Ashley retched again. Acid burned her throat and nose as Scott held her hair up, away from her face. He patted her back, the consoling rhythm not soothing her distressed constitution. The tears she attempted to choke back lodged in her throat. She’d never witnessed such utter destruction and mutilation. The only part taken from them were their tusks, chopped out and stolen in the black night.
Dead elephants lay everywhere, the huge grey-maroon shapes scattered in a clearing. Little identical shapes lay in the inner circle of the larger animals.
Scott smoothed her hair. ‘They protect their young to the death.’
‘It’s barbaric. Why? Who?’
‘Money. Although there’s an international ban on ivory trade, the black market’s booming. There’s a huge demand for it, especially in the East. The money from one tusk will feed a family in the surrounding park area for a few years.’
‘So many, all dead.’
‘This particular poaching ring are professionals. They’ve planned this for months, manipulating the elephants into this area. Even before they brought in their ground crews and the helicopters that cornered the jumbo. At least their hunters have shot everything.’
‘But the babies? They were only babies,’ Ashley said with a huge sniff.
‘In a warped way, they’re being kind to the youngsters. This way they won’t remember.’
Nearby, a sadistic laugh sent a chill up Ashley’s spine. She shivered.
‘Hyena.’ Scott quickly filled in the source of the sound for her. ‘You can hear them waiting on the outskirts of this slaughter. On the positive side, the scavengers in the reserve will have plenty of food tonight.’
Ashley looked at him blankly. How could he find any positives in this situation?
Zol shouted, ‘Scott, we’ve got tracks!’
‘On my way,’ Scott replied, walking towards Zol’s voice.
The men looked at the spoor. Tyre marks cut deep into the dry African sand where heavily laden trucks had driven away from the grim crime scene. Scott and Zol, their heads low over their torches, pointed to the dirt below.
Ashley heard other muffled voices rumbling in the night, and she turned and shone her powerful torch towards the sound. Men materialised out of the shadows and walked towards her. The front man smiled and his teeth flashed white in the torchlight as he lifted his hand up to shield his eyes.
Her mouth opened but no sound came out. Her feet wouldn’t move. She was frozen at the sight of the armed men. All wore camouflage clothing and toted an assortment of guns.
‘Ahhggg,’ she managed eventually, but it came out more like a church mouse whisper than a scream as fear gripped her throat.
Scott looked up. ‘Vusi, you’re here. Good. Zol has the spoor. Get going. They have about five hours on us. Follow their tracks.’
‘They’re friendly?’ Ashley squeaked.
‘If you are not a poacher. They are part of my anti-poaching unit. Each man carries authority from the President: shoot to kill any suspected poacher.’
‘Okay,’ Ashley said.
‘Keep in radio contact. I’ll be at Delmonica.’ He put a hand on Zol’s shoulder. ‘Take special care, my brother. These ones are ruthless. Again they have picked up every spent shell. It’s as if they knew they had the time to clean up after themselves before we’d react.’
Zol nodded and joined the team. As if by magic, the seven men disappeared into the dark night. Ashley couldn’t even hear their footsteps as they walked away. She turned her attention back to the carnage in front of her and watched some men put a chain around the front of an elephant and winch it up onto the back of a large flatbed truck. ‘What are they doing?’
‘Those are the Parks Board workers. They’ll utilise as much as possible from the carcasses, including make biltong to sell to the tourists in the park, and supply meat to the local restaurants and lodges. They’ll cure the hides and sell those. Mostly, they’ll try to minimise waste from this catastrophe. The high-valued ivory might be gone, but the elephant body’s still valuable, if they can get it into cold storage quick enough. The park will get a small injection of capital from tonight. But what they have lost is greater.’ He stroked her cheek. ‘Let’s go home. There’s nothing more we can do here.’
They left the workers performing their grim task of loading carcasses onto their trucks, and they drove back to Delmonica in silence, using the main bitumen road through the reserve. Ashley sat still, shell-shocked. Scott had insisted she take the middle seat as she’d done on her first journey with him, her legs around the gear lever. He kept his hand in contact with her as much as he dared, his palm absentmindedly brushing her leg. She wondered if it was to reassure himself that he wasn’t alone, or to reassure her he was there.
She didn’t mind the contact this time. She needed it to believe that there was still some good left in the world.
They saw no herds of buffalo, no elephant and no antelope on the deserted roads. It was as if the reserve itself was mourning the loss of the giant monarchs of the savannah.
