by Leon Mare
‘Some friend.’
As full realisation penetrated, Sam’s expression changed to that of cold fury. ‘The bastard!’
Had Sam known what was happening at that instant sixty kilometres to the south east of them, he would have come close to a catatonic seizure.
Sam had been driving back slowly through patches of scattered thunder showers, his confused mind crowded with thoughts of Joao, Linda and Estelle. It was well after 10 p.m. when his lights illuminated the high gates of Nzwantezi, and he snapped out of his reverie instantly when he saw Aaron waiting for him.
At Aaron’s first words Sam felt as if his bone-marrow temperature had dropped five degrees and there was gooseflesh on his forearms.
‘There is big trouble, nkosi. The poachers are back. They have killed two bulls near Gamula Pan, and on their way back to the fence they came across Ndlofu, and killed him, too.’
Sam rubbed his hand over his eyes as if trying to erase a bad dream. ‘They killed Ndlofu?’
Aaron was standing a respectful distance away, as if half expecting Sam to lash out at the bearer of bad tidings. ‘Eheh, nkosi. But by then each of them was already carrying a tusk. They could not carry Ndlofu’s tusks as well, so they buried them.’
Sam froze, and the look in his eyes scared even the hardened Aaron. ‘You found the tusks?’
‘They hid them well, nkosi, but I found them.’
‘You are my brother, Aaron. They will be back – tell the men we are leaving at four in the morning.’
A minute later Sam was on the radio, talking to a sleepy Louis. When Louis switched off his radio, he knew it was useless to try and go back to sleep, so he rounded up his two best men and headed for Nwanetzi with his camping gear.
Chapter Three
Joao dos Santos was dead drunk. He had made a killing with the ivory and was spending the night in Maputo. In the days when it was still Lourenço Marques there used to be a lot more life in this town.
Nevertheless, a man with enough money can buy his own action. Although too inebriated to show his manhood to better advantage, he was lying on his back thoroughly enjoying the expert ministrations of the fifteen-year old hooker he had picked up earlier in the afternoon at the Marco Polo Bar and Grill. He had even treated her to a meal consisting of broiled fish and rice, the proteins of which, judging by her enthusiastic performance, she was burning off at an alarming rate.
The Chinese trader had been keen on the other two tusks Joao had told him about but had also inquired about rhino horn, for which he was willing to pay astronomic prices.
He had, in fact, sounded desperate for rhino horn. Joao knew that this was considered the ultimate aphrodisiacs, and idly wondered if he should maybe keep some for himself next time. Not that he needed it, but maybe he could have taught this little vixen something new tonight with a bit of rhino dust to prop him up, as it were.
In the early hours of the morning he woke up with a splitting headache and a magnificent hard-on. After having satiated himself violently in his companion, he got dressed and started the army truck. The truck was on loan to him, compliments of Colonel Lysenski, a Cuban ‘advisor’ in charge of a camp near the border.
Rui was waiting for him, sitting with his head in his hands on the culvert in what used to be the Avenida Republica. He groaned as he heaved himself into the passenger seat.
‘Ho, little lion! Have the young maidens drained your loins? You have to be a man to indulge in the sport of men!’
‘Shut up, ‘Rui groaned. ‘I drank like a man, I screwed like a man, and I got rolled like a bloody novice.’
‘What, four million metical gone!’ Joao stomped on the brake. For four million metical you could not buy a box of matches outside Mozambique, but it was worth about four hundred rand, or 120 dollars on the local black market. In this country, it was a small fortune. ‘Where do we find them?’
‘No, brother, if we went back there they would kill us. Forget it and get us back to the camp.’
‘Like hell,’ Joao said, rummaging in his kit bag. He pulled out a Tokarev pistol and jacked round into the chamber. ‘Point me.’
Rui sighed. Knowing Joao, he regretted mentioning the incident before they were well away but he knew it was no use arguing.
‘Make a U-turn and take the first road to your right.’
Three blocks up he pointed to a dilapidated building on their left.
