Murder on Safari

by Peter Riva

  “Heep, danger, cars approaching. Load up, rev up, Mbuno’s coming in fast. Possibly four shufti, repeat four shufti cars. Over.”

  “Godverdomme! Got it. Land in here close . . .” he cut out. Pero could see him place the Betacam in its gray case, slap the lid and hinges shut. He must have been yelling orders because everyone was running around to get things buttoned up. Soaring above them, Pero heard some of it, unintelligible, but authoritative. Pero resumed two-handed flying, heading for the Land Rover. Pero needed to slow this thing down. If Pero pushed too hard on the bar, the kite would soar up, not down, and then stall, dive and swoop. Like learning to drive a stick shift car, Pero thought, Pero had the hiccup thing going. So then, in desperation, Pero decided to simply make tight turns, to the right Pero thought, tight turns bleeding airspeed, causing the thing to go down.

  It did. What Pero had not anticipated was that it went down fast. Pero struggled to get his feet out of the pouch just as he skimmed a few bushes, moved the bar the wrong way, stalled, pitched up, then down, and planted the nose. Aluminum tubing doesn’t like a speed-planting even in soft sand. It bent up. Strapped in, Pero rolled over the top, felt the tube snap under his hands, felt the slice of his fingers, and prepared for impact, head first.

  Wouldn’t it be ironic if I broke my damn neck? he thought. No bullets for Pero, simple stupidity will do.

  The helmet bounced off a fist-sized rock and Pero came to rest, tangled in a mess of straps with his backside sending severe agony signals to the brain. Pero unclipped the waist belt and the shoulder straps and fell clear, bottom down, into a thorn bush. Oh yes, it hurt. Two-inch African thorns make Mojave Desert cactus thorns feel like nothing.

  “You okay, Pero?” It was Ruis.

  “Yeah, get me out of here.” Ruis gave Pero a hand up. Pero felt some of the thorns staying behind, sliding out of his skin.

  “That’s going to hurt.” Ruis chuckled, the helpful bastard. “Come on, let’s go.”

  They sprinted for the Land Rover, Ruis tugging Pero along. Pero could see Mbuno about 200 yards away and, way behind him, no match for his bush driving skills, a cloud of shufti followed. “Heep, you take the front Land Rover, I’ll follow with the guards. Give me the satellite phone.”

  He handed it over, “No way, Pero—let them deal with it. Come with us.”

  The minder said out the Land Rover window, “We leave now. Right now!”

  “Heep, you have the footage, we’ll be right behind you.” The professional in Heep listened, shrugged, and piled in the already revving Land Rover. As they started off, Mbuno slid to a halt. He started to get out, making his way towards the wrecked hang glider. “Mbuno, leave it, it’s finished. Let’s go. You drive.” And to the soldiers, looking increasingly worried. “You two, stand up in the hatch and point your guns at them. Do not fire, you understand, do not fire. Got it?”

  Like twins, they both said, “Yes, bwana.”

  Pero jumped in the back just as Mbuno started off and got his key out, reached into the locker for the pistol and binoculars. Holding the binoculars in his right hand, Pero peered back through the dusty glass of the rear door. He did not dare put his head up through the hatch next to the Chief’s guards, not with a revolver in his hand.

  Watching intently, his mind raced. Years before, his friend Tom Baylor at State had warned him: “Whatever you do, nothing we ask you to do will be important enough to let anyone know you are carrying it, collecting it or whatever. If you think you are being watched, simply stop and go back to your job. Never, ever, raise suspicions.” Tom had gone to the same Swiss prep school, some years ahead of Pero, graduating when Pero was just thirteen. In the years since he’d started doing these favors for State, Pero had never needed to cash in the credits he felt he was earning, credits Tom Baylor always referred to as “patriotic duty.” Pero was now hoping the support he always relied on would be forthcoming if needed. “Never, ever, raise suspicions,” now rang in his memory. Had they raised suspicions merely by filming? Or running from whoever was chasing them?