‘Sunday is the day of rest, so tell me again why I have to learn how to shoot this thing?’ Ashley asked Scott, as she looked down at the weapon in her hands.
‘Remember last night, the elephants?’
‘Hang on. The poachers are after the animals. You kept saying “don’t bother things and they won’t bother you”. I won’t go after a poacher, I promise.’
He smiled. ‘You still need this crash course in weapons use. You will be in the park, and they are in the park. Look in the mirror, you’ll be a spoil of war if they catch you.’
Ashley stared at Scott; she hadn’t given that angle any thought. He had hinted once before and his words came back to her now: there are worse things than death if you get into trouble in Africa.
She shivered. She’d always taken her safety as a given in Australia. Here in Africa, it wasn’t the case. It was a hard continent. A place where there were more grey areas than black and white in the eyes of the law. She needed more than four weeks to understand it. Africa and Australia were oceans apart in so many of the everyday customs and the shooting range highlighted this fact. Not that she frequented shooting ranges as an everyday occurrence in her life, but even she knew the range was rough.
She turned back towards the target. Another difference between their countries – in Australia, because of occupational health and safety regulations she’d have worn earmuffs to protect her hearing. Here, Scott had laughed when she’d asked where they were.
The boards he’d set up as targets, already shot to smithereens, bore a rough cardboard body outline. The range was in the back garden, away from the house and workers’ compound, but still not fenced. The small hillock, or mannetjie, as he called it, at the back wasn’t that big, just a mound of dirt pushed together by a front-end loader, to do its job of absorbing stray bullets that missed the targets. Scott had informed her he didn’t want any of his cattle shot, and that was the only reason why he’d bothered to construct the bank at all.
Standing square on with her feet slightly apart, her right hand loosely caressing the gun and her left supporting underneath and her wrist, she slipped off the safety catch again. Slowly, gently, she squeezed the trigger. Bang!
She heard a dull thunk as the bullet sank into the soil behind the target. ‘Ouch!’
Scott looked at her and frowned. ‘What?’
‘My arms are aching. I must’ve fired this gun more than a hundred times in the last two hours. Every time it goes off, it yanks my arms from their sockets and manages to jump at least forty centimetres into the air.’
‘You’re getting better. You compensated for it this time. You hit the target, at last.’ A huge grin spread across his face.
‘Whoop-de-do.’
‘If it’s life or death, you had better hit your target,’ he told her firmly.
‘Okay, I give up. You win. I’ll go home,’ she said, but she knew it was just lip-sync, she had no intention of leaving.
‘No longer a viable option, I really would prefer it if you stayed here,’ he said seriously. ‘I need your skills in the pump project.’
A small smile passed over Ashley’s lips. She was amazed at the progression and change in their relationship in such a short time. It would be interesting to see where it went. She was still leaving in three weeks, but she’d never done casual before. This was new territory.
But with Scott, she might be willing to explore that possibility. After all, it was Scott who, once they got home last night, had kissed her nose as if she was an innocent schoolgirl and sent her to her room.
‘Enough for now, you still need to be able to fix those pumps,’ he said, removing the .38 revolver from her hand. He checked the safety was on before slipping it into its holster on his hip next to the 9mm he’d been using. ‘Besides, it’s lunchtime. My stomach thinks my throat’s been cut.’
‘That’s a gross expression.’
‘Gross or not, it’s true. Come on, let’s go eat.’ He took her hand as they headed back to the ranch house.
On the veranda, Alan sat at the table, his head in his hands, nursing a hangover from the night before. ‘Did you have to do that today? Every shot vibrated through my head.’
‘Have another beer. It’s the best treatment.’ Scott passed him a Lion lager.
Alan held up his hands. ‘Thanks, but no. I couldn’t.’
‘Where are the others? Any sign of them?’ Scott asked. After rushing out on his volunteers at Zebra Pan Lodge last night, he assumed they had all returned to the ranch in their various modes of transport.
‘William went off with the hunters he met at the dinner last night, and David hasn’t got out of bed yet. He was still snoring when I came out.’
Ashley looked at Alan. ‘You don’t look good.’
‘I think I’m going to throw up, I’m getting too old to party,’ Alan managed, as he got to his feet and ran for the men’s room.
‘Want one?’ Scott asked as he bent into the bar fridge again and this time withdrew two cold lagers.
‘No thanks. I’ll stick to my soft drinks.’
‘You don’t drink at all?’ He returned the lager and grabbed a diet soda in its place.
