by Anna del Mar
“My God.” She hid a huge grin behind her camera. “That’s a phenomenal specimen, the Channing Tatum of the giraffe world.”
I almost burst out laughing. It was one thing to see these animals in a zoo, surrounded by people and fences. But seeing and photographing them in their environments, interacting with their peers, and free? Phenomenal.
Jade’s eyes were light and luminous with discovery as she looked through her viewfinder. I’d been doing this long enough to recognize that her passion for wildlife was an authentic force. Her energy was contagious. No wonder she inspired others with her work. I could get used to riding in my truck with her sitting beside me. If only I didn’t have to get her out of here, STAT.
The giraffes moved away from the road, sauntering into the bush, stopping only to snack on the tops of the acacias. The big fellow became an outline against the sunset. Jade leaned out the window, brown hair rippling in the wind as she adjusted her lens to keep track of the tall male in the distance.
A crack rang in the air and echoed through the bush. My gut went cold. I knew that sound too fucking well. A flock of birds took to the air. I stiffened in my seat and stepped on the brakes. The truck screeched to a stop. On our tail, Zeke’s Land Rover braked as well.
“What was that?” someone asked from the backseat.
The sound rang again, followed by several others.
“Firearm,” Jade said. “High caliber.”
She pressed her eye to the viewfinder and turned the ring between her fingers, zooming in. I stuck my head out the window and craned my neck, until I caught a glimpse of that very long neck as it wobbled in the air before it leaned over and disappeared with a crash that resonated in the bush.
Jade’s gaze met my stare, wide and liquid. “He’s down.”
3
Jade
“I need you out of the truck,” Matthias ordered, before he clicked on his radio. “Code 99, I repeat, code 99. ADW in progress. Zone 3. All units, code 17. I repeat, all units, code 17. My current position is…” He checked the GPS mounted on the console and rattled off our coordinates. “I’m moving to intercept.”
The radio crackled with activity. Several voices responded, spitting out codes. I assumed the replies came from ranger patrols scattered throughout the reserve. My heart had stopped and my butt was glued to the seat. I’d known that there was a war going on in Africa, a battle between humans and beasts, existence and extinction. But nothing could’ve prepared me for the sheer shock of watching that magnificent giraffe topple like a centenary tree, inexplicably stricken.
“Why are you still in this truck?”
Matthias’s voice startled me out of the shock. I wasn’t the only one. The girls sat frozen in place, eyes wide and mouths gaping. Matthias stuck his arm out the window and motioned for Zeke to drive his truck alongside ours. He then addressed us with the factual, professional coolness of a veteran of many wars.
“Move out,” he ordered, voice tight and controlled. “You will board the other vehicle immediately.”
Something about his tone worked, because the women sprang their doors open and obediently scurried out of the truck.
I swallowed a dry gulp. “Let me come with you.”
“What?” he snapped, then quickly regained his control. “Negative, that’s a no.”
“Look at me.” I met my reflection on his sunglasses. “This is why I came.”
He cursed under his breath. “What part of ‘get out’ don’t you understand?”
“I’m good to go.” My fingers tightened around my camera. “I can do this.”
“You are not getting hurt under my watch,” he spat between clenched teeth. “Every second you delay means another bullet in the air. Is that what you want?”
No, it wasn’t what I wanted at all. Despite my fervent wishes to the contrary, more shots echoed on the plains. I considered another round of discussion, but Matthias’s face settled into a steel mask. He wasn’t budging. There could be more giraffes dying out there. I grabbed my backpack and jumped out of the truck.
“Secure the station,” Matthias said to Zeke through the window. “Get them out of here.”
He slammed on the accelerator and peeled out, cutting across the clearing and barreling into the bush. Sixty seconds later, those brakes screeched again. I was shocked and upset about the giraffe, but I was also reeling from the fact that the game warden had kept me from doing exactly what I’d come to do.
“Jade?” Peter called. “Come on, we need to get out of here.”
Oh, yeah. I needed to get the hell out of here all right.
