by Tony Park
Tema stopped thrashing and her body floated limply in the water as Sonja finally severed the last few strands. Sonja wrapped an arm around the young woman and kicked for the surface.
When she broke through she breathed in the clean air, but Tema was silent and unresponsive.
‘Tema!’ Sonja wrapped both her arms around Tema and squeezed her as hard as she could. Water welled up and out of her lungs and down over her lips.
Sonja searched for help. She heard then saw a Zodiac inflatable boat, but it was racing away from them, towards shore. On board were Mario, Julianne, and James Paterson. Shit, she thought. Mario had ignored her and Tema and was looking after his bosses.
Sonja looked back to the wrecked fishing boat and her heart lurched when she saw Nikola Pesev emerge from a hatch. He must have climbed in and hidden when the boat rammed his cruiser. He was holding an AK-47 and his eyes met Sonja’s.
‘Your friends have left you. How is Tema?’
‘She’s unconscious, nearly drowned,’ Sonja called back to him.
He snorted. ‘Well, good for her.’
Sonja stopped swimming. She trod water, supporting Tema, and reached behind her back. ‘What do you mean “good for her”?’
Peves raised the AK-47 and swung the barrel towards Sonja and Tema. ‘She won’t feel a thing.’
The water slowed her movements, but Sonja was able to get a round off from her Makarov before she even got the pistol clear of the lake’s surface. A spout of water erupted and the bullet went close enough to Nikola to snatch the fabric of his shirt. He winced, as if grazed, but when Sonja got the weapon totally clear and pulled the trigger again the mechanism was locked open. The pistol had misfired.
Peves chuckled.
Sonja couldn’t clear the weapon without letting go of Tema, nor could she dive into the water again with the unconscious woman in her arms. The sound of a siren rolled across the lake. Nikola ignored it, but Sonja could see, around the bow of the fishing boat, the low, sleek, green shape of the Tanzanian military patrol boat that had been moored in the inlet by the village of Kipili.
Peves brought the AK-47 up to his shoulder and took aim. ‘I’ll make this as quick and clean as I can, Sonja. Any last words?’
‘Don’t look behind you.’
He laughed, loudly, his muscular body shaking. He steadied his aim. ‘OK, I won’t.’
Sonja held Tema tight to her body, kissed her on the temple and closed her eyes.
A deafening storm of gunfire was the last thing Sonja heard.
PART 3
The Kill
Three weeks later
She was a hunter.
From her lair, nestled between a smooth pair of granite boulders high atop a koppie she had an almost 360-degree view of her killing fields.
From the dainty klipspringers that hopped nimbly from rock to rock, oblivious of her presence, to the majestic lion who roared to his females and his rivals every evening, to the tourists returning to their lodges from game drives and the staff smoking cigarettes and joints behind the kitchens. She saw them all.
She moved at night, and watched and waited during the day, biding her time, waiting for the kill.
From her place of concealment, she was too high for the hyenas to come nosing about after her, too clever for the lions and too cunning for the humans to have the faintest inkling of her presence.
The only thing that did concern her, made her watch the ground for tracks and sniff the air, were leopards. Specifically, there was a female, as secretive and as nocturnal in her movements as she was, and a big, brash male, the one they called Mbvala, who strode imperiously to the waterhole most nights, broadcasting his rasping, sawing call, defying the other predators and scaring the poor bushback, after whom he was named, half to death. Every now and then he caught one with practised ease.
She watched them, all of them, come and go, noted their routines and learned their secrets.
In the dark she crept below the decks of the suites, waited in the bushes where the people came and went, and she readied herself for the kill.
Chapter 30
Hudson Brand pulled up at the Shaws Gate entrance to the Sabi Sand Game Reserve. A security guard in a smartly starched green uniform and polished boots came up to the Toyota Fortuner and Hudson wound down the electric window.
‘Avuxeni, Lucas,’ Hudson said by way of greeting in xiTsonga.
‘Ayeh imjani, Hudson.’
