Far Horizon (30 page)

He moved the crosshairs of the sight to the spot just behind where the rhino's stubby front left leg joined the body. The thick hide was painted a shimmery luminescent green by the night sight, making the creature appear like something from a child's storybook.

Orlov wrapped his index finger around the trigger and started to squeeze.

*

Whether it was the new haircut or not, Mike was unsure, but he had started acting like a soldier again. The realisation, which came to him while he was sitting on the deck of the houseboat gazing at the silvery reflection of the half-moon on the lake, both scared and comforted him.

The poker game had deteriorated into near debauchery as the evening wore on. George had beaten Jane down to bra and pants and then resorted to taking off his contact lenses, one at a time, instead of losing his underpants when he lost hand after hand. Even Nigel seemed to be enjoying himself at last, and he, too, was down to grey-white jockeys when Sam convinced him it was time to turn in. Mike feared that if the game had gone on much longer the next phase would have been skinny-dipping in the lake – not a good idea given the number of crocodiles and hippos they had spotted within a stone's-throw of the houseboat. He had called lights out around midnight to a chorus of half-hearted boos, jeers and facetious ‘yes, sir's.

Mike stuck around after the last of them had stumbled off to bed, and climbed the shaky aluminium ladder onto the top deck to look at the stars and finish the remains of his third beer of the day. He wanted to stay relatively sober, just in case Hess and Orlov were stupid enough to cruise past the houseboat and give themselves away.

From his shirt pocket he fished a crumpled packet of cigarettes and his Zippo. He lifted the lighter and flipped the cap, but something stopped him from striking the wheel against the flint. He looked out
across the lake. There was no sign of anything odd, just a couple of kapenta rigs. The chug of their diesel engines and the occasional whine of a winch reeling in a net filled with thousands of tiny fish carried clearly across the water.

When he was a young soldier, and smoking was still the rule rather than the exception, he had to be very careful doing so at night when he was out in the bush on military exercises. A naked light would expose him to the enemy. ‘The enemy' was a relative term. It could be some prick from a rival unit sneaking around the perimeter, or his own troop sergeant prowling around inside the perimeter looking for an excuse to kick arse. Either way, the smokers had to be a cautious lot.

Mike glanced across the water again. This would be the approach his enemy would take, if he was out there. From the shore there was nothing to fear. He padded on bare feet across the non-slip deck, around the upper wheelhouse so that he was shielded from view from the lake. As a further precaution he faced the shore and cupped his hands close to his mouth as he lit up.

Bats squeaked in the trees above the empty camping ground and every now and then a nightjar issued its repetitive call, like a mini electric motor purring away. Above the night noises Mike detected a new sound. This time it really was a motor, the high-pitched whine of a fast, smooth-running marine outboard. It wasn't loud, so it couldn't be nearby, but the sound was man-made and out of place.

He flicked the cigarette into the inky waters of the
lake, the lee of the boat concealing the glowing trail of burning embers that followed the butt. The cigarette died with a plop and a hiss and he instinctively dropped to the deck. He edged along the rough surface, using his elbows to drag himself forward until only his head poked around the wheelhouse.

The wake gave away the position of the little boat before he saw the craft itself. What surprised him at first was how close it was. No more than a couple of hundred metres away, he guessed. The engine was very quiet, though, for the fast speed it was travelling at.

The boat jinked wildly as Mike watched it, probably to miss a sunken tree. Another noise echoed across the water, this time a loud clunk of heavy metal striking a deck. The boat slowed and the wake started to settle.

Though it was closer than he had thought, the boat was still too distant for him to tell how many people were on board. More than two, by the look of it, with some bulky cargo as well. The moonlight rippled on the disturbed water and the slowing boat rocked as someone, or something, changed position.

Shadows moved in the boat and a menacing shape broke the otherwise smooth silhouette. Someone had raised a rifle, a long-barrelled rifle. The movement was over in a split second, but there was no mistaking it. Mike lowered his body even more, hoping to disappear into the unyielding deck. He pressed his face to the gritty surface, in case the comparative paleness of his skin caught the moon's reflection.

