by Tony Park
Ahead of them the bush thinned to a grassy plain, set in a shallow valley between two opposing ridge lines. ‘We can make fast time through here.’
Leonard had not survived two decades of forays across the border in search of rhino horn and ivory without honing all his senses. He saw the first national parks green cap bob into view above the tall yellow grass.
He nodded to Samuel, who passed the silent message down the line. Six fingers tightened slowly around triggers.
Shane peered around the anthill and saw the first of the rangers, a dark shape almost obscured by heat haze and swaying yellow grass. He looked heavenwards, decided it was too late in life to become god-fearing, and climbed up onto the anthill.
‘LOVEMORE!’ he bellowed, his words echoing across the vlei. ‘Hokoyo! Ambush! Ma-tsotsis, kurudji kwenyu!’
He had the satisfaction of seeing the capped head bob down instinctively as the first bullets slammed into the anthill and whip-cracked in the air around him. He dived and rolled, using his parachute training to take the force of the landing along his right side and thigh.
Lead slugs scythed the grass above his head as he leopard-crawled away from the mound, which made a perfect target for most of the poachers’ rifles.
Wise, on Shane’s orders, had repositioned himself behind a fallen tree, fifty metres from the anthill and closer to the poachers. He had a perfect view of the man they had identified as the leader. He took a breath, as Shane had taught him, then exhaled. The poacher was visible through the circular sight as he paused at the end of the breath. Wise squeezed the trigger. His first shot fell short, raising a geyser of dust in front of the old Zambian, who ducked his head. Wise fired again, until he could not see the man, then shifted his aim to the right, to another of them. This man was obviously unaware, through the cacophony of shots, that anyone was shooting back at the gang, for he rose on one knee to try to see Shane.
Wise centred the poacher in his sights, controlled his breathing again. He exhaled and squeezed. The man was knocked flat on his back. Wise whooped with joy. In the Congo, despite what he had told Shane about being an infantryman and the veteran of several fire fights, he had only ever driven a truck. Today he was a warrior from the sky.
Shane’s pulse raced, but his mind was clear and calm. He reached the leadwood’s trunk and raised his head. He saw one poacher fall, and heard the man’s screams of pain. He stood, braced himself against the tree, took aim at a crouching man with an AK 47 and fired. He felt the satisfying kick of the old rifle in his shoulder. The man was gone, swallowed by the grass. A poacher yelled something in his own language and Shane was aware of fire being redirected. They had seen Wise. He hoped the boy did as he had instructed and backed away to the reverse side of the ridge. They had spoiled the ambush and saved the national parks callsign – for the time being. It was now up to Lovemore to make the next move.
‘Mapenga!’ Lovemore muttered as he shook his head. The white man was crazy, but he had saved their lives.
‘Let us wait for help,’ Christopher pleaded as he lay in the cocooning warmth of the grass.
‘There is no help!’ Noah said. ‘Lovemore, what do we do next?’
Lovemore risked a peep through the swaying blades of gold. The fire was directed away from them now, and the Zambians were shouting. At least one was crying in pain. ‘Right flanking attack. Now!’
Shane moved across the middle of the vlei now, from south to north. Only the grass covered him, but there was nothing between him and the Zambians solid enough to stop a bullet. If he was seen, he would die. His mouth was dry, his heart thumping. A poacher was firing on automatic, long bursts of six or seven rounds, away from Shane, towards Wise.
There was movement to his right. He dropped to his knee and pointed his rifle down an elephant trail; a flash of green as a man darted across the path. ‘Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe,’ he hissed.
A second man reached the trail, turned and raised an AK 47, his eyes wide. Shane opened his arms, his SLR held high in his right hand. ‘Friend,’ he said. He recognised one of the men from Lovemore’s patrol.
‘Lovemore!’ the man whispered urgently, and tapped the tin magazine of his AK 47.
Shane joined the patrol. Lovemore explained that he was hooking around to the right, to try to outflank the poachers. ‘Lead on,’ Shane said.
Splinters of wood flew off the fallen tree behind which Wise sheltered. He remembered he should retreat, but was sure he could account for another Zambian. He had seen and heard nothing of Shane since he had climbed, like a madman, onto the anthill.
