Red Earth

by Tony Park

  Mike took out a plastic zip-lock bag from the back pocket of his shorts and a pen from his shirt. He used the pen to scoop some of the poison into the bag. With luck a lab might be able to trace its exact make and source.

  The Zulu called vultures Inqe, which meant the one that purifies the land. They did nature’s dirty work, clearing up the remains of kills that had provided nourishment for others. They prevented the spread of disease and did not prey on live, healthy animals or people. In short, they did nothing wrong, and a hell of a lot of good. Man repaid the good work Inqe did by vilifying and poisoning them.

  Mike felt angry, sad, dejected, and, at the same time, galvanised. He walked around the scene of death, eyes down, looking for spoor. He’d tried calling his contact at Mtubatuba police station, Sergeant Lindiwe Khumalo, but couldn’t even get through to the switchboard. Mike had heard on the news that there’d been a bomb blast in Durban. He cared little for international politics or politicians, and while he was saddened by the loss of the American ambassador and her bodyguards, his war was here, in the blood-spattered grass, not in the global war against terrorism, or a clash of religions.

  There were parallels, though, he mused as he checked the ground for footprints, tyre tracks and other signs of the people who had committed this mass killing. The poachers killed animals and birds in order to prey on the unproven beliefs of their customers; terrorists invoked religious beliefs to encourage young men and women to die for something ethereal, a promise of a better life after death. It was all crazy.

  He had learned to track as a youngster from his father, who had hunted, although Mike himself had never had an interest in hunting beyond shooting a couple of impala for the pot. From an early age he’d set his sights on a career with the old Natal Parks Board. He’d managed it, and had thought he’d have a job for life in the bush. But change had come to South Africa in 1994 with the end of apartheid and the election of Nelson Mandela. Mike had known, like the overwhelming majority of his peers, that their lives would change.

  Unlike some, he hadn’t been bitter when the axe fell. He was one of the lucky ones, who had completed a university education in the pursuit of his love of wildlife. When he was made redundant, eventually, from the renamed Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, he left as one of the country’s foremost experts on birds of prey, especially vultures. He had found a job with an NGO; money from foreign donors and South African businesses with a conscience kept him in work, but did little to stem the bloodshed. As depressing as his work often was he appreciated the benefits that came with it. He travelled southern Africa, working with various national parks services, counting nests and tracking birds with GPS devices. He trained police and parks officers in what to look for at the scenes of vulture killings and sometimes accompanied them on operations. He gave lectures and media interviews and worked with other researchers and volunteers. He was his own boss and his funders were grateful for the publicity his work generated.

  He would need to collect the birds that had not yet been beheaded. Mike scanned the tree line again. He was sure that whoever was responsible for this barbaric crime was nearby, probably watching him, waiting for him to leave.

  He stopped at another dead vulture. This one was a lappet-faced, bigger and more powerful than the white-backed vultures around it. With its wickedly curved beak and strength it was the ‘can-opener’, capable of opening the toughest skin. It fed first and, in this case, had probably been one of the first to die. He stroked its pinkish neck. His student volunteers were usually surprised at how soft yet strong that skin was. He rarely saw a nick or a scar despite the fierce competition of sharp beaks on a kill.

  Mike raised the rifle again and started to walk towards the bushes, his senses ratcheted up a few levels, the hairs on his arms prickling. He’d taken no more than a dozen steps when his phone vibrated in his pocket.

  He stopped and thought for a moment. If there was a poacher there, and he was armed, he should at least tell someone what he was doing. He pulled out his phone. He didn’t immediately recognise the number, but hoped it might be the police. ‘Mike Dunn.’

  ‘Mr Mike, it’s Solly.’

  Solomon Radebe was a sixty-something-year-old ex national parks ranger from Mtubatuba. He had been invalided out of the parks service after a buffalo had charged him and trampled his right leg, breaking it in several places. He walked with a limp. A lifelong protector of wildlife, and as straight as they came, Solly had worked with Mike before his retirement and still kept in touch; he had tipped Mike off in the past about the illegal trade in vulture heads.

