by Hugo Navikov
“I said the real one, you asshole. Are you trying to test my patience? Because you’re doing an excellent job … at that, at least. Now what is our goddamned mission? Show me you know it before I cut off your funds and you and your TV pals have to walk back to the U.S.”
I had never heard him like this. I took a shaky draw on the cheroot and exhaled as I said, “We protect indigenous populations encroaching on virgin territory by removing—”
“Forget about the goddamned animals! Do you not even know our mission? All these years and it’s never occurred to you?”
“Sir, I’m sorry. I don’t have even the slightest idea what you’re talking about.” I gulped and realized how dry my throat was, ironic since I was still soaked from the run to the tent. “No one’s ever told me I was doing anything wrong. I mean, you’re the only other member I even know. If you didn’t tell me, then I don’t know.”
A big sigh came from his end of the sat-phone. “This adventure of yours is so goddamn sideways at this point, it won’t hurt to tell you explicitly what you’ve done all these years.”
My heart was already pounding in my chest, and it didn’t slow down at the Boss’s latest words. I had dedicated my life to The Organization after my wife and boy died in the firebombing. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, as many hours in a day as I could stay awake. It had been four years, and two years before my family was killed. No, I wasn’t available at the drop of a hat when they had been alive, but I served The Organization well and they compensated me just as well. Was the Boss saying I had no idea what I was doing all these years? Was I not saving endangered species, not protecting indigenous people who reported cryptid predators? I choked out, “Then tell me.”
You know how you can hear someone smile as they’re talking sometimes? Yeah, this was that: “H————, saving children and goats and what-have-you is noble, as is risking your life to catch poachers and save endangered predators.”
Predators? Yes, I supposed it almost always was a predator of the “most concern” variety, but that was what got in the news, people telling stories about legendary creatures eating things and doing things that scare the piss out of people living hand-to-mouth, whether it was next to a river or in the middle of a desert. So predators. “Yes, I always thought it was a noble way to make a buck,” I said. “I’ve never lost any sleep at night. Except last night.”
“Excellent. Now, in any of those dozens, maybe over a hundred adventures out in the wilds, whether with recruited poachers, or being sent in undercover like this time, or doing it by yourself with just a guide, have you ever reported a real cryptid of any kind? I’m not talking about a new species of hedgehog or some ridiculous orchid. I’m talking about the predators, the big game.”
“You know I haven’t.”
“Exactly, exactly.” He continued like a math professor explaining how functions worked to a class full of football players. “And out of those, let’s say, one hundred adventures, how many successfully relocated an endangered predator, one near the top of the near-extinction list?”
“I keep track, sir. It’s been 93 animals, so 93 percent if there were one hundred adventures. A pretty good record, I think.”
“Indeed, as I’ve told you many times, you’re our best operative. Or were. You’re reporting cryptids now, giant crocodiles and even more giant snakes. And please tell me, was it an actual Kasai Rex who ate the snake?”
“And killed several miners,” I added. “But I don’t know what attacked—it was too dark.”
“I see. No pun intended.”
“Very droll, sir. Listen, sir, I called you because there is some unprecedented wildlife lurking in this area. The biggest of the specimens, I believe, has been attacking the miners, killing many of them and forcing the rest into the company building for safety, even if that’s only temporarily and if they can make it in time.”
A harsher tone entered the Boss’s voice: “What? Who is letting them into that building?”
I stammered for a second, not expecting him to say anything like that. “I—uh—I guess some of the Vermeulen employees who live in the building?”
“That soft piece of shit,” he said, almost making my head spin. Was I going insane, as I thought last night, from some bug bite or poisonous mushroom spore? Or was he losing his mind? The things he was saying … my little room in the tent seemed claustrophobic now. The rain continued to beat down, as it would for another hour at least. “That son of a bitch!”
“Wow, sir, I don’t know what to—”
“This isn’t the Special Forces anymore, boy. You don’t just get objectives handed to you. You need to know our mission. And, since you seem not to have any goddamned idea, let me share it with you: We provide what our customers pay for. And what do they pay for, you’re about to ask. They pay for absolute security, complete immunity from prosecution, and total freedom to do whatever the hell they want.”
Nothing. I had nothing.
“What do they pay? Two to five million dollars per hunt. Million, H————. Our clients, our customers, are the richest men and women in the world. Our fee is practically a rounding error to them. Our mission, you dolt, is to give them their substantial money’s worth.”
“Per hunt?” I had to be in a nightmare and shook my head to try to wake myself up, but in the nightmare I remained. “I think I might have misheard you, s—”
“You did not. The endangered creatures we relocate go to an undisclosed location that varies depending on what kind of environment the animals need. Then our clients go in and kill those animals for trophies. Every amenity is seen to, every legal technicality exploited. Our mission is to keep them supplied with game, with animals no one else may ever hunt again. Imagine possessing the last dodo ever shot, or the last Tasmanian tiger? They pay to make history. In secret, of course, but history nonetheless.”
“I feel sick.”
