Burning Angels (24 page)

Pause. Then Konig again. ‘Airspeed: ninety-five knots. Direction of travel: 085 degrees.’

Co-pilot. ‘Check. Fifteen minutes out from run cameras.’

At their present speed – over a hundred miles per hour – they’d be reach the the Rukwa flood plain shortly, at which moment they’d set the video cameras rolling.

Co-pilot: ‘ETA waterhole Zulu Alpha Mike Bravo Echo Zulu India fifteen minutes. Repeat, waterhole Zambezi in fifteen. Look for dog’s-head kopje, then clearing one hundred metres east of there . . .’

Konig: ‘Roger that.’

Through the open door, Jaeger could see the odd acacia flashing by. He felt close enough almost to reach out and touch the treetops, as Konig weaved the aircraft between them, hugging the contours.

Konig flew well. If he took the HIP any lower, its rotors would be shaving the branches.

They sped onwards, the noise killing all chance of any chat. The racket from the HIP’s worn turbines and rotor gear was deafening. There were three other figures riding in the rear along with Jaeger and Narov. Two were game guards, armed with AK-47 assault rifles; the third was the aircraft’s loadmaster – the guy who managed any cargo or passengers.

The loadie kept moving from one doorway to the other, glancing upwards. Jaeger knew what he was doing: he was checking for any smoke or oil coming from the turbines, and that the rotors weren’t about to sheer off or splinter. He settled back to enjoy the ride. He’d flown in countless HIPs.

They might look and sound like a sack of shit, but he’d never known one to go down.

48

Jaeger reached for a ‘havabag’, as they’d nicknamed them in the military – a brown paper bag stuffed full of food. There was a pile of them sitting in a cool box lashed to the HIP’s floor.

When serving in the British military, the best you could hope for from a havabag was a stale ham and cheese sandwich, a warm can of Panda cola, a bag of prawn cocktail crisps and a Kit Kat. The contents never seemed to differ, courtesy of the RAF caterers.

Jaeger peered inside: boiled eggs wrapped in tin foil; still warm to the touch. Pancakes, freshly fried that morning, and laced with maple syrup. Grilled sausages and bacon slapped between slices of buttered toast. A couple of crispy croissants, plus a freezer bag full of freshly sliced fruit: pineapple, watermelon and mango.

In addition, there was a flask of fresh coffee, hot water for making tea, plus chilled sodas. He should have guessed, given the care the Katavi Lodge caterers took of their guests and staff.

He tucked in. Beside him – hangover or no – Narov was likewise getting busy.

Breakfast was done and dusted by the time they hit the first signs of trouble. It was approaching mid-morning, and Konig had already flown a series of survey transects across the Lake Rukwa region, finding nothing.

All of a sudden he was forced to throw the HIP into a series of fierce manoeuvres, the noise from the screaming turbines rebounding off the ground deafeningly as the helo dropped lower and almost kissed the very dirt.

The loadie peered from the doorway and jabbed a thumb towards their rear.

‘Poachers!’ he yelled.

Jaeger thrust his head into the raging slipstream. He was just in time to see a group of stick-like figures being swallowed by the thick dust. He glimpsed the flash of a raised weapon, but even if the gunman did manage to unleash any rounds, they would be too late to find their target.

This was the reason for the ultra-low-level ride: by the time the bad guys had noticed the HIP, it would be long gone.

‘Cameras running?’ Konig came up over the intercom.

‘Running,’ his co-pilot confirmed.

‘For the benefit of our passengers,’ Konig announced, ‘that was a poaching gang. Maybe a dozen strong. Armed with AK47s and what looked like RPGs. More than enough to blast us out of the sky. Oh, and I hope you still have your breakfasts in your stomachs!’

Jaeger was surprised at how tooled up the poachers were. AK47 assault rifles could do the HIP some serious damage. As for a direct hit from an RPG – a rocket-propelled-grenade – that would blast them out of the skies.

‘We’re just plotting their line of march, and it seems they’re returning from a . . . kill.’ Even via the intercom, the tension in Konig’s voice was palpable. ‘Looked like they were carrying tusks. But you can see our predicament. We’re outnumbered and outgunned, and when they’re armed to the teeth like that, we have little chance of arresting them, or seizing the ivory.

