The Hunter (4 page)

Brand dabbed his mouth with a linen serviette. ‘I’ll just go to the bathroom, Patrick. I’m sure the clients might like a final pit stop as well.’

Patrick gave a snort. ‘
Ja
, I know how it is for you old-timers. Don’t worry, folks, there’ll be plenty of stops to answer the call of nature on this walk, I’m sure.’

Brand excused himself from the guests at the table and took his rifle to the bathroom located near the dining platform. He disliked Patrick; the man was a racist and a bully, but he’d had to work with him before. This, however, was the first time he had walked with the man in the bush and already he was worried on a number of counts.

First up, Patrick should have been at lunch with the clients. Brand didn’t know whether the younger man had used the midday break to sleep, or if he thought himself above the need for a meal before an afternoon’s walking. In any case, Brand believed the guide should have been at the table getting to know his guests and briefing them about the walk ahead.

Secondly, and more concerning, Patrick had made a show of loading his rifle at the table. It was purely for effect, Brand supposed; the simple action of loading rounds into the breech always conveyed a strong message to safari guests that they were heading out into a land where there were many things that could maim or kill them, and it behoved them to listen to the man with the gun. What worried Brand was that Patrick had said the vehicle was waiting, so they would presumably be driving somewhere. When Patrick had started loading his rifle Brand assumed they would be walking out of camp, because a rifle was not normally carried loaded when driving, for safety reasons.

‘All right,’ Patrick said, drawing himself up to his full height, which was about a foot lower than Brand’s, ‘we’re going to take a short drive and then we’ll walk from there. I’ll brief you on board the vehicle.’

They followed Patrick off the platform to the front of the lodge, where an open Land Rover was parked. Patrick laid his rifle in a cradle fixed to the dashboard.

‘Aren’t you going to load your rifle, or have you done it already?’ Darlene asked Brand as they allowed the couples to climb aboard first.

Brand turned to her. ‘No. I have to hold mine between my knees while we drive. Patrick’s is fine, resting in the gun rack.’ It was a lie, but he didn’t want to alarm Darlene or undermine Patrick in front of her or the other guests. The chances of Patrick’s weapon somehow misfiring if it were jolted out of its cradle were negligible, but all the same it was standard practice not to drive around with a loaded weapon sitting in front of you. It was another basic rule that Patrick had either forgotten or ignored. Given Patrick’s age, Brand suspected he was guilty of the latter, not the former.

Brand made sure the clients were all settled in the back, then climbed into the front passenger seat next to Patrick. As Patrick drove, at a speed Brand felt was too fast for the road, he began to explain to the guests the format of the day and the rules of the walk. They would be out for about four hours before returning for dinner. Patrick would lead and Brand would walk second, explaining things and pointing out anything of interest. They were to walk in single file, Patrick said, and, most importantly, no one was to run if they encountered dangerous game.

‘What is he saying?’ Brand heard Sharon ask from the rear of the vehicle. Given the rush of the air and Patrick’s tendency to talk while looking straight ahead over the folded-down windscreen, it was no wonder she had missed much of the briefing.

Brand swivelled in his seat and reinforced the rule that under no circumstances should anyone run if they encountered a dangerous animal, even if it charged them. When he turned to face forward again he saw that Patrick was glaring at him. He would, Brand hoped, learn to become a better guide in the future, but in the meantime he didn’t want anyone, least of all himself, getting killed because of Patrick’s slapdash briefing.

The Zebra Plains property was, Brand thought, a truly beautiful piece of land. With no other vehicles allowed to traverse the area they walked in, it seemed as though they had the whole continent to themselves. The dirt track they bounced along ran through a savannah of golden grass. Herds of zebra and wildebeest, skittish things at the best of times, took flight at the sight and sound of their high-speed progress. Brand wondered why Patrick hadn’t parked the vehicle and begun the walk already. The fact was that it was hard to have good game viewing on a walk. Most animals would detect the approach of a human, particularly a group of tourists, stumbling through the bush, and run off long before the guides had a chance to pick them up. Had they already been walking they might have been able to get closer to the grazers that had just fled from Patrick’s hard revving of the diesel engine.