‘Sure I do. Chocolate milk, soft drinks, juices. Just avoid alcohol.’ She accepted her drink. ‘Thanks.’
‘Why?’
‘I’ve seen too many people make huge mistakes under the influence. Do stupid things and have to live with the consequences.’ Ashley laughed at the comical expression on his face. ‘I don’t have an alcoholic parent stashed in the cupboard or anything.’
‘So then it’s personal?’
‘No and yes. Bronwyn, my business partner, was badly hurt in an avoidable car accident. It put me off drinking. I still drive Bronwyn on girls’ nights out. She drinks, I drive. She never blamed me for the accident, but I do blame myself.’
‘Perhaps you were both at fault and neither should be pointing the blame at anyone else. But not drinking, that’s not a bad thing.’
‘Truly? That’s your honest opinion?’
Scott laughed. ‘No. I think you’re weird, but then you’re an Australian, so it’s expected.’
She chucked a pillow at him from the couch.
His mobile CB burst to life with Zol’s voice. ‘Scott, come in. Over.’
‘Scott here. Come in, Zol,’ he replied as he ran for the main unit in his study, where he could hear with less static interference.
Ashley sat down to lunch without him. Her stomach growled as she smelled the aroma of the lovely meal Lisa had laid out for them. Homemade bread with butter on the side, sliced ham and other cold meat selections, some of which Ashley couldn’t give a name to. Bougainvillea flowers decorated the platters where, in a restaurant in Brisbane, lettuce leaves or herbs would have been used in abundance. But there was no frivolous waste of food here in Africa. She made a mental note to tell Lisa that she’d done well and was up with the best of the best chefs in the city.
Scott came back onto the veranda as she ate. He quickly threw together a dagwood-style sandwich and surprised her by kissing her half on the cheek and half on the lips, haphazard and distracted.
‘I’ll be home later tonight. Don’t go anywhere. Zol wants me to check out something for him, and I can’t take you with me. Please stay near Alan.’
Within a few minutes, he was in his bakkie and driving out the main gate. She watched from the veranda as the dust column behind his vehicle settled back to earth, her fingers touching her lips. Even when her lunch was completed, she sat staring at the road he’d travelled down, lost in thought. He had kissed her almost as if it were a habit on leaving. Shocked her … a little. But it had been interesting – soft, too fast … familiar.
Finally she looked away, pushed her chair back and strolled out to the swimming pool where she pulled out a large cushion from the cupboard, and placed it on the lounger in the sun. She opened the fantasy novel she’d picked up at the airport in Brisbane, but her mind wasn’t on the words. She was thinking about a sexy farmer who was full of surprises.
She was attracted to him. Her African man. He was tough, but gentle, an anomaly within the male world she’d known. Anyone would have thought she was in love.
No, that can’t be right. I can’t be falling in love with Scott.
It was simply that she was beginning to care deeply for him.
But she’d only known him such a short time.
And exactly where was it written that you needed years to get to know someone?
Her mind fluttered to another time, another country, when she’d thought she knew what love was. She’d known Michael for three years before they’d become intimately involved, and just look where that had got her. A week was fast, but then, when you were trying to cram a lifetime into four weeks, seven days could seem like an eternity.
Alan joined her at the pool. ‘I’ll never drink again, I swear it.’
‘Sure you will. You feel like hell today but tomorrow when the others toss you a cold one, you’ll drink it. Men always do.’ She smiled to help sweeten her words.
‘I know I need to put you in your place, but I don’t have the energy. So all I can say is, “Yes, dear”.’
‘Yes, dear? What is that supposed to mean?’
‘When I say it to Michelle, she simply smiles. I was hoping it’d work for you too.’
She laughed. How wonderful Alan and Michelle’s relationship must be.
Alan put his head down and soon she could hear his soft snore.
The clean crisp smell of Africa filled her. A go-away bird jumped from one mango tree to the next, chattering as it went, then lifted off as a flock of quelias descended into the trees and onto the lawn. Within moments, the fat black and white kitchen cat raced into part of the flock that had settled on the lawn. They all took flight, noisily rushing upwards, like a giant whale into the sky, and flew off in a westward direction. Ashley couldn’t help smiling at the cat as it sat, indignant, looking at the departing birds.
Midmorning on Monday, Scott sat in the passenger seat of Lucinda, his sunnies pushed high on his nose, his fingers drumming a non-tune on the butt of the hunting rifle he’d placed barrel downwards on the seat between himself and Ashley. He knew he was scowling, but wasn’t in the frame of mind to ease the tension radiating from his forehead.
