When was this, Babo? The night before last, the headman replied. When they found no people in the village and no canoes, they were angry.
They shouted at each other and waved their guns, but in the end they went away. He pointed with his chin, eastwards down the river. But now I am afraid they will return. That is why I sit awake while the village sleeps. Are the people of Mbepura still camped at the place of the Red Birds? Isaac asked, and the headman nodded. I think that after these hard men left here, they went down to Mbepura's village.
Thank you, old father. The place of the Red Birds was named for the flocks of carmine-breasted bee-eaters which burrow their nests into the steep cutaway bank of the river at that point. Mbepura's village was on the north bank, across the river from the clay cliff of the breeding colony. Isaac approached it with the engine idling softly, allowing the flow of the Zambezi to drift him down. All his rangers were alert.
They had discarded their greatcoats and now crouched down below the gunwale with their weapons ready.
With a soft burst of the engine, Isaac pushed in closer to the bank.
Mbepura's village was another tiny group of shaggy huts near the water's edge. They seemed deserted and the drying fires below the fish-racks had been allowed to burn out. However, he saw in the gleam of the moon that the mooring poles for the canoes were still standing in the shallow muddy landing, but the canoes were missing. The fisherfolk lived by their canoes, their most precious possession.
Isaac let the assault craft drift on downstream well below the village before he gunned the motor and cut back across the flow of the Zambezi, crossing half a mile of open water to the south bank. If the gang had crossed here, then they would be coming back the same way.
Isaac checked the time, turning the luminous dial of his wristwatch to catch the moonlight. He calculated the distance from Chiwewe headquarters and divided it by the probable rate of march of the poachers, and made allowance for the fact that they were probably carrying heavy loads of plundered ivory.
He looked up at the moon. Already it was paling at the approach of dawn.
He could expect the returning raiders to get back to the Zambezi bank any time within the next two or three hours.
If I can find where they have cached the canoes, he muttered.
His guess was that they had commandeered Mbepura's entire flotilla of canoes. He recalled that on his last visit to the village there had been seven or eight of these frail craft, each of them hollowed out from a massive log of the Kigelia tree. Each of them could accommodate six or seven passengers for the journey across the great river.
The gang would probably have dragooned the men from the village to act as boatmen. The handling of the canoes required skill and experience, for the canoes were cranky and unstable, especially under a heavy load. He guessed that they would probably have left the boatmen under guard on the south bank while they marched on to Chiwewe.
If I can find the canoes, I've got them cold, Isaac decided.
He turned the assault boat in towards the south bank a little downstream from where he judged that the canoes would have crossed.
When he found the entrance to a lagoon he pressed the sharp bows into the dense stand of papyrus reeds that blocked the mouth. He cut the engine and his rangers used handfuls of the tough papyrus stems to pull themselves deeper into the reedbed while Isaac stood in the bows and sounded for bottom with a paddle.
As soon as it was shallow enough, Isaac and one of his senior rangers waded ashore, leaving the rest of the party to guard the boat. On dry land Isaac gave his ranger whispered orders, sending him down-river to search for the canoes and check the bank for signs of the passage of a large party of marauders.
When he had gone, Isaac set off in the opposite direction, upstream.
He went alone, swiftly and silently, moving like a wraith in the river mist.
He had judged it accurately. He had not gone more than half a mile upstream when he smelt smoke. It was too strong and fresh to originate from the village on the far side of the broad river, and Isaac knew that there were no habitations on this bank. This was part of the National Park.
He moved in quietly towards the source of the smoke. At this point the bank was a sheer red clay cliff into which the bee eaters burrowed their subterranean nests. However, there was a break in the cliff directly below where he crouched. it was a narrow gulley, choked with riverine bush that formed a natural landing-place from the river.
The faint glimmer of coming dawn gave Isaac just sufficient light to make out the encampment in the gulley below him. The canoes were drawn up welt out of the water so that they would be concealed from anyone searching from a boat. There were seven canoes, the entire flotilla from Mbepura's village across the river.
Nearby, the boatmen were lying around two small smoky fires. They were wrapped in karosses of animal skin and, as protection from mosquitoes, each of them had drawn the covering completely over his head, so they looked like corpses laid out in a morgue. An armed poacher sat at each fire with his AK 47 rifle across his lap, guarding the sleeping boatmen and making certain that none of them sneaked away to the beached carioes nearby. Danny figured it exactly right, Isaac told himself. They are waiting for the return of the raiding party.
He drew back from the cliff edge and silently circled inland.
Within two hundred yards he intersected a well-trodden game trail that left the river and headed directly southward in the direction of Chiwewe headquarters camp.
approximat Isaac followed it for a short distance until the game trail dipped through a shallow dry water- course. The bed of the water-course was of sugary white sand and the prints that it held were plain to decipher even in the uncertain pre-dawn light. A large party of men in Indian file had trodden deeply, but their tracks were eroded and overlaid by the tracks of both large and small game. Twenty-four hours old, Isaac estimated.
This was the route on their outward march. Almost the raiding party had take certainly they would use the same trail on their return march to rejoin the waiting canoes.
Isaac found a vantage point from which he was able to overlook a long stretch of the trail while remaining well concealed in a patch of dense Jesse bush. At his back there was a secure escape route for him down a shallow donga, the banks of which were screened with a heavy growth of rank elephant grass. He settled in to wait. The light strengthened swiftly and within minutes he could make out the full length of the game trail winding away into the mopane forest.
The sunrise chorus of birds began with the noisy duet of a pair of Heughlin robins in the donga behind him, and then the first flight of wild duck sped overhead. Their arrowhead formation was crisp and black against the tangerine and heron blue of the dawn sky.
Isaac crouched in his ambush position. There was no way that he could be certain how long the poachers might take on the return march from Chiwewe. Danny had reckoned on ten hours or so. If he were correct they
