He held his breath as long as he could before coming up. Wally surfaced, too. He sucked his teeth and muttered, sore, but LB listened for the bees, ready to gasp and go down again. The night stayed quiet, the bees were gone, but he turned a circle to check on all sides.
On shore, under the baobab, Promise stood, not waving her arms to ward anything off, but calmly peering out to where LB’s and Wally’s heads bobbed like hippos. She waved for them to come back.
Dripping, they returned to the tree. Promise stood over her wet ranger shirt, which had been thrown across a lump on the ground, the hive.
She wrapped it, the size of a rugby ball, in her shirt, then smacked the hive against the ground.
Inside the tunic, the hive crunched. She left the shirt in place, dampening and confusing any bees left in residence, as well as hiding it from angry returnees. Promise reached in for broken bits. She handed the first to Wally, another to LB, and kept one for herself. Each waxy shard drizzled honey.
Promise, still all skin from the waist up, bit into the honey-comb first, eyes on LB. He sucked away as much honey as he could, catching the dribbles in his free palm, then nibbled off a corner of the honeycomb. The texture was stiff, with a bland flavor, but he chewed and swallowed. Wally did the same, while Promise finished her chunk of the hive with relish. LB wadded the rest into a ball and stuffed it into his mouth. The comb collapsed slowly between his teeth, but made it to his stomach.
The girl handed them more bits of the hive; they lapped the rest of the honey away, but LB ate no more of the wax. He was hungry but not enough to eat a candle.
While Wally and LB finished, Promise surveyed the dark bush, tuning her senses to it. Finding everything in order, she nodded to herself the way an animal might. Pulling her damp jersey over her shoulders, the ranger put away her nakedness.
“More?”
Wally gave her a thumbs-up, but she’d addressed the question to LB, plainly testing him. He put his fists on his hips.
“What’ve you got?”
“Come on, then.”
Promise led the way from under the baobab, leading them northeast toward the moon. In the dimness, she walked differently from Wally and LB. Her tread fell lighter. Her boots didn’t strike the ground like theirs, she didn’t roll heel to toe but planted her soles flat, a glide as much as a gait. Nothing on her jangled. Years ago, in jungles with the Rangers, LB had seen people move like this. They’d been insurgents or friendlies, soundless and sometimes invisible because they were natives to the lands where LB was a stranger. They were powerful because the part of the earth where he’d come to fight was their homeland. Walking behind Promise in the bush made him feel even more out of place, more exposed and unfit to be here.
She guided them along a game trail, around more prickly hedges and the rustles of small creatures scurrying out of their path. The brush gave way to wide-open ground. A hundred yards across the gray plain, what LB thought were just more bushes got to their feet and pranced off, a herd of something with horns and pale backsides disturbed from grazing and sleeping. Promise whispered these were hartebeests. LB heard nothing from their mass movement. Silence in the Kruger seemed the norm, broken once in a while by roars, trumpets, and screeches that carried for miles.
Promise halted near a tall mound of dirt built like a small watchtower and bigger around than the baobab’s trunk. It stood level with LB’s eyes. With no hesitation, Promise plunged her hand through the crusty exterior, up to her elbow.
She withdrew her clenched fist and opened her fingers under LB’s nose. Her palm crawled. Before LB could gape or recoil, she shoved the contents of her hand into her mouth. With a darting tongue and fast fingers, Promise nabbed tiny escapees on her chin and shoved them past her lips. The munching sound she made put a grimace on Wally’s face. But she was gauging LB, and he stayed stoic, only clearing his throat.
“What was that?”
Promise wrung her hands to rub off any clinging survivors.
“Termites.”
LB peered into the hole she’d punched in the mound.
“You’re eating bugs. Really.”
“Termites have seven times the protein of steak.”
LB made no move to reach in for his own fistful of insects; the girl turned instead to Wally.
“Captain?”
Wally sighed.
“I like a good steak. Fuck it.”
