Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers

by Wilbur Smith

  The Government had granted them special dispensation to continue the tradition. It was particularly prevalent amongst the old women of the tribe. “Are all your men in their huts?” Isaac asked quietly. “Are all the canoes on the beach?”

  The old woman blew her nose before she replied. She blocked one nostril with her thumb and from the other shot a shaft of silver mucus into the fire. She wiped the residue from her upper lip with the palm of her hand. “All my sons and their wives are asleep in the huts, and their children with them,” she cackled.

  “You saw no strange men with guns who wished you to ferry them across the river?” Isaac insisted, and the old woman shook her head and scratched herself.

  “We saw no strangers.”

  “I honour you, old mother,” Isaac told her formally, and pressed a small paper packet of sugar into her withered paw. “Stay in peace.”

  He ran back to the assault craft. The ranger cast off and jumped aboard as soon as Isaac started the motor. The next village was three miles further downstream. Once again Isaac went ashore. He knew the headman of this village and found him sitting alone in the smoke from the fish-drying fires to keep off the singing clouds of malarial mosquitoes. Twenty years before, the headman-had lost one of his feet to a crocodile, but he was still one of the most intrepid boatmen on the river.

  Isaac greeted him and gave him a packet of cigarettes and squatted beside him in the smoke. “You sit alone, Babo. Why can’t you sleep? Are there things that trouble you?”

  “An old man has many memories to trouble him.” The headman was evasive. “Like strangers with guns who demand passage in your canoes?” Isaac asked. “Did you give them what they wanted, Babo?”

  The headman shook his head. “One of the children saw them crossing the flood plains and ran to warn the village. We had time to hide the canoes in the reedbeds and run away into the bush.”

  “How many men?” Isaac encouraged him.

  The old man showed the fingers of both hands twice. “They were hard men with guns, and faces like lions,” he whispered. “We were afraid.”

  “When was this, Babo?”

  “The night before last,” the headman replied. “When they found no people in the village and no canoes, they were angry. They shouted at each other and waved their guns, but in the end they went away.” He pointed with his chin, eastwards down the river. “But now I am afraid they will return. That is why I sit awake while the village sleeps.”

  “Are the people of Mbepura still camped at the place of the Red Birds?” Isaac asked, and the headman nodded.

  “I think that after these hard men left here, they went down to Mbepura’s village.”

  “Thank you, old father.”

  The place of the Red Birds was named for the flocks of carmine-breasted bee-eaters which burrow their nests into the steep cutaway bank of the river at that point. Mbepura’s village was on the north bank, across the river from the clay cliff of the breeding colony. Isaac approached it with the engine idling softly, allowing the flow of the Zambezi to drift him down. All his rangers were alert. They had discarded their greatcoats and now crouched down below the gunwale with their weapons ready.

  With a soft burst of the engine, Isaac pushed in closer to the bank.

  Mbepura’s village was another tiny group of shaggy huts near the water’s edge. They seemed deserted and the drying fires below the fish-racks had been allowed to burn out. However, he saw in the gleam of the moon that the mooring poles for the canoes were still standing in the shallow muddy landing, but the canoes were missing. The fisherfolk lived by their canoes, their most precious possession.

  Isaac let the assault craft drift on downstream well below the village before he gunned the motor and cut back across the flow of the Zambezi, crossing half a mile of open water to the south bank. If the gang had crossed here, then they would be coming back the same way.

  Isaac checked the time, turning the luminous dial of his wristwatch to catch the moonlight. He calculated the distance from Chiwewe headquarters and divided it by the probable rate of march of the poachers, and made allowance for the fact that they were probably carrying heavy loads of plundered ivory.

  He looked up at the moon. Already it was paling at the approach of dawn. He could expect the returning raiders to get back to the Zambezi bank any time within the next two or three hours.

  “If I can find where they have cached the canoes,” he muttered.