The pilot of the darkened boat revved the engine again and Mike heard it fade away. At last he risked a
look. There was nothing but a shimmering wake to prove the boat had ever been there.

His mind raced as possible explanations came to him and were then cast away. Could the boat be a National Parks vessel? No, as it would have had its navigation lights on. An anti-poaching patrol, sneaking about hoping to surprise illegal hunters? Not likely, and besides, the boat was coming from the Zambian side of the lake.

He and Sarah had clearly seen Orlov and Hess in a speeding boat, a different one, earlier in the day. Had they been doing what he would have done in their shoes? A daytime reconnaissance under the enemy's nose was a ballsy move, he had to give them that, and from what Flynn had told him, it seemed exactly what the hunters had had in mind. There was no way they could hunt in broad daylight, so the night after their trip was the logical time for their return, when the trail of the rhino they'd been tracking was still fresh.

Mike got himself up off the deck with the first movement of a push-up. He may have been thinking like a soldier again, but his body had well and truly retired from the military. He grunted with the effort, and his pectoral muscles shrieked messages of protest as he stood and shook his arms.

He retraced his steps down the ladder, taking care not to make any noise. He didn't need his passengers or the houseboat crew waking up and asking questions about what he was going to do next. On the lower deck he eased open a door and padded inside. George snored as only a passed-out drunk can snore,
and Jane and Julie rolled restlessly against each other in a double bed as he crept past the tiny bedroom they shared. He gingerly stepped over an unconscious Nigel, who for some reason had not made it to his bed and lay sprawled in the narrow corridor between the cabins, one white cheek poking out very unattractively from his underpants. Mike's cabin was at the end of the corridor and he gently worked the door handle.

Mike didn't want to risk using the light. He knew what he wanted and where it was. At the bottom of his daypack was the Browning, wrapped in an oily chamois cloth. The loaded magazine was inside the weapon. He unwrapped the pistol, thumbed the magazine release and caught the mag in the palm of his left hand. The deadly little brass and copper passengers were seated comfortably, so he returned them to the take-off position inside the pistol with an audible mating of metal on metal.

Something touched his shoulder and he spun around fast, his right hand rising automatically to the fire position. The black barrel stopped just centimetres from Sarah's heart.

Panic flashed in her blue eyes, but she raised a hand to her mouth to stifle a shout. Mike didn't know who was more surprised, him or her.

‘What are you doing!' she whispered, dropping her hand as he lowered the pistol. ‘You could have killed me!'

He shoved the Browning into the waistband of his cargo shorts. ‘Keep your voice down.'

She was back-lit by shafts of moonlight bouncing
down the corridor through the slatted door to the main deck. The pale silver light caught the spikes of her newly shorn hair and the light, downy hair on her arms. She wore a green T-shirt, her nipples just visible as they strained against the stretchy fabric. Her smooth legs shone like pale gold. She ran a hand self-consciously through her still-unfamiliar short hair.

‘I was waiting . . . I mean, looking for you,' she stammered. ‘I heard a noise up top and wasn't sure what it was, so I came to tell you, and . . .'

The rest of her story hung in the air as she fumbled for more detail. Mike closed his eyes briefly to focus on his mission. All other thought had been dispelled by the confrontation he hoped was coming. Nonetheless, a vision of he and Sarah kissing in the nightclub flashed across his mind's eye. He smelled her perfume in the small and hot cabin, the same scent she had been wearing that night.

‘Sarah, I . . .' He reached out to her with his hand, now free of the weapon, but she stepped back.

‘What?' she hissed with annoyance, and maybe embarrassment. ‘I just wanted to talk. That's all. Don't go getting any stupid ideas.'

He looked at her again. Part of him knew he could, should, take her in his arms and finish the kiss they started in Victoria Falls.

She stepped back awkwardly as he moved towards her, the resolve crumbling as he turned side-on to pass her in the narrow doorway. Mike almost expected to get a shock of static electricity as his chest came a hair's breadth from her erect nipples.

‘I've got to go,' he said.

She parted her lips to speak and Mike couldn't help but notice how the moonlight glistened on the soft, moist skin. He turned his back on her and hastened silently down the corridor. He was now driven by an emotion stronger than love, lust or fear.

