White Bone

by Ridley Pearson

  68

  Brantingham carried a long rifle slung over his shoulder and a pistol in a belt holster, with an army canteen, a sat phone and a radio clipped to the opposite side. He handed Knox sunscreen and a canteen; told him to be liberal with the first, and conservative with the other.

  “Did you see them?”

  “I saw one. The truck?” As they’d landed, Knox had seen a 4x4 out his window. No sign of a person.

  “Two. Stay with me.” The man was an extraordinarily fast walker. Knox, with his longer strides, could barely keep up.

  They reached the two vehicles. Finding both abandoned and one scavenged, they hurried on, hiking for forty minutes in silence toward the Porini Camp.

  Throughout their journey, Brantingham never consulted a map or a compass.

  When they arrived, they found two preyed-upon carcasses, their brutalized condition not visible from the plane. One wore nothing but plaid boxer shorts.

  What remained of the two dead men around a black smudge of a campfire caused Knox to swear mightily, a long string of expletives. The bodies—both African men—were swollen from the sun, their veins bulging grotesquely. They’d been scavenged, with a good deal of flesh left on the bone. It was a sight and a smell that Knox knew would linger for a long time. No way to die, he thought.

  “Jackals and hyenas,” Brantingham said, studying the tracks around the bodies. He stuck a stick in the only pot and stirred.

  “Their veins,” Knox said.

  “They poisoned themselves, I reckon. Happens more often than it should. Usually it’s the kids. A bit surprising in men this age. They should have known better.” He spoke in a professional but strangely unsympathetic way, and continued to walk the area, head down. “Odd to see nothing more than a single machete. I’d like to know where they dragged his clothes off to. A rucksack, too, I should think. Usually, it’s no more than a few meters away.”

  He stopped and kneeled. Backed away from the fire circle, head down. His mood had intensified. Moving faster now, he circled in the opposite direction from Knox.

  “What?” Knox asked, moving toward him.

  “Circle around, man. KGA will need to investigate.” Concern had filled his voice. “Look: do me a favor. Search the area. Find the clothes, a rifle. Something.” He pointed into the bush beyond the two corpses.

  “Something was dragged here,” Knox said.

  Brantingham stuck a stick in the sand where he’d been standing and joined Knox. The man kneeled and touched a few spots, the sand crumbling easily.

  “What do you think?” Knox said.

  Brantingham had tuned Knox out. The man was clearly in his element. He shuffled away from the camp in a squat, following the disturbed ground. Then he stopped and turned, still on his haunches, looking back at the camp, where a few daring vultures had returned to feed. Knox looked away.

  Brantingham stood and slapped his palms together. “Stay where you are, please, John,” he chided. “I don’t want to disturb it.”

  Knox felt a bubble in his throat. “Tell me they didn’t have a hostage,” Knox said. “Tell me we’re not going to find a third body.”

  “Mother of Christ,” Brantingham groaned. He stopped back toward the upright stick. “See my prints?”

  “Yes.”

  “Follow them. Walk in them if possible.”

  Moving fast, but precisely, Knox reached a series of circles Brantingham had drawn. Each one contained a bootprint. It took Knox a moment to spot the obvious. “Small.”

  “Yes.”

  “Too small for either of them. Small, as in a woman’s boots.”

  “There are plenty of small men.”

  “These guys were wearing sandals,” Knox said. “Their prints are all over the place.”

  “See this . . .” Brantingham used the same stick to point to an impression in the sand. “Here and back there as well. That’s a woman’s bare breast.”

  “We don’t know that. You can’t possibly know that!”

  “She’s topless and wearing boots.”

  “That’s not true.” Knox felt his gut clench. He squatted, trying to catch his breath and quiet the dizziness.

  “She wasn’t dragged. She crawled out of camp. Crawled backward.”

  “Alive,” Knox gasped.

  “If she ate whatever they did, probably not for long.”

  Knox felt his throat constrict. Brantingham circled the campfire. Knox remained squatting, unable to move.

