by Peter Riva
Moments later, the four were clustered around, walkie-talkie burbling questions from the other Land Rover. “Standby, fellows.” Pero switched it off for a moment to think.
“What do you mean dead? It cannot be!” The stooge wanted to know, Pero knew he really wanted to know. The man prodded Simon’s boots with his shoe toe as if to wake him. “Why is he dead? It is not permitted!” It was almost an accusation. He glared at Pero. Another look down and a tap to Simon’s boot. Another glare at Pero.
What the hell did I have to do with it, Pero wondered. But he said nothing, since he knew this could not be an accident. As the blue nylon fluttered in the gentle ground breeze, the plastic made little crackling noises, setting his teeth on edge. Pero wanted to spin around and search the area about them, but he fought the impulse. If they were being watched, Pero wanted whomever it was out there who had murdered Simon to see them dealing with what looked like an accident, staring at the victim.
Mbuno squatted, said nothing, Heep standing next to him. Both men knew Pero had to take command here or matters could get worse very quickly. Kenya’s government did not like people dying in National Parks—it was “very bad for business.” Someone had to be blamed.
Simon’s head, poor bastard thought Heep, was bent over at an impossible angle. The glider was intact, one stay loose, but nothing was even bent or broken. Despite being covered in thorns, the wing fabric was intact as well. It must have just brushed the thorny wait-a-minute bushes on landing. If the track in the dust was to be believed, Simon had landed, gliding in headfirst.
“Don’t anybody touch this.” Pero said in a sudden voice of authority. Pero was the boss, time to take command, to act the bully if needed. Pero had to get this under control and fast. He too knew there was sudden danger out here to his crew, real danger. A Kenyan was dead and the local police could hold them indefinitely while they investigated or extracted a bribe to let them go.
Heep walked a few yards off and radioed the other car, “Guys, bad news, poor Simon is dead, crash landed, broken neck.” Their answer in Heep’s earpiece made him answer, “We have no idea.”
Pero turned to the minder “You go, now. Mbuno will drive. Go to the District Officer’s office and ask for Chief Methenge, not the police officer, got that? If you come back with the police officer, I will make sure Nairobi fires you—and they will never pay your fee, ever. Get the Chief here with two or three of his soldiers. He can make the police report.” The stooge wasn’t happy, but the threat of losing his fee made him sullenly agree with a nod.
Chief Methenge was a Kikuyu/Luo tribesman elder as well as a political employee in this desolate region of almost no permanent tribes and certainly not his tribe, which was 600 miles to the south. The ex-President of Kenya, a Luo himself, Daniel Arap Moi had given hundreds of his tribal stooges familial favors of postings of prestige. Chief Methenge was lonely, idle, and keen to change office to something greener, preferably down south. It’s not just the desirability of the vegetation down south; the tourist dollars are nice and green also—and much more plentiful in the big national parks.
To appeal to the Chief would make sense to Heep—and to the other crew members alighting from the other Land Rover now pulling up behind Pero—because they knew the Chief was into cash, whereas the local police, like all sub-Saharan civil servants, were into promotion by exercising power. Give them that power over the crew, falsehoods or not, and they’d all be there for weeks, maybe forever, on some trumped-up charges until the political folks in Nairobi got their pound of flesh from someone overseas in the form of dollars—and television production was seen as having very deep pockets. Besides, Pero was thinking, as justification to override his own fears, they had a schedule to keep, places to film, and nothing they could do here would make poor Simon any better.
Mbuno, on the other hand, knew this was a bad omen for what might be coming. Seasoned wildlife expert that he was, Mbuno recognized that this was no accidental death. And no one is killed without reason. The reason escaped him, for now. As the other Land Rover pulled up, Pero went over to talk with them, telling them to stay in the car.
Mbuno figured out that Pero would think that the Chief, not wanting to discourage future permit payers—this film permit had been $500 for three days shooting in his district—should want to deal with this “accident” quickly. Mbuno also knew Chief Methenge, Pero had worked with him before and Mbuno had been the guide then too. The chief no doubt still had the photo of himself, smiling in full war gear, on the cover of Nairobi’s scandal sheet, the Daily Nation, which Pero had arranged: “Chief Saves Film Crew From Shufti Single-Handed!”