Revenge.

‘W
ait for me!' Sarah called as Mike untied the rope securing the twelve-foot aluminium runabout to the houseboat.

‘Keep your voice down, and stay where you are,' he replied. The last thing he wanted was the houseboat's crew waking up. There was no way the captain would let him take the dinghy out for a night trip on Lake Kariba, even if he was only travelling the short distance to shore.

Mike bent to grab an oar and felt the dinghy rock. He turned around and hissed, ‘Get back on the boat, Sarah, now!'

‘Go to hell,' she replied, hands on hips, eyes blazing. She had pulled on a pair of faded denim shorts and sandals and tied the hem of her T-shirt in a knot, exposing a bare, flat midriff. Slung from her right shoulder was her camera, with a large flash unit attached. ‘I'm coming with you whether you like it or not. It's the poachers, isn't it? They're heading back to the park. This is my story!'

Mike clenched his teeth and contemplated forcibly ejecting her from the boat. If she screamed, however, the crew would be on deck before he could get away. ‘This isn't a bloody story! If the poachers I saw . . .' He realised he had given the game away.

‘I knew it! They're here!'

‘If it is them, they'll be bombed-up – armed, I mean – to the teeth. They kill witnesses, Sarah.'

She studied him for a moment in silence. ‘You don't have a choice. I'll wake the captain.'

He sighed. ‘Push us off from the houseboat and sit down.'

‘Give me the other oar.'

Off to port, a hippo laughed out loud.

‘No pictures, OK?' Mike whispered as they pulled the boat onto the sandy shore of the lakeside camp. Sarah nodded and followed close behind him as he moved quickly through the empty camping ground.

They were breaking too many rules to contemplate. Walking around after dark was bad enough, but Mike realised that if he were seen brandishing a pistol in a national park the rangers would shoot him on sight and ask questions later. He kept the Browning tucked under his shirt, inside his shorts.

Off to their left, somewhere along the shoreline, an elephant trumpeted crankily. Poachers and overzealous rangers aside, they were also in real danger of bumping into any of Africa's big, dangerous animals in the park, not to mention a catalogue of poisonous snakes. Mike knew he and Sarah were woefully underdressed and underarmed, but turning back to the safety of the boat was no longer an option.

On the far side of the camping ground they found the access road leading through the bush to the park headquarters. They kept to the shadows of the trees rather than the middle of the road, in case anyone was watching. Mike's hopes of leaving Sarah at camp headquarters were dashed when they got to the darkened building.

‘It's empty,' Mike said softly as he emerged from the building.

‘Loos are empty too. I checked,' Sarah said. Mike had told her to stay still in the bushes outside the headquarters, but she had ignored him. ‘There's something else, as well,' she added, beckoning him to follow her.

At the rear of the building she knelt and grabbed a loose end of black cable, which was partly fixed to the rendered wall. Sarah held the end of the cable up until the moonlight caught its bright tip. ‘Someone's cut this. You can see by how shiny the copper wire is that it's fresh. I imagine the radio's out of action.'

‘Shit,' Mike said, scanning the ground for tracks. There was one set of footprints apart from theirs, which had partially obscured the culprit's. It looked like a pair of homemade sandals, cut from old truck tyres. ‘Poacher. He's gone that way,' he said, pointing across the road back into the bush. ‘Towards the rhino
boma
.'

‘Where are the rangers?' Sarah asked.

‘Home in bed, pissed out of their heads probably,' he said. The fact that the headquarters did not even appear to have been manned that night, despite his
warning, fuelled his anger. ‘Let's go. I suppose it's useless for me to suggest that you stay here?'

‘Useless,' she replied.

‘At least stay behind me, and stay low if the shooting starts.'

‘No argument there, Major. You're the one with the gun.' She gave him a playful punch on the arm and he found her touch reassuring. He drew the pistol from his shorts and Sarah watched intently as he pulled back the slide halfway to check once again there was a round up the spout. He showed the weapon to her.

‘If anything happens, pull the trigger, here, and the bullets come out of the end, there. Got it?'

