Poacher

by Leon Mare

  They drove on in silence and reached Komatipoort without incident just before one am.

  ‘When you pass the town, just before you get to the border post, there is a road to your right that goes to Swaziland. Take it.’

  ‘Yes, I know the road. No problem.’

  Once on the Swaziland road, Joao started relaxing. He knew that the border was no more than two kilometres to his left, running parallel to the road.

  Some distance out he told to driver to slow down.

  Crawling along, he was scanning the sides of the road. There was no other traffic on the road, and it wasn’t long before he found what he was looking for. An obviously seldom-used track led into the veld on the left. The entrance to a cattle camp was barred by a gate that was kept closed by a thick wire loop hooked over the gatepost.

  ‘Open it,’ he commanded the man, pressing the pistol to the woman’s head once again. ‘No tricks.’

  The car could only follow the track for a short distance before it petered out completely. They got out and Joao opened the trunk. He was hoping to find something with which to tie the man up, but there was nothing.

  ‘Take off your shirt and trousers,’ he told him.

  The man was getting worried. ‘But you promised that if we . . .’

  ‘Shut up and take them off. I want to tie you up with your own clothes, so I can be long gone before you raise the alarm. Otherwise I can just kill you. Save myself a lot of trouble. So make up your mind.’

  ‘Oh,’ the man said meekly, literally peeling his clothes off.

  Joao tied him to the bumper securely, not bothering to gag him. Out here he could shout his head off and nobody would hear him.

  ‘Now listen to me very carefully. Back there in the hospital there’s a game ranger that got shot in the stomach, a while ago.’

  ‘Yes, yes. I read about it in the papers.’

  ‘Good. His name is Sam Jenkins. I want you to give him a message. Tell him Joao dos Santos promised to kill him. Tell him that when he goes home, he must start looking over his shoulder, for one day he will find me there. I want him to know and be prepared, for his death is going to be a very slow and painful one. You got all that?’

  ‘Yes, I got it. I’ll tell him. Please don’t make the woman take her clothes off. Tie her up with something else.’

  ‘No, my friend, you misunderstood me. She is not getting tied up right now. I need her to help me get over the fence.’

  ‘No! Leave her here! I will help you get over the fence. Please!’

  ‘Shut up,’ Joao said, taking the woman’s arm in a firm grip.

  The man started screaming at him, and Joao kicked him in the stomach.

  They were both whimpering now, the man with pain and the woman with fright.

  By the light of the stars Joao started striding through the bush towards the wire, maintaining a firm grip on the woman. She was stumbling through the tall grass and crying, beyond herself with fright.

  She stumbled again and fell down. ‘Stupid bitch,’ he swore as he bent down to pick her up. As he put his arm around her, a large firm breast filled hand. A vivid picture of her spread thighs flashed through his mind, and there was the familiar stirring in his loins.

  Without a word he laid her down again and proceeded to tear the clothes off her. ‘No, please,’ she whimpered, struggling half-heartedly, nearly catatonic with fright.

  As his strong fingers ripped off her panties, he felt that she was still well lubricated from her earlier session at the Nurses’ Home. It drove him wild. His hospital pajamas and gown were no obstruction and his erection was flapping around wildly in the struggle to get her positioned. As his huge penis parted her thighs she lifted her hips involuntarily to accommodate him, and with a grunt he slid into her effortlessly. ‘This is what a man feels like, woman,’ he grunted, pounding away furiously. In his excitement, he climaxed practically immediately.

  He got up, disgusted with himself, and pulled her up with him. As he dragged her along, she vainly tried to cover herself with one hand, as if there were spectators to her shame. She stumbled along like a zombie, not noticing the cuts and bruises on her bare flesh. She was past the point of thinking or caring.

  A short while later they reached the wire.

  He pulled her down with him and scanned the area carefully. He was so close to freedom now, he could practically smell it. A mere twenty metres and he would be home and dry.

  Nothing stirred in the starlight, and there was no army post in sight.

  ‘Climb over the fence,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t.’

  He slapped her very hard. ‘Climb.’

