by Tony Park
‘You prefer killing the captive men – poor sods that don’t know one end of a rifle from the other, who’ve been released by the Congolese Army to run into your guns?’
Fletcher laughed. ‘What a silly question. Of course I do. It’s money for jam – let’s go back to the party. Don’t do too much soul-searching, Shane, or you’ll have me crying in my beer as well. Think of it like I do – a means to an end.’
Michelle grimaced at Fletcher’s self-incriminating wickedness. Shane’s suggestion that they duct-tape a night-vision scope to the lens of the mini digital camera Sarah had leant them was a simple but effective way of allowing them to film at night. Michelle noted how bright Fletcher’s teeth appeared in the lime-green picture on the camera’s LCD screen.
Shane sat in the dark in front of his tent, reassembling his rifle and checking his magazines and ammunition.
He had seen Michelle creeping from behind the cottage and his heart had beat faster as he’d focused on keeping Fletcher’s attention on him. Her bravery didn’t make up for her lack of field craft. Still, he’d noticed that she was carrying the video camera, and hoped that she had recorded his last remarks to Fletcher.
She was a brave woman and it must have been hell for her, learning the man she was sleeping with was a killer. It would have been safer if she’d stayed in Zimbabwe or gone home to Canada, but Shane knew she was right – Fletcher would be far less suspicious if she were around. It was difficult for him, though, having her in the camp. He remembered the taste of her, the softness of her skin on the undersides of her slender wrists, the look in her eyes when she came. He’d said nothing, but he would have been gutted if she’d decided she had to sleep with Fletcher to maintain the charade. He felt his pulse rate start to rise, and knew this was not the time to let emotion cloud his thoughts. Better to focus on the mechanics of the job.
Fletcher had given him an old banana-shaped AK 47 magazine with five bullets in it. Fletcher carried one as well, with the idea being that when the Americans killed the ‘poacher’, whomever was closer would switch the empty magazine from the dead man’s rifle with another containing bullets, before the Yanks arrived at the body. He pushed down on the top round, and heard the scratch and squeak of dirt in the magazine. He shook his head. The thing had probably never been cleaned. When he did it again, he felt the spring inside the magazine snap. It must have rusted away, he thought. He shook the copper-jacketed Russian-made bullets free and caught them in his left hand. He wouldn’t need the magazine in any case and, not knowing what else to do with the rounds, he stuffed them in the side cargo pocket of his fatigue trousers. The magazine was history, so he tossed it aside. He had a hundred and twenty rounds for his own rifle, and reckoned that would be enough to see him through the next day.
32
His name was Mubare, although he didn’t know it.
Mubare was not a man – he was a one hundred and eighty kilogram silverback mountain gorilla.
He stood one hundred and seventy centimetres tall, his massive head the size of a human’s torso, his hands as big as dinner plates. All Mubare knew, or really cared about, was eating, having sex and protecting his family. He was very good at all three. That’s why he was the silverback.
It was a fine day, which had begun with wisps of mist curling around the tops of the tall trees. The sun warmed his back pleasingly, drying the droplets of rain that remained from the previous night’s shower. Soon it would be too hot to move and eat, which was why Mubare was leading his family on their normal early-morning foraging expedition.
He looked at the little black-haired human who sat watching him through the thicket of bamboo. He knew she was a female, by the smell of her, and that she was no harm to his family. Mubare saw humans often. He snapped off another green stalk and continued eating.
One of his females had given birth recently and he watched his tiny son, out of the corner of his eye, wander closer to the human. Mubare sat back on his bottom, scratched his privates and continued chewing his bamboo as he kept a wary eye on his offspring.
Marie Delacroix had been researching Gorilla berengei, the endangered mountain gorilla, on and off for seven years, yet she never tired of watching them, nor ceased to be surprised at the depth of her emotions towards these mammals. She held her breath as the little baby toddled towards her. It looked up at her and she knew, from past experience, that the source of its curiosity was his own reflection in the lens of her camera. She kept herself perfectly still, but couldn’t stop a tear from rolling down her cheek as the baby reached up and first touched the glass of her camera and then, with his soft leathery finger, traced a line down the back of her hand.
