The Cull

by Tony Park

  He cursed, slumped back down again and yelped as the glass fragments dug deeper into his skin.

  Hudson was aware of footsteps on the floorboards, a shadow passing over him. He blinked and saw through gritty eyes a shaggy green and brown monster, like the Sasquatch or Bigfoot creatures that had been a popular source of myth and speculation during his childhood in the United States in the sixties and seventies.

  It leaned over him, its face a mask of mottled camouflage. It smelled pungent, acrid, not totally unpleasant, and not completely unfamiliar.

  It slapped his face.

  ‘Hudson?’

  If his voice made a sound he couldn’t hear it, but the being put a green hand to its head and pushed back its skin, its hood. He saw the auburn hair, the blue eyes through the green and brown makeup, the even white teeth.

  ‘Sheesh, I thought you were dead,’ she said.

  He could barely hear it, her. Sonja leaned over him, closer, and kissed him. His mouth and tongue searched for her, like a man stranded in the desert licking the last drops of water from a canteen.

  She rolled him over, ran her hands over him, and lifted his shirt.

  ‘You’re not hit as bad as you look.’

  Funny – he felt pretty bad, but at least he could hear her words better. He tried to speak.

  ‘Shush.’ She put a finger to his lips, then kissed him again. ‘I love you. Goodbye.’

  As she moved, her boots crunched scattered diamantes of broken glass. Her ghillie suit, a sniper’s one-piece camouflage overall made of scraps of dyed hessian, flapped on her body and he saw the hunting rifle with night sight and silencer held in her right hand.

  He closed his eyes, giving in to the pain, and when he opened them again, she was gone.

  Chapter 31

  Ezekial led the way, scanning the dirt and rocks for spoor and signs of James Paterson. James had been wounded, either by a bullet or flying glass or fragments from the grenade, as every now and then the tracker picked up droplets of blood.

  ‘His stride is long, and he is still strong,’ Ezekial said.

  ‘Great,’ Sonja muttered. She held her rifle in her right hand, but her left was pressed against the sniper’s suit, trying as best as she could to staunch the blood from the wound in the side of her belly.

  She had not been far from the house, less than a hundred metres, lying up in the observation post she had created ten days earlier between a pair of granite boulders. All through that time she had watched them, Julianne and James, and all the other staff and guests, from her hide. She hadn’t bathed or even brushed her teeth. She had lived like an animal, like the leopards she saw at night, gathering information, and biding her time.

  Sonja had seen James’s liaison with Rosie and the pieces had fallen more snugly into place. She’d thought, on the boat at Kipili, that Peves was too smart for his own good, revealing too much inside knowledge. Sonja believed that James and/or Julianne were crooked and she had been watching and listening, waiting for either of them to slip up. Rosie was more than just James’s lover or friend with benefits; they had talked about him transferring money to her, and she had made references to him ‘doing what needed to be done, especially when it came to elephants’.

  Sonja had eavesdropped on phone calls and conversations at night, as she lay beneath the floorboards of the deck on which Julianne and James had their dinner most evenings. She had learned that if Julianne was complicit in any of James’s wrongdoing then she was very good at hiding it; more likely, she was innocent.

  James, however, spoke Russian into his phone when Julianne was away inspecting the building works at the lodges, and Sonja recorded his conversations on her phone, hiding under his nose, charging her phone with a mini roll-out solar panel she had bought at Outdoor Warehouse after discharging herself from hospital, and then emailing those conversations to a Russian friend she had served with in Afghanistan. She built up her picture of him, which was the same as the one Hudson and Sannie had drawn, clearly. She had watched Hudson sneak up to Julianne’s house, and seen Sannie and the man she presumed was Sannie’s husband meet with Julianne at the lodge. Through a directional surveillance microphone she had heard Hudson outline the case against Paterson.

  While Tema was looking the other way, covering their flank, Sonja took a quick look at her injury, under the voluminous ghillie suit she had bought from a shop specialising in selling paintball guns and imitation military uniforms to weekend warriors in Nelspruit.

