The Devil's Horn (13 page)

Wally continued.

“Apparently, the one thing that kept working in the drone was the GPS. After everything went blank, all the Denel had the sense to do was go back to the spot where it got hijacked.”

“Over the Kruger.”

“CIA has a fix on where it went down. They’ve got it pinpointed in a clearing in the northern part of the park.”

“Did the missile blow?”

Wally shook his head. “CIA thinks it didn’t. The GPS is still transmitting. That last Hellfire has an incendiary warhead. If it had blown, there’d be nothing left but hot dust.”

A South African drone with an American missile attached to it was a major diplomatic breach. South Africa was going to scream bloody murder if this got out, and so would probably a dozen more Muslim countries on the continent. Mozambique would be humiliated, America tarnished again.

LB counted the violations on his fingers: “We hacked another country’s drone, put our missiles on it, flew it into a third country to blow up nationals from a fourth country, then tried to splash the drone to get rid of the evidence.”

“That’s what Torres told me. I assume with a straight face.”

“Now you and I got to go clean it up.”

“Not the first time.”

It wasn’t. The ruses, gamesmanship, sleight of hand politics, these were always the handiwork of people far from the explosive reality of their schemes. Politicians, ambassadors, spies, sometimes even top military brass, like the drone operators, they stayed far out of harm’s way. At least the UAV pilots had their hands on a trigger. A senator, a general, or an intel analyst couldn’t even say that.

“Who else knows the drone’s on the ground? Who are we racing?”

“No way to know. The Kruger’s pretty huge. Probably no one. Maybe someone.”

“Threat level? Hostiles?”

“Don’t know. Lions.”

The urgency on this job was high, the intel lousy. Drop into a massive African game preserve, locate the downed drone and destroy it, then get out. With no weapons, provisions, transportation, maps, the list of what they lacked for this op was just shy of everything. They had parachutes.

“Assets on the ground?”

Wally hedged again, this time with no hint of laughter behind the pause. LB knew him well enough to spot the signs of bad news.

“Really?”

“Torres says a park ranger will pick us up.”

“A park ranger. Like a Smokey-the-Bear kind of ranger? Has this guy got clearance?”

“I assume so.”

“When?”

“Don’t know. Tonight, maybe morning. We stay out of sight and wait by the drone.”

“We got a cover story for everyone else?”

“We did a SERE training exercise in the bush.”

SERE meant survive, evade, resist, escape, a standard exercise for all Special Operators.

“That works. I assume Smokey’s bringing a picnic basket.”

“LB, quit. I’m not thrilled with this, either. You know everything I do, which isn’t much. I get it. We’ll jump in, put eyes on, then wait for the ranger. Torres will send us the radio code to blow the warhead. After we do it, Smokey drives us back to Waterkloof. That’s the plan.”

“That’s it. That’s the best we got.”

“LB.”

“Get on the horn and tell Torres this is fucked up.”

“I don’t tell Major Torres anything.”

“Sure you don’t.”

“LB.”

“Fine. Rules of engagement? In case we bump into someone.”

“Evade.”

“And what if someone’s got big teeth?”

“I just need to outrun you.”

“You would, too.”

“Without question. Okay. We got two hours’ flight time. We jump from twelve thousand nine.”

That altitude was one hundred feet below the level where they’d need to be on oxygen, why the HC-130 had been climbing so steeply. LB had figured they’d fly nap of the earth, below radar, then he and Wally would bail at eight hundred over the Kruger. But it seemed getting down fast was being set aside for secrecy. At that great height, no one on the ground would hear the cargo plane coming. Just a blip on the South African radar,
Kingsman 2
was going to sneak in on a commercial airline route, hiding among the eastbound traffic out of Johannesburg and Pretoria.

Wally got to his feet.

LB stayed seated. “I hate this part.”

This was going to be a covert mission with political ramifications, and he and Wally couldn’t be ID’d as Americans if something went sideways on the ground. Every warrior shared this fear of dying in a forgotten field, an unclaimed body, nameless.

Wally began. He ripped the Velcro-attached American flag off his breast, the first step in cleansing his uniform and himself. Next came his unit patches and name tape. He dropped them all on the cloth seat, along with his wallet. Finally, he left behind his Air Force Academy ring.

LB followed suit. Every bit of identity he tore away dug a shovelful out of his anonymous grave. He lay down all his patches, his name, his papers, all except the Guardian Angel patch. This he wore last and longest before taking it off.

