by Tony Park
Hess checked the luminescent dial on his watch and tapped Orlov on the shoulder. ‘Thirty seconds.’
Orlov centred the crosshairs of the glowing sight on the dark mass of the head under the baseball cap.
‘When you’re ready, Vassily.’
Orlov had to will his hands to stay steady, such was his excitement. His heart pounded against his rib cage and his throat went tight. He took a deep breath, held it, then expelled half of the air in his lungs. His finger curled around the trigger and he squeezed.
The rifle bucked against his shoulder. There was a slick mechanical noise of sliding metal as the rifle automatically chambered another round. Through the sight he saw a baseball cap sail out the driver’s side window of the truck’s cab. Orlov smelled burned cordite. The windscreen of the truck had shattered into a crazed spiderweb, with a tiny hole at its centre where the bullet had smashed through on its deadly path. Of the figure inside the truck there was no sign.
Hess picked up the ejected brass cartridge, which had landed next to his face. He held it up for Orlov to see. A thin wisp of smoke curled out of the empty end of the hot casing. ‘Good shot, Vassily.’ Orlov nodded.
The bark of automatic rifle fire tore the night apart. Orange-yellow flashes from the two AK-47s momentarily illuminated the two poachers as they charged into the middle of the tents. With each burst of fire they stitched ragged holes in their flimsy canvas. The men’s rifles were pointed downwards, aimed at unseen sleeping inhabitants inside each of the tents.
The lead poacher, Alfred, raised his rifle and took aim at the driver’s side door of the truck. The last three bullets in his rifle’s magazine punched through the yellow metal and ricocheted wildly inside the cab, one exiting through the roof with a whining buzz. There was an audible click as his weapon emptied, the cocking handle locked rearwards. Smoke rose from the rifle’s barrel and the open ejection port as he reached up for the door handle. Ezekial, the other poacher, stood a couple of metres away, his rifle raised to cover the interior of the cab. His eyes were wide and wild with the thrill of killing. He nervously shifted his weight from foot to foot.
Alfred opened the door and jumped back. The body inside tumbled down.
Hess could just make out the shadowy forms of the poachers. Through the night sight he saw something fall from the truck’s cab when one of the men opened the door. The night was still – even the insects were hushed in the eerie silence that followed the shooting.
‘Come, Vassily, Klaus. Let’s get down there,’ Hess said. All three were on their feet now, running towards the truck and the bullet-holed tents.
‘By the sounds of it, none of them has survived,’ Orlov said between gasps as he trotted along at Hess’s side.
Hess caught the note of disappointment in the Russian’s words. Hess himself would not have minded if the man or woman who had been following them had survived the initial onslaught. He could then interrogate one or both of them to find out who they were, what they knew about him, and why they had so doggedly followed him and Orlov.
But it was quiet. Dead quiet.
*
‘Don’t move,’ Mike said. ‘Lower your guns. Now!’
He held the Browning out, left hand cupping right, the barrel pointed at the head of the man in ragged clothes who had just opened the cab door.
The man’s eyes were wide in stupefied amazement. When he opened the door a tangled mass of arms and legs had fallen on him, and he had instinctively jumped back. Now, even though Mike’s pistol was pointed at him he still stared incredulously at the crumpled, lifeless form at his feet.
‘Meet our friend Britney,’ Mike said.
‘Not a girl, not yet a woman,’ said Sam from behind Mike.
The inflatable girl had been sitting in the driver’s cab of the Bedford ever since Mike had sent the passengers to bed. After he woke to the tug on his arm from the OP he had climbed into the cab with his cigarette. Unseen in the gloom he had crawled into the back of the truck and perched just behind the doll. He had placed his baseball cap on the head to add to the illusion. Sitting behind Britney he was able to draw repeatedly on the cigarette and occasionally hold it near her gaping red-lipped mouth, exposing himself as little as possible to what he expected to be the poachers’ line of fire. It had taken three cigarettes before the attack came. Mike had hoped that the poachers would have been preceded by George and Terry, but the enemy had arrived first, which left him very concerned about the fate of the two young Englishmen.
