by Chris Ryan
'All aboard for the trunk route,' said Hex as they climbed into the Jeep.
'Hex,' said Alex, 'do you get your jokes from some awful website?'
'Yes,' said Amber. 'It's called his brain.'
They drove through an acacia wood. Birds fluttered away from the vehicle. The ground was rutted and the Jeep lurched and bounced until they came out onto a plain. Ahead was a cluster of three elephants under an acacia tree.
Gaston braked gently. 'Hex,' he said, 'can you turn on the tracer?'
Hex flicked it on. The device vibrated gently, which indicated it was working, but the needle stayed where it was. 'These elephants don't seem to be tagged,' he said.
Gaston let the brake off and crept forward slowly. The elephants were standing quietly, their heads together as though they were having a conversation and had dozed off. One of them had her trunk neatly curled in her tusks. Alpha Force stayed quiet as Gaston halted again.
Still seated, he raised the gun to his shoulder and fired. There was a hiss from the gun and the dart hit the elephant in the side. The animal trumpeted in surprise, its ears fanning backwards and forwards. Gaston reloaded swiftly and fired again. His aim was good and he darted a second elephant just as the three massive beasts turned and stampeded.
The ground thundered; the leaves on the trees shook and the Jeep bounced on its axles. A massive cloud of dust ballooned up over the disappearing backs of the elephants.
Gaston holstered the gun back into position. 'I knew I'd never get all three, but two should be enough. They stick together in family groups anyway, so whenever we see these two the chances are that the other one won't be far away. We'll follow at a distance so we don't make them too stressed.'
'How long does the drug take to work?'
'About fifteen minutes.' Gaston started the engine.
When the dust settled, the elephants were visible as grey blobs in the distance. 'They've gone a long way,' exclaimed Alex. 'How fast can they move?'
'About twenty-five kilometres per hour.'
'Five tonnes, doing twenty-five kph? No wonder the earth moved,' said Hex.
Gaston eased the Jeep closer. Two of the elephants were looking less alert. Their heads drooped, their ears were less restless and their tails hung still.
The Jeep was now about ten metres away from the animals. The elephant who hadn't been drugged caught sight of them. Its ears fanned forwards and its trunk shot up in the air, probing. It turned on its heel and sped away.
The two drugged elephants barely seemed to notice. One of them fell forward onto its knees and stayed there, breathing heavily. The other folded its legs underneath itself and subsided to the earth. It lay on its side, its skin billowing loosely as it breathed.
Gaston took the Jeep to within three metres and cut the engine. 'We must be very careful when we go near them. They look sleepy but they might not be fully under. If we panic them they could wake up completely and run amok.'
Keeping an eye on the two doped animals, Gaston went again to the back of the Jeep. He loaded another dart with the red drug into the gun and passed it to Alex. 'That's in case the elephant wakes up when we get close. If that happens, shoot it wherever you can and all of you run away, fast.' He took out another case with a shoulder strap and passed it to Amber.
'We've also got to be careful that the undoped one doesn't come back. Families tend to protect each other. That's another reason why we've got the extra tranquillizer.'
The party walked up to the elephants. The one lying on its side stared up at them from a half-closed eye. The wrinkled lid blinked and the ear stirred, but aside from that the elephant didn't move. The other elephant, which was still on its knees, sank closer and closer to the ground until its head was resting on the tree trunk. Alpha Force were so close they could clearly hear the breathing of the two giants.
Alex had the gun at his hip, ready to fire.
'Are they asleep?' said Li. She was ready behind Alex, in case the antidote was needed.
Gaston nodded. 'They look fairly out of it. Right, Amber, give me that case you're carrying.'
She handed it over. Gaston flipped the catches open: inside was a small device like an ear-piercing gun. He picked up a tube and loaded the gun with two small discs the size of a small coin. Keeping the gun in one hand, he reached out and touched the elephant. The end of its trunk quivered. It registered he was there, but couldn't do anything else. He seized a chunk of its flesh in his left hand and applied the gun to it with his right. A brief click and he sent the tag into the leathery skin. It formed a bulge like a blister, with a clean sliced entry hole. Then Gaston turned the gun round and used a device on the other end to punch two staples into the entry wound before it had even had time to bleed.