That time it wasn’t a TV crew. Back then they had been filming a Peugeot car commercial and the attackers weren’t shufti—they had been angry locals the chief hadn’t shared his fee with so they tried to get some dollars from Pero directly, at gunpoint. The Chief’s action wasn’t single-handed—the police had stood behind him with rifles. Pero had to admit, he did save them though, and it could have been nasty. His timing had been impeccable. Maybe too good, but then all’s well that ends well in Africa.
“Heep, why don’t you go with them, with Mbuno, Ruis, and Priit?”
“Pero, that’ll leave you alone here.” Heep looked worried. Pero took him aside.
“Look, you need to get that tape in the Betacam safely tucked away, right? Swap it out fresh and pretend what’s in the camera was the footage of Simon, okay? And I have this as well.” Pero peeped into his safari jacket pocket at the minicam, out of sight. “Stay with Ruis and Priit, pack up, we may need to get the hell out of here, fast. But leave the tents up. Make it look normal. Have them drop you off on the way to the Chief’s. And ask Mbuno to bring back the Land Rover—alone with none of you—and have my digital still camera in the glove box.” Heep looked quizzically at Pero, then nodded, shouldered his Betacam, shot some footage of the dead, crashed Simon and then decidedly moved off. The minder followed him, black leather city shoes slipping in the sand.
At the door of the Land Rover, Pero asked, “Ruis, you remember Chief Methenge?” Ruis had been on the car commercial shoot. He nodded. “Good, go with Nairobi’s fellow here and meet up with the Chief and explain that I, his friend, am guarding the body for him, only him, got that? I will not move from this spot until his Excellency shows up. Please be so kind as to remind him how grateful we were last time for his help.” Ruis smiled, he knew what Pero meant; the Chief could smell money ten miles off.
Nairobi’s fellow—the stooge—still hadn’t caught on and was looking dangerously unhappy. Perhaps he was contemplating a call to his bosses. Pero wanted to avoid that until they were safely away. Bribe number two coming up, Pero thought, here goes, “And you,” Pero said, turning to him, “I trust you will be willing to help here so we may thank you for your extra . . .” said again with emphasis and a rubbing of fingers “your extra help in this tragic accident?”
Suddenly, he got the message. He was not too bright, this boy, but he had a steel trap for a left hand—the one you take money with. He burst out energetically with, “Then we must hurry. It is most important to see Chief Methenge presently.” He pointed at the crew, “They must be driving me there presently.”
With a parting okay sign from Heep, they all finished piling into the one Land Rover and drove off in the ubiquitous cloud of dust, leaving Pero alone at Simon’s accident site.
Time to find out what killed him, he thought.
Pero knew Simon hadn’t died on impact. No one with Simon’s paragliding experience stays in a prone harness, approaching landing. Headfirst, lying down, is hardly even safe on water. Here, there were boulders strewn around. Simon would have known better.
Apologizing out loud, “Sorry, friend,” gingerly Pero made a closer inspection. Simon had never made it down alive. The broken neck had happened on landing. The bullet holes hadn’t. There were two of them just visible on his left side below his shoulder. There was no pool of blood underneath him so Pero gues
sed he was killed by something small, something tidier than a usual bullet, perhaps a very small caliber weapon. Maybe it was a .22-250, high velocity stuff. Sniper armament. Very much against the law in Kenya, which tried (and failed) to adopt the British anti-gun laws. Out here on the Northern Frontier, the supply of guns from Somalis, Ethiopians, or crashed gunrunning planes was plentiful and, although clandestine, well known. Still, a sniper rifle hardly had value to the locals. Not big enough to stop something large, from a Cape buffalo to a rhino, and useless for poaching as it was so loud, a .22-250 bullet still had plenty of energy traveling at over 3,000 miles per hour. Nevertheless, hardly the weapon of choice for shufti either because those bullets could go straight through living flesh at close range, leaving only a small pencil hole as a token. Unless, of course, they hit bone, then the entry would be small and the exit the size of, well, a gaping hole.
Pero took a deep breath to steady his nerves—it was time to check Simon out. Pero continued his sadly lopsided conversation, “Excuse me, Simon,” as Pero rolled the head straight, “There, that looks better. Now I’m just going to check you out. Don’t wait for me—you carry on, straight to heaven. You can soar with angels there.” Pero knew he was being overly talkative, prattling on, but, for him, almost holding his breath, shoulder turned away ready to flee, death created its own reality and needs. Talking to Simon made it all seem less revolting.