Wise rose, grinning and yelling an incoherent war cry, exposing himself above the deadfall for a second and a half as he squeezed off two more rounds. The firing pin of his rifle clicked on an empty chamber. ‘Magazine!’ he yelled and started to duck down.
Two poachers, who had already zeroed in on the tree, fired bursts of automatic fire at him. A third, the bearer with the .303, had been waiting for such a chance. He took careful aim and pulled the trigger of his fifty-year-old rifle.
Wise screamed and fell back.
Shane had seen the younger man’s foolhardiness, and he cursed under his breath. But Wise’s fall had given the poachers a false sense of victory and distracted them. Shane and the rangers used the poachers’ jubilant cries to their advantage, moving stealthily up behind them.
Two of the gang rose and started to advance on Wise’s position. Shane, Lovemore, Noah and Christopher opened up on Shane’s command. The two Zambians pitched forward, shot in the back.
‘Forward! Fight through!’ Shane commanded. They had seized the initiative and needed to maintain it. They walked, line abreast, along the ragged ambush line.
Shane came across the lifeless body of a man, a shotgun lying by his side. He kicked the weapon aside. ‘One dead enemy!’ he yelled, then continued moving, his SLR held high into his shoulder, finger curled around the trigger.
Lovemore came to one of the men armed with automatic weapons. He echoed Shane’s call, adding, ‘AK 47.’
‘Leave it, we can . . .’ Shane began, as Lovemore stooped to prise the rifle from the dead poacher’s hand. ‘Down!’ Shane saw the movement in the bush, then spotted the long wooden stock of a Lee Enfield rifle. He turned at the waist and fired two quick shots. The second found its mark, and the man’s head flicked back.
Lovemore was wide eyed at his narrow escape. ‘Keep moving,’ Shane cajoled.
Noah flung the dead man’s bolt-action rifle away when he reached the corpse. Christopher came across the body of another man armed with an AK 47.
‘Eyes peeled, men,’ Shane said, his voice steady and calm.
‘Over here,’ Noah called.
Shane crashed through a thicket of leafless bush, ignoring the thorns that snatched at his fatigues and skin. A grey-haired man sat with his back against the trunk of a tree, his AK 47 on the ground beside him. Weakly, for blood pumped thick and bright from a hole in his right shoulder, he tried to raise his hands, and moaned in pain with the effort.
Lovemore walked ahead of Shane and kicked the man, hard, in the ribs. The man screamed.
‘Enough,’ Shane barked.
Lovemore turned on Shane, eyes wide and nostrils flared in anger, then the fear and adrenaline seemed to subside. He nodded to Shane, dropped to one knee beside the older man and tossed his rifle out of reach. ‘Where are the other four?’ Lovemore asked the man. The other two rangers stood by, watching.
Shane left them, striding into the bush, looking for tracks and other signs. There was one armed man still on the loose.
‘WISE!’ he called.
There was no reply. He noticed and ignored the four elephant tusks, tied in pairs and slung from timber poles. Shane kept his rifle raised as he moved, at a crouch, through the tall grass, which had been flattened by men on the move. He ran down into the shallow depression, then scaled the ridge to the fallen log behind which Wise had sheltered. He braced himself for the worst as he crested the ridge.
Wise lay on the ground, on his back, beside the two parachutes, which he had dragged to his new position after he and Shane had separated. His neck and left shoulder were drenched red. Lying face down across Wise’s lower torso and legs was another man, dressed in three-quarter length pants and a tan bush shirt. Wise was conscious, but silent, and he stared up at Shane. In his right hand was a US Air Force pilot’s survival knife, the top edge of its blackened-blade serrated, for cutting wood. It was Shane’s spare and he had given it to Wise before the flight. The weapon, like Wise’s hand, was coated in blood.
Shane looked around for signs of danger. Wise’s AK 47, which had been painted camouflage, lay two metres away. The cocking handle and working parts were locked open – a sign that Wise had not been able to reload after he called ‘magazine’, which meant he was out of ammunition. It looked as though he had dropped the rifle after being hit in the neck by a grazing shot.
