Captive_A High-octane And Gripping African Thriller Read online

  For Nicola

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  THE CULL

  Chapter 1

  Prologue

  South Africa, 1998

  Nsele was scared of nothing, nobody. Not lions, not leopards, not hyenas nor even the wild dogs, who were professional killers. What he lacked in height he made up for in attitude and ferocity.

  He was a killer, and no one messed with him.

  But he knew when it was time to run. Nsele leapt over a fallen log and scrambled under a thornbush. He felt no pain from the barbs that tried to hook him. He was invincible, he was young.

  But he was scared.

  Behind him his pursuers had taken to a vehicle. The Land Rover bounced over the open vlei of dry golden grass, flattening stems and lurching in and out of a landscape cratered by the sinking feet of elephants passing through here during the last rainy season. The black soil had hardened now into a hundred thousand potholes.

  It didn’t slow him. Nothing could stop him.

  If they cornered him, somehow, somewhere, he would kill them and their deaths would be vile and bloody.

  If they wanted to kill him they would have done so by now. They had guns, and they’d had a clear shot at him, but they were still in pursuit. They wanted him alive.

  Nsele had evaded traps in the past, amateurish affairs that were easy to circumvent and easier still to escape from. He would not be taken easily.

  He ran and he ran, but the men were faster. Nsele scurried up and over a termite mound, but when he started sliding down the far side he saw he had run into a trap.

  There, in front of him, was another open-topped Land Rover, parked and waiting. A man stood in the open rear with a dart gun.

  ‘Honey badger!’ The driver of the vehicle pointed at Nsele.

  Nsele turned and tried to get over the mound again, but the dart left the weapon with a pffft, and Nsele felt a pain in his arse.

  Chapter 1

  South Africa, the present

  Kerry Maxwell looked out of the window of the Embraer jet and gasped. She turned to the man in the khaki uniform of the South African National Parks across the narrow aisle. ‘It’s a giraffe!’

  He smiled. ‘Ja, a big bull.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, feeling a little self-conscious. ‘You must see giraffe every day.’

  He laughed, his big beer belly shaking. ‘I wish. I work in Pretoria in an office mostly; I’m almost as excited as you to be back in the Kruger Park. This your first visit?’

  She nodded. ‘I’m so excited.’

  ‘Do you mind if I ask, where are you from?’ His accent was Afrikaans. ‘China?’

  It was her turn to laugh. ‘No, Australia. I’m part Vietnamese.’

  He looked over the top of his reading glasses. ‘You know, sadly, much of the rhino horn taken from animals that are illegally killed here in the Kruger Park ends up in Vietnam.’

  ‘I know.’ She didn’t think the man meant offence. ‘Actually, I’m involved with a charity dedicated to saving the rhinos. That’s why I’m here. I’ve come to learn more about the problem. The charity is all about reducing demand in Vietnam, and I’ve travelled there to work as a translator with our people who are placing anti-poaching advertisements in the news media.’

  He smiled. ‘Good for you. We can’t win this fight with guns and bullets on the ground. My name is Danie.’

  She shook his hand. ‘I’m Kerry-Anh, though people just call me Kerry. Anh was my mother’s name, she was half-French, half-Vietnamese.’

  ‘Was?’

  ‘She died, of cancer, two years ago.’

  ‘So sorry for your loss. That is a beautiful name, Kerry-Anh. Do you work for this charity fulltime?’

  ‘No, I’m a lawyer. I work for a firm in Sydney, but I’m taking two months’ long service leave. I try to help out in my spare time.’

  ‘Then welcome to South Africa. Where will you be staying?’

  ‘I’m first going to volunteer for a month at a wildlife rehabilitation centre at Hoedspruit.’

  ‘Ukuphila Wildlife Orphanage?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the place. I read on their website that the name means “life” in Zulu. I’m going to be working with a veterinarian. Dr Baird.’

