I pulled up on the yoke to give us a better view of the elephant herd that extended across several kilometers around Horseshoe. The place looked all the more beautiful from above in the early morning light—the glistening oxbow lake of Horseshoe teeming with elephants. Pods of hippos dotted the bends in the river, bobbing up and down in objection to our presence as we flew over at one hundred meters. It felt great to be up flying a census again.
Jon was counting furiously from the backseat, sitting next to Natembo. Gidean was in the front adding the numbers on a chart. After three hours of census flying, I was pretty exhausted. But the place was littered with elephants, which made the time fly by.
All morning we had counted groups of several hundred that extended all along the Kwando heading south from Susuwe, and seeing this many elephants was breathtaking. “This is unbelievable!” I said, leaning over to Gidean and speaking loudly through the airplane headset.
Gidean nodded, holding his stratified map of coordinates and elephant numbers on a clipboard. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” He leaned over to take a photograph.
Jon called up from the back, “Five hundred on this side and still more.”
“Four hundred this side,” called Natembo.
“Largest group I’ve ever seen,” Jon called. “Total of six hundred on my side.”
Gidean entered the count on his map. “Natembo, your final count?”
“Five hundred and fifty this side,” Natembo answered.
We were doing the stratified count as planned, flying at a height of a hundred meters along a predetermined set of GPS coordinates that were one kilometer apart. The tight coordinates meant a lot of banking—which was having a cumulative effect on my stomach, despite the Dramamine I had taken.
I looked at the mirror as Jon dipped into a bag of greasy slices of dried meat. “Wouldn’t want to drive through that lot!” He laughed and chewed hungrily as he saw me looking at him. “Bloody pachyderm Jurassic Park deal.” He handed the soggy bag up to me. “Gemsbok. Keeps the stomach grounded.”
I hesitated as I looked into the bag of greasy globs that were more fat than meat. I decided that I’d better decline. And I wasn’t going to allow myself not to enjoy Jon’s company. Just as long as I didn’t say anything incriminating, what would it hurt? If I suddenly became cool, that would also not be good, as he’d sense that something was wrong. I was going to ride this out and Craig would have an explanation for his doubt and we’d move past this awkward situation. I had to believe that. And right now, I needed to believe that.
We flew south along the snaking Kwando and continued past Horseshoe. The river looked as if it went on forever south. But when we reached the Botswana cutline we turned due west toward the Kavango River, two hundred kilometers away.
After a few minutes of flying over the sandveld, we came upon a long double fence bordering Botswana. I could see a kudu caught in between the fences, trying to escape. Carcasses of those that hadn’t make it hung on the fence.
“Jon, is the ministry aware of this?”
“It’s a bloody travesty.” He chewed on some more biltong. “Cattle can’t rub noses with wildlife if the Europeans are to enjoy disease-free prime rib.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Used to be worse. The fence used to come right up to the river. Now, at least there is a twenty-kilometer corridor for game to move up and down the Kwando and Kavango.”
“That’s right, you mentioned that elephant-movement study showing how much elephants use the area.”
“Yes, sometimes scientific data actually gets turned into management policy.” He smiled. “A rare thing indeed.”
Gidean finished reviewing his map and looked over at me. “We’ve finished the southern high-density area. We need to do the block along the Angolan border.” He pointed to his watch. “Do we have time?”
I checked the fuel gauge and nodded, banking left over the floodplain. We headed north along the sparkling Kwando, past Hippo Pool, past Nambwa Campsite, past Susuwe, and up toward the Angolan border.
The right side of the floodplain was lined with cornfields in various stages of harvest, some in the range of a hectare or two and some much more substantial. Clusters of huts dappled the horizon far inland of the floodplain, first the village of Choyi and then Kongola, and as we got further north, Shesheke and then the sprawling Singalamwe, bordering Zambia. We must have seen six or seven large groups of hippos along the way.
When we reached a long straight cutline that looked like a firebreak, I recognized the Angolan border. I started banking left and pressed down on the left rudder, but I was a little too late and we crossed the border.
An urgent voice came over the radio. “Identify yourself! You do not have permission to cross into Angolan airspace!”
Startled, I banked more sharply.
“If you do not explain your purpose we are prepared to shoot!”
I grabbed the radio. “Radio one. Radio one. Please be prepared for Cessna 182 code 22668. Permission to bank over border. Aerial survey under way.” As I spoke, I could see a whole open area between dense veins of trees that was filled with freshly butchered elephant carcasses, smoke from a fire, and long strings of red meat hanging on drying racks. This was a different camp. And much bigger than the previous one.
Jon called up from the back, “Je’sus, Catherine, get us out of here, now.”
The sounds of automatic weapon fire exploded from below. The high-pitched sound of bullets penetrating the metal of the fuselage pierced my ears like daggers. “Damn it!” I pulled up on the yoke and quickly gained elevation.
In our rapid ascent, I had to dodge a group of vultures spiraling in a thermal and try not to stall the plane in the process. The plane began to bounce in the thermal, and I fought the rudder pedals and yoke as hard as I could, trying to stay level. I tightened my stomach and tried to focus on every detail as the conditions kept changing.
Jon grabbed my seat from behind as we continued to bounce through the thermal. “Kak, man!”
Natembo sat in stoic silence, while Gidean looked like his life was passing before him.
Suddenly the plane hit an air pocket and we went into a free fall from a hundred meters. My stomach lurched as I pushed in the throttle and pulled up on the yoke to get some lift. My stomach felt like it was coming out of my mouth as my ears popped from the loss of altitude. There were a few sickening seconds of dread before the plane leveled out at fifty meters, just above a dense acacia woodland.
My heart was beating in my ears. I took deep breaths to ease my pulse and loosen up my rib cage. I tried to appear as calm as possible under the circumstances. I held the lives of these guys in my hands. All I could think about was getting us all on solid ground as quickly as possible. I had never before been shot at in flight, and I had only been in two other free falls as a pilot at such a low elevation, but they hadn’t lasted nearly as long as this one.
They say that things slow down in the final moments before disaster. But what no one says is that time actually stands still. Those sickening moments churn in the gut like they had been there for an eternity. I would have given anything for time to move faster on any one of these occasions, but it never does.
We flew the thirty minutes back to Popa Falls in silence. I could tell that no one wanted to guess how many carcasses they had seen. This block would have to wait to be counted.