THE LAST SAVANNA

by Mike Bond

  M’kele shook his head. “Just now.”

  Cold bamboo fronds slipped down MacAdam’s neck; mosquitoes gathered, rapacious in the chill. Don’t lose a man. The trail ahead vanished up a slope of silvery dark bamboo undulating in downrolling waves of mist. Bamboos blocked either side of the path and closed in on their back trail like predators slinking up behind. Gideon’s spare, spectacled face half-emerged from their leaves; MacAdam hand-signaled him: move back and deploy.

  In between the bamboos the trails of heavy-hoofed Cape buffalo were skeins of a web where the poachers could creep silently, invisibly, shoot from anywhere. With a hand on M’kele’s shoulder MacAdam pushed him down. The air tasted like bullets; he imagined their hot sour steel smashing the nape of his neck. “Go back. Climb the ridge and follow it north to the top of this valley, up there where the trees end. It’s 14:50. In exactly half an hour, at 15:20, I’ll meet you there. Watch both sides of the ridge. But the poachers should be below you, inside this valley, and if you get a chance to shoot don’t worry about me because I’ll be ahead of you.”

  M’kele swung his jaw, motioning MacAdam back also. A stonechat’s raspy alarm made him tuck his head; MacAdam saw the bird spring from the top of a lichen-clad cycad fifty yards upslope, the wide soft flap of its wings echoing off the treetops, then silenced by the mist. “Go!” he shoved M’kele. “Don’t shoot at sounds.”

  M’kele was gone. Drops fell from the trees down MacAdam’s neck; sweat trickled down his underarm and off his wrist where mosquitoes fumbled in the reddish hairs fringing his sleeve. Mist ovaled the crenellations of his rifle’s barrel shroud and beaded on the bright hard plastic of its stock. A grass blade sprang back up from the poacher’s track. The chatter of mosquitoes at his ears shut out the faint waterfall roar of the mist cascading downhill.

  Softly he crawled upslope, rifle cradled against his chest, his elbows and knees sucking into the mossy, rooty, tendrilled soil and dung-spattered, hoof-punctured mud as he moved, pushing aside the thick growth of bamboo stalks with the muzzle, holding his breath to slow the loud panting in his throat, saplings scratching his pack and slapping at his ankles and shutting off his sight as though he crawled blind across the bottom of a sea.

  Any moment the poachers would shoot, he could feel it; every second his body awaited the hail of hot steel biting through it. You always expect it, he told himself. But this time it’s true.

  Here the buffalo trail forked, then splintered among mucky bamboo stalks ripped by horns. The poachers’ tracks separated, then rejoined, the ridge less steep now as it neared the top of the valley. The poachers have gone on, he told himself, the distance growing again between us, and we almost walked right up their backs. Three white colobus monkeys in the high side boughs of a podocarpus at the valley’s topmost edge were peering anxiously downhill—no, there were four—no, five of them—what are they seeing? Could my men be there already? That’s too early to climb the whole ridge and then all the way up this valley.

  Something was wrong and, like all wrong things when you first sense them, he could not place it. He crept ten yards upslope and raised his head to look again, but now the podocarpus with the five colobus was blocked by intervening trees, and when he finally could see it again the colobus were gone. There was nothing to do but creep down and cross the valley and back up the other hill to where the colobus had seen something, and find out what it was.

  As he moved forward his rifle caught on creepers. Bending to detach it he lost his hat and knelt to retrieve it when with a great crash of bamboo a buffalo jumped up from its bed ten feet away, smashed the bamboos aside with a swing of its huge ebony horns, lowered its head and charged. In its black thundering chest wide as a truck and its white-red enraged eyes and squat ugly snout, MacAdam recognized Death, Death this instant, with no time to shoot as he stood frozen for an instant ankle-deep in bamboo muck, then dived aside, too late for the buffalo to swerve, his chest raked by one sharp broken-tipped horn as the buffalo swung round its wide black rack and came for him again. Now MacAdam could shoot but dared not, fearing to warn the poachers, saw if he did not shoot he’d die, raised the rifle but the rifle wasn’t there—knocked away in the buffalo’s first charge—and he ran crazily through barred walls of bamboo, the buffalo’s infuriated huff smacking his neck. He dived, knowing he’d be trampled, this is Death, he thought, but the buffalo overran him, a hoof whacking his ribs, the buffalo’s body tilting like a race pony’s as it turned again, broad blocky head with its outreaching gnarled crown of jagged horns meeting across the shaggy brow, its angry white breath and slobber-speckled chest smashing down bamboos as it galloped at him. He jumped round a tree making the buffalo veer round it also, and then he ducked to the other side; the buffalo pivoted again and he leaped up the first few branches; the animal halted, tearing boulders and stumps from the earth with the side-to-side jerk of its horns.