‘Ndzi kona.’ Hudson motioned to the man and the woman holding hands in the back seat. ‘I have two pax, for Khaya Ngala.’
‘All right.’ Lucas handed Hudson a clipboard, and as he filled out his details and the vehicle’s, a female guard with elaborately braided hair opened the rear of the Toyota while another scanned underneath with a mirror attached to a pole. They were looking for weapons, and while the guards were still vigilant it was a fact that in the three weeks since Hudson had been back in South Africa there hadn’t been a single rhino killed in the Sabi Sand reserve, nor the south of Kruger. It was no excuse to celebrate, not just yet, but poaching activity had dropped off in the region.
Lucas telephoned Khaya Ngala, giving the names of the guests to the lodge, who confirmed they were booked in. He came back to Hudson, took the money for entry fees into the reserve, went back to the office, then returned with a receipt and permit.
‘Mr and Mrs Furey?’ Lucas said as he took back the clipboard and leaned into the Fortuner.
‘Yes, that’s us,’ said the man, in an English accent.
Lucas saluted. ‘Welcome to the Sabi Sand Game Reserve and enjoy your safari.’
Hudson drove them into the reserve and turned left, following the sign to Julianne Clyde-Smith’s flagship safari lodge. On the way they passed a turnoff to Lion Plains, which Julianne also now owned, officially.
He and his passengers said little, and didn’t bother to stop for the white rhino and her calf, nor the herd of elephant that they passed. At the final turnoff to Khaya Ngala, Hudson stopped the vehicle. He got out, looked around him in case there were any lions or other dangerous game, then went to the driver’s side rear tyre and took off the valve cap. He took out his Leatherman and used the tips of the pliers to depress the tyre’s valve until two-thirds of the air inside had escaped. He replaced the cap and got back in.
‘Nearly there,’ he said to the couple in the back.
‘All good,’ said Tom. Sannie nodded.
Hudson followed the narrower, winding access road that was, he knew, kept deliberately ungraded to give guests a feeling that they were wending their way into darkest Africa. It made the towering thatch-roofed portico, the smart butler in white offering a silver tray of drinks, and the pretty young woman who opened the door and greeted the Fureys all seem that little bit more impressive.
When his guests had been escorted inside, Hudson went into the cool of the reception area and found the duty manager.
‘Say, I’ve got a slow puncture, mind if I go around to your workshop and put some air in it?’
‘Can I take a look?’ said the stockily built man in white shirt and khaki trousers.
‘Sure.’
He followed Hudson out, inspected the right rear tyre and then nodded. ‘Go back to where you came in and take the road marked “Deliveries”.’
‘Servants’ entrance. Gotcha.’
Hudson went back to the Fortuner and retraced his route, slowing for an impressive male nyala that crossed the road in front of him. These normally shy antelopes were congregating around the lodges on the Sabie River, and at Hippo Rock, drawn by the vegetation that still survived among the luxury accommodation units and houses during the drought.
He took the delivery road turnoff, but before he got to the workshop and parking area for the lodge’s safari vehicles, Hudson drove off-road, into the bush. He had spied a large termite mound and,
weaving in between trees and dying bushes, he managed to park behind the mound, out of sight of the road.
Hudson reached under the driver’s seat and took out his 1911 model Colt .45 pistol. He took the map he’d drawn from Tema’s instructions out of his pocket and checked it. He pointed his wristwatch at the sun and worked out where north was, halfway between twelve and the hour hand, and set off through the bush to the southwest, back towards the Sabie River.
The whine and screech of a drill and an angle grinder masked any noise he would make walking through the brittle dry bush. Julianne had embarked on a well-publicised upgrade of her lodge. She was renovating and rebuilding her luxury camp, and when it was unveiled in a few months’ time it, and its accompanying room rates, would put all the other premier camps in the Sabi Sand Game Reserve to shame. Business was good for Julianne Clyde-Smith.
The other news that had come out in the media following the reporting of Julianne’s near-death experience at the hands of the late head of the Scorpions poaching syndicate, whose existence, or former existence, was now common knowledge in Africa, was that Julianne would soon marry her head of security, James Paterson.