Finished, Wally set a hand on LB’s shoulder. The gesture said,
We know who we are
.

“I don’t like it, either. Okay?”

Wally shot LB an encouraging smile, which LB did not feel or return. Wally sighed, having done his best, then took in the emptiness of the cargo bay.

“Let’s scavenge.”

While Wally climbed the steps up to the cockpit, LB dug through the HC-130’s few cabinets. He grabbed the plane’s small first aid kit, designed more for household scrapes than a mission in the bush. Wally returned with the flight engineer, loadmaster, and copilot. The three airmen combed through their own day bags. From the loadmaster, LB and Wally took a book of matches and an empty canteen, but turned down magazines and wool sweaters. The copilot handed over a satellite phone. The flight engineer gave up a pair of NVGs, light-amplifying night-vision goggles. Then he produced a black Pelican case. The engineer opened it in an unenthusiastic way that said this contained his pet—a Beretta M9 pistol with an extra loaded magazine.

The engineer offered them up, but not without a reluctant tug. LB made a sheepish face and took them.

“Sorry. Lions.”

Chapter 10

Allyn’s phone fluted during the squash game. His opponent, a fat Pretoria banker, put his hands on his hips and waited, red faced and jowly. Allyn left the court for the vestibule to open his gym bag, find the phone, and silence it. He apologized for his carelessness, then three points later drilled the man in the leg with a forehand.

In his day, the banker had been a nationally ranked player. Now he wore the anchors of his success and years in his waist and chin; Allyn won the best-of-five match three games to one, and the thousand-rand bet with it. This he spent at the bar on the banker.

On the club veranda, in the shade of an umbrella, Allyn checked his calls. His son had rung from London, one time zone behind Pretoria. The boy worked for an English mining firm; Allyn had used his connections to set him up. The long-term hope, a father’s wish, was that the son would come back a man, an engineer, and take over Ingwe from Allyn. The call from London, in the late afternoon, would be business. The boy likely needed money, advice, or both. In the rare times he called at night, he was drunk. Allyn set the phone on the tablecloth. It rang under his fingers. The number came up private.

“Hello?”

“Mwanganani
,
shamwari.”

“
Ndara
, Juma.”

“Where are you?”

“The club.”

“Can you talk?”

Allyn made sure no one was in range of his conversation.

“Ja. Is something wrong?”

“No. Something has fallen into our hands. Actually fallen.”

Allyn motioned for a waiter to freshen his seltzer. He palmed one of his damp wristbands. The sweat in the cloth came from play, not a pick or a pushcart of coal. A blond and shapely woman walked past the picture window, off for a game of racquetball in whites.

“Tell me.”

Juma described a drone that had crashed in the Kruger. One of his lookouts in the park had called him ten minutes ago to tell him the location, a northern sector of Shingwedzi, eight kilometers west of the Mozambican border.

Allyn sipped his seltzer and, though no one was close enough to hear him, asked only generic, careful questions.

“Whose is it?”

“The contact cannot say.”

“Do you think it has value?”

“The drone, no. It’s a wreck. Maybe some of the electronics. But there’s something else.”

“Yes?”

“A missile.”

Allyn nodded but had no notion of what a missile might sell for on the black market. His expertise was world markets for ore and diamonds; with Juma he’d only traded in horn. But after their meeting at Allyn’s house days ago, they both had agreed to bring Allyn in deeper—a little more risk for a lot more profit.

“What will that bring?”

“Eighty to a hundred thousand American.”

“Where are you?”

“In Macandezulo.”

“How fast can you get there?”

“One hour.”

Allyn swiped some of the dew from the cold glass at his hand. He touched the chill of the glass to his forehead to cool his brow.

“What do you need me to do?”

“Nothing. But we agreed to expand your role, yes?”

“Ja.”

“I’ll need to transport it. I didn’t want to put a missile on one of your ships without telling you.”

Allyn needed to do nothing, only get a little richer. Perhaps play some racquetball.

“Alright.”

“One more thing. My contact in the Kruger, the one who called. I’ve told the contact to stay with the drone until I get there.”

Allyn couldn’t fathom why this was important.

“Why are you telling me?”

“The contact is not alone.”

As if the phone had snapped at him, Allyn yanked it from his ear and held it at arm’s length.

“Stop talking.”

Slowly, Allyn brought the phone back to his ear. Juma loosed a long breath, letting Allyn be the one to speak next, or not.