  “She killed them,” Knox proposed, wondering on the effect it would have on her. He knew well the depression and torment that came from such an act, even if delivered in self-defense.

  “Found them, more likely. Understood not to share the soup if she’s lucky. Took their clothes. A rucksack . . . This will require a few minutes,” Brantingham said. “I need your eyes.”

  Knox rose and followed along robotically as Brantingham walked a long, ever-expanding spiral out from the camp, following the line of small bootprints.

  “She’s walking fairly well,” Brantingham said encouragingly. “Sore left leg, but no staggering. No stopping. No blood. It’s all good, John.”

  The boot tracks joined elephant tracks fifteen meters later.

  “You’re good at this,” Knox said, feeling stupid for saying so.

  Brantingham took the compliment indifferently. He wasn’t talking at the moment.

  They walked for several more minutes, this time following the wide swath of elephant tracks. At last, Brantingham raised his binoculars, trained them in the direction of the plane. “We’re what, three or four klicks from our lost collar signal? I think we should trek it. Is that good with you? You can wait by the plane, if not. The point being, I may not find as good a place to land.”

  “I’m good,” Knox said.

  “She’s alone, John. No other prints. No evidence of anyone else. It would appear she got lucky. They likely denied their hostage food, and they both died for it. The only curious thing—contradictory evidence, you could say—was the melted mobile.”

  “I saw that, too.”

  “I don’t understand it, I admit.”

  “She’s on foot. They’re dead. There were no ropes or ties suggesting she’d cut herself free.”

  “I noticed that as well. She’s only a matter of hours ahead. The state of the bodies tells us as much.” Brantingham slipped the radio off his belt and called into his agency’s dispatch. The KGA would be put on notice. Brantingham’s Larger Than Life rangers were mobilized. “They’re two hours out,” the man said. “I suggest we don’t wait.”

  “That’s not an option.”

  69

  It wasn’t the axle, but the wheel and rim that Koigi’s vehicle lost as the driver set off to shortcut the intersection of the three dirt tracks.

  The earth caved in beneath the left tire; a blowout. Koigi radioed one of his trucks forward, leaving the last of the three in a position to ambush if Guuleed ran north unexpectedly.

  It took fifteen minutes to change the wheel, fifteen minutes to discover it wasn’t just the bent rim, that the truck wasn’t going to drive. By the time their truck arrived, delayed by the passing of Guuleed’s convoy several hundred meters to the west, Koigi’s plan had gone from the shit heap to the crapper. He stomped impatiently, awaiting the truck, and piled his men in quickly once it arrived.

  Guuleed was ahead of him.

  “So we play catch-up now! Same as always! Who cares?” He wanted his men staying positive. “Call back and bring them along.”

  To try to catch Guuleed from behind would risk being caught in an ambush. He needed a plan. He leaned over to his navigator. “We need a shortcut across the bush.” The track matching Guuleed’s coordinates eventually died in the middle of a vast nothingness.

  “Yes, boss.”

  Complicating matters furthe
r, Koigi had a love of the mountainous north, had never warmed to the grasslands of the south. He’d established camps all over Kenya in the past fifteen years, had a love of Maasai but not the arid land they often inhabited. From his first childhood trip, a church service trip for Kibera children, the mountains had owned him—the changeable weather, the cool, and forests so thick they blotted out the sun.

  “May I suggest . . . ?” his navigator inquired.

  “Speak!”

  “If the Somali is heading to Snaggle Tooth, and if Larger Than Life won’t supply us with the coordinates, perhaps your lady friend, the policewoman, could help?”

  The man’s mention of Inspector Kanika Alkinyi hushed the car. She was the great unspoken. No one talked of Koigi’s interests outside of the cause. The wind whipped, making them numb.