'One down, one to go,' said Gaston. 'Amber, would you like to do the second one?'
Amber nodded eagerly.
He handed her the gun. She approached the elephant carefully and grasped a fold of skin at its neck. It felt warm and rough, gritty with sand. She put the gun into the fold and fired a microchip into the skin. It went in cleanly. She turned the gun round and sutured the skin as Gaston had done. The elephant continued breathing steadily, completely unaware. Amber stepped back and returned the gun to its case. Then she puffed her cheeks out. 'Wow, I just touched an elephant!' Her eyes were glittering.
Hex turned on the radio tracker. The needle quivered and swung sharply over to the red area. 'It's working,' he said. 'They're transmitting.'
'That's our job done,' said Gaston. 'They'll wake up by themselves in a little while.'
They put the equipment away in the Jeep. Alex unloaded the tranquillizer gun and the unused ampoule was safely stowed in its case. Li dismantled the antidote dart and put the drug away too. They climbed into the Jeep and set off. Alpha Force looked back at the sleeping giants.
'Here comes the other elephant,' said Paulo. The elephant that had run away was appearing as a large shape on the horizon.
Gaston glanced in his mirror. 'Back to protect the others. She'll watch over them. We timed that just right.'
A sharp crack rang out across the plain. They had left the tagged elephants about ten minutes earlier and were making their way back through a tangle of acacia trees.
'That was a gunshot,' said Alex. 'Back that way' He pointed behind them.
Gaston stamped on the brakes and brought the Jeep round in a handbrake turn.
'Is anyone shooting in the park?' said Li.
Gaston floored the accelerator. 'The poachers must have found the doped elephants. They won't be able to run away!'
12
AMBUSH
In the front seat, Hex was watching the radio detector as Gaston pushed the Jeep hard. 'We're close,' he shouted over the roar of the engine, as the needle inched towards the red. 'Closer . . .' But would they be in time?
Gaston swerved to avoid a clump of trees and they crashed into the wood, retracing the elephants' trail of destruction, and exited leaving a wake of swirling leaves and twigs. Alpha Force perched forwards in their seats. Where were the elephants?
A trumpeting sound blared out above the noise of the engine, furious and warning.
They saw the elephants ahead. The two doped ones were still lying down, easy victims for the poachers. Had they already been shot? It was impossible to tell at that distance. A coloured man in army fatigues was running, fast, desperately. Behind him the untagged elephant reared up and trumpeted, an ear-shattering sound of fury.
The poacher reached his vehicle, a battered green Land Rover, its roof covered with camouflage netting. The engine roared into life.
The poacher saw the Jeep arrive. He gunned the accelerator and swung the wheel round.
'He's trying to ram us,' said Gaston. He put the Jeep into a skidding turn and narrowly avoided the Land Rover.
'Yes,' said Alex in a low voice. 'He's trying to stop us following him and hoping the elephant will go after us instead.'
The poacher's vehicle surged towards th
e Jeep again and cannoned into its side. Gaston fought to regain control as the Jeep slalomed sideways, slipping on the sandy earth. He wrenched the wheel and the Jeep banged into the side of the Land Rover.
The elephant thundered towards them, its footfalls shaking the earth like the deep notes on an organ, audible in spite of the screaming engines. It gained on them in moments, more sure-footed than the vehicles with their spinning wheels and skidding tyres. The elephant's powerful chest was the width of two men, its forelegs like tree stumps. Its trunk snaked like a serpent over Li, Alex, Paulo and Amber in the back seat. The massive tusks loomed above them like scimitars.
Amber tore her eyes away from the spectacle behind them to look at the poacher, whose vehicle was so close she could almost touch it. He was bending down to reach for something on the floor.
'He's going for his gun,' screamed Amber.
Hex grabbed the flare pistol from the side pocket of the Jeep. The Land Rover surged ahead slightly. Hex raised the pistol and fired it into the poacher's windscreen.
