by Tony Park
Sonja counted them. There were three more, all with AK-47s. They were well dressed, in bush clothes, but not the uniforms of the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Service. The first man who had crossed covered the others as they moved past him. These men were well trained.
When the man began to stand and turn to follow the others, Sonja made her move. She crept silently through the bush, doing as he had done, watching her footfall, but moving faster, more confidently than he had.
Sonja remembered that Tema, like her, had been checking her phone while they watched the buffalo. Sonja took her phone out of her pocket and, as she walked, tapped out an SMS. Contact rear. Hold fire. She had no time for more, and hoped Tema would receive it. At this stage Sonja didn’t know for sure who the men were, other than that they were not dressed as rangers. For all she knew they could be some Zimbabwean special police unit or even operatives from Charlie 10, the Central Intelligence Organisation. While they might be coming to arrest her, that did not give her the right to open fire on them indiscriminately. With a bit of luck Julianne Clyde-Smith could find a lawyer or pay a big enough bribe to keep her out of prison in Zimbabwe, but not if she murdered some intelligence officers in cold blood.
The man paused, perhaps because those ahead of him had also stopped. Sonja reckoned their lead element must at least be in sight of her people on the edge of the riverbank, overlooking where the buffalo were drinking. She could hear the buffalo grunting and lowing and the splash of hooves in the shallow water.
The man was alert and she pondered the best way to disarm him, quietly, without killing him. It wouldn’t be easy, she thought, but then she caught a break.
The man took his right hand from the pistol grip of his AK-47 and unbuttoned the flap of the left breast pocket of his shirt and took out a mobile phone. Sonja took the Leatherman tool from her belt and opened the knife blade. She moved fast and silent through the grass and came up behind him. As the man studied the screen she reached around him and put her hand over his mouth and pushed the point of the knife into his neck until blood began to flow.
‘Drop your rifle or I’ll open your throat.’
He writhed in her grip and tried to reach for the trigger. Sonja pushed the blade a little deeper to still him and he groaned into her palm. ‘I said drop it. Get on your knees.’
This time he complied. Sonja snatched up his rifle and put the barrel to the back of his head.
‘Who are you?’
‘National parks rangers. Anti-poaching.’
‘You’re not in uniform.’
‘We are poor, the government has no money.’
‘Bullshit,’ Sonja said. ‘Your clothes are new, as are your boots. Are you Charlie 10?’
The man started to turn his head and she caught the flash of confusion in his eyes.
‘Give me your phone.’
He picked it up from the grass where he had dropped it, and Sonja saw his thumb start to tap the keys. She swung the AK-47 around and smashed the butt into the side of his head. The man dropped the phone and toppled sideways, unconscious or at least severely stunned.
Sonja checked the screen. The last message read, Kill them.
She scrolled up and saw the brief exchange. The owner of the phone had reported that he had the ‘targets’ in sight. Then the order to kill had been given. Whoever was after them, their intent was not to arrest them or take them alive. Sonja took out her phone and saw that Tema had replied to her earlier message, saying they were standing by.
Sonja tapped out a reply. Targets hostile. Shoot to kill.
The man groaned, pulled himself to his hands and knees and tried to stand. Sonja delivered a swift, vicious kick to his ribs. The man cried out and clutched his side. Sonja brought the rifle up to her shoulder and took aim between the man’s eyes.
‘In about thirty seconds your men are going to come in range of my people. I’ve given the order to take them out. As soon as the first shot’s fired I’m going to kill you, unless you start talking now. Who sent you the message?’
The man blinked up at her. ‘You’re a woman.’
Sonja laughed. ‘So, you think I won’t kill you?’
The man shook his head. ‘We were warned, you are a warrior. We were told not to underestimate you. But if you think you can stop the people who give me my orders – you, one woman – you are mistaken.’
Sonja took up the slack on the trigger. ‘I don’t need your shit. I need to know who they are. Zimbabwean? Chinese? Vietnamese?’
‘Obert was my boss, the national parks warden you killed.’
