The Devil's Horn (26 page)

Keeping his palms facing out, LB eased down his hands.

“I’m Master Sergeant DiNardo. United States Air Force.”

“If this is true, why do you have nothing on your uniform? No flags, no patches.”

“It’s a secret that I’m here.”

“Whoever you are, I tell you a last time. Put your gun down.”

The only thing that could make Mozambique worse was being weaponless. LB hesitated too long. Good Luck stuck out his tongue.

Promise moved in front of LB, making a beeline to the shooter. She stopped with her breast inches from his muzzle.

“Juma will bury you with your head between your legs if I tell him so. This American has come to see the missile. Take us to Juma. Now.”

Behind the hunting rifle, the poacher’s smile was black. The animal skin over his shoulders and his fanged grin gave him the look of a big, wicked cat.

“Juma will not know you were here if I bury you, Promise. And your secret Americans.”

“Not an American.” Karskie waggled his underwear to get attention. “South African. Thank you.”

Neither Promise nor the hunting rifle gave way. Good Luck appeared to despise Promise as much as she loathed him. Next to them, the little one, not much more than a child, seemed unable to lift his Kalashnikov to enter the fray on either side. This was no stalemate. It was about to get worse.

LB waved his own hands.

“Okay, okay. Here, look.”

He shed the strap of the ranger R-1 from around his neck to set the gun down. Good Luck sent the small one to snatch it up. The boy did this, blinking relieved eyes up at LB. He struggled to haul the gun away.

The shooter lowered his hunting rifle, satisfied.

“I’ve never met an American.”

“Well?”

“You look fat. Who is this?”

Karskie spoke for himself. “Donald Karskie, SANParks.”

“Are you here for the missile, too?”

“Yes.”

“Lower your hands. Are those underpants?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Yes.”

“Put them on or throw them away. You look foolish.”

Karskie snorted. “I suppose a leopard skin is the rage in your village.”

The lanky shooter gaped, flaring his red gums first at LB, then Promise, looking for someone to tell the big boy to shut up and do as he was told. LB poked Karskie.

“One of us is going to shoot you. Do it.”

Karskie made Promise turn her back before dropping his pants. LB looked away, too. Good Luck’s little helper covered his mouth to giggle politely.

When Karskie was dressed again, the shooter instructed the little one to search the three of them. Karskie dwarfed the boy while his pockets were being patted. Promise let herself be touched. The boy seemed in awe of LB, who barely felt the boy’s touch on his legs.

When he was finished, Good Luck turned them east. The little one almost dragged the two rifles through the dust. Promise spoke to him gently and followed, then Karskie and LB, who walked the ravine unarmed and unidentified, a murderer at his back. On the way to Macandezulo, he saw the buzzards, gone from the sky, had clustered in a gloomy, leafless tree.

Several times the poacher Good Luck barked at Karskie to be quiet. The big boy talked to calm himself, and when he could not he seemed out of kilter. LB worried that Karskie would trip himself and fall, then Good Luck would simply plug him and leave him. Promise slowed to walk beside the big boy, even laying a hand on his back. LB imagined her doing this for an animal, consoling it; she seemed a natural empath. Killing a rhino with a machete didn’t fit this girl.

The little poacher looked to be the epitome of African poverty, a thin and willing boy, probably smart. He wore threadbare clothes, with plastic sandals under cracked, calloused heels. Unlike the shooter who marched them at gunpoint, this boy seemed caught up, snared into poaching and guns, with few choices to escape his poverty. This didn’t make him innocent, only sad and ordinary. Promise called him Hard Life.

The short distance to the village remained lifeless; other than the buzzards, nothing stirred in the bush. The land looked like a bone picked clean, pale and brittle. To live here, to have anything on your back, in your belly, or over your head, you’d need to scrabble every day. You could wind up like Good Luck, kill for money, wear an animal’s skin, and hate. Or like Hard Life, and serve.