Tema was working for Julianne again and was, Hudson calculated as he moved through the bush, somewhere nearby. There was no more elite anti-poaching squad or surveillance unit, or hit squad, or whatever Sonja’s unit had been. It seemed there was no need for one any more. Tema had been relegated to walking well-heeled guests to and from their suites to dinner in case they encountered a leopard or buffalo or other dangerous game on the pathways at night.
Ezekial was working for Julianne as well, running tracking and ranger training courses for local youths from the communities near the Sabi Sand Game Reserve. Julianne was publicly channelling her money and efforts into projects designed to improve the lives and futures of people who lived on the border of the reserve and the national park, in the hope that this would stop young people falling into a life of poaching and other crime. Tema and Ezekial were living together, in the staff quarters.
Sonja had been hit by one of Peves’s bullets, which had creased the side of her skull and put her into a coma. Hudson had manned the .50 calibre heavy machine gun on the bow of the Tanzanian patrol boat and had opened up on Peves at the moment he took aim at Sonja and the unconscious Tema. The heavy slugs had all but cut Nikola Pesev in half, killing him instantly.
Hudson and Ezekial had dived into the water and lifted the women onto the patrol boat. They had revived Tema through CPR, but Sonja was unconscious. Hudson had escorted Sonja back to South Africa on a medical evacuation flight while the others had returned on Julianne’s private aircraft.
Sonja had stayed in a coma for three days in the Nelspruit Mediclinic. On the fourth, during the only three hours when Hudson had left her bedside, to drive home and get himself some clothes and to buy some for Sonja, she had come to and discharged herself. Hudson hadn’t seen or spoken to Sonja, but she was not far away.
At Hudson’s request Tema, now working at Khaya Ngala, had found out the daily routines of James and Julianne, South Africa’s newest power couple who were in residence at Julianne’s home near her lodge.
Hudson checked his watch. At this time of the day, Julianne would be inspecting the building works at the revamped luxury camp and James would be completing his workout, in their private gym, then swimming fifty laps of the twenty-metre infinity lap pool that ran across the front of the house, overlooking the veld.
Julianne’s home sat amid the boulders of a granite koppie overlooking the plain and waterhole below. Hudson skirted the building, keeping off the driveway, circling through the bush until he began to descend. Jumping from rock to rock he moved in front of and below the house, staying out of sight. When he was in line with where he reckoned the gym should be, he started to climb.
It was already hot and Brand was sweating as he climbed until he heard, then saw, the water cascading over the edge of the pool’s rim. He crouched behind a boulder, then peered around it.
Paterson was finishing his swim. His last lap was a furious one and when he touched the wall and stood he was panting with the exertion. He walked up the steps, out of the water, and Hudson saw his back. It was striped with fresh horizontal red welts, but another wound slashed the muscles at a 45-degree angle, almost like a perverse ‘does not equal’ sign.
Hudson came out from behind the rock, his pistol in his hand.
‘Nasty cut, James.’
Paterson stepped into a pair of sandals, bent to pick up a snowy white towelling robe and turned, slowly.
‘Hudson. Nice to see you again.’
‘That back of yours looks like you’ve been in the wars. Or was it just another Saturday night?’
Paterson pulled on the robe. ‘I slipped off the balcony here, fell into a thornbush. Nasty business. What’s with the pistol?’
‘Oh, I just brought a couple of tourists with me. It’s dangerous out here in the bush, in case you haven’t heard. I’m working today, James.’
‘So am I. In fact, I have a busy day, so get whatever it is that’s on your chest off it.’
Hudson kept the .45 trained on him. He knew Paterson would have a weapon, or weapons, somewhere close by. ‘Yup, I bet you do. You’re the head of a multi-million-dollar business.’
James shook his head. ‘No, you’ve got that wrong. When I marry Jules I’ll still be her head of security, nothing more. I’ll draw my wage but all of her business interests are in her name only, and that’s the way it should be. I can show you our pre-nup if you like. Even if we did get divorced, which I hope will never happen, I’ll get nothing. And besides, she’s worth billions, Hudson, not millions.’
