The Bone Hunter, page 3
Mposi Diallo slid down in the backseat between Allison and Brood until he was almost in the floorboard.
Mark looked back at them and then down at the ranger. “What was that?”
“African politics,” Mposi said.
Allison smelled smoke on their clothes. “Can you be more specific?”
“Masai have come east and have attacked the Hadazabe along Lake Eyasi,” Mposi said.
“Masai?” Mark shook his head. “The hell for? There’s nothing here they need.”
“They are different people from different tribes,” Brood said staring out his door at the rising smoke. “That’s all the reason anyone ever needs.”
Mposi said, “The Masai claim the Hadazabe have summoned a great, ancient evil to consume the Masai and the world.”
“The Hadazabe don’t have any recent history against the Masai. Why would they think the Hadazabe are after them?” Mark asked.
John laughed. “When people believe in ancient, world-eating evil, sometimes they are hard to reason with, I imagine.”
“I’m guessing the Masai militia is coming in to take the lake territory for gun trade,” Mposi said. “It always involves guns in some way.”
John hung one arm out his window and steered with the other hand like he was back on a leisurely drive. “Mposi, you want me to get you a booster seat so you can sit up taller back there?”
The back window of the Rover shattered inward dumping glass over the seat. The plastic grates of one of the air conditioning vents obliterated into sharp shards between John Lance and Mark Friday on the dash. Everyone slid down in their seats, including John, who drove staring up over the steering wheel.
“No,” Mposi said. “I think I am good down here. Thanks.”
They circled wide around the forest and made their way back up to the site of the first shots near the body of the rhino and the overturned truck.
Allison stepped out and stared. The dirt was churned and the grass was buried under the turned soil. Rock chips covered the scene; dusty brown on one side and dark gray on the side that had once been inside the shredded stone. “Like a stump.”
“What are you saying, Specialist Tread?” Mposi asked.
Allison looked up into the underside of the truck. Only one tire remained with the other three missing from the scene. The undercarriage was torn away to a few jagged shards showing the inside of the cab in the wreck.
“Maybe he wasn’t dead,” Mark said.
Allison looked around the dirt not even seeing blood from the body of the poacher they had left behind.
John laughed in a low, dark tone. “No, he was all kinds of dead. They must have stripped down the truck when they came back for him too.”
Mark waved toward the body of the rhino. “They did all of that, but left the horn and the hide?”
“Suddenly, you are a forensic scientist?” John stepped back toward the Rover.
“Easy, hot-shot. I outranked you,” Mark said. “And I did more over there than motor pool.”
“Screw you.” John leaned on the hood of the Rover. “The cars were where they targeted all the IEDs, you jerk. And no one outranks anyone anymore, except Allison. We’re all mercenaries now just like Brother Kultha.”
“Advisors,” Mposi said. He shook his head. “Don’t call yourselves mercenaries in front of any of the villagers, for God’s sake. That’s one word of English they do know. In all seriousness, you are sure he was dead when you left him?”
Allison swallowed. “I put one through the back of his head and blew out his forehead.”
“Allison Tread.” Mposi Diallo shook his head.
Brood Kultha said, “He was going for his weapon after being told to stop.”
The rhino’s body rose up off the grass, and Allison turned her head slowly to see what was causing it. She did not see the red, spined vision she had been glimpsing all day.
Her eyes widened. “Look out. It’s still alive.”
The team scattered as the rhino whipped its horn from side to side. Allison and Mposi circled around the Toyota truck. They heard the impact on the other side, and it tipped toward them. Allison grabbed his arm, and they ran through the open toward the Rover.
The black rhino turned and charged after them. Allison dove through the open door landing on top of the ranger.
The rhino rammed the grill lifting the vehicle in the front and slamming it back down.
Mark grabbed John’s arm. “Get us out of here, motor pool.”
“Screw you,” John yelled. “And where do you think we can go?”
The rhino rammed again rolling them back a couple feet as the transmission snapped loose underneath them. The creature backed off a few steps and ducked its head. One eye was caked with blood on the open side of its head. The beast turned and ran down the hill away from them in a hobble.
“He will probably die soon with those injuries,” Mposi said as Allison climbed off of him. “Been better had the creature not gotten up.”
She took a step out and away from the Rover. Looking underneath, she saw black fluid ooze out in heavy globs. “A tough son-of-a-bitch like that? Doubtful. He’ll probably outlive us all at this rate.”
4
Clean Cut
John Lance pulled the Humvee to a halt. Ranger Mposi Diallo sat in the passenger’s jump seat up front. Mark Friday sat sandwiched between Brood Kultha and Allison Tread. All three in the back were armed. Even with the width of the vehicle, Mark’s bulk made it a tight fit.
“If you’d sit like a lady, I’d have more room,” Mark said.
Allison opened the door beside her and stepped out. “You better be talking to Brood, or I’ll make you sit like a girl.”
The others laughed.
Mark cleared his throat. “Of course I was. Don’t be silly.”
She knelt with her rifle braced over one knee and parted the grass with her free hand.
