Black Order (8 page)

“Is there a way upstairs? To another level?”

Fiona glanced up. A pall of smoke obscured the tin ceiling tiles. “Some old rooms. An attic…”

“Yes. Perfect. Can we get up there?”

She shook her head at first slowly, then more firmly, reviving to the danger. “No. The only stairs are…” She waved feebly toward the fire. “At the back of the building.”

“On the outside.”

She nodded. Ash swirled in fiery eddies around them as the wall of fire advanced.

Gray cursed silently. There must’ve once been an interior staircase, before the building was split into a shop and upper rooms. But no longer. He’d have to improvise.

“Do you have an ax?” he asked.

Fiona shook her head.

“How about a crowbar? Something to open crates or boxes?”

Fiona stiffened and nodded. “By the cash register.”

“Stay here.” Gray edged along the left-hand wall. It offered the clearest path back toward the central desk. The fire had not quite reached it.

Fiona followed.

“I told you to stay back.”

“I know where the soddin’ crowbar is,” she snapped at him.

Gray recognized the terror behind her anger, but it was an improvement over the limp-limbed shock from a moment ago. Plus it matched his own fury. At himself. It was bad enough the girl had tailed him earlier, but now he’d allowed himself to be trapped by unknown assassins. He’d been too distracted by thoughts of Rachel, too dismissive of this mission and its parameters, and now it wasn’t only his life in jeopardy.

Fiona pushed ahead of him, red-eyed and coughing from the smoke. “It’s over here.” She leaned across the desk, reached behind it, and tugged free a long green steel bar.

“Let’s go.” He led the way back toward the advancing flames. He pulled out of his wool sweater and traded it for the crowbar.

“Wet the sweater down. Soak it good in that sprinkler.” He pointed with the crowbar. “And yourself, for that matter.”

“What are you going to—?”

“Try to make our own staircase.”

Gray mounted one of the bookshelf ladders and scrambled up. The smoke churned above his upraised face. The very air burned. Gray poked the crowbar at one of the tin ceiling tiles. It was easily dislodged and nudged aside. As he had hoped, the shop roof was a cantilevered drop ceiling. It hid the rafter-and-plank floor of the story above.

Gray climbed to the top of the ladder and scaled the last few shelves of the bookcase. He perched atop it. Using this vantage, he jammed his crow-bar between two of the planks. It sank deep. He shouldered and levered the crowbar. The steel bar ripped through the old wood. Still, he barely managed to gouge out a mouse hole.

Eyes watering and burning, Gray leaned down. A racking cough shook through him. Not good. It would be a race between his crowbar and the smoke. Gray glanced back to the fire. It grew fiercer. The smoke belched thicker.

He’d never make it at this rate.

Movement drew his gaze back down. Fiona had scrambled up the ladder. She had found a kerchief, soaked it, and had it wrapped around the lower half of her face like a bandit, a fitting disguise in her case.

She held up his soggy wool sweater. She had soaked herself, too, seeming to shrink in size like a wet puppy. Gray realized she was younger than the seventeen he had guessed earlier. She could be no more than fifteen. Her eyes were red-rimmed with panic—but also shone with hope, placing some blind faith in him.

Gray hated when people did that…because it always worked.

Gray tied the arms of his sweater around his neck and let the rest drape over his back. He tugged up a flap of sodden wool to cover his mouth and nose, offering some insulation from the ash-thickened air.

With water soaking through the back of his shirt, Gray knelt up again, ready to attack the stubborn planks. He sensed the presence of Fiona below. And the responsibility.

Gray searched the space between the drop ceiling and the rafters for any other means of escape. All around, piping and wiring crisscrossed in a haphazard pattern, plainly added piecemeal after the two-story home had been sectioned into a lower shop and upper apartment. The newer renovations appeared shoddy, the difference between Old World craftsmanship and modern slipshod construction.

As he searched, Gray spotted a break in the uniform run of planks and rafters. A boxed-off section, three feet square, framed by thicker bracing. Gray recognized it immediately. He’d been right earlier. The bracing marked the opening where a long-demolished interior staircase had once passed through to the floor above.

But how securely had it been sealed up?

Only one way to find out.

Gray rose up on his heels, stood atop the bookcase, and followed it like a balance beam in the direction of the framed opening. It was only a few yards—but it led deeper into the shop, toward the fire.

“Where are you going?” Fiona demanded from atop the ladder.

Gray didn’t have the breath to explain. The smoke choked thicker with every step. The heat grew to an open-furnace intensity. He finally reached the section of bookshelf below the sealed stairwell.

