by Alex Archer
“My name is Xabba.” He stepped forward so that he could see back in the direction she’d come. “Where is the rest of your group? Are you here on a tour?”
Annja shook her head. “No, I’m on my own.”
Xabba considered that for a moment. “It is not safe to be in the Kalahari alone,” he said at last. “There are many predators.”
You’ve got that right. And not just the four-legged kind, either.
She slipped her pack off her back and pulled a photograph of Humphrey out of one of its pockets. “I’m looking for this man,” she said, holding it up to Xabba. “Can you tell me if you’ve seen him?”
For just a moment she thought she saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes, but it was gone so quickly that she wasn’t sure it had been there at all.
He shook his head. “I do not know this man.”
“Perhaps there is someone else who might have seen him...?”
“I will take you to Mmegi, our village elder.”
As they walked, Annja asked, “Your English is excellent. Where did you learn it?”
Xabba’s grin returned. “I went to school for a little while, when the government took our land. I learn quickly.”
Annja knew about the land dispute from her research. When diamonds had been discovered inside the reserve, the Botswana government forcibly relocated most of the San tribesmen to refugee camps outside its boundaries. They were prevented from hunting and gathering and forced to live on government handouts. A number of human rights organizations came to the aid of the San and a few years ago the tribespeople had won the right to return to their ancestral home and way of life. Now, several years later, many still lingered in the camps, victims of alcoholism, boredom and depression.
Xabba led her through the village to where a group of older San were gathered together in the shade of several trees. They fell silent at their approach. One of them rose to his feet.
Must be the elder Xabba was talking about...
The old man said something in their native tongue and Xabba replied. They went back and forth for a moment, question and reply, until Xabba turned to Annja.
“This is Mmegi, our elder,” he explained. “I’ve told him you are looking for help. Ask him what you wish and I will translate for you.”
Annja nodded, then turned to face the old man. He was a wizened fellow, with bright eyes that seemed to stare into her. A mischievous grin played at the corners of his mouth.
“I’m looking for this man,” she said, holding up the picture of Humphrey again. “Can you tell me if you’ve seen him?”
Xabba waited until she was finished and then translated what she’d said to the tribal elder. The elder, in turn, stared at the photo in Annja’s hand for a moment and then shook his head before saying something in his native tongue.
“Mmegi says that he does not know that man.”
Annja frowned. Something didn’t feel right to her. The elder’s answer had been straightforward enough, provided it was translated properly, which she suspected it had been, but something still felt...off. Even though she couldn’t speak the language, she was left with the sense that the elder was lying.
Why would he do that?
She tried again. “It’s been some time, so perhaps a closer look might help?” She handed the photograph to Xabba and indicated that he should give it to Mmegi. “His name is Robert Humphrey. Big happy fellow with a keen interest in you and your culture. I’m all but positive he came this way. If he did, I find it hard to imagine that he wouldn’t have stopped to enjoy your hospitality.”
Xabba held out the photo but Mmegi didn’t even look at it. All he said was one word and even Annja could hear the finality in it. He turned away, a sure sign that the audience was over, and that’s when Annja saw it.
Tattooed on the old man’s back was the image of an elephant skull, complete with long curving tusks. It started near the base of his spine and rose upward, with the tusks pointing over each shoulder, and filled nearly his entire back.
With nothing left to lose, Annja said, “I know Humphrey was here. He was searching for the elephant graveyard and thought you knew where it could be found. After all, you are the People of the Elephant, are you not?”
The moment Xabba translated her remark about the elephant graveyard there was silence.
Mmegi stared at her with hard eyes, his mouth stretched into a tight, angry line. Even Xabba was shaking his head in barely restrained anger.
Annja didn’t know if it was because she’d all but called the elder a liar or her mention of the elephant graveyard that caused the shift, but it was clear she’d overstepped some boundary they held dear. She opened her mouth, intending to apologize, but the elder was a beat quicker. In the silence his voice rang loud and clear. Annja didn’t need to understand what he was saying to know that he’d just passed sentence on her.
Xabba gave her the bad news seconds later.
“Mmegi says that you are no longer welcome among the People. He asks that you leave the village at once.”
Six San warriors rose to their feet, spears and bows in hand.
Annja looked at each of them, one after the other, letting them see she wasn’t intimidated by their actions. At the same time, however, she recognized that the situation had become untenable and it was time she left before things got ugly. She needed their help. Antagonizing them wasn’t a smart way to go about getting it.
She faced Mmegi once again and bowed slightly, to show her acceptance of his request. “I’m sorry I have offended you,” she said to him, trying to ignore his angry stare. Beside her, Xabba translated for her again. “I am just concerned about my friend. Please, if you have seen him, let me know. I am worried for him.”
With that, she let them lead her out of the village.