The silverback grunted and the baby turned and scampered back to the safety of his family. It was time to move on. Mubare raised himself on his rear feet, kneeling forward on his knuckles, and kept an eye on the human as his females, sons and daughters lifted themselves and started moving on to the next juicy thicket.
Marie, who had long since dispensed with the need for a guide, waited until the silverback was moving, then stood and slung her rifle over her shoulder. She was worried, not because she had illegally crossed the border into Uganda to follow these gorillas, but because they had already crossed into the Congo once that day, and might yet move back into the Sarambwe Forest again. She had been alerted by a Congolese national parks ranger, who in turn had been told by one of Colonel Francois Gizenga’s officers, that the troop had been seen moving across the border the day before. Marie had tried to contact Fletcher Reynolds, to warn him of the proximity of the gorilla troop to his hunting concession, but he had already left on safari with his clients. She had driven north from her base at Bukima, bluffing her way through army and UN roadblocks, until she had been close enough to walk to the hills where the apes had reportedly been seen.
Today was the first time she had ever carried a firearm on a gorilla trek. She had told her assistant, who had remarked on it, that it was because of the distant sounds of gunfire, of the army mounting yet another operation to try to oust whichever band of ragtag rebels was calling the Virunga park home this month. The gun was for her safety, she had said. However, secretly she replayed over and over in her mind the thrill of executing the poacher on her safari with Fletcher. From now on, if she came across an armed man who had no business in a park or other protected area, she would take the law into her own hands. It was risky, carrying a firearm into a neighbouring country, but Marie saw no alternative.
‘Absolutely no way, Anthony. I totally and utterly forbid it,’ Fletcher said.
‘Half a million dollars, Fletcher. Just think about it. Five times the price of a human being.’
They had left the Landcruiser parked in the jungle, just off the dirt road, and had been slogging through a latticework of vines and thistles for the best part of two hours. Anthony had sprung the surprise request on Fletcher that morning and had been badgering him ever since. To no avail.
‘Anthony, there is no way on God’s green earth that I am going to be a party to the killing or capture of a mountain gorilla. It’s simply not going to happen.’
Fletcher slapped at a mosquito on his neck, satisfied at the sight of blood on his fingers. He wished he could rid himself of Anthony and his mobsters as easily. Anthony, who had only just learned that there were mountain gorillas in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park adjoining the concession, said he had been fascinated, as a child, by a taxidermist’s shop in New York, which had a gorilla hand ashtray on its counter. ‘Ever since then I wanted one of those things,’ he’d said.
In addition, as if that request weren’t dangerous or difficult enough, Anthony had explained that a Chinese-American ‘businessman’ with whom he had an ‘association’ kept a private zoo on a farm in upstate New York. The man had mentioned, in passing, when Anthony had told him of his travels to Africa, that he would pay half a million dollars for a baby gorilla. ‘If his first offer was five hundred thousand,’ Anthony had reasoned, ‘he’ll ea
sy go seven-fifty or a mill. If I get a million I’ll split it fifty-fifty with you, Fletcher.’
Fletcher shook his head.
‘How about it, be a sport,’ Anthony tried again, stopping to unhook a barbed vine from his tiger-striped camouflage smock. He was wearing the bandanna again today, which Fletcher thought was as absurd as his request.
‘Once and for all, no!’ Fletcher hissed. ‘There are only a few hundred mountain gorillas left alive. I won’t be a party to poaching or an illegal armed incursion into Uganda!’
Anthony snorted. ‘Nah, but you’ll kill people for money. How do you sleep at night?’
Sal and Eddy laughed. They stumbled along behind Anthony, along with Vincent. Shane had dropped back, presumably to check on Delancy, who was bringing up the rear.
Fletcher was constantly looking back, keeping an eye on all his charges and making sure Shane was alert – not that he needed to worry on that account. He’d had his doubts about Shane’s sincerity, about wanting in on the business, and had half been expecting a setup of some kind. His quick results with the English lord, however, had convinced him that Shane was serious. The gory picture of the dead poacher was proof.
