Trackers (22 page)

I should have protected them.

I should have started shooting, created chaos.

We were outnumbered. There was only so much I could do,
alone.

Why had Diederik sent me along?

I should have protected them.

Thirty kilometres further, Lourens asked in a whisper, 'Do
you have the proper licence, Oom?' his voice was without expression.

'No.'

'I'll be all right soon.'

At Vaalwater, under the bright lights of a petrol station,
she clambered over the cages and injected one rhino, and then the other.

Petrol attendants watched us with wary, shifting eyes. There
was blood on my face.

I let them fill up with diesel, checked over the truck again.
Everything seemed right. I went to the restroom. Saw myself in the mirror,
looked bad. One eye swollen, a deep cut on the eyebrow. Flecks of Snake's brain
on my ear. I washed thoroughly and for a long time.

In the cafe I bought four litres of Coke, they needed sugar.

Lourens said: 'I will drive.'

'Soon,' I said and made him drink some cola. 'You can
navigate.'

At two forty-five, we drove out of town. His voice was
emotionless as he gave directions.

I wanted to talk to them. I wanted to tell them fear was not
a disgrace. I wanted to explain to them how violence and fear stripped you of
your dignity, that you mustn't allow that to happen. I wanted to explain trauma
to them, the process, the mechanisms to fight it. Like revenge.

I couldn't find the words.

Eventually Lourens fished out his CDs from a compartment. He
chose one and pushed it into the player, turned up the volume. I looked at the
cover. Arsis.
We are the Nightmare.

Death metal washed over us, surreal, otherworldly, until
there was room for nothing else.

When the CD had played through, the silence was heavy, like
lead. Then Lourens said, 'Oom, I'm all right now.'

'I'll drive until just before Rustenburg. Try to sleep a
little. There's still a long road ahead.'

He hesitated before saying: 'OK.'

'Do you want a cushion?' Flea asked.

'No, thanks. You should try to sleep too.'

There was a bond between them now.

'I'm sorry,' I said.

'It wasn't your fault.'

I didn't reply.

'There was nothing you could have done, Oom.'

I wanted to believe him. They were too many.

'What were they after?' Flea asked, of no one in particular.

'I don't know.'

She turned to me. 'Are you sure?'

'No,' Lourens stopped her. 'Oom Diederik only asked him to
come along yesterday.'

'Why?'

That was the question.

'I will find out,' I said. Diederik Brand had the answer. The
old bastard. Black Swan of the Bo-Karoo. 'I will find out.'

They slept, for two hours.

I understood the process Lourens was working through. The
closeness of death, the shock of a first confrontation with brutality. The
inability to understand or accept that people were capable of such violence.
That the world really was a place where the most violent ruled. I was eight
years old when my father began to beat me. To punish my mother for her
unfaithfulness. A child learns more quickly, adapts more easily if he knows no
other life. But Lourens was the product of a stable, loving family that had
given him self worth and pride, love and respect for others.

That had all been snatched away.

Seventy kilometres before Rustenburg the sun came up, angled
from the left, so that I had to fold down the sun visor. Lourens woke up.

'How do you feel?' I asked.

'Better, thank you, Oom. Ready to drive.' There was a false
note to his enthusiasm.

I stopped and got out. Throbbing headache, left eye swollen
shut, aching body, but hopefully the worst of the damage was a cracked rib. In
front of the truck Lourens put a hand on my arm. 'Oom, there's nothing we could
have done.'

I looked at him, saw the earnest expression. I merely nodded.

As we pulled away, Flea woke up with a start, checked her
watch and picked up the map. 'Ventersdorp,' she said. 'At six o'clock I must
inject them again.'

I made him stop at a garage in Rustenburg so we could use the
restrooms. I wanted to see if there was blood in my urine.

There was none. Flea emerged from the cafe with two brown
paper bags. When we drove out again she took out a packet of painkillers for
me, sandwiches, coffee and Coke. She plied Lourens with food and drink. There
was a determined air about her, an inner strength.

I felt I had been wrong about her.

Lourens turned on the radio. We listened to the news on RSG,
all the troubles of the country and the world, self-inflicted, without
exception.
Annus horribilis.

He stopped at twenty to six. They clambered onto the back,
she with her medical bag. He helped her to sedate the animals. I stood beside
the Mercedes, superfluous, and watched a tractor plough rows in a field.

Just before we got going, Nicola phoned. 'We are behind schedule
...' said Lourens. 'I guess about seven o'clock tonight. No, no ... just a bit
tired ...We're OK.'

Which we probably were. No use
talking about last night's events.

Beyond Hartebeesfontein, Lourens's silence grew too much for
her. She said: 'Tell me about the Bo-Karoo,' her voice was as intimate and soft
as a lover's. He took a deep breath before replying, at first just cursorily
polite. She kept on questioning him. About his family, about himself. That was
her strategy. A good one. Lourens's voice gradually gained momentum, a
painfully slow return to who he was. He was still young, I thought. And tough.
Maybe he would find his way back home.

The painkillers made me drowsy. I fought sleep, using my
frustration, my anger as a counter. Diederik Brand. I looked forward to seeing
him again. And Inkunzi. I would go and find him. I would make him kneel with
the Glock against the back of his head. Strip him of his self respect, as he
had done to Lourens, pull the trigger, watch his body jerk in terror. Give him
a taste of death.

