Hennie and his men sat around the fire, with cups of coffee. Some had a sandwich in hand; others dunked a rusk into their coffee to soften the hard-baked confection. Crys hadn’t appeared yet.
‘Do you think she’ll keep her mouth shut?’ Sampson asked.
‘Most National Geographic reporters are real pros,’ Hennie replied. ‘I think she’ll keep to what she agreed.’
The men stared into the flames.
‘I thought she did pretty well,’ Hennie continued, ‘considering she’s only been in Africa a few days. Most people, men or women, wouldn’t have had the balls to do what she did.’
‘She did what we asked. She’s tougher than she looks,’ Bongani said.
‘She must have been shocked out of her skull when you cut off his balls,’ Ariko said. ‘Probably never dreamed of anything like that.’
Hennie shrugged. ‘Hard to know what people dream about.’
‘Wish she would wake up,’ Sampson growled. ‘I want to get out of here.’
‘We’ll give her until ten-thirty. If she’s not up, I’ll wake her,’ Ariko said.
‘No, let me do it,’ Sampson said, lifting his rifle. ‘This should be loud enough to get her up.’
The men around the fire laughed, imagining what the woman’s reaction would be to an elephant gun being fired right outside her tent.
Crys opened her eyes and looked at her watch. It was just after ten. She’d only had about five hours’ sleep, and they weren’t good. Some of the time, images of the man tied to the ground had flashed into her mind, and she’d heard his screams. Other times, she saw hyenas, licking their lips, saliva dripping from their powerful jaws, creeping towards the man. He was struggling, knowing he was going to be eaten.
And sometimes it wasn’t the poacher she saw.
Sometimes it was Michael.
She closed her eyes and pulled the pillow over her head, hoping the images would go away. They didn’t.
Eventually she dragged herself out of her sleeping bag and unzipped the tent. She saw that the others were sitting around a fire, a blackened kettle balanced on a twisted grate above it.
‘Coffee?’ Hennie offered.
Crys nodded. ‘Thanks.’
He spooned some instant coffee powder into a tin mug and poured water over it.
‘No milk,’ he said.
‘No problem,’ she mumbled.
‘Sugar?’
‘Two, please.’
After adding the sugar and giving the liquid a stir, he handed Crys the mug. She sat down on a dead tree they’d pulled close to the fire. Like the others, she gazed at the flames.
‘Crys, I need to remind you of what you agreed to yesterday. You can report what you saw, but no names, places, or dates of what happened. Understand?’
She nodded. She had to stick to her word.
‘Good. Now, how’re you doing?’ Hennie asked.
Crys didn’t answer right away. She didn’t really know how she was feeling. Or what she was feeling. Her mind and emotions were in turmoil. Eventually she murmured, ‘I’m okay.’ She didn’t know what else to say.
‘What would you have done?’ Hennie asked.
Crys looked around the group. Everyone was staring down into the fire.
She took a breath. ‘Couldn’t you tell them to put their hands up instead of just shooting them?’
‘We tried that at the beginning. One of my friends was killed when they opened up with an AK-47. If they see us, they don’t hesitate. They shoot to kill. So now we do the same.’
‘What about the other man – the one on the ground? Did you have to…’ Crys’s voice cracked. She swallowed, trying to stay calm. ‘Did you have to torture him and leave him to be eaten alive?’
‘He was going to die anyway. He was hit badly and was going to bleed to death. And it was too far to carry him.’
‘You could’ve tried to stop the blood. You could’ve got the Land Rover. He might have survived. And … and…’ She couldn’t stop herself. ‘You looked as though you were enjoying it!’
Hennie threw the dregs of his coffee into the grass. ‘He knew what he was getting into when he signed up as a poacher.’
There was a long silence.
‘What were you asking him?’ Crys said at last.
‘I wanted to know where he came from.’
‘What difference does that make?’
‘If we know where he comes from, we can go to his village and encourage the villagers not to cooperate with the men next up the chain.’
‘You mean kill them like you killed him!’ she snapped, her anger rising. ‘Is that why he didn’t say anything? He didn’t want his village destroyed. That’s what the Americans did in Vietnam – killed innocent villagers to find out where the Vietcong were.’
Bongani stood up and walked away.
‘And which side were you on, Crys?’ Hennie’s lips formed a tight, thin line. ‘The brutal Americans or the brutal Vietcong?’
Crys gripped her mug and drained it.
Eventually she said, ‘I wasn’t born then. My father was in the South Vietnamese army.’
‘He was lucky to get out,’ Hennie said.
‘He didn’t. At least not then.’ She stared into her empty cup. She didn’t want to talk about her family.
‘What happened?’ Hennie asked, taking a softer tone.
Crys normally avoided answering questions about her family, but with the events of the previous night sharp in her mind, her usual barriers were down. She turned and looked Hennie in the eyes. ‘The Vietcong put him in prison for thirteen years. My mother got pregnant with me after one of her annual visits. We were lucky that she wasn’t harassed … or worse. She and my brother and I were able to get to the States ten years after the end of the war. My father was only allowed to join us in 1990.’