He strode to the mound and rammed in a fist to make his own hole. Groping around, Wally grunted in revulsion at keeping his arm in. When he pulled out his hand, he stared at it as if it were not his own before flinging the contents into his mouth. Wally bit down once, stopped chewing, closed his eyes, and forced himself to swallow.
“What do they taste like?”
Wally brushed his chin and cheeks clean of termites fleeing his teeth. He wagged a finger.
“Oh, no. You do it. Then we’ll talk.”
A little proudly, Wally stepped beside Promise, both termite eaters now. LB’s reluctance showed in his sluggish turn to the mound. He searched for his bravado, that surge that made him jump from planes, ships, choppers; drove him onward under gunfire and exhaustion; let him ignore the odds in the remotest parts of the planet. LB rummaged in himself for the thing that made him a PJ. He couldn’t find it.
“No thanks.”
Promise and Wally snapped at him together. “Do it.”
Humiliation did the trick. LB screwed up his face and stuck his hand deep into the opening Wally had made.
Instantly his wrist was encased by a creeping, itching, pinching horde, like living grains of sand. LB shook his fingers to dislodge them before remembering that he was supposed to grab them. He closed his fist around a shifting, squirming mass. LB yanked out his arm. Termites spilled off his sleeve and began to march under his cuffs, up his arm. He had to let them go or eat them.
LB shut his eyes to remove at least one of his senses from what he was about to do. He rushed his hand to his mouth to cram in the shifting ball of bugs. He wanted to spit them out. LB tried to swallow but couldn’t do it with his teeth so far apart, he came close to gagging. Focusing on his pride while trying to shut down his tongue the way he’d his eyes, LB closed his jaws on the termites.
They crackled and released juices. If taste could have a color, this was brown, oddly like wood. LB bit down again and gained confidence that he would not retch. Though the idea of eating living things was revolting, their flavor was not. He opened his lids to face the girl ranger and Wally, then swiped a few termites off his cheeks before brushing out the ones headed up his sleeve. LB focused inward to feel if insects were teeming in his gut.
He put his hand back into the hole, grabbed one more wriggling ball of bugs, and gobbled them. LB walked away from the mound and crossed his arms over his barrel chest, standing alone.
“They’re better the second time.”
Wally raised his hands, surrendering this round of whatever little competition they always had between them. Promise gave LB a tight-lipped smile.
The girl ranger turned on her heels. Wally and LB followed to the pond.
“You can’t drink this water. But . . .”
A few strides from the water’s edge, Promise dropped to her knees. She clawed at the soft ground, digging a tunnel straight down. A handful at a time, she excavated until she hauled out mud dripping between her fingers. When the hole was elbow deep, Promise withdrew a cupped palm of clear water. This she drank.
“The earth filters it. Go ahead. It’s clean.”
Wally tried first, reaching down, then lapping the water out of his hand. He nodded at LB, who found the water cool and sweet.
LB widened the hole enough to dip in the empty canteen. This was the first time the Kruger had cooperated without a barb or a bite.
When they’d drunk their fill, Promise led them into the night. They stopped at a prickly pear plant and a sour-plum tree to suck on the fruits for moisture. The moon had risen enough for LB to walk behind the girl
ranger and let his mind wander, thinking about what it must be like to have this harsh, vast place as an office. To know the bush so well, to love it as much as she plainly did, even though it fought her, fought everything of man. This wasn’t so different from what LB did. His workplace had tried to kill him plenty of times.
Approaching the drone, Promise slowed on the game trail, holding a hand behind her, signaling for LB and Wally to stop and be silent. Alone she walked the groove in the ground from the drone’s crash, disappearing through the broken, thorny hedge. Wally drew the pistol from his waistband.
“What’s she doing?” he whispered.
Before LB could figure a reply, Promise whistled for them. Wally held the gun ready as they moved toward the drone.