Hudson smiled. ‘Oh, I’m not talking about your fiancée’s business, James. I’m talking about yours.’
‘I told you, I work for Julianne. I don’t have a business. Can we go inside? I’m frying in the sun out here.’
‘Sure. You’re going to have some visitors soon, so you need to get dressed, but I’ve got my eye on you.’
Paterson led the way into Julianne’s home, and Hudson stayed out of arm’s reach, behind him. James went towards a phone on a side table. ‘I’m calling the police.’
‘Touch that phone and I’ll hurt you, James. Besides, no need to call the cops. They’re here already – my clients, the Fureys. Tom’s actually an ex-policeman, but I think you know his wife, Sannie van Rensburg-Furey. Sannie and Tom don’t know I’m here with you right now,’ he lied. ‘They’re getting ready to come and arrest you. I was just the wheelman to get them into the lodge without the Sabi Sand security people letting you know the cops were coming. I took a short cut here, because I wanted a little private chat with you first. We don’t have much time.’
Paterson left the phone in its docking station and sat down in a leather armchair. ‘I still have no idea what this is all about.’
‘Oh, I think you do. The Scorpions.’
‘They’re out of business. They died along with Nikola Pesev. There’s been a marked drop-off in rhino and elephant poaching in most of the areas where they used to operate. The media’s been reporting it, especially your friend Rosie Appleton.’
‘Yeah, Rosie. Nice girl. Pretty.’
‘If you say so.’
‘I do. Pretty tenacious.’
‘Like other journalists I’ve met; most of them, in fact.’
Hudson nodded. ‘Agreed. Which makes me wonder why a hard-nosed news hound like her would simply disappear from Tanzania and fly back to South Africa just when she knew that we were about to start a surveillance mission on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. She knew we were going after Peves, pointed us to him, in fact. Did you do a deal with her, James? Did Julianne?’
‘As a matter of fact, I did talk to her. I promised her a scoop, if and when we got Peves, in exchange for her staying out of the way and not following us to Kipili.’
>
‘She sure did run a glowing story – made the national newspapers, radio, television, even CNN and the BBC. You and Julianne were quite the heroes. All thanks to Rosie.’
Paterson started to stand. ‘I’ve had enough of this.’
Hudson closed on him, fast, and rammed the barrel of the pistol into his heart and kept it there, pushing him into a chair. ‘Sit down and shut up. Rosie hasn’t been returning my calls lately, which is kind of funny because she was all over me when I started an investigation into Shadrack’s killing, wanting to know what I had, where I was going, who I was talking to.’
‘She got a bigger story,’ Paterson countered. ‘Lost interest in you. Perhaps she wasn’t after your body after all.’
‘Yeah. I get that. I’m more interested in her mind than her body. I did a bit of research, looked up some of her older work. You know she caused quite a stir a few years ago, when she was younger, less experienced. Made quite a name for herself, and plenty of enemies in the conservation movement.’
‘Really?’
‘Don’t raise your eyebrow, James, it’s too theatrical – gives you away. You’re the lord of the files, man. You had one on each of us – me, Sonja, Mario, Tema, Ezekial. You knew who was sleeping with whom, when and where, played us off against each other. You would have had a digital file worth a few gigabytes on Rosie before you let her in for a one-on-one interview with your other girlfriend, Julianne, to talk about taking down the Scorpions.’
‘My “other” girlfriend?’
‘Rosie was here at the lodge last week, right?’
Paterson shrugged. ‘So? It was something of a reunion dinner. Sorry we didn’t invite you and Sonja. Oh, no, wait, Sonja’s gone missing, hasn’t she? Guess you two never kissed and made up.’
‘I don’t know where Sonja is, and that’s the truth,’ Hudson said, ‘but it doesn’t matter. I know where Rosie was, last week, during the day, when you were supposed to be doing your daily workout – you know, the one you never vary?’