Zambezi E-Book

Tony Park

• Herausgeber: Ingwe Publishing
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

A wild African paradise is about to erupt.

When a young American research assistant is killed by a man-eating lion, three people are devastated – Jed Banks, an American Special Forces soldier serving in Afghanistan; Professor Christine Wallis, a wildlife researcher in South Africa; and Hassan bin Zayid, a hotel magnate in Zambia. The victim, Miranda Banks-Lewis, was their daughter, protégé and lover respectively.

Desperate to find out what happened to Miranda, Jed and Christine, with the help of a determined Australian journalist, set out on a perilous journey of discovery in Africa. Forced to pit themselves against the continent’s dangers, they will also learn shocking truths about the woman they thought they knew.

Leseprobe

ZAMBEZI

TONY PARK

CONTENTS

About the Author

Also by Tony Park

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

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tony Park was born in 1964 and grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney, Australia. He has worked as a journalist, public relations consultant and a press secretary. He also served 34 years in the Australian Army Reserve, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan in 2002. He is the author of 21 other thriller novels, all set in Africa. Tony and his wife, Nicola, divide their time equally between a home in Australia and a house on the edge of the Kruger National Park in South Africa.

www.tonypark.net

ALSO BY TONY PARK

Far Horizon

African Sky

Safari

Silent Predator

Ivory

The Delta

African Dawn

Dark Heart

The Prey

The Hunter

An Empty Coast

Red Earth

The Cull

Captive

Scent of Fear

Ghosts of the Past

Last Survivor

Blood Trail

The Pride

Vendetta

Part of the Pride, with Kevin Richardson

War Dogs,with Shane Bryant

The Grey Man, with John Curtis

Bush Vet, with Dr Clay Wilson

Courage Under Fire, with Daniel Keighran VC

No One Left Behind, with Keith Payne VC

Rhino War, with Major General (Ret) Johan Jooste

Bwana, There’s a Body in the Bath! with Peter Whitehead

First published by Pan Macmillan Australia in 2005 This edition published in 2023 by Ingwe Publishing

Copyright © Tony Park 2005 www.ingwepublishing.com

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.

Zambezi

EPUB: 9781922389138

POD: 9781922389145

Cover design by Paris Giannakis

For Nicola

1

AFGHANISTAN, 2005

A dead place.

That’s how he thought of it. Nothing grew on the plain in front of him. Rock, dirt and dust. Even the target was made of mud, the once straight lines of the compound’s walls rounded by the ceaseless blasting of grit and wind. The backdrop was a mountain, jagged and welcoming as a chunk of razor-sharp shrapnel, capped in bitter, lethal snow. The passable areas, the roads and the village path ways; the arable areas, the farms and the populated valleys, were home to seven million landmines.

The land was reflected in its people. Burned by searing summers, hardened in unforgiving winters, brutalised by warfare. Afghanistan didn’t have a monopoly on war and killing, it was just a market leader in both.

Master Sergeant Jed Banks blinked and rested his eye from the tiring one-dimensional blur of the view through his night-vision goggles. On the ground, he noticed, in the dust near his elbow, was a half-buried copper cartridge case, green with age. Probably from an AK-47. Maybe a Russian soldier had sat out here under a chilly star-studded night and watched the same medieval mud-brick compound. Maybe an Afghan shepherd had fired at a predator or a thief from a neighbouring village. Perhaps a blood feud had been settled on this spot.

Here they resolved village disputes with assault rifles and mortars, celebrated weddings with a fireworks show of machinegun tracer rounds, played a game on horseback with a dead animal instead of a ball. Sometimes, depending on who was at war with whom, they used a human instead of an animal.

Jed Banks was here to kill, too. He squinted into the sight of his M4 assault rifle again and scanned the squat tower at the corner of the compound once more. Maybe he would add to the never-ending tally of this country’s violent death toll tonight.

‘Do you think the US is achieving anything here?’ the man beside him whispered as he lowered himself to the dust.

The nasal drawl of the young Australian was a distraction for Jed – and not a welcome one. Nothing good could come of having a reporter along on a mission like this. There was no movement around the compound or on the parapets. The guard in the tower at the north-east corner was still asleep. All was quiet and the snatch team was almost in position.

