by Tony Park
As it was, for the first few hours of the day they had several game sightings to themselves on their side of the arena.
Hudson was leaning out the driver’s side window of his Land Rover and had picked up fresh pugmarks in the dust of the road heading towards the Lerai Forest. ‘Lioness.’
Sonja felt the thrill of the hunt as Hudson followed the spoor and she scanned the golden grass that stretched away to a small lake beyond. ‘I see her!’
Hudson accelerated a little, but stopped about a hundred metres short of the lioness. Sonja had picked up the movement of the dark fur on the backs of her ears, above the grass. The animal had moved off the road and had her nose up, sniffing.
Hudson switched off the engine and took up his binoculars. It had cost them a small fortune to pay the fees to drive their own vehicle down to the floor. He had very little money, she had gathered, but it wasn’t a problem for her so she had been happy to pay. While they had been driving hard to get to their rendezvous with Julianne, Hudson had been adamant that Sonja could not miss this iconic African destination.
‘Look,’ Sonja said, proud that she had once again trumped her safari guide boyfriend, ‘there’s a male, off to the right.’
‘Hey, you’re good at this. Watch, he’s coming towards her.’
Sonja followed the lions’ progress as they trotted towards each other, and realised she had just thought of Hudson as her boyfriend. She wondered if that was the right word. The male lion was a handsome fellow with a luxurious mane so pale it was almost blond. The two animals came together and rubbed their heads against each other in greeting.
‘They’re going to mate,’ Hudson said.
He started the engine and crept a little closer, and by the time they reached the lions the friendly house cat–style greeting had been replaced with snarling and the bearing of fangs.
The lioness lashed out at the male, taunting him with the smack of a big paw to his face. He growled, moved behind her and bit down on her neck.
‘I’ve seen this before, but it never gets old,’ Sonja said.
‘Yep, I know what you mean.’
They were close enough not to need binoculars. As they both watched the intense, somewhat violent spectacle of the big male mating with the female, her snarling and him grunting through the brutal but short coupling, Sonja reached out across the console box between them.
Hudson took her hand and clasped it, hard, as the male lion finished.
The lions parted, got up and walked around each other once, then flopped down into the grass, sated and exhausted.
‘You know they’ll do that every fifteen to twenty minutes for a whole day,’ Hudson said.
‘I know. But I prefer quality over quantity, and at least you’re not that fast.’
After they exited the crater via the same gate they had entered through, Hudson drove around the rim and then past a smaller caldera where Maasai warriors herded their cattle amid zebra and wildebeest.
As they descended they continued on through the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, where people and wildlife lived side by side. They passed but didn’t stop at the Olduvai Gorge heritage site, where Hudson told Sonja that Louis Leakey had discovered evidence of the earliest human species.
‘Ironic,’ Sonja said, ‘that humanity began in Africa, and ended in so many countries over here.’
They had both, Hudson thought as he drove across the dry, dusty Ndutu Plains, seen the best and worst the continent had to offer, but here he was, an American, choosing to live in Africa, and here Sonja was, too. ‘Does Africa feel like home to you?’
She looked over at him and he met her eyes for as long as the corrugations in the road would allow. ‘It does right now.’
They entered the Serengeti National Park at the busy Nabi Hill Gate and Hudson queued with a score of driver guides waiting to pay entry fees. Hudson and Sonja’s was the only self-drive vehicle in the packed car park, and when Hudson finally emerged from the payment office he saw a pair of Japanese tourists, wearing surgical face masks to protect themselves from Tanzania’s ubiquitous dust, taking pictures of his battered, ageing Land Rover. Sonja sat in the shade of a tree, her legs crossed, reading a paperback, ignoring the tourists.
‘All set,’ he said.
They drove through the park, heading for the first of Julianne Clyde-Smith’s two operations in the Serengeti, the semi-permanent tented camp in the Makoma Hills, to the west of the park’s headquarters at Seronera. He took it slow as they turned off the main road onto the game-viewing track that wound its way along the Seronera River.
