Wilbur Smith's Smashing Thrillers (100 page)

Quietly he told his men what he had found, and he watched their expressions. They were good men, all three of them, but the odds were formidable even for them, and the enemy were hard men with faces like lions, as the headman had described them. “We will take them on the water,” Isaac told them. “And we will not wait for them to fire the first shot. They are armed, and they are carrying ivory in the Park. That is enough. We will take them by surprise when they expect us least.

Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, had issued a directive that was unequivocal. They had the right to shoot on sight. Too many Parks men had been killed in these clashes to justify the usual niceties of a formal challenge.

The expressions of the listening rangers hardened and they hefted their weapons with renewed confidence. Isaac ordered them to work the boat out of the reeds and as soon as they reached open water he cranked the starter motor. The engine balked and fired roughly and cut out.

He cranked it again and again until the battery became sluggish.

They were drifting away swiftly down stream.

Muttering angrily, Isaac hurried back and pulled the cover off the motor.

While he worked on it he was vividly aware that upstream the gang would be loading the plundered ivory into the canoes and preparing to cross back into their own territory and safety.

He left the motor uncovered and ran forward to the controls.

This time the motor fired and ran, surged and then faded. He pumped the throttle and she surged again and then settled to a steady beat. The engine whined shrilly as he turned across the current and ran back upstream.

The sound of the unmuted motor carried far ahead, and it must have alerted the gang. As Isaac drove the assault boat around the next bend, all the canoes were strung out across the river racing for the north shore.

The rising sun was behind Isaac’s back and the broad stretch of water was lit like a theatre stage. The Zambezi was bright emerald green, the papyrus beds were crowned with gold where the sun’s rays struck them. The canoes were starkly lit. Each of the frail craft carried a boatman and three passengers, together with a full load of ivory. Their free-board was only the width of a man’s hand, and they lay so low in the water that the men seemed to be crouched on the very surface.

The boatmen were paddling frantically. Their long spearshaped paddles flashed in the sunlight as they drove for the far bank. The leading canoe was already within a hundred yards of the Zambian papyrus beds.

The propeller of the Yamaha carved a lacy wake from the glossy green surface as Isaac swung the boat in a long curving trajectory to head off the leading canoe from the sanctuary of the reeds.

As the two vessels closed, Isaac made out the scarred visage of Sali . He squatted in the warped bows, turning his head awkwardly to glare back at them, unable to move without upsetting the delicate trim of the canoe.

“This time we’ve got you,” Isaac whispered, as he pushed the throttle forward to the stop, and the Yamaha shrieked.

Suddenly Sali rose to his feet and the canoe rocked wildly under him. Water slopped in over the wooden sides and the canoe began to flood and settle. Sali shouted a threat at Isaac and he lifted the AK his face was contorted into a mask of fury and fired a long continuous burst at the boat racing down on him.

Bullets slammed into the hull and one of the instrument gauges on the control console in front of Isaac exploded. He ducked, but held her on course to ram the canoe.

Soli flicked the empty magazine out of the rifle, and loaded another from his bandolier. He fired again. The bright brass cases sparkled in the sunlight as they were spewed from the breech. One of the rangers in the front of the assault boat cried out and clutched at his stomach as he tumbled to the deck, and at that moment the bows of the assault boat crashed into the side of the canoe at thirty knots. The brittle kigelia wood shattered, and the men in her were hurled into the river.

At the last moment before the collision, Sali threw the AK 47 aside and dived overboard. He tried to force his body deep beneath the water to escape the speeding hull. He thought he could cover the last few yards to the edge of the reedbed without surfacing and showing himself again.

However, his lungs were full of air and the buoyancy prevented him diving deeply enough. Although his head and body were angled downwards, his feet were only a few inches below the surface.

The propeller of the Yamaha was spinning at peak revolutions as it passed over his left leg. It took his foot off cleanly at the ankle and went over his calf muscles like the blade of a bread-slicing machine, shredding the meat down to the bone.