Last night he’d been called over to Tessa’s lodge. He’d met with two rangers whose reserve in Kenya had suffered a similar attack just two weeks previously, and they were hot on the trail of the poachers. The information they had relayed was extremely valuable, and worth losing sleep over.
Kenya and Zimbabwe had now officially joined forces, and were pooling resources. The government officials would handle the necessary paperwork later. Right now, the people on the ground needed to cooperate to enable them to catch the mastermind behind the organised poaching ring.
It seemed the poachers had disappeared across the southern border and into Botswana. Zol had lost their spoor once out of the reserve, where they crossed onto the main bitumen road and the blood splatters had just stopped.
They had reached a dead-end tracking them.
Zol and his anti-poaching unit were zigzagging back and forward in the bush, hoping to find something more. A clue of any type to identify them. If one was there, his unit would find it.
Many of the men in the anti-poaching squad had once been part of some military organisation somewhere in Africa. All were well trained. Some were local, while others were from as far away as the Congo and Ethiopia. Each had been hand-picked by Scott and Zol. They could disappear into the bush for months at a time, and they could find anything or anyone when they were asked to.
He thought back to a ‘problem’ client Tessa had experienced at her lodge five years before. All the hunting guides had a standard unwritten rule with the ranchers and local hunters: no matter what bribe a guest hunter offered to deny any blood show, whether it was a graze, a single drop, or a full bleed from a wounded creature, the ranchers and hunters would better it by ten grand. As a consequence, not many bribes from clients were accepted. The hunting guides kept their jobs, and were richer for revealing the truth, and the hunting association slowly built their shared lists of blacklisted, dishonest hunters.
Tessa’s South African hunter’s name had already been on the blacklist, but it had been during Tessa’s drug using days, before she’d met Kevin and cleaned up, and she had missed it. This particular hunter had given various safari companies trouble. He would wound an animal and then wouldn’t follow it. In Tessa’s case, he’d wounded a lion, not fatally, but there was a blood show. Tessa had stood her ground well in the showdown with him. He’d become aggressive and one of her game guards had stepped between the client and her, fearing for her safety.
The guard had been right. The hunter had punched him. The guard pulled his 9mm on the client and cocked it, which was when Tessa’s chef, Yellow, had radioed Scott for help.
Zol had been the first to respond, and he’d resolved the situation Africa style. He’d force marched the hunter out of Tessa’s lodge and into the bush to look for the wounded animal. Amazing what a man did when a razor-sharp hunting knife was held to his throat …
For three days they tracked the wounded lion. Zol remained at the hunter’s side, but the other members of the unit, illusive and silent, hadn’t been visible, although their presence was felt. Twice the hunter had tried to escape, but each time an anti-poaching unit guard had returned him to Zol.
After the first escape attempt, Zol had taken the man’s shoes and made him walk barefoot. On the next attempt, he’d taken his trousers. When they caught up with the lion, its wounds had started to fester in the hot African sun. Zol had used his knife to cut the hunter on his arm, deep, and left the wound open with no bandage. Flies swarmed on the fresh wound.
Soon the hunter was begging for forgiveness. He confessed to all the times he’d lied to the ranchers in the area. Zol had signalled to Kwiella, one of the others in his elite group. Within half an hour, they had put the lion put out of its misery, and the hunter in a bakkie, heading for the local police station and jail. That particular hunter had never bothered the area again.
Zol and his unit were a formidable force. They would catch up with the poachers soon, and then justice would be done. Scott smiled.
‘Penny for your thoughts.’ Ashley’s voice interrupted his silence.
‘They’re dark, and not worth sharing,’ he said, still gazing out but not seeing anything from the passenger seat of Lucinda.
‘Oh, come on, Scott,’ Ashley said as she changed gears, and drove over a particularly high pile of elephant dung.
‘I was thinking about what Zol and the unit will do to the poachers when they catch up with them.’
‘What can they do?’
‘Nothing pretty.’ The harshness in his voice caught her attention.
‘Scott! Come on, let me in … I’m trying here.’
‘It’s not intentional,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to keep you innocent to all the harsh reality that’s Africa. We live by a different code here, one probably not accepted in your First World country, but it works just fine for us. Well, up to a point. Sometimes in Africa the punishment is fitting for the crime, but international law would call it something else. Cruel, barbaric, maybe torture even.’ He paused. ‘Here, we shoot to kill poachers on sight. We don’t ask them why they are in our national parks. I’m sure you and your countrymen would find this morally unacceptable, but to us, it’s a good solution to our problems. A dead poacher doesn’t return; one less for us to worry about.’
