Setting himself as best as he was able, Simon drew the punching dagger up, then shoved it between the Cape buffalo’s ribs and into its heart. For another moment, he hung on desperately, not trusting the fall or his ability to avoid the rampaging hooves. In the next, the buffalo suddenly gave out and fell, a mountain of rolling flesh that dropped at the edge of the stream.
Stunned, Simon sprawled beside the great beast. Shafts of sunlight slashed through the trees overhead. He lost consciousness briefly, scared because he wasn’t sure if he was paralyzed or if he was breathing.
When Simon opened his eyes again, one of the hyenas was almost on him. The scavenger’s nose was wrinkled back to expose sharp, yellow teeth.
Simon moved out of instinct, slashing the hyena’s throat with the punching dagger. Blood sprayed, but the animal ran until its life fled.
Drawing a deep breath, Simon levered himself to his feet. The other hyena ran off, barking with insane laughter. Simon looked down at the Cape buffalo and saw at once that it was dead. He felt bad for it. Just like the elephants the poachers had killed, the buffalo had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
After washing the punching dagger in the stream, Simon went back to survey the damage to the radio. It was immediately evident that the radio was a total loss.
So much for impact-resistant.
Returning to the tree where he’d left his gear, Simon collapsed the dagger and put it away. He hefted the backpack and his hunting rifle, took out his good compass to check the direction, and started back toward camp.
Back at the campsite, Simon knew things had gone badly wrong. He’d known they would when he started tracking the tire marks left by the poachers’ vehicles and found they headed toward the campsite.
For a little while he’d let himself hope that the poachers wouldn’t find the campsite. But as soon as they’d gotten into the area, Simon knew the men were hunting them too. Tire tracks cut through the abandoned campsite, rolling through the gray ash of the campfire.
Simon cursed himself and surveyed the terrain. The poachers hadn’t had any problems picking up Saundra’s trail. Saundra hadn’t had time to hide her tracks, and with tourists in tow, that hadn’t been possible.
There was little doubt that the poachers had probably overtaken Saundra and the others by now.
And what will they do? Kill them for possibly being witnesses to their poaching?
The possibility flushed ice water through Simon’s veins. He redistributed his pack across his shoulders and pushed himself into a jog. He’d lost over two hours tracking the wounded Cape buffalo. His sweat-drenched clothing clung to him. His muscles protested, but he pushed himself forward.
Four and a half miles later, as best as Simon could guess, he found where the poachers had overtaken Saundra and their group.
Hyenas savaged Dalton’s and Carey’s bodies, growling at each other as they claimed their meals. Both men had been executed, a bullet between the eyes and powder marks to show the proximity.
Breath burning in his lungs, Simon dropped to his knees beside the men and checked their pulses even though he knew he wouldn’t find any. He closed their staring eyes and got up again.
Why did they kill you? Did you resist? Simon couldn’t believe that. Or to make a point? That felt more right even though it was ultimately more wrong.
He swung back to search the ground, barely holding the panic within him in check. There were footprints and tire tracks everywhere. He figured that the poachers had found Saundra and the tourists in the brush, flushed them toward the trail, then killed Dalton and Carey and loaded the survivors onto the Land Rovers.
Saundra’s alive. The others are alive. Simon chose to concentrate on that instead of the dead men. Despite his fatigue, he sipped water from his canteen and ate an energy bar as he walked. When he finished, he began to run again.
“What are they going to do to us?”
Calming herself, Saundra turned to face one of the women in the group. It was a struggle to remember the woman’s name. Saundra hated that; she prided herself on getting the names of her charges sorted out promptly. She was a perfectionist. Simon teased her unmercifully for that.
Simon. She wondered if he was still alive. So far the poachers hadn’t said anything about killing him. He couldn’t be dead. She wouldn’t let him be dead. She’d never known a man more alive than Simon Cross. But he wouldn’t have given in to their captors either. She knew that as well.
“Miss McIntyre? Did you hear me?” The woman whispered more forcefully.
“I heard you.” Saundra made herself speak calmly. She was anything but calm. The poachers had tied their hands behind them with rope, then tied them together around a tree. At first Saundra had tried to break free, but her hands had quickly gone numb from lack of blood circulation.
“Well?”
“I don’t know what they’re going to do.”
The woman was young, probably in her mid-twenties, the same age as Saundra. But she hadn’t seen as much of the cold callousness of life that Saundra had. The woman lowered her head as she wept. Tears ran down her dusty cheeks, leaving muddy furrows behind.
Saundra’s first impulse was to tell the woman—Cherie, the name just popped into her head—that everything was going to be all right. But she didn’t. One of her first rules, one she’d had to teach Simon, was not to ever promise a paying client something you couldn’t deliver.
So she let the woman cry. One of the others, Denise, leaned in to her. They whispered in French, and Saundra only had marginal French. The two women came from France, somewhere outside of Paris, Saundra thought, but she couldn’t be sure now. They’d come on a grand adventure, hoping to meet men that would make them forget about boring