  Pero had a decision to make. Returning to his normal profession here meant running like hell from shufti. They were doing that, so far all was normal. The problem was, Pero now finally figured out that these killers must have guessed that Pero knew that they had killed Simon . . . and it was not normal to have that unreported. If they had, there would have been troops landing at Ramu airport to conduct a sweep. The head of National Parks, in Nairobi, would have insisted on it. His man was shot, after all. But there were no troops, no report, no ham radio intercept from the Chief to his office in Nairobi telling them of a killing. There was a death, that was all, a reported accidental death. Did the Chief report that scavengers had eaten the carcass before it could be examined? Probably not, because it would upset Nairobi officials that he had not guarded the corpse and the Chief would get the blame.

  Whoever was chasing them, they had moved so fast and professionally, it meant they weren’t normally listless, undisciplined shufti. They were trained, active, eager. They could have been watching Simon and then Pero fly high enough to spot their encampment. Something big was happening here, or rather there, Pero thought. They would not take a chance. Otherwise, if Mbuno could see them, they certainly could see the blue glider break the skyline.

  Pero knew then they were al-Shabaab—nothing else fit. The papers were full of stories of the terrorist organization operating out of western Somalia. Shufti would have melted away in the landscape, not al-Shabaab. Even Kenya had sent troops up against their incursions.

  Pero put the binoculars in the box and reached for the satellite phone. It was not a standard model and although it operated like one, normally, it was illegal. It had a second amplitude modulator. Press 411 and you got someone Tom Baylor said would always be listening, scrambled, direct. He said it had a perfect signal, always. They listened, you spoke, they clicked off—double click—when you stopped talking. It was how you knew they had heard you.

  Pocketing the revolver, Pero held the phone out the sliding side window, put in his earpiece, lifted the side arm antenna and hit the buttons; 4-1-1. It rang clearly in some far away office. It answered with a click.

  “Pero Baltazar here, north of Wajir in Gurreh-Ajuran territory near Ramu. Twenty, repeat twenty spotted al-Shabaab, I think, plus vehicles, one larger, suspect truck but fast. Dug in, mounded encampment spotted near or over Kenya border. We’re running for the airstrip at Ramo, they are chasing. I suppose there is nothing you can do. Local police have rifles with one round only, so if they chase us that far, well . . . okay, that’s all. Over.” Pero heard the promised double click and the signal went dead, the phone automatically turned off. Pero tried to turn it back on. It was dead. He checked the battery indicator, full charge. Tried to cycle it, still dead. Tom Baylor hadn’t explained that 4-1-1 was a one-time call, the phone thereafter dead. Okay then, so what’s left? Let’s get the hell out of here, was all Pero was thinking.

  Driving fast in desolate terrain, even on so-called prepared roads is never safe. A sudden unseen, unheard, thunderstorm can wash away a road used the day before. After two miles, Mbuno had caught and was pressing the other Land Rover to drive faster by leaning on the horn. He looked genuinely determined. He also looked angrier than Pero had ever seen him. Driving this fast in the bush is unwise, very unwise. He needed to lead, not push. So Mbuno passed the other car.

  More tourists end up in the hospital because of car crashes than any other injury in Kenya. At speed, suddenly you’re motoring happily along a dusty trail, the next second you’re trying to stop before you plant the nose ten feet down a ravine sliced though a dry wash. If you stop in time, you ease down and ease up the other side. If the gully comes on you too fast or is too small to spot soon enough, you crash if you’re a novice. Mbuno wasn’t a novice. Time and again, he wrenched the wheel, applied the gas, and fishtailed into, around, past or over gullies, large and small. The Land Rover following copied Mbuno’s every move.

&n
bsp; One gulley seemed to form between the wheels, getting larger and larger. As the gap became wider than the track of the Land Rover, they slid down to the bottom, disappearing from view, wheels spinning, Mbuno’s will and skill urging them forward in the very loose sand at the same time luckily making a track for the car behind. When the road started to climb, he straddled the ruts, zoomed into the clear, and pressed on. Somehow, mile after mile, he maintained forward momentum and a more or less straight line for the airport.

  Suddenly, one of the two guards shouted something down and Mbuno seemed to ease up a bit.

  “He says they are dropping back, they may be stopping.” Pero put his head up and the guards pointed to the receding cloud. They had come about fifteen miles, the assailants were another two or three miles back, but their dust cloud was growing smaller and, as Pero watched, seemed to “puff” out. They had stopped. As Mbuno drove on, still setting a fast pace, Pero saw the dust cloud reappear, smaller than before, getting further away. Pero guessed they had turned back, but at speed.