Mposi leaned back to call out Allison’s door without opening his own. “What do you see?”
“A trail, maybe,” she said.
Brood spoke from the other side of the vehicle where he stood by his open door. “Is it them?”
“Maybe.” Allison wasn’t positive which them Brood meant as there seemed to be more and more thems in the area to choose from lately. “If it were the Masai, they wouldn’t be trying this hard to cover their trail.”
“The Hadazabe might, if they were engaging the Masai again,” Mposi said.
Allison tilted her head from side to side. “But they probably wouldn’t come this way. I don’t think it is an animal either. My guess is our latest band of poachers is trying to lose us.”
“Because they know what is going to happen when we find them,” John said from the driver’s seat.
“We arrest them and let them stand trial?” Mposi glared at John.
John shrugged. “Of course. That’s what I meant.”
Allison stood and pointed her hand out in a chopping motion toward a gap leading up into the mountains between a foothill and a rocky outcropping. “Let’s follow up through this way.”
Everyone loaded up, and the Humvee took the trail.
“They must still be on foot,” John said.
Mark shook his head. “What makes you say that, motor pool?”
John held up his middle finger as he steered the tight trail one-handed. “From what I saw, they don’t know how to drive around rocks without smashing into them.”
Mark clicked his tongue. “Good point. How about two hands?”
John held up both middle fingers with no hands on the wheel.
Allison looked out her window over the rocky drop. She shook her head. “John.”
Mposi threw out his hands. “Look out.”
John locked down on the brakes and grabbed both hands on the wheel. As they came to a full stop, he said, “Sorry. Is that the rhino from earlier?”
Allison stood up as far as she could to look up over the hood. She kicked open the door and walked out in front of the Humvee.
The others, except for John, who stayed behind the wheel, opened their doors and joined her.
Brood and Mark brought guns up and swept opposite sides of the trail, although they were not in good positions to hide for an ambush, if that’s what this was.
Mposi knelt and pointed at the familiar tear from the bullet that had grazed the side of its skull. “I think this is the same one.”
There was not much left behind the neck. The body lay mangled and scattered across the trail. Bones were stripped bare and snapped. Organs had burst. Two legs lay dismembered in the path, but the other two were missing.
“Retribution?” Brood asked.
Mposi looked between them and stood. “You think they did this to get back at us?”
Allison frowned. “They left the horn though. I don’t think they have the evil discipline to do that no matter how much they might hate us.”
“An animal, then?” Mposi backed up and looked off the sides of the trail. “A big one?”
Allison knelt and felt at grooves in the trail near the rhino’s body. She wondered if they might be from strange twirling blades she couldn’t yet explain. The dirt under the blood and guts in the trail could be churned, but enough to hide a creature as big as what she thought she saw?
Allison had been twelve and had ridden with her father back when her mother was trying to keep her out of trouble and before he had his heart attack. It had been her job to watch the blades of the bush hog as he tore out the brush for his customers. “Rocks, roots thicker than your arm, and anything metal,” he had told her. That stuff had the potential to destroy a machine he couldn’t afford to replace. It could also fly up and take out an eye or break a bone, which he couldn’t afford either in medical expenses or time away from work. Little had he known that the heart attack was going to flatten him and they would still be paying off the medical bills long after he was dead and Allison had joined the military.
He bounced the bladed beast along the tall grass and twisted vines, tearing them and slicing them apart. Allison had blinked as grit and bits of grass peppered her face from the blasts.
Her father had said, “Don’t stagger into my path, girl. I never met someone so intent on throwing themselves onto the teeth of every danger.”
“Sorry, Dad.”
The blades sometimes met the ground as he rocked the beast to get it through a particularly troublesome thicket. The metal teeth had scarred the ground and ripped into the top soil leaving long, brown slashes to mark its angry path. She had imagined the bushwhacker as some living, angry monster punishing the ground or eating up all the grass.
Then, she had seen it. It was brown and gray, and its ears had been so close to its little round head. It had been too late to stop her father. She had dove in front of the machine with her hands out. Her father had cursed and looking back she had thought that she had nearly given him a heart attack. Knowing what would happen later, that wasn’t funny.
Her father had pulled back on the handles of the monster as hard as he could. He had nearly dragged it back over his own toes before cutting the power and holding the machine until the teeth whined down into silence.
He had come around and yanked her up by her arm hard enough to lift her off her feet. “What in the flying hell do you think you’re doing? You could have died.”
As he had set her back on her feet, she still held the baby bunny clutched in her hands. “It would have died. There was no time to do anything else.”
He took the bunny from her in his gloved hands. “It has your smell on it now, girl. The mother won’t care for it.”
Allison had rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand and blinked, but would not let the tears spill over. “What are we going to do, Daddy? We saved it from the teeth, but we let it die anyway? Is that it?”
He had stared into her eyes for a long moment until she had not known what to expect. Finally, he had said, “Go to the truck, and bring me an empty cardboard box. We’ll see to it after we finish what we came here to do. Hear?”
Allison had smiled as she ran for the truck. “Yes, sir.”