Here was the boundary. The gate that would lock behind him. Juma had already warned him the money was not easy or bloodless, no matter if it seemed to be. But until now the blood was at a remove. Poachers were shot by rangers, eaten by beasts, these were the natural risks of going into the bush for horn. Fair enough, they were paid to go. But this? The contact was not alone. By telling him, by seeking his permission, Juma bound Allyn in blood.

Allyn peered at a shining, tall, bustling Pretoria. East, over the government buildings and office high-rises, far beyond the green horizon to the bush where life and death were the lone currency, Juma would go on his word.

What did Allyn have left but life and death? Life handed you a bill, it needed to be paid. Life required money. Death was free.

“Juma.”

“Allyn.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“We said we would share.”

“So we did. Good-bye.”

Chapter 11

The drone had crashed in a dry and dusty spot. The few stunted trees nearby, either withered or picked clean by giraffes and elephants, offered no shade, just sticks against the sun. The only shadow lay beneath the wings of the wrecked drone, and neither Wophule nor Promise would sit so close to the thing and its rocket. The glassy eye under the drone’s belly stared blankly, but the two sat where it could not see them, should they be wrong about it being dead.

Wophule squatted on his haunches in the way of a villager; Promise rested her rear on the ground, a township girl. Her rifle lay across her folded knees; Wophule’s gun remained across his back. The bush buzzed with bugs and the crackling of heat. The metal drone baked in the brightness. The air above it shimmied.

Juma had told her to wait there. She said she had her partner with her. Juma told her to make up whatever lies she needed, but the partner must stay. Promise didn’t like this, but Juma was her great-uncle and a rich man, and she could not earn Gogo’s house without him. Juma said he would bring money. She asked how much? He replied only that he would be there in an hour, then hung up. When Wophule asked what was happening, she told him she’d spoken to Shingwedzi headquarters and they knew about the crash. She said the drone and missile were from Mozambique and someone was coming to claim them. That way when Juma showed up, he’d at least look the part. Juma would pay them both as a reward. Wophule listened, then pointed east; the drone had come from that way, from Mozambique. She countered that the drone had gone crazy; that was why it crashed. Then Promise spit, beginning the vigil and ending the boy’s questions.

Wophule tried to be quiet. He could not for long, so he began to chat by himself about the waitress Treasure, the day’s heat, how much he wanted to become one of the extended patrol rangers, how good he would be at disappearing into the bush, how much he hated poachers and wanted to shoot one.

Promise kept an eye out for anyone approaching. What if a tourist had seen the drone zoom in over the road and phoned it in? Or what if the sector ECP was in the area and headed this way right now? Promise couldn’t keep track of the scenarios in her head—rangers and Juma and her and Wophule, the drone and rocket, all in one place—she couldn’t concoct enough lies.

Wophule chattered on, circling back to the drone. He speculated where it had been, what it had been sent to do. The first animal came within sight; a warthog scuttled out of the thorns into a thicket of prickly pear. Disappearing, it gave an indignant grunt.

Promise lifted her gaze to the immensity of the sky, sorry that the drone had fallen out of it, sorry for her choices, and frightened. Perhaps it would be better to leave, as Wophule had asked an hour ago.

“Do you know what I think?”

Wophule faced her to answer. Then a whisk cut the air, the sound of a knife slicing cloth. It ended in Wophule with a meaty thud as a muted pop came from the brush. The boy flew backward off his haunches; one of his hands reared up and knocked Promise on the cheek. He landed on his back, spread-eagled. Promise tumbled sideways, shaken and scrabbling in the dirt, away from the convulsing boy. Wophule’s belly thrust off the ground, arching his back, then he collapsed. He coughed a red geyser. The blood rained back to his face, ringing his mouth, spattering his neck. His eyelids fluttered; his pink palms turned up, fingers curled. His head struggled once to come up off the dirt, to see what had happened, to ask Promise. Then he sagged, and his eyelids stopped.

Promise climbed to her knees, hands stuffing her open mouth. She waited, fighting panic, expecting her own bullet. She didn’t scan the scrub for the shooter and had no notion of running; if she was under crosshairs, she was dead. Seconds passed with no bullet; Promise suspected she might live. Terror clouded her relief as she crawled closer to Wophule, pushing at his boot in a pale hope of rousing him. The boy’s boot, high olive sock, and bare black thigh rolled in the dust, but it was a terrible, perished weight. She stopped shaking his boot, and Wophule came to rest. A dark puddle glistened in the center of his tunic, framing a rip between the pockets.