  A shard of glass had speared into her as she’d jumped from a granite boulder at the moment the grenade had gone off. Through a spotting scope she had seen James plant that grenade in his bar fridge on her second night. She had wondered if he was feeling cornered, like a rat, and was preparing for the day when the authorities might come calling. She had sent the picture of James and Rosie to Hudson from a nondescript email address she had set up, but had had to blow her cover and location by sending him the SMS warning about the grenade.

  Sonja had hidden again, after the blast, and watched the police slowly get their act together, calling in reinforcements, but she knew Paterson would be long gone by the time a police helicopter or dog squad arrived. She had snuck off to the staff accommodation, found Tema and dragooned her and Ezekial into action. They were both as keen to bring Paterson to justice as she was, now that they knew he had been giving Mario his assassination orders and that James was responsible for the deaths of Shadrack and their colleagues in the Leopards.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Tema whispered to her.

  ‘Fine,’ Sonja lied. ‘Old age. I’ve been lying up in that hide too long.’

  ‘Hudson told us that you were hiding somewhere around here. Why don’t you take that camo suit off?’ Tema said. ‘It’s crazy hot; you must be cooking in there.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. Keep moving.’

  Sonja knew that if Tema saw the gash in her side she would stop and call for help and they would lose Paterson, perhaps forever. The bastard had murdered two of her girls, and for that he would not be allowed to escape.

  *

  The sun was setting by the time Doug Pearse had picked up the four Scorpions members from across the Mozambican border. That was good, as he needed the long shadows to hide him from sight in case there were any national parks or police aircraft above him.

  Doug flew low – NOTE the Americans called it, nap of the earth. He was almost brushing treetops with the skids of Julianne’s helicopter. He had to pick up James and he needed his boss and paymaster alive if he was to have any chance of avoiding prison and starting a new life for himself. The hired guns in the back of the chopper would provide the ground security element.

  Boarding had been a rushed affair, and Doug had not at first noticed that one of the men who climbed into the helicopter was a white man, his face and hands covered with black camouflage cream. He knew now it was Mario Machado, the latest recruit to James’s private army of poachers.

  Doug figured that once they were done they would take the helicopter back across the border into Mozambique and get rid of it over there, or maybe even respray and rebirth it, like a stolen car. If the police were on to James, then they would soon learn of his complicity in the death of the female anti-poaching unit member on board this very helicopter en route to hospital in Nelspruit, and how Doug had transported the poachers, with James leading them, on the night of the ambush. There was no going back for any of them.

  It had been madness – James was crazy. Far from being the risk-averse backroom staff officer that he liked to portray himself as, James lusted for action and the adrenaline and danger of combat like no one Doug had ever met. He was the head of a major organised crime syndicate, but what gave him the biggest kick was slogging through the bush, carrying an RPD machine gun and trying to shoot down a national parks helicopter, or executing a fleeing female anti-poaching unit member. The madness, and t
he greed, had been contagious.

  ‘I’m picking up a man, running, on the FLIR,’ Doug said to Mario via the intercom. Doug pointed to the ghostly glowing figure making steady progress through the bush below in the now almost-dark bushveld.

  ‘Affirmative,’ Mario said. ‘That has to be him. Put us down in that clearing over there. We’ll get him, you orbit out of visual range.’

  ‘Roger that.’ Doug banked, levelled out, flared the nose and put the chopper down in the clearing. As soon as the last man had stepped off he was airborne again.

  *

  Ezekial stopped. ‘Helicopter.’

  Sonja, her breathing laboured, caught up to Ezekial and Tema. ‘I hear it. Ours or theirs?’

  ‘No lights,’ Tema said. ‘One of theirs?’

  Sonja nodded. She should have thought of that. She was feeling light-headed, probably a combination of blood loss and dehydration from the slog through the bush during the hot afternoon.

  ‘Sonja,’ Tema said. ‘Let’s pull back, call Captain van Rensburg, tell her we’ve just heard a helicopter.’

  ‘No!’

