12

Sickened at the sight of Buju’s slaughter, Connor lowered his binoculars. He’d seen the boy soldier with the red beret point in their direction and wondered how on earth they’d been spotted so quickly. Buju no longer knew where they were, so he couldn’t have betrayed them. Then, as he stuffed the binoculars back into his go-bag, Connor cursed his stupidity—he’d been looking due east, so the sunlight would have reflected off the lenses.

“What’s going on?” asked Amber, still lying prone in the dirt beside her brother.

“Buju’s just been killed,” he explained.

“My God, no!” The blood visibly drained from her face as the hope she’d held for her parents’ survival died along with Buju.

Connor dragged the two of them to their feet. “The gunmen are coming this way. We need to move fast!”

Staying low, they kept to the cover of the bushes as much as they could. Without Buju to guide the rebels, Connor hoped the soldiers would be slower to track them. So long as the three of them stayed out of sight, they might still have a slim chance of evading their pursuers.

As they crested the rise, the savannah once again opened out before them, mounds of granite boulders breaking up the terrain between strips of dense undergrowth and islands of flat-top trees. In the distance the land smoothed out into a grassy plain where the Ruvubu River wound like a glistening python, dividing the valley in two. Until now Connor hadn’t given any consideration to how they’d cross that wide stretch of waterway . . . if they even got that far.

He risked a quick glance back and spotted the red beret racing through the long grass and bushes toward them.

“Keep going,” Connor urged, directing Amber and Henri downslope.

Running as fast as Henri’s asthma would allow, they followed an animal trail across the savannah and into a dense thicket. Emerging at the other side, Amber came to an abrupt halt, Henri and Connor almost running into the back of her before they also froze.

Up ahead of them a zebra was being ripped apart in a feeding frenzy by a pack of spotted hyenas. Their powerful jaws snapping, their fur stained with blood, they squabbled over the kill, cackling and giggling.

The lower-ranked hyenas, pushed out by the dominant females, instantly turned their attention to the human intruders. Staring at their newfound prey with dark, hungry eyes, they bared their teeth, drool dripping from their ravenous mouths. One by one, the other hyenas fell silent as they became aware of the presence of Connor, Amber and Henri.

Faced by such a fearsome pack of wild animals, it took all Connor’s willpower not to simply turn and flee. But he knew from Gunner’s advice that to do such a thing would trigger the hunting instinct.

“Back away,” he whispered, trying to keep the panic out of his voice. “Slowly.”

Amber managed the slightest of nods in acknowledgment. They retreated a step at a time, drawing back into the cover of the thicket. The hyenas advanced in slow, deliberate paces, determined to keep their quarry in sight. Henri glanced behind to see where he was walking, and a large hyena with a ripped ear stealthily closed the gap.

“Don’t take your eyes off them,” Connor warned. “As soon as you do, they’ll attack.”

They were almost concealed within the thicket when the matriarch of the clan let out a haunting whoop and all of a sudden the hyenas launched themselves. Survival instinct overruling any ranger’s advice, Amber, Henri and Connor ran for their lives. They fled through the bush, not caring as the thorns of a wait-a-while tore at their clothes and ripped their skin. Maniacal giggles and growls pursued them on all sides, and Connor caught flashes of sandy-brown hair, black snouts and muscular forelegs closing in.

The three of them broke from the thicket and into the long grass. The hyenas matched them pace for pace, boxing them in but not yet attacking. For a brief second Connor wondered why—then realized the pack was simply tiring them out to make the kill easier.

“The trees!” cried Amber, pointing to a copse of acacia farther up the slope.

Connor saw them too and, recalling Gunner saying that hyenas couldn’t climb, shepherded his two Principals toward the promised sanctuary of the trees. But they were forced to change direction when a huge snarling hyena blocked their path. They ran across a slope, skirting around a huge pile of boulders as they looked for another way through. Henri was wheezing heavily by now, his face pale with the exertion.

“Up there,” Connor shouted, spotting a narrow gully between the massive boulders.

Taking advantage of a gap in the pack, he led the way to the opening. But the moment they reached it, the hyena with the ripped ear lunged at Henri. Panicking, Henri fled in the opposite direction and was soon lost from sight in the tall grass. Connor could hear the pack whooping and howling as they hunted down the youngest and weakest of their chosen prey.

“We have to save him!” Amber cried.

But the hunt wasn’t over for them either. Two hyenas were pursuing them up the gully. Then another appeared at the top. Trapped, Connor searched frantically for a different escape route.

“In there,” he said, spotting a narrow gap between two gigantic boulders.

“It’s too small,” cried Amber.

Faced with no alternative and the hyenas bearing down on them, Connor shoved her toward the hole. Slender as she was, Amber still struggled to wiggle through. He tossed in his go-bag, then sucked in his chest as he scrambled after her. But he got stuck halfway, the rocks seeming to press down on him, crushing the breath from his body. He could hear the hyenas bounding toward his exposed flailing legs. Amber, who’d managed to crawl into a little hollow beneath the boulders, tugged frantically on his arms. With a final desperate squirm, Connor scraped through the suffocating gap, just as the hyenas’ jaws snapped at his disappearing feet.