by Tony Park
‘Affirmative, Taipan.’
That was enough chatter over the radio. The poachers were shouldering their packs, so Shane simply ended the conversation with a single click of the transmit switch.
He checked his compass. The hunters and their heavily laden bearers were heading almost due east. Their route would take them into the centre of the line of Gizenga’s soldiers. Shane had never worked with the Army of the Democratic Republic of Congo, but if the dress and bearing of Colonel Gizenga’s driver was any indication it was likely the soldiers were poorly equipped and ill disciplined. Still, after several years of war, some of them had to be seasoned fighters. Shane radioed Fletcher to pass on the new information.
After the gang had filed off, Shane followed them, though he was careful to stay out of sight. He was getting more used to tracking in the jungle, and found he could easily follow the trail of scuffed leaves, torn spiderwebs and bent branches.
Every hundred paces he stopped, dropped to one knee and listened. He rechecked the compass and saw the men had not changed direction. Shane calculated that he had travelled four hundred metres – quite a distance in the steaming maze of vines and swamp. He stifled a yawn and focused his senses on the trail ahead. He was tired after so little sleep, but he knew another shot of adrenaline would soon fire him up.
He started to stand, but froze when he heard voices. Not soft and secretive, like the tone the old poacher had used with his men, but shouted commands. Soldiers.
‘Zero Alpha, this is Taipan, noises up ahead, I think it’s your other blue callsign, over,’ he whispered into his radio. Blue was friendly, red was enemy. He looked around and spied a thick tree trunk that would give him cover if the shooting started. He moved quickly, at a crouch, to its base and dropped to his belly.
‘Taipan, wait, out,’ Fletcher replied. Shane presumed his boss was trying to make contact now with the Congolese soldiers. For all the other man’s faults, Shane trusted Fletcher’s ability and experience. The hunter had been in fire fights with Zimbabwean freedom fighters when Shane had still been in primary school.
Shane heard rustling ahead of him, the sound of men running, taking no care to hide the sound of their footfall. The poachers had heard the approaching soldiers, which meant they might be coming back his way.
A gunshot went off somewhere in front of him. The report was muffled by the jungle’s dense vegetation, and while he couldn’t see who had fired, Shane knew it would spell trouble for him if he stayed put. ‘Zero Alpha, Taipan. Contact, wait out,’ he breathed, then hauled himself to his feet and ran.
Shane vaulted a fallen log and ignored the thorn-covered vines and creepers that snatched at his pistoning legs. He held the compass up as he ran, and saw he was now headed due west. With a bit of luck he would stumble upon Fletcher, Wise and Caesar.
‘Taipan, Zero Alpha. Head west. Repeat, west.’ Fletcher hissed in his earpiece. At least he was going the right way.
Shane cursed the soldiers for their poor noise discipline. They were acting more like beaters in a pheasant shoot than trained professionals. He’d heard them blundering about, even though he reckoned he was still a good hundred metres behind the poachers. The gang must have just about bumped into the army cordon.
His fatigue was gone, all his senses on high alert. Along with his increased awareness came an odd sensation of calm. This was his job.
He heard a bang and a man screamed, a primal keening wail of pain and shock. Shane couldn’t see, but he reckoned the noise was a round exploding in the blocked barrel of the rifle he had filled with mud during the night. It was a dirty act of sabotage, but he’d long ago realised that there was precious little honour in warfare. He consoled himself with the thought that if the man were screaming – as he still was – then at least he might be captured alive.
Shane lost his footing as the land dropped away in a steep slope and found himself sliding on his bottom down a muddy creek bank. He held his rifle at the high port to keep it clear of soil and water as his boots hit the crystal-clear stream with a splash that soaked him to the waist. He stood and strode through the water. His left foot touched a rock and he was glad of the sure footing until his boot slipped on the slimy surface. He fell, just managing to hold his SLR free, and felt a sharp pain in his ankle. ‘Fuck,’ he said as he tried to stand again.
In his haste he’d made a mistake worthy of a nineteen-year-old recruit. He tested the ankle again by transferring his weight, and grimaced in pain. The joint buckled as soon as he tried to take another step.