  Although the danger seemed to have passed for their crew, to keep them out of trouble Pero needed to get down to Nairobi and out again, switching countries for this shoot, letting their trail go cold. Pero was now especially glad he had booked Tanzania. If these terrorists, madmen, al-Shabaab, whatever they were, were operating just inside Kenya, then Pero didn’t want to be here. These assailants now knew their crew’s whereabouts, Pero was sure of that—the question remained: would they follow?

  “Mbuno, they are definitely stopping or already turned around.”

  “Very good, bwana, we will slow down a bit. Not very much, we need to leave and you need to get that Handy of yours out of here.” Like many East Africans, Mbuno had adopted the German slang name for a cell phone, the Handy.

  “It’s just a satellite cell phone Mbuno, like Heep’s. Only it is now broken.” Speaking fast English, they both knew the guards, standing in the open roof space, wind in their ears, couldn’t understand them.

  “Mr. Pero, we have been in the bush many times, many years. You may not lie to me. I was a tracker in the Troubles, working with Mr. Bird finding the Mau Mau.” Pero had met “Bird.” He was a short man, an expert White Hunter, Mr. Thomas Wilson, now a gamekeeper on a private ranch. “Bird” was his code name, given by the British authorities during the Insurrection, the deadly uprising of the slaughtering Mau Mau—which brought Jomo Kenyatta to power on a sea of blood and the threat of more to come.

  Mbuno continued, “It was our job to find and report the Mau Mau. Others then killed them. If they failed, we had to kill them, or be killed and have our families killed. These . . . they are not shufti, they are Arab Mau Mau. You are doing like Mr. Bird did. Now you tell.”

  “Mbuno, sorry I lied. I didn’t plan deliberately to place anyone in danger, I was just asked to see if I saw anything unusual. It was Simon’s glider that must have tipped them off. And I only made it worse this morning. I could see their camp from up there, clearly. It was stupid, I admit.”

  “I told you I could see them. I warned you.”

  “Yes, you did, but by then I had to jump off, if only to honor Simon’s last flight, to look like him. Otherwise, I haven’t been scouting around—I have no idea what they are really, where they came from, or what they want. We’ll avoid them, leave here, and go film in Tanzania. Those people back there were dangerous, yes, and killers, probably . . .”

  He interrupted, his voice scolding, “Simon was shot with a sniper rifle, you knew.”

  Pero was still puzzled, “How did you know so soon?”

  “Blood has a smell from inside. A neck only broken does not bleed. I could smell it before you touched the body.”

  Pero nodded. He figured there was no fooling Mbuno who had probably seen too much blood killing in the bush. “Okay, but look, I only pretended an accident to avoid Chief Methenge keeping us all there, unprotected—you know he only has a few soldiers. If those Arab Mau Mau as you call them attacked, Chief Methenge wouldn’t stand a chance, and nor would we.”

  Mbuno saw the sense in this and nodded.

  Pero continued, “And we’re running now, what else can we do?”

  Mbuno was silent for a moment, as he negotiated a boulder and an Acacia tree before bumping onto the main dirt highway towards the airport at Ramu, “If they were watching the hill this morning, then they saw me too. So I stay with you and not go home, so if they follow us or do not leave us alone . . .” he left the threat to his family unsaid. “If they follow anywhere, there will be more trouble.” It was a statement of fact.

  Pero knew Mbuno’s wife was living in Langata, a suburb of Nairobi on Giraffe Manor grounds. Giraffe Manor was a world-renowned sanctuary for Rothschild’s Giraffes, a wonderful peaceful place. “And Niamba?”

  “She will be safe there at Giraffe Manor. These Arab Mau Mau do not know my name, they may follow me as a man—but they do not know who I am. But Mr. Pero, I cannot lead these people to Giraffe Manor, they will kill.” Mbuno was calculating everything as a wounded animal does, as if he was leaving a spoor. He clearly assessed that there was no need to risk leading the killers to home.

  “Okay, Mbuno, you can come with us to Tanzania. That okay?”

