Shoot the Bastards

by Michael Stanley

  “Crys, please,” Bongani continued, more quietly. “You don’t understand. Last year, a jewelry shop was robbed in Johannesburg. They got away with diamonds and other stones, and a lot of Krugerrands. The police tracked them down to a town called Hoedspruit, near Phalaborwa, and raided a house belonging to the mother of one of the robbers. All the robbers died in the shootout. And the mother and the grandmother, too…The old lady was bedridden. Both women were shot in the head like the pilot. By the police—‘for resisting arrest’ the police said.”

  She turned and walked away a few steps. She looked down at the man she’d killed. If the police here were so corrupt, how could she trust that they would understand that she’d acted in self-defense? How could she plead her case?

  “And the diamonds and Krugerrands?” she asked, still looking at Ho.

  “The police said they never found them.”

  At last, Crys realized what Bongani was saying: if the two of them weren’t around, they wouldn’t be telling anyone about the briefcase. She turned back to Bongani. She could feel herself shaking.

  “You mean…You must be kidding…They’d really just kill us?”

  He nodded but didn’t say anything.

  Crys couldn’t believe the police were really like that in South Africa. Could they be that corrupt?

  “There are two of us,” she said, “and I’m from the US and a newspaper reporter…They wouldn’t dare touch me, would they? There’d be…there’d be an international incident…Something…”

  Crys put her hands to her head, as if she were trying to contain the realization that was growing there. The police would use what she’d done against her—so they could keep the money for themselves. It was unbelievable.

  Bongani pointed at the briefcase. “That money, Crys, it’s for the rhino poaching. Everyone is involved. Do you think they can operate without the police? The police get their share. Always. Think about what Hennie did the other night. Why did he do that, Crys? It’s because the police won’t do anything. And if anyone speaks up, they disappear. I know these things. I—”

  “How do you know that’s what the money was for?” There was an accusation in Crys’s voice, and she moved toward him.

  Bongani hesitated, then took a step back. “It’s such a lot of money. The police will want it. They’ll kill us. Nobody will know; nobody will find us.”

  Suddenly Crys thought of Michael again. He’d come to this part of the country, found something big, and vanished. And the police said they’d discovered nothing. But had they looked? Or did they know what had happened to him all along?

  She felt way out of her depth. It seemed she was either going to be arrested or dead. She turned away from Bongani and took a few steps down the track. She squatted down on her haunches and put her head in her hands. How had she got into this situation? She didn’t mean to kill Ho, and now she might be killed herself…for trying to help. This had to be a dream, a bad nightmare.

  She stayed in that position for a couple of minutes, but then, instead of panic, and despite the heat, a kind of chill calm settled on her. There had to be a solution to all this. She stood up and walked back to Bongani.

  He was standing watching her calmly, as if he knew she’d come around to his way of thinking eventually.

  “What should we do then?” she asked flatly.

  “What I said—take him back to those rocks and leave him. But we keep the money.”

  “The Land Rover tracks, our footprints—we’d never get away with it.”

  “We’ll say we followed the tracks then gave up.”

  She looked into his eyes. “It won’t work, Bongani. There are cartridges we won’t be able to find, bullets, DNA, fingerprints.”

  He was silent for several seconds. “Okay. We bury the money here. We can come back for it later.”

  She glowered at him.

  What if he wanted it all for himself? she asked herself. Then he’d make sure she couldn’t come back for it.

  But she couldn’t read him; his face was impassive.

  She had to trust him for the moment—play this by ear. And watch her back too. She had to make a choice. Now.

  “All right, all right, we bury it here. But we tell Johannes and Anton everything as soon as we’re back at Tshukudu. Make it their problem. This is too much for me. I’ll get the GPS co-ords so we can find it when we come back.”

  Then an idea occurred to her—a little insurance policy. She leaned inside the Land Rover and took the briefcase out, opened it, removed a bundle of bills, counted out ten and gave them to Bongani. A thousand U.S. dollars. That would help his family. And hopefully save her too, if he ever decided to say she was the one responsible. She put the rest back.

  “I’m sure you can use the money,” she said. “Don’t tell anyone and be careful how you spend it.”

  He nodded.

  “Okay, let’s bury the case.”

  In saying that, Crys knew she was stirring up a hornet’s nest. The police would want it, Bongani would want it. And somebody had lost it and would want it back. She was betting that somebody knew something about Michael.

  Bongani nodded again. He quickly unclipped the spade from the side of the Land Rover, walked about thirty yards to the side of the track, and started digging.

  It didn’t take long in the soft sand to make a hole big enough for the briefcase. Crys threw it in, and Bongani covered it up, smoothing the surface and kicking leaves over it.

  Back at the Land Rover, Crys grabbed the GPS and noted the coordinates of the hole. While she did that, Bongani used a dead branch to erase their footprints in the sand, walking backwards toward the vehicle.

  “What are we going to do with him?” Bongani asked, pointing at Ho.

  “Put him back in the passenger seat. Just make sure he doesn’t fall out before we get back to the camp.”

