In the Company of Killers

by Bryan Christy

  How to explain it? Every significant business deal seemed to move a pendulum inside him, his most sophisticated deals ratcheting that pendulum so far in one direction that instead of feeling satisfied, he felt supremely out of balance. Hunting was his very soul demanding something primal, a blood conquest to match his intellectual victory.

  He’d shared his pendulum theory with China’s president during their hunting trip together on the Kimber. Ho’s broad, lineless face had broken into a knowing smile. “Wu ji bi fan.” He’d nodded, stepping over a fallen log. “When things reach an extreme, they must move in their opposite direction.” Ho patted Krieger’s shoulder. “Yin and yang, Terry. We need a calm to have the storm.”

  The Seventh Fleet was in Krieger’s pocket now—the entire Seventh Fleet of the United States Navy. He hadn’t closed the deal yet, but his tactical success over Admiral Tighe had ratcheted the pendulum inside of him to a point that demanded release.

  Blaze held up a vial of tranquilizer. She was filming the hunt for her college applications. “I need to adjust this,” she said into her iPhone. “Because he’s way above average male weight.”

  He couldn’t believe she was headed to college. To him Blaze was still the little seven-year-old girl who had taught Krieger’s brother what a liberal was. It had been Christmas at the Montana ranch. James, a dermatologist from San Francisco, was tucking Blaze into bed when Blaze said, “Uncle James, Daddy says I shouldn’t talk politics with you because you’re a liberal.”

  James had been amused. “What’s a liberal, Blaze?”

  “Daddy says if I get an A on a test and a lazy girl gets an F, a liberal will take away my A and give it to the lazy girl so she gets a C and I do, too.”

  That was Blaze. She had politics in her future. Or maybe even Perseus Group—if she could step up today.

  “We’ll need to bait him, Tots,” Zoeller said, looking up at the lion. “He’s breeding age and nothing’s going to get him off those females.”

  “Who’s Tots?” Blaze asked.

  Krieger smiled. “It’s my bush name. Ras Botha gave it to me when I was a boy. Tots because I was the baby Krieger when your great grandfather hunted here. If you do well, maybe Pete will give you a bush name.”

  Blaze gave a short laugh. “I think I can live without one, Tots.”

  * * *

  • • •

  While Zoeller set up a blind, Krieger sat in the passenger seat of the open Land Rover, closed his eyes, and breathed in the warm air. Behind him, Blaze was looking at her phone. Their trackers, a father and son named Njovu and Isaac, went off to find a zebra to use as bait.

  Krieger could feel Ras Botha’s presence on the Kimber. Even when they were boys, Botha had been something out of mythology. He’d been there for Krieger’s first lion. Krieger’s father and grandfather had painted Krieger’s cheek with the lion’s blood, but Botha had cut out the big cat’s testicles and handed him one for him to swallow. Botha was a little younger than Krieger, but only in years. In the bush Botha was an ancient, a true Boer. Unfortunately, a true Boer in more ways than just hunting: Botha couldn’t avoid trouble in an empty room. For as long as Krieger could remember, Botha had been on his way into, or out of, prison. “Recruiting trips, Tots,” Botha called his frequent incarcerations. The man was indomitable.

  It had been a criminal trial that had inspired Botha to sell him the Kimber. “Tots, my bru,” Botha’s phone call had begun. “Lekker investment opportunity for you . . .”

  Krieger had laughed when he heard Botha’s scheme. Botha proposed to sell him the Kimber, quietly and off book, in order to plead poverty to his judge. “If I’m so poor, how can I be the head of a fokken international crime syndicate? Right, Terry?”

  Krieger would have paid whatever Botha asked for the property. He had been sending Botha money to support the Kimber for years. The Krieger family had hunted the Kimber for generations. The black rhino above the mantel in Krieger’s Missoula ranch had been shot by his great-grandfather on the Kimber, mounted by taxidermist Carl Akeley himself. If Botha wanted to turn over the extraordinary property, Krieger was more than happy to oblige. “I’m South African,” Botha had said, always overselling. “What do I want with Zimbabwe?”