Glancing down, Gray saw that the bookcase’s lower shelves already smoldered. He’d reached the firestorm’s leading edge.

No time to waste.

Bracing himself, he slammed his crowbar up.

The tip plunged easily through the thinner wood planking. It was no more than pressed fiberboard and vinyl tiles. Shoddy, as he’d hoped. Thank God for the lack of modern work ethic.

Gray hauled on his crowbar, cranking like a machine as the air burned and the heat blistered. Soon he had created an opening wide enough to climb through.

Gray tossed the crowbar through the opening. It clattered above.

He turned to Fiona and waved her to him.

“Can you get on top of the bookshelves and—?”

“I saw how you got over there.” She scrambled up onto the bookcase.

A
pop
drew Gray’s attention below. The bookcase shuddered under him.

Uh-oh…

His weight and the burning lower tiers were rapidly weakening his perch. He reached to the hole and half pulled himself up, shifting his weight off the shelf.

“Hurry,” he urged the girl.

With her arms held out for balance, Fiona edged along the top of the bookcase. About a yard away.

“Hurry,” he repeated.

“I heard you the first—”

With a resounding
crack,
the section of bookcase under Gray collapsed. He gripped the edges of the hole tighter as the case toppled away, crashing into the fire. A fresh wash of heat, ash, and flames swept high.

Fiona screamed as her section shook, but held.

Hanging by his arms, Gray called to her. “Leap over to me. Grab around my shoulders.”

Fiona needed no further encouragement as her case wobbled. She jumped and struck him hard, arms latching around his neck, legs clinging around his waist. He was almost knocked from his perch. He swung in place.

“Can you use my body to climb up through the hole?” he asked with a strain.

“I…I think so.”

She hung a moment longer, not moving.

The rough edges of the hole tore at his fingers. “Fiona…”

She trembled against him, then worked her way around to his back. Once moving, she climbed quickly, planting a toe into his belt, then pushing off his shoulder. She was through the hole with all the agility of a spider monkey.

Below, a bonfire of books and shelving raged.

Gray gladly hauled himself up after her, worming through the hole and beaching himself on the floor. He was in the center of a hallway. Rooms spread out in either direction.

“Fire’s up here, too,” Fiona whispered, as if afraid to attract the flames’ attention.

Rolling to his feet, Gray saw the flickering glow from the back half of the apartment. Smoke choked these halls, even thicker than below.

“C’mon,” he said. It was still a race.

Gray hurried down the hall away from the fire. He ended at one of the boarded upper windows. He peeked between two slats. Sirens could be heard in the distance. People gathered in the street below: onlookers and gawkers. And surely hidden among them was a gunman or two.

Gray and the girl would be exposed if they tried climbing out the window.

Fiona studied the crowd, too. “They won’t let us leave, will they?”

“Then we’ll get out on our own.”

Gray backed away and searched up. He pictured the attic dormer window he’d spotted earlier from the street. They needed to reach the roof.

Fiona understood his intention. “There’s a pull-down ladder in the next room.” She led the way. “I would come up here to read sometimes when Mutti…” Fiona’s voice cracked, and her words died.

Gray knew the girl would be haunted by the death of her grandmother for a long time. He put his arm around her shoulder, but she shrugged out of it angrily and stepped away.

“Over here,” she said and entered what once must have been a sitting room. Now it held only a few crates and a faded, ripped sofa.

Fiona pointed to a frayed rope hanging from the ceiling, attached to a trapdoor in the roof.

Gray tugged it down, and a collapsible wooden ladder slid to the floor. He climbed first, followed by Fiona.

The attic was unfinished: just insulation, rafters, and rat droppings. The only light came from a pair of dormer windows. One faced the front street, the other toward the back. Thin smoke filled the space, but so far no flames.

Gray decided to try the rear window. It faced west, leaving the roof in shadow this time of day. Also, that side of the row house was on fire. Their attackers might be less attentive to it.

Gray hopped from rafter to rafter. He could feel the heat from below. One section of insulation was already smoldering, the fiberglass melting.

Reaching the window, Gray checked below. The roof pitch was such that he could not see into the courtyard behind the shop. And if he couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see him. Additionally, smoke roiled up from the broken windows below, offering additional cover.

For once, the fire was to their advantage.

Still, Gray stood well to the side as he unhooked the window latch and pushed it open. He waited. No gunshots. Sirens could now be heard converging on the street outside.

“Let me go first,” Gray whispered in Fiona’s ear. “If all’s clear—”

A low roar erupted behind them.

They both turned. A tongue of flame shot out of the heart of the burning insulation, licking high, cracking and smoking. They were out of time.

“Follow me,” Gray said.

