Shoot the Bastards

by Michael Stanley

  Crys ended up spending as much time taking photographs as she did running. There was color everywhere. She loved the elegant women in their vivid, African dresses and was amazed at the street vendors selling everything from food to intricate toys made from wire—something that wouldn’t happen in Duluth.

  And then there were the gorgeous trees that had no leaves but were smothered in hundreds of small blue flowers. She’d read that Pretoria was called the jacaranda city and now understood why; almost every street was lined with them. And with what seemed overkill, blue-flowered agapanthus grew below the jacarandas, almost as though they were offspring.

  And the birds—they were nothing like the ones she knew in Minnesota. They were of all colors, sizes, and shapes. She spotted one big character with a curved beak and a raucous call, as though it was crying “haaa!” And a little further on, some tiny, iridescent birds that reminded her of hummingbirds were dipping their beaks into the trumpet-like flowers of a roadside plant.

  But Crys decided Pretoria wasn’t a good running city. The sidewalks were uneven, and the car traffic was heavy, and she could feel the fumes in her throat. So, after about an hour’s jogging and sightseeing, she returned to the hotel.

  As she walked through the lobby, she stopped at the concierge’s desk to ask whether they’d checked the CCTV coverage.

  “I am so sorry, Ms. Nguyen. There seems to have been a technical problem. The man who services the cameras didn’t push the flash drive in far enough, so nothing has been recorded since yesterday morning. A bad mistake. We’re looking into it.”

  That was convenient, she thought. It was quite a coincidence that the cameras were off at exactly the time someone was breaking into her room. Except, of course, they hadn’t broken in. So, they must have had a key.

  Crys shook her head and gave the concierge a hard look. He glanced away. He knew she’d seen through his story. But she decided to drop the matter—there wasn’t much more she could do about it.

  * * *

  From her room, Crys placed a call to Lieutenant Mkazi at the Phalaborwa police station. He had responded to Sara’s inquiry about Michael, and Crys wanted to know what progress had been made since then—if any.

  When she was eventually put through, she explained who she was and asked what the police had discovered.

  “We have been following this up, Ms. Nguyen, but it takes time to track down what has happened to people. Let me say first that we are doing everything we can. But we have a big area here—some of it wild country. We can’t search everywhere.”

  Crys deduced immediately that he had no news.

  “We have looked for his rental car, and we have tried to trace his cell phone. Neither has helped. The phone was off for some time in the area of Giyani—that is a small town north of here—but then it moved from there. Of course, we don’t know if Mr. Davidson was with it. And then at some point the signal went off permanently. Perhaps the battery went flat. Perhaps it was destroyed. The place where that happened is in the bush. There’s nothing there. And at that point the phone was moving. We suspect it was in a vehicle.”

  “He has two cell numbers—a U.S. one and a South African one. Did you trace them both?”

  There was a pause. “Please give me the numbers.”

  She did, and Mkazi promised to check.

  “When the phone went dead, was it in his vehicle?”

  “We can’t say. The car rental company has tracking devices on their cars, but this one could not be activated. Perhaps it was faulty, but…”

  As Crys digested all this, she felt almost nauseated. It didn’t sound good. If Michael had broken down somewhere with a flat cell phone or no signal, the car’s transponder should still have identified the location.

  “And there’s been no trace of him?”

  “No, that is correct.”

  No trace…Crys forced herself to ask the next question. “So, what do you think happened to him, Lieutenant?”

  There was a long silence. Crys thought the man wasn’t going to answer her question at all.

  But at last he did. “We cannot say. Sometimes people are hijacked. The cars are quickly broken up and the tracking devices disabled. Most times the people are released and they are found. Occasionally not. A month is a long time…”

  Crys swallowed. There didn’t seem much more to say. She thanked him and disconnected. For a few minutes, she sat dead still, her shoulders slumped, wondering if she was wasting her time and National Geographic’s money. But then she realized that nothing had really changed. The police knew nothing more than before. This was all just speculation.

  Michael was onto something big. He was on someone’s trail. Whatever happened was related to that, not some random hijacking.

  She wasn’t going to give up hope, but resolved to find out exactly what his big story was. She was going to find him.

  The next morning, Crys headed out, eager now to be in the African bush, away from the frustrations of the city.

  Phalaborwa Airport was unlike anything she’d seen before. It was of African design with long wooden beams and a high thatched roof. Much of it was open to the outside. It would be no good in a Duluth winter, she thought.

  Johannes came himself to meet her. He was the stereotype of the white African bush guide—boots, khaki shirt and shorts, and a sunburnt face, a bit spoiled by a scraggly beard. Crys guessed he was in his mid-thirties. He was also a few pounds overweight. Crys had read that South Africans liked their beer, so that was probably the cause.

  He took her bag and put it in the back of his truck, then opened the passenger door for her with a smile.

  “It’s a bit of a drive, I’m afraid, Ms. Nguyen.” Crys ignored the mangling of her name. “We’ve got two thousand hectares to the west of the Kruger National Park. We’re part of a big game-conservation area bordering the park. It’s mostly private farms running tourism, hunting, and so on…in our case it’s rhino conservation.”

