by Karen Rispin
"Neither do I want to be responsible for taking you into danger," she answered. "Somali poachers carry AK-47s, Russian machine guns left from the war in Somalia. In fact, they're often soldiers who've deserted from the Somali army. Now will you get out and let me go? If I'm with the elephant herd there, the poachers won't be as likely to kill any elephants."
I looked at Rick. He was looking at me with a frown on his face. I could guess what he was thinking. He wished I wasn't there so he could go along.
"I want to come too!" I blurted. My heart was hammering madly. "It's no good just talking about taking care of animals. I want to help!"
"I will not take a child!" Dr. Webb said, turning to glare at Rick. "Take your sister, or half sister, or whatever the child is, and get out." She spun to face Dr. Field, "If you come, it's your own responsibility."
Rick and I climbed out. The Range Rover started downhill. Then the tires skidded. Dr. Webb had stopped. The Range Rover shot backwards up the hill toward us again.
Dr. Webb leaned out the window and yelled, "Isak is the officer of the antipoaching unit in Amboseli. I told him that there'd be instructions waiting here. Tell him that we are—" She pointed. "See that light area over there? That's Amboseli Lake. Now the Masai boy said that the poaching camp is back in the bush toward the Tanzania border from the… Bother! I'll just write it down. That way it's sure not to get muddled."
She dug furiously through the glove compartment, looking for a pen. A few seconds later she handed Rick a piece of paper.
"Mind that you give that to Isak!" she said. Gravel and dust spun from under the tires as they took off downhill.
Rick and I were standing alone on the rocky ground of the parking area. I sighed and shifted my feet in the gravel. Being a kid was rotten sometimes. I looked uneasily at Rick. If I hadn't been along he would probably have gotten to go.
Rick was staring at the paper Dr. Webb had given him. He looked up at me with intent blue eyes. "You want to get into the action as bad as I do, don't you?"
I swallowed hard, then slowly nodded. I wanted to see, but… people could easily get killed. Daddy had said the antipoaching units are allowed to shoot armed poachers.
"OK," Rick said, nodding. "It might work… if you can read this note."
"How would that make any difference?" I asked, shrugging. "They don't need me to read them a note."
"Take a look at the note for me anyway. Can you read it?" he asked. The paper looked small in his big hands. He handed it to me. I looked at it, then nodded.
"Read it carefully," he said.
I shrugged and read it through twice. It was in Swahili. It gave directions by saying things like, "Go to the big tree on the west side of Amboseli lake, the one where the leopard was found dead. If you go straight south from there you'll find an old manyatta site—" There were two words I wasn't sure of. I read them over a couple of times whispering them to myself. I couldn't remember what they meant.
"Tell me what it says," Rick demanded.
"You'll never get Daddy to drive out there," I said.
"Tell me!" he insisted.
I shrugged and began to tell him, holding the paper out to show him the words. He came up close beside me to see better. His long eyelashes looked dusty. I told him I didn't know two of the words. He wanted me to memorize the whole thing, especially how to say and spell the two words.
I frowned and backed away from him. "Why? Why do you want to know this stuff?" I demanded nervously.
"Come on, Sis," he said. "Do it for me, OK?"
He had such a neat smile. Besides, we were supposed to think of others first. I shrugged and smiled. "I think you're crazy, but OK, I'll do it."
I was glad the note wasn't too long. While I was memorizing it, he kept looking along the road that came up to Lookout Hill. The people who were in the vans came down from the top. I started toward them.
Rick grabbed my arm and held me back. "We've got to wait for the antipoaching unit, remember?"
I nodded. Still, it felt funny to watch the vans drive off. Now we were out in the middle of Amboseli without any car.
"Who did Margaret Webb say we were supposed to give the note to?" Rick asked. "Esau?"
"No, Isak," I answered. It's no wonder Rick got mixed up. The way Isak sounded was "Eesok."
Rick said the name to himself. He made me say the whole note back to him twice. He held the note and checked me. Luckily, Swahili is spelled the same way it sounds. He made me tell him what I thought the note said in English. He repeated it back to me.