Fifty meters away, Good Luck emerged from the bush. He carried his rifle like a soldier, the homemade silencer high above his shoulder. Even at a distance, the empty space in his teeth blackened his grin. He came without hurry, wearing his leopard pelt.

Frantic, Promise reached for her own rifle. She’d dropped it beside Wophule’s body. Without breaking stride, Good Luck leveled his long gun at her, shaking his narrow head.

“No, girl. I’m not here for you. But see if I don’t.”

Promise raised both hands. Good Luck advanced in long strides. When he stood over Wophule, he bent to admire his shot, dead center, pleased with the murder.

Good Luck kicked Promise’s rifle farther from her reach. He motioned for her to toss away her panga. When Promise did, he relaxed the muzzle of his gun down from her.

She breathed fast through her nose, clamped her lips, fighting tears. Promise climbed off her knees. Good Luck showed no fear of her, not with his gun and muti.

“Why?”

Good Luck was a rag of a man. Spare and shabby, he had only his trigger finger to offer the world. He shrugged, and the spotted pelt rose and fell on his skinny shoulders.

“I do not ask Juma why. Only how much. Just like you.”

This damned Promise, but was not a surprise. She’d known it the instant Good Luck stepped out of the thorns. When she’d called Juma, she’d killed Wophule.

Her great-uncle appeared from the brush. Juma could not have heard Good Luck invoking his name, or Promise thinking it, but he came as though summoned. In one hand Juma carried a toolbox; against his size it seemed no more than a lunch pail. In his other hand, he walked with a staff taller than his head.

Promise had knelt beside death before. First as a child, beside her father in the AIDS clinic, a young man devastating to look at. Then, four months later, Promise cut down her mother, who’d hung herself and left a note that she’d learned she was infected. A decade after that, a nun at the township orphanage suffered a heart attack in the night. Promise was sent to the sister’s room to find her after the woman missed the evening meal. Those times Promise had prayed to the Christian god for the passage of their souls. But kneeling in the dirt under the yellow eyes of Good Luck, waiting for ponderous Juma to approach, Promise did not mutter to Jesus; he seemed to lack the power to hurt anyone. In her seething heart she called on the older gods, the ones who answered offerings of blood and dance, who rewarded meat and great fires. Over Wophule’s body, Promise begged the jackal for cunning, the tortoise for patience, the lion for strength.

When Juma’s big leather shoes stopped and the wooden rod rapped the dirt below her lowered eyes, Promise spit. She raised her gaze to Good Luck and silently swore she would kill him.

Juma lowered a massive hand to her.

“Get up, Nomawethu.”

Promise stiffened her legs to rise without shaking. She took Juma’s hand, but her eyes lingered on Good Luck, sending the message that if the old gods answered her, she would use their gifts on him.

The skinny shooter lofted his eyebrows as if to say he understood and welcomed her curse. He patted the leopard pelt over his chest, in the place where he’d shot Wophule. The gesture said,
You cannot do it, girl. But I can
.

Juma blocked the sun. He wore black cotton pants and a sleeveless T, his big arms thick with flab and strength. He set down the tool kit and tree branch. With fingers under her chin, Juma dragged her attention to him.

“He did what I told him to do. If you’re going to stare, stare at me.”

This she did. Could she kill her gogo’s brother? If she swore to it, she must commit to it. Or the old gods would not help.

Juma held out a rubber-banded roll of rands as fat as his wrist. The roll balanced in his immense palm.

Promise cut her eyes at Good Luck before she asked:

“How much?”

The question made her no better than him, just as he’d said. This made no matter, because when she killed Good Luck, she would be better than him.

“One hundred thousand rand.”

Promise snatched it off the platter of Juma’s hand.

“You are getting closer to your gogo’s house all the time.”

Promise pocketed the bills. She promised the old gods she would kill Juma, too, after she had enough money.

Good Luck slung his long rifle across his back but kept his sandaled feet between Promise and her own gun on the ground.

Now that she’d been paid, Juma relaxed his posture, so large he slumped like a mudslide. “I am sorry, girl. You know I am. But how was I to explain to your partner why I am here?”

“I told him the drone was from Mozambique. You could have been from there.”

Juma held out his empty hands, never with blood on them.

“And what happens when you go back to your head-quarters? You report that Mozambique came for their fallen drone and missile. Do we look like soldiers? Your partner there would describe me in detail. Then, when it turns out the drone is not from Mozambique—and believe me, it is not—it becomes clear that a poacher has taken it. They begin to look for me. Me, Nomawethu. I cannot allow that.”

