Poacher (20 page)

Linda arrived minutes before one, and stopped
next to his truck in front of the restaurant. ‘Hello, beautiful. We
are cutting it fine, aren’t we?’

‘Don’t even talk to me about it. I think
Courie is becoming senile. He had been carrying on about a terribly
important meeting all week long, and then he just sat there
waffling and wasting everybody’s time. I eventually just got up and
walked out of the meeting. I can imagine the fight on Monday but,
fortunately, Monday is still a long way off.’

They embraced briefly and got into the
Toyota, both failing to notice the dark green BMW following at a
discreet distance. They drove through the camp to a gate at the
back. The chopper was sitting on the helipad just outside the camp,
and Vick was idly kicking at the skids like someone contemplating
buying a second-hand car, as they got out of the truck.

‘Pre-flight check completed, main rotor
slightly loose, I think the Jesus nut is worn out, but everything
else checks out OK. Stunning,’ he added in the same breath, taking
Linda’s hand in both his. Still holding her hand, he looked at Sam.
‘I definitely disagree with you. I personally, don’t think she is
overweight at all, and what’s more, her teeth are quite straight
enough for me, thank you.’

Sam aimed a backhand at him. ‘Linda, you must
please excuse the man. The Parks Board felt sorry for his wife and
twelve kids after he got fired by the roads department for
incompetence, so they offered him this job. He actually talked them
into believing that he could fly one of these things. He’s been at
it for years, and he still can’t fly it.’

Linda took an instant liking to the pilot,
and looked at the machine apprehensively. ‘It’s my first time in a
helicopter. Are you sure you can keep this thing in the air?’

‘Positive. As long as the main rotor doesn’t
come unstuck, no problem.’

Lazarus, observing the activities from a
distance, was frantic. Looking around to make sure he was not being
observed himself, he held the radio close to his mouth. ‘Joao, she
is not coming by road. They are all getting into a helicopter!’

Joao swore at the complication, and was
silent for a while, thinking. ‘Is Jenkins also in the chopper’

‘Affirmative.’

‘OK, this is how we play it. You stay put in
Satara. Have a meal or something, you’ll be less conspicuous that
way. Keep the radio out of sight, but stay close to it. From the
air, I am a sitting duck here. I’m moving deeper into the bush for
better cover. If the chopper gets close enough to me I’m going to
nail it. So if I shout, you better come and pick me up fast.’

The three terrorists were galvanised by
Joao’s audacity. ‘Hell, the man is insane,’ one of them
remarked.

‘Not necessarily,’ Lazarus said. ‘Downing an
unsuspecting chopper with a RPG7 is a piece of cake. Can you
imagine the uproar?’

As the helicopter lifted into the wind and
turned, Lazarus was on the radio again. ‘Get under cover, they are
heading your way.’

But Joao only heard the chopper, passing far
to the north. ‘Shit,’ he said and put the launcher down again.

They were flying at five hundred feet,
searching the bush for elephant. Once Linda got her eye in, she was
amazed by the amount of game that could be seen from the air. She
noticed Vick leaning forward every so often to scan the sky ahead
and above them. She triggered the foot control of the mike
suspended from her earphones. ‘Should we be looking for airborne
elephants too?’ she wanted to know.

‘No, I’m just keeping an eye out for the big
raptors. You always fly over or around them, never under. When they
get a fright, most of them tend to go straight down, and if our
tail rotor happens to be in the way, that’s it.’

Flying over a large pool in the
Shikellengane, Vick took the helicopter down to show her a monster
or a crocodile, suspended motionlessly in the clear water. ‘Big
enough to grab a buffalo by the nose and drown it,’ he
remarked.

She shivered as she watched it slowly sinking
into the depths and disappearing as the helicopter came close.

Thirty minutes later they spotted a herd of
elephant, and Vick radioed the location to the ground crew. They
flew back along the fire break until they had a visual on the
trucks, and Vick gently put the machine down in the road. He told
Linda that the country was open enough to make the herding fairly
easy, and she could remain in the front seat if she wished to watch
the actual culling.