"What are you going to do?" I asked as soon as he was done. "Steal our car and try to—"
"Hsst!" he said, pointing toward the road. "Does that look like what we've been waiting for?"
A Land Rover was coming fast. I could see that it was crammed with men. Rick suddenly snatched the note out of my hand. He pulled a lighter out of his pocket and set the note on fire.
"Hey!" I yelled, grabbing for the paper. I jerked my hand back from the flame. "Don't burn it!"
"Do you want to go along, or not?" he demanded.
"Well, I guess," I said. "But—"
"So now we have to," he said. He dropped the note onto the ground so it could finish burning. He was pushing dust over the ashes with his foot when the Land Rover stopped. My mouth felt dry, like I was part lizard. I couldn't seem to get enough air.
The man driving the Land Rover was very black. His green bush hat shaded his eyes. He leaned out into the sunlight looking at us.
"Jambo," he said in a deep voice. "Wapi memsabu Webb?"
I swallowed with a dry throat. He had asked where Dr. Webb was in Swahili. I answered in the same language, wishing that Rick could talk instead. "She has gone to guard the elephants," I said. "She has left instructions—"
"Is he Isak?" Rick interrupted.
I glared at him. Why did he burn the note and get me into this anyway? The man driving the Land Rover said in Swahili, "I am Isak Abdul."
I turned away from Rick and explained that we had a message. I said that I had been made to memorize it. That was true, even if it wasn't the whole truth. Isak looked at me kind of funny when I said that. I never thought of tattling on Rick. If there's one thing you learn at boarding school, it's never to tattle. Besides, it wouldn't have done any good. I'd still have to tell them the message.
I finished telling him the message. Isak picked up a mike and started talking on the radio very fast.
"What's going on?" Rick asked.
"I think he's talking to a helicopter…" I said uncertainly.
"Did you give him the message straight?"
I frowned and nodded without looking at Rick. Suddenly Isak motioned for both of us to get into the Land Rover. One of the men in the front climbed into the back. We crammed into the front seat. My heart pounded in my ears. Rick's plan had worked.
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Chapter Nine
Please, God, I prayed silently as we bumped down the hill. My mouth felt dry as sawdust. I didn't mean to do anything wrong. I didn't know Rick was going to burn the note. Just keep us safe.
I was practically sitting on Rick's lap. He was jammed up against the door. The man between me and the driver had a belt with bullets in it. The butt of his rifle was sticking into my ribs. I looked at him nervously. The Land Rover smelled of sweat.
Isak yelled over the noise in the Land Rover, "I have told the antipoaching helicopter. You will go with them to point the spot. We will wait for them by the lake. He is already coming from Tsavo."
"But I don't know this place," I said desperately. "I only know Dr. Webb's directions."
He jerked his head to point at the man sitting between us. "Loragoi will go with you. He knows the land. Already he says he knows the place Dr. Webb speaks of."
"What?" Rick asked in my ear. He didn't know what was going on because it was all in Swahili.
"He said I have to go in the helicopter with one of the askaris," I said. I was still mad at Ri
ck, but I was scared that they'd separate us.
"Askaris?" Rick asked.
I shook my head. "It means 'guards' or 'soldiers' or whatever, like these men," I said.
One of the men in the backseat yelled something. The Land Rover skidded to a halt. All the askaris piled out. Rick and I followed.
"There!" one of the men said in Swahili, pointing up.
The black speck was getting bigger. Isak switched off the Land Rover engine. Immediately we could hear the steady whup, whup, whup of a helicopter. Another man grabbed a red cloth out of the back of the Land Rover and started waving it.
"Hey!" Rick blurted, looking up at the helicopter. "That's a Bell Huey gunship!"
I bit my lip and watched. The helicopter got bigger and bigger and louder and louder. The doors in the side were open. There was a big machine gun on the outside, below the doors. A blast of wind hit us as the helicopter landed.
