poachers. They think it may be the same Zambians that killed the rhino, with some extra help. They have asked for our assistance.’

  Shane carried his rifle into the manager’s house, followed by Dougal. Charles read out the coordinates of the patrol’s location and Shane marked it on the clear plastic overlaying the map on the wall of the bedroom that served as their operations room. The radio hissed static in the background. ‘They’re close to the Botswana border,’ Shane said. ‘How many guys in the national parks callsign, Charles?’

  ‘Three. Lovemore, Noah and Christopher,’ Charles said. It was his old patrol. ‘They say the poachers’ spoor is very fresh, but they are worried they will not catch them before they cross the border.’

  ‘With three men against nine, if I was Lovemore I’d be more worried if I did catch them.’

  Dougal studied the map. ‘The patrol’s kilometres from the nearest roadway, Shane. You’ll never get to the border to head them off in time.’

  Shane smiled and clapped Dougal on the shoulder. ‘Not by vehicle, we won’t, China.’

  ‘You ouns are crazy, you know?’ Dougal said into the microphone. Shane heard the tinny voice in his headphones and laughed. He looked across at Wise, smiled and gave him a thumbs-up. The African tried to grin.

  Shane leaned over the back of the Cessna front passenger seat and stabbed the map with his finger. Dougal glanced down. ‘There’s the border. Stay high, Dougal, we don’t want to tip them off.’

  ‘Roger,’ Dougal said.

  Shane saw the flare of sunlight reflected off something man-made. He stuck his head out of the gaping hole where they had removed the Cessna’s rear side door prior to takeoff. The slipstream tore at his thick dark hair as he looked down. ‘Vehicle,’ he said. ‘A bakkie, just across the border.’ He sat back in his seat and rechecked the map. ‘That’ll be their pick-up.’

  Shane radioed Charles again with the new information and asked for a sitrep from the national parks callsign. Charles informed him that Lovemore and his men were less than three kilometres from the border, and closing on the poachers, who were somewhere between the rangers and the dirt track that marked the international boundary.

  ‘Wise!’ Shane yelled. ‘Are you okay?’ Wise looked up and nodded. Shane admired him at that moment. The boy had only just completed his ninth jump. As a parachutist he was still a novice, but he had agreed without hesitation to accompany Shane.

  Charles had radioed Fletcher, who, predictably, was heading as fast as he could towards the scene of the possible showdown. He had, under Shane’s orders, stressed and restressed the estimated size of the poaching gang, and conveyed a formal recommendation from Shane that Fletcher’s hunting clients be kept well away from the area. Orbiting over the border, Shane hoped his boss and the foreigners didn’t stumble into a fire fight.

  ‘Shane, up ahead,’ Dougal said.

  Shane leaned into the front of the cockpit again and Dougal pointed to a grassy vlei. Shane checked his topographical map and saw a prominent ridge line rising up from the left of the clearing. The rise, which was heavily treed, flanked the vlei. That was where they would position themselves. If the poachers kept to their straight course for the border, they would cross the open plain. For now, it would make an excellent drop zone. ‘Perfect. Circle around, Dougal.’

  It was madness – jumping without a safety crew, the nearest hospital more than a hundred kilometres away. His ground support, in the form of Caesar in a Land Rover, was still two hours’ walk away. However, he wouldn’t have been anywhere else in the world right then. Shane was jumping with the bare minimum of equipment. His chest webbing was crammed with six magazines of twenty rounds each, his hand-held radio and three wound dressings. He carried three water bottles on his belt and his K-Bar. Stuffed in the bulging pocket
s of his camouflage tunic and cargo pants were matches, a map, a GPS, a compass and enough basic rations to last a night – although he planned on being back at Isilwane for sundowners. He had slung his SLR over his right shoulder, barrel pointing down, before strapping on his brand-new free-fall parachute rig. Two chutes had arrived from Australia while he was out on his last patrol – a donation from an ex-army friend who now ran a civilian parachute training school. He’d been intrigued by Shane’s request to supply parachutes to help aid in the fight to save Africa’s wildlife. Shane had envisaged an operation such as this, but not so soon, and with so little preparation or planning.

