by Tony Park
‘Poachers, si?’
Fletcher said nothing, but raised his binoculars to his eyes.
The man with no shirt on looked their way and started to raise his AK 47.
The sound of the gunshot rolled across the bushveld and was carried on the wind.
Shane swore quietly. He had almost made it back to his pack. He slithered into a firing position, facing the direction where the poachers were, peering around the base of a leadwood. He heard alarmed chatter, orders issued. He imagined dirt being kicked on the fire; weapons, packs and booty being shouldered.
‘Fuck!’ he mouthed again to himself.
The shot had come from behind him, back where the dead rhino rotted.
He heard the men ahead now, making no attempt to mask the noise of their flight. They were running further and further into Botswana. He gave it ten minutes and then crawled the remaining distance to his pack. ‘Niner, this is Taipan. Shot heard. Was that you, over?’ It was a hell of a time to be hunting.
‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! We’re a hunting party, out of Isilwane Lodge, Matetsi Safari Area,’ Fletcher called. The Italian cowered beside him, prostrate, clutching at tufts of grass with his hands, his weapon discarded.
Ranger Charles Ndlovu emerged from his position of cover, behind an anthill as tall as a man, his SLR still in his shoulder as he moved cautiously past the dead rhino.
‘Charles, it’s me! Fletcher Reynolds.’
Charles lowered the barrel a little. There was no smile on his face as Reynolds stood and walked out towards the carcass. ‘What happened? Why did you open fire on us?’ Charles said.
‘I am sorry, shamwari,’ Reynolds said. ‘I saw your man with no shirt on, and when he started to raise his weapon I thought he was going to attack my party.’ The Italians hovered nervously in the tree line.
‘I am the senior man, here, Lovemore Sithole. And it was you who fired the first shot at my man,’ said a man next to Charles, wearing a grubby brown T-shirt.
Reynolds appraised the shorter man. Charles, he knew well. This man was new, and looked like a Mashona. ‘I am sorry, Lovemore. I am Fletcher.’ He extended a hand, but the other man pointedly ignored him.
‘We will have to call the police,’ Lovemore said.
Charles stepped between the two men. ‘Mister Reynolds, you know we operate under a shoot-to-kill policy when we see armed men in the national park, but that does not mean hunters can open fire on poachers.’
Reynolds played his trump card. ‘You know, Charles, that you are out of the national park. You are in the safari area.’
‘That does not matter,’ Lovemore said quickly.
Reynolds guessed the leader of the patrol, who seemed less confident than the older Ndebele, did not know that he had strayed out of the park and into the adjoining area. It was all government-controlled land, and the rangers had as much right to hunt poachers there as anywhere else, but by convention anti-poaching patrols in the safari areas bordering Hwange were coordinated through the parks and wildlife office at Matetsi, so that incidents like this could be avoided. Armed rangers wandering through an area populated with hunters could easily result in bloodshed. ‘I hadn’t received word from Matetsi that you would be here today.’
Lovemore scowled. Charles nodded, conceding Reynolds had made a valid point. Fletcher’s radio cackled to life. ‘Niner, this is Taipan. Have you in sight. I’m coming in.’
Reynolds said into his handset, ‘Roger.’
‘Who was that?’ Lovemore asked.
Shane jogged out of the bush, slinging his rifle as he entered the circle of men so there would be no mistaking him. The Africans regarded him with curiosity. He wore an American desert camouflage BDU shirt and his equipment was obviously military. His rifle, once black metal with a wooden stock and butt, had been spray-painted camouflage with tan and green stripes.
He beamed his widest smile, even white teeth splitting a face hurriedly camouflaged with spit and dust, and said, ‘Sawubona,’ to Charles, and ‘Kanjaan,’ to Lovemore. He nodded to the other two rangers, who stood back, and gave a casual salute to the Italians.
‘Yebo,’ Charles said in reply. Lovemore nodded curtly.
Fletcher smiled. The whole day had gone to shit, but Castle, the trained killer, had been able to put nearly everyone at ease with two well-directed greetings.