‘We’ll be over the most likely area – a waterhole – in a matter of seconds now,’ he added. ‘So brace yourselves.’

Moments later, the helo decelerated massively as Konig threw it into a screaming turn, circling over what had to be the waterhole. Jaeger peered out of the starboard-side porthole. He found that he was looking down almost directly at the ground. Several dozen feet from the muddy gleam of the water, he spotted two shapeless grey forms.

The elephants possessed little of their poise or magical grace any more. Compared to the magisterial animals that he and Narov had encountered deep within Burning Angels cave, these had been rendered into unmoving bundles of lifeless meat.

‘As you can see, they captured and tethered a baby elephant,’ Konig announced, his voice tight with emotion. ‘They used that to lure the parents in. Both the bull and the mother have been shot and butchered. Tusks gone.

‘I know many of the animals here by name,’ he continued. ‘The big bull looks like Kubwa-Kubwa; that’s Swahili for “Big-Big”. Most elephants don’t live past seventy years of age. Kubwa-Kubwa was eighty-one years old. He was the elder of the herd, and one of the oldest in the reserve.

‘The baby is alive, but it’ll be badly traumatised. If we can get to it and calm it down, it may live. If we’re lucky, the other matriarchs should take it under their wing.’

Konig sounded remarkably calm. But as Jaeger well knew, dealing with such pressure and trauma day after day, took its toll.

‘Okay, now for your surprise,’ Konig announced grimly. ‘You said you wanted to see this . . . I’m taking you down. A few minutes on the ground to witness the horror close up. The guards will escort you.’

Almost instantly Jaeger felt the HIP start to lose what little altitude it had. As it flared out, the rear end dropping towards a narrow clearing, the loadie hung out of the doorway, checking that the rotor blades and tail were clear of the acacia trees.

There was a jolt as the wheels made contact with the hot African earth, and the loadie gave the thumbs up.

‘We’re good!’ he yelled. ‘De-bus!’

Jaeger and Narov leapt from the doorway. Bent double and heads bowed they scuttled off to one side until they were clear of the rotors, which were whipping up a storm of dirt and blasted vegetation. They went down on one knee, pistol in hand, just in case there were any poachers remaining in the area. The two game guards rushed over to join them. One gave a thumbs up to the cockpit, Konig flashed it back, and an instant later the HIP rose vertically and was gone.

The seconds ticked by.

The juddering beat of the rotors faded.

Shortly the aircraft was no longer audible at all.

Hurriedly the game guards explained that Konig was returning to Katavi to fetch a harness. If they could get the baby elephant darted and put to sleep, they could sling it beneath the HIP and fly it back to the reserve. There, they’d hand-rear the animal for as long as it took to get it over the trauma, at which stage it could be reunited with its herd.

Jaeger could see the sense in this, but he didn’t exactly relish their present situation: surrounded by the carcasses of recently butchered elephants, and armed with only a pair of pistols between them. The game guards seemed calm, but he doubted how skilled they’d be if it all went south.

He rose to his feet and glanced at Narov.

As they made their way toward the scene of unspeakable carnage, he could see the rage burning in her eyes.

49

As carefully as they could, they approached the trembling, traumatised form of the baby elephant. It was lying on its side now, seemingly too exhausted to even stand. The ground betrayed the signs of its recent struggles: the rope tethering it to the tree had cut deep into its leg, as it had fought to get free.

Narov knelt over the poor thing. She lowered her head, whispering soft words of reassurance into its ear. Its small – human-sized – eyes rolled in fear, but eventually her voice seemed to calm it. She stayed close to the animal for what seemed like an age.

Finally she turned. There were tears in her eyes. ‘We’re going after them. Those who did this.’

Jaeger shook his head. ‘Come on . . . The two of us armed with pistols. That’s not brave: it’s foolish.’

Narov got to her feet. She fixed Jaeger with a tortured look. ‘Then I’ll go alone.’

‘But what about . . .’ Jaeger gestured at the baby elephant. ‘It needs protection. Safeguarding.’

Narov jabbed a finger in the direction of the guards. ‘What about them? They are better armed than we are.’ She glanced west, in the direction the poachers had taken. ‘Unless someone goes after them, this will continue until the last animal is killed.’ Her expression was one of cold and determined fury. ‘We need to hit them hard, mercilessly, and with the same kind of savagery as they used here.’