  He knelt on the floor of the aircraft and checked Wise’s parachute and gear, making sure the AK 47 was firmly seated under the parachute harness straps. He made the younger man talk through his flight drills, and the actions he would take if his main canopy malfunctioned and he had to use his reserve chute.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Shane barked.

  Wise croaked a feeble, ‘Yes.’

  ‘ARE YOU READY?’

  ‘YEBO!’

  Shane felt the Cessna come out of a turn and level off. Dougal looked around and held up crossed fingers. Thirty seconds. Shane motioned for Wise to dangle his legs out of the opening where the doors had been. He held the African’s left hand, steadying him. The fierce slipstream snatched at Wise’s green trousers.

  The last trip of the season and it had been a good one. Soon the rains would come, dispersing the animals, who would no longer be forced to congregate around the meagre water of the pumped pans and the trickling natural springs.

  The whores and bartenders in Livingstone would grow rich from their wages tonight, as soon as the ivory was delivered and paid for, in Botswana. They were nine for this trip – four hunters, the boy, and four bearers who carried the four mighty tusks between them, slung from mopane poles. And such tusks! The one pair weighed at least forty kilograms, the other probably fifty. Where the booty was bound for, Leonard did not know. All he cared about now was getting his men and himself home safe.

  Maybe he was being extra cautious because it was the last trip of the season, but Leonard had the feeling that they were being followed. An earlier foray into Zimbabwe, to kill the rhino, had been a close call – someone had been shooting at a person behind them, but by then they had been safely across the border. The Botswana national parks authorities and their army also mounted patrols, but they used vehicles. Patrolling in a truck might have been easier on the feet of the rangers and soldiers, but they were also simple to avoid, as one only had to listen for the engines. The Zimbabweans might be short of diesel and spare parts, but they were good on their feet – and they shot to kill. Leonard had sent Samuel circling back on the route they had taken, to see if he could spot anyone following them.

  Leonard looked up at the sky. A small aeroplane droned across the clear blue sky, very high, too far up to notice them. He smiled at the four bearers, who trudged past him as he stared at the aircraft. Following them, in reserve, was his brother’s son, just a boy of fourteen, but so very keen. He had boasted that he would take his fill of beer and women that evening too. They would see about that, but for the time being the boy looked as though he had never been happier in his life.

  He raised his rifle at the rustling of some bushes to his left. Samuel emerged, panting. ‘You were right, Leonard. Three men. Parks and wildlife. AK 47s. Moving fast.’

  Leonard scanned the horizon, checking the familiar landmarks. They were still a few kilometres from the border. ‘How far behind us?’

  Samuel sucked greedily on a water bottle, then wiped his mouth. ‘They will catch us, Leonard. Even if we run, with the ivory, we will not make it.’

  Abandoning the tusks was out of the question. They represented close to a year’s wages for the gang. Three rangers, versus four hunters, all with the same weapons. Also, one of the bearers carried a .303 and another had an old shotgun. Six guns against three, and the Zambians would have the element of surprise. ‘We fight them, Samuel. And that is three less of them we will have to evade next year.’

  Samuel licked the last drops of the water from his lips. ‘Leonard, let us hide the ivory, in an anthill. We can come back for it in a week or two.’

  The others had stopped and were listening now. The boy, whose name was Daniel, spoke up. ‘Uncle, give me Samuel’s AK. I will fight.’

  ‘Shit,’ Samuel said. To be shamed by a boy. He would take it out on the whelp later that night – if they lived that long.

  ‘There is a big vlei ahead. You know the one, Samuel?’ Leonard said. Samuel nodded.

  ‘We will wait for them there, where the land rises. We will kill them. And you, young man,’ he said, pointing to Daniel, ‘will have your first rifle, courtesy of these men who would make us poor and hungry.’ The teenager beamed.

  ‘Isilwane, Isilwane, Isilwane, this is national parks callsign Whisky One,’ Lovemore repeated into his radio. There was only static on the other end.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Noah asked, breathing heavily, as he scanned the bush ahead of them.

  ‘Ah, but this radio is buggered. The batteries, I think.’

  ‘Shit,’ Christopher said.

  Lovemore scanned the spoor again. They were so close he could almost smell the Zambians. ‘We know from Charles Ndlovu that Isilwane was trying to deploy a callsign to head the poachers off. We do not need communications to kill. Let us proceed.’