LB looked for ways to keep his silent tension from mounting on the walk to Macandezulo. Typically, waiting in copters or Humvees before jumps, rescues, even combat, he and the rest of his GA team slept or listened to headphones. They marshaled themselves. But with Good Luck’s gun at his back, jittery Karskie relying on him, Promise so unpredictable, and a bleak landscape, LB had little to distract himself. He envisioned how annoying Neels was being to Wally right now. That helped a little.

They entered the outskirts of the village. Good Luck shouted “Juma!” just as LB became aware of the first structures. The gray scrub obscured the remnants of a few abandoned hovels that had caved in to the elements. Broken window glass glinted, tin roofs canted awkwardly, pastel walls rotted. The dirt of the bush gave way to a dirt street. At the far end, the rusty hulk of a pickup truck sprouted a mounted machine gun from its back. The muted tapping of a generator made the only reply to Good Luck’s call.

LB fingered the radio tucked in his vest. He might be in range now. He could try to blow the Hellfire. Somewhere in the ruins of Macandezulo, the blast would be terrific. In the street, LB would win a tussle with Good Luck; the little poacher boy was no threat. Juma would go to hell, or not. LB, Karskie, and Promise could scoot out of the village, back down the ravine to Neels and Wally, then over the border to the Kruger and safety. Mission accomplished.

Just punch in five numbers. Five-four-three-one-zero. Done.

LB’s first sight of Macandezulo attested to what Neels had said. Everybody with Juma was a criminal. The village was wrecked, filthy, overgrown, fit for nothing but a hideout. Who’d live here if he or she wasn’t part of Juma’s operation? LB thought back to the water hole, the slow-eyed majesty of the rhino. This village was home to the sons of bitches who would kill it.

Five numbers, then run. Why not? To save who?

LB slowed to shorten the distance to Good Luck behind him. The toothless poacher gave him a shove, urging him along the seedy road. Twenty years of risking his own life had brought LB to hot Mozambique and Macandezulo to do it again. He stopped walking, inviting another push from Good Luck. For the first time in uniform, ever, LB was unsure for what, or for whom, he was putting himself at risk.

He didn’t know if the disheveled and shoeless white man walking toward him from one of the huts was an answer.

LB left his fingers on the radio.

Chapter 29

The sun finally drove Allyn indoors. One of the women wanted to follow, but he waved her off. He left behind the gun Juma had given him and went to his paltry mattress in the shade for a nap.

He did not drift off in the sweltering afternoon. A new kind of loneliness settled on him like a blanket, adding to the heat, stealing his rest. The hours to midnight seemed too many, like the years he had left in his life, to do what with? He believed this was the first time since her death a month ago that he missed more than Eva’s presence, missed her company. Her conversation, often insipid or natively wise, never featured Allyn, his business or worries, money or influence, but always her own inanities, her bridge club and gardening, a trip she wanted, a piece of art, a new friend, a fresh slight from an old friend. Allyn listened and did not, was concerned and was not, loved and did not. Though she was shallow in his life, she had breadth, she touched a great amount of his time. Now he’d been left by himself, with only time for company. He missed sharing time with his wife, cutting it into portions, bearing it more easily.

At the call for Juma in the street, he jumped up from the mattress. Allyn did not think to straighten himself up, nothing else in Macandezulo was. Untucked and barefoot, he stepped from the hut into the dirt road.

Two of Juma’s armed men escorted three remarkable people into the village. Juma had warned of this, someone would come for the missile. But these didn’t look like assassins, not at all. The first was a large, loosely knit young man in hiking clothes, who glanced about in plain fright at the rubble of the poachers’ village. The second was a wiry black woman who wore the green khakis of a Kruger ranger. She barely registered Macandezulo or Allyn’s approach, she seemed somehow beyond her surroundings. The third was another white man but in military camouflage and boots, a formidable tank of a fellow kitted out in a web vest, unarmed but with his hand on a radio.