Nobody said a thing. She didn’t know what was going through the heads of the men around the fire, but she was thinking of her father. She hadn’t spoken to him in more than ten years – since he’d thrown her out of the house for not being a ‘good Vietnamese girl’, obeying his every wish; for being too American, even though she was raised there. The familiar ache spread from her chest to her throat.
Then Hennie broke into her thoughts. ‘The problem with you Americans is that you want rhino poaching to stop, but aren’t willing to accept what has to be done to accomplish that.’ He threw a branch onto the fire. ‘What you really need to do, if you want to stop rhinos being killed, is to put an embargo on all Vietnamese trade. That’s where most of the horns go. And you know what for?’ He glared at her. ‘For medicines that don’t heal anything and for sniffing at yuppie parties. And it doesn’t even give them a high.’ He threw the dregs of his coffee onto the fire.
‘I get it why poachers are willing to take the risk,’ he continued. ‘They can earn a lifetime of income from a couple of horns.’ He pointed to the others sitting around the fire. ‘But we’re working at the bottom of the food chain. We don’t get anything extra when we catch or kill a poacher, even though our lives are in danger. We do it so rhinos don’t disappear from the planet.’
He picked up a stone and threw it at the fire. It hit a log and sparks flew up, crackling. ‘We can only try to stop the poachers – the US has the influence to stop the trade. But what does it do? Nothing. Because too many people are making too much money. Or perhaps it’s feeling guilty about what it did in Vietnam…’
Crys knew there was some truth in what he said, but couldn’t take any more of it – of him; of what she’d seen. Of his justifications. All she could see was the grin on his face as he tortured the naked, mutilated man.
She stood up and headed back to her tent.
‘We’ll give her a few more minutes to get her shit together,’ Hennie said. ‘Then we’re off.’
Crys turned and glared at him.
Crys stayed in her tent until Bongani called out that they were leaving.
‘Do I have time to interview the others?’ she asked, realising that she had probably lost the opportunity.
He shook his head. ‘No, we don’t. Anyway, they don’t want to talk to you. They think it’s bad luck having a woman around.’
‘Oh, they do, do they? And what do you think?’
He shrugged and looked away. ‘Come. We need to go.’
He led the way through the bush to the helicopter, which was standing in the clearing, its rotor turning slowly. Crys climbed on board and, a minute later, they were airborne and on their way.
She stared out of the window on the trip back to the farm, but she saw nothing. She was totally lost in her thoughts. As the chopper touched down, it felt as if it had just lifted off.
Johannes was there to meet them. He offered his hand to help Crys out, but she avoided it and jumped down instead. He hesitated a moment, then thanked Frikkie and nodded to Bongani.
‘I’m relieved you’re safe,’ he said as they walked back to the chalets. ‘How did it go?’
Crys didn’t really want to talk about it. ‘It was very interesting and very frightening,’ she said. ‘I’m pleased I went, though.’
‘Did you run into any poachers?’
She glanced at his serious expression. She suspected that he knew exactly what had happened. That Hennie had radioed him that morning or perhaps even late the previous night.
She nodded. ‘We did.’ She took a deep breath. ‘They killed four.’
‘Good.’ Johannes gave a small nod, looking straight ahead. ‘Perhaps they’ll learn the risk isn’t worth it.’
She didn’t respond.
Crys felt his hand on her shoulder. It was only a light touch, but it was unwelcome. ‘I’m impressed you’re willing to go out and see what actually happens on these patrols. Most newspaper people seem to look it up on Google and then file their reports.’
She nodded again. His hand dropped away.
‘Tomorrow, we have a safari going out,’ Johannes continued, his voice brighter. ‘You’re welcome to join it. The numbers aren’t finalised yet, but there’ll probably be about eight guests in two game-viewing vehicles – tourists who want a taste of the wild.’ Then he smiled wryly. ‘Perhaps they should have gone out with you last night. That was probably wilder than anything they’ve ever dreamed of.’
Crys didn’t respond to his joke.
‘We’ll go to an area bordering Kruger. It’s private, so we can set up a camp there.’
‘How long will we be there?’ she asked.
‘Four nights. I’ll be the leader. Bongani will be my head ranger and back me up.’
Crys was tempted. However, four nights was quite a long delay in her search for Michael – a search that so far seemed to be leading nowhere. And she was still feeling burned by the events of the previous night.
But a reporter had to be careful not to judge – whatever they’d seen or experienced. It was the only way to gain trust and get to the truth. She forced a smile. ‘That’s great. When do we leave?’
‘Straight after breakfast. You’ll notice the other chalets will be occupied tonight.’
She thanked him and headed back to her quarters as he made his way to the house.
‘Dinner’s at seven. See you there,’ he shouted over his shoulder.
She waved to indicate she’d heard, but wasn’t sure she’d go. She needed some time to herself.
