by Tony Park
Alex directed Novak to drive straight to Satara Camp without stopping. A vehicle crammed with uniformed men was bound to attract attention, but some of them would be getting out once they neared their destination.
Novak sat on close to the maximum road speed of fifty kilometres per hour, ignoring the antelope, elephant, giraffes and zebra they passed on the way. As they neared Satara, the thick bushveld started to give way to more open grassy plains. When they at last rolled through the camp gates they were surrounded by people.
‘Holy fuck, what a circus,’ Kevin said from the back seat.
It was a protest. Men, women and children of all ages emerged from the car park and picnic area at the sight of a four-wheel drive full of men in uniform.
‘Stop the cull! Stop the cull! Stop the cull!’ they chanted, their voices growing stronger by the second as more and more of the demonstrators found a target for their frustrations.
It was the first glitch in the plan. Alex had intended on dropping Henri, Heinrich, Kevin and Kobus at the camp while he went to the operational control post for the cull, which was located nearby at Satara’s dirt airstrip. He’d figured that if he showed up in a rental vehicle with the correct number of people for the public relations team – himself, Kufa and Novak – he would have an easier time getting past the inevitable police and army checkpoint. He knew from the operational orders that he would be issued with a vehicle pass when he gained access to the airstrip. Once he had reconnoitred the area he would leave Novak and Kufa to pretend to take pictures and video, and return to camp for the others. Having passed through security once he would simply claim to have picked up some other men who needed a lift when he returned to the field base.
They were surrounded by chanting people. ‘I can’t move,’ Novak said. ‘I don’t want to run them down.’
‘No, lock the doors.’
Something thudded on the roof of the Land Cruiser and a moment later red paint trickled down the windows on one side.
A white man with acne, dreadlocks and half-a-dozen piercings glinting on bits of his face pounded the windscreen. ‘Murdering bastards!’
‘Stay cool, everyone,’ Alex said.
From the direction of the camp reception came the blast of whistles. ‘Cops,’ said Heinrich from the back of the truck.
‘Move away from the vehicle!’ a voice called through a loud hailer in English, then repeated the command in Afrikaans.
‘Fascist bastards!’ cried the young man. Alex could see he was trying to whip the protesters into a fury. He had a whistle of his own and blew on it loudly in response to the noise coming from the swelling ranks of blue-uniformed police.
‘Watch your language, there are children here,’ said a grey-haired woman who was being pushed into Alex’s window by the crush of people around her.
‘This is getting ugly. Novak, rev the engine, hard.’
A cloud of black diesel smoke belched from the rear of the Toyota, forcing a few people to step back, coughing.
‘There’s a gap. Slowly now, reverse back towards the police.’
‘Save the elephants! Save the elephants! Stop the cull! Stop the cull!’ Parents moved children out of the way of the moving vehicle, and the crowd of protesters, now at about sixty, regrouped in front of the Land Cruiser to stop it moving forward.
Twenty police moved around the vehicle in a protective phalanx and one jumped on the running board. He rapped on the window. ‘What the hell are you doing here, man?’ the captain said to Novak as the electric window wound down.
Alex said across the driver, ‘Sorry. Lieutenant Arno van Dyk from army public relations. I just came in here to get some food for my men.’
‘Well you should have gone straight to the bladdy airstrip. Keep reversing then turn when I tell you to. There’s another exit out near the staff quarters. We’ve been using it discreetly all morning. Hopefully these bunny huggers don’t follow us and find it.’
The man was red-faced. It was going to get hotter as the day wore on, and tempers were not going to get any cooler on either side. The crowd increased the volume of its chanting, thinking it had a victory.
The police captain jumped off the running board when they reached a white police pick-up. ‘Follow me,’ he said. He led them past a bungalow that Alex guessed was the warden’s house, and through a fence onto a gravel road that eventually joined the main tar road, just outside camp. A short way up the road they turned right, ignoring the red circular sign with a white bar across it that denoted no entry.
‘This is the airstrip road,’ Alex said.