‘Ibizo lakho ngubani?’ Charles asked Shane.
‘Elami igama ngangu Shane Castle.’
Charles smiled. ‘You mean ngingu.’
‘I have reached the end of my Ndebele,’ Shane said.
Charles chuckled. Lovemore looked petulant and left out. ‘What are you doing here?’
Fletcher answered for him. ‘Mister Castle is our new head of security at Isilwane Lodge and I think that while we have been shooting at each other here the real poachers have escaped.’
Shane briefed all of the men, including the Italians, who had edged a little closer to the action and nodded sagely as Shane pulled out his map and pointed to the place where the poachers had been resting, presumably awaiting pick-up. He learned from Fletcher that shots had been exchanged between the hunters and the rangers – one and two respectively, though no one had been injured.
Shane’s report had given them all something more to think about other than the near tragedy, but Lovemore seemed disinclined to let the matter rest.
‘Christopher and Noah were out of uniform,’ Charles said, his tone placatory, and he tactfully avoided pointing out that the only issued item of clothing Lovemore was wearing was his trousers. His brown T-shirt had a picture of Bob Marley on it. ‘Perhaps instead of the police we should let the chief warden at Main Camp decide what action needs to be taken?’
Lovemore suddenly looked alarmed. ‘No, I am sure we have all learned a valuable lesson from today. Mister Reynolds, just because you are white does not mean you can take the law into your hands.’
Reynolds nodded, swallowing the reply that almost came to his lips. He had lived for twenty-seven years under a black government and had not survived this long by always speaking his mind.
‘You warriors look thirsty!’ Shane interrupted. ‘There is room for your men and gear in the back of my Land Rover. Lovemore, you might have to sit in the front with me, if that is all right. It is only fifteen minutes’ walk from here. We can send word to the police in Botswana from the lodge.’
Reynolds smiled at Shane’s easygoing charm, and picked up the hint. ‘Beers for everyone at Isilwane!’
*
Charles and Shane sat in the shade of an umbrella thorn tree on the grassy irrigated lawn of Isilwane Lodge, each clutching a dewy brown ‘bomber’ of cold Castle Lager.
‘You have the same name as the beer,’ Charles said. He was into his third bottle, and smiling broadly, the tensions of the day and his illness forgotten for now.
‘What, Lager?’
Charles laughed at the joke. ‘Are you serious, about this offer you have made?’
Charles had explained to Shane that he would soon be retired from the parks service, because of his advancing age. He said, in a whisper, that that was the only reason he put up with incompetents like Lovemore. He did not want to risk losing his pension by being dismissed for disciplinary reasons, even though it was unlikely he could support his family on the meagre payments from the government.
Shane had explained that Reynolds wanted him to form an anti-poaching team to find the criminals before they struck. He had been impressed by Charles’s obvious control of the situation near the rhino carcass, and with his breadth of experience as a ranger.
‘I am an old man, and my health has been better,’ Charles said, then took a long pull on his beer.
Shane saw the hollowed eyes, the thin limbs. It wasn’t hard to guess what type of health problems Charles was referring to. ‘I have six months to get the team established. I will need a good man to help me with a training program, and to monitor the radio twenty-four hours a day, from a room here at the lodge
, when the patrols are out. Can you do that for me, Charles? The money will be good.’
Charles peeled the wet label from the beer bottle. ‘Castle is a good name. A strong name.’
Shane looked into the older man’s rheumy eyes. He thought the old man might be close to weeping. ‘And Ndlovu is as strong as its meaning, the elephant.’
‘I would very much like to come and work here,’ Charles said. They clinked bottles.
7
‘What do you think?’ Reynolds asked as he stepped down from his brand-new Land Rover Discovery 3, in front of Michelle’s cottage in the staff area of Hwange National Park’s Main Camp.
A group of small boys in cast-off clothes suspended their game of soccer, played with a half-inflated ball in the middle of the dusty road, to stare at the shiny new SUV. A scrawny chicken clucked and pecked its way under the chassis.
