He did not see Sali come in at the door. His face was pressed to the concrete floor. He, heard the poacher's boots squeak and slip on the blood, and then the click of the safety-catch on the rifle as he stood over Johnny's prostrate form.
Johnny felt no fear, only a vast sense of sorrow and resignation. He thought about Mavis and the children as he felt the muzzle of the rifle touch the back of his head. He was relieved that he would not be left alone after they were gone. He was glad that he would never see what had happened to them, would never be forced to witness the signs of their agony and degradation.
He was already dying before the bullet from the AK 47 tore through his skull and buried itself in the concrete under his face. Shit, said Sali . He stepped back and shouldered the rifle, a faint feather of gunsmoke still drifting from the muzzle. A hard man to kill. He made me waste mining! bullets, each one ten kwacha. Too much! Ning Cheng Gong advanced into the room. Are you sure that you've finished the job, at last? he asked. His head gone, Sali grunted as he picked up Johnny's keys from the desk and went to ransack the Milner safe. Kufa!
He dead, for sure. Cheng moved closer to the corpse, and stared at it with fascination. The killing had excited him. He was sexually aroused, not as much as if it had been a young girl who had died, but aroused, nevertheless. The smell of blood filled the room. He loved that smell.
He was so absorbed that he did not notice that he was standing in a puddle of blood until Gomo called him from below the verandah.
"All the ivory is loaded. We are ready to go. Cheng stepped back and exclaimed with disgust as he saw the stain on the cuff of his crisply ironed blue cotton slacks. I'm going now, he told Sali . Burn the ivory godown before you leave. In the safe Sali had found the canvas bank bag that contained the month's wages for the camp staff, and he grunted without looking up from the contents. I burn everything for sure. Cheng ran down the verandah steps and climbed into the Mercedes. He signalled to Gomo and the two refrigerator trucks pulled away. The ivory was packed into the holds and then covered with the dismembered carcasses of the culled beasts. A casual inspection would not reveal the hoard, but there was nobody to stop the convoy. They were protected by the badges of the National Parks Board painted on the trucks, and by the khaki uniforms and shoulder flashes of Gomo and David, the two rangers. Not even one of the frequent roadblocks was likely to delay them. The security forces were intent on catching political dissidents, not ivory-runners.
It had all gone as Chetti Singh had planned it. Cheng glanced at the rear-view mirror of the Mercedes. The ivory godown was already ablaze.
The poachers were forming up into a column for the return march.
Each of them carried a large tusk from the hoard.
Cheng smiled to himself. Perhaps Sali's greed would work to his advantage. If the police ever caught up with the gang, the disappearance of the ivory would be neatly explained by both the fire and the loads the poachers were carrying.
At Cheng's insistence they had left forty tusks in the burning godown, to provide traces of charred ivory for the police forensic laboratory. As Chetti Singh might have said, Another dead herring.
This time- Cheng laughed aloud. He was elated. The success of the raid and the thrill of violence and death and blood warmed his belly and filled him with a sense of power. He felt masterful and sexually charged, and suddenly he was aware that he had a hard throbbing erection.
He determined that next time he would do the killing himself.
It was quite natural to believe that there would be a next time, and many more times after that. Death had made Cheng feel immortal.
Johnny. Oh, God. Johnny. Daniel squatted beside him and reached out to touch the side of his throat just below the ear feeling for the pulse of the carotid. It was an instinctive gesture, for the bullet entry wound in the back of Johnny's skull was conclusive.
Johnny's skin was cool and Daniel could not yet bring himself to turn him over and look at the exit wound. He let him lie a little longer and rocked back on his heels, letting his anger flourish to replace the enervating chill of grief. He cherished his rage, as though it were a candle flame on a dark night. It warmed the cold empty place in his soul that Johnny had left.
Daniel stood up at last. He played the torch-beam on the floor ahead of him, and stepped over the pools and smears of Johnny's blood as he went to the armoury.
The remote control for the generator was on the mains panel beside the door. Daniel threw the switch and heard the distant clatter of the diesel engine in the power house down near the main gates to the camp.
The diesel engine ran up to speed an settled at a steady beat, then the generator kicked in and the lights flickered and bloomed. Through the window he saw the street lamps lining the driveway light up and in their glow the Casia trees were vivid green and shiny with raindrops.
Daniel fetched the bunch of keys that still hung in the lock of the Milner safe and strode through into the armoury. Along with the . 375
culling rifles, there were five AK47 assault rifles on the rack.
These were used on anti-poaching patrols when the rangers needed equivalent fire-power to take on the gangs of poachers. Ammunition was stored in the cupboard below the gunrack. He unlocked the steel door.
There were four magazines of AK ammunition in each pouched webbing belt hanging. on the hooks.
He slung one of these over his shoulder, then lifted an automatic rifle down from the rack and loaded it with deft movements; the old warlike arts once learned were never forgotten.
Armed and angry, he ran down the verandah steps. Start with the ivory godown, " he decided. They'll been there for sure. He circled the burned-out building, searching for sign by the light of the street lamps, flashing his torch at anything that caught his attention. If he had allowed himself to think about it, he would have realised he was wasting his time. The only prints that had withstood the erosion of the rain were those protected by the overhanging verandah roof, a set of heavy tyre tracks in the mud at the front entrance to the ivory godown.
Even these were almost erased and only just recognisable.
Daniel ignored them; he was after the gang and they would not be using vehicles. Quickly he widened the circles of his search, trying to pick up an outgoing set of tracks, concentrating on the northern side of the camp's perimeter, for the gang would almost certainly head back to the Zambezi River.
It was useless, as he had known deep down that it would be.
After twenty minutes he gave it up. There were no tracks to follow.
He stood under the dark trees and raged with frustration and sorrow.
If only I could get a shot at the bastards, he lamented.
It meant little to him in his present mood that he was one man against twenty or more professional killers. Jock was a cameraman, not a soldier. He would be of no help in a fight. The memory of those mutilated bodies in the bedroom of the bungalow and of Johnny's shattered head overpowered all rational thought. Daniel found that he was physically shaking with the strength of his anger, and that put him on the road to recovering his scattered wits. While I'm wasting time here, they're getting clean away, he told himself. The only way is to cut them off on the river. I need help. He thought of the Parks camp at Mana Pools. The warden there was a good man. Daniel knew him well from the old days. He had an anti-poaching team and a fast boat. They could get downstream and patrol the river crossing to catch the gang as it attempted to get back on to the Zambian side. Daniel was already starting to think logically as he started back towards the warden's office. From Mana Pools they could ring Harare and get the police to send in a spotter plane.