Two soldiers carrying R5s, half-a-dozen policemen and two women in national parks uniforms stood around a makeshift boom gate – a red and white striped pole laid across two two-hundred litre drums. A policeman stopped beside the captain’s car, in front of them, and spoke to the officer for a minute. He stepped back, scrawled something on a piece of paper and waved the captain through. The police vehicle did a three-point turn past them.
‘He’s not having a good day,’ Kevin said.
‘Just think how bad it’s going to get for him later,’ Henri grinned.
‘Quiet,’ said Alex. He didn’t want them getting cocky just yet.
The policeman waved them forward and when Novak lowered the window the harried-looking man simply handed them a piece of paper with the words visitor pass written on it, followed by the numbers forty-two and seven, with the seven circled. ‘This is your pass number. Don’t lose it. Seven is the number of occupants.’
Novak nodded his thanks and slid the paper on the dashboard so it was visible.
‘Is it just me or is everyone else nearly kakking their pants?’ Kobus asked.
‘Spoken like a typical air force guy,’ Heinrich said from the back.
‘We can’t do this job without you, Kobus. Stay cool,’ Alex said. As if on cue, a shadow passed over the Land Cruiser and they all craned their heads to see the podgy silhouette of a South African Air Force Oryx helicopter pass overhead.
Novak followed the red dirt road, carved through the brittle yellow grass and occasional knob thorns and leadwoods of the open savannah country.
Alex wondered if the airstrip had ever seen such activity. A row of brown canvas army tents lined half of the length of the dirt runway, and soldiers in camouflage and rangers in khaki darted in and out like mongoose foraging for food. A caravan was serving cold drinks and sandwiches and a line of policemen was queuing for their lunch.
The Oryx, a South African-built copy of the Anglo-French Puma troop-carrying helicopter, touched down. Its rotors stayed turning, throwing out a rolling cloud of choking red dust, grit, grass and stones. Fifteen men, all resting on one knee and holding their balance with long rifles, waited by the side of the airstrip. The lead man had his right hand raised, thumb up. The Oryx’s copilot looked like a robot, with a bulbous green head and a lowered reflective visor covering his eyes. He returned the thumbs-up sign and the column of men stood and jogged towards the helicopter. They boarded quickly, showing this wasn’t a maiden flight for any of them.
‘That must be one of the five culling teams,’ Alex said. ‘They’re being flown to their positions as soon as a national parks helo confirms the location of a suitable elephant herd.’
‘Suitable?’ Kobus asked. The other members of the team had been briefed thoroughly on the culling operation and their illegal part in it, but Kobus had been isolated from the others, having only just returned to South Africa the day before from a flying assignment in the Democratic Republic of Congo. If Kobus’s flight had been delayed or cancelled, the job would have been over before it began.
‘They’re looking for breeding herds – mothers and young. They need bigger herds of at least fifteen animals and they won’t be targeting mature bulls.’ He didn’t have to tell Kobus that elephant herds were generally composed of a matriarch, her daughters and granddaughters and all their children. Young males stayed with the herd only until they could fend for themselves and we
re then kicked out.
Alex told the pilot the Oryx would return and refuel once the last of the culling teams was out in the bush. Once all of the teams had done their work and removed the ivory, each would stay with the tusks until the helicopter collected them. The Oryx would then head out again to collect the precious harvest.
Kobus looked at the vehicle park behind the tents. ‘So what are all those armoured cars?’
Twenty assorted military, national parks and police armour-plated trucks were lined side by side. Most looked like troop-carriers and the army vehicles had v-shaped hulls perched high above the ground, in order to minimise the effects of landmine blasts. Half-a-dozen had .50 calibre machine-guns mounted on top. Alex viewed the guns with some unease. He’d seen what the finger-length slugs from one of those weapons could do – take a helicopter out of the sky or cut a man in two.
‘Redundancy and deception.’
‘Talk like a civilian, not a marine,’ Kobus said.