Perhaps, Brand thought, he was being unnecessarily critical of Patrick, but on second thoughts he didn’t think so. Sharon and Darlene, both newcomers to the continent, seemed over the moon just to see a zebra, and could not know they were in the hands of a rank amateur. Brand heard Sharon curse because she couldn’t get her camera out quick enough to photograph the zebra, but if Patrick heard her, he ignored her. He took a left turn and they headed downhill, towards a line of tall trees that Brand knew marked the course of a river.

‘We’ve got a better chance of seeing lion and buffalo in the riverbed. They’ll be in the thick stuff as it gives them cover and shade,’ he said over his shoulder to the guests.

Brand looked at him. What Patrick had said was essentially correct, and in his peripheral vision he saw the clients in the back nodding enthusiastically. They had hundreds of square kilometres of stunning open country to roam, where they would probably come across giraffe and impala and other relatively benign animals and, perhaps, if the wind was in their favour and the guests not too noisy they might get a sighting of a pride of lions far off before they detected the humans and moved away. But it seemed to Brand that Patrick was intent on arranging an assisted suicide for himself and presiding over the manslaughter of the rest of them. He had to say something.

‘Maybe this open country would be a bit easier on the folks,’ he said quietly. Brand knew very well that Cape buffalo might be lurking in the riverbed ahead, which was precisely why most game walks tended to cross riverbeds quickly rather than spending any more time than was absolutely necessary
in
them.

‘Did you hear that?’ Patrick looked back at the guests. ‘Hudson thinks you’re all too weak or old to walk along the river line. Who wants to see a lion?’

‘We do!’ they called back in unison.

Patrick glanced at Brand and out of the side of his mouth said, ‘I can take you back to camp if you’re chicken.’

On the walks Brand had led, in peacetime at least, he avoided danger and did not go into thick bush deliberately with the intention of seeking encounters with the Big Five, save for white rhino which were easy to track, relatively docile and usually favoured open grassland in any case. Perhaps Zebra Plains marketed itself differently, promising guests adrenaline-charged thrills and near-death experiences, but he doubted it. He resolved to call Gert when they got back to camp and alert him to Patrick’s behaviour. In the meantime, he rose to Patrick’s childish challenge. Whatever Brand did, Patrick seemed intent on putting his clients in harm’s way, and Brand now felt some moral obligation to try and make sure they all returned from this afternoon’s walk alive. ‘No, I’m coming along.’

Patrick stopped the vehicle and, to his credit, quickly reiterated the key parts of his briefing. Brand loaded his rifle. ‘Keep up with me, Yank,’ Patrick said to Brand as he set off.

Brand thought it odd that Patrick was forging ahead. Patrick, Brand knew, was a freelance guide like himself, but he’d had more to do with Gert’s camp than Brand had. Brand had assumed that he would have been out front, tracking, and that Patrick would be in the second position, looking after the guests. That was how he would have arranged it. Brand was the hired hand on this occasion and as such he shouldn’t have had a speaking role. But perhaps Patrick guessed, correctly, that if Brand was number one rifle he would have chosen a safer route, and one with less potential to deliver hefty tips. Brand always made a point of telling people on a guided safari walk that he was
not
looking for big game, and explained his reasons why.

Brand slipped into his role as the commentator for this walk. ‘We’re here to look at the small things as well as the big animals – spider webs, tracks, insects and trees,’ he said. ‘Your safety is our number one priority so we won’t go out of our way to find dangerous game.’

Brand could sense Patrick bridling as the other man moved off, down a sandy bank into the thick bush and towering sycamore figs and fever trees that lined the banks of the largely dry river. Brand said a small prayer and held his rifle across his chest, at the ready.

Patrick, Brand observed, was not unskilled as a tracker or guide. He moved carefully and quietly and tested the wind by allowing a handful of fine sand to run slowly from his closed fist. He led them so that the wind was in their faces and he insisted they keep the talking to a minimum. If he wanted to walk them into an encounter with a surprised and ornery buffalo or a protective lioness and cubs then he was going about it the right way.