  ‘Howzit, Solly?’

  ‘Fine, and you?’ he replied.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Mike said, and with the protocol out of the way it was safe to say, ‘what can I do for you, Solly?’

  ‘There is something going on at the Mona market today, right now. This is important, Mr Mike. There is a big man here, fancy car, bodyguards. Something is about to happen.’

  Mike had never had reason to question Solly’s instincts or his information. Solly had noticed that the buffalo that had charged him was about to attack, and had put himself between another trails guide and their party of tourists to protect them from the charge he saw coming. He’d shot the buffalo, fatally wounding it, but the momentum of its charge had carried it onwards and over Solly’s body. He’d received a commendation for bravery.

  ‘Something like what, Solly?’

  ‘A big deal. I have seen this man before; he’s an ex-politician. I think he is here to buy or sell something very valuable.’

  ‘How valuable?’

  ‘Enough to warrant him bringing a bodyguard as well as a driver.’

  ‘You’re watching them?’

  ‘I am, Mr Mike. I don’t want to approach them myself.’

  Mike wanted to spend more time at the cow carcass, collecting evidence and photographing the scene. However, Solly’s instincts were good and he was fearless. Mike had the option of preserving the scene of one wildlife crime or preventing another.

  He went back to his truck and from the rear he took an anemometer, a cigarette lighter and a five-litre can of fuel he kept for cases like this. With the rifle slung over his shoulder he jogged back to the carcass. He held up the wind-measuring device and checked that the direction and speed were in his favour. They were; the wind was blowing back towards the road, and the breeze was only a couple of knots. Even better, the grass on the other side of the road had been recently burned.

  Mike set down the device, fuel and his rifle and set to work dragging the dead vultures back to the carcass that had killed them, piling dead upon dead. When he was done, his clothes soaked with sweat, he splashed half the container of fuel over the grisly mound. He lit a handful of dry grass and tossed it; the pyre erupted with a whoof. Ideally, he would have had people here to watch that the blaze didn’t get out of hand, but at this time of day he was sure the wind wouldn’t change. The grass would catch, but the fire would stop at the roadside and burn itself out. Mike spared a look back to the trees and hoped the bastards who had done this were watching the rest of their profits go up in smoke. He gathered his things and jogged back to the Land Rover.

  It wasn’t far to the Mona market and he pushed his Land Rover as close to the speed limit as it would let him. Villages and bare, overgrazed hills flashed by. When he came within sight of the stalls, but not too close, he pulled off the road and parked. Solly walked down the road to meet him.

  The market itself ran along both sides of a back road, a linear collection of ramshackle stalls and huts made of timber, corrugated iron and other cast-off building materials. Here and there were a few more substantial shelters of mud brick. Some sellers plied their wares on makeshift shelves in the open. Side alleys had sprawled from the main road and Mike knew it was usually in these back lanes that the illegal products were to be found. Solly led him to the rear of a brick building, a shebeen, a local bar. />
  The market was quiet now; the end of month rush, when people were paid, had just passed and many of the stalls were closed, wrapped shut against the elements with fraying canvas and plastic sheeting. A dog, all ribs and mange, trotted down the street searching for scraps. A woman selling tomatoes and cabbages cursed it in Zulu.

  After they’d exchanged greetings and shaken hands, Solly said: ‘I got closer to them, and I recognised the big man, the one who is obviously in charge. He was wearing dark glasses, so I couldn’t be sure from a distance.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Bandile Dlamini.’

  Mike swore quietly. ‘The former politician turned entrepreneur?’

  Solly looked left and right. ‘Yes. He talks a good deal about protecting wildlife and the fight against rhino poaching.’

  ‘Then what’s he doing here?’

  Solly shrugged. ‘I don’t think it’s a photo opportunity for the local media, or a campaign rally. He’s gone back to his car now. He has a driver and one other man, who looks like a bodyguard.’