‘This is it.’
Joao took a good look at the premises without diminishing speed. It was a typical rundown double-storey block consisting of four bachelor flats.
He parked the truck around the corner and got out. He was in civilian clothing, so he stuck the Tokarev in the back of his worn denims.
‘Come on, let’s go teach these idiots not to bugger around with Joao dos Santos’s baby brother.’ Rui sighed – he’d heard this before.
Joao hitched up his pants and strode down the sidewalk, Rui following at a discreet distance.
Before rounding the corner, he stopped and turned around.
‘Which flat, and how may?’
‘Ground floor, left. There were two bog blokes with knives. Joao, shit, it wasn’t all that much money. Let’s get out of here.’
Joao clamped his jaws and rounded the corner. When he entered the foyer the smell of urine and garbage assaulted his nostrils. Shit, he thought, at least it could have been cabbage or burnt cooking oil.
He drew his pistol and slammed his size 14 shoe into the door next to the lock. The dilapidated door gave at the first try. It ricocheted from the back wall, one hinge tearing out of the rotten wood. There was only the standard single room with a bathroom and kitchenette. Under the opposite window was a three-quarter bed, off which a naked couple was trying to bound as quickly as possible. The man was halfway up when Joao hit him with the pistol, shattering his nose. Joao quickly scanned the flat in the half light, trying to see if there was anybody else. They seemed to be alone, and as Joao focused on the man again, he was amazed by the speed at which he had recovered. Bleeding profusely, the big man was charging, wielding a deadly commando knife. Joao shot him in the chest four times, the force bowling him over backwards. On her way to the door the woman had collided with Rui, and had ended up on her backside in the middle of the floor.
Joao grabbed her at the back of the neck and lifted her clear off the ground.
‘My little one, never cross a dos Santos. We’re bad news – tell your friends. Where is the money?’
Overcome by the sudden violence she screamed hysterically. Joao applied more violence in the form of a closed fist that shattered three of her front teeth and cut her lip badly. She subsided to a whimper. He dumped her in a chair and pulled his fist back once more.
‘Stop! In the bathroom!’
‘Show me.’ He jerked her out of the chair and propelled her towards the bathroom. Gibbering, she stumbled to her knees in front of the washbasin and proceeded to pull dirty clothing from underneath it. Joao bowled her over with a backhand and did it himself. Tucked underneath the drainpipe was considerably more than four million metical. There was a thin bundle of South African ten-rand notes as well.
‘Ah! Been looking after the miners as well, slut.’
Many thousands of unemployed Mozambican citizens found work in the gold mines on the Witwatersrand. The Rands they brought into Mozambique were much sought after real money, which could buy anything.
‘Bad luck, whore,’ Joao grunted, giving her a parting kick as she lay whimpering on the faded linoleum.
Throughout the performance Rui had been watching the front door but nothing stirred. In this neighbourhood there are no telephones, and even if there were, nobody would have considered calling the cops. Not that they would have responded anyway. Mainly because there were no cops. Only army.
They drove off as if they had been buying some pizzas, Rui eagerly counting the spoils.
‘Seven million metical, three hundred and twenty rand, and some shit papers,’ Rui said, cranking
down his window to dispose of the papers.
‘Let me see that.’ Joao reduced speed to a crawl and unfolded the sheets of notepaper on the steering wheel, driving the truck with one hand.
‘Little brother, we have hit the jackpot! This guy was with the resistance, and somebody has given him the location of an arms cache!’
Joao studied the documents carefully, grunting with satisfaction occasionally.
It was just after five on Sunday morning, and nothing stirred as he executed another U-turn and headed towards that used to be Villa Salazar, some ten kilometres to the west. Driving with one hand again, he filled the clip of his pistol once more. Slamming home the magazine he cast a sideways grin at Rui. ‘You sure pick them, my man. We’re going to pick us up some very valuable merchandise.’ Arms represent power, and thus fetched excellent prices on the black market. With all the wars and the violence on the continent of Africa, instruments of death were in great demand everywhere.