Crys sat on the porch and tried to digest what she’d seen – to make sense of it. But the same kaleidoscope of thoughts and images kept going round and round in her head. Eventually she went to look for Bongani. He’d been on patrols before. Maybe he could help her understand what it was all about. And she also wanted to ask him about Michael.
She found him working on one of the game-viewing vehicles.
‘Bongani, I don’t know your last name,’ she said as she approached.
‘It’s Chikosi.’
‘Are you busy?’
‘I’m just setting up this Land Rover for the trip tomorrow. Can I help you with something?’
‘Can I talk to you for a few minutes?’
He hesitated, then nodded. ‘We can go over there,’ he said, pointing to a bench in the shade of a tree with a wide-spreading crown.
‘Bongani,’ she began after they’d sat down, ‘one of my colleagues from National Geographic stayed here about six weeks ago. His name is Michael Davidson. Did you meet him?’
Bongani shook his head. ‘I saw him but didn’t speak to him. He was doing the same as you – writing a story about rhinos.’
‘Do you know where he went when he left? We’ve lost track of him.’
He just shook his head again and looked down at the ground. ‘No, I don’t. Sorry.’
She suppressed a sigh. Every possible avenue to trace Michael seemed to lead to a dead end.
‘Another thing,’ she said after a moment. ‘You’ve been on those antipoaching trips before. Is it always like that?’
‘No. Most times we find nothing. Maybe a dead rhino with the horn cut off. Then we try to follow the tracks of the poachers, but they usually get away. They have vehicles not too far away.’
‘Did you…’ she stopped. Crys wondered if she could ask the difficult questions she had in mind. But she knew she had to. This story wasn’t some interest piece. It was important; big. And that meant asking the hard questions. ‘Did you ever kill someone?’
Bongani sat stone-faced. Crys thought he wasn’t going to answer. ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘Just once.’
She suddenly realised that last night may have been as hard for him as it had been for her. ‘What do you feel about it, Bongani? Is it right to torture and kill people to save animals? Is it worth it to fight for them like that? That man we left for the hyenas—’
‘He knew what would happen if we caught him.’ Bongani’s words were clipped, hard. ‘He accepted the danger.’
She didn’t think she was getting through to him.
‘Look, where I live, in northern Minnesota, we have wolves. They’re wonderful animals. Smart and beautiful. Poachers hunt them, and they’re endangered. I tried to stop the poachers. I sabotaged their snowmobiles, shamed them in the media, and so on, but I never wanted to … to kill them. But now I wonder, if there were only a few wolves left, would I be willing to do that?’
Bongani turned to face her. ‘Crys, you don’t understand at all. This isn’t about rhinos or wolves or some other animal. It’s about money. Poachers take on the job for money. They don’t care about the animals. Most of them can’t get work. They can’t make a living, can’t support their families. What they get paid for one rhino horn will support their families for several years. Of course, they’re willing to take the risk. And you probably would too, if you were desperate like they are.’
Crys wanted to reply, but she was a journalist. If someone begins talking, you let them continue. She waited, and he went on.
‘It’s not a question of right or wrong. The poachers see it as a matter of survival. Their own.’
‘I’m confused. Why do you go on anti-poaching patrols if you are so sympathetic to the poachers?’
‘For the same reason they poach – I need the money for my family. For my village.’
‘But that man yesterday. The one on the ground…’ She paused to let him speak.
He opened his mouth to respond, but then just shook his head and stood up. ‘I have to get back to work.’
When she returned to her chalet, Crys pulled out her laptop and rattled out her first report for the Duluth News Tribune.
But when she’d finished, she wondered whether she should send it. She knew what would happen if she did. Some readers would be appalled by the torture. Others would cheer that the poachers had been killed. For them, saving a species was worth the loss of human life.
She closed the lid of her laptop and went out onto the porch. The relentless sun was baking down and the bush was shimmering in the heat. Nothing moved. Even the birds had stopped calling. She sat down and let her mind wander, hoping it would lead her to a decision.
Most of the afternoon had passed before she finally sent her piece. She felt good, finally making the decision to do so – to say what had happened and let people form their own opinions. After all, that was her job.
In the end, Crys did go to dinner. She wanted to learn more about the area they’d be visiting on the trip. And she was hoping it would lead to another piece for the newspaper. At worst, she’d see more of the African bush without being in the firing line of rhino poachers.
During the meal, Crys mentioned that she’d written her first article.
‘You didn’t mention any names, did you?’ Anton asked sharply. ‘I vouched for you, you know.’
‘No, I said I wouldn’t, so I didn’t. I keep my word, Anton. But I did report what happened.’ She paused, looking from Anton to Johannes. They concentrated on their plates. ‘Even the torture.’
Neither Anton nor Johannes said anything. Their meals seemed to be occupying all their attention. So, it was as she’d guessed: they had heard all about it. And neither looked upset.
Crys finished her dinner in silence and excused herself before dessert.