  Crys helped him lift up the body and dump it into the seat. Bongani closed and locked the Land Rover door, then climbed into the back. He clearly had no intention of riding back to camp sitting next to the corpse.

  “Let’s get going,” Crys said. “We’re going to have to persuade the police we didn’t murder this man.”

  Chapter 14

  By the time Bongani and Crys reached camp, they had their story straight. The last thing they wanted was each to give the police a different story, so they agreed they’d tell the truth exactly as they remembered it…except for the briefcase. Bongani was sure that mentioning that would put them in danger. So, they’d leave it out altogether. It seemed pretty straightforward, and they didn’t see how it could go wrong. At least that’s what Crys told herself.

  Climbing out of the Land Rover, Crys noticed Bongani flipping through the money she’d given him, looking carefully at a couple of the bills and holding them up to the light.

  “You think they’re fake?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. There must be half a million dollars in that case. If it’s all real, it could feed a village for years.”

  “That money was for something illegal,” she said. “Maybe to buy rhino horn, as you said. Or ivory. Or smuggled diamonds…”

  “We can’t let the police find this,” Bongani said, folding the notes up. “I must hide them.” He headed to the kitchen tent and a few moments later came out with a zip-lock bag.

  “I’ll hide them where no one will find them. Go and start the Land Rover, please.”

  Puzzled, Crys did as he asked.

  Sitting in the driver’s seat, the engine turning over, and doing her best not to look at the dead Ho slumped in the passenger’s side, she watched as Bongani sealed the bills in the bag and then walked to the edge of camp. Near one of the big, spreading jackalberry trees, he scooped some sandy earth out with his hand, making a shallow hole, then dropped the bag inside and covered it over.

  “Okay, Crys.�
�� He beckoned with his dusty hand. “Bring the Land Rover over here and park it with one wheel right over where I’ve buried the money.”

  Smart, Crys thought. Someone could search the camp and the Land Rover and never find it. But there was still a pointer to the briefcase: she’d entered the coordinates of where it was buried on the GPS.

  Crys decided she’d better hide that too. They couldn’t leave anything to chance.

  She took the GPS into her tent and started wrapping it in one of her towels. Then she hesitated. She would need a backup of the coordinates in case the GPS died. She switched on her phone, waited impatiently for it to boot up, then chose the contacts menu and added two new names: Katie Latimer and Longley Svenson. She gave Katie’s number as +1 612 followed by the last seven digits of the latitude of the money; Longley’s she used for the longitude. Then she turned off the GPS, wrapped it up, and asked Bongani to help her hide it.

  “Under the wheel on the bonnet of the Land Rover,” he said pointing.

  “You’re pretty good at hiding things.”

  He nodded, serious. “You have to be, where I come from.”

  She wasn’t sure what he meant by that but decided not to ask.

  They’d hardly had anything to eat at breakfast, so Crys made sandwiches, which Bongani washed down with a cold beer, and she with orange juice.

  When she’d finished, she felt exhausted. More than anything she wanted to sleep before the police arrived, even if it were only a power nap.

  She hesitated. She and Bongani were the only two in the camp, and if she was right about Bongani’s involvement in the smuggling, what was to stop him getting rid of her while she was asleep? He could easily say that Ho had shot her; he could use Ho’s handgun.

  Then the briefcase of money would be his.

  “You must be tired,” she said to Bongani. “Go and have a nap while we wait. I’ll keep watch for a while.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She nodded, and he walked off to his tent.

  She walked over to a tree from which she could keep his tent in sight, then sat down and leaned against it. After a few minutes, her eyelids started to droop. She shook her head. She needed to stay awake.

  She thought about what Bongani had said.

  Did the South African police really kill people for money? It was hard to believe. But Bongani’s story was terrifying—if it was true. Maybe he had made it up…

  Her eyes drooped again. She let them stay like that for a few seconds, then shook her head again and slapped her cheeks.

  She couldn’t figure out how Bongani was involved. He knew what the money was for, but didn’t know Ho. And he was obviously scared to be found by the police with the money.

  Her head nodded and slumped forward.

  * * *

  Crys woke from a deep sleep with a start. Someone was shaking her shoulder.

  “Wake up. Wake up.”

  She opened her eyes and saw a policeman standing over her.

  “Hello, Officer,” she stammered. “Sorry. I must have drifted off. Didn’t have much sleep last night.” She shook her head and pointed. “Mr. Chikosi is in that tent.”

  She stood up. “I’ll be back in a minute.” She headed for the bush toilet.

  When she returned, Bongani was standing near the policeman, rubbing his face.

  She saw that the police had arrived in two four-by-four vehicles. One was a closed van—to remove the pilot’s body, Crys guessed. They were in for a surprise: there were now two bodies.

  The leader of the group was a Sergeant Nkomo. He introduced himself and his men.

  Crys ran her hands through her hair to straighten it and beckoned him aside. He frowned but followed her over to the Land Rover. He took a slight step back when he saw Ho.

  “This man…” The words stuck in Crys’s throat. “This man was in the plane too. He…he tried to shoot me, while we were bringing him back here. I slammed on the brakes and…and he hit the windscreen.”

  “And that’s how he died?” asked Nkomo, scowling.

