The Bone Hunter, page 2
Mposi Diallo had said, “These men hardly fear death until it is happening to them. It is not a deterrent in a land where people grow up among child soldiers and warlords. They could just as easily die from genocide back in the villages they left, so what is death to men like that? No. They see death every day. Sitting in a cage for the rest of their lives terrifies them, and that is what we are going to do to them. Welcome to Africa, Team Tread.”
Three days later they were in Tanzania and on their first ride along. Diallo’s men had cornered a group of poachers and were waiting them out. Allison wanted to go up with the action, but Mposi had kept them back in the truck too far to see and they waited for an hour until the poachers ran out of bullets and surrendered.
They had driven up to the scene to find the five young men with their hands cuffed behind their backs and sitting on the ground. They looked to be high school age to Allison at the time. Mposi had been saying something about awaiting a transport, but never finished his statement. One of the boys shifted. Allison saw the motion, but did not react. He drew a hand gun out of the back of his waistband and aimed behind his back with his head turned away. The bullet had struck the headlight between Allison and Mposi, shattering it only inches from her stomach. Everyone had scattered. One of the boys with a lion tattoo below his eye had taken to his feet and ran away with his hands still cuffed behind his back. She would later learn the escapee’s name was Leon; she never learned the name of the one who had shot at her. As far as she knew, Leon was still out and active. She always watched for him.
Allison had drawn her side arm, which was her only weapon at the time. It felt molasses slow; like she had waited too long and those were the final seconds expanding out at the end of her life. The boy fired two more shots by the time Allison had squared and aimed and she did not know where those had gone. Allison fired one shot behind the boy’s ear and out through his forehead. He fell to his face with his hands cuffed behind his back and still on the gun.
What struck her in that moment was how easy the shot had been. Not taking the shot had been terrifying, but once she fired and once he died, she felt great relief and then nothing. There was no fear, no remorse, and no static from thoughts she couldn’t organize. The heavy flatness that had haunted her back home and nearly drove her insane was lifted, and in its place, was normal nothing. Shooting the boy had been easy and right. That should have been disturbing, but as she stood there with her gun still in her hand and the task done, it was just easy. The bruise below her eye from the bar had faded to a ghastly green and yellow. The static that had driven her to get it had gone silent again.
Mposi Diallo had cleared his throat, and hissed, “Assist and advise.”
Allison had nodded. “My first advice is to search your damn prisoners for weapons, Ranger Diallo.”
She came back to the present watching the three poachers flee toward the trees. Mark had asked her a question, and she needed to respond. Something about two bodies and one of them being human.
Brood said, “And they will both be there when we get back with the prisoners.”
“Are we taking prisoners this time?” John asked as he gripped the wheel and raced toward the trees.
Allison opened her mouth to answer, but heard a grinding noise behind them. She held the bar above the open door frame and leaned out with her rifle looking back behind them. The poachers’ wrecked Toyota truck rolled onto the driver’s side crushing the open door. Shards of stone blasted into the air in three spurts. It wasn’t like an explosion. It reminded her of her dad chewing up a stump with an industrial shredder on their back acres. That was before his heart attack and before she joined up to fight terrorists in Afghanistan. The Tanzanian Wild Life Preserve was far from Afghanistan and even farther from rural Kentucky.
The blasts of rock stopped and were from behind the truck where she couldn’t see the cause. She started to pull back inside the Rover, but then saw a bright red hide arch out in front of the overturned truck before diving back into the cover of the grass. She knew of nothing native to that region that had that type of fur or skin. Hell, she didn’t know any animal in the world she could match to that, she thought.
Spurs of white twirled out from its massive body and dazzled her eyes. She blinked and stared in surprise. The thing disappeared below the grass. It was too large to hide in that low, matted cover, but yet, it was gone.
“Allison?” John called. “What do you want to do? Are we still going for them or circling back to clean up?”
She pulled away from the sight behind her and sat back in the seat. “Run them down. They don’t get to kill anything else.”
3
Violent Interruption
The bullet punched through the windshield of the Rover and spider webbed out across the glass in deep, dark cracks. The four of them ducked away out of reflex, but the bullet was already finished with its journey before they could react. They felt around to be sure they hadn’t caught it. Brood and Allison both saw the hole in the upholstery between them and made eye contact.
She nodded, and they leaned out of their doorways on both sides to return fire.
Mark said, “Get him before he learns to aim better, please.”
Brood laughed as he popped off several shots into the trees. “You got it, Sergeant Friday.”
The blasts rained down splinters and shards of bark. He did not hit the shooter, but the only poacher that had thought to hold on to his rifle exposed himself and fell back for deeper cover.
Allison took one measured shot as the Rover bottomed out and her aim went wide, but only by a few inches. It was enough for the shooter to flee faster with trees between him and Allison’s team.
Allison gritted her teeth. “John?”
Corporal John Lance turned the wheel to skirt the tree line. “I’ve got it.”