  ‘Why does a businessman need a bodyguard?’ Mike asked. ‘It’s not like he’s a government minister who’d warrant protection.’

  Again Solly looked around, checking no one had moved into earshot. ‘I’ve heard talk about him. Before he got into politics, back in the days of the struggle, he moved guns and explosives for the ANC, but people said he also supplied criminal gangs. They say he was involved in car hijackings as well, not stealing the vehicles himself, but running garages where stolen vehicles were stripped and resprayed. But this was years ago.’

  Mike had read Dlamini’s tough talk in the newspapers, and had met him once at a conference on rhino poaching, but he hadn’t had time or the opportunity to form his own opinion of the man. ‘Let’s take a look around.’

  They walked out from behind the shebeen onto the dusty road that ran the length of the market.

  Most of the people selling goods greeted them both, but every few stalls someone would retreat further into the shadows at the rear of their tin hut, avoiding eye contact with Mike, perhaps thinking he was police or national parks – or they recognised old Solly. As they passed one stall Mike glimpsed a giraffe skull with dried skin still stretched across the bone, and a set of hippo tusks beside it. The seller tossed a blanket over his wares, but Mike didn’t care about him right now.

  Solly put a hand on Mike’s forearm and pointed down the street. Mike saw the black late model BMW sedan with the tinted windows, a heavy-set man in a leather bomber jacket and sunglasses leaning against the bonnet.

  ‘That man is the driver,’ Solly said.

  The rear door on their side opened and a man got out.

  ‘That’s not Dlamini,’ Mike said.

  ‘The bodyguard,’ said Solly. ‘Dlamini is inside in the back seat.’

  The driver pulled the keys from his pocket and pressed the boot release on the remote. The boot popped open and the bodyguard, dressed in jeans and a grey hoodie, took out a hessian bag before closing it again.

  Mike and Solly moved between two stalls, where they were out of plain sight but could still track the man with the bag. He crossed the road and came their way, to a small shack about a hundred metres up the street.

  ‘Let us go behind the stores,’ Solly said.

  Solly led them to the rear and they moved cautiously but quickly along the line of stalls. Away from the street chickens foraged in garbage, women cooked pots of pap over small fires, and young men brought more stock for the various sellers.

  ‘It is this one,’ Solly said, then put his finger to his lips. He and Mike moved quietly to the rear of the stall.

  Mike let Solly translate, though his Zulu was almost as good as the old ranger’s.

  ‘The man with the bag is selling something,’ Solly said. ‘The other man is asking what it is.’

  ‘Inqe,’ Mike whispered, before Solly could translate the next sentence. ‘Vulture heads.’

  Mike took a deep breath to try and still himself. He wanted to kick the ramshackle back door of the hut in and grab the man with the bag and throw him to the ground. He would probably be armed, but Mike had a gun as well.

  Solly put his hand on Mike’s arm again. ‘We must wait.’

  Mike exhaled. ‘You’re right. Listen.’ Mike put his finger to his lips to tell Solly he could understand what the men said and didn’t need any further translation.

  The bodyguard was saying the vulture heads were fresh, not yet even dried. The stallholder asked how many he had. ‘Ishumi nanye.’

  Eleven. Mike remembered the headless birds he had found at the site just outside of Hluhluwe–iMfolozi, where the cow had been poisoned – the exact same number. If it hadn’t been for the helicopter tracker scaring away many birds with the helicopter, there would have been more. It was no coincidence; these had to be the heads of the birds he had burned.

  The men argued over the price, with the stallholder eventually offering an amount acceptable to the seller. It was a tidy sum, but Mike thought about Dlamini, in his big black sedan waiting across the road. Vulture heads were worth good money, but good enough for a high-profile man such as Dlamini to risk hanging around in public while his minion did the trade?