Purple smoke blossomed into the cab. The poacher took his hands off the wheel as the smoke enveloped him. The Land Rover hit a tree stump and started to spin. The Jeep pulled away and the Land Rover clipped the elephant on the leg.
'Go, Gaston, go!' cried Alpha Force.
The elephant's full fury was now directed at the vehicle that had hit her. She got her tusks between the back wheels and lifted the Land Rover off the ground like a fork-lift truck.
Through the clouds of dust in their wake, they saw the vehicle tipped up at a crazy angle. The poacher tumbled out through the window, leaving a vapour trail of purple.
'Dios mio,' said Paulo. 'I had no idea they were so strong.'
'She weighs at least twice one of those,' said Hex. 'It's like nothing to her.'
With a toss of her head the elephant threw the Land Rover off her tusks like a toy. It crashed onto its side. The elephant swivelled her head. Her trunk snaked up into the air like a periscope.
'She's looking for him,' said Alex. His voice was full of awe. 'And she's thinking about what she's going to do next. Clever girl.'
'She's going to get him,' said Amber.
The poacher was on his feet and running, but the elephant was on him in a moment. One front foot crashed down on the top of his thigh and encountered no resistance. The poacher's agonized screams mingled with the sickening crack of his femur smashing. Then the matriarch elephant very deliberately stepped on the poacher's skull.
The cloud of dust in the Jeep's wake obscured what happened next.
Gaston drove until they reached a river. Then he pulled up and cut the engine.
Six faces looked around at each other, stunned. Gaston looked shaky with shock. Sweat was pouring down his face.
Hex was the first to speak. 'That poacher must have been watching us.'
'We'd have noticed him,' said Alex immediately.
'Yeah,' agreed Li. 'The wildlife would have given him away.'
'He must have had binoculars,' said Hex. 'He was watching us from a distance.'
'God, that's creepy,' said Amber.
Gaston had recovered enough to speak. 'That must be a new dirty trick they've learned. We'll have to be even more careful when we're darting them. We'll have to stay with them until they can get up and look after themselves.'
'Was that one of the poachers you saw earlier?' said Li.
'No,' said Amber. 'The black guy this morning was much slimmer and had a scar. I'd know him if I saw him again. I'd know all of them.'
'Gaston,' said Li, 'if that elephant had come back while we were still there, would she have gone for us?'
Gaston shrugged. 'You can't tell. It depends on whether they've had any scary experiences before. But it could just have been the shots that set her off. They've learned very quickly what shots mean.' He started the engine.
They followed the bank of the river. A herd of impala bounded out of the long grass, arcing through the undergrowth like tan-coloured dolphins.
'What if they've wounded one of the drugged elephants?' said Li at last.
'We can't go back and check,' said Gaston. 'It's too dangerous. By the look of things, the poacher didn't get that close before the matriarch started chasing him. It's actually quite hard to really hurt an elephant if you're not very close.' He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. 'We'll tell the police he's there and they can sort out when to go and scrape him off the floor.'
Amber was gazing out along the river. It was cloudy yellow, like diluted paint. Obviously something had churned the water up recently. She straightened up. 'Oh look, we've got company.'
A boat was moored on the shore and she spotted Patrick with the three boys.
The one who had taken a liking to Amber caught sight of her. 'Hey, come and look what we've found,' he said.
On the riverbank was a crocodile snapped in two. The head, front legs and most of the body lay on the bank, its nose just touching the reeds. To all the wildlife that passed, it could have been alive and ready to strike. But the tail and back legs had been torn from it and left a few metres away. Strands of flesh, tendon and entrails poked out from the bottom of the body, as though it had literally been ripped apart.
'Did a lion do that?' asked Hex.
'No,' said Patrick. 'A hippo. They are much more dangerous.'
'They're the most dangerous animals in Africa,' said one of the boys.
'I thought buffalo were,' said another. 'Lone buffalo.'
It was Gaston who replied. 'No. The most dangerous animal in Africa is man.'