  Danie shook his head. ‘Eish, that Graham Baird.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  He smiled. ‘You’ll find out. Try and catch him before midday, though.’ The man pantomimed taking a sip of a drink from a bottle.

  Kerry sat back in her chair, a little disconcerted. What have I got myself into? she wondered.

  *

  ‘That’s the Lebombo Hills over there in the distance, Doc. The Kruger Park’s on the other side, across the border,’ the helicopter pilot said into the intercom.

  Graham Baird felt queasy. It wasn’t the flying – he’d been in and out of choppers for twenty-five years, since his time as a conscript in the South African Army and had a fixed-wing pilot’s licence. It was the beers last night. And the red wine. And the Scotch. And the brandy. He hadn’t expected to be flying today.

  Graham burped. ‘I was working as a vet in that area before you were born.’

  ‘Whatever, Doc,’ said the pilot, Retief, who Graham thought looked about sixteen.

  On the rear seat of the helicopter, next to Graham, was his plastic fishing tackle box full of drugs and darts, and some traces and lures in case he ever got the chance to hunt for some tigerfish in Mozambique’s rivers.

  He was very familiar with the Kruger National Park, having worked there for the national parks board in his youth, but nowadays nearly all his work was done in and around the Timbavati Game Reserve and other neighbouring privately owned safari land on the western border of Kruger. Today, however, he was far to the east, on the Mozambican side of Kruger.

  The Kruger Park, as big as the state of Israel, had been expanded even further in recent years across the border into Mozambique. The whole conglomeration was known as the GLTP, the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park.

  All that meant to Graham Baird these days, however, was more space for poachers to hide in, and more dead and injured animals. He loaded a dart with M99, the potentially lethal opium derivative he’d need to sedate the elephant if they found it.

  ‘Last report had the baby elephant somewhere around here, running up and down the old fence line,’ Retief said.

  Graham looked out the open side door, scanning the ground. It was a forlorn hope trying to find a lost baby elephant in all this bush, but his friend Juan Pereira, the owner of the newly developed lodge on the Mozambican side of the park, had been alerted to the calf’s plight by one of his guides, who had encountered i
t while taking some well-heeled American visitors on a game drive that morning. The visitors were investors in the lodge and had, by good fortune, arrived in a helicopter – the one Graham was in now.

  As luck would have it – although his flip-flopping belly protested he was anything but fortunate – Dr Graham Baird had been visiting the lodge at Juan’s invitation to perform surgery on his dog, which had been seriously mauled by a leopard.

  Graham looked up and scanned the horizon. He saw a swirl of black dots against the clear blue dry-season sky. They looked almost like a disjointed tornado. ‘Vultures, to the north.’

  ‘OK, Doc. I see them. You think that’s the baby’s mom?’

  ‘Could be.’

  ‘Bastards,’ Retief said.

  Graham felt the same. It was bad enough having to deal with the scourge of rhino poaching on an almost daily basis, but in recent times there had been an upsurge in elephant poaching. It was hopeless; the killing never ended.

  Retief headed in the direction of the vultures and the elephant carcass came into view. Retief settled into a hover nearby and they both searched the surrounding landscape. ‘Hey, there’s the baby! To the west.’

  Graham shifted his binoculars. The distraught calf ran in circles.

  ‘Call the ground team,’ Graham said. ‘Give them the coordinates. We’re not far from the lodge and there’s a game-viewing road nearby. Shouldn’t take them long to get here.’ As soon as the two vehicles arrived, Graham would dart the elephant and then Juan could take it to wherever and whatever he had planned for it.

  ‘Roger, Doc. How about we take a bit of a joy flight while we wait for them?’

  Graham rolled his eyes. ‘I’d rather die. Keep it straight and level.’

  Far to the north the sun glinted on water Graham realised was Massingir Dam, on the Olifants River. He closed his eyes and laid his head against the padded insulation on the rear bulkhead of the chopper.

  ‘Doc!’