Shane heard a further single shot from an AK 47, followed by loud cursing in an African tongue. The guy with the broken magazine, he reckoned. Shane’s little tricks had provided good sport, but they would count for nothing if the gang of angry and wounded men came across him lying helpless in the mud. He heard an answering volley of fire, a four-round burst fired on full automatic, coming in his direction by the sound of it. The soldiers were running true to form. Pray and spray – shooting blindly on full auto in the hope of hitting something – was the mark of a truly undisciplined force.
‘Zero Alpha, Taipan is down. Leg injury. I’m going to ground in the bed of a creek running north-south, over.’
Shane nestled into the bank of the stream and peered over the edge of the drop-off towards where the poachers and soldiers would soon appear.
‘Roger, Taipan. We’re taking a bead on the gunfire and . . . Wait.’
Shane pulled the wooden butt of the big rifle into his shoulder and looked down the barrel. If it came to a shoot-out, this was as good a place as any to defend. He just hoped the Congolese Army didn’t overrun the poachers and start shooting at him in their excitement. He heard them now, jeering and bellowing, punctuating each phrase with another burst of fire.
‘Taipan, this is Zero Alpha.’ Fletcher was panting as he spoke, on the run. Shane heard the same shots through the earpiece of his radio that were being fired in front of him. Reynolds and his team must be close. ‘One of our number knows the stream where you are. We’ll be there in a few seconds. Sit tight, out.’
One of our number? Shane wondered who that would be. Perhaps it was Patrice. The thought of the surly guide coming up behind him with a loaded weapon wasn’t reassuring.
The first of the poachers came into view. Shane captured him through the circular rear sight of the SLR, then placed the narrow blade of the foresight in the centre of the man’s chest. The man was carrying an AK, but there was no banana-shaped magazine protruding from the bottom. Shane didn’t have time to congratulate himself on his cunning, as the man was running straight towards him.
‘Arrêt!’ Shane bellowed, using the word Michelle had taught him for ‘stop’.
The man slowed, then stopped as he looked down towards the stream and caught sight of the green-painted face at the end of the long rifle barrel. The poacher held up his rifle, as if to show that it was now useless. Shane motioned with the muzzle of his weapon for the man to drop his.
It looked as though the poacher might comply, until a second man elbowed him aside. Shane had been focusing his attention on the first man and had missed the approach of the second. This man carried a loaded Kalashnikov. He raised it to his shoulder and then pulled the trigger.
The man’s aim looked true, but the bullets sailed high over Shane’s head, showering him with shredded leaves and bark. Shane shifted his aim to the firer, squeezed the trigger twice and the poacher disappeared from sight. While he hadn’t had time to damage the third of the gang’s rifles he had quickly adjusted the rear sight of the weapon, setting it to fire at long range rather than the default setting for close combat. Raising the rear sight meant the marksman would fire high, to compensate for the natural fall of a projectile over a longer distance. The trick had probably saved Shane’s life. He called again to the first man to stop, but he was running away, to his left, to the north, parallel to the stream.
‘Shane! Coming up, on your left!’ Fletcher called, not bothering with the r
adio.
Shane turned and saw blurs of movement through the jungle.
‘One’s heading your way!’ Shane replied. ‘He’s got an AK but he’s got no mag —’
Shane had lost sight of the fleeing poacher, but he heard him cry out, just as the first gunshot erupted. ‘Non, non!’
The deep boom of the heavy-calibre hunting rifle silenced the man’s cry.
Shane pushed himself painfully to his feet and limped northwards through the mud at the edge of the running water.
‘Shane, behind you!’ He looked over his shoulder and saw Caesar splashing through the stream. ‘Are you hit?’
Shane tried to brush off Caesar’s offer of help, but found that he could move faster leaning on the younger man’s shoulder. The pair of them rounded a bend in the creek bed. Shane was speechless at the sight before them.
‘Take the picture, Fletcher,’ Marie Delacroix commanded.
She wore a tailored green shirt and matching fatigue trousers, nipped here and there to ensure they showed off her curves perfectly. Around her waist was a canvas webbing belt heavy with fat brass cartridges. She wore a leopard-print scarf around her neck and held a .375 Holland and Holland hunting rifle by the barrel, the stock balanced on her shoulder.