‘Got it.'

They crossed the road and stepped into the bush. A couple of times Sarah bumped into him when he stopped to listen to the sounds around them. She was too close to him, but he couldn't blame her. He didn't need any distractions; however, he couldn't help noticing the intoxicating smell of her perfume and her body on the light breeze that followed them.

Mike reckoned he could navigate to the rhino
boma
through the bush, but he didn't hold out much chance of tracking down the poacher who had slashed the radio cables. Neither did he want to try. The wind was behind them and anyone, or anything, would smell them coming. He decided they would stop at the
boma
, take up a defensive position, and do the job the absent rangers should have been doing. He hoped he would at least find one of them on guard duty at the
boma
, although he half expected the sentry would be asleep.

Mike judged they probably had about two to three hundred metres to the
boma
. He moved a thorn tree branch to one side, being careful not to let any of the wicked, long barbs catch his shirt, and held it to one side to let Sarah past. A rustle in the leaves made them both freeze and turn their heads.

There was more movement and, more ominously, a low growl from the base of a bush in front of them. Mike gently let go of the branch and used his left hand to support the pistol, which he held stretched out in the firing position.

He glanced at Sarah, who was looking behind herself now. ‘Don't move,' he mouthed silently, checking her natural urge to turn and flee. If it was a leopard or a lion, running was the worst thing she could do. Big cats, like small cats, love to pounce on moving creatures. Slowly he crouched, and Sarah mimicked his movements. She rested a clammy hand on his shoulder.

Mike felt short of breath and a vein began to throb incessantly in his neck. The animal growled again, low and full of menace. He strained his eyes for a better look, trying to peer through the bushes ahead, rather than at them. The barrel of the pistol started to waver slightly.

The bushes shook and Sarah placed a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream. Mike took up the pressure on the trigger and the animal burst into the clearing. Mike's eyes were locked at about waist-height, at the position where a charging lion's head would have been, so he missed seeing the creature at first.

‘Look, on the ground,' Sarah whispered breathlessly. ‘He's gorgeous!' She giggled with nervous relief.

There, two metres in front of them, was a honey badger, a small black and grey creature not much bigger than a skunk or an undersized specimen of its European counterpart. The grey saddle of hair that ran from the top of its head to the tip of its long tail bristled with anger and it lifted its nasty squashed Pekinese-dog face to the humans in defiance. After a moment, in which it decided they were no threat, the honey badger trotted off into a thicket to their right.

‘Noisy little bugger,' Sarah said in admiration.

‘And ferocious. They've been known to bring down a wildebeest,' he replied, lowering the pistol at last.

‘Never! How?'

‘They jump up and rip their scrotum open. The animal bleeds to death. Let's get moving.'

They walked on for a few minutes and then Mike paused. He leaned against the trunk of a leadwood and wiped the sweat from his eyes with the back of his gun hand. The thick bush prevented the lake breeze from reaching them and the going was getting harder and hotter.

‘Mike!' Sarah called, too late.

As he turned he felt cold, hard steel poke painfully into the tender skin behind his right ear.

‘Do not move, do not speak. Place the pistol on the ground. Do not drop it. Samson, search the woman,' said the deep African voice behind Mike.

A second man emerged from the bush in front of him. He was young and dressed in the uniform of a National Parks ranger.

‘Your radio is dead, and there are poachers –' Mike began.

‘Quiet. I said no talking,' the man behind him whispered, pressing the gun barrel harder into Mike's head to punctuate his order.

When the man spoke, especially when he pronounced the letter S, Mike detected a soft whistling sound. He recognised the voice – it was the old grey-headed ranger they had spoken to at the headquarters, the one who knew Flynn.

Sarah fidgeted and slapped at the hands of the tall young ranger as he quickly completed his cursory search. With the little she was wearing there was nowhere for her to conceal a weapon.

The young ranger was dressed for war. He wore an olive green bush uniform and canvas web gear, including four pouches for banana-shaped AK-47 magazines slung across his broad chest. He held his assault rifle by its pistol grip, ready for action.

‘Take the camera,' the older ranger said.