  Krieger brought in the House of Saud as a minority partner in the purchase. He didn’t need their money; he gave them a piece of the Kimber to cement a business relationship. The Saudis loved to hunt. They built a new main lodge and upgraded the airstrip, extending it and paving it in order to handle their larger aircraft. They erected mini luxe villas in various spots across the property. They added a warehouse-sized refrigerator with butchering tables large enough to handle multiple elephant carcasses. They built facilities for caping and salting skins, installed a freezer, and added a taxidermy studio with an apartment for their preferred artist. All the usual and appropriates throughout. But Krieger forbade them from touching the lodge and huts where he stayed. The old stone-and-wood structures had been used by his grandfather. He liked the camp as it was.

  Along with its animals, what Krieger treasured most about the Kimber was its guaranteed privacy. According to the Kimber’s partnership agreement, there would never be more than two hunting parties on the property at a time. When Krieger was visiting, no one else was permitted. He and his family would be completely alone.

  Still, he missed Botha. The plan had been to keep him around, use him as the lead PH, maybe even find him some investments, but Botha could not keep his scheming in check. By the time he got out of prison he had acquired land on either side of the Kimber, intending to turn the conservancy into a smuggling route. When Krieger asked him what he thought he was doing, Botha said, “I opened the Kruger park fence. It’s trophy-quality Big Five all the time now, Tots!” Botha pretending the expansion was to make the Kimber a better hunting property.

  But Krieger could read a map, too. Through his acquisitions, Botha had created a banana-shaped corridor stretching from Zimbabwe’s Marange diamond mines south to the port at Maputo.

  “That’s diamonds like my fist, Tots,” Botha had exclaimed when Krieger confronted him. “Russians right there to take it out. Or the Chinese if I want. Dig it up on Tuesday, I’ll have it under a jeweler’s loupe on the weekend.”

  Krieger had laughed out loud. He’d caught Botha leveraging the Kimber to traffic diamonds and God knows what else, and Botha’s defense had been to pitch him an even bigger deal.

  Krieger sighed. When it came to business, Botha was just too African. He’d trusted Krieger to sell the Kimber back to him when the time was right. Big mistake, “Never hold another man’s dick” being one of Krieger’s rules. A rule he’d now have to modify for Blaze.

  * * *

  • • •

  The trackers returned with a zebra, already parted. Isaac shouldered the zebra’s legs while his father, Njovu, lugged buckets of offal. They carried the carcass to a tree at the edge of the clearing, upwind of the lion’s promontory. Krieger watched them hook a chain into the zebra’s Achilles and haul its flanks into the tree. The African boy looked to be about Blaze’s age, but Njovu could easily have been a grandfather. The old man was having difficulty doing his job.

  Krieger got out of the truck. He looked at his daughter. “Come on, Blaze,” he said. “Let’s help them.” He started toward the tree, and she followed him.

  He reached into the gut bucket and scooped a handful of intestines. “Think of it as mucking the stables for Nefertiti and Marigold.”

  “Yeah,” Blaze said, “like I would know.”

  She reached into the bucket.

  The old man was struggling to secure the free end of the chain. His son did it for him quickly, then turned to Blaze. “Let me,” he said. He put his hands into the gut bucket with Blaze’s. “You’re too pretty for this. I will do it.”

  Blaze smiled, grateful. “It’s not that bad once you get started. But you don’t
—”

  “Boy!” Krieger barked.

  Isaac jumped, nearly spilling the bucket.

  But Krieger wasn’t addressing Isaac. He was talking to Njovu. The old man turned, saw his son, and leapt forward. He seized Isaac by the shoulders and jerked him backwards so hard they both fell into the dirt.

  “Jesus, Dad,” Blaze said. “It’s okay.”

  As if nothing had happened, Krieger reached into his bucket of zebra guts and tossed a length of intestine underhand into the tree. The gut wrapped a low branch and dangled like sausage.

  Blaze glanced across the clearing. Njovu and Isaac had moved off to the blind, the father instructing the son in something, Isaac furtively looking in her direction.