He scanned the trees above them and the jungle ahead of Patrice, a near impenetrable tangle of vines and bamboo thickets. He had deliberately steered Gizenga towards higher ground, thick with vegetation and away from existing roads, in the hope that there would be less chance of them running into any Rwandan rebels – or other armed militiamen who had sought refuge in the concession and were now being harassed by the Congolese Army. The ambush yesterday had worried him. The whole operation would come tumbling down around his ears if he ever lost a hunter to a stray bullet.
Counting Delancy, he was looking at hunting fees of half a million dollars already from this trip. Minus the cuts for Chuck, Gizenga, and now Shane, he would still clear about a quarter of a million dollars for himself.
‘Hey, Patrice, buddy! How about you? Could you use fifty grand?’ Anthony called ahead to the guide. Patrice looked over his shoulder and raised his eyebrows at Fletcher.
‘I’d kill you, if the UN anti-poaching patrols or the Congolese Army didn’t get you first,’ Fletcher told Patrice. The guide returned his attention to the creepers in front of him, hacking away with his panga. Overhead, monkeys chattered and leapt from tree to tree, their antics creating a light rain of falling leaves on the men far below.
‘Boy, I’m outta shape,’ Sal wheezed, wiping his brow with his bush hat. They were climbing steadily now, moving into the foothills of the mountains that constituted the gorillas’ refuge in the Bwindi Forest across the border.
Fletcher checked his GPS. They were close to the stream where Gizenga would release the target. With soldiers positioned each side of its banks, the man would logically follow the watercourse as the quickest route down off the mountain. As if on cue, his earpiece hissed to life, as Gizenga called him, quoting their prearranged callsigns.
‘We are ready to release. Are you in position, over?’ Gizenga asked.
‘Affirmative,’ Fletcher hissed. He held up a hand to stop their movement, then beckoned Anthony over. ‘Tell your men to stay alert. The army commander’s just told me there’s an armed poacher heading our way.’
‘Okay.’
‘Niner, this is zero alpha, over.’ Fletcher reached for the radio handset again at the unexpected sound of Caesar’s voice, calling from camp. He acknowledged the call.
‘Sah, I have Doctor Hamley here, over.’
Fletcher sighed. He knew very well that Chuck should have arrived by now, and wondered why Caesar was stating the obvious, bothering him with such news while he was out on safari and about to go into action. ‘So what, over?’
‘Sah, I am calling because Doctor Hamley wants to talk to you. He says it is urgent, over.’
Marie Delacroix turned to face the sound of gunfire. It was getting closer.
Mubare, the silverback, heard the noise as well, and gave his characteristic warning cough. The rest of the troop of gorillas looked to him.
Another weapon answered, and this one was close enough for Marie to hear the crack-thump of the bullet leaving the barrel and echoing across the mountainside.
Mubare stood on his hind legs and faced Marie, then beat a hollow-sounding tattoo on his chest, as if she, as a human, were somehow responsible for the bothersome noise. He grunted to his family and they veered off on a tangent, away from their south-bound feeding route, to the west. Marie held her breath as they filed past her. As he skirted her, Mubare gave her what she would have described from a human as an angry glare.
Marie took out her GPS and switched it on. While she waited for the gadget to compute her position, she pulled out her map. After a few minutes, the receiver gave her a position in degrees, minutes and seconds. Cross-referencing the figures on the map, she said, ‘Mon Dieu!’ They were perilously near to the border of the Congo, much closer than she had imagined. If the gorillas kept on their present heading they would be out of their sanctuary and in the DRC again – in Fletcher’s concession – in half an hour or less. She heard more gunfire to the east.
‘Stop the target!’ Fletcher hissed angrily into the radio.
‘Stop him? But what am I supposed to do, tell my men to kill him? I thought that was your job, over,’ Gizenga replied.
‘Shit,’ Fletcher swore to himself. He was cursed. He pulled Patrice aside and quickly issued his orders. He opened his day pack and pulled out his spare radio. He turned it on, checked the frequency and barked, ‘Run!’ at the guide, who turned and started jogging back the way they had come, brushing past Sal and Vincent, and not stopping to answer Shane when he asked what was going on.