19
As Annja moved off down the trail, she could’ve kicked herself for letting the events play out the way they had back in the San village. She’d pushed too hard and had no one but herself to blame for the results. If she’d been patient, if she hadn’t tried to force the issue, she might still be there instead of wandering the outskirts of the village and trying to come up with some excuse for returning that wouldn’t get her immediately thrown out again.
She stopped, brought up short by what she thought had been...a scream?
She glanced around, but didn’t see anything besides the same thick grass and low trees that she’d been walking through for several minutes.
Had she imagined it?
She turned in a slow circle, straining to catch the sound again but to no avail. She was all but convinced that she had imagined it, when suddenly there it was again. This time, however, the scream was followed by a thundering roar and there was no mistaking that sound.
Lion!
Both cries had come from somewhere to her right, on the other side of the thicket of monkey thorn trees. Time was clearly of the essence so Annja took off at a run, drawing her sword as she went.
The trees were low, no more than fifteen to twenty feet high at most. Their branches twisted and entwined, growing more outward than upward, creating a canopy overhead where two or more grew close together. As Annja made her way between the trees, she could hear the growls of the lion now intermixed with the crying of a child. She prayed she’d be in time.
Another few moments more and she emerged into a small clearing. Ahead of her, on the other side of the open space, a large jackal berry tree grew all by itself. A young boy presumably from the nearby village clung to branches as high up in the tree as he could go, his face wet with tears as he stared in horror at the lion below him. The beast stood on its hind legs, its body braced against the tree trunk as it swiped at him with its front paws. The tree shook, threatening to unseat the boy and send him spilling to the ground.
There was no doubt in anyone’s mind—Annja’s, the boy’s or the lion’s—what would happen if the boy fell.
Annja let out a yell to get the big cat’s attention.
* * *
IT WAS NEARLY SUNDOWN by the time Porter and his men found Annja’s abandoned minibus.
Unused to being subjected to violence, Crane had broken rather easily and revealed that Annja had headed south, deeper into the Kalahari in search of the White Valley and the San tribe known as the People of the Elephant.
Not the type to go roaming the desert for a needle in a haystack, Porter had ordered Bryant to turn their little caravan around and they had driven back to Dr. Crane’s compound. There Porter had used the telephone to hire a helicopter pilot to search the area south of Crane’s compound for trace of the missing minibus. He told the pilot he’d pay a handsome bonus if he could find the vehicle before the end of the day, more if he could do it in a few hours. With a bonus of what he could normally make in six months of flying, the pilot moved with alacrity and was airborne within moments of agreeing to take the job.
Unfortunately, the Kalahari was a big place and even with Dr. Crane’s information Annja proved hard to find. The pilot spent the morning searching the road south of Crane’s compound, returned just after noon to refuel and went back out again immediately. Porter spent the time in Crane’s air-conditioned office, waiting for word. When it came, Porter, Bryant and his security team piled back into the SUVs and drove south for the second time in so many days.
According to the pilot, Creed had followed the road eighty miles south and then had turned west. She had apparently run into trouble at some point and the minibus was currently sitting out in the middle of nowhere with the hood up. The pilot had circled the vehicle three times, just in case the driver was taking shelter nearby, but no one emerged to flag him down. At that point, he’d called it in.
Now Porter watched from the coolness of the SUV as Bryant and a handful of his men checked out the abandoned vehicle and the surrounding area. It didn’t take them long.
“She was leaking oil from a hole in her oil pan,” Bryant said through the partially opened window next to Porter. “There’s a long trail of it running back in the direction she came from. Looks like she blew the engine.”
“So where is she?”
Bryant nodded in the direction they’d been traveling. “O’Neil found boot tracks that way, so I’m guessing she continued on foot.”
Deeper into the reserve?
Porter turned to Dr. Crane, who he’d moved into the vehicle with him. “What’s in that direction?” he asked.
Crane glared at him with distain. “The White Valley, of course. Why else would she go that way?”
Now that the immediate fear of losing his life had passed, the doctor had grown more insolent as the miles had passed. Porter considered shooting him then and there, but he might need the man for what lay ahead.
His father had made trip after trip to the remnants of that indigenous-people group in the months before his final expedition. Porter had long been estranged from Humphrey at that point, and his father had never been one to share his secrets, so Porter didn’t know the result of his efforts. But given that Creed was now retracing his footsteps based on the clue Crane had given her, it seemed clear that the next missing piece of the puzzle could be found among the San.
Which made sense, of course, given that the Lost City was supposedly the ancestral home of the San themselves.
A glance at the setting sun told him they had less than a half hour of daylight left. He wondered if they should go on. The halogen lights mounted on the roof of each vehicle would allow them to travel after dark, but he was reluctant to take the chance of losing her trail a second time. If they lost it in the darkness they might travel miles out of their way without realizing it. Best to hunker down for the night and start fresh in the morning, he decided.
No doubt Creed would be doing the same.
20
The lion turned to look at Annja when she yelled. Mission accomplished. It stopped trying to knock the boy out of the tree...and instead focused its attention on Annja.