More shots rang in the bush. They didn’t sound that far away. I slung my pack over my shoulders, checked my bearings, and estimated the distance between me and the nearest brush. What was it? Fifty meters maybe?
I was no Usain Bolt, but I kept form and I could run a pretty decent mile. I looked down at my smart watch, activated my GPS, and marked my location before I gripped the camera hanging from my neck and met Peter’s eyes.
“Oh, no,” he said, reading my mind. “No, Jade. Stay, Jade. Jade!”
My muscles bunched up and a burst of energy exploded into movement. I bolted away from the road, my feet pumping over the uneven terrain, my eyes scanning the way ahead in the dearth of the setting light. I’d never been anyone’s dog and I wasn’t about to start now. I had skills and I’d educated myself on the perils of the African bush.
I leaped across a ditch and swerved around a termite mound, knowing full well that the truck couldn’t follow me on this trajectory. I made it to the bush before Zeke could turn the Land Rover around. Then I lost sight of the truck, as I jogged, roughly, on a northerly heading in an attempt to intercept the route that Matthias had taken.
Sure enough, a few minutes later, I found the truck’s fresh tracks and followed them. My breath came in gasps. My lungs burned. Along the way, I was very quickly reminded of some of the things I’d learned during my research phase. The African bush wasn’t friendly to human skin. The acacia’s thorns tore at me and left a set of impressive scratches on my arm.
Thank God I’d worn long cargo pants and boots. I slowed down and picked my route with more care, trying to avoid further shredding. Ten minutes later, I spotted Matthias’s Land Rover, parked in a clearing. The truck was empty. His Tilley hat lay abandoned on the front seat.
He was out there. Without backup. Crap. I surveyed the area. The light was waning quickly. The shots had stopped. I understood the risks of entering a battlefield. I considered backtracking, but only for a second. If I could catch the poachers in action, I’d have pictures and a hell of a story to tell.
I knelt on the ground, pulled out my gear from the backpack, and forced myself to go through my standard equipment check. The hum of mosquitoes buzzing around me in a dense cloud reminded me to find my repellent and drench myself in it, dispelling the gathering. Back to my gear. I strapped my prized body camera to my shoulder and flipped it on. I checked my Nikon DSLR, inserted a new memory card, and adjusted it to low light setting. With my equipment ready, I secured my pack to my back and advanced cautiously, following the imprint of Matthias’s fresh tracks on the ground.
Once in the bush, it was hard to make out shapes, especially with the light ebbing. I kept at high alert. Twice, I startled some kind of fowl from its cover among the undergrowth and once I almost stepped on a warthog. It huffed at me before it took off, tail in the air. What else was crammed in the woods along with me?
I stopped and listened. It took a little while, but I caught a break. Voices. Somewhere to my right. Sound carried far on the Serengeti, so I stole silently toward the noise. As the sun sank beyond the fiery horizon, I caught a glimpse of a clearing in the distance. There was a bulge on the ground. I zoomed my lens and looked through my viewfinder, taking advantage of the last vestiges of light. I clamped down on my lip. The giraffe.
Flashlights came on. I counted eight men huddled around the dead animal. The giraffe had already been gu
tted and the poachers were hard at work skinning the animal with expediency that suggested a professional poaching crew.
I gulped around the lump in my throat. Tempering my adrenaline, I crept along a dry creek that sheltered me from view. It led me to a small gap in the bush overlooking the larger clearing. Poachers had a reputation for being a nasty bunch and what I’d learned so far indicated that these merited some extra care. I crawled up the dusty bank, took off my backpack to ensure a low profile, and concealed myself in the grass. Night had fallen and a full moon was quickly rising, showering the bush with a silvery sparkle that accentuated the shadows around me.
I adjusted the body cam on my shoulder. Flash was out of the question. Under the moonlight, I’d need a longer exposure to capture any images. I braced my left arm on the ground, steadied my DSLR against my forearm, and began to shoot a combination of pictures and footage, hoping to capture at least a few clear images.
