Poacher (10 page)

He was constantly guarded by an armed police
constable, changing shifts every eight hours. The fact that he was
even accompanied to the toilet did nothing to lighten his mood.

He was scheming and planning, pretending to
be a lot less mobile than he actually was. Time, for him, also
passed agonisingly slowly.

Then, one day, he got an unexpected visitor
who would change the course of his life. ‘Duncan Courie,’ the man
said, extending his right hand. ‘I’m your lawyer. We have to
talk.’

The next Sunday evening Estelle and Sam’s
parents had to depart. After much kissing and crying by the women
they eventually were on their way.

Linda must have been waiting in her car in
the car park – her timing was just too good to be pure chance. They
had not been gone five minutes, when she entered, all smiles.
Without preamble she put her arms around his neck and proceeded to
kiss him passionately. Ignoring his wound, Sam put his arms around
her, his hands on her bare back, and pulled her to him. ‘Jesus,
woman, you are driving me insane.’

She had detected the movement of the sheet at
his crotch and, smiling a wicked smile, she slid her hand down and
gripped his growing erection through the covers.

‘Shit!’ He nearly tore his wound open,
sitting upright and removing her hand. ‘If someone had walked in
here now we would both be thrown out,’ he said, lying back again
and lifting his knees, creating a miniature tent to hide his
predicament.

‘Shall I come back when things are a little
quieter?’ she started giggling, and Sam started laughing till the
tears streamed down his face.

‘You’re bloody insane, woman!’

The draw-string nurse appeared at the door.
It was clear that she did not approve of the two beautiful women
taking turns in visiting her patient. ‘You must take it easy, Mr
Jenkins. You will tear out the stitches.’

They found this understatement hilarious, and
laughed even harder. The nurse left with a haughty sniff, and they
subsided gradually.

‘And haven’t I been a good girl?’

‘Perfect. You had me very worried initially.
Fortunately Estelle is a very naïve girl. She wouldn’t recognise
evil if she stepped in it.’

‘You calling me evil?’ Her hand sliding
towards is crotch again.

‘No, hell! It’s just a figure of speech.’ He
grabbed her hand.

‘When you get out you will have to recuperate
at my place for a few days.’

‘No way, woman. I would love to, but no way.
You are putting too much pressure on Smitty. He is going to snap,
and spill the beans to Estelle.’

‘Will that mean the end of the world?’

Sam knew he was on very thin ice suddenly.
Give me a dangerous animal any day, he thought.

Before he could phrase an appropriate answer,
she was smiling again. ‘Don’t look so worried, big man. I am not
becoming demanding. And please don’t worry about Smitty, believe me
when I say I can handle him.’

After she had left it took Sam a long time to
fall asleep. He was a very worried man. He knew women well enough
to know that those imaginary thunder clouds were in fact growing
thicker by the day. He suspected that she might just be becoming
possessive. Getting out of this one was going to be a real bastard.
To compound the problem, he wasn’t sure he wanted to get out.
Either way, he had trouble.

Joao was watching the constable through his
half-closed eyes. He had just come on duty, and he was young and
frail looking. It was 10:30 on a Monday evening, and the nightly
hush had descended on the ward. The night staff would remain at
their station, only occasionally looking in on the more serious
patients.

With a bit of luck he had up to seven hours
before anybody would miss him.

He groaned and sat up. The policeman was
immediately alert. With another grunt Joao got out of bed and stood
doubled over, both arms across his stomach. The constable was up
and approaching him. ‘Shall I call the night sister?’ he wanted to
know.

‘Not necessary, just give me a hand to the
toilet please.’

As the constable reached out his hand Joao
hit him in the stomach with all his weight behind the blow. With a
‘woof’ the constable’s breath exploded from his mouth and he
doubled over, gagging.

Casually Joao stepped over him, put his arm
around his neck and started applying pressure. ‘Good-bye, little
boy blue,’ he whispered as the constable’s eyes started bulging,
his arms flapping wildly.