  Crouched into a crotch of the tree, MacAdam tried to present the smallest possible rifle target from the ground. The mist was clearing; the bamboo canopy at his feet glowed with renewed emerald precision; under every stalk he saw a poacher’s upraised rifle. The tree cracked and shuddered as the buffalo thrust against it, backed away, looked up, and thrust again. MacAdam wrapped his legs around the trunk and wedged his arms among its branches. He could not see his rifle in the trampled muddy brush below.

  The buffalo roared dismally, protruding its glossy lower lip in rage. Then, tossing a bamboo clump off its horn and over its shoulder, it trotted uphill and vanished into the foliage.

  MacAdam slid part way down, still not able to see his gun. The mud reeked of buffalo dung and urine; black water was seeping into the gouges and craters made by the buffalo’s horns and hooves; broken bamboo shafts thrust up like half-buried swords. He dropped to the ground, waited, ran a few steps and spun round but the buffalo did not come. A crackle of brush made him jump but it was just a broken branch falling from the tree he had climbed, and here was his gun on the ground before him, as if dropped there from another world.

  He switched it to auto, off safety, and scrambled to the tree. Beyond the roar of his breath the jungle was silent, as if the buffalo had never been. Mosquitoes began to hover. Like a slender enchanted leaf, a night adder gracefully descended a bamboo stalk and slid away.

  Feeling an awful pain he looked down, astonished to see his chest painted with blood. He crept back downhill, waited in silence, then angled up the valley side towards one ridge, the rank odor of buffalo coming down new shoals of silent mist. He cut sideways and back down to the main trail, crossing new buffalo prints, then on the trail the barefoot tracks of several men scrambling fast.

  He left the trail, moving quietly, halted on one knee among cabbage-smelling plants, watching round and round through leafy walls of barred bamboo, wanting to stay here because it seemed safer, but again he moved upslope, on his stomach now, one elbow forward at a time, paralleling the trail. Near the crest he slowed, circled instinctively to the left, where his men might already be. Parrying a wide bamboo frond with his rifle muzzle, he saw crouched twenty yards away a near-naked black man with an AK47.

  From this angle MacAdam could not fire except uphill towards where his men should be. When he was sure this Somali had not heard or seen him he turned to check behind him, where ten yards away stood a second Somali, near-naked as the first, this one pointing his rifle at the center of MacAdam’s chest.

  14

  THERE WAS NO time to raise and swing round his rifle; bullets from the other man’s hard black muzzle would smash him down. MacAdam lifted his hands, knowing this too was useless, this baring of his chest in a plea for mercy. I’m a killer; you’re a killer; let’s get it over with. But with a sense of grace the instant widened: I mean no harm, I’m not afraid of you—knowing also that the man would shoot. With the tip of his rifle the man motioned MacAdam closer.

  Across ten green yards of stems and downcast branches, through the wavering air somnolent with rotting vegetation and
the exhalations of a billion leaves, MacAdam conveyed the totality of his life to this young man with his sideways scarred face and thin wide hungry mouth, his large eyes rounded by danger and compassion. I need time, MacAdam told him. I haven’t been good to my wife. I’ve been superficial with life—I’m not ready for death—I want years, a few seconds, to understand, see the desert sunset—please let me. But MacAdam knew the compassion in the Somali’s eyes was not reprieve but only pity for the doomed.

  When the rifle fired he clutched himself against the bullets, thinking this is death, you do not feel it, as he fell among the bamboo saplings and could not find the pain. He scrambled for his gun as guns were firing everywhere and he churned round to shoot but the Somali was not there and another ran ducking up the trail. MacAdam fired and the man tumbled horribly, the air too hot and stinking of bullets. A scream rose like a call to heaven then died down, an ant ran over his wrist, his belly wet in mud, air like a train in his ears.