  “It will do, Mr. Pero, asanti. But, please,” in that scolding tone, “get rid of those things in that box, they are a danger now to everyone.” Pero knew he was right. Once spotted, anything incriminating would make the situation worse, even if only with the proper authorities. So they stopped the car, waived the other Land Rover on, and Pero dug a hole while Mbuno led the two guards off to settle some dust with their urine. Pero broke the radio up and ripped out the memory chip and cracked it in two. Pero placed the parts and the revolver in the shallow grave. The phone battery and shells Pero threw fifteen yards away. When Mbuno returned, Pero was settling some dust of his own against the thorn tree marking their grave.

  Without a comment, they piled back in and drove off. Two hours later, in the full heat of the day, they arrived at the Ramu Airstrip.

  The solitary policeman was waiting impatiently. “Inspection, everybody out. Stand over there.” It was going to be a hot, sweaty morning.

  CHAPTER 5

  Nairobi

  Ramu Airstrip is both a civilian small commercial airport as well as a remote, occasional, military airbase consisting of one dirt strip, a few whitewashed rocks, and a few corrugated iron huts. The inspection demand here, so close to the porous borders with Ethiopia and Somalia, was not surprising. If they had driven up here from Nairobi they would have had to go through inspection in Wajir, six hours hard driving to the south-southwest on a pitted, rutted “highway.”

  What was surprising was that the Land Rover rental agency—a concession of the National Park Service run by a woman on a local camel farm—was ordered to deliver the now-empty Land Rovers for inspection. The hard cases and their soft-sided bags sat, in a jumble, in the baking sun, awaiting their plane. The empty Land Rovers were driven into the inspector’s hanger, a WWII relic Nizzen-hut with a chain mail garage overhead door looking like a rusty fishing net, sagging in the middle. After they were driven into the gloom, Mbuno and Joshua sprinted out into the sun as the jail door was lowered and then padlocked.

  No one was in a hurry to inspect the Land Rovers. Pero suspected that this policeman would have to conduct the inspection himself later, at his leisure. There didn’t seem to be too many people about to assist him, but that didn’t dampen his air of authority.

  Debbie Rose, a thirty-something, parchment dry-skinned woman, tough as nails, had her arms crossed, glaring at the inspector, while her huge Rhodesian Ridgeback dog, a lion hunter by breeding, wagged his tail against her thigh in a sort of reassuring “I’m here;” pat, pat, pat. Debbie ran the rental service. She was arguing in Swahili, vehemently, about getting access to her vehicles. The amiable Joshua was now glued to her side, trying to look more manly than she, but failing miserably.

  Mbuno had walked back to rejoin the
crew. They could hear Debbie pointing out the obvious—she needed the mileage and a physical inspection before she could close out their contracts, get her rental money. The shoot had put up a bond (so close to an easy illegal exportation across a porous border, often renters had to put up the value of the car as a good faith bond). Pero would have been, normally, very keen to get their deposit money back. Today, he just wanted to be away from there. There was no phone up there, just a patchy radio phone, a ham station really, with a post-WWII tube transmitter. Anyway, there was no authority in Nairobi they could “get on the blower” to straighten out this police inspector. They were stuck. Arguing would only make it worse.

  On top of which, their Mara Airways twin-engined Cessna 414 was absent. They were not allowed to go to the flight center to inquire, on the VHF plane radio, the plane’s whereabouts. “Until we have finished an inspection of your equipment, you are not free to leave.” The officious man had been serious. His use of the pronoun “we” almost comical, his authority not comical at all. Even the government stooge had nothing to offer, being careful to stand a little apart from the film crew, just in case someone was about to get arrested.

  Fifty yards off, he raised his voice to Debbie in Swahili again and she turned on her heels, pivoting in the dust, in their direction. The dog growled menacingly at the officer, then followed, looking happy as Debbie patted his head, “Good boy, nasty man.” He wagged his tail more eagerly. Pero got the impression he would eat the policeman if Debbie asked him. It was clear the policeman had the same thought. He kept his hand on his revolver.

  Debbie was not too pleased with them either. “You bloody idiots, what have you done to make him so damn mad? He says he’ll keep my Land Rovers until an inspector comes up from Nairobi. I have a group of blue-haired ladies coming tomorrow and I need those damn vehicles.”

  Pero shook her hand and responded, quietly, “Look, we didn’t do anything. A man died in a hang-gliding accident. Chief Methenge has it all sorted out, they’re getting the body sent back to Nairobi.”