When the shot came, it had nearly taken his hand off. He sneaked out of the truck via the main door to the passenger cab, which was out of sight of the shooter, and hid under the vehicle. Sam was waiting there for him. Nigel was squatting out of sight in the bushes, somewhere at the rear of the truck.
The elder of the two poachers looked up at Mike now and held out his AK-47, away from his body. Mike could see the breech of the rifle was locked open, which meant he was out of ammunition. The poacher knew it as well, and he dropped the rifle in the mud. Mike shifted his aim to the second man. As he did, the man started to move, his body swivelling as he swung the barrel of his rifle.
Mike saw the poacher’s face beyond the black metal nub of the pistol’s foresight. His eyes were wide and wild. Mike pulled the trigger twice, quickly. The man’s head snapped backwards, like he’d been king-hit, and his body landed with a splash in a puddle.
The old poacher dropped to his knees and crawled toward the younger man. Mike was still locked in the firing position. Smoke curled from the hot barrel of the pistol.
The man was dead. He lay half on his side, one leg bent underneath his body. The first bullet had entered his right eye and torn out the back of his head, the other had pierced his neck. Blood pumped from the throat wound, then slowed. Mike could see grey brains and stark white skull fragments in the puddle, and he swallowed hard.
The old man was crying, deep sobbing moans, as he cradled the younger man’s pulped head in his lap. Mike guessed he was the dead man’s father. At another time, as an innocent bystander, he would have felt for the old man, no matter what crime his son had committed, but he was no mere witness to this shooting. The young man had tried to kill him and he had replied in kind. There were more men out there in the wet darkness who would kill him and his passengers if he did nothing.
‘Shit,’ Sam said, hovering near Mike, peering at the dead man and his tear-racked companion.
Sam carried the axe from the truck loosely in his right hand. His face, like Mike’s, was blackened with charcoal.
‘You OK?’ Mike asked.
‘Sure. He was going to shoot us,’ Sam said.
‘Now you get the picture. Let’s get this guy out of the way.’
Sam and Mike dragged the keening old man away from the body and Mike relieved him of the cloth bag he wore around his neck. While Sam bound the man’s hands behind his back and gagged him with duct tape, Mike retrieved the fallen AK-47 from the mud and wiped it down with the tail of his shirt. The weapon had a reputation for being able to take rough treatment and still fire under appalling conditions. Tonight would be a good test. Mike removed the empty magazine from the rifle, tossed it into the bush, and fished a fresh magazine from the poacher’s bag. He fitted it to the rifle and let the cocking handle fly forward. There were still two full magazines inside the cloth bag. He picked up the dead man’s rifle and slung it over his shoulder.
‘Where’s Nigel, Sam?’ Mike asked.
‘Don’t know,’ Sam said, biting off the last strand of tape as he secured a strip across the poacher’s mouth.
‘Help me . . .’ came a voice from the rear of the truck.
Mike jogged around Nelson and saw Nigel lying at the base of a tree. There was blood all over his left shoulder and his face was ivory white.
Nigel opened his eyes. ‘It hurts, Mike. Christ, it fucking hurts, man,’ he said. Blood welled from his lower lip where he’d bitten it to stop from crying out.
Mike was touched by N
igel’s bravery. If he had screamed or cried out, the ambush would have been blown.
He knelt and took Nigel’s right hand, and clasped it hard. ‘You did good, mate.’ Gently, Mike raised him to the sitting position and inspected the wound. ‘It’s gone straight through, but it doesn’t seem to have hit your lungs. Believe it or not, you’ll live.’
Mike fished in his top left pocket and took out a handful of tampons. He had asked the girls to surrender any spares they had. ‘Sam, remember what I told you? Take a few of these and pack them around the entry and exit wounds. Cover them with that piece of plastic shopping bag I gave you and tape it down. We’ll take him to Kylie, but you’ll have to help him walk.’