Then the assault boat was past, turning back steeply with Isaac spinning the wheel. She leaned out into the turn as he lined up the bows for the next canoe in the straggling line. He hit it without a check, steering into the fragile hull and spilling its crew into the river, driving it under and running on, swinging into the next turn like a slalom racer weaving through the poles.

The men in the third canoe saw them coming and threw themselves over the side an instant before the bows struck and then they were splashing and screaming as the swift green current carried them away.

Isaac spun the wheel back the other way, and the next canoe was dead ahead. The crew were shouting and pleading and firing wildly. The volleys of bullets kicked up fountains of spray all around the approaching assault craft in the moments before it struck and trod the shattered canoe under.

The remaining canoes had turned back and were paddling desperately for the south bank. Isaac overtook them effortlessly and smashed in the stern of the nearest vessel. He felt the engine check and shudder as the spinning propeller bit into living human flesh and then it surged forward again.

The last canoes reached the south bank and the poachers spilled out of them and tried to clamber up the sheer cliff. The red clay crumbled under their clawing fingers.

Isaac throttled back and turned the bows upstream holding the assault boat against the current. “I am a Parks warden,” Isaac yelled across at them. “You are under arrest. Stand where you are. Do not try to escape or I will fire upon you.” One of the poachers still clutched his rifle in his hand. He almost reached the top of the bank before the clay broke away under his feet and he slid down to the water’s edge. Sitting in the red mud, he threw up the rifle and aimed at the men in the assault boat.

The two unwounded rangers were kneeling at the rail, their rifles cocked and levelled.

“Bulala! Kill!” Isaac snapped, and they opened up together, a massed volley of fire that swept the riverbank. They were hand-picked members of the anti-poaching unit, both good marksmen, and they hated the gangs that plundered the elephant herds, savaged their comrades and threatened their own lives. They laughed as they shot the panic-stricken gang members off the bank. They made a game of allowing them almost to reach the top of the red clay wall before bringing them flopping and kicking back into the river with a short crisp burst of fire.

Isaac made no effort to restrain them. He had a long-outstanding score to settle with these men, and a few years imprisonment was not enough punishment for their crimes. As the last of them rolled down the bank and sank slowly into the clear green water, he spun the boat and raced back across the river.

Scar-faced Sali was the leader. These others were mere brainless thugs and cannon-fodder. Sali could recruit a new regiment of them for a few dollars a head. Sali was the brains and the guts of the trade, and without him this day’s work would count for little. Unless Isaac stopped him now, Sali would be back again next week or next month with another gang of ruffians. He had to crush the head of the mamba or it would strike again.

He raced in close to the edge of the reeds on the north bank, to the spot at which he had rammed the first canoe. Then Isaac turned into the current and throttled back the Yamaha and allowed the current to drift them downstream, using bursts of engine to keep within a few yards of the edge of the reeds.

The two rangers stood at the port rail, and eagerly scrutinised the reedbed as they drifted by. There was no telling how far the Zambezi current had carried the poacher before he had been able to reach the cover of the papyrus.

Isaac would make only one sweep from the boat for a mile downstream. Then he would go ashore with his men and heat back along the north bank on foot to pick up any sign that Sali might have left as he dragged himself from the reeds on to dry land and tried to escape. Then they would follow him, for as far and as long as it took.

Strict interpretation of the law gave Isaac no powers of arrest on the Zambian side of the river, but this was a hot pursuit of a murderer and a notorious bandit. Isaac was prepared to fight if challenged, and put a bullet through his prisoner’s head if the Zambian police tried to intervene and take Sali away from him.

At that moment something caught his eye in the reedbed directly opposite the drifting assault boat. Isaac touched the throttle and held the boat stationary against the current.

A small area of reeds had been disturbed, as if something had been dragged through them, a crocodile possibly, or a large leguan lizard, except that clumps of reeds had been twisted and broken as though used as handholds. Crocodiles don’t have hands, Isaac grunted, and manoeuvred the boat in closer. The disturbance must have taken place only minutes before, for under his eyes the flattened reeds were still straightening and rising into their original upright position. Then Isaac smiled thinly.