  His guess was that they had commandeered Mbepura’s entire flotilla of canoes. He recalled that on his last visit to the village there had been seven or eight of these frail craft, each of them hollowed out from a massive log of the Kigelia tree. Each of them could accommodate six or seven passengers for the journey across the great river.

  The gang would probably have dragooned the men from the village to act as boatmen. The handling of the canoes required skill and experience, for the canoes were cranky and unstable, especially under a heavy load. He guessed that they would probably have left the boatmen under guard on the south bank while they marched on to Chiwewe.

  “If I can find the canoes, I’ve got them cold,” Isaac decided. He turned the assault boat in towards the south bank a little downstream from where he judged that the canoes would have crossed.

  When he found the entrance to a lagoon he pressed the sharp bows into the dense stand of papyrus reeds that blocked the mouth. He cut the engine and his rangers used handfuls of the tough papyrus stems to pull themselves deeper into the reedbed while Isaac stood in the bows and sounded for bottom with a paddle.

  As soon as it was shallow enough, Isaac and one of his senior rangers waded ashore, leaving the rest of the party to guard the boat. On dry land Isaac gave his ranger whispered orders, sending him down-river to search for the canoes and check the bank for signs of the passage of a large party of marauders. When he had gone, Isaac set off in the opposite direction, upstream. He went alone, swiftly and silently, moving like a wraith in the river mist.

  He had judged it accurately. He had not gone more than half a mile upstream when he smelt smoke. It was too strong and fresh to originate from the village on the far side of the broad river, and Isaac knew that there were no habitations on this bank. This was part of the National Park.

  He moved in quietly towards the source of the smoke. At this point the bank was a sheer red clay cliff into which the bee eaters burrowed their subterranean nests. However, there was a break in the cliff directly below where he crouched. it was a narrow gulley, choked with riverine bush that formed a natural landing-place from the river.

  The faint glimmer of coming dawn gave Isaac just sufficient light to make out the encampment in the gulley below him. The canoes were drawn up well out of the water so that they would be concealed from anyone searching from a boat. There were seven canoes, the entire flotilla from Mbepura’s village across the river.

  Nearby, the boatmen were lying around two small smoky fires. They were wrapped in karosses of animal skin and, as protection from mosquitoes, each of them had drawn the covering completely over his head, so they looked like corpses laid out in a morgue. An armed poacher sat at each fire with his AK 47 rifle across his lap, guarding the sleeping boatmen and making certain that none of them sneaked away to the beached canoes nearby. “Danny figured it exactly right,” Isaac told himself. “They are waiting for the return of the raiding party.”

  He drew back from the cliff edge and silently circled inland. Within two hundred yards he intersected a well-trodden game trail that left the river and headed directly southward in the direction of Chiwewe headquarters camp.

  Isaac followed it for a short distance until the game trail dipped through a shallow dry water-course. The bed of the water-course was of sugary white sand and the prints that it held were plain to decipher even in the uncertain pre-dawn light. A large party of men in Indian file had trodden deeply, but their tracks were eroded and overlaid by the tracks of both large and small game. Twenty-four hours old, Isaac estimate
d.

  This was the route on their outward march. Almost the raiding party had take certainly they would use the same trail on their return march to rejoin the waiting canoes.

  Isaac found a vantage point from which he was able to overlook a long stretch of the trail while remaining well concealed in a patch of dense Jesse bush. At his back there was a secure escape route for him down a shallow donga, the banks of which were screened with a heavy growth of rank elephant grass. He settled in to wait. The light strengthened swiftly and within minutes he could make out the full length of the game trail winding away into the mopane forest.

  The sunrise chorus of birds began with the noisy duet of a pair of Heughlin robins in the donga behind him, and then the first flight of wild duck sped overhead. Their arrowhead formation was crisp and black against the tangerine and heron blue of the dawn sky.

  Isaac crouched in his ambush position. There was no way that he could be certain how long the poachers might take on the return march from Chiwewe. Danny had reckoned on ten hours or so. If he were correct they would be arriving any minute now. Isaac checked his wristwatch again.