He edged out the window, staying low. It was wonderfully cool out on the roof, the air crisp after the perpetual stifle.

Buoyed by the escape, Gray tested the roof tiles. The pitch was steep, but he had good grip with his boots. With care, walking was manageable. He stepped away from the shelter of the window and aimed for the roofline to the north. Ahead, the gap between the row houses was less than three feet. They should be able to leap the distance.

Satisfied, he turned back to the window. “Okay, Fiona…be careful.”

The girl popped her head out, searched around, then crept onto the roof. She stayed crouched, almost on all fours.

Gray waited for her. “You’re doing fine.”

She glanced over to him. Distracted, she failed to spot a cracked tile. Her toe shattered through it. It broke away, causing her to lose her balance. She landed hard on her belly—and began to slide.

Her fingers and toes fought for purchase, but to no avail.

Gray lunged for her. His fingers found only empty air.

Her speed increased as she skated over the tiles. More tiles broke away in her frantic attempt to halt her plummet. Shards of pottery chattered and bounced ahead of her, becoming an avalanche of roof tiles.

Gray lay splayed on his belly. There was nothing he could do to help.

“The gutter!” he called after her, forgoing caution. “Grab the gutter!”

She seemed deaf to his words, fingers scrabbling, toes gouging out more tiles. She bumped over on her side and began to roll. A fluttering scream escaped her.

The first few broken tiles rained over the edge. Gray heard them shatter to the stone courtyard below with firecracker pops.

Then Fiona followed, tumbling over the roof edge, arms flailing.

And she was gone.

10:20
A.M
.
HLUHLUWE-UMFOLOZI GAME PRESERVE
ZULULAND, SOUTH AFRICA

Six thousand miles and a world away from Copenhagen, an open-air Jeep trundled across the trackless wilderness of South Africa.

The heat already sweltered, searing the savanna and casting up shimmering mirages. In the rearview mirror, the plains baked brilliantly under the sun, interrupted by thorny thickets and solitary stands of red bush willow. Immediately ahead rose a low knoll, studded thickly with knobby acacia and skeletal leadwood trees.

“Is that the place, Doctor?” Khamisi Taylor asked, twisting the wheel to bounce his Jeep across a dry creekbed, the dust rising in a rooster tail. He glanced at the woman beside him.

Dr. Marcia Fairfield half stood in the passenger seat, her hand clamped on the windshield’s edge for balance. She pointed an arm. “Around to the west side. There’s a deep hollow.”

Khamisi downshifted and skirted to the right. As the current game warden on duty for the Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Game Preserve, he had to follow protocol. Poaching was a serious offense—but also a reality. Especially in the lonelier sections of the park.

Even his own people, his fellow Zulu tribesmen, sometimes followed the traditional way and practices. It required even fining some of his grandfather’s old friends. The elders had given him a nickname, a word in Zulu that translated as “Fat Boy.” It was said with little outward derision, but Khamisi knew there was still an undercurrent of distaste. They considered him less a man for taking a white man’s job, living
fat
off of others. He was still a bit of a stranger around here. His father had taken him to Australia when he was twelve, after his mother died. He had spent a good portion of his life outside the city of Darwin on Australia’s north coast, even spent two years at university in Queensland. Now at twenty-eight, he was back, having secured a job as a game warden—partly from his education, partly from his ties to the tribes here.

Living fat off of others.

“Can’t you go any faster?” his passenger urged.

Dr. Marcia Fairfield was a graying biologist out of Cambridge, well respected, a part of the original Operation Rhino project, often called the Jane Goodall of rhinos. Khamisi enjoyed working with her. Maybe it was just her lack of pretense, from her faded khaki safari jacket to her silver-gray hair tied back in a simple ponytail.

Or maybe it was her passion. Like now.

“If the cow died birthing, her calf might still be alive. But for how long?” She pounded a fist against the edge of the windshield. “We can’t lose both.”

As game warden, Khamisi understood. Since 1970, the population of black rhinos had decreased ninety-six percent in Africa. The Hluhluwe-Umfolozi reserve sought to remedy that, as it had the white rhino population. It was the chief conservation effort of the park.

Every black rhino was important.

“The only reason we found her was the tracking implant,” Dr. Fairfield continued. “Spotted her by helicopter. But if she gave birth, there’ll be no way to track her calf.”

“Won’t the baby stay close to its mother?” Khamisi asked. He had witnessed the same himself. Two years ago, a pair of lion cubs had been found huddling against the cold belly of their dam, shot by a sport poacher.