In the clearing, the wrecked UAV cast a strange, scarecrow-like silhouette. Promise stood beside her partner’s rocky grave. She’d spread both arms wide, facing the open bush and the stars beyond. In the dim, silver light, something dark, something on four legs, walked away.
Wally and LB both held their ground. Wally raised the Beretta only a little.
“What was that?”
Promise made no answer other than to gaze into the night after whatever she’d convinced to leave. She turned not to Wally and LB, but to her partner. The girl ranger folded her legs to sit beside the stacked-stone grave. She hung her head. Now that she’d returned to her partner, something had left her, had gone out into the bush, too. LB sat with Promise. He laid a hand on the rocks above Wophule.
“It wasn’t your fault. Poachers did this. The Kruger did this.”
The girl ranger hid her face behind both hands. LB wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and she leaned against him.
Chapter 16
Neels did not play golf. He drank. The nearest and best place to do that was the outdoor bar at the Skukuza golf course.
He sat alone with a beer, at a plastic table in a plastic chair. The other rangers who came to while away the last daylight hours left him that way. Neels had no reputation as a chatty man. He kept the untruth of that to himself; he would have talked if invited. He’d trained most of the younger rangers. And though none had been in Angola or any war outside the Kruger, there was plenty else they could converse about. They all had women, they could speak of that. But they left Neels to himself, and by doing so, made him begrudge his empty table.
A lion’s roar rolled across the big lake as if it were a foghorn. Deep, hungry, pompous, the lion lay claim to everything in earshot and this included the golf course. All eighteen holes were inside the park without fences to separate it from the bush. So the animals wandered it, too, free ranging with the players over greens and fairways. Golfers in carts routinely chased away warthogs, kudu, and antelope. A half dozen hippos lived in the water between the eighteenth tee box and the green; they snorted at shots that fell short on them and came out to roll in the bunker. Croc attacks near the water holes were not uncommon. The Skukuza golf course rated as the eighth most dangerous in the world. The other seven were all beside active volcanoes or in minefields. For Neels, this meant that there might only be seven better places in the world to have a beer.
He sipped his third while two empty cans dripped on the table, still cold. In the dusk the lion bellowed and Neels wished he could go find him. He’d do nothing but stand in the lion’s voice, let it shake him, he could bask in something so resolute. The rangers at other tables gabbed, giving the lion no due. Neels grunted privately, offended on the lion’s behalf and swallowed his next sip in toast of the shouting king out there.
Karskie sat, unexpected. The big boy plopped a fresh beer in front of Neels, and set down two for himself. Neels finished the last of his can then opened the new one.
“How’d you find me?”
“How many places are there to look?”
The lion moaned; even this was audible from a distance. Neels waited until he was done, as if in conversation with the lion, not Karskie.
“What do you want?”
Without Neels noticing, the analyst had finished his first beer and popped the top on the second with a fizz.
“I got a very strange phone call.”
“What’s that to do with me?”
Karskie ignored the question.
“About two hours ago, the general himself called me.”
Former two-star General de Haven, the man in charge of the Kruger. Everyone’s baas.
“What did he want with you?”
“He told me to gather up food and water and drive to Shingwedzi to pick up two American airmen. Apparently they were in the Kruger doing some survivalist training or something. The general said to wait until I heard back from him before leaving.”
Neels took a swig, slowing the pace of his reply to show disdain.
“Shingwedzi’s my sector. No one told me about two Americans.”
Karskie brushed the complaint out of the air between them.
“Can’t help you with that.”
“Did he call back?”
“Twenty minutes ago. And things had changed.”
“How so?”
“We talked about you.”
Neels drummed his fingers on the flimsy table.
“Why’s the general calling you about me?”
In the cheap chair, Neels straightened out of his slouch. Karskie waved his hand again.
“Keep your seat. He’s a friend of my father. He got me this job.”
Neels slid back into the chair slowly.
“Plucked you off the scrap heap, you mean.”
“Absolutely. Would you like me to wait for more cutting wit, or do you want to know what he wanted?”