After a few meters, he turned hard again and plunged into an opening between the trunks. Brood and Allison both pulled their heads back inside to avoid having them torn off, but they remained crouched to lean out and engage the fight at any moment.
John dodged the Rover through the outer forest bringing the vehicle deeper in after the poachers. He cut his eyes to the left, over and over, trying to catch sight of their path.
“Watch it,” Mark said while gripping the panel above his door.
“I am watching,” John said.
The Rover bottomed out again with a long scrape from a felled log.
“That’s watching out?” Mark growled through clenched jaws.
John steered around another rock and looked left again. “Saw it the whole time we were driving over it, Sergeant.”
Allison opened her mouth to give them a quick order to focus their energy on the targets, but a crackle and pop behind them cut her off. She turned and leaned out of the vehicle to look back, but kept her body flat to the side panel. She saw the tree finish its fall, and it disappeared in the grass where they came into the forest. She made a mental note of it to warn John on the way back out.
Another tree fell, and then another. The third exploded and lifted several feet into the air with the entire root system before coming down in three pieces. Another burst took out another a few feet closer. The trunk unraveled from the inside, and the limbs came straight down as the center of the tree disintegrated under the branches.
She looked up and over the roof of the Rover for the poachers or some of the other members of their group firing in mortars. She knew some of them were funding local militias closer to the main cities in the west of the country to facilitate shipping out their kills. Maybe they were getting better weapons now too.
“What is it, Allison?” Brood Kultha shouted from inside in a deep voice that vibrated the roof.
The trees parted, falling to the left and right, on a path closing behind them. She cut her eyes back and forth looking for smoke, fire, or some sort of light trail coming into the forest.
The red hide and bony blades arced up from the grass and dove back down to vanish in the grass. She squinted. “What the hell am I seeing?”
She imagined a sea monster swimming through the grass and woods.
The next few trees tilted sharply, but did not fall or explode. “Shredded,” she said. “Like a grader or a buzz saw.”
Another explosion crackled through the forest, but far to their left. There was smoke this time. She spotted the three poachers break from cover and cut diagonally through the trees away from them. Allison brought her rifle up over the Rover and aimed across. “Don’t lift your head, Brood, I’m hot.”
“Copy,” he said.
She trained on the shooter’s back. He was fleeing, but he had already fired on them once and would likely do so again given the opportunity. “Train and advise,” Allison whispered as she held her aim tracking him while they wheeled through the trees, and the shooter fled headlong. Behind the ear through the forehead, she thought. They were only to fire in defense or under extreme circumstances. Still…
“Karma’s a bitch, and so am I sometimes.” Allison curled her finger around the trigger inside the guard.
A smaller man crossed behind the shooter and over her site. Allison folded her finger back out and rested it on the outside of the trigger guard. The man that crossed her bullet’s intended path was the driver. He also deserved what he got, but still. They were fleeing. “I don’t have a shot. Hook around and let’s cut them off on the other side of the forest.”
“We have a body or two to deal with back on the hills,” Mark reminded.
The shot cracked off, and the driver stumbled. He threw his head back and his arms out as he pitched forward onto the ground. The other two ran away without looking back.
“Kultha, did you fire?”
“No, I thought it was you.”
“I had no shot.”
More gunfire rattled off from automatic weapons. Before she could look, a bullet skimmed over the roof cutting a silver streak through the paint near her hands. Allison rolled her rifle off and dropped back inside.
Brood and Mark Friday both looked back over their seats.
“Warlords,” Brood Kultha said.
Allison looked from him to the jeeps driving through the forest and back forward. “Are you sure?”
More gunfire crackled, and bark peppered the side of the Rover from the trees beside them.
“Very sure,” Brood said.
“Are they with the poachers?” Mark asked.
“They shot one,” Brood said.
“They shot at us too,” John said as he steered deeper into the forest.
The poacher driver stood and hobbled away from where he fell. He was screaming with one arm twisted up behind his back at an awkward angle. He threw his arms out again and spun in a tight circle three times. It reminded Allison of a ballet movement until the red thing appeared again and blood geysered into the air.
She said, “Did anyone see that?”
“They cut him down.” Brood brought up his gun. “The militia is after both of us.”
“Which militia?” Mark looked forward through the cracked windshield. “There’s no one fighting out this far. No drug lines or diamond mines. They aren’t with the Hadazabe tribes by the lake, are they?”
More gunfire sounded off behind them.
Allison said, “John, get us out of here. Out past the forest. Head for the Ranger Station. Mposi either knows or he needs to know.”
“Do you want me to radio ahead?” Mark asked.
“Probably best.” She looked back out the dusty back window expecting a bullet to blast through into her face at any moment. Afghanistan was starting to look like a quieter option, if this kept up. As John raced out to the eastern edge of the forest, the world behind them vibrated into a blur. Allison wasn’t sure she wanted to see it anyway, and she opted to turn back forward.
Mark was already talking into the radio as she began to listen.
“Mposi Diallo, this is Team Tread. Do you read? We are coming your way under militia fire. Come back, Mposi …” Mark set down the radio. “That’s the third time, Allison. Nothing. You want me to try another channel?”