‘The old one had more character,’ she said, wiping her wet hands on her shorts. She had been washing her clothes in the laundry tub when she’d heard the unfamiliar engine’s deep purring. ‘Where have you been these past couple of weeks?’
‘Busy with business.’
‘Looks like it’s good,’ she said, nodding to the car. ‘Come in and I’ll make you a cup of tea.’
The house had probably once belonged to a senior ranger. It was not big, but the ceilings were high and the two bedrooms were airy and cool, even in the strength-sapping heat at the end of the dry season. Outside she struggled to keep a small flowerbed alive, but she had not taken up a career in zoology because she was good with plants, and her results were mixed, at best.
‘You know you could move up to the lodge – no strings attached,’ Fletcher said, and thanked her for the tea.
He had made the offer twice before and each time Michelle had politely declined. It wasn’t that she feared more lascivious advances, rather that she wanted to retain her independence and her good relationship with the park authorities. However, on a day like this, when the wind whipped the sandy soil around Main Camp into a stinging dust storm, she would have sacrificed all her principles for a dip in Fletcher’s lawn-fringed swimming pool.
‘Don’t forget, I have a swimming pool,’ he said.
She smiled. ‘We have a pool right here at Main Camp.’
He laughed. It was an old joke. The cracked swimming pool hadn’t had water in it for decades.
‘Has your new mercenary killed any poachers yet?’
Fletcher shook his head and blew on his tea. ‘Shane’s doing a good job. He and his men are tracking a gang that’s been crossing to and from Botswana. We think it’s the same group that killed the rhino.’
‘Well, I hope your dog-of-war kills the lot of them,’ she said. ‘By the way, when do I get to meet the war hero?’
‘I’m not sure I want you to. He’s about your age and I suppose some women would find him quite attractive.’
She was touched by his vulnerability, even though he punctuated the sentence with a false laugh. ‘Younger men are overrated – trust me, I know.’
‘I won’t ask for details.’
‘You won’t get any.’ She checked her wristwatch. It was three in the afternoon. ‘What have you been doing in this part of the park, anyway? You’re a long way from home.’ It was more than a hundred and fifty kilometres back to Fletcher’s lodge through the park, on bad roads, and even further if he went the long way around, back onto the main Bulawayo–Victoria Falls Road and into Matetsi from the north.
‘More good news. I’ve just had a meeting with the chief warden at headquarters and I’ve joined the parks and wildlife service.’
She laughed. It must have been a joke. There had been a time, long ago, when there were many whites serving as uniformed rangers, but independence, affirmative action, white emigration and the fact that government salaries couldn’t hope to keep pace with inflation had meant there were only two murungus – the local term for whites – left in the service that she knew of. ‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘Honorary Ranger Fletcher Reynolds at your service.’ Fletcher explained that his friend Brigadier Moyo had spoken to the senior management in the national parks office and suggested it would be a good idea to resurrect an old scheme whereby people could be sworn in as part-time rangers, to augment the service’s meagre resources on the ground. There were other white land-holders, or lessees, like Fletcher, who still had properties on the boundaries of the country’s various national parks, and many of them, like him, wanted to take a more active role in the day-to-day management and running of the government-owned lands. ‘What it means is that I can work more closely with the rangers inside the park to coordinate my anti-poaching patrols with theirs, and it also gives me the same legal powers of arrest that the uniformed guys have, if I catch more intruders.’
‘Do you get a uniform?’
‘Yes, in fact I do.’
‘Sexy,’ she said.
‘If that’s all it took to woo you I would have dusted off my old army gear months ago!’
‘Not so fast. I’m more a fireman-policeman-national-parks-ranger kind of gal. I don’t go for professional killers, Fletcher – at least, not killers of men.’
‘So I’ve got nothing to worry about when you meet my new askari?’
She laughed. She would never be interested in a security guard. She found she was enjoying their flirting – and his company. The other European researchers at Main Camp tended to be postgraduate students in their early twenties and she had a good ten years on most of them. They partied hard and had appalling taste in music. She realised, too, that an inability to recognise a single artist or band in someone’s CD collection was a sure sign of old age. Fletcher, at least, made her feel relatively youthful. ‘Hey, don’t tell me you’re driving home tonight. Where are you staying?’