“You know the fate of orphans. Predators will be drawn by the carcass. If the calf is still around, bloody from birth…”

Khamisi nodded. He punched the gas and bounced the Jeep up the rocky slope. The rear end fishtailed in some loose scree—but he kept going.

As they cleared the hill, the terrain ahead broke apart into deep ravines, cut by trickling streams. Here the vegetation thickened: sycamore figs, Natal mahogany, and nyala trees. It was one of the few “wet” areas of the park, also one of the most remote, well away from the usual game trails and tourist roads. Only those with permits were allowed to traverse this section under strict limitations: daylight hours only, no overnight stays. The territory ran all the way to the park’s western border.

Khamisi scanned the horizon as he inched the Jeep down the far slope. A mile away, a stretch of game fencing broke across the terrain. The ten-foot-high black fence divided the park from a neighboring private preserve. Such reserves often shared a park’s borders, offering the more affluent traveler a more intimate experience.

But this was no ordinary private preserve.

The Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Park had been founded in 1895, the oldest sanctuary in all of Africa. As such, the neighboring private reserve was also the oldest. The chunk of family-owned land predated even the park, owned by a living dynasty of South Africa, the Waalenberg clan, one of the original Boer families, whose generations stretched back to the seventeenth century. This particular reserve was a quarter the size of the park itself. Its grounds were said to be teeming with wildlife. And not just the big five—the elephant, rhinoceros, leopard, lion, and cape buffalo—but also predators and prey of every ilk: the Nile crocodile, hippo, cheetah, hyena, wildebeest, jackal, giraffe, zebra, waterbuck, kudu, impala, reedbuck, warthog, baboons. It was said that the Waalenberg preserve had unknowingly sheltered a pack of rare okapi, well before this relative of the giraffe had even been discovered back in 1901.

But there were always rumors and stories associated with the Waalenberg preserve. The park was only accessible by helicopter or small plane. The roads that once led to it had long since returned to the wild. The only visitors, occasional as they were, were major dignitaries from around the world. It was said Teddy Roosevelt once hunted on the reserve and even fashioned the United States national park system after the Waalenberg preserve.

Khamisi would give his eyeteeth to spend a day in there.

But that honor was limited only to the head warden of Hluhluwe. A tour of the Waalenberg estate was one of the perks upon acquiring that mantle, and even then it took a signed affidavit of secrecy. Khamisi hoped one day to achieve that lofty goal.

But he held out little hope.

Not with his black skin.

His Zulu heritage and education might have helped him get this job, but even after apartheid, there remained limits. Traditional ways die hard—for both black and white men. Still, his position was an inroad. One of the sad legacies of apartheid was that an entire generation of tribal children had been raised with little or no education, suffering under the years of sanctions, segregation, and unrest. A lost generation. So he did all he could do: opened what doors he could and held them for those who would come after.

He would play the Fat Boy, if that’s what it took.

In the meantime…

“There!” Dr. Fairfield shouted, startling Khamisi back to the tortuous unmarked track. “Make a left at that baobab at the bottom of the hill.”

Khamisi spotted the prehistoric giant tree. Large white flowers drooped mournfully from the ends of its branches. To its left, the land dropped away, descending into a bowl-shaped depression. Khamisi caught a sparkle of a tiny pool near the bottom.

Water hole.

Such springs dotted the park, some natural, some man-made. They were the best places for a glimpse of wildlife—and also the most dangerous to traverse on foot.

Khamisi braked to a halt by the tree. “We’ll have to walk in from here.”

Dr. Fairfield nodded. They both reached for rifles. Though both were conservationists, they were also familiar with the ever-present danger of the veldt.

As he climbed out, Khamisi shouldered his large-bore double rifle, a.465 Nitro Holland & Holland Royal. It could stop a charging elephant. In dense brush, he preferred it to any bolt-action rifle.

They headed down the slope, prickling with basket grass and shrubby sicklebush. Overhead, the higher canopy shielded them from the sun but created deep shadows below. As he marched, Khamisi noted the heavy silence. No birdsong. No chatter of monkeys. Only the buzz and whirring of insects. The quiet set his teeth on edge.

Beside him, Dr. Fairfield checked a handheld GPS tracker.

She pointed an arm.

Khamisi followed her direction, skirting the muddy pool. As he stalked through some reeds, he was rewarded by a growing stench of rotting meat. It didn’t take much longer to push into a deep-shadowed copse and discover its source.

The black rhino cow must have weighed three thousand pounds, give or take a stone. A monster-size specimen.

“Dear God,” Dr. Fairfield exclaimed through a handkerchief clutched over her mouth and nose. “When Roberto pinpointed the remains by helicopter…”

“It’s always worse on the ground,” Khamisi said.