  “She could find out for us, eh? That might tip the scales, boss. I map us a route along here.” He traced his wide finger along a line of dashes. “There are only two ways to go. Both terminate in the bush. But look here.” His finger found and followed a dry creek bed—all such creeks were seasonal, active only during the monsoon—to a vast fan of dry swamp some distance south. “This splits the two tracks right down the middle, boss. We take the creek bed, and they never see us coming. If your friend can get us the coordinates, then we also know where they’re heading.”

  Koigi thought back to the message involving the wounded gazelle. He weighed this against Guuleed’s brazen entrance into Larger Than Life territory, a place where the odds were stacked against him and his men.

  Perhaps, he thought, Guuleed is after Snaggle Tooth; perhaps, Grace Chu, the wounded gazelle.

  He lit up the satellite phone and dialed, his men looking on.

  70

  Apprehensive, Knox trailed a few feet behind Brantingham as they followed the disturbed sand and earth left in the wake of the five elephants. The trail looked as if it had been made by a tractor, dragging a heavy implement. Alongside, the occasional small bootprint appeared.

  “You see this?” Brantingham said. “Small strides. Walking slowly. She’s following the ellies at their pace. Smart girl. She knows they will head to water. Knows the safari guides will be looking for such sightings.”

  “Smart girl,” Knox echoed. In contrast to Grace’s steady tracks, he was having trouble walking, overcome by the discovery of the campsite.

  Fifteen minutes later Brantingham picked up his pace. Knox saw why. A scrap of fabric, hanging from a bush. They reached the marker and saw what turned out to be a backpack and a pile of clothes. The items Brantingham had theorized about.

  “Well, sir,” Brantingham said. “I’d never have expected this. She stripped the man down to his shorts. You see?”

  “Not really.”

  “The shirt. A pair of trousers beneath the pack. I’ll wager another set of clothing’s inside. Shall we take a look?”

  “Sure.” Knox forced the word out. He could barely speak, was struggling to understand what any of it meant. Grace wouldn’t abandon warmth, or the storage offered by the pack. His gut wrenched as reality sank in. “What’s it mean? Why leave it?”

  “That is the question.” Brantingham had taken photographs at the campfire. Now he studied the back of his camera. Took several shots of the clothing and backpack before approaching the bag.

  Knox stayed with him as Brantingham carefully emptied the backpack, revealing a second set of filthy clothes and little else. “Well, there you have it.”

  “Have what, exactly?” Knox asked.

  “Smart, as we’ve said. Bush smart. She understood the ellies could smell her. Brilliant! They’d kept her at a distance, you see. A distance she wanted to close.”

  They walked another thirty minutes. Knox felt the desolation of the landscape, the exposure and isolation. The plane was miles behind them now. Brantingham was in his element. Knox barely existed to him.

  “Christ to hell!” Brantingham cursed. The words cut sharply into Knox’s thoughts. Beside him, Brantingham went down on one knee. He took a photograph, then used the arm of his sunglasses to hook and capture a brass shell from the sand. “Five-four-five by thirty-nine millimeter. Kalashnikov seventy-four. Single shot . . .” He dropped the shell into a leg pocket of his cargo pants and began taking additional photographs. “Kneeling shot. Close range. For fuck’s sake, she shot him!”

  “Your men told her about the collar,” Knox suggested. “She saw a way out. She took it.”

  “They scattered here. See?” Knox nodded. The elephant tracks fanned out in several directions. “I expect we’ll pick up blood within a few meters. Damn it all to hell. We separate. I’ll take these three. You follow each of those. The blood may look like water, like a piss spot. You’ll have to handle it.” He rubbed his fingers together. “The sun dries it quickly.”

  “Understood.” Knox started with the one farthest to his left. “How far?”

  “Start with fifty meters. Hard to imagine she missed, but if she did, we’ll need to stay with this.”

  Brantingham walked off, head down.

  Knox walked the first track for fifty yards. He was well into following the second when Brantingham called out. Knox joined him.

  “You see?”

  “No.”

  “Just there.” Brantingham pointed.

  Even being guided, it took Knox a moment to spot the boot heel mark.