  Tema winced at the retort.

  ‘Sorry,’ Sonja said. ‘We’re so close, Tema. We can get him. Eyes peeled, both of you. That chopper could have been dropping off an extraction team. We know Paterson has an army on the other side of the border. He’ll have been calling for help.’

  ‘I’ll take point, up the front,’ Tema said.

  ‘No,’ said Ezekial. ‘Let me. I can still track even though the light is low.’

  ‘All right, but look up as well as down,’ Sonja said.

  Tema moved closer to Ezekial. Sonja was grateful for a moment’s rest while the two of them discussed something. Her fingers were still coming away from the wound in her abdomen wet with fresh blood, which was not good. She strained to hear the other two.

  ‘Ezekial, I am just as experienced as you. I can go in front, even if I am a woman.’

  ‘It has nothing to do with you being a woman, Tema. In Tanzania, you thought I was a coward, because I could not kill that man in cold blood.’

  ‘No, not at all,’ she said, loud enough for Sonja to hear easily. ‘I was undercover; we’ve been over this before. I had to pretend to be on Mario’s side. I hated what he did, executing that man in cold blood.’

  ‘Yes, I know that, but I have to show you that I, too, am a warrior.’

  ‘You don’t have to show me anything.’

  But it was too late; Ezekial strode off into the darkness. Sonja took a deep, painful breath and followed them.

  *

  James Paterson allowed himself another stop. He heard it again, on the slight evening breeze, the raised pitch of a person making a point in anger.

  That confirmed to him what he believed, that he was still being followed, but the sound of the helicopter ahead of him told him Doug was in the area, and had probably dropped off Mario and the rest of the quick reaction force. He preferred to think of them that way, in military terms, than as a gang of poachers.

  It was ironic, James mused, that it was Mario coming to collect him. He had given the order for Mario, Sonja and the others to be killed after they had taken out Obert Mvuu in Zimbabwe. Sonja had been Julianne’s pick to head the anti-poaching hit squad and James had known from the start that she would be trouble. He’d achieved most of what he needed, by setting her and the team up to get rid of his last major competitors in South Africa and Zimbabwe, but the team had proven more difficult to eliminate than he had expected. He’d used their survival to his benefit in Tanzania, and Mario had demonstrated that he had no qualms about being employed as an assassin.

  James had planned all along to kill Nikola Pesev and Brand was right, he had fed information to Rosie so that Peves began to feel cornered, therefore making him susceptible to a deal with Julianne to take the heat off him. The plan was that James would ‘escape’ from the captivity he had never been in and take out Peves and his bodyguards. As it happened, Mario had beat him to it. Unfortunately, Mario had found James below decks on Peves’s boat, armed and clearly not bound or cuffed. Mario had pretended to believe James had overpowered his guard, but had then got the drop on him and put a gun to his head. Mario had guessed he was not who he pretended, and said he would shoot him so that he, after saving Julianne, could take over as her head of security. Fearing for his life – he had no doubt Mario would kill him – James had let him in on his secret and offered him a place and a share in the Scorpions.

  Their war was not over, but now it was definitely time to retreat across the border into Mozambique and lick his wounds on an Indian Ocean island. He was a mess. His skin was covered in scratches from the countless thorns and branches he had run through and his feet were shredded. The sandals he had been wearing when he got out of the pool had been ripped apart on rocks and tree roots. He had ditched the white bathrobe soon after leaping from Julianne’s home, and the numerous falls he had taken had covered his body with enough dirt mixed with sweat to camouflage his pale skin. He told himself to ignore the pain. Fortunately Hudson Brand had not had the presence of mind to search him and had missed the phone he had left in his bathrobe pocket. He had been able to contact Doug, who had indeed fled that morning, with Julianne’s helicopter, but Doug was still firmly on James’s team. Doug had no choice but to stay with James, or else face prison. He was out of mobile phone range now, but he could guess from the direction in which he’d heard the helicopter which way the reaction force would be heading. He assumed Doug had picked him up on the infra-red camera.