Jed glanced at the reporter. The man was short and weedy, with a goatee beard and an earring. He had carried a ruck on the walk in from the landing zone and Jed had made sure the stranger also humped the spare radio batteries and a couple of IV drips, just so they would get some use out of him. He had stood up to the walk all right, though he still hadn’t been carrying near as much as the rest of them.

‘Hi, remember me from the briefing? Luke Scarborough,’ the reporter whispered.

Jed remembered the man, but ignored him. He scanned the wall again. The reporter worked for some wire service or other. AP, UPI, Reuters, some damn thing. Afghanistan was what was termed an acronym-rich environment. It was hard enough to keep up with the military abbreviations, let alone the media’s. He stayed away from the motley crew of journalists at Bagram. He resented having one forced upon the team, but CENTCOM – the US military’s Central Command in Tampa, Florida – was red hot on embedding journalists with all units, even Special Forces. Probably seemed like a good idea over drinks in the officers’ club. Out here in the dust, it sucked.

‘The captain said we’ll have to wait a while,’ hissed Luke, ‘About two hours. How do you pass the time?’

‘I sit quiet and do my job.

‘Think about home?’

Jed turned and stared at the man. He didn’t get it. He was out on a big adventure, but couldn’t see that Jed and the rest of the ODA were totally focused on their mission every second they were out in the field. By contrast it seemed that everything the reporter had been told during the briefing about Operational Detachment Alphas – ODAs, or what used to be known in Vietnam and subsequently on TV as ‘A Teams’- had gone in one ear and out the other. ‘Nothing to think about,’ he said, hoping this would shut the reporter up.

‘No one back home? No parents, no wife, no girlfriend? A boyfriend?’

‘Can’t you see I have a loaded weapon?’

Luke grinned.

Jed wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, mopping away the sweat with his black Nomex fire proof gloves. It was hot at this time of year in Afghanistan. A country of extremes, the reporters called it, and they were right about that. At the end of winter, when he started his tour, he’d been operating in the mountains and it had been bitterly cold, with snow on the peaks. Now, in August, it was sometimes over fifty degrees Celsius during the day and damn near as hot even at night.

‘A daughter.’ Immediately Jed regretted giving this away. He couldn’t help it, though. She was on his mind too much these days.

‘How old?’

‘None of your fucking business.’

The radio hissed in his earpiece. He held up a hand to silence the reporter.

‘Hawk, this is Snake, go.’

The reporter pulled out his notebook.

Jed listened intently for a few seconds, held the headset’s microphone close to his lips and whispered: ‘Roger that. Six, this is Snake. They’re in position. Show time is in two-zero mikes, over.’

Jed took another sight picture on the sleeping guard.

‘How old’s your daughter?’

‘I was hoping you had left.’

‘Give me what I want and I’ll get out of your hair.’

Fat chance, Jed thought. ‘She’s twenty.’

‘College?’

‘Was. She’s in Africa. Zimbabwe. Researching lions.’

‘Cool,’ Scarborough exclaimed.

‘Keep the fucking noise down.’

‘Sorry. But, hey, that’s interesting. That’s my usual beat - Africa. I normally work out of Johannesburg; I’ve just been up here for a few weeks covering for someone else. I’m going back next week’

‘Don’t even think about asking for her phone number.’

‘She got a degree?’

‘Science. University of Massachusetts. She’s studying for her masters in wildlife conservation and working as a researcher while she writes her thesis.’

‘What does she think of you being over here?’

‘I don’t know. Proud, I guess. Not as proud as I am of her. She’s the only good thing in my life.’

‘Do you worry about her, being out in the wild in Africa? Zimbabwe can be pretty hairy.’

‘Thanks for the tip. But yeah, I do worry about her. She tells me it’s fine, though, so don’t spoil my illusions, OK, asshole?’

‘Sure. You’re the one with the gun.’

Luke chuckled to himself. He had got the soldier talking. That was ninety per cent of the job done. He had cracked the tough guy wide open and got his story.