The Rover ripped out into open ground and cut two tire tracks through the grass. Being in the open did not make her feel safer under the circumstances. She looked out across the tree line, but did not spot the poachers. She found herself hoping the warlords were gutting them, but then felt bad wishing that on anyone. “Karma.”
“What?” Brood turned his head toward her.
“Don’t bother, Mark. John, take us north toward the station. Bring us in hot. We don’t know what we’ll find.”
“You think he’s in trouble?” Mark turned as much as his mass in the passenger’s seat would allow.
“She just said that we don’t know, Sergeant Friday,” Brood said.
Allison raised an open hand between them. “He knew we had engaged some poachers. He might be on his way toward us. So, with them behind us, then he would be in trouble, if we don’t head him off.”
God, don’t let him find that man I shot before I have time to explain, she thought.
Mark turned back forward. “Even if he was coming to us, he’d have a radio.”
No one responded.
John engaged a dirt trail that was rougher than driving in the grass and roared northward throwing a cloud of dust into the air behind them.
Allison saw Kultha looking back behind them. “Do you see something, Brood?”
“No, but they will see us from a mile away.”
Allison patted his shoulder. “As long as we are at least a mile away, I can live with that.”
The ranger station was a squat building with plaster walls. Allison narrowed her eyes and leaned forward. Chunks of the walls exploded out on both sides. Glass rained down from the small, high widows. She could not see the bullets, but a few flew near them close enough to the ground to part the grass in their path. The paths were traveling both directions.
John laid down on the brakes causing the Rover to fishtail and slide to a stop at an angle to the trail. “We have a problem.”
Jeeps lined the trees about a quarter mile ahead of them and to the west. The same militia fighters crouched and fired across the plain.
“We hooked right around back into them,” Mark said.
“Both of them.” Brood pointed toward the northeast.
Hadazabe warriors advanced through the grass and low trenches returning fire with small arms.
“Lucky us.” Mark shook his head. “We are witnessing the start of a brand new war in Africa. Maybe they won’t go after the animals for a while.”
“I doubt it,” Allison whispered.
The radio crackled. “Go back. I wasn’t answering you because I didn’t want to draw you in.”
Mark Friday grabbed up the radio. “Mposi, are you inside?”
“Go back until this is over,” the voice from the radio said through a light hiss of static. The gunfire they heard outside the Rover came over the radio sooner than through the air by about a split second.
Explosions blasted dirt into the air in a line traveling north to south behind the station. The Hadazabe dropped to the ground and continued to fire back. Flame erupted on the roof of the station.
“Take us in,” Allison said.
John Lance stomped on the gas spinning the wheels and kicking rocks up into the open sides of the Rover. The vehicle twisted in place, and then lurched forward on the trail between the two fighting sides. They tore through two trails of smoke in their path and made a wide turn in front of the burning building.
Allison leapt out in the air leaving her rifle back on the seat. She closed her hand over the butt of her side arm as she just missed getting clipped by the bumper of the turning Rover. She landed on her boots and broke into a run.
Dust kicked up around her feet in short burst in what she thought might be gunfire, but she didn’t stop to look. The door to the burning station was ajar and scarred down to the unpainted wood around three dark holes. She slammed into the door shoulder first and broke it in two as she stumbled into the smoky darkness within. “Don’t shoot, Mposi.”
He coughed from her left side and rose slowly with a short muzzled gun and both hands in the air from behind the desk. “Are you actually as insane as they say you are then?”
She covered her nose and mouth with one edge of her head cover. “Come on.”
Ranger Mposi Diallo ran around the desk through the smoke as more holes exploded in the wall behind him, cutting light through the thick smoke. His dark skin glistened with sweat, and his thick, curly hair stuck out all around his head.
Brood Kultha stepped into the open doorway with his rifle up. “We are out gunned from two sides. Kindly move your asses, please.”
Brood took hold of Mposi’s arm and led him out toward the Rover.
Allison felt the entire structure rumble. She stopped under the doorframe and looked up at the ceiling. The floor folded upward as splinters and sawdust blasted into the air cutting paths through the smoke. Mposi’s desk tilted over and rolled into the dark canyon opening in the floor. White, curved blades stabbed into it in midair, and then the desk exploded throwing pieces of wood and paper all about the room.
Despite the situation, Allison Tread leaned inside and tried to peer down into the darkness below. She only realized after she did it that she was looking for the red back of some creature she did not understand and didn’t really believe she was seeing. She heard a growl, but saw nothing.
The ceiling folded down and dumped the flaming roof into the interior of the station.
A hand locked on her shoulder and yanked her backward. Allison rolled away, seized the wrist, and twisted the dark man to his knees and face on the ground.
“Allison.”
She released him. “Sorry, Brood.”
“We need to go.” He braced his shoulder as he regained his feet, and they ran to opposite sides of the Rover.
John floored the accelerator. The smoke swirled behind them as they rocketed south along the dusty trail.
