Bodyguard: Ambush (Book 3) (30 page)

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 tarpaulin 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
jerrycan. Abel shouldered the kitbag 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 kudu 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 moustache 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 due to 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.

It was late when the poachers finally settled
down beneath their makeshift tents, leaving the younger one beside the fire to watch
over their prisoners. Amber lay contorted on the hard earth, her body twisted awkwardly
by the bindings as she tried to sleep. Connor, however, was in no state of mind to rest.
Through half-closed eyes, he observed their guard absently chipping away at the log with
his father’s knife and tried to figure out how to free them both and get his
heirloom back.

The Wolf and Abel had yet to return. With
the other two asleep, Connor reckoned this was their best opportunity to attempt an
escape. For, despite the Wolf’s initial care of them, Connor couldn’t trust
the man to stay true to his word. Even if it was the hunter’s intention to release
them to the authorities, his gang of poachers could well persuade him otherwise.

Their only chance of survival lay in
running.

The sound of chipping wood ceased and Connor
cautiously looked up. Their guard was beginning to doze, his head lolling, the knife
left protruding out of the hacked
piece of
log. Connor waited another ten minutes, then, as quietly as he could, he shifted into a
kneeling position. It took some time, his limbs being stiff and his muscles cramped, but
eventually he got himself upright. Although his hands were numb, the blood supply half
cut off, Connor was glad his bindings were tight. It would make them easier to
break.

Bending over, he raised his arms up behind
himself and, just as he’d been shown at his surprise birthday party, he brought
them down hard on to his backside. But the impact failed to snap the plastic tie.
Instead he lost his balance, toppled forward and landed face first in the dirt.

Spitting out bits of earth, Connor twisted
his head round towards the guard. Thankfully the young poacher was still asleep.
Convinced the technique had been easier in the company of his friends, Connor checked
the tie’s locking mechanism was dead-centre between his wrists and tried again. It
took two more attempts before the binding actually split.

After shaking the blood back into his hands,
he edged his way over to the sleeping guard and reached for his knife. The young man
stirred and Connor’s fingers clasped the hilt of the knife, ready to fight back.
But the poacher didn’t wake and Connor relaxed his grip. Tugging the blade free,
he sliced through the plastic binding securing his ankles. Then he crept back to Amber
and placed a finger on her lips.

Her eyes flickered open and she flinched
away, but immediately calmed on seeing Connor’s face in the firelight.
Connor cut her ties, then signed for her to
follow him. They passed the supply pile, where he grabbed a full water bottle and found
his discarded Go-bag. Leaving the muted glow of the campfire behind, the night closed in
around them until they could barely see in front of their faces. From the pocket of his
cargo trousers Connor retrieved his night-vision sunglasses. Flicking the tiny switch on
the frame’s edge, the world burst back into a ghostly light. Almost immediately he
was confronted by a pair of huge round eyes and Connor almost cried out – but it was
just a harmless bush baby hanging from a nearby branch.

With the copse now illuminated as if there
was a full moon, Connor saw a track they could follow through the undergrowth without
making a sound. But they’d only gone a few metres when Muscleman stepped out from
behind a tree. Having just finished relieving himself, the poacher looked as surprised
as they were. Before he could react, Connor drove a fist into the man’s gut with a
stepping lunge punch; it was like hitting a solid brick wall. For all his martial arts
expertise, his fist crumpled against the granite-hard stomach.

Muscleman grinned in amusement, his teeth
gleaming like a half-moon in the darkness.

‘
Encore!
’ He laughed,
opening up his arms to welcome another shot.

In the second that Connor took to consider
his next best target, Amber stepped up and kicked Muscleman straight between the legs.
The poacher’s eyes bulged and he bent double, expelling a pained gasp. Then she
hammer-fisted
him in the temple. Muscleman
went down like a felled buffalo.

Connor stared at Amber in stunned
admiration.

She replied with a shrug,
‘That’s what they taught me to do in self-defence class at
school.’

‘Then remind me never to pick a fight
with you!’

Connor and Amber crept through a night alive
with noise and unseen movement. The warm air pulsated with the ceaseless chirp of
crickets and cicadas, the plaintive cries of bush babies and the soft flutter of bats
flying overhead. Accompanying this nightly chorus of the African savannah were the
rumbling vocalizations of elephants and the deep drawn-out roars of lions prowling the
plain.

Connor’s eyes darted to every snap of
twig or rustle of leaf in the darkness. But, even with the aid of his night-vision
glasses, he rarely saw the culprit – the creature disappearing into the bushes or up
into the branches before he could identify it.

Amber kept a firm grip of his hand, anxious
not to lose him in the unnerving dark as he guided her through the trees bordering the
plain. Every so often he’d check the compass on his watch and adjust their
direction. Connor had made the conscious decision not to take the most direct route to
the lodge, fearing that if they broke the cover of the trees, they’d be more
easily spotted by rebel soldiers, or the Wolf, or else become prey to the lions they
could hear hunting.

Neither of them
spoke as they hurried away from the camp. Connor presumed that Muscleman must have come
to and woken the others by now. But would they come after them in the dark and without
the Wolf?

Connor heard another crack of a twig close
by.

He stopped still and Amber became motionless
by his side. Her laboured breathing was loud in his ear as he strained to listen for
what animal or person was approaching. But the night noises gave nothing away.

Continuing on, they kept to a well-used
animal trail. This made the going easier and quicker, as well as hiding any potential
tracks they made among the spoor of antelope and other creatures. If the Wolf really did
mean to hunt them down, Connor wanted to ensure he left as little evidence of their
progress as possible.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a
flash of movement.

Connor spun in its direction.

‘What is it?’ Amber whispered,
her eyes wide as a bush baby’s.

Connor shushed for her to be silent. He
scanned the bushes, their edges glowing softly in his night vision. A branch was swaying
ever so slightly but there was nothing there.

‘Just my imagination,’ he
replied, keeping his voice low as he led Amber further along the trail. But they
hadn’t gone far when they both heard a distinct rustling.

Was the Wolf on their trail already? Or had
they run into a rebel patrol?

Connor slowly
pivoted on the spot, searching the undergrowth once more. But it was just a shadowy wall
of bushes and grass.