The stuff was buried under a giant kiaat tree, two hundred yards up a disused dirt track on the outskirts of Villa Salazar. Joao knew there would be nobody actually guarding the cache, in case of discovery by Frelimo, but someone was sure to be close by. He drove some distance past the turn-off and stopped.
Instead of taking the road, they cut through the veld on foot, equipped with the small collapsible army-issue spades that were part of the truck’s equipment.
They knelt behind a bush fifty yards from the kiaat and carefully surveyed their surroundings. All appeared quiet. They sneaked up to the tree, moved aside a flat rock and commenced digging, stopping every now and again to look and listen.
There were four heavy crates, each about four feet in length. That meant four trips to the truck, which would take a lot of time, increasing the chances of discovery. Joao was under no illusion as to what would happen if they were surprised by resistance fighters.
‘I’m fetching the truck,’ he said, tossing the Tokarev to Rui. ‘Keep your eyes open.’
Rui sat down on one of the crates, his back to the trunk of the big tree. He was sweating profusely and his eyes were darting all over, trying to look everywhere at once. On top of his fear, the pounding hangover made life miserable.
It felt like hours before he heard the familiar sound of the approaching truck.
Joao slammed on the brakes and stopped in a cloud of dust, piling out of the cab. Speed was now of the essence. One by one they threw the heavy crates onto the truck. There was no way that their presence could not have been detected by now. It was just a matter of beating the reaction time of the opposition.
They jumped into the cab and reversed the 200 yards to the main road in record time.
Joao expected to be torn apart in a hail of bullets at any moment, but nothing happened. He backed onto the tarmac and got going, pressing the ancient truck to its limits.
As the kilometres clicked by, the tension started abating.
‘Yeoww!’ Joao exclaimed, slapping his brother on the leg. ‘We’re rich! This stuff is going to fetch us a fortune. Renamo is most probably going to buy it back from us, but boy, are they going to pay!’
Rui was still glancing over his shoulder apprehensively. ‘We are going to have to keep this to ourselves. We could end up in front of a firing squad if it leaked out.’
‘Sure thing, bro, but only you and I know. We will bury the stuff near our camp and start looking for buyers later. Meanwhile, we will jump the wire again as soon as we can get away. Just you and me. We have still got two good tusks, and the Chink sounded rather desperate for rhino horn. I’m sure we can put the pressure on him for enough to retire on.’
‘Joao, you are living in a dream world. You know how scarce rhino still are. We could spend weeks in the Park without seeing one.’
‘I know where there is a magnificent bull with a gigantic horn, just waiting for us. The only problem is convincing him to part with his horn,’ Joao said, casting his brother a sideways glance and grinning mischievously.
Rui was petrified. ‘You can’t be serious,’ he said. ‘The quarantine camp is too close to the rangers’ place. He guards those rhinos better than he would have guarded his own harem.’
In the late 1800s both the white and black rhino were hunted to the brink of extinction.
During the past twenty years, a concerted effort had been made by the Parks Board to re-establish these pachyderms in the Park.
White rhinos were obtained from the Natal Parks Board, Natal being the only province where viable quantities still existed to enable the species to survive. The animals were then transported to the Kruger Park and kept in quarantine camps for several months to acclimatise, before being released in the Park.
One of these quarantine camps was situated five kilometres to the west of Sam’s house at Nwanetzi. Rumour had it that one of the bulls there at present had a horn that would challenge the present world record.
In aphrodisiac value this was worth 10,000 dollars, but Joao was shrewd enough to know that, provided he could find the right buyer, the trophy value would exceed that amount tenfold.
‘Don’t worry, little brother, if the ranger interferes, I’ll handle him.’
He was hoping to sound more confident than he felt: somewhere in the back of his mind a small voice was trying to tell him something, which he preferred to ignore.
He knew Sam Jenkins well. This was no ordinary ranger. Rumour had it that he had followed a band of poachers way into Mozambique, killing them one by one.