The moonlight and the zoom lens allowed me to see the men working on the giraffe. They wielded power tools, wore military fatigues, and were well armed. Some of the men were covered in blood as they worked to skin the animal. A grunt startled me. The rustle of several large bodies passing nearby had me on the alert for an unfriendly animal encounter. I tried not to think about Africa’s great predators. You wanted to come to Africa, Jade? Well, there you have it, girl. Enjoy your visit.
I took in a deep breath. My lungs filled with the scent of ash-covered loam and grass, dung, urine and blood. The mosquitoes buzzed by, but they weren’t biting. I was stretched out on my belly, propped on my elbows, clicking away, minding my own business, when the elephant stepped on me. At least, that’s what I thought happened for a whole ten seconds, when I couldn’t breathe under the crushing weight that squashed me to the ground like a turd smashed under a giant foot. Of course, the fact that elephants have no hands should have been a dead giveaway, since a massive hand clamped down over my mouth.
“Quiet.” A voice rasped in my ear. “Not a word. Understand?”
I froze and nodded. The pressure over my mouth eased. When I didn’t scream, or move, the hand retreated and the crushing weight lifted.
The murmur came again. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Funny how I’d only heard that pebbly voice today for the first time and yet I knew exactly who it belonged to.
“I’m doing my job, kind of like you,” I whispered, glancing at Matthias, who now sprawled on his belly next to me, eyeing the poachers. He’d ditched his sunglasses and had his carbine with him as well as a sidearm I hadn’t seen before. I caught a sparkle of fire in his eyes before repositioning my camera over my arm and jockeying for my next picture. “How did you find me?”
“You sounded like a rhino coming through the bush.”
“Did not.”
“Quiet.” He lifted a pair of state of the art thermal binoculars that I’d love to own. “My men will be here soon.”
“I thought the poachers were after elephant and rhino,” I whispered. “Why are they poaching a giraffe?”
“That’s a magnificent specimen for any collector,” Matthias said in hushed tones. “And giraffe meat is an expensive, exotic treat in China. They’ll make a good chunk of change on that kill. Now, you’re gonna backtrack to the truck and wait for me there.”
“I will do no such thing.”
“You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?” He cursed under his breath. “You’re out of here the minute we get out of the bush…”
I don’t think he was done by any means, and I sure had some things I wanted to say, but the click of a weapon cocking behind us silenced us both. We exchanged wary looks. This is all your fault, his eyes said. Worst part? He could be right.
“Follow my lead.” He placed his weapon on the ground and rose with his hands in the air.
I set my camera on the dirt and rose to my feet, hands up. Two men dressed in green camouflage faced us. One was taller than the other by a good foot, but both men were armed with AK-47s and both weapons were centered on us.
My stomach plummeted to my feet. Had I really gotten us caught? No way. I had skills. I was good. It hit me like a Mack truck. These poachers had set up a trap. They’d actually lured us in with their kill. These two must have been holding back to ambush first responders. Were they out to kill the reserve’s rangers?
My knees buckled a little. I forced myself to breathe and focused on the two men. Think, Jade. I hadn’t seen this kind of action in a while. Assess, adapt, overcome.
Eyes wide, the shorter man of the two pointed a fat finger at Matthias. “Kifaru?” he said, in Swahili.
“Ndiyo.” The taller man’s smile widened and he motioned for the other man to approach us from the right before he shifted into perfect, British-accented English. “I think we just got ourselves the prize.”
Since the taller man seemed to be calling the shots, I labeled him as T-man in my mind. Short man became Pot Belly, for obvious reasons. T-man and Pot Belly approached us with their weapons pointed straight at our chests. At this range, a single bullet could do the trick.
T-man eyed Matthias and spoke in a deep baritone as he continued his approach. I didn’t understand a word he said, but I’d witnessed enough conflicts in my life to recognize the tension in the air, the winner giving orders to the loser, saying things, probably nasty things, judging by the way in which T-man’s eyes kept deviating in my direction.