“So you’re de Haven’s rat inside Kruger. I figured you for a shit.”
“He did me a favor, that’s all. I told him you were a capable chap and not the soulless prick you are.”
Neels answered with a cock of his head. They’d swapped insults, so he could leave it at even for the moment. Besides, if Karskie was the general’s boy, it made no sense to spar with him openly. In the deepening night outside the bar’s lights, far beyond the limp flag of the eighteenth green, the lion had gone quiet. Karskie waited for Neels’s response to see how the conversation would turn.
“If I’m capable, what did you get me involved in?”
Karskie seemed glad that Neels did not fire back but asked a question.
“The general told me about a phone call he got. From the director of SSA.”
SSA, the State Security Agency. South Africa’s spies. Neels flattened both palms on the plastic tablecloth to keep them from balling. Long ago, doing counterintel and surveillance in Angola, he’d learned to have no love for spies, for lies. The butcher’s bill rarely landed in the laps of the liars.
“What did that twit want?”
“He gave de Haven a new shopping list. Clothes and food, but a lot more. The general gave the list to me. And I bring it to you.”
“Let’s see it.”
Karskie tapped his temple.
“All up here, mate. Nothing written down. But wait till I tell you. This is black-ops stuff. Something’s going on in Shingwedzi.”
The large boy leaned back in his plastic chair, which bent under his girth. With a soft smile and pale cheeks untanned from the light of a computer, he finished his second beer, guzzling like an experienced hand. But then, he’d been a druggie.
“And what do I do with your list?”
“Take it into the bush. To the Americans.”
“What for?”
“The general didn’t say. Just gave me the coordinates in Shingwedzi. And he said we should get there as fast as we can.”
“We?”
Karskie put the empty can on the table with a smack, intending it to be some sort of starting signal.
“Then you should have said no.”
Neels didn’t pull his eyes from the narrow road. Animals were not careful of cars.
“And watch someone else kak it up? I don’t care if you wa
sh the general’s ball sack for him, it’s my sector. It’ll be me answering for it.”
Karskie sagged in the passenger seat of the speeding Land Cruiser.
“Then quit your bitching.”
Neels slowed to turn off the paved surface. The Land Cruiser bumped onto the rutted dirt road leading through the bush to the shooting range.
“And just why are you tagging along?”
Karskie reached for the dashboard handle as the vehicle hit a pothole. He muttered, “Jesus,” and kept both hands on the grip.
“Like I said already. The general asked me to go.”
“That was a lie the first time you said it. Tell me straight or get left. And before you answer, I may leave you anyway.”
Karskie seemed reluctant to tell the truth. This set Neels’s teeth on edge, and he resolved to let the big boy walk back to Skukuza. The Land Cruiser rattled into the yard of the shooting range before Karskie spoke up.
“I want . . .” He stopped himself. Neels pulled up, set the parking brake, and shut down the ignition.
“You want what?”
Karskie licked his lips and lowered his eyes. This was going to be some kind of confession.
“Speak up, boy, or it’s a long stroll back.”
Karskie remained tight-lipped. Neels finished the boy’s sentence for him.
“Jou ma.” (Your mother.) “You want to be a ranger.”
Karskie shifted in the seat. Neels’s first shot had hit close to the mark.
“Not a ranger, no.”
“Good. Because you’re not. You’re a computer.”
Karskie stiffened at this. Without facing Neels, shamed for no good reason, he snapped, “Do you even have a fucking heart?”
Neels got out of the car. He stomped under the corrugated roof of the firing range, fishing in his pockets for the key to the armory closet. Behind him, the passenger door to the Land Cruiser closed.
Neels opened the padlock to the gun closet. Karskie appeared at his side.
“Let me go with you.”
Neels stepped inside the large steel enclosure. He snared two R-1s off the racks; his own weapon lay on the backseat of the car. He handed the two rifles to Karskie, then grabbed boxes of .762 ammo. He tucked a sheathed, long-bladed knife into his boot.
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