‘No, Marie. I don’t like the idea of pictures.’ Fletcher stood opposite her, an identical rifle in his left hand and a pocket-sized digital camera dangling uselessly from his right by the carry strap.
‘Take the picture,’ Marie insisted again.
Shane and Caesar stopped. In front of them, Marie stood over the face-up body of the man who had been carrying the AK 47 without a magazine. Shane had been too late to tell them that their opponent may as well have been unarmed. She raised her hiking boot and planted it on the dead man’s chest. ‘Now, Fletcher.’
‘What the hell is all this?’ Shane finally managed.
Fletcher ignored the question and passed his rifle to Patrice, who stood, grinning malevolently, at his boss’s side. Reynolds lifted the camera, which looked like a child’s toy in his hands, and pressed the button. White flashlight lit the macabre scene and seemed to Shane to bounce off Marie Delacroix’s wide eyes and perfect teeth.
‘The huntress with her trophy, no!’ she exclaimed.
Fletcher handed the camera back to her, and while Marie gleefully showed a hovering Patrice the image in the LED screen, Fletcher turned to Shane and Caesar, acknowledging them for the first time. He shrugged. ‘She insisted on coming.’
‘You brought a woman to a fire fight?’ Shane couldn’t hide his incredulity.
Fletcher held up his hands to stifle the protest, but Shane persisted. ‘There were three armed men running about out there.’
‘Yes, but you told me you’d managed to doctor their weapons. The soldiers picked up the wounded man. Spiking his AK 47 cost that chap half his face.’
Shane’s ankle throbbed with pain and he was in no mood for mirth. ‘First useful thing those dozy bastards have done all morning.’ He jerked a thumb at the line of camouflage-clad Africans who were now wandering into view. Shane heard the sobs of the wounded poacher, who held a hand streaked with blood over the right side of his face.
‘They did their job, all right,’ Fletcher countered. ‘They told me on the radio they’d captured the one guy and I heard you drill that other one just as we arrived. I knew it was down to one man.’
Shane couldn’t hold his anger in check. ‘Then you knew it was the man with no ammo in his rifle. I started to tell you, but —’
‘You started to tell me something, and then Marie and I saw a man running towards us with a rifle. If she hadn’t shot him first, I would have.’
‘She shot him?’
Marie handed Patrice her rifle, took three paces and stood in front of Shane, hands on her hips. ‘Oui, she shot the poacher. Are you such a Neanderthal that you think a woman cannot defend herself in the twenty-first century?’
‘I . . . it’s just that . . .’
‘Don’t be a male chauvinist pig,’ she spat. ‘You say a woman should not be in combat, a woman cannot kill these poacher cochon. You need to spend less time with soldier boys and more time with real people, Monsieur Castle.’
Shane ignored the insults. His objections had come out wrongly. However, he was certainly dumbfounded to have come across an ardent environmentalist standing alongside a professional hunter with a gun in her hands. ‘I meant no offence. But this whole day has, pardon my French, been one gigantic cluster-fuck.’
‘On the contrary, I would say. We have two dead poachers, six men in captivity and only one casualty on the side of good,’ Marie said, giving a slow, contemptuous nod towards his twisted ankle.
Shane ignored her jibe and said to Fletcher, ‘The soldiers have caught all the bearers?’
Fletcher nodded. ‘The carriers surrendered as soon as they realised they were caught. I have to agree with Marie, Shane, it’s been a good morning.’
Shane fished his cigarettes from his breast pocket. The pack was damp from his sweat. He lit one, which made him aware his hands were still shaking a little. ‘We should question the prisoners – find out who’s behind this. We need to start looking for the men buying the bush meat.’
Fletcher shrugged. ‘It’s out of our hands now, Shane. The military will look after that. As long as we nail anyone who trespasses on our patch, I’m happy.’
‘And I am happy that there are three fewer armed men on the mountain,’ Marie said, smiling up at Fletcher.