  She climbed, cutting her hands and feet on the barbed wire and crying softly. Joao stayed abreast of her, and they landed on the far side simultaneously. She was standing in the middle of the open area, eyes closed and covering her nakedness, tears streaming down her face.

  Joao positioned himself between her and the game fencing and took a last look around. All quiet.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I need you for this,’ he said. ‘You were a lousy fuck anyway.’

  She still didn’t comprehend as he approached her.

  With one mighty shove he made her stagger back into the electrified fence. She shrieked once as blue sparks erupted from the wire, the stench of scorched flesh filling the air. After a brief macabre dance she fell away from the wire, smouldering burn lines criss-crossing her back in the starlight.

  The current would now be shorted out on this section of line, and alarm bells would be ringing in the guard huts.

  To make sure, Joao picked up the corpse and threw her against the wire again. Nothing. He crossed the fence and the game fencing on the other side in a flash.

  As he ran into Mozambican bush he could hear the Unimogs converging on the area of the breach. Home and dry! ‘Comrades!’ he started shouting at the top of his voice, peeling his lips away from his teeth in an effort to get some more volume through his clamped jaws. Once again, the missing teeth were an advantage. ‘I am Joao dos Santos – I have escaped from the Boers!’ No use getting shot by a trigger-happy Frelimo patrol at this stage.

  He ran into the bush, his gown flapping behind him, leaving his semen still smouldering inside the woman under the bleak light of the stars.

  Sam was dreaming about Linda when Smitty shook his shoulder at three in the morning.

  ‘Your prisoner is gone!’

  ‘Go away,’ he mumbled, turning on his other side.

  ‘I’m telling you, Joao has escaped!’

  As it penetrated his sleepy mind, his blood pressure soared. He shot bolt upright and grabbed Smitty by the front of his white jacket. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said your prisoner has escaped. He killed the policeman guarding him. He is gone. Flown. Disappeared. Missing.’

  ‘What’s being done? When did he escape?’

  ‘Nobody knows. Apparently the new cop came on duty at 10 p.m. He has just been discovered, throttled to death by the looks of him. He was in Joao’s bed. The sister initially thought her patient had expired but when she saw the uniform she amazed everybody by deducing that something was amiss. She called me and I phoned the cops.’

  ‘Can I get to a phone?’ Sam was already out of bed, tying the belt of his gown, his wounds completely forgotten.

  ‘Sure thing. At the nurses’ station.’

  Sam hurried down the passage, Smitty trailing behind. Tobacco-pouch was on duty again, and did not approve. Fortunately Smitty intervened, and saved her from being throttled.

  The lieutenant, acting as station commander for the night, was in a flat spin. He assured Sam that road blocks were being erected everywhere and everything was being done to apprehend the culprit.

  The murder of a member of the South African police was tantamount to assassinating the president of a minor country. And this was the second policeman in a matter of weeks. No effort would be spared.

  Sam wanted Joao. He wanted him badly. ‘I want to speak t
o the colonel.’

  ‘We have advised the colonel, and he is on his way to the station, sir.’

  ‘Shit! He slammed the phone down and in his fury grabbed Smitty by the coat once more. ‘Tell me how the fuck this could have happened!’

  Dislodging his hand, Smitty tried to pacify Sam. ‘Relax, man, there is no way he is going to get away in a hospital gown. They’ll nail him before sunrise.’

  Sam was beside himself. Storming back to the nurses’ station he demanded his clothes.

  Tobacco-pouch pouted at him. ‘Mr Jenkins, this is a provincial hospital. You are a patient, and whether you like it or not, my word is law in this ward. Here, you have no rights. Stop running around like a raving lunatic and get back to your bed. You are disrupting the whole ward.’

  ‘Like hell! I demand my clothes. I am discharging myself.’

  ‘Mr Jenkins, you have no clothes. Your blood-encrusted and perforated accoutrements were incinerated on admission. You will remain a patient in this hospital until you are officially discharged.’ She was obviously enjoying herself now, adding fuel to Sam’s frenzy.

  ‘Get lost,’ he said, turning his back on her. ‘Smitty, I need clothes.’