Kylie, Sarah, Mel and Linda were a hundred metres behind them, hidden deep in the bush. Mike had found a natural strongpoint in the forest, made by two fallen trees with trunks wide enough to stop a bullet. One tree had knocked the other over when it fell, making a barricade with the point of the two trunks facing the way the bad guys would most likely approach. They had tied the spare tarpaulin across the fallen logs to provide shelter and then covered the whole thing with fresh-cut trees. Mike made everyone empty their backpacks and stuff them full of food and water bottles. His plan was to run a fighting retreat from the log fort, as they had christened it, or, if too many of them were wounded, to make their last stand there.
Nigel winced as Sam finished applying the crude bandage. Sam’s hands were red and sticky with blood, and he stared at them.
‘Good job, Sam. Here, take this,’ Mike said as he unslung the dead poacher’s AK-47 and handed it to Sam.
‘What’ll we do with him?’ Sam asked, pointing to the bound and gagged poacher lying on the ground.
Mike pulled the pistol from his belt and walked over to the prone man.
‘You’re not going to . . .’ Sam said, his eyes wide.
Mike shook his head, bent over and clubbed the man hard on the back of the head with the butt of the pistol. ‘Drag him under a bush. He’ll wake up eventually.’
‘It looks like you’ve got a spare gun. I’ll take it,’ Sarah said. She had arrived silently behind them.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’ve come to help, and you look like you need it,’ she said.
‘I told you to stay back at the fort, with the –’
‘I know what you told me. Back with the girls. That’s what you were going to say, wasn’t it?’ Her eyes burned with barely suppressed anger. ‘I know you have trouble accepting that women can do more than make the tea, but you seem to be short of able-bodied men, now, don’t you?’
‘I killed a man tonight, Sarah,’ Mike said. ‘I didn’t want to do it, but he was going to kill me if I didn’t. Believe me, you don’t want to do what I’ve just done.’
‘Spare me the patronising chauvinist bullshit! Sam’s got to carry Nigel, and get him back to Kylie. I’ll tell you right now that he’s too big for me to carry, but I can fire that gun of yours!’
‘Lucky you showed up, then,’ Mike said to Sarah, and handed her the pistol and the spare magazine. ‘Everyone ready?’
Nigel’s face was even paler as Sam pulled him to his feet, but he managed to stand and lean on Sam’s shoulder. They set off, as quietly and as quickly as Nigel could manage. They headed straight back from the truck through the bush towards the log fort. Mike was hoping to keep the truck between them and the remainder of the poachers. With George and Terry missing he had no idea how many others they faced. The poachers would soon know their initial raid had failed.
There was a sound like the ripping of canvas, followed by a thump that could have come from the back room of a butcher’s shop. Nigel and Sam were knocked to the ground. Someone cried in pain.
‘Sniper!’ Mike yelled. ‘Everyone down!’
Mike grabbed Sarah’s wrist and pulled her to the ground. He hugged her to his chest and rolled down a slight slope, four, maybe five times, their bodies alternately riding on and crushing each other until they came to rest against a stout tree trunk.
‘Christ, Nigel’s been shot again,’ Sam cried.
The American lay on his stomach a metre away from Nigel. Low ferns hid him from view, but Nigel was lying in a patch of clear ground. He stretched an arm out to Sam, and Mike saw Nigel’s fist opening and closing in a futile attempt to reach him.
‘Nigel, where are you hit?’ Mike called.
‘Leg . . . It hurts. Mike, it hurts!’
‘Sam, get behind some cover before you get shot.’
‘I’ve got to move Nigel. We can’t leave him out there!’ Sam said.
‘No! Stay where you are. The sniper wants you to go into the clearing. He’s waiting for you, Sam. Nigel, can you hold on for us, mate?’
Nigel coughed. ‘I think so,’ he croaked.
Another silenced bullet slammed into the mud next to Nigel’s face, sending up a geyser of black water. The shooter was toying with them. Undergrowth and tree limbs obscured his view, but Mike guessed the sniper was close, probably just on the far side of the shot-up tents.