He made some notes. The moon was full, so he could see enough to write. M/SGT Jed. The captain is the senior man, but Jed runs the team 6’2; broad shoulders; long, fair hair past his collar, bushy beard – the Special Forces types grow them as it gains them more respect with Afghan tribal elders. Crows’ feet at the corners of his eyes – sun-bronzed, weathered face. Veteran of Grenada, Somalia, Desert Storm, Kosovo. The last patrol of his tour. Daughter, aged 20.

‘What’s her name?’

‘Miranda.’

Miranda. Zimbabwe. Researches lions. The one person this soldier cares about. A little corny, Luke thought, but he’d finesse it a bit. Tough guy with a heart of gold always worked. He wondered what the daughter looked like. A blonde, if she took after her dad. Couldn’t be too many blonde, female American lion researchers in Zimbabwe.

Jed couldn’t stop himself from thinking about Miranda. He really did worry about her. He was due out of this godforsaken dustbowl of a country in four short days. He had a ticket booked to Harare, Zimbabwe. He was going to spend four weeks of his leave with his baby girl and he couldn’t wait.

‘Where’s Miranda’s mom?’ the reporter asked.

‘Boston.’

‘And your unit is based in Fayetteville, North Carolina, is that right?’ He wrote it all down.

‘Yep. Work it out yet, genius? We split when Miranda was about three years old.’

‘How did it feel not being around when she was growing up?’

‘They teach you how to piss people off in journalism school, or does it just come natural?’

‘They teach us to ask loaded questions,’ Luke laughed. ‘Sorry. It must have been tough, being away from your kid. How come you’re so tight with her now?’

‘She found me. Looked me up a couple of years ago. She made the effort and I guess that’s why I love her so much. I always sent presents, called in on Patti maybe once or twice a year. There was no bad blood between us – not after the first couple years, anyway. Miranda reached out for me at a bad time – I hadn’t seen either of them for a while, and, well, she really helped.’

‘Why did you lose contact?’

‘None of your business.’

‘But things are good now?’ Luke said.

‘Couldn’t be better.’

‘Got a picture?’

Jed gave a half grin. ‘Remember the weapon.’

‘Hey, I didn’t mean it that way.’

‘We don’t take anything personal out with us in the field. Nothing that identifies our families or loved ones, nothing they can use against us if we’re captured. You were told that during the brief. I don’t want to know what you’re carrying.’

‘I’m a reporter. No one’s going to harm me.’

It was Jed’s turn to laugh now. ‘You’re in civilian clothes - they’ll think you’re OGA, so they’ll torture you and kill you first. It’ll give the rest of us time to escape.’ OGA - Other Government Agencies - was a euphemism for the CIA in Afghanistan.

‘Really?’

Jed shrugged. He’d had enough of the interview. A green shadow flickered in the night sight.

‘Six, this is Snake, over. We’ve got movement in the tower, I say again, we have movement in the tower.’

Jed’s voice was calm and matter-of-fact, as if he were asking for more chow in the D-FAC, the dining facility at Bagram, Luke thought. Luke hunkered down lower in the dust when he saw the muj in the tower stretch and yawn. He was picking up the Special Forces language quickly; a muj – short for mujahideen or holy warrior – was the common term for any Afghan adult male.

A goat bleated somewhere in the shadows at the base of the compound wall. The turbaned guard placed his hands on the earthen wall and looked over the edge. He straightened, scratched his beard and picked up his AK-47.

‘Six, this is Snake. Subject is moving. He has his weapon. Climbing down from the tower. I think he’s going to get that stray goat.’

‘What does that mean?’ Luke asked too quickly, giving away his rising panic.

‘Quiet, buddy. Stay low and be cool.’ Jed reached over with his left hand – his right didn’t leave the pistol grip of his M4 – and patted Luke on the shoulder.

He smiled and the Australian tried to force a grin back at him. Poor kid was shit-scared.

The captain’s voice came over the radio, asking for a situation report. Jed ignored him. He was more concerned about the snatch team, four men lying in the cover of some boulders not twenty metres from the compound.