  Tobacco-pouch was awestricken. Nobody, but nobody addressed her in such a manner, especially in her own ward.

  Before she could react, however, Smitty intervened. ‘No ways are you going anywhere, Sam. The sister is quite within her rights. Get back to your bed and await developments. There is nothing you can do anyway.’

  ‘Like hell! I can kick some ass. This is one guy that is not going to get away. I want him.’

  ‘More than Linda?’ It just slipped out inadvertently.

  Sam very nearly swiped him. ‘Stuff you, too.’ He grabbed the phone again and ordered a taxi.

  Both Smitty and Tobacco-pouch trailed him to the front door, alternately imploring and threatening, to no avail.

  He got into the taxi in his gown and asked for the police station. Had his destination been anywhere else the driver might have baulked.

  Arriving at the charge office, a hectic argument about payment ensued. The driver eventually followed Sam into the station to either collect his fare of lay a charge. Sam borrowed the necessary money from a very reluctant lieutenant, and the driver left in a huff. All these hassles did nothing to improve Sam’s frame of mind.

  ‘Has the colonel arrived?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Actually, he has already tried to get hold of you at the hospital. Please follow me.’ They passed through a security checkpoint and took the lift to the top floor. Colonel Aucamp was sitting behind his desk, gesticulating wildly while shouting into the telephone. He did a double take on Sam’s apparel, and gestured towards the chair in front of his desk. The harassed lieutenant, who was about to leave, was waved back.

  Slamming the phone down, Colonel Aucamp glared at the man in the hospital gown opposite him. ‘Jenkins, I presume. What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘I want to know how Joao dos Santos managed to escape. You people damn well knew he was dangerous and desperate. I also want to know what is being done to apprehend him.’

  Aucamp, his colour having risen considerably, slammed his fist on the desk. ‘Mr Jenkins, don’t you dare come into my office demanding explanations! This is police work and as a civilian it has got absolutely nothing to do with you. The circumstances and the follow-up in this matter is privileged information. I must ask you to leave this station immediately. You are interfering with our work.’

  By this time Sam was livid. Having half risen out of his chair, he also took a turn in slamming the desk. Like Tobacco-pouch, Colonel Aucamp was too awestricken to react immediately. No civilian had ever had the audacity to back-chat him in his own office.

  ‘Listen, Colonel,’ Sam said, trying to control his anger. ‘Firstly, this is not entirely a police matter. The man is not only a poacher and a murderer. He is also a foreign solider who entered the country illegally, carrying arms and ammunition issued by a foreign army. This makes it a military issue as well. Secondly, I am not a civilian. I am an offer in the Recces.’

  Taken aback, the colonel kept glaring at Sam. ‘A very serious claim to make, Mr Jenkins. Can you prove that you are a Recce?’

  The Recces, or reconnaissance corps of the South African Army, was a top-secret counter-insurgency branch of the armed forces. Only the very best were invited to join the long queue of aspiring recces, and of these very few passed the first rigorous survival tests. The net result of the continuous training was a brand of man entirely different from the special forces anywhere else in the world. In addition to being expert in the skills taught elsewhere, their absolute speciality was in infiltrating the neighbouring states singly or in pairs, living off the veld and sometimes penetrating for up to a thousand kilometres without their presence being detected. Their main aim was locating camps used by transient terrorists en route to South Africa. Despite vehement denials by the neighbouring states these camps did exist. They were marked by the Recces, and air strikes were executed at times deemed feasible by the politicians.

  Hardly anybody knew anything about the Recces; this secrecy only heightened the awe in which the general public held the elite.

  ‘Colonel, I will give you an unlisted number in Pretoria to phone. The current password is hipotrachus. The duty officer will confirm my status as captain in the Recces. In a sealed need-to-know file in your safe you may break the seal of file 85 to confirm the procedure and the telephone number. You may then proceed to write your report explaining the necessity for breaking that seal.

  Colonel Aucamp leaned back in his chair and waved the lieutenant away. ‘Well, I’ll be buggered. A real honest-to-God Recce. First confirmed sighting I have ever had on your species. No, I don’t think I need to break that seal. You’re one of them, all right.’