He reached over the side and snapped one of the reeds and held it to the sunlight. The smear of colour along its fibrous stem came a way wet and red on Isaac’s fingers and he showed it to the ranger who stood at his shoulder. “Blood,” the ranger nodded. “He is hurt. The prop–”

Before he could finish the sentence somebody screamed in the reeds ahead of them. It was a high ringing cry of utter terror that froze them all for an instant. Isaac recovered first and nudged the throttle, forcing the bows into the dense stand of reeds. Somewhere ahead of them the human voice screamed and screamed again.

Deep in the river Sali felt the boat run over him. His head was filled with the deafening shriek of the spinning propeller blades. The sound had no direction but assaulted his senses from every angle.

Then something struck his left leg a blow that seemed to dislocate his hip and the force of it spun him end over end in the water and disoriented him. He tried to lunge for the surface but his left leg would not respond. There was no pain, just a great heavy numbness as though the limb was encased in a block of concrete that was drawing him down into the green Zambezi depths.

He kicked out wildly with his good leg and suddenly his head broke the surface. Through streaming eyes he saw the assault boat weaving and zigzagging across the river, smashing up the flotilla of canoes and throwing their crews, splashing and screaming, into the river.

Sali welcomed the respite that this attack on the other canoes had afforded him. He knew that he had a few minutes before the boat came roaring back to find him.

He turned his head. The edge of the reedbed was close. With the strength of his fighting anger and outrage still strong upon him, he struck out for it. His leg was a dead weight, a heavy drogue anchor that hampered and slowed him, but he swam with great sweeping overhead strokes of his powerful arms and seconds later grabbed the first handful of papyrus stems.

Desperately he dragged himself into the cover of the reeds, sliding his body over the springing mattress of papyrus, the maimed leg slithering after him. Deep in the reeds, he paused at last and rolled on to his back to look back the way that he had come. His breathing whistled in his throat as he saw the trail of blood that he had laid through the water.

He grabbed his own knee, lifted the wounded leg above the surface and stared at it in disbelief. His foot was gone and white bone protruded from the mangled flesh. His blood spurted and dribbled from the severed vessels so that he floated in a red-brown cloud. Tiny silver fish, excited by the smell of it, darted through the stained water, gobbling the strings and morsels of tattered meat.

Quickly Sali lowered his good leg and tried to touch bottom. The water closed over his head, but his right foot groped unavailingly for the Zambezi’s mud bed. He came to the surface again coughing and choking. He was well out of his depth, with only the thick reeds to support him.

Far away across the river he heard the sound of gunfire, and then the high-pitched whine of the returning assault craft. It drew closer and closer, until abruptly it sank to a faint burbling sound and he heard voices. He realised that they were searching the edge of the reedbeds for him, and he shrank down lower in the water.

A cold lethargy was stealing over him as his life-blood leaked away into the river, but he forced himself to rally and began to edge away, deeper into the reeds, towards the Zambian bank of the river. He pushed gently into an opening in the reeds It was the size of a tennis court enclosed by a palisade of tall swaying papyrus. The surface was paved with the flat circular green leaves of the water-lilies and their blooms raised lovely cerulean heads to the early sunlight. Their perfume was sweet and delicate on the still air.

Suddenly Sali froze with only his head above the surface. Something moved beneath the water-lilies. The water pushed and bulged while the blossoms nodded their heads to the weighty and stealthy movement passing beneath them.

Soli knew what it was. His thick liver-coloured lips split open and he drooled with terror. His blood drifted away on the lily-strewn waters and the thing beneath moved with greater authority and determination, homing in on the tantalizing taste of blood.

Soli was a brave man. Very few things in this world could frighten him. However, this was a creature from another world, the secret cold world beneath the waters. His bowels evacuated uncontrollably as terror released his sphincter muscle, and this fresh odour in the water brought the creature to the surface.