“Anyone would feel sick in your shoes,” the Boss said, not unkindly, but then added, extremely unkindly: “You’re a moron not to have seen what you allowed The Organization to do, Mister Special Forces, but you’re a damned good soldier. You have been our number one since you started. Even more valuable since your misfortune. One day you’ll catch the poachers who did that to your family, right? Isn’t that what you’ve always believed?”
“What in the hell are you talking about?”
“We’re the poachers! You and I and the entire Organization are the poachers. And when you couldn’t do as much poaching as we needed you to do … well, we poached your family, didn’t we?”
I tried to speak but no sound was possible.
“That really upped your productivity, I must say. I bet you wonder why I’m telling you all of this now.”
“You could say that,” I rasped, my eyes seeing nothing but red.
“Because you’re fired, son. You’ve seen real cryptids now, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You believe in them now.”
“Yes.”
“We don’t need any true believers on our team, H————. We need the best poachers in the world, the ones who can take out other poachers so we can serve our high-living clientele, not the ones who know about the secret creatures of our planet. Those can’t be killed by our customers—too big, their behaviors too unknown. It makes me sad. You were the very best, and I’m sorry to see you go. But you did your family proud—”
“Don’t you talk about my family, you bastard—”
“Yes, yes, let it out. A large severance check will be headed to a post office box in Denver where you can pick it up.”
“I’ll rip it up.”
“I doubt you will. Destroy a clue as you try to hunt me down? Refuse the money that would aid you in your futile search? I don’t see that happening.”
“I will find you and I will kill you.”
“Maybe so! You are the most prolific poacher in the world, after all. Until then, have fun in Congo. Your plane tickets back ho
me, dated for tomorrow evening; your apartment lease; your driver’s license; all will be under ‘Brett Russell’ very shortly and delivered to Daan Vermeulen tomorrow morning—and at great expense, I might add. But it’s worth it: lots of angry, heavily armed, recently released former poachers would love to find ‘Brett Russell,’ so do watch your step.”
“I will kill you.”
“All right, you’re repeating yourself now, Brett. Have fun with your Kasai Rex or whatever else you think you saw in the jungle.” The connection ended, a single appearing almost to float in white against the black background: —-CONNECTION TERMINATED—-.
I shut down the phone, and a minute later Ellie scratched on the synthetic fabric of the wall, the only way to “knock” inside our tent. She almost recoiled when she saw my pallor and teary eyes, not to mention me sitting there in my boxers by the sat-phone. “Oh my God, are you okay?”
“You can see damn well I’m not, but I appreciate you asking.”
She knelt down beside me sitting on the floor and put an arm around me. The rain sounded peaceful now, even though it was pounding the tent as hard as ever. “Tell me, Brett. Tell me whatever you want. You don’t have to carry this alone … whatever it is.” She kissed me gently on each eye, and then sweetly on my lips.
Maybe just everything felt more peaceful when Ellie had her arm around me, kissing me and inviting me to cry on her shoulder. Damn it all to hell, I told her everything. Everything. The Organization had thrown me away like paper wiped on its ass. I didn’t have to keep their secrets anymore, or mine.
When I was finished talking and weeping and clenching my fists against her back in anger and despair, she used my soaked shirt collar to wipe my face, she kissed me. Then she said, “Tell me something about your wife.”
“What?”
“Share a memory of your wife. Keep her alive, if only between us.”
I was as surprised as hell at Ellie’s gentleness, her femininity, since I had seen her scream like a banshee in the face of danger and lash out to hurt one would hurt her as suddenly and as naturally as a cat. The feeling of surprise was a happy one, so I thought for a moment and answered her request: “Jenny wrinkled her nose when she laughed. Whenever we’d hear that Sinatra song, the super-romantic one, we’d laugh when he’d sing”—and I sang it:
♪ And that laugh that wrinkles your nose … ♪
“… we’d crack up, and her laugh would wrinkle her nose all over again! She turned so red.”
We laughed together, still touching, never louder than the rain, as if it were just us in that tent and nothing else anywhere that could ever hurt us. But I knew what was next.
“And your son?”
It took me a second to make sure I could say his name out loud. “Harry.”
“Harry Potter fans, huh?”
I shook my head and said, “It was Harry Junior. That’s my name.” I thought to the terrible text call with the Boss. “It was. It isn’t anymore. Now I’m Brett.”
“Tell me something about Harry Junior.”
“He loved dinosaurs, like most boys his age, I guess. But he would spend hours reading the books about them and watching documentaries—heh, on the History Channel, come to think of it. He would color them in coloring books with their names at the bottom. Of course the T. Rex, but also the stegosaurus, the mosasaur, the spinosaurus—which fought the tyrannosaurus for food, and most always won. At least, that’s what my little expert told me.” I wiped away a tear before it reached the smile my memory had created. “God, he used to spiel fact after fact about every dinosaur—how it hunted, where it lived, what kind of ‘family’ structure the species had. And he was eight! He was only eight …” I didn’t wipe away the fresh tears.
“That’s yours now. Nobody can take that from you. And you can be the hero I bet your son thought you were. You can still do so much good here. You can save the miners.”