Joao kept the pressure up for a good while
after the struggling had ceased. Ascertaining that there was
definitely no pulse, Joao took his pistol and dumped the corpse in
his bed. He pulled up the sheets, hiding the blue uniform
completely. The cap he kicked under the bed.

It was a pity about the size of the cop, he
thought, tying the belt of the hospital gown. He could have used
the uniform.

He would have loved to go looking for Jenkins
right now, but he knew he would not get far, sneaking around the
hospital at this time of night, trying to find his quarry.

Going out of the door would be dicey, as he
had to pass the nurses’ station, so he opted for the window. He was
on the first floor, but there was a ledge running the length of the
building. He got down carefully and lowered himself till he was
hanging from the ledge by the tips of his fingers. Dropping the
short distance into a flower bed was a piece of cake.

All was quiet in the main parking area, and
only a few cars were standing around. He would have preferred to
steal a car and drive himself, but he was afraid of getting lost
and wasting time trying to find his way Komatipoort, where the
Lebombo border post was situated. He also didn’t know anything
about hot-wiring a car.

Komatipoort was approximately 120 kilometres
east of Nelspruit, at the very southern tip of the Kruger Park. A
bit more than an hour’s drive could get him there. The small town
was surrounded mostly by wilderness, with a few scattered farms
here and there.

Joao knew that, in this area, outside the
Park, the border fence was a different cup of tea. The main fence
was two metres high and carried an electric current that resulted
in instant death when touched. Every two kilometres there was a
military monitoring station that reacted instantly upon short
circuiting of the current.

At a distance of three metres, this fence was
flanked by standard game fencing, with a warning sign in four
languages every twenty yards.

It was going to be difficult crossing but he
would rather risk that than be executed for the murder of the
policeman.

Joao ducked into some shrubs as a car turned
off the main road and approached the hospital. It did not, however,
enter the main car park but went past in the direction of a smaller
parking area some distance away. Joao started trotting after the
car, and noticed a sign indicating that this was the Nurses’ Home.
Good, he thought, there should be some life around here. As four
young women got out of the car, chatting and laughing, he faded
back into the shadows. Too many. He would prefer a car with only
one occupant.

He was getting edgy when, ten minutes later,
another car entered the parking area and stopped in the shadow of a
big thorn tree right at the edge. There were two occupants but they
remained in the car, necking. He stalked the car through the
flowers and shrubs, creating havoc which would be bound to send the
chief gardener into convulsions the next day. He sat on his
haunches a few metres from the car, waiting impatiently.

Judging by the sounds emanating from the open
window he decided that this was bound to take a while, and he
didn’t have the time to wait. He had no alternative but to take
them both. Getting up he cocked the dead policeman’s pistol and
stepped up to the car. He jerked the driver’s door open and leant
inside, pointing the pistol.

The roof light had come on as the door
opened. The woman’s dress was hiked up around her hips and her legs
were spread as wide as the foot well would allow. The man was in
the process of kissing her, his hand working away furiously between
her legs. The sudden intrusion made the woman take a deep breath
and she opened her mouth to scream.

‘Don’t!’ Joao hissed, jabbing the pistol in
her direction. ‘You make a noise and you are both dead. You
understand that?’ He reached out his other hand and switched off
the interior light. He opened the back door and in one movement he
slammed the driver’s door and got in the back.

He pressed the pistol behind the woman’s ear.
‘Drive,’ he instructed. ‘Get going. Now!’

The man fumbled lot but got the car going
eventually. ‘I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. You can even
take the car. I haven’t got much money on me, but you are welcome
to what I got. Just please don’t harm us.’

‘Go around the town and get to the
Komatipoort road. You get me to Komati quick and nobody gets
hurt.’

‘Sure, sure,’ the man said, glancing at the
fuel gauge. ‘We have enough fuel. We’ll have you there in no
time.’

‘Just as long as you are not planning on
being a dead hero.’ Joao made sure the man got a good look at the
pistol.