The dead man’s weapon lay beside the pair.
Shane grabbed the poacher by the waistband of his shorts and dragged him off Wise, staining the grass the same colour as Wise’s clothes. He checked the man’s pockets and found a bundle of banknotes, still damp with sweat, and a grubby-covered Zambian passport. He opened the document and looked at the face of Samuel Mumba. Shane pocketed it, and the cash, then extended a hand to Wise. ‘All right, mate?’
Wise blinked at him and finally seemed to understand. He raised his hand. Shane took it and hauled him to his feet.
‘I . . . I think I fainted for a few moments. When I woke, he was . . . he was searching me.’ He held the knife out for Shane’s inspection and stared at it, as if unable to comprehend what he had done.
‘It’s okay. Pick up your weapon and reload.’
‘But . . .’ Wise looked down at the man he had killed.
Shane grabbed him firmly by the shoulder with his free hand and stared hard into his eyes. ‘You did good. Get your rifle, reload it, and grab his as well. That should be the last of the ones with guns, but we’re not safe until we’re back at Isilwane.’
‘He could have killed me, Shane . . .’
‘Yeah, but you got him first. That’s all that matters, mate. Let’s go home.’
Wise was able to walk and, when they returned to the rangers, Lovemore told them the ringleader had died of his wound.
‘The bullet had hit his lung, I think. He was an old man.’
Shane wondered if Lovemore had administered first aid to the poacher – or done something else.
Lovemore kept looking down at the body, then back at Shane. ‘He told us they were from Zambia. Asked us not to harm the boy if we found him.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I told him we would shoot any Zambian we found in our country.’ Lovemore ran his hand through his close-cropped hair.
Shane shook a cigarette from his packet and offered the rest to the Africans. Lovemore and Noah accepted and Shane lit their smokes. He couldn’t judge these men. They were fighting a war, but he didn’t want any part of tracking unarmed fugitives, especially not a child.
‘We should go. Wise is injured.’
Lovemore nodded, and Shane sensed the fight leaving him, along with the adrenaline.
They left the bodies where they had fallen, hoping that the police could be raised before hyenas and vultures discovered them. They were all tired and thirsty from the aftermath of combat, and Wise needed medical attention.
Fletcher Reynolds and his three American hunters were parked next to Caesar on the side of the road when the rangers, Shane, and Wise straggled out of the bush.
‘How many got away?’ was the first thing Fletcher asked Shane.
Shane had a wounded man with him and thought some words of compassion, let alone congratulations, might have been in order. ‘Three. One of them is just a kid. They were unarmed bearers.’
‘Shoot! We heard you nailed some of them, though, is that right?’ a beer-bellied, balding American in camouflaged fatigues asked.
Shane looked at the man in silence, then nodded. ‘Six.’
‘Let’s go take a look,’ another of the hunters suggested.
‘Have you picked up the spoor of the tsotsis who escaped?’ Fletcher asked.
Shane lit another cigarette and ran a hand through his dirt- and sweat-matted hair. ‘I’ve got a wounded man who needs to see a doctor. Where are the cops?’
Fletcher smiled. ‘You’ve done a great job, Shane. You really have, as has Wise. But we can’t let the others get off scot-free. They’ll only be back to kill again.’
‘Yeah, let’s get some!’ the third of the Americans said.
‘You’re not seriously considering taking these . . . your clients out on a man-hunt, are you?’ Shane asked.
Lovemore strode over to the two men. ‘Mister Reynolds, parks and wildlife will coordinate the search for the other men with the police, when they arrive.’
Shane thought the Americans looked like a pack of dogs who had just seen their fox disappear down its burrow.
‘Awww, shoot, can we at least go take a look at the dead guys?’ the fat hunter pleaded.
‘Come, we’ll go and collect the ivory,’ Reynolds said to them. ‘Shane, I’ll see you back at Isilwane.’
Shane washed his hands with antiseptic soap in the kitchen sink of his house, watching as the blood and filth sluiced down the plughole. He shook them dry and reached for a pair of latex gloves.
‘I am clean. I have been tested, and I always use a condom,’ Wise said. The young African sat bare-chested at the kitchen table, a cigarette burning in the ashtray, two open beers on the table.
