The Cull Read online

  About The Cull

  One mission . . . countless enemies.

  Former mercenary Sonja Kurtz is hired by business tycoon Julianne Clyde-Smith to head an elite squad. Their aim: to take down Africa’s top poaching kingpins and stop at nothing to save its endangered wildlife.

  But as the body count rises, it becomes harder for Sonja to stay under the radar as she is targeted by an underworld syndicate known as The Scorpions.

  When her love interest, safari guide and private investigator Hudson Brand, is employed to look into the death of an alleged poacher at the hands of Sonja’s team, she is forced to ask herself if Julianne’s crusade has gone too far.

  From South Africa’s Kruger National Park to the Serengeti of Tanzania, Sonja realises she is fighting a war on numerous fronts, against enemies known and unknown.

  So who can Sonja really trust?

  Contents

  Cover

  About The Cull

  Dedication

  Map 1

  Map 2

  PART 1: The Night

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  PART 2: The Day

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  PART 3: The Kill

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Acknowledgements

  About Tony Park

  Also by Tony Park

  Copyright page

  For Nicola

  PART 1

  The Night

  She killed quietly, strangling the life out of her victim.

  It was her special skill, the ability to take a life in the darkness, without making a sound. She was a single mother and she did what she did for the sake of her daughter, and herself, and she thought nothing of the act.

  She had stalked her quarry carefully, creeping through the dry African bush under the bright light of a full, clear moon. She had paused in the shadow of a giant jackalberry tree and watched him. He cut a handsome figure, silhouetted against the silvery waters of the Sabie River. He was watchful, alert, looking around him and sniffing the wind for danger.

  She had dropped to her belly and, with even more care than before, crept until she was within striking distance. He’d gone back to eating – one of the two things males usually had on their minds – and it was then that she had launched herself from the darkness.

  It was quick, it was clean, it was necessary. It was what she had been designed for, what she had spent her life perfecting. Killing.

  She needed to go about her business in silence because she, too, was being hunted. She had enemies, male and female, who were bigger, stronger than her, and some were far better armed than her.

  The whispered voices of women were carried on the cool night breeze through the South African bush. In their language, xiTsonga, they called the killer Ingwe, and they were acutely aware of the danger she posed to them. They may all have been females – Ingwe and the women who patrolled the bush around her – but they were still enemies.

  Ingwe listened, all her senses alert, as the life ebbed from the victim in her grasp. When at last he was still she laid him at her feet.

  She lifted her head and sniffed the wind. The women were getting closer.

  ‘Be quiet,’ a voice hissed.

  A lion called, mercifully far off, but a baboon barked its wa-hoo warning call. The baboon hadn’t seen her, but it might have seen the women, or possibly a spotted hyena.

  Ingwe sensed imminent danger.

  The women were getting closer and, as she had feared, a hyena lent its eerie whooping call to the cacophony of chattering baboons. Her enemies were closing in on her, but she would survive. She had to, for the sake of her daughter.

  Ingwe grasped the neck of the impala ram firmly in her strong jaws, lifted him and climbed up the jackalberry tree, out of reach and sight of the women who passed below her.

  Chapter 1

  Sonja Kurtz was unsure of herself. It might have been an acceptable feeling for most people, but not for her.

  She heard whispering ahead of her, and tittering laughter. The sounds multiplied her annoyance. ‘Be quiet.’

  The women in front of her stopped making their noise. It would be Patience and Goodness, whose names belied their characters.

  Sonja didn’t fear the bush, with its myriad deadly creatures, nor the armed poachers she was training the six Shangaan women with her to hunt. She was more worried about a lovely house on the banks of the Sabie River, just a few kilometres away, and a handsome man who was there right now, cooking dinner for her.

  That picture of domestic bliss under an African moon worried her more than anything.

  Tema Matsebula, the woman immediately in front of her, stopped and held up a hand. Tema clicked her fingers so that Patience and Goodness, the Mdluli sisters, looked back and also halted.

  Sonja closed the gap between her and Tema. Tall, pretty and intelligent, Tema was the most serious and capable of her recruits to the Leopards Anti-Poaching Unit in the Sabi Sand Game Reserve. The Leopards were an all-female unit, based on the success of the first such outfit, the Black Mambas, in the Balule Reserve, north of where they were operating now.

  ‘What is it?’ Sonja whispered.

  Tema pointed the barrel of her LM5 assault rifle, the semi-automatic version of the South African military’s R5, to the ground. There was a game trail, a dirt path made by the regular passing of animals towards the Sabie River. Across the path was a drag mark. Tema dropped to one knee, touched a muddy spot and raised her fingers to sniff them. ‘Kill.’

  Sonja saw the compact pugmarks on either side of the drag trail; there had been an unseasonal shower of rain that morning so the tracks stood out clearly in the soil, which had retained some moisture beneath the surface. ‘Ingwe.’

  ‘Yes,’ Tema said quietly. ‘Leopard.’