‘Sam, I’m going to swing around to the right, back to the truck. I’ve got to get up high where I can see these bastards, but I need a diversion. You got the cocktails?’
‘Yeah, I got them with me,’ Sam replied.
‘I’m coming with you,’ Sarah said.
Mike could have argued, but he supposed that at least if she was with him he could try to protect her. He didn’t bother replying to her since nothing he could say would have made the slightest bit of difference. He simply nodded.
‘Give me three minutes, Sam. Remember the plan – aim for the tents,’ Mike said.
‘What about Nigel?’ Sam called back.
‘Three minutes, Sam, that’s all he has to hold on for,’ Mike said.
Nigel coughed and Mike saw how his body shook with the pain. He had both hands pressed on the wound on his thigh, and the blood had stained them crimson. Another bullet whizzed low over his head and split a narrow branch behind him. ‘Come on,’ Mike said to Sarah, ‘the shooter’s going to get tired of this game soon.’
They headed along the ridgeline towards the log fort, keeping to thick bush out of the sniper’s line of sight, and then hooked across their intended path and turned back to the truck. Mike checked his watch and motioned for Sarah to stay close.
He could see Nelson through the bushes. The windscreen was shattered and the bodywork riddled with bullet holes. Mike whispered to Sarah what he wanted her to do. The plan sounded insane, but Sarah nodded. They crept along the side of the truck, careful not to make a sound. Sarah climbed the steps up into the passenger cab, pausing for a second when her weight caused a spring to creak. She continued on inside. Mike went to the back of the truck, slung the AK-47 he was carrying, and climbed the external ladder up onto the roof.
Mike checked his watch again and saw by the ticking luminous green second hand that he and Sarah had reached their positions with just twenty seconds to spare. Those last seconds, however, were ticking by with agonising slowness.
As the sweep hand passed the ten-second mark, Mike heard a whoosh of displaced air as the sniper fired another silenced shot. The second hand passed the final mark and Sam screamed, ‘Take this, you motherfuckers!’
A bright trail of burning orange sparks arced out from where Sam hid towards the nearest of the bullet-holed tents.
‘Now, Sarah!’ Mike yelled.
Nelson’s headlights flicked on, followed by the extra driving lights, and the horseshoe of tents was bathed in stark white light. The whisky bottle Sam had lobbed hit one of the tents and exploded, shards of broken glass and burning petrol shooting out in every direction. The tent burst into flames. A rolling cloud of oily black smoke danced upwards and momentarily shrouded the glare of the headlights as the petrol ignited.
Mike always kept a jerry can of petrol in the truck to clean the diesel engine’s air filter and he had used it all tonight on the last of his surprises for the poacher
s. They had doused the tents with fuel and made Molotov cocktails from empty spirit bottles.
There was movement between the tents. Mike recognised the tall black man who had attacked him in Victoria Falls. The man was dressed in a khaki bush shirt and trousers, and armed with an AK-47. He hesitated as the tent next to him caught fire. The man raised his rifle to his shoulder, and Mike swung the barrel of his own weapon around and thumbed the safety catch.
Klaus fired first and Mike felt the truck shudder beneath him as a long burst of ten or fifteen bullets raked the front. Bullets penetrated the panels and ricocheted off the solid engine components, but two found their mark, and one of the headlights and one of the brighter driving lights were snuffed out with a spray of broken glass.
A heavy-bore hunting rifle joined the din, crashing as fast as the new marksman could work the weapon’s bolt action. Mike couldn’t hear the hiss of the silenced rifle above the din, and he hoped the weapon’s night sight had been blinded by the headlights and the glare from the flaming tent.
Mike pulled the trigger of his AK-47 and Klaus dived to his left as three bullets ploughed harmlessly into the earth where he had been standing. He fired again, but the mud-caked rifle jammed. Mike swore aloud as he snapped the magazine from the rifle and worked the cocking handle back and forth furiously. A live round tumbled from the breach and he banged the butt of the weapon down hard on the roof of the truck, causing dried mud to flutter from the working parts. He fitted the magazine back onto the rifle and yanked on the cocking handle.