They drove on in silence and reached
Komatipoort without incident just before one am.

‘When you pass the town, just before you get
to the border post, there is a road to your right that goes to
Swaziland. Take it.’

‘Yes, I know the road. No problem.’

Once on the Swaziland road, Joao started
relaxing. He knew that the border was no more than two kilometres
to his left, running parallel to the road.

Some distance out he told to driver to slow
down.

Crawling along, he was scanning the sides of
the road. There was no other traffic on the road, and it wasn’t
long before he found what he was looking for. An obviously
seldom-used track led into the veld on the left. The entrance to a
cattle camp was barred by a gate that was kept closed by a thick
wire loop hooked over the gatepost.

‘Open it,’ he commanded the man, pressing the
pistol to the woman’s head once again. ‘No tricks.’

The car could only follow the track for a
short distance before it petered out completely. They got out and
Joao opened the trunk. He was hoping to find something with which
to tie the man up, but there was nothing.

‘Take off your shirt and trousers,’ he told
him.

The man was getting worried. ‘But you
promised that if we . . .’

‘Shut up and take them off. I want to tie you
up with your own clothes, so I can be long gone before you raise
the alarm. Otherwise I can just kill you. Save myself a lot of
trouble. So make up your mind.’

‘Oh,’ the man said meekly, literally peeling
his clothes off.

Joao tied him to the bumper securely, not
bothering to gag him. Out here he could shout his head off and
nobody would hear him.

‘Now listen to me very carefully. Back there
in the hospital there’s a game ranger that got shot in the stomach,
a while ago.’

‘Yes, yes. I read about it in the
papers.’

‘Good. His name is Sam Jenkins. I want you to
give him a message. Tell him Joao dos Santos promised to kill him.
Tell him that when he goes home, he must start looking over his
shoulder, for one day he will find me there. I want him to know and
be prepared, for his death is going to be a very slow and painful
one. You got all that?’

‘Yes, I got it. I’ll tell him. Please don’t
make the woman take her clothes off. Tie her up with something
else.’

‘No, my friend, you misunderstood me. She is
not getting tied up right now. I need her to help me get over the
fence.’

‘No! Leave her here! I will help you get over
the fence. Please!’

‘Shut up,’ Joao said, taking the woman’s arm
in a firm grip.

The man started screaming at him, and Joao
kicked him in the stomach.

They were both whimpering now, the man with
pain and the woman with fright.

By the light of the stars Joao started
striding through the bush towards the wire, maintaining a firm grip
on the woman. She was stumbling through the tall grass and crying,
beyond herself with fright.

She stumbled again and fell down. ‘Stupid
bitch,’ he swore as he bent down to pick her up. As he put his arm
around her, a large firm breast filled hand. A vivid picture of her
spread thighs flashed through his mind, and there was the familiar
stirring in his loins.

Without a word he laid her down again and
proceeded to tear the clothes off her. ‘No, please,’ she whimpered,
struggling half-heartedly, nearly catatonic with fright.

As his strong fingers ripped off her panties,
he felt that she was still well lubricated from her earlier session
at the Nurses’ Home. It drove him wild. His hospital pajamas and
gown were no obstruction and his erection was flapping around
wildly in the struggle to get her positioned. As his huge penis
parted her thighs she lifted her hips involuntarily to accommodate
him, and with a grunt he slid into her effortlessly. ‘This is what
a man feels like, woman,’ he grunted, pounding away furiously. In
his excitement, he climaxed practically immediately.

He got up, disgusted with himself, and pulled
her up with him. As he dragged her along, she vainly tried to cover
herself with one hand, as if there were spectators to her shame.
She stumbled along like a zombie, not noticing the cuts and bruises
on her bare flesh. She was past the point of thinking or
caring.

A short while later they reached the
wire.

He pulled her down with him and scanned the
area carefully. He was so close to freedom now, he could
practically smell it. A mere twenty metres and he would be home and
dry.

Nothing stirred in the starlight, and there
was no army post in sight.