With the great wildebeest and zebra migration well on its way north towards Kenya, the plains game wasn’t abundant here, but it was crawling with resident predators who lived in the long grass and marshes of the riverbed, along with elephant, buffalo and enough other herbivores to guarantee some action.
A gaggle of half a dozen game viewers told them there was something interesting across the river, so Hudson found a drift, a shallow crossing point, and headed towards them. ‘Probably lion.’
He was right. When they came to the cleared area on the other side, now a car park, they saw a pride of twelve lions, some sleeping under a tree, others lying in the grass. One lazed in the shade of a game viewer, whose tourists peered nervously from their roof hatch down at the lolling cat, which regally ignored them.
‘I can’t help it, I like lions,’ Sonja said.
This was idyllic, Hudson thought. Here he was on safari with a beautiful woman, taking in some of the greatest national parks in the world. He wanted to suggest to her that they forget Julianne Clyde-Smith and just turn around and head back to South Africa, or, better still, just keep on travelling through Africa. He knew, however, that Sonja was like the predators around them; as relaxed as they might look now, their driving force was the hunt. He understood that, even felt it himself. It’s what drew him into investigation work, that almost addictive feeling he got when he was on someone’s trail.
‘Look,’ Sonja said. ‘That one’s seen a gazelle.’
Hudson watched where Sonja was pointing. The lioness in the shade of the vehicle had rolled into an upright position and was now on the move, in stealth mode. She was up and on all fours, but her legs were bent, her belly close to the ground and her tail straight out. She stalked around and then under the chassis of the Land Cruiser, her gaze fixed on a dainty Thompson’s gazelle, grazing unawares on the other side of the causeway Hudson and Sonja had just crossed.
‘She’s going for the Tommy all right,’ Hudson said, using the East African nickname for the gazelle.
They watched and waited. Periodically the gazelle would look up and around, and then, in the few seconds during which it returned to eating, the lioness moved fast and low, across the river to a bush that gave her cover just twenty metres short of her target. She dropped even lower, tensed, and gave a little shake of her behind, as if psyching herself up or coiling her muscles.
Camera shutters clicked and whirred on the other vehicles around them and the chatter ceased as everyone drew a collective breath and focused on the big cat.
The gazelle looked up and around and then, when it returned to feeding, the lioness sprang from cover. The flash of movement was enough to alert the Tommy, and the little antelope leapt away.
The lioness ran in long strides, her body and legs at full stretch in each bound. As fast as she was, the cat almost looked as though she were lumbering compared to the frantic blur of the gazelle. The Tommy danced left and the lioness twisted to follow. No sooner had she reached out a paw to try and trip up her prey’s rear leg than the little fellow had jinked right.
The lioness followed, but one more zig was too fast for her zag and the predator came to a halt in a cloud of dust.
‘Wow,’ Sonja said. ‘Just wow. My heart’s beating. I’ve seen that a few times in my life and I’m always torn.�
�
‘I know what you mean. You want her to catch something, to see the kill, for the cat to get supper, but you also want the prey to live.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Exactly. It got more like that, not wanting to see a kill, after I had Emma.’
‘We can turn around, you know, or just keep heading in a different direction,’ he said to her.
She looked at him and for a moment he thought she might actually be considering his proposal.
‘No.’ The lioness was coming back to her pride, and looking decidedly annoyed as she walked across the causeway. ‘I don’t miss when I’m hunting. I’m going to find out exactly what Julianne’s up to and if it’s what we think, that she’s running her own personal star chamber, then I’m going to get Tema and Ezekial out before they end up dead or rotting in some African prison for murdering an innocent civilian.’
Chapter 19
Hudson and Sonja spent the night in Julianne’s Makoma Hills camp and rose early the next morning for a long drive through the Serengeti.
Hudson Brand crested a ridge and saw, in the shallow valley, the Grumeti River snaking its way from west to east. Here it was little more than a creek, but it was an important watering stop for the hundreds of black dots that studded the short grassy lands around them.
