26

Connor and Amber were forced to sit by the fire as their hands and feet were bound.

“I regret having to do this,” said the Wolf, watching Abel and the muscleman secure the wrist ties behind their backs, “but it’s for your own good. The African bush is dangerous at night, and I can’t have you wandering off.”

“Please let us go,” begged Amber.

“It’s your own fault for prying, young lady,” the Wolf snapped.

“But it could be days before you even find a leopard,” Connor protested. “And rebel soldiers are swarming all over the park, you said so yourself. What if they find us first?”

The Wolf dismissed the suggestion with a snort of laughter. “The bush is my hunting ground. I can easily avoid those gung-ho rebels.”

“But don’t you understand what’s happening here? They’ve killed or, at the very least, captured the president. There’s been a coup! This country is plunging into civil war. No one will be safe.”

A smirk creasing his thin lips, the Wolf was apparently unfazed. “That all plays to my advantage. War brings chaos. There’ll be no pesky rangers to protect the park, which makes it easier to smuggle out the ivory, along with my glorious collection.”

Pulling back a canvas behind the pile of supplies, the Wolf unveiled a macabre row of animal heads and skins: a once-mighty lion with a full mane; a horned black rhino, its dark eyes weeping as if shedding tears; even a gargantuan elephant head with magnificent tusks; and to this sad line his men added the disembodied buffalo.

“You’re a sick, sick man,” said Amber, having to look away in sorrow and disgust.

The Wolf’s eyes flashed with anger. “You know nothing, young lady. I’m preserving these animals forever. That’s true conservation. We’ll be able to admire these great beasts for years to come—”

“Can’t you simply shoot them with a camera instead?” retorted Amber.

The Wolf’s brow knitted in bewilderment. “Where’s the thrill in that? I’m hunting these animals on foot. My life is on the line just as much as theirs. That’s what makes it—” The Wolf stopped talking as a repeated growl, like wood being sawed, was heard amid the early-evening chorus of the savannah.

His eyes lit up. “Leopard!” he gasped.

Snatching up his rifle, he barked orders to his men, grabbed a handful of spare cartridges and refilled his hip flask from a jerry can. Abel shouldered the kit bag and they prepared to leave. At the edge of the camp, the Wolf glanced back over his shoulder at Connor and Amber on the ground, almost seeming to have forgotten them in his excitement.

“Don’t try to escape!” he warned, his eyes narrowing. “Otherwise I’ll hunt you down for my collection too.”

Accompanied by Abel, he trekked off into the darkening twilight.

Amber glared at his receding shadow. “I wish that lion had eaten him!”

Connor nodded his agreement.

Muscleman and the two others remained behind at the camp, ostensibly to guard them. But, bound as they were, they were paid little attention by the men, who soon became involved in another game of igisoro. As dusk fell, the poachers rebuilt the fire and reheated the oryx stew. They didn’t share their meal this time, although one of them, the youngest, made sure their captives each drank a mugful of water. Then, squatting on the opposite side of the fire, the three men chatted to one another in hushed tones, occasionally glancing over at Connor and Amber propped up against the log in the darkness.

“Can you understand anything they’re saying?” Connor whispered, wishing he had his smartphone to translate.

Shifting closer, Amber replied softly, “They’re talking about what to do with us.”

The look of horror and dismay in her eyes didn’t fill Connor with optimism.

“Muscleman wants to feed us to the lions,” she explained. “The one with the mustache wants to hand us over to the rebels in return for safe passage. And the younger poacher thinks they should just leave us here when they go.”

“None of those options sound particularly promising,” Connor remarked, “or what the Wolf threatened us with.”

Firelight flickering across her face, Amber offered him a resigned smile. “They’re also talking about the return of the Black Mamba. They sound pretty scared, even Musclema—”

“Tais-toi!” snapped Muscleman, ordering them to be quiet.

As they sat in enforced silence, the ache in their wrists and ankles growing steadily worse because of the tight bindings, Connor considered the implications of what Amber had just told him. It seemed as if they’d jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire—fleeing the rebels only to become prisoners of the poachers, a death sentence almost certainly hanging over their heads.