The right door was removed, and a member of
the ground crew passed Sam the gun and the darts. The gun was a
modified over and under 12-gauge shotgun, expertly adapted by the
Parks Board’s instrument maker to fire the darts, propelled by .22
calibre blanks.

Linda was looking over her shoulder at the
two trays of darts, and inquired about the different colours.

‘The yellow ones contain M99,’ Sam explained
over the earphones. ‘It is a drug that puts the baby elephants to
sleep. They are then measured, and if they are the right size, old
enough to survive without their mothers, but still small enough to
be manageable, they are crated and taken to a holding pen at
Skukuza, to be sold later. The red darts contain something called
Scoline. Have you ever had a general anaesthetic?’

‘Twice, but what has that got to do with this
stuff?’

‘This happens to be exactly the same stuff
that is used daily in hospitals all over the world when people have
to undergo surgery.’

‘And yet you use it for killing grown
elephants? Good grief!’

Sam smiled. ‘We use an overdose on the
elephants, and in theatre you are in a controlled environment.
Scoline depolarises all your muscles, in other words, it exhausts
the muscles very quickly to a point where complete paralysis sets
in. At this point the animal collapses and breathing stops. In
theatre, the patient is kept alive through this short stage by
means of artificial ventilation. Enzymes in the body break down the
Scoline within minutes, and the patient can breathe on his own
again. That is one of the main reasons we use the stuff. It is
quick, efficient and painless and, as the chemical is destroyed
totally by the enzymes, nothing remains that can spoil the
meat.’

‘I say, Kosie, if you see your way clear to
continue the boring lecture in the air, maybe we can get this
operation off the ground, as it were. And I think you’re getting
carried away. It would have been good manners to inquire about the
lady’s interest in pre-school biochemistry before starting your
lecture.’

‘Listen, flyboy, you can be glad you are
holding the controls in your sweaty little hands, otherwise I would
have laid on a practical demonstration of the effects of Scoline on
an over-weight, middle-aged old fart. Stop yapping and get going
before I give in to temptation.’

‘Linda, I honestly think you should consider
dropping this uncouth barbarian in favour of a more sophisticated,
educated gentleman like myself. We could be very happy
together.’

‘And what about the wife and twelve kids,’
Linda wanted to know with a giggle.

‘Malicious rumours! And anyway, I was brought
up in the Zulu tradition. I am allowed to have as many wives as I
wish.’

‘And can afford, you twit,’ Sam interjected.
‘You were lucky to get one wife, and let me tell you, the moment
she finds out you are not really in line to inherit millions,
she’ll be off in a flash.’

‘Ah, my uneducated friend, you are greatly
underestimating the impact my formidable personality has on the
opposite gender. On many occasions in my life I actually had to
fight them off my person physically. Not to mention their craving
for my body,’ Vick drawled as he started angling the chopper
sideways towards the herd.

‘They are most probably after your body
because your mind is useless.’ Sam didn’t expound further, his
attention now focused entirely on the herd, fleeing in alarm. He
was sitting sideways in the open doorway, his feet resting on the
landing skid. Only his harness prevented him from joining the herd
on the ground.

‘Ready?’ inquired Vick.

‘Ready.’

No trace remained of the cheerful mood of a
moment ago. This was serious, dangerous work, and they were
professionals.

Linda clenched her fists as the machine swept
down to the herd in a gut-wrenching dive.

From the outset it was clear that these two
both knew exactly what they were doing. Both the helicopter and the
gun were zeroed in on the leading matriarch, the purpose being to
take the leaders out first. As the chopper passed within ten feet
of the big cow, Sam placed two darts in her back in rapid
succession. She trumpeted her fury and confusion, and swung around
nimbly, barely missing the craft with her thick trunk. The next
moment the helicopter was out of reach and not a direct threat any
more, as it hovered a few feet off the ground, directly in her path
of flight. She turned away at right angles and fled, the rest
following, while Sam reloaded.

This procedure was repeated several times,
interrupted occasionally by one of the younger adults attempting to
break away from the herd.