‘Hawk, this is Snake,’ Jed whispered into the microphone. ‘Can you see the subject?’

The only reply was a single click that brought a burst of static. The signal meant yes, but also told Jed that the subject was probably close enough for the team not to risk speaking, even in a whisper.

The goat bleated again. Jed saw the Afghan, if that’s what he was, emerge from the shadow of the wall. He held his AK-47 by the barrel and whacked the animal on its rump.

‘Stay cool, Hawk,’ Jed whispered.

The goat did a one-eighty and scarpered towards the boulders. The guard laughed and turned to follow it. Instinctively he turned his rifle back the right way so the barrel was pointing forward again. He walked to the boulders.

Jed pressed the switch on the black box fixed to the stock of his M4, activating his laser night-aiming device. He closed one eye and looked through the night-vision monocle strapped to his face. The bright dot of the laser beam rested in the middle of the subject’s back

The man stopped suddenly. He brought his AK-47 up into his shoulder with the practised speed of an old warrior. Jed pulled the trigger and felt the recoil in his shoulder. The suppressor muffled the noise of the round exploding from the barrel.

The Afghan pitched forwards and his rifle clattered against the boulders. A split second later the noise of a gunshot destroyed the night’s peace.

‘Holy shit,’ the reporter said.

Jed spoke into the mike again. ‘Subject is down. Hawk, what is your status? Repeat, what is your status? Who fired that shot?’

‘What’s happening, Snake, what’s happening?’ the captain hissed in Jed’s earpiece.

Jed was concerned now. It was going to shit. One of the guys in the snatch team, Murphy probably, who didn’t have a silenced weapon, had panicked when he saw the Afghan raise his rifle and fired a shot as well.

‘We’re fucked, Snake. We’re pulling out,’ said Kirby, the leader of the snatch team.

Jed knew there was no alternative. ‘Roger that. All call signs, abort. I say again, abort. Move to emergency LZ. Fall back through my position.’ Jed moved the mike away from his mouth and turned to Luke, whose face was a ghostly white. ‘Keep it together, man. As soon as the captain gets here, you go with him. I’ve got to wait here for the other guys. OK?’

Luke nodded dumbly.

Jed pressed his night-vision monocle against the aperture of his rifle scope again and saw the four men from the snatch team running back up the hill away from the compound towards him. The picture was lime-green and grainy, clear, but devoid of depth. Another movement caught his eye. First one, then two men appeared in the watchtower. They were struggling with a tarpaulin.

The captain and McCubbin, the team’s radio operator, appeared from Jed’s right, panting as they knelt next to him.

‘What happened, Banks?’ the officer demanded.

Jed ignored the stupid question. ‘Get Boss Man on the radio, Mac. It looks like they’ve got a Dooshka in the tower.’ Boss Man was the United States Air Force Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft, orbiting unseen somewhere above them.

‘What?’ Luke asked.

The radioman was thinking faster than the captain. He spoke rapidly into the handset of the radio he carried in his Alice pack. ‘Boss Man, Boss Man, Boss Man, this is Cougar one-five. Request immediate CAS, over.’

Jed saw the reporter had stopped taking notes and was balling his fists to try to stop his hands shaking. ‘It’s OK, Luke,’ he said softly. ‘We’re calling up some CAS – Close Air Support in case we need it. They’ve got a Russian DSHK heavy machine-gun down in the tower, a Dooshka we call it. Just be ready to move when I tell you.’ The Australian nodded. Jed licked his lips to stave off the dryness in his mouth. The enemy weapon was probably older than himself, but it was built to last and the 12.7-millimetre rounds in its belt would tear a man in half.

Jed continued to watch the tower. ‘Get the Harriers on station, Mac. We need them close, but we don’t want to blow the whole place up if we don’t have to. There are women and children in the compound.’

The long barrel of the Dooshka swung up in profile momentarily as the two Afghans readied it.

Jed placed the point of the laser on the man on the left, whose torso was visible above the mud-brick wall. He squeezed the trigger again and the man careened backwards. The other man, however, was out of sight, presumably behind the weapon. ‘I’d get down if I was you, Captain.’