Allyn let them come to him. The little poacher in front smiled as he passed. The tall one in the rear was the same evil-looking chap with a long rifle who’d been in the back of the pickup when Juma came to collect Allyn from the chopper ride out of Jo’burg. The man wore a leopard pelt that lent fierceness to his gap-toothed mouth and red, peeking tongue. He gave no order for his hostages to stop walking. On her own, the ranger girl paused in front of Allyn. The two whites halted with her. The tall poacher seemed unsure of Allyn’s authority, knowing only that Allyn was closely aligned with Juma. So he stood by.

The girl addressed Allyn.

“Where is Juma?”

The stout soldier nudged her aside, she did not speak for him. Allyn wanted to laugh; these three were such a curious result of his worries and waiting, drinking and loneliness.

The soldier eyed Allyn head to toe. He did not extend a hand to shake.

“I’m Master Sergeant DiNardo. United States Air Force.”

“An American. Good. Do you have any identification, Sergeant?”

“No, sir.”

Allyn knew little about the military beyond what the movies told him, but it did seem odd that America would send one man with no insignia, no papers, and apparently no gun. If he was, in fact, a killer, he kept strange companions and had been rather easily nabbed in broad daylight.

The sergeant jabbed a thumb over his shoulder.

“These two will vouch for me.”

The large white man, young and flaccid, reached into a pocket. That movement drew the end of the poacher’s rifle into his back. The big boy reacted as if it were a cattle prod, arching away, whirling.

“It’s my wallet. Do you fucking mind?”

He handed a green ID card to Allyn.
Donald Karskie, Information Specialist, SANParks
. Karskie began to explain that he’d been assigned to accompany the sergeant into the Kruger. The American cut him off, moving him aside less gently than he’d done the girl. He motioned to her.

“This is Promise. She’s a Kruger ranger.”

“I can see that.” Allyn inclined his head. Promise was a striking young thing, muscular and dusky. Her hands were veined and strong, but her features carried the disdain of those beyond reach. Allyn had seen those same wandering eyes, jaws set against cheap talk with a dismissive tilt of the head, on the powerful and wealthy. Allyn said her name, wanting to remember it.

She asked, as if she had a right to, “Who are you?”

“You can call me Lush Life.”

The American looked skeptical.

“Seriously.”

“If you like. However, I find the less I take seriously, the better I tolerate it.”

The American had a bright look to his eye and seemed on the edge of banter. The ranger girl broke ranks and hurried away.

Followed by his four gun-toting guards, Juma ambled up the street.

“Ah. There’s your man.”

Juma motioned for his protectors to let Promise through. He met the girl with open arms. They walked while embracing, talking quietly. But when they reached Allyn, great Juma put the girl back in line beside the sergeant and Karskie under the poacher’s long gun. She seemed confounded. Juma did not explain himself.

“I am Juma.”

The American and Karskie reintroduced themselves. Karskie offered his identification card. Promise nodded as her way of adding validation. Again, no one shook hands.

“Promise says you’ve come to inspect the missile.”

The sergeant flattened his palm in the direction Juma had come.

“Lead the way.”

“Sergeant, forgive me. This is a bit irregular.”

“How so?”

“You ask me to believe that you’ve been sent by the United States with these two to verify that I do, indeed, have your rocket. One sergeant in an unmarked uniform.”

Juma gestured to his small poacher boy carrying the two rifles and asked him a question in a different tongue. Allyn spoke enough Bantu to interpret the question Juma asked: Was the American carrying that rifle when you found him? The boy rattled one of the guns, nodding. Juma returned to English, and the sergeant.

“An American sergeant carrying a Dutch FN, the weapon of the Kruger rangers. That is odd, surely. Why would you be found with that instead of an American weapon? Accompanied by a female ranger, whom I suspect, by now, you know is of dubious character. And a low-level parks employee sent to vouch for you by way of his plastic ID card.”

Juma rubbed his chin.