Juma indicated the roll of cash bulging in her pocket.

“You cannot allow that.”

He lifted the tool kit, humming to himself. Juma turned to the drone.

“Now, what do we have here?” He curled a finger at Promise. “Let’s take a look.”

Promise held her ground. To step farther away from Wophule’s body was to begin to deny him. Big Juma disliked being denied, as well.

“I said come here, child.”

With a fast glance at Good Luck, Promise imagined the killer lying in the dirt beside Wophule, his hands cut off by her machete.

Juma ducked under the drone’s raised wing. He did as Promise had done, drawing a hand down its gray skin to keep it mild and asleep.

He kept his hand on the fuselage, running fingers over the orb underneath. Juma gazed into its tinted-glass face like the miner he’d been, a dark man peering into darkness, looking for riches. Juma nodded into the glass. From his toolbox he retrieved a hacksaw and a screwdriver. With Promise at his elbow, Juma punched holes in the thin metal skin until he could bring the saw into play. In quick fashion, he ripped the electronic eye out of the drone’s belly. He rolled it in his hands like a chopped-off head to examine the opened electronic neck. Juma poked inside with his meaty fingers, then brought his face close, as if to sip from it.

Juma set the orb down gingerly, then set himself to examining the busted, squared-off firing rack lying on the ground. He nudged it with the tip of his shoe, branding it too broken for salvage. He peeked into the second launcher hanging just below his waist and stroked the tip of the lone rocket tucked inside.

“Ah, this.” He tapped the warhead. “This is a good one.”

He smiled at Promise with the greed of a child. With the screwdriver, Juma loosened the access panel in the sleek pylon connecting the square rack to the underside of the wing. Lifting away the panel door, Juma examined a hive of little levers and wheels, all threaded by red, black, and white wires. He rummaged carefully, so as not to incite anything. Juma rolled several colored wires over in his big fingers, until he saw what he was looking for.

He held out a hand for Promise, as if to dance. She did not take it.

“Come look.”

Promise knelt beside the missile launcher. Juma plucked at the wire to separate it from the jumble inside the pylon. He teased it out.

“Can you read that?”

Tiny white lettering on the black wire read
Lockheed Martin USA.

Juma beamed.

“Nomawethu, you are owed more money, I think.”

He tucked the wire back in place, then secured the access panel.

“Go stand over there.” Juma snapped his fingers for Good Luck to come in her place.

The Mozambican grabbed Promise’s rifle to keep it near him. Wophule lay on his gun, still strapped to his back. Promise could not get to it without drawing attention.

Her great-uncle took several pictures of the downed drone from every angle with his cell phone. When he was done, he explored the ways the missile launcher was harnessed to the wing. He trailed fingertips over all of it, searching for how to free the missile. Quickly, he found the weak place; this was Juma’s talent. He pulled a ratchet from his tool kit, then tried several sockets over four bolts that fixed the pylon to a rail attached to the wing. After several misfits, Juma measured one more socket. This one snugged over the bolt.

He laughed at himself.

“I’m stupid. It’s not metric. It’s half inch. American.”

Juma showed Good Luck where to lift to take pressure off the launcher and pylon so he could loosen the bolts. The first fought him off. Then Juma displayed how powerful he was. He leaned into the wrench, groaning, making no progress. He did not back off, straining longer than Promise believed he could. The wrench moved a fraction, the bolt creaked, then broke loose. Juma undid three more the same way, with great exertion. Exhausted but taking no rest, he and Good Luck lowered the freed mechanism gradually, respecting the unfired missile. The thin shooter seemed of little help; Juma bore most of the burden.

The big man folded to the ground beside the launcher. Juma mopped his brow against his bare arm.

“Something . . .” Juma paused to catch his breath. He gathered in the evidence of the crash: the long gash in the earth, a single American missile on an unidentified drone, a pair of rocket launchers, one of them empty. “Something does not match here. Strange.”

Juma spoke not to Good Luck but to Promise, as though she were his partner.

Good Luck shot a silent snarl at Promise, sensing the slight. His tongue peeked through the gap in his teeth, making Promise think of the blood around Wophule’s mouth, the boy’s last red breath only minutes ago. Promise blocked the surge in her breast to leap at Good Luck.

Juma struggled to get his girth off the ground. He pointed at the tree branch. While Good Luck fetched the staff, Juma took three leather straps out of the toolbox. These he tossed beside the launcher.