‘Irina, I hear you. But let’s at least work out how best to do this. Konig’s twenty minutes out. They had spare AKs stashed in the HIP. At the very least let’s get ourselves properly armed. Plus the chopper’s stuffed full of supplies: water, food. Without that, we’re finished before we’ve even begun.’

Narov stared. She didn’t speak, but he could tell that she was wavering.

Jaeger checked his watch. ‘It’s 1300 hours. We can be on our way by 1330. The poachers will have a two-hour start on us. If we move fast, we can do this; we can catch them.’

She had to accept that his was the voice of reason.

Jaeger decided to go check out the corpses. He didn’t know quite what he expected to find, but he went anyway. He tried to act dispassionately: to inspect the kill scene like a soldier. But still he found his emotions running away with him.

This had been no accurate, professional hit. Jaeger figured the elephants had been charging to protect their young, and the poachers must have panicked. They’d peppered the once-mighty beasts indiscriminately, using assault rifles and machine guns to take them down.

One thing was for sure: the animals would have had no quick and painless death. They’d have sensed danger; possibly even known they were being lured to their doom. But they came anyway, to safeguard their family, charging to the defence of their offspring.

With Luke missing three long years, Jaeger couldn’t help but relate. He wrestled with unexpected emotions and blinked back the tears.

Jaeger turned to leave, but something made him stop. He figured he’d seen movement. He checked again, dreading what he might find. Sure enough – unbelievably – one of the mighty animals was still breathing.

The realisation was like a punch to the guts. The poachers had gunned the bull elephant down, hacked off its tusks and left it in a pool of its own blood. Riddled with bullets, it was dying a slow and agonising death under the burning African sun.

Jaeger felt rage burning through him. The once-mighty animal was well beyond any hope of saving.

Though he was sickened, he knew what he had to do.

He turned aside and made his way to one of the guards, from whom he borrowed an AK47. Then, with hands shaking with anger and emotion, he levelled the weapon at the magnificent animal’s head. For just an instant he thought the bull opened his eyes
.

With tears blurring his vision, Jaeger fired, and the stricken animal breathed its last.

In a daze, Jaeger went back to rejoin Narov. She was still comforting the baby elephant, though he could tell by her pained look that she knew what he had been forced to do. For both of them this was personal now.

He crouched beside her. ‘You’re right. We do have to go after them. Just as soon as we’ve grabbed some supplies off the HIP, let’s get moving.’

Minutes later, the noise of rotor blades cut through the hot air. Konig was ahead of schedule. He brought the HIP down into the clearing, the rotors throwing up a choking cloud of dust and debris. The bulbous wheels hit the dirt, and Konig began to power down the turbines. Jaeger was about to rush forward to help unload when his heart skipped a beat.

He’d spotted a flash of movement way off in the bush; the tell-tale glint of sunlight on metal. He saw a figure rise from the undergrowth, hefting a rocket-launcher on his shoulder. He was a good three hundred yards away, so there was sod-all that Jaeger could do with a pistol.

‘RPG! RPG!’ he screamed.

An instant later he caught the unmistakable sound of the armour-piercing projectile firing. Normally RPGs were notoriously inaccurate, unless fired at close quarters. This one tore out of the bush, hammering towards the HIP like a bowling pin on its side, trailing a fiery dragon’s breath in its wake.

For an instant Jaeger figured it would miss, but at the last moment it ploughed into the rear of the helo, just forward of the tail rotor. There was the blinding flash of an explosion, which ripped the entire tail section off the aircraft, the impact throwing the HIP through ninety degrees.

Jaeger barely hesitated. He was on his feet and racing forward, as he yelled orders at Narov and the game guards to form a defensive cordon, putting steel between them and their attackers. Already he could hear fierce bursts of gunfire, and he didn’t doubt the poachers were closing for the kill.

Even as flames sparked from the HIP’s shattered rear Jaeger vaulted into the torn and buckled hold. Thick, acrid smoke billowed all around him as he searched for survivors. Konig had flown in with four extra guards, and Jaeger could tell instantly that three of them were peppered with shrapnel, and very dead.

He grabbed the fourth, who was injured but still alive, hoisted his bloody form and hauled him out of the stricken aircraft, dumping him in the bush, before turning back for Konig and his co-pilot.