  Inside the shack the stallholder told the bodyguard that he needed to go fetch the cash from elsewhere; it made sense the man would not keep a stockpile of money in his stall or on himself, in case of theft. Solly and Mike backed up between the shop and its neighbour, as they heard the rear door creak open.

  Mike reached behind his back and drew his pistol. As the stallholder came into view he took three steps forward, wrapped his hand around the man’s mouth from behind and rammed his pistol into the man’s temple.

  The stallholder was wide-eyed, but didn’t struggle.

  Solly unthreaded the belt from his trousers and, with Mike keeping the gun on the man and his finger on his own lips to warn him to continue to be quiet, Solly trussed the stallholder’s hands behind his back. Mike took a cleaning rag that was hanging on a wire fence between the huts to dry and stuffed it in the man’s mouth. They lowered him to the ground, on his knees. Solly produced a knife from inside his threadbare suit jacket and held it to the man’s neck. Mike returned to the rear of the shack.

  He cocked his head, moving along the wall of the shack to the back door. There was movement inside. Mike paused, felt the tension and adrenaline firing up his nerve endings. The man Solly was holding a knife to had been about to commit a crime, but he had not handed over any money. Mike wondered if they had gone too far too soon, but the thought of those eleven headless vultures, and the other birds he’d seen slaughtered and nests destroyed enraged him. This, he was sure, went beyond the killing of birds for traditional medicine. This deal was a curtain raiser.

  Mike glanced back at the bound man. He looked terrified. He would not be a dealer in rhino horn; his market was local people who wanted a talisman or a potion to improve their lot in life, not Vietnamese businessmen half a world away who wanted to avoid hangovers or impress their commercial contacts.

  The back door of the shack creaked as it swung open.

  Mike moved to where Dlamini’s bodyguard was exiting, probably looking to see where the stallholder was, and noticed him reaching under his hoodie. From a shoulder holster under his left arm, the man drew a black pistol. He had his back to Mike, who moved forward, raised his arm and smashed the butt of his own gun down on the back of the man’s head. The bodyguard crumpled to the ground. Mike straddled the man and reached down, snatching the pistol from his hand and putting it in his pocket.

  The man moaned and writhed on the ground at the rear of the stall, not out cold, but stunned. Mike bent down again and snatched up the hessian bag the bodyguard had dropped beside him. Inside he saw the pinkish-grey heads, the glassy eyes, the hooked beaks. Mike gave the man a kick.

  �
�Who are you?’ the man croaked.

  ‘Shut up.’ Mike pointed his gun at him. ‘What’s your boss doing here?’

  ‘Who?’

  Mike kicked the henchman again. ‘Dlamini. Don’t tell me he’s here just to oversee the sale of some vulture heads.’

  The man spat. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, and if you’re not police then get off me.’

  ‘You’ll wish I was the police once I finish with you.’

  ‘Hey,’ Solly called, ‘let’s just wait for the police.’

  Solly was right, but Mike was angry. The bag of vulture heads had incensed him. ‘There’s more to this than just the heads.’

  ‘I agree,’ Solly said, ‘but we are not the law.’

  Mike ignored the older man’s words of caution and addressed the henchman. ‘If you’re delivering the vulture heads for Bandile Dlamini then you’re just a courier, not a serious criminal. Tell me where you got them from and I’ll put in a good word for you when the police arrive.’

  The man spat blood. ‘I’ll tell the police what you did to me and I’ll charge you with assault, white man. Go fuck yourself.’

  It wasn’t in Mike to torture the man any further, beyond the kicking he’d given him, but he needed him to talk. He picked him up by the hood of his top and pushed him around the corner of the stall to where the stallholder was sitting, bound and gagged. ‘OK, how about I let you go free. I’ll take the heads, and this guy,’ he gestured to the stallholder with his pistol, ‘can tell the cops how he was never going to buy any vulture heads and instead cooperated fully with the police and national parks officers. You get to go back to Dlamini and tell him you lost the heads and didn’t get the cash. How about that?’