  The two women looked at each other, then down again, following the trail of blood and flattened grass that led right to the base of the trunk of the huge jackalberry tree under which they were standing.

  Sonja saw, as no doubt her trainee did, the fresh pale scars that the leopard’s claws had carved into the tree’s bark. They both looked up. Sonja searched the high branches.

  ‘What is it now?’ Patience said. Her tone was typically surly. She would have been smarting from Sonja’s sharp command for her to be quiet. Patience took every order as an insult.

  ‘Ingwe,’ said Tema.

  Patience’s eyes widened and her jaw dropped as Tema pointed upwards.

  Sonja finally located the sleek silhouette, though the big cat was expertly camouflaged. It raised its head. ‘Nobody move.’

  ‘Eish,’ said Patience. She brushed past Sonja and Tema, waddling quickly back
the way they had come.

  ‘Patience, I said don’t move.’

  ‘I don’t care.’ Patience spoke in her normal voice, not bothering to whisper. ‘Stop telling me what to do. I’m going home.’

  There was a rustle in the branches above and a dappled blur as the leopard ran halfway down the tree trunk then launched itself into mid-air above Sonja’s head. Goodness screamed as the leopard hit the ground. Patience looked back, changed direction and ran.

  ‘Don’t run,’ Sonja called. The leopard seemed as startled and confused as the women around it. Sonja thought it might chase down the fleeing Patience. She raised her LM5 to her shoulder and took aim.

  A burst of gunfire sent the women diving for the ground, but Sonja hadn’t fired the bullets. Panic spread through the women like a veld fire. Sonja took in Patience, yelling in pain this time, and crumpling to the ground. The leopard bounded away into the night, away from them all. Goodness screamed her sister’s name.

  Tema returned fire, two shots. ‘By the big leadwood, towards the river.’

  Good girl, Sonja thought. Tema had seen where the shots had come from and given a target indication, as per her training. Sonja got up. ‘Tema, with me.’ She looked to the other women in the patrol. They looked justifiably terrified. ‘Mavis, Lungile, Lucy, give us covering fire. And for fuck’s sake don’t shoot us in the back.’

  Sonja stood and fired two rounds to the right and the left of the leadwood. ‘Where’s Goodness?’

  ‘She’s run away,’ Tema said, not bothering to hide the disgust in her voice.

  Patience was a pain in the butt, but Goodness was her sister. Tema set off and Sonja, a couple of decades older but just as fit, ran to catch up with her. Patience was crying out to them for help. The three women behind them fired sporadic shots in the direction from which the first burst had come.

  Tema arrived at Patience first and dropped to her knees. She checked the other woman and by the time Sonja reached them Tema had her first aid kit out and was placing a field dressing over a wound in Patience’s belly.

  ‘Keep the pressure on the wound,’ Sonja advised.

  Tema looked up at her, and swallowed hard to control her fear. ‘She’s hurt badly.’

  Sonja took her handheld radio from the pouch on her belt. ‘Sabi Sand warden, this is call-sign Leopard Niner, we’re in a contact with one woman wounded, request immediate casualty evacuation . . .’

  A storm of fire erupted from the bushes ahead of them. Tema lay across Patience to protect her. Sonja dropped to her belly, brought her LM5 to bear and returned fire.

  ‘We can’t stay here, we’re exposed,’ Sonja said as bullets whizzed around them. ‘Covering fire!’ she called to the others.

  Sonja willed herself to stand, and fired two more bursts towards her still unseen enemies. ‘Help me get Patience on my shoulders.’

  Tema ignored the order, slung her rifle and bent and hoisted Patience, much heavier than herself, in a fireman’s carry. ‘I’m younger than you.’

  Sonja shook her head. She put herself between her girls and the people shooting at them and kept firing while walking backwards, as they fell back to the others.

  Lucy, Lungile and Mavis had moved to a position of cover, behind a fallen tree trunk. Tema, panting, lay Patience on her back behind the other women. Lucy dropped her rifle, put a hand over her mouth and started to sob when she saw how badly Patience was hit.

  Tema grabbed her by a shoulder. ‘Stop that. Stop your crying. You must be strong.’

  Sonja repeated her call for assistance and was told by the reserve’s warden that he had contacted the Mission Area Joint Operations Command at Skukuza Airport, inside the neighbouring Kruger National Park. An evacuation helicopter and armed response team were being scrambled. The headquarters for the anti-poaching effort in the Kruger Park and surrounding game reserves was only twelve kilometres away and the reinforcements would be with them in minutes.

  Sonja shrugged off her daypack. From inside it she took her first aid kit and handed it to Tema, to replace the dressing on Patience’s wound, which was already soaked through with blood. She also fished out a pair of night vision goggles. She had planned to give each of the women in the Leopard patrol a chance to try out the device. However, their night-time movement and navigation training exercise had suddenly turned very real.

  Sonja put on the goggles and scanned the bush ahead of them.

  ‘I hear movement,’ Lungile said.

  Sonja nodded and held up a hand for silence. About fifty metres ahead of them she saw a man. A second then moved forward and dropped to one knee behind a tree.