The machine-gun opened up with a din like a giant striking an anvil five hundred and fifty times a minute. The heavy bullets split the air a couple of metres above the heads of the small group of Americans. Every now and then a green phosphorescent tracer round arced into the sky. The captain landed in the dirt beside Banks, sending up a cloud of dust.

‘Put some fire down, sir,’ Jed said to the captain. To the best of his knowledge it was the officer’s first time under fire. He was Special Forces, but a staff officer from CJSOTF-Coalition Joint Special Operations Task Force – headquarters. He’d been assigned to accompany the reporter and supposedly make sure neither Jed nor any of the other ODA team members said the wrong thing, like how much they resented having a newsman and a rear-echelon dude from HQ along for the ride.

The captain screamed at his radio operator. ‘Mac, call in the CAS. Wipe that fucking compound off the face of the earth. Now!’

McCubbin hesitated.

‘Don’t look at Banks! I just gave you an order.’

Jed ignored the screaming captain. The man behind the machine-gun had raised his head a little, desperately trying to see his target. The gunfire stopped. Jed placed the dot of the laser on the man’s head and pulled the trigger. The silenced rifle coughed. The pale-green face disappeared.

‘Sir,’ Jed said, ‘here comes the snatch team. Mac, when Boss Man gets back to you just tell him to keep the Harrier jets on station. In the meantime, call up the CH 47. It’s time for us to get out of here.’

‘On its way, Jed.’

‘Good man. Sir,’ Jed said to the captain, ‘we’ve silenced the gun for the time being. If you lead the men back to the emergency LZ I’ll tidy up here.’

The captain realised he had been overruled, but Banks had given him an out. ‘Right, you men, let’s go. Now! You too, Luke.’

Jed reached for his pack and unstrapped a 66-millimetre light anti-tank weapon, a disposable one-shot rocket-launcher that was pretty well useless against modern tanks, but still handy for busting open buildings and bunkers. He slung his M4 and extended the telescopic case of the rocket-launcher. The weapon was not overly accurate and he needed to get closer to the compound. There was enough explosive in the rocket to wreck the machine-gun if he could score a direct hit.

‘You need a hand, Jed?’ McCubbin asked. The captain and the snatch team were disappearing over the brow of the barren hill.

‘No thanks, Mac. Won’t be but a minute,’ he said.

‘Don’t dick around now, Jed.’

Jed nodded then half ran and half slid down the face of the dry slope. He cut right and started to climb again, then moved forwards once more until he was within a hundred paces of the compound’s tower.

Someone shouted. Jed could see a big man with a white beard climbing the inner steps to the compound wall. He couldn’t be sure from this distance, but he looked like one of the four men they had been sent to capture or kill. Intelligence said they were Al Qaeda, foreign Arabs who had crossed over from Pakistan with a couple of shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles which they planned to use against Coalition aircraft.

Jed pulled the safety pin from the rocket-launcher and flipped up the crude sights. He squinted through the aperture. He could see the Dooshka and one of the bodies of the two men he had killed. The white bearded man came into view as he swung the machine- gun around. Jed realised he was silhouetted on the slope, casting a tell-tale shadow on the ground from the moon’s illumination.

The first rounds from the machine-gun brought up geysers of dirt in front of him. He pressed down on the launcher’s firing mechanism and the rocket screamed from its tube. A cloud of dust erupted behind Jed from the back blast. He dropped to his knees and watched the projectile find its mark. The explosion lit up the compound, and the timber roof of the guard tower disappeared in a thousand splinters.

Jed tossed away the used launcher and ran back up the hill.

He paused on the other side of the crest and punched in the pre-set waypoint for the emergency helicopter extraction zone on his wristwatch GPS. He started jogging again, following the illuminated arrow on the display. He ran for three minutes, until the GPS told him he was only two hundred metres away. Gunfire once again ripped apart the night. AK-47s, two probably. An M4 was returning fire. Dead ahead. Shit.

Jed heard the clatter of approaching rotors. There would be an AH64 Apache attack helicopter escorting the big Chinook. He cautiously crested another rise and instantly saw the cause of the problem. There was a Toyota Land Cruiser parked in the middle of the track. Two men were out of the vehicle, lying on their bellies and firing at the fleeing Americans.

