He propped his AK 47 against the trunk, spread a handkerchief upon the earth to protect his jeans and sat down with his back to the rough bark. He lit a cigarette with a gold Dunhill lighter and inhaled deeply, before letting the smoke trickle gently over his full dark lips.
Then he smiled for the first time, a cool reflective smile, as he considered how many men, and how much time and ammunition it would take to kill three hundred elephant in the conventional manner.
"The comrade commissar has lost none of his cunning from the old days of the bush war who else would have thought of this?" He shook his head in admiration and respect.
When he had finished the cigarette, he crushed the butt to powder between his thumb and forefinger, a little habit from those far-off days, and closed his eyes.
The terrible chorus of groans and screams from the minefield could not keep him from sleep. It was the sound of men's voices that woke him. He stood up quickly, instantly alert, and glanced at the sun. It was past noon.
He went to the helicopter and woke the pilot.
"They are coming." He took the loud hailer from its clamp on the bulkhead and waited in the open*fiatchway until the first of them came out from amonitst the trees, and he looked at them with amused contempt.
"Baboons!" he murmured, with the disdain of the educared man for the peasant, of one African for another of a different tribe.
They came in a long file, following the elephant trail.
Two or three hundred, dressed in animal-skin cloaks and ragged western cast-offs, the men leading and the women bringing up the rear. Many of the women were bare breasted, and some of them were young with a saucy tilt to the head and a lyrical swing of round buttocks under brief animal-tail kilts. As the denim-clad officer watched them, his contempt changed to appreciation: perhaps he would find time for one of them later, he thought, and put his hand into the pocket of his jeans at the thought. They lined the edge of the minefield, jabbering and screeching with delight, some of them capering and giggling and pointing out to each other the masses of great stricken beasts.
The officer let them vent their glee. They had earned this pause for self-congratulation. They had been eight days on the trail, almost without rest, acting in shifts as beaters to drive the elephant herd down the escarpment.
While he waited for them to quieten, he considered again the personal magnetism and force of character that could weld this mob of primitive illiterate peasants into a cohesive and effective whole. One man had engineered the entire operation.
"He is a man!" the officer nodded, then roused himself from the indulgence of hero-worship and lifted the trumpet of the loud hailer to his lips.
"Be quiet! Silence!" He stilled them, and began to allocate the work that must be done.
He picked the butcher gangs from those who were armed with axe and pan ga He set the women to building the smoking racks and plaiting baskets of mopani bark, others he ordered to gather wood for the fires.
Then he turned his attention back to the butchers.
None of the tribesmen had ever ridden in an aircraft and the officer had to use the pointed toe of his western boot to persuade the first of them to climb into the hatch for the short hop over the mine-sown strip to the nearest carcass.
Leaning out of the hatchway, the officer peered down at the old bull. He appraised the thick curved ivory, and IF
then saw that the beast had bled to death during the waiting hours, and he signalled the pilot lower.
He placed his lips close to the eldest tribesman's ear.
"Let not your feet touch the earth, on your life!" he shouted, and the man nodded jerkily. "The tusks first, then the meat." The man nodded again.
The officer slapped his shoulder and the elder jumped down onto the bull's belly that was already swelling with fermenting gases. He balanced agilely upon it. The rest of his gang, clutching their axes, followed him down.
At the officer's hand signal the helicopter rose and darted likea dragonfly to the next animal that showed good ivory from the lip. This one was still alive, and heaved itself into a sitting position, reaching up with bloody dust-smeared trunk to try and pluck the hovering helicopter from the air.
Braced in the hatch, the officer sighted down the AK 47 and fired a single shot into the back of the neck where it joined the skull, and the cow collapsed and lay as still as the body of her calf bekde her. The officer nodded at the leader of the next gang of butchers.
Balanced on the gigantic grey heads, careful not to let a foot touch the earth, the axe men chipped the tusks loose from their castles of white bone. It was delicate work, for a careless stroke could drastically diminish the value of the ivory. They had seen the officer in the dyed jeans, with a short, well-timed swing of the rifle-butt, break the jaw of a man who merely queried an order. What would he do with one who ruined a tusk? They worked with care. As the tusks were freed, the helicopter winched them up and then carried the gang to the next carcass.
By nightfall most of the elephant had died of their massive wounds or had been shot to death, but the screams of those who had not yet received the coup de grdce mingled with the hubbub of the gathering jackal and hyena packs to make the night hideous. The axe men worked on by the light of grass torches, and by the first light of dawn all the ivory had been gathered in.
Now the axe men could turn their attention to butchering and dismembering the carcasses. The rising heat worked more swiftly than they could. The stench of putrefying flesh mingled with the gases from ruptured entrails and drove the skulking scavengers to fresh paroxysms of gluttonous anticipation. The helicopter carried each haunch or shoulder as it was hacked free to the safe und beyond the minefield. The women cut the meat gro into strips and festooned it on the smoking racks above the smouldering fires of green wood.
While he supervised the work, the officer was calculating the spoils. It was a pity they could not save the hides, for each was worth a thousand dollars, but they were too bulky and could not be sufficiently preserved, putrefaction would render them worthless. On the other hand, mild putrefaction would give the meat more zest on the African palate in the same way that an Englishman enjoys his game high.
Five hundred tons of wet meat would lose half its weight in the drying process, but the copper mines of neighbouring Zambia with tens of thousands of labourers to feed, were eager markets for proteins. Two dollars a pound for the crudely smoked meat was the price that had already been agreed. That was a million U.S. dollars and then of course there was the ivory.
The ivory had been ferried by the helicopter half a mile beyond the sprawling camp to a secluded place in the hills.
There it had been laid out in rows, and a selected gang set to work removing the fat white cone shaped nerve mass from the hollow end of each tusk and cleansing the ivory of any blood and muck that might betray it to the sensitive nose of an oriental customs officer.
There were four hundred tusks. Some of those taken from immature animals weighed only a few pounds, but the old bull's tusks would go well over eighty pounds apiece. A good average was twenty pounds over the lot.