  However, Danny’s estimate might be wildly inaccurate. Isaac prepared himself for a long wait. During the war, they had at times lain in ambush position for days on end, once for five days when they had slept and eaten and defecated without rising from where they lay. Patience was the hunter’s and the soldier’s single most important virtue.

  In the distance he heard a baboon bark, that booming alarm call with which the wily ape greets the appearance of a predator. The cry was taken up by other members of the troop, and then gradually silence returned as the danger receded or the baboons retreated deeper into the forest. Now Isaac’s nerves were strung out with tension. He knew that the apes might have barked at a leopard, but they would have reacted the same way to the passing of a file of human beings.

  Fifteen minutes later and much closer he heard a grey lourie cry “Go away! Go away!” in a harsh screech. Another one of the sentinels of the bush was reacting to the presence of danger.

  Isaac never stirred, but he blinked his eyes rapidly to clear his vision. Minutes later, he picked out another less obtrusive sound from the subtle orchestra of the wilderness. It was the whirring chatter of a honey guide. The sound told him where to look and he spotted the small nondescript brown bird in the top branches of a mopane far ahead. It flitted above the game trail, flicking its wings, darting from tree to tree and uttering seductive entreaties. If they were prepared to follow the bird, it would lead the honey badger or man to a hive of wild bees.

  While they robbed the hive the honey guide would hover in close waiting for its share of the comb and the grubs that it contained. The bird’s specially adapted digestive system was capable of breaking down the beeswax and deriving nourishment where no other creature could. Legend maintained that if you failed to leave the bird his portion of the spoils, then the next time he would lead you to a deadly mamba or a man-eating lion.

  The honey guide drew closer to where Isaac waited, and suddenly he discerned obscure movement in the forest below the fluttering bird. Swiftly the shadowy shapes resolved into a column of men moving down the game trail. The head of the column drew level with the head of the donga where Isaac lay.

  Although they were dressed in tattered and filthy clothing with an eclectic selection of hcadwear that ranged from baseball caps to faded military floppies, each of them carried an AK 47 rifle and an elephant tusk.

  Some of them carried the tusk balanced upon their heads, the natural curve of the ivory drooping down fore and aft. Others carried it over the shoulder, using one hand to balance the burden while the other hand held the assault rifle. Most of them had woven a pad of bark string and soft grass to cushion the galling weight of the ivory on their scalps or collar-bones.

  The agony that their loads were causing after all these hours and miles of trek was evident on their contorted faces. Yet to each of the raiders the tusk they carried represented an enormous fortune, and they would suffer permanent physical damage rather than abandon it.

  The man leading the column was short and squat, with thick bow-legs and a bull neck. The mellow early light caught the glossy scar down the side of his face. “Sali,” Isaac hissed as he recognised him. He was the most notorious of all the Zambian poachers. Twice before their paths had crossed, and each time it had cost the lives of good men.

  He passed close to where Isaac lay at a swinging jog-trot, carrying the thick honey-coloured tusk balanced on his head. He alone of all his men showed no signs of distress from the long march.

  Isaac counted the poachers as they passed his position. The slower and weaker ones had fallen far behind the killing pace that Sali set, so the column was strung out. It took almost seven minutes by Isaac’s wristwatch for all of them to go by.

  Nineteen. Isaac counted the last pair as they limped past. Greedily they had selected tusks too heavy for their own strength and they were paying the price now.

  Isaac let them go, but the moment they disappeared in the direction of the river, he rose from his ambush position and slipped away into the donga. He moved with extreme caution for he could not be certain that there were not still other members of the gang on the trail behind him.

  The assault boat was where he had left it, moored in the reeds at the entrance to the lagoon. Isaac waded out alongside the boat and swung himself in over the gunwale. He noticed that the man he had sent down river had returned.