‘Well, here it is,’ he said.
‘What?’ Sonja asked.
‘The great wildebeest migration, well, the tail end of it at least.’
Sonja and Hudson got out of the Land Rover. She looked around them. ‘It’s amazing.’
‘Nah, this is nothing. Wait until we get into the thick of it, then you’ll see what a spectacle it is.’
‘Ow.’ Sonja slapped the back of her thigh. She squealed again then jumped back into the Land Rover, slammed the door and wound up the window.
Hudson went to the back of the truck, opened the rear door, rummaged in his duffel bag, slapped a fly on his arm and got back in.
‘My God, they’re the worst insects I’ve ever come across.’ Sonja rubbed her leg, where a red welt was rising. ‘That hurts so much. Are they tsetse flies?’
Hudson laughed. ‘Yes. You don’t think you’re overreacting just a tad, Sonja?’
She looked at him and pulled a face like an angry buffalo. ‘That fly seriously bit me. Look at the size of this lump. My leg looks like I’ve been pumping iron and taking steroids.’
Hudson produced the elegant slim-line aerosol can he’d found under his dirty underwear. ‘Try this.’
Sonja took the can and read the label. ‘Avon Skin So Soft spray-on moisturiser?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you gone metrosexual on me, Hudson?’
He smiled. ‘Trust me, this is the only thing in the world that repels tsetse flies, other than Dettol mixed with water, so if you don’t want to smell like a hospital ward then try some.’
She looked at him sceptically, but sprayed some moisturiser on her arms and legs and rubbed it in.
‘The added benefit,’ he said, ‘is that when I travel to tsetse-infested countries my skin is positively glowing.’
She laughed.
The repellent worked, and Hudson explained to Sonja that as well as being die-hard safari aficionados the British Special Air Service had also become converts to the Avon spray-on moisturiser, which repelled midges as well.
They drove on through the Serengeti and Hudson continued to savour the experience. He liked being able to tell Sonja things she didn’t know. She was such a self-assured, confident woman that he could see how some men might find her intimidating. She had confessed to him that she’d only had two long-term relationships in her life and that both had ended badly.
He wondered, as they drove past more herds of wildebeest making their way inexorably towards the Mara River, what it might be like to settle down with someone like Sonja if, in fact, she was capable of putting down roots again.
They stopped a few times to stretch, have a snack, and reapply their moisturising tsetse fly repellent. Hudson could feel the mood changing between them, the closer they came to Julianne Clyde-Smith’s camp. Sonja had lost the free and easy look; her feet were planted firmly in the footwell of the Land Rover as she cleaned her pistol while they drove. She checked and cleaned her ammunition and reloaded the weapon.
‘You look like you’re preparing for battle.’
She glanced at him. ‘I am.’
After a long morning’s drive they came, in the early afternoon, to a T-junction intersection with a giant white animal skull on a plinth.
‘Kichwa Tembo,’ Hudson said. ‘Elephant’s head. This is the point of no return.’
‘Don’t be so melodramatic, just turn right,’ Sonja said.
About fifteen kilometres down the road they started seeing the distinctive granite koppies of the Kuria Hills. This was a prime spot, he explained to Sonja, for tourists to come and see the great wildebeest migration in Tanzania. Here, the Mara River, which formed part of the border with Kenya, flowed into the Serengeti National Park, and this time of year, in August, was a prime opportunity to view the massed crossings of the river by wildebeest and zebra.
While it had been busy in the Seronera area of the park, where they had watched the lioness chase the gazelle, the drive through the Serengeti had been much quieter; they had seen no more than half a dozen other vehicles on their route. Now, however, they started encountering more and more safari traffic. Eventually they came to a turnoff, to the left, to Julianne Clyde-Smith’s Crossing Lodge in the Kuria Hills.