It was a healthy-looking specimen, she could see, with a great black mane. Annja guessed it to be in the neighborhood of four hundred pounds and roughly eight to nine feet in length.
“There’s a good kitty,” she said in a steady voice, doing what she could to keep its attention. If she could draw it away from the tree, the boy might have a chance to climb down and escape.
She began to back away, waving her hand in a come-and-get-it gesture. The lion watched her for a moment and then turned back toward the tree.
Oh, no, you don’t.
“Hey! Fur face! Over here!” she yelled, waving her hands over her head to create a bigger target.
That got its attention.
The lion whirled back around and roared, no doubt letting her know just who was king of the beasts and who was the prey.
Annja wasn’t having any of it.
She yelled back as loud as she could, brandishing her sword at the same time, keeping the attention firmly on her as she slowly began backing away again.
This time the lion advanced in her direction, then made a couple of warning swipes with one giant paw, the way a house cat warned off another cat when it got too close.
“What’s the matter?” she taunted. “Afraid of little ol’ me?”
Her behavior was clearly confusing the animal—Annja’s stubborn refusal to behave like proper prey caused it to hesitate instead of rushing forward and pulling her down beneath its massive form.
A glance over the lion’s head showed the boy silently dropping to the ground.
Run! Annja urged him silently. Run and don’t look back!
As if he’d heard her, he did just that. He was off like a shot, disappearing into the undergrowth as fast as his feet would carry him and barely making a sound in the process.
The lion didn’t even notice, its attention now fully on Annja. It began to advance slowly in her direction again, one step at a time.
Every instinct screamed at her to turn and run, but she knew she wouldn’t make it ten yards if she was foolish enough to try. Lions weren’t built for long-distance running, and would tire easily if forced to, but they could put on an impressive burst of speed for a short period. A lion’s preferred method of attack was to rush its prey and seize the throat in its massive jaws, crushing the life out of its prey by suffocation. Therefore turning her back was the last thing she should do. Despite what her primitive survival instincts were telling her, her best chance was to stay where she was and face the beast head-on.
If she could keep it in front of her and at arm’s length, she might have a chance of surviving.
She could outwit the lion, scare it off or kill it. She didn’t want to do the latter unless that was absolutely necessary. This lion was beautiful and with so few of them left in the world the senseless slaughter of such a magnificent creature didn’t sit right with her. She wouldn’t hesitate to kill it if it became a matter of life and death, but she’d put off doing so as long as possible.
Without warning the lion rushed forward, snarling as it came.
Annja refused to run, standing her ground with her sword pulled back over her shoulder as the lion charged her. She waited until it was almost on her and then stepped adroitly to one side, striking with the sword.
The lion twisted toward her, one paw lashing out in a terrible blow no doubt intended to knock her flat to the ground, but Annja’s sword was there to meet it.
Sword struck flesh.
Blood flew.
Annja spun away from the lion as it recoiled in pain.
It didn’t stay away for long, though. Annja might have scored first blood but she knew a minor injury like that wasn’t going to slow the cat down in any significant way. The lion proved this seconds later by taking a few short steps and then leaping at her.
Time seemed to slow as Annja’s mind went into combat mode, analyzing and rejecting possible courses of action in milliseconds as the lion crossed the distance between them. Teeth, claws and sword glinted in the afternoon light. If the lion got clos
e enough to take her down...
As the king of the jungle reached the nadir of his leap, Annja took the only course of action that looked as if it might give her a chance of surviving the next ten seconds.
She took two steps toward the leaping beast, released her sword into the otherwhere and then dove forward directly beneath the lion.
One oversize paw lashed downward, the claws passing less than an inch above her diving form, and then her fingers touched the ground and she curled herself into a ball, letting her momentum carry her through the somersault and back up onto her feet.
There was a large monkey thorn tree directly in front of her with a trunk thick enough to protect her back, and Annja headed for it with due haste.
Behind her she heard the lion touch back down and knew it wouldn’t waste any time in turning and coming after her. She had only seconds to be ready for its charge.
As she ran she called her sword to her again, feeling an almost physical relief as her fingers wrapped around the hilt.
Behind her, the lion roared again, the air shaking with the intensity of its frustration.
Annja knew by the sound that they had passed the point of no return. Only one of them was going to walk away from this battle if the lion had its way.
In her mind’s eye she could see the lion rushing toward her unprotected back. As she reached the tree she reacted to the unseen attack, spinning around and lashing out with her sword.
The blade bit deep into the lion’s shoulder, throwing off the animal’s strike, and the claws that were meant to rip her down the middle lashed into the trunk of the tree next to her.
Roaring again, this time in pain rather than frustration, the lion backed off.
It didn’t stay away for long, though, taking a moment to recover itself and then rushing in again, lashing with its other paw this time.
Again, Annja fended it off.
So began a series of repeat attacks, with the lion trying to break through her defenses and Annja doing all she could to keep the beast away from her.