‘Partly, they’re here in case the helicopter breaks down – that’s the redundancy part of the plan. They’ll drive out to the culling teams and collect the ivory, load it on board and drive to Skukuza. There’s a warehouse there with a reinforced vault under twenty-four-hour armed guard where national parks keep all the ivory they routinely collect from the carcasses of elephants that have died of natural causes or poaching. By the time it gets there a replacement helicopter will have arrived from Air Force Base Hoedspruit to take some of the ivory to Pretoria for the media event.’
‘Some?’
‘Yeah. National parks usually stores all the ivory it collects. They’re holding it as an investment for the future. However, the cull has caused so much political division in South Africa and abroad, the government doesn’t want to be seen to be doing this for money they might make one day.’
‘So that’s why they’re going to burn it.’
‘Some of it,’ Alex said. ‘They’ll burn just enough to make a good bonfire for the local and international media in Pretoria. A tonne at least.’
‘I doubt you’d fit three tonne of ivory inside an Oryx anyway. It’ll take the weight, but the volume will be enormous,’ Kobus said.
Alex nodded in agreement. ‘After they’ve picked up about a tonne and a half of tusks the helicopter crew will fly back and unload. That ivory will be stacked into a cargo net. Then the Oryx will top up its fuel tanks and go pick up the rest of the cargo. When it comes back it’ll touch down briefly and then the net will be attached. They’ll fly to Skukuza, drop off the cargo net and carry on to Pretoria with whatever’s left on board.’
‘Why are they flying the stuff all the way to Pretoria?’ Kobus asked.
‘The government’s playing a clever game. They know the media can’t be everywhere at once. They figure if they put on a press conference in Pretoria that will force some of the photographers and journalists to stay in the capital, away from where the action’s happening. Same goes for the foreign media. Besides, no politician wants to be anywhere near a dying elephant or men with guns.’
‘Got it,’ Kobus said. ‘But getting back to the armoured cars – they’re here in case the helo breaks down, but what did you mean by deception?’
‘You saw the protesters at Satara. The authorities expect other groups of demonstrators to man the park gates during the day, and to try to blockade the entrance to Skukuza. The armoured cars will start leaving here during the day, in packets of three or four, once it’s clear they’re not needed. They’ll leave via the main gates and some will go to park headquarters. It’ll give the protesters something to focus on, but there will be no ivory on board. It’s supposed to deter and confuse criminals as well.’
Kevin laughed from the back of the four-wheel drive.
‘So what do we do now?’ Kobus asked.
The plan for the pirate gang, Alex explained, was to do the job of the army public relations team. They needed to ingratiate themselves with the people running the operation on the ground, so that their movements wouldn’t be challenged. Alex told Novak to drive to the line of tents and they cruised slowly through the dust churned up by an armoured car in front of them until they came to one that said Headquarters. Someone had scrawled Operation Jumbo in chalk underneath. Alex, Novak, Kufa and Kobus got out of the Toyota and Kevin got in the driver’s seat. ‘Go hide in the car park,’ Alex told the rest of them.
Inside the brown canvas army tent were four rows of folding trestle tables littered with maps, field radio sets, laptop computers, satellite phones and half-drunk plastic bottles of water. Men and women in army, police and national parks uniforms sat in fold-out camp chairs. A couple read magazines. A soldier excused himself and edged past them, drawing a packet of cigarettes out of his breast pocket. There was not much going on.
‘I’m looking for Colonel De Villiers,’ Alex said to an African private, who was studying a bikini-clad centrefold.
‘Over there . . . sir,’ he said, looking up and seeing Alex’s rank insignia.
Alex tried to remember he was a public relations officer, not a former Royal Marine Commando. If he’d been in his old uniform he wouldn’t have brooked the man’s casual attitude towards a stranger.
He threaded his way between the tables to the far end of the tent where a short, grey-haired man in army camouflage was talking to a bald-headed African in national parks uniform. The white man was tapping a plastic-covered map pinned to a board on an easel. Both turned at Alex’s approach.
‘Morning, sir. Sorry to disturb you. I’m Arno van Dyk, from army public relations.’
The colonel gave a grunt that Alex took to be a greeting. ‘Why are you wearing gloves? It’s thirty-five degrees out there already.’