  A yellow butterfly crawled, trembling crushed wings, up a red stem before his eye. The heartbeat in his brain was like a fast-moving clock. Unbelieving he looked down at his body but could see no bullet wound, only the buffalo’s gash across his chest, and could not understand how the man had missed him at such close range. Then he realized the shots had been Enfields, his men shooting.

  Something hustled over the leaves, masked by foliage—a quiet breath, a flutter of brush. Not seeing well enough to shoot, he crept forward, finding blood and tracks of bare feet. Three men. He fell to his stomach as bullets whistled and whacked among the trees, the crack of Enfields burst out behind him, and a Kalashnikov rattled harshly ahead.

  A bullet struck, catapulting dirt and twigs into his face. He felt fear, then fury with himself for being here, rage at his own men for shooting down at him. Squirming to the left, he began to ascend the last slope, on his belly, one knee or arm forward at a time, the rifle heavy as a log in front of him, sweat and mud and leaves and tendrils and mosquitoes in his eyes, a new staccato of guns erratic behind him. In an instant’s clarity he saw he had condemned himself to this purposeless horror because he did not value life, his own life. The slope eased; he ducked over the ridge where the forest opened, and ran up the far side of the ridge through knee-deep tussocks, boots splashing in the muck between them, then breathless out of the mist into the astonishing gold glare of the sun and back over the ridge into the sun-bright glade of forest at the top of the valley.

  The clouds of mist spread out beneath him like an incandescent sea in which the crowns of a few tall trees floated like islands. Wraiths of mist clung like usnea lichen to the nearer scrub through which the path snaked upwards the last two hundred meters to the valley top; up from this, from the gray ambivalence of cloud forest into the grilling brightness of the sun, ran three men with rifles. MacAdam jumped back over the ridge and darted downhill, then back over the ridge again just above where the three would cross this saddle and probably drop into the mists of the valley on the other side. Remembering how many bullets he’d already used and gauging the point at which the three poachers would cross the saddle, and where he’d best find cover yet could control an open field of fire, he twisted and ducked down to a clump of senecio overlooking the saddle and dived down among its rocks. Wiping sweat from his eyes, he laid the white point of his rifle’s front sight into the cradle of the rear, against the nearest man’s chest.

  The men’s heads bobbed as they ran uphill. They were gasping and kept looking back. There was a dip in the trail and their heads vanished, then came up again as from the trough of a wave. The lead one grabbed the next one’s arm, pulling him upwards; MacAdam centered his front sight on the lead one’s chest and softly touched the trigger; the lead one neared, dodging side to side with pain and exhaustion; it was the tall, scar-faced man who’d held MacAdam in his sights and had not fired.

  MacAdam felt nausea, disgust. Blood covered the scarred man’s chest and shoulder. He slowed and turned to urge the others on, his mouth round with agony. His heaving chest filled MacAdam’s iron sights and for a flash it was to MacAdam ridiculously like a school experiment in which he had once attempted and failed to draw his own blood. He stood silently covering them as the men came up out of the last fog, then saw him, staggered and stopped.

  The back two dropped their rifles and raised their hands; the first stared wildly at him, unable to decide between death now and death a little later—MacAdam waved his rifle tip, trying to hide the trembling in his wrists, and very reluctantly the first man put down his Kalashnikov. He stared at MacAdam; I’ve put down my gun, his eyes said. Now are you going to shoot me?

  “Over here,” MacAdam yelled. His voice seemed garbled and he could not remember the words, realized these men would not understand Swahili and waved one hand to show they should move uphill from their guns. A figure far below coalesced out of the fog, a grim, sharp, dark point that became a man and rifle, then seventy yards behind it another, both climbing fast. In an instant MacAdam realized he’d have to shoot the men he had if he were to deal with the two now coming. Then he saw the first was M’kele, with Darius behind him, and MacAdam wondered at M’kele’s courage, in the open, tracking an unseen enemy who at any moment could turn and shoot him down.

  “We got them all!” M’kele yelled.

  “You got four?”

  “We got four.”

  “What about us?”

  “Kuria—”

  “Kuria?” MacAdam screamed.