Brand called a halt and deliberately allowed his voice to carry as he showed the guests the shell of a leopard tortoise. A hole had been pecked in the hapless creature’s back and Brand explained that the ground hornbill, with its long, strong, black beak was one of the few creatures that could crack the tortoise’s armour.

‘Can we move on, if you’re finished with the dead tortoise?’ Patrick said, not trying to hide his impatience.

Asshole
, Brand thought. Patrick’s skilled tracking paid off, though, when he picked up a herd of elephant feeding ahead of them and called the tourists forward without alerting the elephants to their presence. They crouched in the riverbed, in the shade of a towering jackalberry tree, and watched the giant creatures for a while, peaceably munching on foliage around them. They were oblivious to the humans, until the auto-focus beep on Darlene’s camera alerted the herd’s matriarch. The elephant turned to them, flapped her sail-like ears and shook her head. At her signal, a rumbling from her belly, the herd gathered and moved away from the people, out of the riverbed and deeper into the surrounding bush.

Patrick glared at Darlene. ‘Can’t you silence that?’

‘Sorry.’

Brand was astounded Patrick would address Darlene in such an abrupt manner.

Darlene fiddled with some buttons on the camera. ‘I don’t know how. Maybe I shouldn’t take any pictures.’

‘Here, let me have a look,’ Brand said to her. As a guide he had developed a basic understanding of cameras and photography early on and as a private investigator he found his knowledge of light, shutter speeds and lenses was a bonus during surveillance work. He found the settings menu on the camera and was able to cancel the beeping noise. ‘All done.’

Darlene laid her hand on his and smiled up at him. ‘My hero.’

Patrick was up and moving again, so Brand made sure everyone was fine and they carried on along the riverbed, keeping to the shade of the trees along one side. Ahead of them, the near-dry watercourse curved around to the left.

Patrick pushed ahead, outstripping the rest of them. As he approached the bend, he stopped and dropped to one knee to study the sand. Brand stopped the group. He waited a few seconds, checked there was nothing coming up behind them, then told Darlene and the others to stay put. He walked up to Patrick. ‘What is it?’ Brand asked.

‘People,’ Patrick whispered. He licked his lips. ‘No one else walks this part of the concession and I haven’t been here for two weeks. These are fresh.’

‘Poachers.’

Patrick nodded. ‘There are plenty of rhino along here. We often see them in the riverbed. I’m going to follow them.’

‘Are you fucking crazy?’ Brand couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘We’ve got clients with us. Let’s call this in to the reserve’s security people. We need to get the guests out of here. You said it yourself, these tracks are fresh.’

‘Just as I thought, you’re gutless,’ Patrick said.

There was bold, and there was insane. If Brand had been alone, or if it had just been him and Patrick, he probably would have followed the tracks. He hated poachers, and was incensed that in this day and age rhino were still being hunted for their horn so that rich Vietnamese businessmen could impress their friends by serving up ground horn as a party drug – they claimed it prevented hangovers.

‘I’m taking the tourists back to the truck. You do what you want,’ Brand said.

‘So you’re not going to back me up?’

‘We can come back later, Patrick.’

Patrick shook his head, stood up and moved forward. Brand was furious; he backtracked to the guests. Patrick had been nothing but a dangerous liability since the moment he’d loaded his gun at the dining table.

‘What’s going on?’ Darlene asked him.

‘Patrick’s just checking something out. We’re going to move slowly back the way we came.’

‘Why?’ she asked. Patrick had moved around the bend and was out of sight.

A burst of three gunshots, fired on automatic, echoed down the riverbed. Darlene screamed. ‘Everybody behind that rock,’ Brand said, motioning to a boulder a few metres away from them. He turned to look up the river, his rifle in his shoulder.

‘Help!’ yelled Patrick. He emerged, running around the bend towards them, eyes wide and arms and legs pumping. His hands were empty.

Brand heard voices, men calling in Portuguese, which meant they had to be Mozambicans, from across the border on the other side of the Kruger Park. Someone was telling another person to hurry up. It was the language of his youth, taught to him by his half-Portuguese, half-Angolan mother. A man dressed in a green shirt and shorts and carrying an AK-47 came into view, holding his rifle at the ready. He aimed at Patrick’s back and Brand saw the man’s surprise as he caught sight of him.