  Retief’s voice roused him from the micro-sleep he’d fallen into. ‘What now?’

  ‘I’ve got people ahead, crossing a vlei, running.’

  Graham lifted his binoculars and followed the pilot’s directions. He picked up the men, half-a-dozen of them, running through the waist-high golden grass of the floodplain. Two of them were burdened with long, curved ivory tusks.

  ‘Put me through to the ground team,’ Graham said. Retief patched him through. ‘Juan, it’s Graham. We’ve got six poachers in the open, about a kilometre southwest of the coordinates we gave you for the elephant, over.’

  ‘Copy, Graham,’ Juan said above the noise of his Land Rover’s engine. ‘What are they carrying?’

  Retief keyed his microphone. ‘Looks like three with AK-47s, two carrying the tusks and the remaining guy with the tools.’

  There was a pause on the other end. ‘Graham, I’ve got one rifle, my .375.’

  ‘Where’s your nearest anti-poaching patrol?’ Graham asked.

  ‘Eli Johnston’s working fifty kilometres south of us today. With the state of the roads here it will take him nearly two hours to reach you.’

  Graham had met Johnston, a former US Navy SEAL who had left the military to devote his life to hunting poachers.

  ‘I’ll be out of fuel by then,’ Retief said. ‘I’ve got maybe thirty minutes remaining.’

  ‘Best we can do is keep them in sight for as long as we can,’ Graham said. ‘Juan, see if you can raise Eli or the police in any case.’

  ‘Roger.’

  Retief cut in again, using their private intercom. ‘I’m going to buzz these guys, scare them.’

  Graham shared the pilot’s frustration, but not his impetuous youth. ‘All I’ve got is my nine-mil pistol. I smuggled it into Mozambique.’

  Retief reached under his seat. ‘Take mine as well.’ He passed a Glock 17 back to Graham.

  Graham held a pistol in each hand. ‘What am I, Wyatt Earp?’

  The pilot threw the helicopter into a steep banking dive. ‘You are now, partner.’

  Graham tensed his whole body as the ground raced up towards them. Retief levelled out and the long grass on the floodplain flattened under the downwash. Graham saw the poachers dive in fear.

  Retief was foolhardy, but Graham couldn’t fault his courage.

  ‘They’re not going to fire on us,’ the pilot said. ‘They don’t want to risk getting in that much shit.’

  ‘I’m not so sure about that,’ Graham said. ‘How about you back off, China.’

  ‘Negative, Doc.’

  Retief turned tightly one hundred and eighty degrees, and came back for another low-level buzz. Graham saw two of the poachers pop up, their AK-47s pointed at the helicopter. ‘They’re firing.’

  Graham heard the ping and thud of bullets penetrating the skin of the helicopter. He put both hands out in the slipstream and started firing back, the two pistols blazing as they passed over the men below. A bullet whizzed between Graham’s legs and he yelled with fright.

  ‘Sheesh, that was too close,’ Graham said. It was terrifying, yet at the same time exciting. Graham was momentarily taken back to his time in the army.

  He looked back, the wind catching his hair. The poachers were running. The helicopter lurched sickeningly to the right. Graham stuck one pistol inside his open shirtfront and grabbed onto the seat. ‘Retief, what’s going on?’

  ‘Doc . . .’

  ‘What is it?’ Graham leaned forward and saw the blood.

  ‘I’m hit.’

  Graham looked around him in the back of the helicopter. He saw a first aid kit clipped to a bulkhead and wrenched it free. ‘Hold on.’ He climbed awkwardly between the pilot and co-pilot’s seat.

  ‘Got to find somewhere to put her down.’

  The helicopter slewed from side to side. Blood was spurting from the top of Retief’s thigh and his face was getting paler by the second. Graham fell into the co-pilot’s seat. He reached over and put his hand on Retief’s leg. ‘It’s your femoral artery. Shit.’

  Retief tried to smile. ‘What happened to “reassure the patient”, Doc?’