  Two thousand hectares, Crys thought. That was nearly four and a half thousand acres. A big ranch by anyone’s standards.

  It was not long before they’d left the small town behind and were on their way through the bush. After a few minutes, Johannes pulled over and pointed out a group of antelope not far from the road.

  “Those are kudu. One of the biggest antelopes around here.”

  They were gorgeous creatures: sandy-colored with gentle stripes and huge corkscrew horns. One took fright and ran off, its tail folded back, flashing white.

  They drove on, both still smiling at the sight.

  “There aren’t any other visitors at the lodge right now,” said Johannes. “So, you’ll eat dinner with my father and me in the main house tonight, if that’s okay?”

  “That sounds great. Thank you.”

  After a while, Crys decided to ask about Michael.

  “Johannes, a friend of mine from National Geographic—his name is Michael Davidson—he visited Tshukudu a month or so ago. Do you remember him?”

  Johannes shook his head. “My father told me that someone from your magazine had visited, but I was taking some tourists on a safari at the time, so I never met him. He was also working on rhinos, wasn’t he?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Are the two of you going to meet up to exchange notes?”

  “I hope so, but we’ve lost track of him. I was hoping you may know where he was headed.”

  Johannes shook his head. “I don’t, but my father may. Ask him over dinner.”

  It was another two hours of driving through the countryside before they came to an impressive entrance made of stone. The guard lifted the boom and waved them through, onto a road that was little more than a bumpy dirt track through the bush.

  As they lurched along, Johannes’s radio squawked. He stopped the truck, picked up the mike, and started talking in a langu
age Crys didn’t understand.

  After Johannes had finished speaking, he asked Crys if she was up for a little detour. “They’ve found a rhino that’s been caught in a snare. I think you’ll be interested in how we deal with it”

  Crys nodded enthusiastically. “Rhino poachers?” she asked, pulling her notebook from her backpack.

  “No—poachers use high-powered rifles. This was probably set for a big antelope like the kudu we saw. Someone wanted it for the meat. The rhino’s yanked the snare out of the ground, but it’s cut into her foot, so we’re going to have to dart her and cut the wire off. You’ll be able to watch the whole process.”

  As they drove on, Crys was already thinking of the copy she could write. She pulled her camera out of her backpack and clipped on a medium-range zoom. This could be an amazing column for the newspaper, she thought.

  When they arrived, the rhino was staggering about, and the rangers were keeping their distance. Johannes looked worried. “It’s Mary,” he said. “She’s a fixture around here. They must have darted her already. If she falls badly, she could hurt herself. I’d hate it if anything happened to her.”

  They watched for a few tense minutes, unable to help, but at last Mary lay down and passed out. But it was another ten minutes before Johannes said it was safe to approach.

  “You can touch her.”

  Crys put out her hand and felt the rough hide and hair. Up close Mary was a really impressive beast, but there was something disturbing to see her lying there, being handled like a domestic animal. Crys stepped back and began to take pictures.

  A ranger cut off the snare with wire cutters, and then Johannes examined the wound in Mary’s foot.

  “It’s not deep,” he said. “We do have to worry about infection, though, so we’ll dose her with antibiotics and put on some antiseptic cream.”

  One of the rangers adjusted the radio collar she wore like a loose necklace and changed the batteries. Another came up and talked to Johannes, pointing at the horn. Crys leaned down and felt it. It was just a big stump, smooth and hard like polished wood.

  “It’s grown a bit,” Johannes said. “We wouldn’t normally harvest it yet, but since she’s already out, we may as well cut it back now. They grow back, just like hair—which is exactly what they are. Just keratin.”

  Crys already knew that, but didn’t say so. Instead, she stepped back and watched as a ranger cut the stump of horn down with a fine-toothed hacksaw. It was reduced by less than two inches, yet Johannes carefully weighed the cut-off section and bagged it.

  “What’s that worth?” Crys asked.

  “Here, not that much—about twenty thousand dollars, I’d guess. We can trade horn legally in South Africa now, but there’s not much of a market locally, and you can’t sell it outside the country.”

  Crys nodded; this matched what Deputy Minister Tolo had told her.

  “On the black market in Vietnam,” Johannes continued, “at a hundred and twenty-five thousand U.S. dollars a kilogram, Mary’s horn would be worth around half a million dollars if we allowed it to grow to full size.” He paused, letting the amount sink in. “The real question, though, is what would a poacher get for it here in South Africa? About ten to twenty thousand dollars. And that’s more than these people can make in a lifetime.”

  Once Mary was given the antidote, everyone hurried back to the safety of the vehicles. Pretty soon she lurched to her feet and, if a bit disoriented, looked well enough. She made a mock charge at Johannes’s truck—just to make a point, Crys thought—and then headed off into the bush at a trot.

  Johannes laughed. “That’s my girl! She’ll be fine. Let’s go and have a cup of coffee and get you settled in.”

  “Is it dangerous to keep tranquilizing rhinos?” Crys asked as they drove toward the house.