In the process of keeping the herd together
in order to facilitate the gutting and loading, Vick also had to
make sure that the animals did not end up in a spot that was
inaccessible to heavy vehicles.

During the aerobatics that ensued, the main
rotors were taxed to their utmost, their regular whirring changing
to an aggressive whapping as gravity was fought with a
vengeance.

Fortunately, today’s area posed no such
problems as streams and riverbeds. It was plain sailing compared to
some of the other operations.

As the first elephants started going down,
the rest were herded towards their fallen comrades. The last
elephant stood swaying on its feet, when Sam noticed that one of
the young animals, earmarked for capture, had gone down on its
knees, and hadn’t toppled over on its side. He pointed this out to
Vick, who immediately patched the radio through to the ground
crew.

‘Get in fast, Dan, next to the baobab there
is a calf that went down on its brisket! One young bull is still on
his feet fifty yards away, but he is bound to go down in
seconds.’

Due to narrow escapes in the past, the
helicopter wasn’t allowed to land before receiving the all clear
from the ground crew.

They circled, watching the ground crew pull
the errant calf onto its side, measuring and shooting the rest.
Linda was aghast. She had been prepared, but like anyone
experiencing this for the first time, it was overwhelming. It was
akin to visiting one of the hundreds of abattoirs throughout the
country – the killing was something that had to be done, but
preferably by somebody else. It could turn one into a vegetarian in
the blink of an eye.

‘Why did they have to pull the calf over on
its side?’

Sam was faster on the foot control. ‘Going
down on its haunches is a completely unnatural position for an
elephant. The intestines press up against the diaphragm, and the
elephant suffocates. Live calves are worth a hell of a lot more
than dead adults in monetary terms. About humane terms I would
rather not voice an option.’

For the first time during their short
acquaintance Linda heard a serious tone in Vick’s voice. ‘And so
say all of us,’ very solemnly.

They got the all clear eventually, and Vick
put the machine down in a clearing close to the vehicles. Linda was
keen to get out immediately, but Vick put his hand on her arm,
restraining her. ‘We don’t want you running into our tail rotor in
all the excitement, love. Give me a minute or two to cool the turbo
fans, then we can stop the engine and all get out. Just hang in
there, and I will personally organise you a little something cool
to slake the thirst.’

Sam occupied himself with picking up spent
.22 cases while they were waiting for the turbo temperature to come
down from 700˚Centigrade, prior to switching off the engines.

When they disembarked, Linda immediately
rushed to the scene of the crating of the calves. She was
absolutely fascinated by the arrogant, and at the same time
terrified, attitude of the newly captured calves. Tears were
streaming down her face when Sam put his arm around her.

‘This is one of those things you have to try
and comprehend with your head and not with your heart, my love. The
first time is always traumatic, I know. My heart still tends to
rebel against it.’

She turned around and buried her face in his
neck, sobbing inconsolably. ‘Well, this is what makes Africa so
totally different from any other place in the world. It is so cruel
and harsh, and yet so beautiful, and it squanders the life it has
so much of easily.’ On their way back, they passed within five
hundred yards of Joao, who had the helicopter squarely in his
sights. He was hesitant, and did not launch his deadly weapon for
fear of missing. He knew full well that, should he not destroy the
helicopter with the first go, all hell would break loose, and his
chances of making it out of the country were practically
non-existent.

Joao triggered the radio twice and
waited.

The others had brought food, and were sitting
at a picnic table in Satara, trying to make the meal last all
afternoon. As the carrier wave backlashed twice over the tiny
speaker, Lazarus grabbed the radio from where it was lying
concealed under a paper bag. ‘Got them?’

‘No, they are on their way back. I am moving
back towards the road, so keep me informed of their progress once
they take to the road. And for God’s sake be right behind them when
I hit them. I don’t want to be sitting in the road with two
smouldering wrecks, waiting to be picked up.’

The game ranger stationed at Satara, whose
house was right next to the helipad, was waiting for them when they
landed. As the noise of the whipping blades started abating,
introductions were made.