"Come!" Loragoi yelled in my ear over the helicopter noise. His hand felt callused when he grabbed my arm. Pulling me after him, he started running toward the helicopter. Noise, dust, gravel, and wind beat at me. Loragoi ran crouched down. The huge rotor blades were slashing through the air just above me.
I twisted away from Loragoi and looked for Rick. He was right behind me. We climbed into the open door of the helicopter. Rick gave me a thumbs-up signal. He had a big grin on his face. My heart gave a thudding leap. For a second I grinned too. Talk about exciting! I thought, as the helicopter gave a jerk and went up. Then my smile faded. I stared at the rifles the men were carrying.
It got even noisier. Rick was looking into the cockpit, grinning like an idiot. There were at least ten African men in the helicopter dressed in the same uniform as Loragoi. One of them yelled something at Loragoi. Loragoi followed him toward the cockpit.
I looked back out the door. There was just air between me and the ground. I could see the flat, grey pan of Amboseli Lake. At first I couldn't see the Land Rover. Then, there it was, looking like a micromachine. It was tearing along a road after us, trailing a plume of dust behind it. A herd of giraffes was running away from the noise of the helicopter. It looked odd from straight up.
Somebody thumped me on the shoulder. My stomach jerked. I whirled around. One of the men from the helicopter motioned for me to follow him. We went forward on the vibrating metal floor. Rick yelled something at me that I couldn't hear. He was still grinning. I ended up standing behind the pilot. One of the flight crew pulled a helmet off his head and put it on me. It fell down over my eyes. I shoved it up so I could see. Suddenly I realized I could hear the men talking. The helmet had earphones in it.
"Jambo mtoto," somebody said. That means, "Hello, child." I looked around wildly to see who was talking. The man who had put the helmet on me pulled something down from the top of my helmet. It ended up in front of my mouth. It was a tiny microphone. These helmets were like the ones fighter pilots wear in the movies.
Again a man's voice greeted me. This time I saw it was the copilot. "Jambo," I answered, trying to make my voice sound steady and grown-up.
"Loragoi has said you have the instructions. Please repeat them," the voice said in my ear.
I swallowed and repeated the instructions, trying to get them exactly right.
"Good. Thank you, child," the voice said. The man took the helmet back. Just before he pulled it off my head I heard Loragoi talking. I could see him pointing. I moved over to see what he was pointing at and ended up next to Rick.
Rick put his mouth right in my ear and yelled, "I think they've found the poachers' camp. You're doing OK, Sis."
I shook my head and pointed at what I'd seen out the window. It was a dead elephant. It looked flat, like it had been printed on the dusty ground. Around it were the black shapes of vultures.
We went past the dead elephant. A few minutes later we slowed down until we were hovering. Loragoi was pointing and motioning that we should go down. Another man seemed to be arguing with him.
Two men pulled black visors over their faces. They swung the machine guns around in front of the doors. Rick and I were shoved back into a corner. My mouth tasted like old metal. They were getting ready to shoot!
The helicopter went down so low I could see trees out the window. We hovered, then moved, and hovered again. Both of the machine guns started firing. I could see the empty shells from the bullets fly through the air. We spun in a circle.
One of the men by the door shook his head. An askari near me yelled, "They are not there."
Rick stood up. I did too. My stomach felt very weird. We went down and landed in a clear area. I could see a place where there had been a campfire. After a second I realized that some of the branches of the bushes were cut to make shelters. It was the poachers' camp.
Loragoi was out first. He ran zigzagging over the ground like a dog looking for a scent. He watched the ground as he went. His head and shoulders hunched forward. A second later another man joined him, moving in the same way.
Loragoi laid a hand on the ashes of the fire. Then he called back, "They are gone since this morning."
"Have they taken the ivory?" the officer called. "Will they return?"
Both men who had got out began to circle at a trot. They were carefully looking at the ground in a wide area around the camp. They called back and forth to each other.
"It was not here, they have gone," Loragoi called.
"Perhaps they have buried it where they have killed," the other man called.
The officer nodded and said, "Let us go and see the place of the dead elephant."