Pero unclipped the glider harness and tugged Simon out of the frame, ducking his helmet around the bar. The ultralight was easy to lift and move aside. Pero contemplated folding it up, getting those blue wings Mbuno had spotted out of sight. That rogue vehicle was out there. Connecting the dots wasn’t hard. They had appeared—Simon had died. Pero’s spine was still tingling, the very real threat still on his mind. But he hadn’t seen a dust cloud for thirty minutes, so there was probably enough time. He hoped anyway. Or else they went back the way they had come. Maybe our Land Rovers had scared them off. Pero’s ears did a scalp tugging, straining to hear any sound at all from behind. All was silent, normal, but his fear turned up the reception. Pero could still just hear their Land Rover to the south, maybe now three miles off.
It was unnerving handling a corpse, knowing the killers could be somewhere near, but Pero had to be sure. And Pero was also thinking of poor Simon—he had a family who needed this to be an accident for the production insurance to pay up. Pero had negotiated the million-dollar coverage himself. Any act of war or act of God was outside of the policy. Pero didn’t know which one this was, but Pero was sure the insurance company would wiggle out of it if they could. He wasn’t about to let that happen.
Pero rolled Simon over, unclipped the helmet, unbuckled the waist harness strap, pocketed Simon’s walkie-talkie, and unzipped the anorak, careful to hold the flap sides upright. It had been a cold pre-dawn when Simon had put it on, grateful for the loan of a production orange Eddie Bauer anorak instead of his own thin Chinese black model. Even though he soared on the thermals, Simon, a wiry fellow, always wore an anorak. He was Kenyan born, thin-blooded, and used to heat. Or had been . . .
Pero traced the two holes through the open anorak to the butcher’s slop of offal of Simon’s insides—white bits of bone, ribs probably, floating in a red and purple mess. To keep it all in, Pero re-zipped the anorak and refastened the harness waist buckle. Without knowing which way he was flying when he was killed, Pero had no way of knowing exactly which direction the bullets had come from. One thing was clear—they had entered his front side chest and passed down and through his abdomen.
Pero needed nature to come to his assistance to protect Simon’s family. Pero worked it out. It was at least a two-hour round-trip for the cavalry. Add another hour for the Chief to feel he had his act together. The total time calculated would suffice for Mother Nature to cover the crime. Pero unclipped the hang glider’s stays and folded it into its “dormant bat” form as Simon had called it. It weighed less than fifty pounds, so Pero hefted it and placed it on the roof rack of the Land Rover. From inside the cab Pero extracted the ex-army blanket kept for cold misty mornings and draped it over the bundle, effectively camouflaging most of the nylon blue from view, and strapped it down. Twenty yards away Pero spotted a ravine, a dry lugger, a riverbed gulch ten feet deep, they had driven through. Pero backed the Land Rover back in and climbed on top. As Pero stood on top of the cab, he could scan the horizon from relative obscurity, his feet slightly above ground level.
The hooded vultures didn’t take long. Their little pink wrinkled-skin faces and fluffy gray heads only served to accentuate the vicious razor-sharp jet-black beaks. Pero knew he had to wait until they were engrossed in their feeding frenzy, squabbling over the carcass, moving Simon’s head, arms, and legs in little lifelike twitches. The birds were paying no attention to Pero. Looking up, Pero saw they were marking this spot in their hundreds, along with incoming Egyptian Storks, soaring anti-clockwise here, just above the equator. The mysterious car would surely know where the corpse was now and if they still had some other motive, they could follow the vultures to discover where Pero was. It couldn’t be helped.
Pero jumped down, reached into the back of the Land Rover, opened a tool lockbox, and took out an illegal revolver he had stashed there the night before. As he stuck it in his baggy pocket, Pero wondered: If they came, could I at least ward them off for a while? For long enough? What was long enough? Thinking that way, he knew he was frightened. Being frightened didn’t worry him, controlling the fear did.
From the roof, Pero unclipped a section of the hang glider’s tubing, about three feet in length, hid it behind his back, and approached the hopping birds. Vultures land with some grace on their huge outstretched wings, talons extended. On the ground, they sort of half-flap and hop towards their prey. It keeps them in a dominant position to land on top as well as keeps their wings free in case they need to make a get-away. Out here in daylight, with a fresh kill and no lion getting the first feed, they needed to beat the hyena and the storks to the feast. The hyena was already sniffing around, but being more wary of Pero, it kept snorting, circling, and raising the hairs on the back of his neck. The storks had no such fear. A pack of jackals, circling the whole scene, yapping, barking, some hundred yards off, wanted to get to the prime meat as well, before it was too late. Up here in the arid Northern Territory, a clean kill of meat, replete with liquid blood, is a meal from heaven. Simon fell, just like an angel, to sustain them. Pero thought that was what they might be thinking and was sure Simon wouldn’t begrudge them. He had loved these raptors.