My cellphone woke me. Body sore and aching, I felt for it in
my pocket, pressed the wrong button, the ringing suddenly stopped.

'Where are we?' The dashboard clock
said it was 08.41.

'Coming up to Hertzogville. You had a
good sleep, Oom.'

Lemmer, the ever-vigilant bodyguard.

I pressed the keys of my phone to see who had called.
Jeanette. I called her back.

'How are things going?' she asked, full of her usual morning
fire and spirit.

'We are making progress.' I would tell her everything later,
when I was alone.

'Your friend Diederik hasn't paid yet.'

'He is not my friend.'

'I thought you were all friends out there in the boondocks.'

'I will see him tonight. He is going to pay.'

'What gives me the idea that this trip isn't all you dreamed
it would be?'

'I'll call you tonight.'

'Lemmer, is everything all right?'

'It will be.'

She caught on quickly. 'You can't talk. Is there something I
should be worrying about?'

'No.'

'Call me when you can,' her voice was uneasy.

She
didn't let anyone mess with her people.

Virtually all conceivable
actions leave distinctive markings, which may make it possible for the tracker
to reconstruct the animal's activities.

The Art of Tracking: Spoor
interpretation

Lourens thawed. He said to Flea: 'You love rhinos.'

A shrug of her shoulders said 'not necessarily'. 'The Hook
Lip is endangered.'

'The
who
clip?'

'The Hook Lip. That's the real name of the black rhino. The
white rhino is the Square Lip, if you look you can see the difference clearly.'

'How endangered?'

'In 1970 there were 65,000, in 1993 there were only 2,000
left.'

'In the world?'

She nodded. 'Ninety-six per cent murdered.'

'Jissie
. And now?'

'About 3,700.'

'OK,' said Lourens. 'I get it.' Then: 'It's for the horns?
Because the Chinese believe the horns make you ... fertile ...'

'No
, that's a myth. They believe it
helps for fever. Most of the horns get ground up for that. About a third are
carved. For ornaments. And dagger handles. In Yemen and Oman a dagger with a
rhino horn handle is a big status symbol.'

'But numbers are rising again?'

She snorted, indignant. 'Not for long. Last year they shot
thirty-six black rhino in our own national parks, another fifty in private game
reserves ...'

'Who did?'

'Thieves. Poachers. Everyone is in on the game, white and black.
In the Congo and Zim the slaughter is on a much bigger scale, because nobody
cares, nobody stops them. Last year they caught four men in Zim who confessed
to killing eighteen rhinos. The police just let them go-'

'That's why you are helping with this trip?'

She nodded. 'You'll see. If these two survive ... It will
make a big difference.'

Diederik Brand was hiding behind that. The Noble Deed. With
his charm and acts of conservation. But there was a snake in the grass.

What had Inkunzi and his gang been looking for?

A wire with a hook in the diesel tank?
Just tell
me if you threw the stuff in the veld. Where must we look? Over the fence?

They had searched the truck. Our belongings. Something small
enough to be hidden in a sports bag, light enough to throw over a fence?

You're a
pro. I wonder why you are here. And that fire power, the route you took.
There's a reason.

Diederik had organised the so-called 'pro'. Provided the MAG
and, most likely, prescribed the route, with the lame excuse of 'avoiding
weighbridges'.

I asked Flea: 'How much does a rhino horn weigh?'

'About three kilos.'

Easy enough to throw a bag of rhino horns into the veld. But
he'd said
Chinese witchcraft. Not my business.
He could have been lying deliberately, in case we didn't know what he was
talking about.

'Ehrlichmann. What do you know about him?'

'He used to be a game ranger.'

'Who has to survive as a safari guide in a country where
tourism doesn't happen any more. Was he there when you loaded?'

'He was in charge of it.' She got my drift. 'Do you think he
...'

'Who else was there?'

She thought about it. 'Just the workers. And the drivers.'

'You saw the whole loading process?'

'Not everything. I was busy with the rhinos.'

Lourens and I had been there for the transfer to the
Mercedes. The only things that had been moved from one lorry to the other had
been the two cages.

'When do you have to inject them again?'

She checked her watch. 'In about half an hour.'

'We can stop in Hertzogville. I have to get diesel,' said
Lourens.

Something else that bothered me. 'Why hasn't Diederik phoned
yet?'

'Nicola is keeping him informed, Oom.'

'You have millions rands' worth of rhinos on a truck, with
another million rands' worth of rhino horn, you hire a bodyguard because you
are quite concerned. But you get your progress report second hand?'

'Ay,' said Lourens half-heartedly. 'That Oom Diederik ...'
Reluctant to lay any blame on Brand.

While Flea was injecting the animals, I inspected the cages.
There were no hiding places. The frame and bars were solid steel, the floor was
a single layer of wooden planks with no space underneath.

I rolled under the truck. There were many options, but
Inkunzi's henchmen would have searched diligently. I had the advantage of
daylight, but found nothing.

What could be so valuable that it warranted the effort of
orchestrating a midnight hijacking with five vehicles and twelve men? What
would you bring from the north of Zimbabwe, where there was nothing, a land
stripped bare?

Before we got back in, Flea quizzed me with raised eyebrows.
I shook my head, as I had no answers.

We drove. She got a conversation going again, as though she
considered it her responsibility. I stared at the landscape drifting past, trying
to make sense of it all. The key was the transfer on the Swanepoel's farm. Was
there someone who was not involved, who didn't help to push or pull to move the
cages across?