  ‘Have it your way, Colonel. Now, what has happened in the meantime?’

  ‘As you know, the bastard killed one of my men in the escape. As to why a relatively inexperienced man was given the guard duty, that is a matter I intend following up personally once we have handled the crisis. I can assure you the responsible party is going to find himself up shit creek without a paddle. But that’s beside the point. I am afraid I have some rather disturbing news. We are fairly certain that our man is already in Mozambique. I have received a call from the Komati border patrol. There was an apparent breakout on the fence about fifteen kilometres south of Komati. The electrocuted corpse of an as-yet-unidentified woman was found on the scene. Tracks indicate the exit of one barefoot person. They are busy back-tracking.’

  ‘Damn! Can we get to the scene?

  ‘I’m going in by chopper. The pilot should be at the airport by now. I would suggest we get you something else to wear, however.’ He picked up the phone. ‘Lieutenant, send someone up here with an extra large operations overall and boots, and lay on transport to the airport. Make it snappy.’ The phone rang again as soon as he replaced it. He listened to the report grim-faced, and slammed it down again. ‘It was him, all right. And he has gotten clean away. They found the boyfriend of the dead girl tied to his car near the tarred road. Apparently he is in a state of shock, and they have taken him the local doctor. As you heard, I have instructed them not to sedate the man before we get there. Let’s move. You can change clothes at the airport.’

  It was just getting light when they boarded the yellow Jetranger with the police logo on the sides and took off. They headed due east, passing over the southern part of Nelspruit, the street lights blinking pinpoints in an early morning ground mist.

  The colonel’s distorted voice was giving the pilot instructions over the earphones. ‘Their local medic lives about two kilometres out of town on the Swaziland road. There will be a police van marking the turnoff. Get this bird moving.’

  ‘Yessir!’

  There was no further conversation as the yellow machine sped eastwards into the rising sun. They followed the winding course of the Crocodile River thr
ough the gorge, the mountains rising majestically on either side. Sam was looking through the Perspex at the country he loved so passionately. The first rays of the sun were striking chips of flashing light off the wet, seeping rocks on the high slopes. Ribbons of mist undulated through the black trunks of the myriad indigenous trees growing on the steep slopes, while the densely wooded ravines, sanctuary of the leopard and the greater kudu, were still shrouded in darkness. He could imagine the silence prevailing in those woods, only the song of awakening birds and the occasional bark of a baboon reverberating off the krantzes.

  The mountain fell behind, to be replaced by flat fields of sugar cane stretching as far as the eye could see. This used to be mainly tomato and tobacco country, until the sugar mill was built fifteen years ago. Since then most of the bigger farmers in the area had become overnight millionaires.

  The chopper banked where the Swaziland road turned off, and they started losing height, scanning the road for a yellow van. They found the farm within minutes and the pilot set the helicopter down expertly on the doctor’s front lawn, much to the chagrin of the two lion-like boerboels, baring their vicious teeth and growling at the strange machine invading their territory. The doctor’s wife was on the front stoep, two young boys hanging on her hands, pointing at the helicopter excitedly.

  As they ducked from under the still whipping blades, Dr. Hamilton approached and introduced himself. He led the way towards his study, admonishing them about the patient. ‘He must be sedated and hospitalised immediately. He is in a serious state of shock. Please try not to upset him further.’

  The man was sitting on an examination couch, gripping the rubber sheet on either side of his knees. Dr. Hamilton introduced him as Hannes Meyer.

  ‘Mr Meyer, we know this must be very distressing, but please tell us as accurately as possible what happened. As soon as we’re through we will fly you to the hospital.’

  The dazed expression remained. Meyer lifted his eyes slowly towards Sam. ‘Jenkins, did you say? Are you the ranger that was wounded? He talked about you. Said for me to tell you never to stop looking over your shoulder. He’s coming back to kill you. Better watch out. I think he means it.’ He started babbling incoherently and the doctor intervened, gently pushing him onto his back on the couch.