That evening as they mixed a solution of milk, water, and sugar and fed it to the bunny through a dropper, Allison’s mother had said, “I think she might just grow up to be a veterinarian.”
Her father had stared at Allison for a long time again before he had said, “I’m guessing something else.”
Allison had thought at the time that was an odd thing to say. Now standing over the rhino butchered by the blades of something Allison did not yet understand, it seemed somehow prophetic. She thought about months later having to wash off the hammer, but she decided to push that memory aside.
“He had been wrong.” She stood back up over the trail. “The mothers still take care of the babies even if humans touch them.”
“What?” Mposi tilted his head at her.
“Let’s keep going,” she said.
Everyone loaded up, and John steered wide around the mess in the trail. The wheels pulled high on the slope along one wall of the trail tilting them at a sickening angle. He pulled back down on the other side of the body and continued on.
“What do you think you saw?” Brood asked.
Allison blinked. It took her a moment to sort out whether he was talking about the rhino on the trail or the bunny from her memory. “Are you asking me?”
“I saw the wheels turning,” he said. “Was there something there that we need to know about?”
She shook her head. “Nothing I have figured out yet.”
Brood stared a moment longer around Mark’s barreled chest. She felt the weight of Brood’s stare.
“Stop looking at me, Brood. You remind me of my mother. If I figure something out, I’ll tell you.”
He finally turned his eyes back out to watch for trouble.
Allison swallowed and stared forward. Weighty stares were the reason she couldn’t stay in Kentucky. She joined the Army to stop getting in bar fights that were likely to get her in prison, if she continued. Her mother told Allison she was fighting because she missed her father. Allison didn’t want to hear it, mostly because it was true. After Afghanistan, she returned home and landed a job working security for a small hospital. She didn’t fight in bars again except for that one last time, but her mother kept staring. In her stares, Allison saw hidden monster churning under the surface. Allison searched hard for a reason to go and found it in Africa after a documentary on poaching caused her to polish off a bottle of whiskey and destroy the drywall in her bedroom with her fists. It should have been far enough, but sometimes she still felt her mother’s eyes boring into her from across an ocean and most of a continent.
Some monsters are too big to hide forever, she thought. They grow in the dark where we try to bury them.
Allison’s eyes flicked to the left. “Stop.”
John applied the brakes and coasted to a stop. Guns came up.
“What?” Brood kept his stare outward at least.
“On the side trail.” She opened the door and stepped out. The other doors opened, she said, “Just Brood. Follow behind us, but stay alert.”
Brood Kultha fell in beside Allison, and they stalked forward. John made the turn and idled along behind them. Allison pointed at a torn, green shirt hung in a thicket of thorns. Brood nodded, but kept his eyes forward.
They spied the edge of a collapsed tent on the next rise. Brood and Allison spread out. She held an open palm behind her, and John stopped the Humvee.
They emerged on the rise hidden between two groupings of trees. The ground was painted in blood in a crimson mud that approached purple in color. Gear and more canvas from tents lay scattered and discarded. One severed arm, still in its sleeve, lay near a smashed radio. A boot holding a severed foot lay nearer to her. The top was torn off revealing the foot’s ashen toes and yellowed nails. Flies settled on the foot.
Allison waved the others forward.
Mposi shook his head. He pointed at a symbol drawn in rough, white paint on one of the tents. It was a circle with a short blade stabbing through. “Masai.”
“They did this?” Mark asked.
Mposi shook his head. “No, done to them … I think this was their camp.”
Allison looked at Mposi. “The Hadazabe did this?”
“Would they?” Mark asked.
“They are capable of it in war.” Mposi nodded and turned away. “It’s hard to tell since most of the bodies have been removed.”
“The bones on that arm and foot were cut through by something sharp. One motion. This was a determined slaughter.” Brood pointed with his rifle.
“We need to go,” Mposi said. “We are out of our depth up here.”
Allison held up her hand. “No, they are up here. We need to confront them even if other monsters are lurking around. If we are waiting for Africa to be at peace before we deal with the poachers, we might as well help them kill the animals ourselves.”
“Let’s go then,” John said.
Brood walked beside Allison toward the Humvee. “Are you ready to tell what you are thinking yet?”
She shook her head. “Not yet, mother.”
John wheeled them back to the main trail and raced up and down the rises pressing deeper into the mountains. The drop off turned to sheer walls up above them on both sides as they entered a small canyon.
Gunfire sparked off the walls ahead. An object dropped onto the trail in front of them.
“Back out,” Mposi shouted.
Instead, John tromped the accelerator and raced forward.
“What are you doing?” Mark asked.
Two explosions went off at the mouth of the canyon behind them, bringing down rock where they would have backed to the exit.
“It’s a trap,” John said. “They wanted us to back up. Hang on. I’m getting us out of here.”
“Are they Masai?” Brood called.
“Don’t know.” Mposi ducked in his seat.
They raced out of the canyon on the other side. An explosion behind them lifted the back of the Humvee and filled it with smoke. It slammed back down, and the wheels locked.