On the other hand, he wouldn’t like this; Pero thought as he swung the pipe. He whacked one bird, then another. They died flapping about . . . Pero dragged them a few feet, between the car and the carcass, then sat on the roof of the car to wait. The ants and flies seemed the likely winners of the two dead vultures, too close to the car for the real scavengers to brave his presence.
Pero still saw no one else approaching. Try though he might, Pero could not spot any rising dust to the east. No mysterious car, so far. The sun was fully up now—it baked down, the desert floor simmered, the vultures kept squawking, pecking, and sucking.
Pero kept watch, turning to and fro, fingering the pistol for comfort, and listened to the silent walkie-talkie. He counted down the seconds, never mind the hour, till Mbuno would get back. The vultures and storks ripped their last flesh as the hyena moved in, snarling and excitedly whining over Simon’s head. From time to time, as Pero added footage with the minicam, the hyena glanced over at Pero as if to say, “Stay there or you could be next.”
It was a long wait for Mbuno. Pero wondered why only Mbuno’s return was any comfort.
CHAPTER 3
Chief Methenge
On time, well, on time for Africa, the noise of three vehicles coming from the west warned Pero to stash the gun back in the lockbox. One of them was their Land Rover, Mbuno driving. One of them was the Chief’s old black 1950s Humber luxury sedan, once more suitable to the streets
of London. And one was a beat-up white and rusted flatbed Toyota with two bored-looking soldiers, one driving, one in the back holding two rifles. The Nairobi minder was stuck back there with him, looking miserable.
“Jambo, Mr. Pero, jambo!” Warm greetings from the Chief. They grasped forearms (never hands), showed no teeth (a sign of displeasure), smiled with lips closed, and exchanged pleasantries. But the chief got down to business quickly, more quickly than Pero expected. “What have we-a here? Where is-a this soaring thing?” Pero pointed to the roof rack. “Ah, you have-a saved it.” It was a statement of fact, like the Chief had prior claim and now it was no longer up for salvage or personal confiscation. Pero suppressed a chuckle as he thought of the Chief soaring off the Ajuran Plateau in his “confiscated” hang glider. Not today, Chief.
“Is-a that him?” He pointed to the now exposed mass of clothing, dried blood in the sand and tough bits of bone scattered over twenty square yards.
Pero nodded.
“His-a neck broken?”
Pero nodded again.
“Most wrong. Most irregular. Very big fine.”
“What? To die in an accident? The man had nothing. We paid him his first extra wage in five years. He works, worked, for the National Park people, Leakey’s lot, in Nairobi as a bird of prey expert. You know, eagles and vultures?”
The Chief nodded. “Did you-a move him?”
“No Chief, I tried to protect him, see I killed those two other scavengers, over there, but there are still too many to attack with just a pipe, and half have already left with full stomachs. And the hyenas finally tore the corpse apart.”
“The very big fine . . . the fine is not for him. He can not pay.”
“Chief, you have always been a great warrior, protecting our crew,” Pero lumped this and the past crew into one, after all they no doubt all looked the same to the Chief, “I am sure your protection will be most valuable today again.” Pero walked over to the Land Rover Mbuno had driven back. Pero reached into the left side, flipped open the glove box and—good job, Heep—took out the small digital still camera. “May I ask if they can have your picture—again? The great Chief at the scene of this terrible accident?” Without hesitating, Pero handed the camera to Mbuno and said, “Look through here, and push the button again and again until I say stop, tafadali.” Pero staged the Chief a little to the left, made the soldiers drop to one knee beneath him, rifles on knee, with the corpse and remaining vultures (ever intent on their meal now that the hyenas had been momentarily frightened off) over his left shoulder. Pero placed the minder a little further away on the Chief’s left—a traditional place for a woman and, as such, subservient to the Chief—to frame the gruesome scene. Then Pero added, “Chief, if I may, may I stand to your right, like this?” Pero squatted, taller than the soldiers, but below the Chief.