Loragoi and the other tracker climbed in. The rotors thundered and we were off again. I thought we would land right beside the dead elephant. Instead we landed way over to the side.
I must have looked puzzled because Rick yelled in my ear, "They don't want vultures in the rotor blades or turbine."
The noise of the engine stopped halfway through what he said. Rick's voice suddenly stood out by itself. A horrible smell came in through the door in a thick wave. Everyone climbed out. Loragoi and another man trotted toward the dead elephant. Rick started to follow him.
"Stop!" the pilot said in English. "The trackers must look first."
I put my hand over my face because of the smell. The vultures were coming back down. Black feathers on the ends of their long wings looked like splayed fingers. One thumped down not far from us. He hopped crookedly toward the dead elephant. The pilot had stayed in the helicopter. I heard him say something to Isak on the radio.
After a few minutes Loragoi came back. "This elephant is dead five or six days," he said. "When they took the tusks, they buried them close. We have found the place. Just this morning they have come back to get the tusks. The tracks are fresh, maybe one hour."
I heard another man say that Isak's Land Rover was coming. That man was handing out automatic rifles and ammunition. The sight of them getting ready to use rifles scared me. It made me madder at Rick for burning that paper.
"What's going on?" Rick asked.
I ignored him.
"What are they saying?" Rick said again. "Come on, Sis, don't be a jerk."
"Who's the jerk?" I whispered so the askari wouldn't hear us arguing.
I turned my back on Rick and tried to listen. I wanted to know what the askaris would tell us to do. The noise of the Land Rover made me jump. It came in in a swirl of choking dust. Men climbed out with their rifles ready. All the askaris, even the men from the helicopter, trotted off toward the dead elephant.
Rick followed them. He motioned me to come. I shook my head. He shrugged and kept going. I stood shifting uneasily from foot to foot. I didn't know the helicopter pilot had stayed. After a second, scared to be alone, I ran after Rick.
I caught up before they got to the elephant. The vultures went away from us. They hopped across the ground, flapping their wings. Suddenly I could see the elephant. I felt hot and dizzy. My brain felt too big for my skull, and my stomach heaved. I threw up into the dust. Everybody
was staring at me. The smell and the buzz of flies choked me.
I ran straight away from there. A branch tripped me. I scrambled up and stood there panting. Somebody was coming behind me. Two little black-backed jackals darted past.
I glanced back. It was Rick. Crossing my arms I turned stiffly away from him.
"Hey, I'm sorry," he said putting a big, warm hand on my shoulder. "I shouldn't have gotten you into this. My stomach doesn't feel too great either."
I stood there stiffly with my shoulders hunched. My mouth tasted horrible. I shifted my feet. It's no use being mad at him, I thought. Besides, we're supposed to forgive. I wiped at my mouth with the back of my hand and said, "It's OK."
There was a small silence. Suddenly I realized maybe this was my chance to explain things to Rick. Please, God, help, I thought.
Quickly, before I could chicken out, I said, "Um… Mom really cares about you. She cried when she told us how she had to give you up."
I took a quick look at Rick. He had gone absolutely still. I went on, "See, don't be mad because we're Christians, OK? We don't always do the right stuff, but that doesn't mean God isn't real. God does care about nature and the stuff he created. Dr. Webb even said so. Don't be mad. I mean, Mom was really sad. She said I had to be God's witness to you today."
Rick was looking at me now. He had one eyebrow up like he was thinking, Oh, sure.
"No, really!" I blurted. "It's confusing sometimes, but God is real. He helps us do the right stuff. Like Mom and Daddy aren't even mad at the Geislers. God even loves you, too."
Rick turned his head away from me. He stood there staring into the distance. Suddenly his whole body tensed.
"Sis, look!" he whispered. "Do you see what I see?"
Through a gap in the bush I could see something moving. It was men, men with rifles. They were quite far away. I looked again. They didn't have uniforms on. They weren't askaris.
"It's the poachers!" I said in a scared squeak.
Rick grabbed me and pulled me down behind a bush. He stared at the poachers. My throat was so tight I could hardly breathe.