Blood Safari

Ka-Nwamuri? They ought to take a look tonight, so they could report back the next day.

They waited till sundown, cleared up their camp and made preparations. It was just over five kilometres to the koppie. They wouldn’t make quick time through the thickets, but the cover was good.

Two hours later they saw the lights for the first time, halfway up Ka-Nwamuri hill, moving lights, which blinked like fireflies in the night.

Poachers didn’t behave like this. What was going on?

Jacobus tried to raise the base over the radio, but there was just the hiss of static over the ether. Pego and he whispered about the best route to take to the lights.

The area directly east of Ka-Nwamuri was too flat and open. But close by ran the Nwaswitsonstso stream, the one that made a wide curve from the west around the Ka-Nwamuri koppie. It formed the Eileen Orpen Dam before carving out a small canyon that ran towards the border. They could follow the stream to the rear of the hill – and then climb over to see what was happening on the eastern side.

It took more than an hour. At the Orpen Dam they ran into to a pride of angry lions roaring their hunger and frustration into the night after a failed zebra hunt. At last, after nine o’clock they peeped over the edge of the crest of Ka-Nwamuri koppie and saw the people below.

The lights were off, but a large campfire burned at the foot of the hill. A group of people sat around the fire. Behind them, camouflage nets covered bulky shapes.

Pego hissed softly through his teeth and said befa, this is bad. Jacobus directed his binoculars at the group beside the fire. They were white. In civilian clothes.

He saw the carcass hanging from the tree near the fire. Impala ram.

He and Pego whispered. They must get closer. No, said Pego, he would go, he was as dark as the night and they wouldn’t see him. There was a moshuta, a thicket, near their camp, he would crawl into the cover of that and take a look and come back. Jacobus should stay here and try the radio again. It might work better on the koppie.

‘But you will come back to me?’

‘Of course, because I’m leaving the bushwa with you,’ and Pego grinned in the dark at their old joke. He would come back because Jacobus was the one carrying the food.

‘Tshetshisa,’ said Jacobus, one of the few words he knew in Mapuleng. Hurry.

Pego disappeared into the darkness and Jacobus shifted below the crest and tried the radio again. He pressed the knob and whispered, ‘Bravo One, come in, this is Juliet Papa.’ He listened and suddenly there was a voice, loud and clear, so that he had to turn the volume down quickly.

‘Juliet Papa, identify yourself,’ but it was an unfamiliar voice, not one of the ESU radio operators.

He hesitated, because this was new. There was no procedure for this. ‘Bravo One, this is Juliet Papa.’

‘I hear you, Juliet Papa, but identify yourself. What are you doing on this frequency?’

That gave him a fright. Had he made a mistake? He checked the radio again, set it back on the frequency they were supposed to use and repeated, ‘Bravo One, this is Juliet Papa, come in.’

The same voice replied clear as day, ‘Juliet Papa, this is a reserved frequency. Identify yourself.’

He felt like throwing the radio down the hill. It worked only when it wanted to and now it was confused. He switched it off and crept back to the crest. He focused the binoculars on the thicket Pego had indicated and waited.

He saw a light moving at the bottom of the slope. They were barely three hundred metres from him. Two men with a torch. They were inspecting something on the ground. They picked it up. A rope? No, through the binoculars he could see that it was a smooth black cable.

Then he heard shouts below and he swung the binoculars towards the fire and saw figures running, armed men, uniformed men. Where had they been? Where had they come from?

Shots cracked, he jerked the binoculars away from his face, searching for the flashes of the shots in the night, but he couldn’t see any.

Pego, where are you?

Down there people scurried around, away from the fire. He used the binoculars again. Everything was suddenly quiet, nobody in sight. He swung back to where the two men with the torch had been. The torch was off.

Minutes ticked past.

He keep watching the fire and trying to see something in the thicket where Pego was planning to hide, but it was too dark.

There was movement at the fire. He focused the binoculars. Two soldiers with someone between them that they were half carrying, half dragging. Others crowded around. He saw the man they had was Pego and his heart leapt in his chest because there was blood on his friend’s leg, at the knee.

They dropped Pego on the ground and stood around him. Someone kicked the black man and Jacobus’s heart thumped in his throat. This was trouble, big trouble, he wanted to charge down the slope and shout, ‘What are you doing, what are you doing? Leave him, he’s my buddy,’ but he lay frozen and not knowing what to do.

42

My path down the mountain was steep and overgrown – branches, tree roots, spiderwebs. Here and there were small erosion gullies and rocks that I had to clamber down step by step while the sweat poured down me in rivers.

Above all I had to be quiet, even though I didn’t expect them on this side of the river. They would have someone watching the piece of ground between the forest and the farmhouse.

I guessed the distance and knew I had come close. The house ought to be within a few hundred metres. I would have to turn south, but I had to be very careful.

Jacobus saw them drag Pego away from the circle of firelight and then come back to confer. He made up his mind. He would rescue Pego first and then they would go for help. His friend was wounded and it didn’t seem as though anyone was treating him.

He crept down the western slope and switched the radio on again just to listen. He was too scared to call.

Nothing.

He crept closer around the koppie, very cautiously. How had they spotted Pego? How had they caught him, the man of maPulana, Tau, the Lion, who could stalk as silently as a cat?

Jacobus was lucky. He saw the electronic device by accident. It was attached to a steel peg knocked into the ground and its thin wire was nearly invisible in the night. It had an eye facing east and he guessed what it must be: a sensor of some kind, casting an invisible beam that must not be broken.

He leopard-crawled past it and did not stand up again, staying down and moving slowly and noiselessly with a great deal of effort, carrying his rifle in his hands, ever closer, until he could hear their voices and spotted one of the sentries under a tree with an R4 in his arms. Then he knew they were army and that Pego would be safe, it had been an accident. He was going to stand up and thought, thank God, it’s all a misunderstanding, when Pego screamed.

I could see them.

They were sitting on my veranda, two of them. One had been driving the jeep at the hospital, the other was the man behind the Galil, the big blond one who had shot Emma.

Blondie sat on a kitchen chair, legs stretched out and his heels propped on the veranda wall. He wore the same baseball cap on his head. Jeep man was just sitting. They were talking, but I was too far away to hear what they were saying.

They were waiting for me. There would be others too. One or two watching the road, surely.

Would that be all of them?

Jacobus continued crawling in the direction of the scream, until he could see them and smell the odour of