  Blaze hurled two fists of grassy stomach content as hard as she could into the air, but throwing grass is difficult.

  “Goddamn it, Blaze!” Zebra shit covered Krieger’s shirt. It was in his hair. His face. He quick-checked to see if she’d done it on purpose.

  “Sorry.” Blaze laughed.

  “Oh!” Across the clearing Isaac stifled a shy laugh. Krieger swiveled and glared at the young man. Why didn’t these people just do what they were told, he thought.

  The bait tree was ready.

  “Like a Christmas tree from the Apocalypse,” Blaze said into her iPhone.

  “So now you like baiting animals,” Krieger interrupted.

  Blaze turned. It took a moment to see his point. Concern flashed across her face. The whale sharks. The trouble she had caused him. “It’s different here,” she said. “This is for science. And we’re not affecting the lions’ long-term behavior.”

  He smiled and stepped back to let her continue.

  “Like a Christmas tree from the Apocalypse,” she repeated, and began to circle the tree as she narrated her video. “But it will be worth it to dart this lion. His pride has never been collared before, so we’ll be able to start a completely new study group. This is very exciting,” she said. “We will take blood and hair samples. Check and photograph his teeth. Address any injuries, and collar him with this.” She reached into the back of their truck and withdrew a lion collar. “This is a Total Information Project collar, designed by Perseus Group.” She zoomed in on the collar. “The collar gives the lion’s location, which we track using the TIPP app, first designed for elephants. We can also monitor testosterone and other hormone levels, as well as brain waves,” she said, and focused on a patch of silver metal inside the black collar.

  * * *

  • • •

  After an hour waiting in the blind without success, Zoeller sent Isaac to the truck. The young man returned with a small equipment bag, a rope, and what looked like a radio. Zoeller set the box on the ground, plugged in a pair of headphones, and scanned through stations, pausing occasionally. He found the one he wanted and removed his headphones.

  “We’re going to use a bait box now,” Blaze whispered into her phone. “What’s a bait box, Mr. Zoeller?”

  “That’s one right there,” Zoeller said, pointing to the box.

  Blaze rolled her eyes and turned her camera to her father.

  “What’s a bait box, Dad?”

  “It’s a digital representation of a prey item used to attract study animals,” Krieger replied.

  “Thanks, Mister Robot. We will be editing this.” She spoke directly to her camera. “I’ve never heard a bait box in action before, so we’ll all be seeing and hearing this for the first time.”

  Zoeller handed the bait box to Isaac, who flashed across the clearing and up the baited tree. He tied the device to a high branch. In moments he was back, his chest barely moving.

  “You’re very fast,” Blaze said. The boy smiled.

  Using a remote, Zoeller switched on the machine, and the quiet low of a calf rumbled from across the clearing. Zoeller slowly increased the volume. Sitting on a folding stool beside Blaze, Krieger listened to the recording and tried to imagine the animal. He pictured the calf with one hind leg staked to the ground standing beside its mother. He heard curiosity in the calf’s calls, no doubt confused to have its neck free but one leg anchored. Then he heard the long question it asked as it realized its mother was being led away. The calf issued a higher note to alert her it was trapped and unable to follow. It cried louder, after she’d probably gone out of view, eager to help her locate it. Then the calf grew quiet.

  Krieger watched Blaze.

  The calf found its voice again as it saw two men approaching. Clearly the calf recognized the men. I’m safe now, its quiet tone said. Why did you leave me? Krieger knew this moment. It was the same with men and animals. Everyone wanted to believe they were home.

  He heard the calf cry out in surprise, then terror, as it experienced pain beyond its understanding, pain that would not end. Krieger had been with men as they made this same journey. He’d designed and manufactured tools to help them get there in a predictable way. In the end he’d discovered it cost almost nothing to transport a man to the same place as this calf, twenty dollars at a CVS.

  Krieger looked at his daughter. She was breathing rapidly. Her cheeks were flushed red. “Relax, Blaze. It’s just a recording.”

  “What are they doing to that animal?” She was filming him.

  “Turn that fucking thing off.”