He marched to the bloated carcass. It lay on its left side. Flies rose in a black cloud at their approach. The belly had been ripped open. Intestines bulged out, ballooned with gas. It seemed impossible that all this had once fit inside the abdomen. Other organs were draped across the dirt. A bloody smudge indicated where some choice tidbit had been dragged into the surrounding dense foliage.

Flies settled again.

Khamisi stepped over a section of gnawed red liver. The rear hind limb appeared to have been almost torn off at the hip. The strength of the jaws to do that…

Even a mature lion would’ve had a hard time.

Khamisi circled until he reached the head.

One of the rhino’s stubby ears had been bitten off, its throat savagely ripped open. Lifeless black eyes stared back at Khamisi, too wide, appearing frozen in fright. Lips were also rippled back as if in terror or agony. A wide tongue protruded, and blood pooled below. But none of this was important.

He knew what he had to check.

Above the scum-flecked nostrils curved a long horn, prominent and perfect.

“Definitely not a poacher,” Khamisi said.

The horn would’ve been taken. It was the main reason rhino populations were still in rapid decline. Powdered horn sold in Asian markets as a so-called cure for erectile dysfunction, a homeopathic Viagra. A single horn fetched a princely sum.

Khamisi straightened.

Dr. Fairfield crouched near the other end of the body. She had donned plastic gloves, leaning her rifle against the body. “It doesn’t appear she’s given birth.”

“So no orphaned calf.”

The biologist stepped around the carcass to the belly again. She bent down and, without even a wince of squeamishness, tugged a flap of torn belly up, and reached inside.

He turned away.

“Why hasn’t the carcass been picked clean by carrion feeders?” Dr. Fairfield asked as she worked.

“It’s a lot of meat,” he mumbled. Khamisi circled back around. The quiet continued to press around him, squeezing the heat atop them.

The woman continued her examination. “I don’t think that’s it. The body’s been here since last night, near a watering hole. If nothing else, the abdomen would have been cleaned out by jackals.”

Khamisi surveyed the body again. He stared at the ripped rear leg, the torn throat. Something large had brought the rhino down. And fast.

A prickling rose along the back of his neck.

Where
were
the carrion feeders?

Before he could contemplate the mystery, Dr. Fairfield spoke. “The calf’s gone.”

“What?” He turned back around. “I thought you said she hadn’t given birth.”

Dr. Fairfield stood up, stripping off her gloves and retrieving her gun. Rifle in hand, the biologist stalked away from the carcass, gaze fixed to the ground. Khamisi noted she was following the bloody path, where something was dragged away from the belly, to be eaten in private.

Oh, God…

He followed after her.

At the edge of the copse, Dr. Fairfield used the tip of her rifle to part some low-hanging branches, which revealed what had been dragged from the belly.

The rhino calf.

The scrawny body had been shredded into sections, as if fought over.

“I think the calf was still alive when it was torn out,” Dr. Fairfield said, pointing to a spray of blood. “Poor thing…”

Khamisi stepped back, remembering the biologist’s earlier question. Why hadn’t any other carrion feeders eviscerated the remains? Vultures, jackals, hyenas, even lions. Dr. Fairfield was right. This much meat would not have been left to flies and maggots.

It made no sense.

Not unless…

Khamisi’s heart thudded heavily.

Not unless the predator was
still
here.

Khamisi lifted his rifle. Deep in the shadowed copse, he again noted the heavy silence. It was as if the very forest were intimidated by whatever had killed the rhino.

He found himself testing the air, listening, eyes straining, standing dead still. The shadows seemed to deepen all around him.

Having spent his childhood in South Africa, Khamisi was well familiar with the superstitions, whispers of monsters that haunted and hunted the jungles: the
ndalawo,
a howling man-eater of the Uganda forest; the
mbilinto,
an elephant-size hippo of the Congo wetlands; the
mngwa,
a furry lurker of coastal coconut groves.

But sometimes even myths came to life in Africa. Like the
nsui-fisi.
It was a striped man-eating monster of Rhodesia, long considered a folktale by white settlers…that is, until decades later it was discovered to be a new form of cheetah, taxonomically classified as
Acinonyx rex
.

As Khamisi searched the jungle, he recalled another monster of legend, one that was known across the breadth of Africa. It went by many names: the
dubu,
the
lumbwa,
the
kerit,
the
getet
. Mere mention of the name evoked cries of fear from natives. As large as a gorilla, it was a veritable devil for its swiftness, cunning, and ferocity. Over the centuries, hunters—black and white—claimed to have caught glimpses of it. All children learned to recognize its characteristic howl. This region of Zulu-land was no exception.