‘After seeing what they did to those poor elephants, I can understand that sentiment now. But before I got here, I wouldn’t have,’ Ashley said. ‘So, what’ll they do?’
‘Who?’
‘Don’t play these games … I’ll win. Zol and his unit, smartypants.’
He wished he could smile at her sassy comments, the attempt to lighten his mood, but he couldn’t. ‘No punches pulled. If they can get to the poachers, they’ll teach them a hard lesson. And afterwards, if they are alive, hand them over to the police. Black-on-black justice is harsher than anything you can imagine. But these poachers, they are different from the many others we have come across so far. More sophisticated. They might have local help, but the technology they are using is state of the art. We know they have hit Hwange Reserve before – two years ago, in fact. Then they moved up north, to Kenya. We must have got close for them to have relocated their operation, but they’ve come back. The pressure is on us now to catch them.
‘My unit’s not unique in this area, many of the other ranchers who border onto the reserve, and those who hold national park concession lands, have similar anti-poaching units. The reserve itself has a few of its own units. They are a necessity here.’ He stole a glimpse at her. She appeared to be listening intently.
‘But Zol and his unit are the elite of all the guards. Each would put his life on the line for an animal. They are like Marines. This is a passion to these men, not just a job. It pays better than most farm labourers’ wages, and even better than a city job in a factory, even better than the gold mines of South Africa. Better than their military careers before. Probably the highest paid anti-poaching unit, with good reason. They’re paid bonuses on results.’
‘Zol, too? He’s more than just a member of the anti-poaching unit though, isn’t he?’
‘Zol co-owns Delmonica with me. To cut a long story short, politics happened. He either became my partner on paper or I lost my ranch. Zol is family. Has always been treated like family. I signed over half the farm to him. His stake in the unit is bigger than any other’s.’
She seemed to take in all that Scott was saying. ‘What if your units fabricate the evidence?’
‘Possible, but not probable. The people here have a great pride. It goes back to the roots of the Ndebele nation and the tribal system, ruled by kings like Mzilikazi. Hwange was his royal hunting area, and pride and honour are still important. And for those foreign to this land, like from the Congo, the Ndebele people would never allow them to get away with that. It would reflect badly on them. They would visit a sangoma and magic muti would appear to sort out the problem.’
‘Muti?’
‘Medicine.’
‘And how can medicine sort out the problem?’
‘The Ndebele people are extremely superstitious of the traditional healer or witchdoctor.’
‘As in black magic or voodoo?’
‘A little like that, yes.’
‘Remind me never to tick-off one of your anti-poaching men, okay?’
‘I’ll try to remember.’ They came up to the gate. ‘Turn here.’
‘But we went through a different gate last week –’
‘It’s an alternate route. You come out at the same pan. I thought we might check out the state of this road. It may get a little claustrophobic with the wag-’n-bietjie bushes scratching Lucinda, but we should get through.’
‘Wag-a-what?’
‘Wag-’n-bietjie. It means wait-a-little. That’s their common name. They have black hooked thorns, which grab you and tell you to wait a moment.’
‘You’re kidding?’
‘No. Scout’s honour.’ He nodded and gave a small three-finger salute.
Two hours later they arrived at the next pump site. The road was passable, and the bushes had indeed grabbed hold of her clothing. But it had been worth it. Ashley had seen the most stunning herd of buffalo. The cattle of the veld, as Scott called them. She’d sat mesmerised as they trudged around Lucinda, snorting and stamping their feet. A few bellowed, but most of the herd ignored their presence. Flies buzzed around their ears, ignoring the roughness of the buffalos’ tongues as they licked their shiny black noses.
‘We’re deep inside the northwest side of the game reserve, and they’re not afraid of us here. Most high-density tourist action is in the east, near Hwange and main camp. Don’t be fooled by their docile nature. After the hippos, buffalo are the most unpredictable and bad-tempered animals.’
‘The hippos?’
‘Sure, they’re responsible for more deaths in Africa than any other wild animal, other than the mosquitoes.’
Ashley watched the buffalos, the way they tossed their heads to the side, and she smelt their unique stench. She basked in the glory of nature for a while until Scott tapped her arm.
‘Ease out of the herd. They’re getting restless.’
So she’d inched Lucinda forward, and, once clear of the buffalo, followed Scott’s directions of which track to take and which game trail to not turn into.