  Quietly he told his men what he had found, and he watched their expressions. They were good men, all three of them, but the odds were formidable even for them, and the enemy were hard men with faces like lions, as the headman had described them. “We will take them on the water,” Isaac told them. “And we will not wait for them to fire the first shot. They are armed, and they are carrying ivory in the Park. That is enough. We will take them by surprise when they expect us least.

  Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, had issued a directive that was unequivocal. They had the right to shoot on sight. Too many Parks men had been killed in these clashes to justify the usual niceties of a formal challenge.

  The expressions of the listening rangers hardened and they hefted their weapons with renewed confidence. Isaac ordered them to work the boat out of the reeds and as soon as they reached open water he cranked the starter motor. The engine balked and fired roughly and cut out.

  He cranked it again and again until the battery became sluggish.

  They were drifting away swiftly down stream.

  Muttering angrily, Isaac hurried back and pulled the cover off the motor.

  While he worked on it he was vividly aware that upstream the gang would be loading the plundered ivory into the canoes and preparing to cross back into their own territory and safety.

  He left the motor uncovered and ran forward to the controls.

  This time the motor fired and ran, surged and then faded. He pumped the throttle and she surged again and then settled to a steady beat. The engine whined shrilly as he turned across the current and ran back upstream.

  The sound of the unmuted motor carried far ahead, and it must have alerted the gang. As Isaac drove the assault boat around the next bend, all the canoes were strung out across the river racing for the north shore.

  The rising sun was behind Isaac’s back and the broad stretch of water was lit like a theatre stage. The Zambezi was bright emerald green, the papyrus beds were crowned with gold where the sun’s rays struck them. The canoes were starkly lit. Each of the frail craft carried a boatman and three passengers, together with a full load of ivory. Their free-board was only the width of a man’s hand, and they lay so low in the water that the men seemed to be crouched on the very surface.

  The boatmen were paddling frantically. Their long spearshaped paddles flashed in the sunlight as they drove for the far bank. The leading canoe was already within a hundred yards of the Zambian papyrus beds.

  The propeller of the Yamaha carve
d a lacy wake from the glossy green surface as Isaac swung the boat in a long curving trajectory to head off the leading canoe from the sanctuary of the reeds.

  As the two vessels closed, Isaac made out the scarred visage of Sali . He squatted in the warped bows, turning his head awkwardly to glare back at them, unable to move without upsetting the delicate trim of the canoe.

  “This time we’ve got you,” Isaac whispered, as he pushed the throttle forward to the stop, and the Yamaha shrieked.

  Suddenly Sali rose to his feet and the canoe rocked wildly under him. Water slopped in over the wooden sides and the canoe began to flood and settle. Sali shouted a threat at Isaac and he lifted the AK his face was contorted into a mask of fury and fired a long continuous burst at the boat racing down on him.

  Bullets slammed into the hull and one of the instrument gauges on the control console in front of Isaac exploded. He ducked, but held her on course to ram the canoe.

  Soli flicked the empty magazine out of the rifle, and loaded another from his bandolier. He fired again. The bright brass cases sparkled in the sunlight as they were spewed from the breech. One of the rangers in the front of the assault boat cried out and clutched at his stomach as he tumbled to the deck, and at that moment the bows of the assault boat crashed into the side of the canoe at thirty knots. The brittle kigelia wood shattered, and the men in her were hurled into the river.

  At the last moment before the collision, Sali threw the AK 47 aside and dived overboard. He tried to force his body deep beneath the water to escape the speeding hull. He thought he could cover the last few yards to the edge of the reedbed without surfacing and showing himself again.

  However, his lungs were full of air and the buoyancy prevented him diving deeply enough. Although his head and body were angled downwards, his feet were only a few inches below the surface.

  The propeller of the Yamaha was spinning at peak revolutions as it passed over his left leg. It took his foot off cleanly at the ankle and went over his calf muscles like the blade of a bread-slicing machine, shredding the meat down to the bone.