  “Yes,” she said, trying to speak clearly. “Yes. That’s how he died. I only meant for him to drop his weapon. It was…an accident.”

  He studied her in angry silence for a moment, then turned to the Land Rover and checked out the body.

  “Step over there,” he ordered her, pointing toward Bongani.

  She did as he said and watched as he moved away toward the trees and made a call on a satellite phone.

  He returned after about five minutes, looking a bit calmer.

  “Headquarters is sending a detective,” he said. “He’ll be here tomorrow. Now I have to secure the crime scene and take full statements from everybody.” He barked some orders in a local language, and a man headed for one of their vehicles.

  “He’s going to guard the plane and make sure nobody interferes with it,” he explained. “Now, I will take your full statements.”

  The sergeant led Bongani and Crys into the shade of the dining area, and they spent the next hour giving him their stories. He laboriously wrote them in longhand in a large spiral-bound notebook.

  “We will stay here until the detective comes,” Nkomo said when it was done. “We have sleeping bags.”

  “You and your men can use the guest tents,” Crys told him in as friendly a manner as she could. “And we have plenty of food and some beer—it was meant for the guests…”

  As he walked away, she felt a little less anxious. Nkomo had seemed to accept the story of Ho’s death. She hoped she’d been worrying too much.

  Chapter 15

  It was late the next morning when another police Land Rover arrived. It didn’t come from the same direction as the others, but from the airstrip. Crys figured they’d gone there before coming to the camp. Probably the detective wanted to get his head around the crime scene first.

  The driver pulled up in the shade of a large mahogany tree, and he and his passenger climbed out. The passenger was obviously the detective—a large, overweight man in plain clothes with damp sweat marks under his arms. He looked hot and tired and not very smart. Crys guessed that the interviews wouldn’t take very long.

  The detective walked up and looked at Bongani and Crys in turn. Then he said to Crys, “I am Colonel Mabula. You are…?”

  “I’m Crystal Nguyen. I’m on a safari from Tshukudu Lodge. And this is Bongani Chikosi, who works for Tshukudu.”

  Mabula nodded, looking them up and down—a little rudely Crys thought. But then she reminded herself what he must have heard about what had happened.

  “Let us get out of the sun,” he said at last. “And could we get something cold to drink?”

  “May I offer you a beer?” Crys asked, thinking that it would start things off on the right note.

  “No, thank you, I’m on duty. Cold water would be fine.”

  He took over the dining area and, once Crys delivered the water, asked them to wait until he called them. They found what shade they could from the jackalberry tree, while Mabula sat with Nkomo at the table.

  * * *

  “Well, sergeant. What do you think?” Colonel Mabula got straight to the point.

  “Sir, I took statements from both of them. Here they are.” Nkomo handed over his spiral-bound notebook.

  Mabula opened it and read both statements carefully.

  “I’m pleased you have a good handwriting, Sergeant. I could read most of what you wrote.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “What’s your impression of the two?”

  Nkomo took a few moments before answering. “I interviewed them separately, of course, and asked them a lot of questions. Their stories were very much the same.”

  “Do you think the stories are true? Or did they just agree to say the same lies?”

  “I think the stories are true. But
they both seemed very nervous.”

  Mabula took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead, wishing it wasn’t so hot.

  “This woman…” He checked the statement again. “Naguwhen, as you’ve written it here. She is from Vietnam?”

  “She is from America, she said. A reporter.”

  “She is Vietnamese,” Mabula said firmly. He knew well how involved the Vietnamese were in rhino-horn poaching. Now this Vietnamese woman had suddenly appeared in the middle of what he believed was a big smuggling operation. And with the man, Chikosi…

  This was supposed to be coincidence?

  “This man, Ho, who was killed in the vehicle. He is also Vietnamese. Did they say he had anything with him apart from these documents?”

  The sergeant shook his head.

  “Did you ask them?”

  Again, Nkomo shook his head, looking a bit puzzled.

  Mabula watched him for a few moments, saying nothing. Then he asked, “Did they do anything or say anything after you’d taken their statements that made you suspicious?”

  “No. They were helpful and polite.”

  Mabula sat for a few minutes, then said, “We’ll see. Please ask the woman to come here. While I talk to them, you and your men will search the camp.”

  Nkomo jumped up, but Mabula stopped him. “Carefully, Sergeant Nkomo—you must search the camp very carefully.”

  “Yes, sir,” Nkomo responded. Then he went to fetch Crys.

  * * *

  From under the jackalberry tree, Bongani and Crys watched the two policemen’s discussion.

  “What are they saying?” Crys murmured to Bongani. But he just shook his head. He couldn’t hear.

  At last, Nkomo stood up and called Crys over.

  She walked to the dining area, her anxiety like a hard ball in her belly.

  Once she’d sat down, Mabula fixed her with a stare that seemed to go on forever. “I read your statement,” he said eventually, “but I want to hear your story directly from you. Please tell me everything—from the beginning.”

  Crys started with Bongani waking her up in the middle of the night and went from there. Mabula sat sipping his water and listening to her without comment, until she came to the elephant episode.