If I had gotten us into this mess, I had to get us out of it, and fast.
Matthias could’ve been a block of granite next to me, a sculpted rock sticking out from the earth with zero expression on his blank face.
“What’s he saying?” I muttered between stiff lips.
“You don’t wanna know,” he muttered back.
“You got a plan?” I kept my stare on the two approaching thugs.
His voice was barely audible. “It doesn’t include you.”
Great. Peachy. Fantastic. He wasn’t a team player. I swallowed a dry gulp.
T-man came to stand next to me. His breath blustered over my cheeks as his black eyes inspected my face. Sweat glimmered on his narrow forehead, pooled above his lips and shone over his razored skull. My heart, which was already beating hard, revved up. I pressed my lips together and forced myself into assess mode.
With a swipe of his hand, T-man ripped the body cam from my shoulder. The straps of my harness broke, but the yank left me smarting all the same. Next to me, Matthias flinched, but he held still when Pot Belly came around and pressed his gun to the back of his skull.
T-man extracted the memory card and dropped it in his pocket before he slammed my body cam on the ground and stomped on it several times. The little camera crumbled beneath his boot with sickening cracks. I cringed. Great. There went another cutting edge, pricy toy. If I survived today, Hannah was going to kill me.
T-man hung his weapons from his shoulder, seized my arm above the elbow and dug his fingers into my flesh.
“Kneel,” he said to Matthias. When Matthias didn’t follow his order, T-man pulled out a nine millimeter from his holster and pressed the muzzle against my temple. “Kneel and clasp your hands behind your back or she dies.”
Reluctantly, slowly, Matthias bent his knees and knelt on the ground. His eyes never left T-man’s face. Pot Belly grabbed Matthias’s hand gun from its holster and stuck it in his belt. Matthias’s glare could’ve incinerated everyone in the clearing.
“So you are the great Matthias Hawking?” T-man studied Matthias. “You don’t look so great to me right now, kneeling on the ground. I had my hopes, but I didn’t think you’d venture out here on your own, when most of your men are chasing ghosts on the other side of the reserve.”
The calvary might be coming, but apparently, not soon enough.
T-man barked something at Pot Belly, who snapped into action. He pulled out a tattered map from his front pocket, unfolded it, and laid it on the ground before Matthias.
“Where’s the ivory?�
� T-man said. “Where are the elephants?”
My belly went cold. The thug was looking for the reserve’s elephant herds. I’d learned about the herds before I came. They represented millions of dollars on the ivory black market. At a time when some of the greatest herds of Africa had been decimated, Pacha Ziwa’s elephants not only survived, they thrived. They had developed a survival strategy against poachers that included an uncanny ability to seemingly dissapear from the landscape. Where they went was a mystery. For the safety of the elephants, the scientists who tracked them kept the secret. But now the poachers were closing in and the herds were in extreme danger.
Matthias stared at T-man. His gaze never once wavered. Not a single word made it through his tightly pressed lips. I let out a slow breath. If anybody knew where the herds were, it would be the reserve’s game warden. The poacher’s plan began to make sense to me. Bait and trap the rangers to find the elephants. But Matthias made no move to help these thugs. I liked that about him. Now I just needed to come up with a plan to get us out of here. Nothing like a gun to the head to stimulate the brain.
T-man squeezed my arm and confronted Matthias. “This here your girlfriend?”
“I’m most certainly not his girlfriend,” I said, feigning indignation. I didn’t think it would help if T-man thought we were an item and frivolous conversation seemed like the best start to my plan, which so far, mostly consisted of smoke and mirrors, delay and distract. If I could keep us alive until the rangers got here, we had a fighting chance.
“I don’t believe you, girl.” T-man’s gaze shifted between Matthias and I. “I know he likes you. Watch this.” In a sudden move, he put me into a chokehold. “Yeah, he likes you. See? His whiteass face is getting all red.” He let out a mocking cackle as Matthias’s face flushed even redder, along with his ears. My heart was going a million miles an hour, but so was my mind.