  Christopher looked worried. ‘There are nine of them, Lovemore, you said it yourself.’

  ‘They will not stand and fight. They will run as soon as they see us. Between us and the murungu Castle and his men, they will be caught in a trap.’

  Noah looked at Christopher and shrugged. ‘It is our job, Christopher.’

  As the more experienced parachutist of the two, Shane had decided that Wise should jump first. Shane would follow him and be better able to steer towards where Wise landed, so they would not be separated on the ground.

  He tumbled out of the Cessna a half-second after Wise had pitched forward into the blue nothingness. Wise had taken to parachuting like a bird and Shane noticed the near perfect way the other man arched his body as he plummeted earthwards.

  As soon as he saw Wise’s canopy deploy, Shane pulled the ripcord on his own parachute and felt the jolt as the leg straps cut into his crotch. Wise was steering for the middle of the vlei and Shane followed him in, touching down before all the wind had spilled from the rectangle of panelled fabric over Wise’s head.

  ‘Good work,’ Shane said as he unbuckled his harness. Wise kept watch, kneeling in the grass, looking down the barrel of his unslung AK 47 as Shane hurriedly field-packed the parachutes so that they could carry them. ‘Come, on, let’s move,’ he whispered.

  Shane had taken the time to orientate himself thoroughly with the surrounding countryside as he had hung beneath his parachute. He led Wise to the south-west now, using a game trail ploughed through the shoulder-high adrenaline grass by elephants. Wise dragged a dry-leafed mopane branch behind them to obscure their tracks. Shane doubted, however, that the poachers would be looking for spoor ahead of them. They would be too busy beetling for the border.

  They climbed the ridge line that rimmed the vlei on one side, and from the cover of a termite colony’s earthen mound they had a commanding view of the grassland. Shane called Charles on the radio. ‘Zero Alpha, this is Taipan, radio check, over.’

  Charles replied. The signal was loud and clear, but he explained that he had lost contact with Lovemore’s callsign. First problem of the day, Shane thought to himself. While they waited and silently prayed that the poachers would continue on in a straight line, Shane took out the map and showed Wise exactly where they were. ‘You know which way to head, to get to Caesar and the pick-up Land Rover, if anything happens?’

  Wise nodded.

  ‘No heroics,’ Shane said to him.

  With the benefit of radio communications between Isilwane and the national pa
rks patrol, Shane’s plan had been to guide the rangers as close as possible to the poachers, and provide support if called upon. As a civilian, he had no legal justification for opening fire on the Zambians, unless of course they saw him and fired on him first, in which case he and Wise could act in self-defence. They had hurriedly discussed a couple of ruses they could use to slow the gang down, if it looked as though they would cross the border before the Zimbabweans caught them. They might start shooting, though not at the criminals, in the hope that they went to ground for a few precious minutes. Another idea of Shane’s was to light a campfire, in the hope that the Zambians would alter their course and therefore take longer to reach the border. All that was out the window now.

  Shane called Charles again, hoping that the old man had somehow been able to re-establish communications with his former comrades. He felt a tap on his arm. Shane slowly raised the binoculars to his eyes and focused on the area at which Wise was pointing. They watched the eight men moving, like a line of black ants, four carrying valuable white crumbs between them. Shane noticed a ninth figure, shorter than the others and trailing behind. Only a kid. He shook his head. The lead poacher gestured with his hands and the gang followed him off to the right, to the north, up out of the long grass onto the high ground on the other side of the vlei. The head man stopped his followers at various points of cover and concealment – a fallen log, an anthill similar to the one Shane and Wise hid behind, a stout leadwood. Shane and Wise faced the poachers across the open expanse of grass.

  ‘Ambush,’ Shane whispered. ‘Shit.’ He crawled closer to Wise and whispered the new plan, so close his lips almost brushed the other man’s ear. It was so simple, it was stupid.

  Lovemore walked with a permanent stoop, his eyes fixed on the spoor in front of him. ‘Hurry, hurry,’ he chivvied the other two.

  Noah tightened his grip on his rifle, his palms damp with sweat. Christopher closed up to his friend. None of them had killed a man before.