  “This is the ellie she’s following. The one she shot.”

  “Blood?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Shouldn’t we see blood?” Knox asked.

  “Depends on the shot. They’re big animals. Blood can dry on skin before hitting the ground.”

  “Let me ask you this,” Knox said. “Why a single shot? If she’s desperate enough to shoot it, why not take advantage of an automatic?”

  “Ellies can run over twenty kilometers per hour, John. There may not have been time for a second shot. Maybe another ellie blocked her. The gun could have jammed. Kalashnikovs can be temperamental. We won’t know until we find him.”

  Her, Knox thought.

  On they walked, following both the elephant’s long strides and the boot impressions that followed.

  “They can’t sustain a run for more than half a kilometer,” Brantingham volunteered.

  Either the sun or the discouragement or both took the talk out of them. Knox applied more sunscreen, pulled up his shirt collar. A line of ants, interrupted by the elephant tracks, drew a broken calligraphy in the sand.

  It was another twenty minutes before Brantingham spoke, and then it was in a whisper so faint Knox wasn’t sure if he was imagining it. Extremely slowly, Brantingham lay down prone. Knox followed, again not seeing whatever it was Brantingham saw. The man hauled the binoculars to his eyes, propped himself up on his elbows.

  “Alive,” he said. “Standing. Four hundred meters. Collar’s on.”

  “Snag—”

  “Yes!”

  “Four hundred meters is within the range of a Kalashnikov.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “She’s been captive for days,” Knox said. “Possibly out here in the bush. A lot can go wrong with a person’s mind. We go in quietly, and we go in carefully. For her sake, and ours.”

  The landscape was crusty with rock. Grasses and bushes were bunched tightly before them. Brantingham spoke in a whisper.

  “Whether he’s been hit or not, he won’t let us get within a hundred meters. You can call out for her, but I’d appreciate a closer look at him first.”

  “To see if he’s wounded.”

  “Yes.” Brantingham belly-crawled to Knox, handed him a Glock 17 with a spare magazine. “We’ve come a long way, John. Give me the extra ten minutes I need.”

  “I don’t need this,” Knox said.

  “It’s for Snaggle Tooth. Fire into the air if he cha
rges. He likes to charge, that one. Stand your ground. Do . . . not . . . run. His legs aren’t nimble, but his head and trunk will surprise you. You can jump . . . dive out of the way. But only at the last second. You understand?”

  Knox nodded.

  “Head a hundred meters straightaway in that direction,” Brantingham said, pointing into the thicker bush, “then ahead another hundred until you’re even with him. If she’s here, she’s hunkered down.”

  “She could easily shoot at us, mistaking us for the enemy,” Knox warned. “We do not return fire.”

  “Keep an eye out. You inspect him from this side. I’ll look from the other. Raise one arm if no sign of a wound. Two, if he’s been hit.”

  Nodding, Knox crawled into the shrub, rising up on all fours where the vegetation stood higher. It was slow and difficult going. He quickly lost track of Brantingham and the elephant he had yet to see.

  71

  Knox crossed the bootprints, his nerves jangling, his senses heightened. He scanned the area for Brantingham, having immediately lost his own interest in anything to do with the elephant. Nothing. The guy was a ghost.

  Mindful of Grace’s fragile state of mind, and of the Kalashnikov, he stayed low on hands and knees, though everything in him was desperate to stand and call her name. The ground became rock hard. He lost the bootprints.

  He heard the elephant before he saw it. The animal was using its trunk to slap dust and dirt over itself in a noisy display thirty yards to Knox’s right. He still couldn’t see Brantingham, but Knox pressed ahead anyway, dropping into a belly-crawl. He raised the binoculars and scanned carefully, frame by frame. No visible wounds.

  He raised his right arm.

  When he saw Brantingham, it was because the man wanted him to—three feet up an acacia tree less than twenty feet from the elephant. Brantingham carefully and slowly hoisted a single arm. No wounds on the elephant. Knox had been granted permission to call out.