‘Is this a revenge attack, for Obert?’
The man shook his head. ‘None of us liked him. He was our boss, but he was just a middleman. He took too big a share of the profits. We would have killed him eventually, or the higher-ups would have taken him out if they’d learned how he was robbing them.’
‘OK, but who are these “higher-ups”? I need names.’
‘I don’t have their names. Obert met with them, not us.’
Sonja was frustrated. She wanted to get to Tema, Mario and Ezekial, to join them in the fight. However, there was much more to what was happening here than Ian Barton knew or had let on. Barton had thought Obert Mvuu was the local poaching kingpin, but now it seemed he was just another pawn.
‘You’re not helping me . . .’
‘Alfred . . . I have a name. I have a wife, two children, please.’
‘Yes, Alfred, and I have a daughter, and you would have happily left her without a mother, you piece of shit. I’m going to kill you now.’
He put up a hand, a stop gesture. ‘Please. Obert mentioned something once, about “the Russian”.’
‘Male or female?’
‘He did not say. I assumed it was a man. He said . . .’ Alfred closed his eyes, concentrating on remembering a conversation, ‘He said, “The Russian is flying back to Johannesburg to be with his other insects”, or something like that.’
‘Insects?’
‘Some sort of insect. He actually said rize.’
‘What language is that, Shona? What does it mean?’
‘Yes, my language. It is the insect with the claws,’ Alfred pronounced it as craws, ‘and the sting in the tail.’
‘Scorpion. That’s an arachnid, Alfred, not an insect. I can see why you’re a poacher, not a guide. How did Obert know the man was Russian?’
‘Obert spoke that language; he was Ndebele and was trained in Russia with Joshua Nkomo’s men as a fighter for the Chimurenga, the liberation war. He said it was good to talk Russian again.’
Russia’s organised crime gangs had a foothold in Africa, so it wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that the Scorpions were backed from there. Sonja pushed the tip of the barrel into the skin and bone between Alfred’s eyes, forcing his head back. ‘Give me more. A name.’
‘I don’t . . .’
‘Goodbye, Alfred.’
‘Wait, wait. I heard one name only. Obert called the man Nicholas, or something like that. The man corrected him – they spoke English for a little bit – his name was not Nicholas, but something similar. I could not hear the rest.’
‘Who sent you the SMS just now, telling you to kill my team and me?’
Before the man could answer or stall they heard a burst of gunfire from the direction of Chitake Springs, the curtain-raiser on a chorus of shooting that followed. Sonja glanced towards where the noise came from, but all the while she kept her eye on Alfred, using her peripheral vision.
Alfred lunged, as she expected he would when he thought she wasn’t watching him, and tried to grab his rifle back from her. Sonja pulled the trigger. He fell back, dead, his blood mixing with the red soil of Africa.
Sonja ran through the bush, rifle up, scanning the trees ahead for targets. The shooting had died down, but every now and then there was still a sho
rt burst or a single aimed shot.
She heard Mario calling out a target indication, saying there was a lone gunman behind a fallen tree. ‘Seventy metres, one o’clock.’
She pictured the spot, based on where his voice had come from. She would be getting almost that close to the riverbank. Of the buffalo there remained only a cloud of bovine-scented dust rising in the wake of their panicked stampede.
Sonja had spent much of her lifetime, from her childhood in the Namibian bush on her parents’ cattle farm through to her time in Botswana’s Okavango Delta in her teens and then as an adult in war zones around the world, training her eyes to pick up movement and targets. She saw the rifle’s barrel poke above a fallen tree. When the head popped up Sonja fired from behind.
‘One dead enemy!’ she called.
‘Cease fire,’ Mario said in reply.
Sonja ran to the man she had just shot, confirmed he was dead and kicked the rifle away from his body. The sound of a vehicle engine made her pause. It could have been one of the tourist trucks leaving but, when she concentrated, she could hear that it was getting louder. It sounded like the rattle of an old Land Rover.
She moved through the bush, weapon still up.