‘Don’t be such a baby,’ Michelle chided. Shane winced as she wrapped the crepe bandage around his ankle. He smelled soapy and clean, a vast improvement on the odorous, stubbled, camouflage-painted creature who had hobbled in from the jungle an hour earlier.
‘You do know what you’re doing, right?’ he asked, drawing on a cigarette.
‘Um, nurse, the bone saw, please.’
‘Very funny.’
‘It wasn’t very funny this morning,’ she said, her tone serious. Michelle had woken to a flurry of activity, with Fletcher striding back and forth from his tent to Shane’s, where Wise and Caesar took turns manning the radio in between loading their packs with ammunition and cleaning their rifles.
Michelle had overheard only snippets of the conversations, but it seemed that Shane and his men had stumbled on some poachers, and the army, along with Fletcher and Shane’s guys, were going out to round them up. She had felt alarmed, not at the thought that she would be left in camp alone, but that Fletcher and Shane would both be facing danger.
Her thoughts led her to Marie Delacroix, who had accompanied Fletcher on the anti-poaching mission. Fletcher had called Marie on her satellite telephone very early in the morning, though Michelle had been unable to hear the conversation. He had wandered a little way into the trees when he had noticed her watching him.
After the conversation, Fletcher had told Wise that he was going out to pick someone up, and had taken a portable radio with him. Michelle had guessed that Fletcher was going to fetch Colonel Gizenga or another army officer and she had been more than a little surprised when he had returned with the French environmentalist. There was no invitation from Fletcher for Michelle to accompany them. She guessed he had been worried for her safety and, while she had no desire to traipse off into the jungle in pursuit of armed criminals, she’d felt snubbed.
They seemed unlikely friends, Marie and Fletcher. Marie was at the far end of the spectrum when it came to animal rights, while Fletcher killed animals for a living. Yet they seemed to have hit it off. She felt a pang of jealousy.
‘I was worried about you all this morning, especially when I heard the gunfire, far off,’ she said as she wound the last of the bandage around Shane’s leg.
‘Most of that was Gizenga’s goons shooting up the forest.’
‘Caesar told me you killed one of the poachers.’ She looked up from his foot, into his eyes.
‘Yep.’
She waited a few seconds, to no avail, for hi
m to say something else. ‘Just can’t shut you up, can I? Do you want to talk about it?’
‘Nope.’
‘Might help.’
‘Who says there’s anything wrong?’
‘How long has your hand been shaking like that?’
He looked at his hand and shrugged, then stared blankly at her.
‘Don’t you feel anything, Shane, about that man?’
He shrugged again.
‘Is that it, is that what troubles you? The killing doesn’t affect you?’
He looked down at his hand, dropped the cigarette, stubbed it out and then closed his fingers into a fist. The shaking stopped and she noticed the whites of his knuckles. ‘You sound like an army shrink,’ he said.
She gave him what she hoped was a sympathetic smile. ‘If you don’t want to talk to me, Shane, I’m sure Patrice would love to keep me company.’
Shane snorted. ‘It was him or me, Michelle. Simple as that. The plan – the original plan, at least – was that we’d let the army round them up, arrest them.’
‘Who changed the plan?’
‘Just happened. Call it the fog of war.’
She shook her head at his unwillingness to say more. It worried her that he’d inadvertently described what they were doing as war. She thought it best to change the subject. ‘Well, I can tell you, it was chaotic here, too, for a while.’
‘How so?’
‘You heard about the hunters, I suppose?’
‘No. Tell me.’
She was surprised that Fletcher hadn’t told him about the call on the satellite phone the previous afternoon. Fletcher had been contacted by two Texan oil men who had been visiting Kinshasa for talks with the Congolese government and, on the spur of the moment, had tried to arrange a hunting safari for the next morning. Fletcher had been over the moon and had started making preparations for Patrice to pick the men up from Goma. The arrangements had fallen through, however, when the men had phoned later to say their aircraft had been grounded for the day due to mechanical problems. Fletcher, Michelle told Shane, had been furious, but his temper had abated after Shane’s message had come in about the poachers breaking camp. ‘Then he was talking to Marie, and the next thing I knew he was bringing her back to camp.’