Elephant Song - Smith Wilbur - Страница 21

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The diesel engine ran up to speed an settled at a steady beat, then the generator kicked in and the lights flickered and bloomed.  Through the window he saw the street lamps lining the driveway light up and in their glow the Casia trees were vivid green and shiny with raindrops.

Daniel fetched the bunch of keys that still hung in the lock of the Milner safe and strode through into the armoury.  Along with the .  375

culling rifles, there were five AK47 assault rifles on the rack.

These were used on anti-poaching patrols when the rangers needed equivalent fire-power to take on the gangs of poachers.  Ammunition was stored in the cupboard below the gunrack.  He unlocked the steel door.

There were four magazines of AK ammunition in each pouched webbing belt hanging.  on the hooks.

He slung one of these over his shoulder, then lifted an automatic rifle down from the rack and loaded it with deft movements; the old warlike arts once learned were never forgotten.

Armed and angry, he ran down the verandah steps.  Start with the ivory godown, " he decided.  They'll been there for sure.  He circled the burned-out building, searching for sign by the light of the street lamps, flashing his torch at anything that caught his attention.  If he had allowed himself to think about it, he would have realised he was wasting his time.  The only prints that had withstood the erosion of the rain were those protected by the overhanging verandah roof, a set of heavy tyre tracks in the mud at the front entrance to the ivory godown.

Even these were almost erased and only just recognisable.

Daniel ignored them; he was after the gang and they would not be using vehicles.  Quickly he widened the circles of his search, trying to pick up an outgoing set of tracks, concentrating on the northern side of the camp's perimeter, for the gang would almost certainly head back to the Zambezi River.

It was useless, as he had known deep down that it would be.

After twenty minutes he gave it up.  There were no tracks to follow.

He stood under the dark trees and raged with frustration and sorrow.

If only I could get a shot at the bastards, he lamented.

It meant little to him in his present mood that he was one man against twenty or more professional killers.  Jock was a cameraman, not a soldier.  He would be of no help in a fight.  The memory of those mutilated bodies in the bedroom of the bungalow and of Johnny's shattered head overpowered all rational thought.  Daniel found that he was physically shaking with the strength of his anger, and that put him on the road to recovering his scattered wits.  While I'm wasting time here, they're getting clean away, he told himself.  The only way is to cut them off on the river.  I need help.  He thought of the Parks camp at Mana Pools.  The warden there was a good man.  Daniel knew him well from the old days.  He had an anti-poaching team and a fast boat.  They could get downstream and patrol the river crossing to catch the gang as it attempted to get back on to the Zambian side.  Daniel was already starting to think logically as he started back towards the warden's office.  From Mana Pools they could ring Harare and get the police to send in a spotter plane.

He knew that speed was vital now.  Within the next ten hours the gang would be back across the river.  However, he could not leave Johnny like that, lying in his own blood.  It meant wasting a few more minutes, but he had to show him some last respect and at the very least cover him decently.

Daniel paused in the doorway to Johnny's office.  The overhead lights were brutally explicit; they left nothing of the horror concealed.  He set aside the AK 47 and looked around for a covering for his friend's corpse.  The curtains over the front windows were green government issue, faded by sunlight, but they would do as a makeshift shroud.  He took one of them down, and went with it to where Johnny lay.

Johnny's attitude was tortured.  One arm was twisted up under his chest and his face lay in a pool of thick congealing blood.  Gently Daniel rolled him over.  The body had not yet stiffened in rigor mortis.  He winced as he looked at Johnny's face, for the bullet had come out through his right eyebrow.  He used a corner of the curtain to wipe his face clean, then arranged him in a comfortable attitude on his back.

Johnny's left hand was thrust into the front of his tunic and his fist was tightly clenched.  Daniel's interest quickened as he saw the balled up sheet of paper in his hand.  He prised Johnny's fingers open and freed the wad.

He stood up, crossed to the desk and spread the paper on it.

He saw at once that Johnny had scrawled on it, using his own blood, and Daniel shivered at the macabre characters.

NJNC.  The letters were childlike and crude, smeared and barely legible.

They made no sense, although perhaps the J was an I. Daniel studied it.

NINC.  Still there was nothing obvious in the message.  Either it was gibberish or had some obscure meaning that only made sense to a dying man.

Suddenly Daniel felt a stirring in his subconscious, something was trying to surface.  He closed his eyes for a minute to give it a chance. Often it helped to let his mind go blank when searching for an elusive idea or memory, rather than to harry the point and drive it further under.  It was there, very close now, a shadow just below his conscious mind like the shape of a man-eating shark under the surface of a turgid sea.

NINC.

He opened his eyes again and found himself looking at the floor.

There were bloody footprints left by his own boot soles and by those of the killer.  He was not thinking about them; he was still grappling with that single cryptic word that Johnny had left for him.

Then he found his eyes had focused on one of the footprints, and his nerves jumped tight and shrieked like the strings of a violin slashed with the bow.  The footprint was chequered with a fish-scale pattern.

NINC.  It resounded through his mind and then that distinctive footprint turned the sense of it and the echo came back, altered and compelling.

NING.  Johnny had tried to write NING!  Daniel found that he was cold and trembling with the shock of the discovery.  Ambassador Ning, Ning Cheng Gong.  How was it possible?  And yet there were the bloody footprints to confirm the impossible.  Ning had been here after Johnny was shot.  Ning had been lying when he said that he had left, Daniel broke that train of thought as another memory struck him like a bolt from a cross-bow.

The blood on the cuff of the blue cotton slacks, the tracks of Ning's training shoes and the blood, Johnny's blood.  At last his rage had a target on which to focus, but now it was a cold constructive rage.  He pressed the bloody note back into Johnny's hand and folded his fingers around it for the police to find.  Then he spread the green curtain over Johnny's body, covering the shattered head.  He stood over him for a few seconds.

I'll get the bastard for you, old friend.  For you and Mavis and the babies.  I promise you, Johnny, on the memory of our friendship.  I swear it.  Then he snatched up the rifle and ran from the office, down the steps to where Jock waited beside the parked Landcruiser.

In the few seconds that it took him to reach the truck, the last details fell into place in his mind.  He remembered Cheng's perturbation when he thought Daniel might be staying longer at Chiwewe, and his obvious relief when he learned that Daniel was leaving.

He glanced back towards the ruins of the ivory godown and the tyre treads were still just visible in the mud.  It was simple and ingenious. Let the gang of poachers draw the pursuit, while they ferried the ivory out in the Parks Board's own trucks.

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