Alex wore green fire retardant Nomex gloves, the type favoured by many special forces soldiers around the world. The way the colonel addressed him sounded like he was accusing Alex of an affectation. ‘Skin condition, sir.’
De Villiers stepped back half a pace. ‘Very well. You’re here to make us all famous, eh?’
‘We’ll do our best, sir.’ He introduced Novak as his photographer and Kufa as the video cameraman and Kobus as their national parks public relations liaison officer.
‘You’ve arrived at a good time. All of the culling teams but one have left, and we’re waiting for the action to start. The calm before the storm, as they say.’
‘We haven’t met,’ said the African man. ‘I’m Jacob Mandile from Corporate Investigation Services.’ He shook hands with Kobus first. ‘You’re not from Skukuza?’
It was said as an accusation, rather than a question. Alex hoped Kobus would keep his cool. Corporate Investigation Services was the park’s elite policing service. CIS operators had a justifiably fierce reputation as hardened fighters in the war on poaching. Its members infiltrated poaching gangs undercover, and tracked illegal hunters through the bush. And killed them.
‘I’m an honorary ranger, from Pretoria,’ Kobus tapped his epaulettes, which showed the national parks emblem of a Kudu’s head on a black background, instead of the green of the full-time employees. ‘I work as a public relations consultant in my civilian job and was asked to help out.’
The bald man nodded, apparently satisfied.
‘Well,’ Colonel De Villiers said, ‘you know what’s required of you better than I do. Go out and take your pictures and your films and try not to get killed by an angry elephant.’
‘Yes, sir. You would have seen from the PR plan that we need to get some aerial footage as well. I thought this would be best achieved on the last sortie, when the helicopter returns to pick up the net for the trip to Pretoria,’ Alex said.
The black private who had directed them towards the colonel excused his way into the cluster of men. ‘Chief of army is on the phone for you, sir. Wants to know how things are going.’
De Villiers gave a theatrical sigh. ‘This will be my lot today. Telling everyone in Pretoria that things are going according to plan. Talk to Captain Steyn, the aviat
ion liaison officer in the next tent. He’s coordinating the helo missions.’
Alex saluted and the colonel dismissed him with little more than a wave of his hand. He left the tent. De Villiers’s lack of interest in the public relation team was a good sign. Better that, Alex thought, than a commander who wanted to oversee every detail.
They filed out of the command tent and went to the next, which had a stencilled sign saying Air Ops outside. Alex found Captain Steyn, a red-haired man, sitting at a table talking on a radio. He held up a hand to tell them to wait until he had finished. Over the radio they could hear the pilot of the Oryx talking above the background whine of his engines. They had just dropped off the culling team that Alex had seen board the helicopter.
When Steyn had finished his radio transmission Alex introduced himself and his men.
‘Ah yes, the PR man. I’ve got you on the last sortie – when the helo will go around picking up all the ivory. You’ll get lots of nice images of the tusks being loaded. Then, when the Oryx returns here you can get out, he’ll hook up the net with the excess ivory, and we can all go for a beer. Is that all right with you?’
That’s what Alex liked about the air force. Their idea of issuing orders was to ask if everything was all right. ‘Almost perfect,’ Alex said.
‘Almost?’
‘Ja. I’ve also been tasked to get some vision and stills of the ivory being dumped at Skukuza, when he drops off the cargo net. National parks have asked for it, and it is their operation, after all.’
Steyn looked thoughtful, then nodded.
‘If it’s all right with you, I’d like to stay on board with my guys and then get out at Skukuza. We’ve got a parks guy with us – an honorary ranger – who has a car at reception. He can drive us back out here to Satara to pick up our four-by-four.’ Alex pointed a thumb back over his shoulder at Kobus, who was standing at the entrance to the tent. Kobus smiled and nodded.
Steyn scratched his chin. ‘Hmmm. Hadn’t heard about another passenger. Shouldn’t be a problem, though. There are two armed airmen on board, riding shotgun. Might be a bit tight for space, but there should be enough room for one more.’