  James stopped when he heard a bird call.

  Ti-ti-ti-tee-teee-toooo, came the call, progressively dropping in speed and pitch. It was the water thick-knee, formerly called a dikkop. In Zimbabwe people called it the Kariba battery bird because the batteries made in that town had a reputation for going flat too soon.

  His men had been trained to use bird calls to signal each other in the bush. Mario was close.

  *

  ‘Listen,’ Ezekial whispered.

  ‘A bird?’ Tema said. She did not have anywhere near the knowledge of birds and wildlife that the man she was now sure she loved had.

  ‘Dikkop,’ Sonja said.

  ‘It’s called a thick-knee these days, but yes,’ said Ezekial.

  ‘So?’ Sonja asked.

  ‘So this bird lives by rivers, streams, lagoons. There is no water in this part of the reserve.’

  They stayed silent and heard the call again.

  Ezekial swallowed. ‘That is a man. He is good at making the call, but it is definitely not a bird.’

  They all raised their weapons, their alertness rising to a new level. Sonja motioned for Ezekial to move forward. After fifty metres she softly snapped her fingers. They stopped and Sonja moved close to Ezekial.

  ‘Can you make that same bird call?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Then do it. And be ready.’

  Ezekial did as requested and a few seconds later came the same call, in reply, but Sonja’s heart skipped. The other man was so close the mournful call sounded like it was being shouted at them.

  ‘Comandante, your bird calls are very good.’

  The man stepped around a bush. He carried an AK-47, but it was angled downwards. Ezekial, however, had his LM5 up in his shoulder, ready. He pulled the trigger three times, fast. The slugs slammed into the poacher and sent him toppling backwards.

  The bush erupted.

  Sonja knew there was no option. ‘Forward!’

  Tema moved up abreast of Ezekial and together they advanced, firing on the move. Bullets whizzed past them and Sonja, who carried a bolt-action hunting rifle, was limited to one shot at a time. She watched for fleeting shadows and fired when she saw movement, or a brief muzzle flash.

  Sonja smelled garlic and as she stumbled through a stand of thick bush she alm
ost collided with a man. The long barrel of her weapon clanged against the steel of his. AK-47. Instinctively she brought up her right hand, smashing the wooden butt into the man’s face. His finger was on the trigger and he let off a burst of fire, but the bullets went wild. Sonja ignored the cacophony and pressed home her attack. The man stumbled and before he could regain his balance she kicked him in the groin. He gasped and as he tried to bring up his rifle Sonja reversed hers, pressed the tip of the barrel into his heart and pulled the trigger. He was blown away from her.

  ‘Tema!’ Ezekial called. ‘Behind you.’

  Tema, too, was locked in a hand-to-hand struggle twenty metres from both Sonja and Ezekial, but another man had come up behind her and was bringing his rifle to bear to shoot her at point-blank range. Ezekial took aim and Sonja almost couldn’t watch. Ezekial fired first and the man behind Tema fell.

  Sonja jogged closer, stopped behind a tree and tried to aim at the man Tema was fighting. The two of them were on the ground, fists flailing. There was an AK-47, the poacher’s weapon, lying on the ground, but Sonja saw that it had been rendered useless by a lucky shot from one of them. The man had been able to disarm Tema, however, as her LM5 rifle was also discarded. Sonja couldn’t fire; the risk of hitting Tema was too great.

  The man proved too strong for Tema; he grabbed her in a wrestling hold and rolled onto his back, his arm around her, choking her. With his free hand he managed to pull a pistol from the holster on his belt and held it to Tema’s head.

  ‘I’m standing up now,’ he called, and as he spoke Sonja could hear then see that it was Mario Machado under the black makeup.

  Ezekial was between Sonja and Mario and Tema.

  ‘Stop where you are, Ezekial. Drop your rifle,’ Mario said. ‘Whoever else is out there, show yourself. If you don’t, Tema is dead on the count of one. Five, four, three, two . . .’

  Sonja cursed and walked around the tree. ‘Don’t shoot, Mario.’