  He shook his head. “There’s a lot of experience with these drugs these days. We use a tranquilizer called M99—it doesn’t really bother them.”

  “But if you can’t sell the horn, what’s the point?”

  “We’re protecting the rhinos. If we don’t remove the horn, the poachers will, and leave us a dead rhino.”

  “But what about the impact on their social structure? Isn’t that supposed to be an issue with harvesting horn?”

  He shrugged. “They’re not like elephants, you know. Elephants use their tusks to help with feeding and all sorts of stuff. And once the tusks are gone, they don’t grow back. With rhinos, the horn is just for fighting, and we’ve found that the biggest bull still becomes dominant without it. And, he’s still alive to do it, of course.” He spun the steering wheel to avoid a big pothole in the track. “That snare this afternoon was nothing,” he went on. “If our rhinos had horns, this place would be an armed camp with the poachers shooting at our game guards as well as the rhinos.”

  “I really want to meet the anti-poaching teams for myself,” Crys said, “but the government people won’t help me.”

  He hesitated, frowning. “You want to visit one of the teams? You’d have to go into the national park for that…I might be able to set that up, though, if you’re serious. We know people there.”

  “You could? That would be great—it’s exactly the reason I’m here. To get a real understanding of what’s going on.” And to find Michael, she added to herself.

  “I’m not sure they’d let you go out with one of the patrols, though,” he said doubtfully.

  She could handle that part herself, Crys thought. She knew she was pretty persuasive.

  “When Michael Davidson was here, did he go out with one of the anti-poaching groups?”

  Johannes shook his head. “I don’t think so. As I said, I was away at the time, but I would have heard if he had.”

  Crys felt a pang of worry. She wasn’t getting any new information about Michael.

  They drove in silence for a while, then Crys asked, “So what do you do with the horns you cut off? They must be a target for the poachers too, surely?”

  He took a few moments before replying, looking like he was concentrating hard on his driving. “We store them…off-site, somewhere safe…”

  When he didn’t continue, Crys realized he wasn’t going to say anything more on the subject. But she’d been thrilled to meet Mary. And she felt a surge of excitement because it seemed there was a chance she’d be able to join an anti-poaching team.

  So far, it had been an excellent day. Except for the lack of information about Michael.

  Chapter 5

  Johannes and Crys sat on the veranda outside the main house and enjoyed a variety of sandwiches with their coffee, entertaining themselves by throwing crumbs to the iridescent birds Johannes called glossy starlings. The veranda overlooked a small waterhole supplied by a solar-powered pump, and while they ate, a parade of impala came to drink. Crys’s face lit up and she couldn’t help pulling her camera out and snapping away with abandon. It was a magical moment.

  “I can’t believe I’m in the African bush at last,” she said. “I’ve dreamed about it for so many years.”

  “And, of course, you’ve watched all the National Geographic videos and documentaries,” Johannes said with a smile.

  She nodded. “Aren’t they amazing? It’s remarkable how the videographers catch some of those amazing moments.”

  “Thanks to satellite TV, we get the National Geographic Channel, and the BBC. I also really liked Blue Planet with that oke—what’s his name? David…somebody or other.”

  “Attenborough,” Crys chimed in. “He’s incredible.”

  Johannes nodded, and they sat quietly, enjoying the moment.

  “Tell me a bit about yourself, Crys. I’ve never met a Vietnamese lady before.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “How you got to write for National Geographic—that must be a really hard job to get. What you like to do in your free time. That
sort of thing.”

  Talking about herself was not Crys’s thing. But, nevertheless, she took in a deep breath and tried to summarize her career as best she could, and then told Johannes all about competing in the biathlon.

  “You mean you ski for several miles, then have to shoot a target?”

  “Yes—alternating between lying down and standing. Standing is the hardest by far. Your heart is pounding; you’re struggling to breathe normally; and your muscles are exhausted. It’s very tough to hold the rifle steady.”

  “That sounds really hard.”

  “And if you miss the target, you get to ski several hundred more yards for every miss.”

  Johannes shook his head. “It would be like shooting after playing rugby. I don’t think I could do it.”

  Crys smiled and assured him she thought he would.

  Then they lapsed into silence, and Crys soaked in the newness of Africa.

  Eventually, Johannes stood up. “Let me show you your accommodation.”

  She was reluctant to move from this perfect spot, but she stood, too, and they walked toward a string of five chalets.

  “Just be careful walking outside at night, and don’t go beyond the electric fence. It’s a single-strand fence about five feet off the ground. It’s designed to keep out the big animals like elephants and buffalo– and the rhinos, of course—but occasionally they break through. We don’t have any lions on the property, so you don’t have to worry about them.”

  * * *

  “Who is she and what does she want?” Johannes’s father, Anton, asked in Afrikaans when Johannes returned to the house.

  “Her name is Crystal Nguyen,” Johannes answered, trying hard to pronounce Crys’s name correctly. “She’s writing about rhino conservation. And she’s a real looker.”

  “She’s Vietnamese?”

  Johannes nodded.

  “How do we know she’s not spying for one of the smuggling gangs?”