This, being highly illegal, was most probably just a story. Still . . . with Jenkins you never knew. With so many stories floating around there had to be something special about the man.
Nevertheless, he thought confidently, you don’t fuck around with Joao dos Santos either.
By the time Louis arrived, accompanied by his chief black ranger and one more man, Sam’s Toyota was loaded and ready. The black rangers used to carry antiquated .303 rifles but they’d recently been issued with new semi-automatic R1 rifles. Sam preferred his Sauer & Sohn 300 Winchester Magnum, topped with a powerful Bausch & Lomb scope.
They drove both trucks to a hill a few hundred metres from the carcass. Everything was off-loaded and while the rangers were carrying the stuff to a big tree at the base of the hill, Sam and Louis drove the trucks a kilometre back along the fire break. They hid the trucks in a deep donga and camouflaged them with branches and grass. On the way back to the hill they kept to the overgrown shoulder to avoid leaving boot prints in the fire break. Not that the poachers would be approaching from this direction, but with an opportunity like this they didn’t want to leave anything to chance. The vehicle tracks were of no consequence, as the fire breaks were regularly patrolled.
‘So, what are you going to do?’ Louis asked.
‘Shoot the buggers if they give me half a chance.’
‘No, you bloodthirsty bush mugu. I was talking about this brand new crumpet you saddled yourself with. Literally.’
‘Oh. Yes. Well, frankly, I don’t know. Have to think about it.’
‘You realise, of course, what Estelle, her family and your family are going to do to you when this lot leaks out. A man doesn’t have to be a prophet to know you’re going to be in the wringer. And you are the bright one who is always accusing me of thinking with my knackers.’
‘Shut up. This is serious, and I haven’t got the faintest idea what I can do.’
‘You can drop this new woman like a hot potato and hope details of your carnal weekend never leak out. In fact, I reckon that’s about the only thing you can do.’
‘No,’ Sam said, shaking his head.
‘You’re in heat. Sit it out and cool off.’
They were approaching the tree under which a rudimentary camp was being pitched.
‘Aaron, you and James get to the top of the hill and start looking. And for God’s sake stick to the shade when you are using binoculars. We don’t want to advertise our presence to the whole of Mozambique.’
Sam tuned the two portable radios to the same wavelength and gave Aaron one. ‘Remember to keep the volume control way down.’
They were going to camp at the base of the hill, and have radio communication with the two lookouts on the summit. The lookouts would be relieved every four hours. It was not a hill in the true sense of the word, but one of the rocky outcrops that were scattered throughout the otherwise flat bushveld. It gave them the advantage of being able to survey the surrounding flats for kilometres around. Another advantage was that they could shield a gas stove between two boulders at the base and were therefore not limited to cold rations.
After a cup of tea and a pipe Sam took his gun and crawled to the summit. ‘You guys go and have tea,’ he said and started glassing the eastern horizon, taking care to shield the lenses of his binoculars from the sun.
Joao and Rui were in the command tent of a military camp near the border, talking to Colonel Lysenski. Joao had just slipped him an envelope containing a bundle of cash, and the colonel was in an expansive mood. These two men were supplementing this pay nicely, and the extra money was making things available to him without which his stint in this godforsaken bush would have been much worse.
Joao was telling him about his intended sortie into the rhino camp.
‘Comrade,’ Lysenski said, ‘do not underestimate this Jenkins. He is a very dangerous man indeed. I have heard much about him.’
Clenching his jaw muscles, Joao leaned forward; ‘I, too, am a very dangerous man, comrade. I know Jenkins well, and I have also heard a lot about him, half of which is bullshit. I think it would be interesting to meet him on equal terms.’
The colonel smiled and leaned against the back of his chair. ‘It is good for a man to have fire in his soul, Joao, but be careful you don’t scorch yourself. You know as well as I do that you will never meet him on equal terms. Over there he has got all the backing in the world, and you are on your own. I give you AKs and ammunition, but that is as far as your backing goes.’