  “—his leg. He’s okay.”

  On MacAdam’s right perimeter there was a flash of movement as the scar-faced poacher broke and ran for the ridge, his naked blackness darting side to side in the waist-high scrub, angling for a fringe of trees. MacAdam’s first shot seemed to go to his right, the rifle kicking back MacAdam’s shoulder, deafening, the second shot wide and to the left, above the man’s head. Shocked, MacAdam fired again, low and to the left, then high to the right and to the right again. The man hit the crest and was over, then was knocked feet-forwards, flat above the ground, by M’kele’s first bullets, as if he were a high jumper on his back crossing the bar. He collapsed in an uphill slog of dust, rolled on his belly and scrambled for the trees, dragging one leg like a wounded hyena until another bullet hit him and he went down, arching up his belly like a broken-backed snake, and M’kele walked slowly uphill to him and fired a last shot into his brain.

  Darius ran up panting, sorrow straining his face. M’kele came down and they gathered up the Kalashnikovs. “Why you be missing that man, Captain?” M’kele said, stern-faced.

  MacAdam felt branded, like a criminal. “He had a chance to shoot me, and he didn’t.”

  “They Somali like hyena sinew. They always kill you in the end.” M’kele and Darius tied up the two remaining prisoners and MacAdam followed them back down into the fog, past the man MacAdam had killed, to where Gideon guarded two other men and Kuria sat clutching a splint bandaged round his thigh. One of Gideon’s prisoners called out and the man in front of MacAdam answered, then Gideon’s prisoner began to wail like an antelope caught by lions. MacAdam knew they were talking about the dead man up the hill, the tall scar-faced Somali who had looked into his eyes and not shot him.

  One of Gideon’s thick lenses was cracked like a star blocking his eye. Kuria’s left thigh was broken; the bullet had taken out an inch of bone and a fistful of muscle behind it. MacAdam saw Kuria was crippled for life but that he couldn’t tell him, not now, that he had to get him down the mountain. His mind was racing for chopper sites, then remembered there was no chopper, but there were only three hours till dark and a hundred different ways to die going down. He had promised himself he wouldn’t lose a man and already he’d lost one. But of course, the one he’d lost was the scar-face Somali, not one of his own. With M’kele holding Kuria down, MacAdam jerked the broken thighbone straight, picked chunks of loose marrow and bone chips from the back of the wound, filled it with gauze and podocarpus leaves, compressed and rewrapped it. “Wher
e’s the seventh guy?” MacAdam said.

  “Dead back there,” Kuria answered. His lips were gray with pain and MacAdam felt somehow he’d wronged him. One of Gideon’s prisoners was weeping, head jerking back and forth. “The guy up the hill was his brother,” Darius said.

  “It doesn’t m-matter,” M’kele answered. “We got to kill them all.”

  Darius raised his rifle, snapped the bolt. The weeping man looked up, and in his eyes MacAdam recognized the woe of all the world distilled, the collective fear since life began, the fear of death—our own death and that of those we love. And MacAdam felt cold in his own heart from Darius’ simple killer’s gesture of making the metal sound with his gun, the reminding sound: in a few instants this gun is going to kill you.

  In the doomed Somali’s eyes MacAdam saw himself. It was he, MacAdam, who knelt there tied beside his brothers, facing these hardened soldiers and this whiteman officer who raise their guns to shoot him down.

  “We don’t shoot captives,” he said.

  Darius shook his head. “President’s orders, sir.”

  MacAdam quelled an urge to smile at Darius, force him to feel this realization—how crucial, essential, life was. But that wasn’t the way. “And then who’s going to carry this lazy Kuria man all the way downhill?” he said instead.

  “It’s the Ministry, sir.” M’kele’s voice was a teacher’s coaxing a slow student. “Our superior…”

  “If it’s Nehemiah I’ll deal with him,” MacAdam answered brusquely. He imagined Nehemiah nodding as he told him about this spark of life that must not be snuffed. “Darius, get bamboo poles for a stretcher,” he ordered, “and M’kele, get out the ponchos, and Gideon, hustle those prisoners together over there.” He sensed the chaos and danger pass, his men quick and angry as they built the stretcher, placing Kuria on it and wrapping him in the second poncho.