‘The safari lodge.’
‘Get out! You’re really flaunting your newfound wealth now.’ The Hwange Safari Lodge was a former government-run hotel about ten kilometres from Main Camp. It was an expensive place to stay, even for local residents, who paid less than foreign tourists.
‘Why don’t you join me for dinner there, tonight?’
She studied his face. It looked as though the idea were spur of the moment, but she couldn’t read him that well yet. She wondered if this were a set-up – an opportunity for him to make another advance, and what she would do if it was. ‘Okay. What time?’
‘Why don’t we go right now? We can go in my car – I’ll bring you home this evening. You can see what it’s like to drive in a vehicle with aircon.’
She felt cornered again, and confused. She’d been enjoying their banter, but suddenly felt her heart leap. ‘Um . . . I’m not really dressed for the lodge right now.’ She wore shorts and an old cotton shirt knotted above her belly button.
‘I can wait. Throw on a skirt and bring your swimming costume with you. We can have an hour or two by the pool before dinner. Come on, Michelle, it’ll be like a holiday from this dustbowl. We can even talk about your research, if you want to make it business.’
She smiled. The hell with it. ‘Yes, boss,’ she said, giving him a mock salute.
Michelle broke the surface of the cool, clear fresh water to find a smiling waiter standing over her, bearing a silver platter with a gin and tonic in a tall glass.
‘Right there, by the side of the pool will be fine,’ Fletcher told the man.
Michelle stayed in the water, elbows resting on the warm tiled surround of the swimming pool, and sipped her drink. It really was a lovely spot. The hotel itself was an uninspiring low-rise concrete blockhouse, but its rooms and the pool overlooked a pumped waterhole in the centre of a wide vlei. A herd of sable was cautiously sniffing the wind before committing themselves to take a drink. The sleek black coat of the male and the rich red-browns of his harem of eight females gleamed in the slanting golden rays of the afternoon sun. A dry moat between the vlei and the hotel’s verdant lawn kept elephant and other dangerous game out, but wasn�
��t nearly enough to stop a cheeky baboon who barked with mischievous joy as he scampered off with a sugar bowl from a nearby table.
Fletcher lay back on the deep green canvas mattress on his sun bed and sipped a whisky and ice. ‘Ah, life is hell in Africa.’
She smiled. It was an old saying but, at times like this, a good one. This wasn’t the real Africa – not the heat, the dust, the drought, the sickness and disease, the corruption, the poverty – but it was a nice place to come for a break from all of that. She corrected herself – it was Fletcher’s Africa. At least, it was his life indoors, alone in his luxurious hunting lodge. She was used to penny-pinching – a round of drinks here was the equivalent of her weekly food budget – but she had no qualms right now about giving herself over to a taste of luxury. ‘I could get used to this.’
She took a sip from her drink, did two more long, lazy lengths of the circular pool, then climbed out and dried off. She noticed him watching her, out of the corner of her eye, as she pretended to watch the sable. He was checking out her body. She didn’t mind, as she had been unashamedly assessing him while she had chatted to him from in the pool. It was the first time she had seen him shirtless and she was pleasantly surprised to find he was in excellent shape. He had abs and pecs a twenty year old would kill for. His body was lean and tanned, not an ounce of fat on his big frame. Without his trademark bush hat he had a full mane of silvering hair. A breeze raised tiny ripples on the surface of the pool, and though the wind was warm it was enough to chill her wet body for a few delicious seconds. She felt her nipples stiffen, and self-consciously raised her towel to cover her breasts.
‘You could use some fattening up, girl,’ Fletcher said.
He was nothing if not direct, but she took his bluntness as a compliment. ‘It’s hard to get fat on a researcher’s allowance.’
‘If that’s a cry for more money, it’s falling on deaf ears.’
‘You’ve been generous enough, Fletcher. I wish I could make it up to you – buy you dinner or something. But you’d be paying for it in the long-run – or, at least, your rich dentist would be.’