‘Over here,’ Mario said.
She passed a second, then a third dead man.
‘Report,’ Sonja said.
‘Tema’s hit.’
Sonja fought down fear that rose in her chest and constricted her heart and lungs. She found them. Ezekial had taken off his shirt and was tying it, tight, around Tema’s left leg.
‘I’m sorry, Sonja,’ Tema said.
Sonja shook her head. ‘Don’t be. How bad is it?’
‘Not serious,’ Mario said, ‘but she needs a doctor.’
Sonja spun and pointed her AK at the Land Rover that crashed over several saplings as it charged towards them. She relaxed, a little, when she saw that Ian Barton was at the wheel. He climbed out.
‘I was on my way, to take you to the Mana Pools airstrip, when I heard the gunfire. I just got a call on the radio. The CIO are here and they’re heading to the airstrip.’
‘How do they know we’re heading there?’ Sonja asked.
He shrugged. ‘One of my staff, maybe, or someone in national parks. We have to go, now.’
They lifted Tema into the back of the Land Rover and climbed in around her in the open cargo area. As Ian drove they passed two dead men. The toll was mounting, but Sonja felt no sense of achievement, even though the immediate threat to Julianne Clyde-Smith’s Zambezi River lodge had been neutralised.
Mario interrupted her thoughts. ‘What will you do if the CIO get to the airstrip first?’
‘I’m not coming with you.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me,’ she said.
Tema raised herself up on an elbow. ‘You can’t stay here, Sonja. We have to get back to South Africa.’
‘You do. And get yourself looked after. Mario, make sure Paterson and Julianne send Tema to the best surgeon in Nelspruit. Ask for Dr Bongi.’
Mario nodded. ‘Please, Sonja, if you stay here the CIO will get you.’
She shook her head. ‘No. If they don’t catch me here they’ll have people waiting in Harare.’
Mario looked her in the eyes. ‘What about us?’
Sonja knew he was thinking about what had happened last night. Nothing like that was going to happen again. She’d had too much to drink, but the fact was she would not have slept with him if she had any intention of them continuing to work together. ‘We’re through.’
‘What do you mean, Sonja?’ Ezekial asked.
‘This business is finished. I’m quitting, and this anti-poaching unit no longer exists. Mario, you can tell Julianne, if I can’t reach her by phone first.’
Tema winced, but Sonja was sure it wasn’t just because of the bullet wound. ‘Sonja, please.’
‘No,’ Sonja said. ‘We’ve been set up from the beginning. If Julianne wants a black ops hit squad then I’m not going to command it. We were told we’d be used for surveillance and reconnaissance, and instead we’ve been dropped into one firefight after another.’
Mario put a hand on her forearm. ‘Sonja . . .’
She shrugged off his touch. ‘I told you, it’s over. All of it.’ Sonja looked to Tema and Ezekial. ‘I’ll give you both good references, and if I get back to South Africa I’ll do my best to see that you both find good jobs, assuming you want to stay in anti-poaching.’
Sonja banged on the roof of the Land Rover’s cab.
Ian Barton stopped the vehicle and craned his head out of the driver’s side window. ‘What is it?’
Before the others could begin to explain to Ian what had happened, Sonja had disappeared, into the African bush.
PART 2
The Day
Ingwe stretched and yawned, stood and shifted her position on the wide branch high in her favourite sycamore fig tree. From her vantage point she surveyed her domain, a large swathe of the Sabi Sand Game Reserve.
It was daylight, the sun high and hot, and the leaves of the tree bathed her in dappled shadows. The breeze ruffled her whiskers.
She settled on her belly, full from another impala, and rested her chin on a paw. But sleep did not come.
Instinctively, as soon as she heard the unfamiliar noise she lowered her ears and squeezed her body into the bark to minimise her profile. Through golden eyes she watched the human.
He moved slowly, cautiously, swinging his long arm from side to side, hunting. As careful as he was, the twig he had stepped on had been enough to alert Ingwe, for she was a far better hunter, a more efficient killer than this man could ever be.