I initiated our kiss this time. Her lips were as tender as her heart. “Maybe,” I said, letting out a breath that could have been a laugh or could have been a sigh of resignation, or both. But Ellie turned my face toward hers, not to kiss me again, but to fix me with a smile and then a stern look.
“But first, we need that gun.”
Chapter 12
Ellie and I got up and walked into the “living room” of the tent, where Gregory were fiddling with equipment that did look loosely grouped by “video” and “audio.” I brought the sat-phone back in with me and set it down between them, let the techies work it out.
Atari came out of one of the other “bedrooms” of the tent and sniffed the air. “Something burning?”
“Sorry,” I said. “Had a cigar in there. I was having … some stress.”
“I hear ya,” he said. “I hate when we go international. I can’t exactly bring my ‘stress reducing’ smoke on the plane, if you get me.”
“We get you, pothead,” Gregory said, and they laughed. “Where’d you go off to, anyway?”
Atari said with a show of injured pride, “I was meditating.”
Eyebrows went up all around the room.
“What, a brother can’t meditate? Enlightenment is reserved for the Chinese and white people?” he said with a serious face that turned into a new smile.
I said, “I got to ask you guys a question. It sounds weird, but … did the History Channel supply you with round-trip tickets?” I gave them each a look that showed as weird as the question may have been, I was asking it in earnest.
“Yeah, they always do,” Atari said. “I mean, we have to have flexible dates for the return—we never know what we’re gonna run into—but they take care of all that stuff.”
“I know there has to be a good reason you’re asking us,” Ellie said, and she was right.
“My ticket was just changed by my now-former boss. I have to fly out tomorrow afternoon or I’m not getting home. All my financial information is being switched to an identity I don’t have yet. I won’t be able to access a dime until I can go to my bank and broker in person back in the States.”
Their jaws couldn’t have dropped and farther. “They fired you?” Atari said, distress in his voice. “What the hell for?”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “What matters is that there’s a giant something out there, and it’s going to keep attacking these poor bastards unless we stop it. Are your cameras and such waterproof?”
“Yes, we film around rivers and lakes—it’s all baffled and protected,” Gregory said, showing me his microphone setup. I don’t know how we picked up any sound with it like that, but apparently he could.
“Great. Because tonight might be our one chance to stop this … cryptid.”
Ellie protested, “That’s not enough time—we’ve got to wait for the rain to stop to get the machine gun off the Jeep, if it’s even still there. And get back, and set up the cameras and mics—”
“We don’t have to wait until the rain stops,” Atari said with a smile.
“Yes, we do!” Ellie snapped. “This frickin’ deluge hasn’t let up. You can barely see two feet in front of you! How are we supposed to find that Jeep?”
“Infrared, boss lady. It can see right through the rain. I mean, not all the way to that Jeep, but enough that we can navigate by closer landmarks one by one until we get there.”
“We have to do this tonight?” Ellie asked me.
“We really should do it under the cover of the rain,” Atari said, and ducked back into his room for a moment, coming back out with a very-well-protected–looking piece of camera equipment. “If it’s anything to do with tech, I got it down.”
“I leave tomorrow unless I want to become a Congolese miner myself. They’re probably spending $2,000 to get my ticket here in time to force me to leave tomorrow afternoon.”
“Why don’t they just do it electronically?”
“My former employer is no fool. He’s sending the new ticket—the old one being removed from any airline system, I’m sure—under my new name,
the one you guys know me as: Brett Russell. He’s also included all the ID I need to get on a plane with a ticket for a ‘Brett Russell.’”
“What an asshole,” Gregory said.
“So yeah, we have to do this tonight if I’m to help Cryptids Alive! get its scoop.”
We all smiled at that, and Atari, already in his rain poncho, held up the infrared camera and cheered, “Let’s do th—”
He was cut off by the tent “door” unzipping and our old friend Bonte sticking his head in, beads of rain all over his slight afro. We all greeted him pretty happily, but he looked like someone who had just lost his best friend. “Misters and Miss, the big boss wants to see you. Mister Vermeulen. He says now.”
We all looked at one another, nobody saying anything.
“Now, he says,” Bonte repeated, and pulled his head back out. Rain whipped in where he left the door unzipped.
“Now, he says,” Atari said in Bonte’s accent, then Ellie repeated it, the Gregory, then me. It was a bit of gallows humor as we put dry gear on and went back out into the maelstrom and our uncertain fate.
***
Daan Vermeulen, who was not wet, stood waiting for us in the middle of the large empty part of the mining company’s bunker. We bedraggled travelers, soaked with rain and mud, walked over to where he was, dripping and splashing all the way. Obviously he didn’t want his precious office carpet messed up, not if his white employees would be expected to walk on it.
He didn’t say hello and so neither did we. He did say, “I would like to invite your team to sleep inside this building tonight. We have a couple of spare rooms, two beds each. You won’t have to stay on the concrete floor out here in a sleeping bag.”
“Thank you,” Ellie said, although I could feel her wanting to say something about how the concrete was good enough for the miners. But she kept her cool.
“My pleasure, Miss White,” he said, then added, “I should tell you to bring everything you might need overnight into the building with you, and of course your expensive equipment shouldn’t be left even in a tent. The miners might be too tempted.”