  She blanched and stuffed the phone in her pocket just as a young male lion emerged from the bush sniffing the air, and slowly circled the clearing. More adolescent lions appeared, followed by adult females. Krieger was surprised there were so many. Finally, the big male lion arrived. Cyril did not look at the bait tree. He ignored the female lions, too. Cyril focused on the humans in the blind. Their blind was little more than a sheet of canvas and some tree branches. Zoeller flicked off his safety.

  Blaze raised her dart gun.

  Krieger placed his hand on the barrel and pressed it toward the ground.

  “What are you doing?” Blaze whispered.

  He held his rifle out to her.

  “No.”

  “You are a Krieger, Blaze. Hard decisions are what we make. You kill that lion or I will.”

  * * *

  • • •

  That evening, Krieger relaxed in a camp chair facing the firepit, his rifle across his lap, a scotch and a cleaning kit on the ground beside him. He’d showered and changed, exchanged his khaki hunting clothes for olive green trousers and a sharply pressed white shirt. He wore his elephant-hide slippers.

  His phone buzzed with a text. The text contained only two words. “Mischief Reef,” it read.

  Krieger ran a cleaning patch through the barrel of his father’s rifle, a single shot .416 Rigby. Great white hunter Harry Selby had carried the venerated rifle into the long grass, and Krieger’s father, a sometime client of Selby’s, had purchased it from him. A double rifle gave you a second opportunity—good for the animal, good for the hunter—but Krieger’s father believed that having only one shot intensified a man’s concentration. “Puts your heart inside the bullet, Terry,” his father used to say. Krieger found that to be true, and he applied his old man’s philosophy to other aspects of his life. He pursued one-of-a-kind business deals. Deals with genuine consequences. Deals that, if he missed, could turn and gore him.

  He intended to use the rifle on a big buffalo in the morning. Zoeller claimed it was a legendary animal. “He’s called Minotaur, Tots. Very grumpy.” All the big animals had names now, apparently.

  Krieger looked at the big male lion carcass hanging by its Achilles tendons from a skinning rack. Blaze would not be joining tomorrow’s hunt. In the end, he had been wrong about her.

  THE PURGE

  Pretoria, South Africa

  The next morning, Hungry drove Klay and Tenchant to an industrial stretch on the outskirts of Pretoria, empty at this early hour of all vehicles but one. “Ncube’s spy,” Hungry said, pointing to a white Corsa va
n parked along the curb.

  Klay saw the driver’s face in the van’s side-view mirror as they passed. He was asleep.

  “Fortunately, they do not like to exert themselves.” She circled the block and parked in the back. “We’ll go in another way.” She led them to a brick building next door. A sign beside the entrance read, “WhiteOut Industro Laundry.”

  Inside, Hungry nodded hello to a man holding a pad and pencil, recording stacks of folded bedsheets. “Abby. My radical friend,” Hungry said as they passed. “We grew up in Soweto together.”

  She pushed a laundry cart out of their path, then opened a heavy door and ushered them into the building next door. “Welcome to the nest,” she said. “Sorry for the . . . everything. The building used to be a garage for diesel trucks. We’re up there.” Hungry pointed to a lighted doorway at the end of a catwalk that ran along the second floor’s back wall.

  The garage was two stories of open space to accommodate trucks, illuminated from above by a row of filthy windows. A graveyard of greasy old truck parts and big jointed tools filled the floor. It stank of motor oil.

  “Watch your step,” she said, taking hold of a metal pipe railing. As he climbed the bar grate stairs, Klay heard snippets of voices arguing.

  A man’s voice said, “. . . for your own good, Miss Edna . . .”

  A woman replied, “When I need another man telling me what’s good for me, it won’t be you . . .”

  “Goodness,” Hungry said under her breath.

  At the far end of the catwalk was a massive stainless steel door more than four inches thick, with recessed locking bolts along its edges, the kind of door found on a bank vault or, Klay reasoned, a safe room. Klay smiled. Someone had propped the impregnable door open using a floor mop and a couple of bricks. All the protections . . .