‘Over my dead body,' Sarah hissed as the younger man took a tentative step towards her, then checked his pace. ‘Touch me and you'll be assaulting a member of the press.'

‘You have no right to be here at this time of night, as a member of the press or even as a tourist. I could shoot you both on suspicion of poaching. Especially you,' the senior man said, emphasising his last words with another shove of the rifle barrel in Mike's ear.

‘I'm the one who warned you about the poachers. We've been to your headquarters, the poachers have –'

‘I know exactly what the poachers have been up to,' he said.

At last he lowered his rifle, allowing Mike to turn
to face him. He still pointed the weapon at Mike, though. It was a long-barrelled FN self-loading rifle, painted in green and brown camouflage colours.

The old man knelt, still covering Mike with the rifle, and said in a disdainful tone, ‘I don't believe you are a poacher. No one would be stupid enough to walk in the bush at night with this thing.' He retrieved the Browning pistol from the ground and stuffed it in his canvas web belt. He, too, was dressed in green fatigues, having swapped the khaki dress uniform Mike had seen him in earlier in the day.

‘We warned you! Of course we're not poachers,' Mike said.

‘And I thanked you for your warning. But what you are doing here, now, with this weapon, is against the law. I think there is more to your story than you are telling me, but we do not have time to talk about it now. I have poachers to catch and now three prisoners to guard.'

‘Three?' Sarah asked. She had pushed the camera behind her back, and the rangers seemed to have forgotten it.

‘Show the lady our new friend, Samson,' the old man said.

Samson, the younger ranger, retreated into the bushes and returned a few moments later pushing a bound and gagged man in front of him. The man wore faded blue shorts and a torn green T-shirt. On his feet were bulky homemade sandals. The soles, Mike guessed, were cut from old car tyres. Panic showed in the man's eyes.

‘He is probably the one who cut the wires. We
found a knife and an AK-47 on him. Both are safely out of harm's way, but there are sure to be other poachers around. We were on our way to the rhino
boma
when we heard you blundering around behind us,' the old ranger said.

‘Let us help you,' Sarah said.

‘I should tie you up here and leave you until we have finished our work. That is what I should do, but if a lion or a leopard took you, Samson and I would lose our jobs. There are only two of us in the camp tonight, and I cannot spare him to guard you. You will have to take your chances with us until the poachers are caught, madam. When we get to the
boma
I will find you a safe place, but we do not want your help. Mr Williams, keep the lady company at the rear of the column. Samson, lead off. I will guard the prisoner.'

They set off again, in a straggling single file, stopping every ten or twenty metres as Samson scanned the bush and listened. Mike smelled the bitter-sweet odour of warm animal dung before he saw the rhino pens. Little grunts and snuffles emerged from the baby animals as the group skirted the clearing around the rough wooden fence that encircled the individual enclosures. They could smell the humans, but didn't seem overly alarmed.

Samson led them through the bush to the far end of the clearing, the farthest point from the lake shore and camping ground. The old ranger motioned for Mike to join him and Samson where they knelt amid a stand of low mopani.

‘My name is Patrick,' he whispered and extended his right hand.

They shook, African style, and Mike said, ‘Pleased to meet you, Patrick.'

‘Do not be pleased, Mr Williams, for if we meet the other poachers, then all of us may not survive this night.' He pulled the Browning from his belt and handed it to Mike. ‘I think, from the look of you, that I can trust you. Keep the madam safe and do not fire unless I fire first.'

Mike nodded, and accepted without comment the pistol and the trust Patrick had placed in him.

‘Your position will be over there –' Patrick's whispered orders were cut short by Samson raising his right hand and then pointing into the bush ahead of them.

They all knelt and Patrick pushed the face of the bound poacher into the dirt. Samson cupped his left hand to his ear. After a few seconds they heard the sound that had alerted Samson, a deep grunting noise and a rustle of bushes, not far off.

Patrick leaned so close to Mike that his lips almost brushed his ear. His breath smelt of rotted biltong and decades of cigarette smoke. ‘It is the male rhino. He has come for one of the females. The poachers may be close.'