‘I’m wearing gloves so that I don’t infect you with bacteria, not because I’m worried about catching anything from you,’ Shane said.
‘You did good out there today,’ he continued as he peeled away the shell dressing, which was crusted with dried blood and dirt. Shane had qualified as a patrol medic in the SAS and, after checking the wound again before the drive back to Isilwane, had decided that he could patch Wise up from his own first-aid kit. Wise had a nasty furrow on his neck, but if they kept the wound clean and dry it would heal without stitches. ‘What do you think about Charles? He’s very ill.’
‘He has HIV-AIDS for sure.’ Wise pronounced the last word in two syllables, for added emphasis. He winced as Shane squirted saline solution into and around his wound. ‘He’s like all the old guys. They’re good family men, but after every payday they go to the shebeens, get drunk and screw a prostitute. Then they go home to their wives and kids. It’s just the way it is.’
‘How long has he got, do you reckon?’ Shane asked as he sprinkled antibiotic powder into the graze.
‘I watched my uncle and my older brother die. I think Charles will be dead in a month – maybe two.’ Wise said it with the matter-of-factness of a generation for whom death had become an everyday occurrence. Shane had been surprised at first by the commonality of death, and the burgeoning funeral industry, on his return to Africa. There were roadside stalls advertising headstones, and you could buy a coffin at any hardware store. In Australia, Shane could count the number of funerals he had been to on the fingers of one hand. Boys like Wise had lost most of their families before they reached manhood. ‘It will be very hard on his family, with only the national parks pension to live on,’ Wise said.
‘I’ll have a word to Reynolds,’ Shane said.
He dressed the wound with gauze and Elastoplast. ‘Keep it dry. We’ll change the dressing every day.’ After checking that Wise wasn’t allergic to penicillin, he gave him some generic antibiotic tablets he had filched from the army before discharge. While the physical wound would heal, Shane knew the scars could run deeper. ‘Do you want to talk about today?’
‘About what?’
‘The shooting – getting wounded. The dead guy.’
‘I saw a lot of dead people in the DRC, boss,’ Wise said. ‘I drove a truck that carried the bodies to the morgue.’
‘You had
a close call today, but I was proud of you. Your training got you through – though you should have got off that ridge line like I told you to, instead of sitting up there like Rambo.’
He looked sheepish, then said, ‘It was good, Shane.’ He held out a hand and Shane clasped it.
‘It was good,’ Shane repeated. ‘Go get cleaned up. Debrief at eighteen-hundred hours tonight.’
‘Yebo.’ Wise saluted, then winced as the muscles in his neck contracted. Shane smiled and waved him out. He removed the gloves and washed his hands again, then lit a cigarette. He replayed the day’s battle in his mind as he sipped his beer. He saw the first man fall, then the guy with the .303 – close enough to him to see his eyes widen as the bullet hit him. Then the other two that he and the rangers had drilled at close range, from behind. He closed his eyes and pressed his palms to them. He needed to piss.
In the bathroom he closed his eyes again, but the ghosts returned. The antlike figures in the Tora Bora Mountains of Afghanistan, vaporised by the B-52s’ J-DAM bombs as his patrol had called in air strike after air strike from their vantage points; the rolling contacts in the Western Desert of Iraq as he and his men had raced towards Baghdad in their long-range patrol vehicle; the burning terrorist he had killed in that city; the dead bodies of the poachers in the African dust. He was moving closer to death, not further away from it. There were no air strikes and little technology to rely on out here – he was close enough to see, hear and smell death at its most intimate. Wise had been there too – even closer – and he seemed okay.
From outside, he heard the return of Fletcher’s Land Rover. As he stepped onto the veranda he saw a herd of elephant emerge from the shelter of the trees and amble down to the waterhole outside the perimeter fence.
The voices from the truck were brash and exuberant, though when the men strolled into view, waving to him as they entered the main lodge, Shane saw that all the noise came from two hunters. The third looked pale and a little unsteady on his feet.
‘Aww, come on, Larry,’ the beer-bellied American said to his subdued friend. ‘Get over it, man.’