Fletcher had halted them within sight of the banks of the rock-studded stream down which the target would soon be clambering. It was shallow, and only about two metres across at its widest, its muddy banks lined with luxuriant ferns.
Shane moved past the sweating, mud-stained Americans, and came to Fletcher’s side. ‘What’s up?’
‘Get back to where you were and keep a lookout down the trail. Chuck Hamley will be coming up soon. He’s driving to the nearest road junction and Patrice will guide him in.’
‘Okay, but what for? Chuck’s not due to go out on safari until tomorrow. Why the rush?’
‘Just do as I say!’
Shane nodded and moved away, keeping Fletcher in sight.
Fletcher moved to Anthony and knelt beside him. ‘Tell your guys to keep watch up that stream. That’s where the poacher will come from. Shoot him as soon as you see him.’
‘Wait a minute. How do you know which way he’s gonna be coming? I hope this ain’t a canned hunt.’
Fletcher sighed. ‘Call it instinct, okay?’ A canned hunt referred to the shooting of a drugged or captive-raised animal, a contest without challenge. Anthony was not as dumb as he looked but Fletcher had bigger problems than his clients working out his modus operandi.
‘Where you going?’ Anthony asked as Fletcher stood and walked towards the rear of the column.
‘To take care of some business.’
William Delancy was sitting on a moss-covered rock drinking from a canteen of water, his back turned to Fletcher. Thank God, Fletcher thought. At least he’d been given one piece of luck. He raised his rifle high in the air and brought the butt down with a satisfying crack on the back of the Englishman’s skull. Delancy fell to the muddy ground like a sack of potatoes.
Shane, who was watching for Patrice and Chuck’s arrival, turned at the sound of the thud. His eyes were wide with surprise. ‘What the —’
‘Search him,’ Fletcher ordered. ‘His pack, his webbing – everything.’
‘Hey, what gives?’ Vincent asked, craning his head, looking back from his position behind a stout tree trunk.
‘No problem. I’ll explain later. Just keep your eyes peeled for that poacher.’
Sal and Eddy muttered something to each other, but Anthony, who had se
en everything, hushed them and pointed back up the stream. For all his faults, Fletcher thought, Anthony was a man who knew when to butt out of other people’s business.
Shane knelt over the Englishman. He checked his pulse. ‘Well, at least you didn’t kill him,’ he muttered.
‘There’ll be time for that later. I want to hear him talk before I shoot him. Check that haversack over his shoulder. It doesn’t look like a particularly practical piece of kit for a hunter.’
Shane lifted the canvas bag, which was slung crossways from a wide strap across the front of Delancy’s torso, and undid the buckles. ‘It’s just a video camera in here.’
Fletcher knelt and looked in the bag. ‘What do you mean “just a video”? Look, the bloody thing’s gaffer-taped to the inside of the bag, and there’s a hole in the canvas. This bastard’s been filming us in secret.’ He removed the camera and two other spare tapes.
‘Why?’ Shane asked as he opened each of the pouches on Delancy’s belt, and the pockets of his hunting vest.
‘Because he’s a bloody journalist, that’s why. Sent to expose what we’re doing. Fuck!’ Fletcher ejected the tape from the mini digital video camera, dropped it and crushed it under the heel of his boot. He repeated the action with the other two tapes.
‘He killed a man yesterday. Even if he is a reporter, you can’t just murder him,’ Shane protested.
Fletcher put the camera back in Delancy’s haversack. ‘We’re in the middle of the biggest operation the Congolese Army’s run in this part of the country since the end of the civil war. William Delancy – or whatever his real name is – will die heroically, filming some of the action.’
Shane nodded. ‘How did he find out about us?’
‘I’ve got my suspicions.’
‘Wise?’ Shane asked.
Fletcher shook his head. ‘He might have been part of it, but he wouldn’t have had the contacts. When he came to me with his gripes he didn’t say he’d been to the media. He just threatened to go to the cops.’