needed to hear it.” Wynne grinned at him.
He tried for a smile, but only managed to pull his lips into a thin sober line. He tugged on her long braid twice, the closest thing to a hug she had ever gotten from him, then he said, “Godspeed.”
“You, too.” Wynne did the same with his dreadlocks, then he slipped off into the woods. For a six foot guy, he moved through the forest like a ghost, disappearing into the foliage.
She lifted the left cuff of her pants and checked the small dagger and sheath there. For the undercover operation, she had worn her most loose-fitting civilian clothes, a white oversized safari shirt, a hunting vest, and tan cargo pants. The pants were wide enough at the bottom to allow her easy access to the dagger.
She dropped the cuff and reached across the stick shift. Strands of blond hair escaped her braid and fell in her face. She blew them back and found the packets of money she had wrapped in waxed canvas and tied with twine. Carefully, she shoved the neat little package into a vest pocket.
A .22 rifle, a Winchester, and a dart gun were in the trunk, mandatory equipment for a ranger. She used the dart pistol when she needed to sedate an animal, but the other guns she rarely utilized. She had seen firsthand the damage guns could inflict. They were made for taking life, not preserving it, and there had never been a time in the two years she’d been a ranger that cunning and wits hadn’t won out over bullets.
She slipped into the forest, Snow shadowing her. Wynne found a well-worn elephant path and the going was easy. She kept her eyes trained for movement. Poachers were infamous for setting traps and had murdered a ranger six months ago.
A blue striped skink skittered across the path in front of her. Out of habit, Wynne paused and found what the lizard was running from. A slender mamba slithered after its prey.
Snow paused behind Wynne, curious, but inherently cautious.
The snake wasn’t quite four feet long and still olive-green, a juvenile. Mambas turned black when full grown and Wynne had seen them fourteen feet in length.
The snake sensed her, but mambas were as poisonous as cobras and they had an attitude to back it up, so it didn’t challenge her and pursued its skink-a-la-mode dinner.
Lack of fear was the snake’s first mistake. Wynne whipped off the slingshot, loaded a rock in the leather strap and followed the mamba.
It reared its head at her.
One snap of her wrist and the slingshot’s cords wrapped around the snake’s slender neck and mouth. Wynne grabbed the back of its head and loosened the cords. She forced open its mouth and drained the venom on a log.
“Don’t worry, little guy, you’ll be free soon,” she said, thrusting the snake in a cloth pouch she kept for capturing poisonous snakes.
The skink looked at her as it scurried off into the underbrush, as if to say, “Thanks.”
The snake thrashed and writhed in the sack as she secured it to her belt and continued her approach.
Another twenty yards, and she paused at the sound of male voices. She imitated the call of a sparrow weaver.
Eieb’s whistle answered.
Everything was in place. She gave Snow a hand signal to stay, then peeked past the underbrush. Five elephant carcasses littered the ground. They had been butchered, only meaty bones and tendon left, the choicest morsels for the vultures and blowflies. By the smell and look of the carrion, the animals had been killed a good three days ago. It surprised her that the meat had been butchered so quickly. Five bull elephants amounted to tons of meat. It took a tribe of hunters a day to butcher one good-size elephant. These guys had killing down to a science.
It made her sick to see the senseless carnage, and she glanced down at her hands, feeling a tightening in the region over her heart. It was part of her job to monitor the elephant herds in the park. There were only one hundred and fifty elephants in the reserve—now only one hundred and forty-five. She had named some of them by their personalities. Which ones had she lost? God! She didn’t want to know.
Thirty feet from the kill, standing near the tusks, Wynne spotted Aja and three poachers. Aja was about fifty, elderly for an African, with graying temples and the expression of a sage. Strands of beads covered his legs, arms and neck. He wore a loincloth. A leather slingshot, identical to Wynne’s, hung down the side of his hip. Despite the development and exploitation of Zambia, some Africans hadn’t lost their sense of heritage. Aja valued the old ways of his ancestors. He truly was one of the people of the earth, and he wore his pride in his bearing. They made eye contact, but he had been expecting her and didn’t give her away. He continued to converse with the poachers.
She assessed the other three Africans. Young, not locals, probably from another province. They donned camouflage fatigues, urbanite garb from a military store. They held Remington M70s, enough firepower to take down the side of a house. More than likely they had herded the animals here and mowed them down like a firing squad. Wynne tried to take a long calming breath, but she kept picturing the slaughter, and the air sat in her lungs like she had just breathed fire.
The tallest of the three men wore a tan beret. An ivory earring dangled from his nose and ear. A belt crafted from giraffe hair and elephant tail hair was threaded through the belt loops of his pants—nothing like flaunting the contraband. He glanced around as if expecting trouble; the leader, she presumed.
She stepped into the clearing, a Teflon smile pasted across her face, while inside she seethed.
The men grew wide-eyed with confusion and concern.
Did they know she was a ranger? Had her cover been blown? Fear pulled at her. She reached for her slingshot, but the men’s uncertainty quickly segued into obvious disdain and she slowly relaxed her hand at her side.
The leader took her measure and spat. He looked at Aja. “We wish to do business, but not with a woman,” he growled in Nyanja, one of over seventy dialects spoken in Zambia.
“Her money is good.”
“We don’t deal with women.”
Wynne had come up against men like these many times before, killers who didn’t respect women or any living creature. To them, she was nothing but a lowly woman, beneath them and not to be trusted. She pulled out the money from her vest and spoke in their language. “Here’s the seventy pounds as agreed upon.”
This softened the leader’s expression.
Wynne tossed the packet to him.
He snatched it out of midair and grinned, white teeth flashing. “Maybe we can do business.”
The other men drew close as the leader tore into the packet.
Wynne stepped back and smiled, focusing on the miniscule cloud of brown dust flittering down as he dropped the covering.
For a moment Aja met her eyes and they shared a knowing glance.
“It’s all there.” Wynne watched the leader fan the bills, more dust scattering in the air.
The others stared, rapt by the sight of so many greenbacks.
“I’ll have my men pick up the ivory.” Wynne