“Are you a spy, Mr. Karskie?”

“Do I look like a spy?”

The poacher in the leopard pelt spoke up, also in Bantu. The lisp from his missing teeth spoiled several words; Allyn made out only “underpants on a stick.” That had to be a mistake, but Juma’s chuckle jiggled his girth.

“Frankly, Sergeant, this is not the delegation I expected.”

“What did you expect, exactly?”

“Something a bit more, what can I say? Dangerous? A death squad, perhaps. A stealth bomber. Something more impressive. Something American.”

“How’s this for impressive? You called the president of Zimbabwe. He called the president of the United States. He called me.”

Juma made a mistake. He cut his eyes at Allyn.

The sergeant caught it.

“You boys have a midnight deadline for two hundred million dollars. Right?”

Allyn wanted to walk away, right now. Or drool and stutter, play Lush Life the drunken fool, distance himself from this plot. But it was too late. The American shot him a piercing glance, the kind that records. The sergeant didn’t know Allyn’s name, but he unraveled instantly that Juma, the giant poacher king of this village of shambles, was not the one who called the president of Zimbabwe.

The sun hammered on the earthen street. Juma’s bodyguards fidgeted, wanting out of the light, waiting for someone to speak. Allyn dropped all pretense.

“Juma. A word.”

On his bare feet, Allyn turned away. Juma followed far enough for them to speak privately. Juma was so large Allyn could not see around him to the American, the South African, and the girl ranger.

“Who is the girl?”

“My sister’s granddaughter.”

“Was she your contact inside the park?”

“Yes.”

“We can assume, then, that she’s told them who you are and what you do here.”

“Yes.”

“She doesn’t know who I am, does she?”

“No.”

“How did they find her?”

Juma looked over his meaty shoulder. Allyn gazed up into the fat bottom of his chin, the brown folds of Juma’s prosperity.

“I think it more likely she found them. I will get the truth, shamwari. It is difficult to believe anything they say. But she brought them here. That I know.”

Allyn curled a small hand over Juma’s forearm. The big man’s skin felt cool against the heat of the day. The fire, the burning will of their youth in the mines to become men of stature, had become banked in Juma. Juma had done the easy things since those years, stolen, bullied, and murdered his way to wealth. Though they’d sworn loyalty to each other and had kept it, Allyn read much that scared him in Juma’s glare at the girl.

“Listen to me. It doesn’t matter how they found her, or who they are. What matters is who sent them. Only that.”

Allyn tugged on his old friend.

“Juma.”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Leave your men around the village tonight.”

“This should not have happened. The Americans weren’t supposed to know where the missile is.”

“They know now. Let’s focus on that.”

“What will it mean?”

Funny that Juma, the criminal, asked Allyn what the likely outcome of their crime would be. In the end, everything was business.

Juma prodded.

“Do you think an attack? A bomb, another drone?”

“I don’t think so. We left them very little time. Besides, two hundred million isn’t much to America. It makes sense for them to pay. It’s cheaper than coming after us. Much cheaper than explaining themselves tomorrow. They’ve been caught playing nasty. They’ll take their medicine. I would.”

“I believe you.” Juma’s belief appeared to buck him up. “Look who they sent us. A soft boy, an unarmed soldier.”

“We’re alright for now. Listen to me. We’ll take the sergeant to see the missile. That’s all we can do. We’ll wait until midnight. Then . . .”

“Then what, shamwari?”

“Then you and I are done, my friend. We can never talk, never see each other again. You have to leave this place. Leave Mozambique. I may disappear myself for a while. They may pay us, but they will not forgive us.”

“What if the money does not come?”

“That changes nothing. We took a chance. But it will come.”

Juma took a moment before nodding. Again, Juma’s gaze fixed on the girl.

“Juma. She’s your family.”

“She’s a traitor before anything else.”

Allyn did nothing to halt Juma’s pivot away from him. A fuse that burned beyond his reach had been lit in his old friend.