  They were moving like soldiers, Sonja observed. One stayed still and looked for targets, ready to give covering fire, while the other moved. These men were disciplined, trained. And they were not running away, which was unusual for poachers, who tended to flee the scene once they were observed or ambushed. Also out of the ordinary for poachers was that these men had fired first.

  Sonja scanned the frightened faces around her. Only Tema looked calm as she finished changing Patience’s dressing. ‘Ladies, listen to me. We have to hold on until the helicopter gets here, but these men, they are coming for us.’

  ‘No!’ Lucy cried.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Tema. ‘Listen to the commander.’

  Lucy shook her head. ‘This woman wants to get us all killed.’ She started to stand but Tema slapped her face. Lucy, taken aback, sat down, rubbing her cheek.

  Sonja was their mentor, not their commander, but now was not the time for semantics. If these men were not running away it meant they were intent on bringing the fight to them. If her Leopards would not, or could not fight, they might not survive until the cavalry arrived.

  ‘Listen up. I’m going to try to outflank them, draw their fire and keep them busy. When the shooting starts, carry Patience further back, towards Lion Sands. You know the way to the lodge, Tema?’

  ‘I do, madam. But I am coming with you. Lungile knows the way, she used to be a chef in the lodge there, right, sisi?’

  Lungile nodded.

  Sonja got back on the radio and updated the warden so he could relay the news to the inbound helicopter. Sonja didn’t want armed rangers in the sky firing on the girls as they moved towards the luxurious safari lodge on the banks of the Sabie River. ‘And tell the chopper there are at least two men armed with AK-47s, probably more, looking for a fight.’

  ‘Roger,’ said the warden over the radio. ‘Security’s advice is for you to retreat, as well.’

  ‘Whatever. Out,’ Sonja said. ‘Go with the others, Tema.’

  ‘No, madam.’

  ‘You’re not my maid, Tema, call me Sonja, and do as I tell you.’

  Tema shook her head. ‘You are right, Sonja, I am not a maid, not any more, but you are our trainer, not our commander. I am a Leopard and I am coming with you. My job is to hunt poachers.’

  Sonja wasn’t given to public displays of affection, not with her daughter, Emma, who she loved, nor her boyfriend or lover or friend with benefits or whatever Hudson Brand, who waited in his house along the river cooking dinner for her, liked to think of himself as. But she reached out her free hand and squeezed Tema’s arm. ‘All right. Let’s go.’

  Lungile and Lucy picked up Patience, and Mavis carried her weapon and the first aid kits. Sonja and Tema retreated with them, and when Sonja was sure they were out of sight of anyone watching them, she and Tema broke off to the left. ‘Keep going until you get to Lion Sands or the chopper finds you,’ she said to the others in parting.

  Sonja had expected the poachers to open fire on them as soon as they started moving, but quiet had returned to the bush, with the exception of the baboons, who were still unsettled by the firefight and the leopard.

  The poachers may have retreated, but Sonja had not heard any movement in the dry bush, nor seen anyone th
rough the night vision goggles. The men had advanced on the patrol, but then seemingly gone to ground. None of it made sense. She tried to process the events as she and Tema moved quietly through the thorny dry bushveld.

  This was supposed to have been a training exercise only, to get the Leopards used to working and navigating at night. The property they were on, Lion Plains, had been hard hit by rhino poachers, but a combination of increased anti-poaching patrols and a recent scarcity of rhino sightings in the area had meant that poaching activity had been quiet for the past four weeks. It had seemed an acceptable risk to conduct the night exercise, but now they were in a very real fight with an enemy who was not acting in a way that passed for normal for illegal hunters.

  Sonja was still wearing the goggles, and taking point, moving in the lead, but she stopped when Tema clicked her fingers.

  Tema moved to Sonja and brought her lips close to her ear. ‘Men talking.’

  Tema pointed ahead and to the right. The women slowly lowered themselves to one knee, behind a wickedly barbed buffalo thorn tree. Sonja had the benefit of modern technology, but her ears had suffered an adult lifetime spent around guns and explosives; Tema had a twenty-two-year-old’s hearing.

  They waited and watched. Sonja saw movement and brought up her rifle. There were two men. One carried an AK-47 and the other a longer weapon. At first Sonja thought it was a hunting rifle, but it looked bulkier.

  ‘What is that gun?’ Tema whispered.

  The men stopped and the man with the odd weapon said something to his comrade.

  From across the Sabie River, inside the Kruger Park, came the whine of a turbine engine and the thwap of rotor blades cleaving the cool night air.

  Sonja looked at the men. They had heard the helicopter approaching, because they, too, scanned the sky, but they did not run for cover. Instead the big man reached to the front of the weapon, under the barrel, and unfolded a spring-loaded bipod.

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘What is it?’ Tema asked.

  ‘That’s an RPD light machine gun. Russian made. They’re not just hunting rhinos with that bloody thing.’ Sonja scrabbled for her handheld radio.