13
TROPHY HUNTERS
Li stood at the foot of the tree. The struts led up to the watch tower at the top. She took a breath. Her heart was pounding. Her palms were sweating. She hadn't even started climbing yet, and the very thought of the ordeal to come was making her freak out.
Get a grip, she said to herself. It's barely eight metres off the ground.
Telling herself not to be so stupid, she stepped forward, seized the rungs and climbed up to the top. 'OK, Li,' she said aloud. 'Now all we're going to do is come down again. No need to worry; just going for a little climb.'
But her nerve was wavering. It wasn't fear at being up there; it was fear of how she would feel once she started to climb down. It was the fear that she could no longer trust her body.
Li went into the hide and sat down on the wooden bench. She wouldn't rush it. She'd relax, look at the view, watch some animals for a while. She gazed out over the golden plain and the purple mountains beyond.
She had come out as soon as they arrived back at the lodge. Amber had been keen to do some exercise before supper, afraid that her injury was severely damaging her fitness. She suggested a swim and the others had accepted with enthusiasm. But Li couldn't face it. The others all seemed so carefree and confident, while she felt as if she was carrying around this terrible secret. The words she'd said to Paulo came back to her. What use was she to them if she no longer had her special skills?
She gave the excuse that she felt tired and was going for a lie down. Then she went to the map in reception and looked for a spotting hide within walking distance.
Giraffes made their stately way across the plain, their heads nodding. A herd of migrating wildebeest formed a dense clump of grey-brown against the golden bush. All of them had their own way of avoiding danger and solving life-threatening problems; she'd find a way too. But how?
For now, the ground seemed a long way away.
'Come on in, the water's lovely.' One of Patrick's group looked up at Amber as she came out in her dark-red bikini. It was the boy with the floppy dark hair. 'I'm Toby, by the way.'
Amber looked at him. He was just the kind of creep she didn't like. Too sure of himself, too sure she'd like him. His friends grinned at him, like lesser wolves in the pack congratulating their leader.
Hex came up behind her and poked her in the buttock. Amber whirled round, then her face split in an astonished gasp as she s
aw him. He was wearing the most ridiculous pair of shorts. They were orange and black, with jagged lines, as though someone had drawn all over them with several coloured pens held in a fist.
'Hex,' she drawled, 'what do you think you look like?'
'We're all the same when we're wet,' he said briskly. Before Amber had a chance to react he scooped her up in both arms. Then he let out a Hiawatha whoop, ran to the edge, pulling her after him, and leaped in.
They bobbed up to the surface at the same time, spluttering and gasping. Hex glimpsed Amber's face, lit with a clear desire for revenge, and powered off down the pool in a smooth crawl. Amber gave chase but Hex had already reached the end. He touched the wall, did a slick tumble turn and shot back past her.
Alex was sitting on the side. He'd got into the pool and swum ten fast lengths, but he couldn't shake the thoughts that kept whirling around his head after the encounter with the poachers.
Paulo came up to him. 'Penny for your thoughts.'
'That poacher was watching us and we didn't know he was there. We should have noticed. What's the point if we don't notice something like that?' Alex's blue eyes were steely. 'What do we do all this training for?'
'These guys are like terrorists,' said Paulo. 'I think the war's getting dirtier.'
The other boys in the pool watched Amber for a while, shouting encouragement and hoping she would notice and let them join in the game. But she was intent on racing Hex until he ran out of puff. In the water, her ankle didn't hurt much and she was enjoying every moment of the race. Hex accepted the challenge gleefully and showed no signs of flagging. The two of them powered up and down the pool like torpedoes.
Finally the three boys got out of the pool and walked over to Alex and Paulo. The blond one held out his hand. 'I'm Ralph, this is my cousin Toby' – he indicated the black-haired youth who had been trying to chat up Amber. 'And this is his brother Ben.'
Paulo thought Alex looked as though he wished they'd go away again, but he felt there was no harm in being friendly. He introduced himself.
'So, what are you doing here?' said Ben, sitting down on the sun lounger. 'You here for the game?'