Hudson noticed Sonja clenching and unclenching her fists as they drove along the access road which wound in and out of large pink granite boulders. They were both tired, hot and dusty from the drive in the un-airconditioned vehicle, but Hudson noted how Sonja became instantly alert as they pulled up and Julianne Clyde-Smith herself emerged from the canvas-and-steel reception building to meet them.
‘Sonja, so nice to see you again, and welcome back.’
Hudson came up behind Sonja, and she introduced him.
‘How nice to meet you. Are you Sonja’s driver?’
Sonja looked to him and back to Julianne. ‘Hudson’s a friend of mine. He’s ex–32 Battalion, South African Defence Force.’
‘Three-two Battalion, Hudson?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Oh, well, then I suppose you know Mario Machado, whom Sonja recruited.’
‘We’re acquainted, ma’am,’ Hudson said. It was Hudson’s turn to clench and unclench his fists at the thought of seeing Mario again. This would be interesting, but Hudson sensed that was how Sonja liked it.
‘Sonja’s briefed you on the work she and Mario have been doing?’
‘Yes,’ Hudson said. ‘I was on my way on a vacation to Tanzania and caught up with Sonja. I’m giving her a lift.’
‘Well, you’re very welcome at Crossing Lodge and we’ll find somewhere for you to stay. Come in,’ Julianne said. ‘It’s good to see you again, Sonja, and to meet you, Mr Brand. Mario and the others have been busy lately. I’m sure you’ll all have lots to chat about over dinner. I’ve reserved our private dining room for all of you.’
‘We’re not here to socialise, Julianne,’ Sonja said. ‘I’ve come back to work, and the sooner we get started the better. Where’s Paterson?’
‘He’ll be along soon. He and Mario have been working on a new mission for the team. I’ll send for him. Meantime, come through to the bar. I must say, Sonja, I’m not used to my employees walking out on me without notice, like you did in Zimbabwe.’
‘The Zimbabwean secret police were after me. If they’d caught me I’d be in prison and so, most likely, would Ian Barton and the rest of my team. It was best I disappeared for a while.’
‘Quite,’ said Julianne.
Hudson followed Sonja and Julianne through the reception area, past the o
ffice on the left and a curio shop on the right, down a short flight of stairs to the bar. It was open on the side overlooking a gentle slope covered in grass and dotted with trees. Zebra grazed very close to where a couple of tourists took pictures with their phones of cocktails in the foreground and the wildlife beyond. Julianne led them to a corner table, away from the guests, and summoned a waiter and invited them to order.
‘Coke Zero for me,’ Sonja said.
‘I’ll take a sparkling water, please,’ Hudson said.
‘Champagne for me, please, Samuel.’ Julianne beamed at them. ‘I feel like celebrating.’
‘You said your team has been busy?’ Hudson asked. ‘Do you mean that your people caught some poachers?’
‘Disrupted a major syndicate’s centre of gravity, as James would put it,’ Julianne said. ‘It means we beat some bad guys, a notorious ivory poaching gang.’
‘Prisoners?’ Sonja asked.
Julianne shook her head. ‘No, they put up a stiff fight. Mario and the team took them all out.’
‘Killed them,’ Hudson said.
She looked at him as she took her glass of sparkling wine from the waiter. ‘I know how dirty this business is, rest assured, Mr Brand.’
‘Hudson.’
‘Very well, Hudson. You must have seen your fair share of combat in Angola.’
He nodded.
‘I haven’t, but I’m aware of the stakes. I don’t like it when anyone is hurt or loses their life, but when people shoot back then our anti-poaching operatives must use the appropriate level of force.’
‘The shoot-to-kill policy works in Botswana,’ Hudson said, ‘and you could argue the only reason there are still a few rhinos left in Zimbabwe is because they still operate under those rules.’
‘You may be right.’ Julianne shifted her gaze to Sonja and narrowed her eyes. ‘Sonja, I know you left because you didn’t like the way your team was being managed, but I can assure you we’re not operating a de facto illegal hit squad here.’