  Graham unzipped the first aid kit and the contents tumbled out into his lap and onto the floor. He found a wound dressing and ripped it open. When he lifted his hand from Retief’s leg the blood kept welling. He placed the dressing over the bullet hole. ‘Can you lift your leg?’

  ‘Not unless you want us to crash. I can see a clearing . . . up ahead.’

  Graham kept pressure on the wound. ‘Hang on, you’ll be OK.’

  Retief coughed and blood ran out of his mouth.

  Graham used his free hand to feel behind the pilot. When he pulled away from Retief’s shirt he saw fresh blood on his hand. The bullet that hit him must have passed through his leg, nicking the artery, and carried on up into his body.

  ‘Can’t . . . can’t keep my leg steady. Brace . . . brace, Doc.’

  Graham looked up and saw that the helicopter had tilted almost onto its right side. The ground rushed up at him. There was the sound of screeching metal as pieces of the rotor blades sheared off and flew at crazy angles as the helicopter smashed into the ground.

  Chapter 2

  ‘I can take the meat off for you,’ said Lawrence, the Shangaan safari guide who had picked Kerry up from Skukuza Airport.

  ‘Thank you,’ Kerry said.

  They had stopped at a picnic spot, a place called Nhlanguleni, which Lawrence explained was near the western border of the Kruger Park, and he had produced ham and cheese rolls from a cooler box for lunch. Kerry had politely explained that she was a vegetarian. She took a travel-sized bottle of hand sanitiser out of her daypack and thoroughly disinfected herself before eating.

  The light seemed brighter and the sun even hotter than either Australia or Vietnam, the two countries she was most familiar with. The sky was a perfect endless blue. The picnic site was a clear patch of raked dirt with a few big trees for shade. There was no animal-proof fence, just a log and pole affair that Kerry sus
pected was more to stop people wandering. A few sets of green tables and chairs were occupied by families laying out food for lunch.

  Lawrence pointed. ‘Look.’

  ‘Oh my God, it’s an elephant!’ She had seen zebra, wildebeest, and more beautiful giraffe already that morning, along with what seemed like thousands of impala, but this was another first.

  ‘Yes, we have many elephants in the Kruger Park,’ Lawrence said. ‘Some people say we have too many.’

  Kerry raised her camera and fired away as the big lone elephant sucked up a trunkful of water from a man-made cement waterhole, set in an open plain about a hundred metres from the picnic site.

  ‘How can you have too many elephants? They’re a threatened species.’ Kerry realised she hadn’t put sunscreen on so she found her bottle and applied a liberal smearing of SPF 50 to her face and hands.

  Lawrence stood beside her. ‘That is true. Elephants have disappeared from much of Africa, but in places where they are protected, like the Kruger Park, their numbers grow and grow each year. Parts of Kruger are suffering from elephants eating too much.’

  A herd of zebra trotted across the plain and closed, nervously, on the waterhole. The elephant turned and took a few steps towards them, sending the skittish animals galloping with a spray of water from his trunk. They returned, though, once the elephant had drunk his fill and ambled away.

  ‘It’s breathtaking,’ Kerry said. She swallowed hard, experiencing a sudden foolish thought that she might cry.

  Lawrence looked at her. ‘Don’t worry, I have seen people shed tears at the sight of their first wild elephant.’

  They packed up and drove on. This, to her mind, was Africa as she had pictured it, with the harsh thorny trees giving way to open plains of golden grass.

  ‘Keep your eyes open,’ Lawrence said. ‘This area west of Satara Camp is very good for cheetah. They favour these savannahs.’

  Kerry stared into the heat haze, willing a big cat to appear, but they reached the Orpen Gate without a sign of the predator. She told herself she had plenty of time to see all Africa had to offer.

  *

  Graham came to and smelled smoke. He lifted his head and his vision swam as he felt the pain, worse than any hangover he had ever experienced.