Ahead of the man was Mkhumbi, the rhino, a dim-witted creature if ever there was one. He could barely see and while his hearing was good he was too engrossed in chomping the grass with his big wide mouth to hear the human sneaking up on him. Mkhumbi relied on his sheer size to protect him from Ngala, the hated lions who roamed the veld in big prides or in coalitions of males. But Mkhumbi, like all of them, had to be wary of humans. Trouble was, for all his size and brute strength the rhino was generally as docile as the Nguni cows that grazed outside of the reserve, where Ingwe, if she was feeling hungry or mischievous, would sometimes wander in search of a tasty goat or calf.
The man stopped, within visual distance of Mkhumbi. He raised and steadied his long arm. It bucked in his hands, but the sound was not loud, as it often was, more a cough that carried on the soft breeze and made Ingwe settle yet lower onto the branch. The rhino took a few paces, staggered and fell onto its chest, raising a cloud of dust as it hit the ground.
Mostly, these things happened at night, occasionally interfering with Ingwe’s nocturnal forays.
And now, something even stranger happened. The machine arrived overhead, its blades clattering and whirring, blowing dust and leaves and twigs and rocking the boughs around Ingwe. The machine settled in a small grassy clearing and the man with the long arm, clutching Mkhumbi’s freshly sawn horn, ran to it, climbed in, and then disappeared into the sky.
Odd, very odd.
Ingwe settled again, chin on paw, and slept, as the flies settled on Mkhumbi’s lifeless body.
Chapter 15
Hudson Brand had been driving for four days and had crossed into Malawi from Chipata, Zambia, at dawn. His left leg was cramping again so he pulled over. The distance he could drive without a break was getting shorter by the year.
He was a long way from South Africa and, as good as it was to be out on the road in Africa again, this was no holiday. He hoped his journey wouldn’t be a waste of time; already the cost of fuel had eaten a crocodile-sized chunk out of his meagre bank account.
From his home near the Kruger Park he had driven north to Musina and crossed the notoriously chaotic border at Beitbridge into Zimbabwe. The countr
y was still on its knees, economically, thanks to its ill-thought-out land redistribution program. Between two and three million Zimbabweans were living legally and illegally in South Africa, having fled their home for the promise of work across the border. Those who didn’t queue for hours at Beitbridge waded through the Limpopo River, dodging military and police patrols.
By contrast, when he crossed the Kariba Dam wall from Zimbabwe into Zambia it became evident how quickly a country’s fortunes could change with the benefit of just a few years of stable, relatively democratic government. Many of the commercial farmers who had been kicked off their farms in Zimbabwe had migrated north, and Zambia’s agricultural sector had been brought back to booming life in a few short years, creating prosperity and jobs.
Hudson climbed down from his old Land Rover, stretched and walked around the vehicle to take a piss, something that was almost impossible to do without company in Malawi. In this poverty-stricken country the roads weren’t congested with traffic, but rather with people walking or cycling everywhere. It wasn’t more than thirty seconds before he heard the ding of a bicycle bell. As he zipped up he waved to the cyclist, a man in a threadbare suit and a natty purple tie who trundled slowly by.
He got back into the Land Rover and continued driving. The air was warm, the sun bright, and occasionally he glimpsed Lake Malawi on his right. Eventually he came to the turnoff he’d been looking for to Makuzi Beach. He took it and followed three kilometres of winding sand road.
Hudson had no idea if she would be there. Sonja’s team had returned to the Sabi Sand Game Reserve. He’d been to see Tema at the Mediclinic hospital in Nelspruit, where she had spent a night following relatively minor surgery before being allowed to leave. She was already up and walking. Neither she nor Ezekial knew where Sonja had gone and nor had they heard from her. Hudson avoided contacting Mario.
Village huts and straggly crops gave way to lawn and palm trees as Hudson approached the beachside lodge and camping ground which, fortunately, contained only one vehicle, a rented four-by-four with South African registration.