Jed brought his M4 into his shoulder, lasered the first man with his night-aiming device and fired. The man writhed on the ground, wounded but not dead. The Chinook was coming in fast, unaware of the gunfight below. Why hadn’t McCubbin warned them? The answer was plain a couple of seconds later. Murphy and Kirby came into view from behind a boulder, dragging the radioman between them. Mac’s feet dug twin furrows in the powdery dirt.

Just as Jed took a sight picture of the second man the Chinook started its descent. The downwash of the giant twin rotors stirred up a dust storm that obscured the terrorist from view. Jed un-snapped a small pouch on the front of his combat vest and pulled out a grenade. He’d never pulled a grenade pin with his teeth, but he had his rifle in his other hand and there was nothing else for it. He was glad none of the others could see him as he extracted the pin – he’d never live it down. He spat the pin out and lobbed the deadly orb in the direction he had last seen the enemy rifleman.

The sight and sound of the explosion were all but lost in the cacophony of noise and dust generated by the huge transport helicopter. The snatch team were dragging Mac and his heavy pack onto the rear ramp of the Chinook The captain was already aboard by the look of it. The fat rear wheels of the machine were barely touching the ground.

Jed saw Luke scramble aboard, two crewmen in bulbous helmets and tan flight suits reaching for him. Jed sprinted for the helicopter and saw one of the crewmen waving to him. Luke was standing on the ramp now, waving as well, urging him on.

From his left, above the din of the screaming engines and the thwop of the blades, Jed heard the unmistakable pop of AK-47 fire. The bullets found their mark, stitching a line of holes in the helicopter’s metal skin. One of the crewmen held his helmet mike close to his mouth and the machine started to rise. Jed dived for the ramp and managed to get his torso on board as the chopper lifted, his legs kicking in the air as he tried to find purchase.

The gunman fired again. The door gunner positioned at the Chinook’s front hatch returned fire with his M240. Luke was down on one knee, grabbing at Jed’s combat vest, trying to pull him aboard. The helicopter rocked to the right and suddenly Luke slipped. Jed watched in horror as the young man fell past him, his arms windmilling. He dropped three metres to the ground and landed on his back. Jed looked up at the crewman, but the man just shook his head and screamed something the Green Beret could not hear.

‘Fuck it,’ Jed said, and let go of the ramp. He fell, maybe five metres now as the chopper was still rising. It was a heavy fall, but he rolled over, unhurt. He had dropped his rifle and couldn’t see where it had fallen. He crawled to Luke, who was still lying on his back, and drew a nine-millimetre automatic pistol from inside his combat vest as he moved.

‘Luke! Talk to me!’

The reporter coughed and tried to sit up, but the fall had winded him.

‘Steady, son. Anything broken?’ Jed yelled over the engine noise. The Chinook was still rising, the door gunner firing blind into the night. Jed hoped the fool didn’t cap them by mistake. The AK man had stopped firing.

‘Don’t think so …’ Luke spluttered.

Jed helped the young man to his feet, then reached into a pouch of his vest and pulled out a battery powered strobe light. He flicked it on. The flashing infra-red beacon was invisible to the naked eye but would be easily picked out by the pilots and crewmen through their night-vision goggles.

There was a noise like a buzz saw fifty metres off to his left. Jed heard the sound of lead tearing into metal. The Apache had let rip on the Land Cruiser with its thirty-millimetre chain gun in a long swooping pass. The gas tank caught and the vehicle erupted in an incandescent orange fireball that lit the surrounding hills.

Jed looked up and saw the Chinook swinging around again. There was no sign or sound of the enemy rifleman. He waved the strobe above his head. The Chinook came back around and Jed shielded his eyes from the stinging dust it stirred up. His other arm was wrapped around Luke, supporting him.

The Chinook blocked out the night sky and the moon with its dust and its fat-bellied green bulk as it descended once more. As the edge of the lowered ramp neared the ground, Jed pushed Luke into waiting arms.

One of the crewmen who dragged Luke aboard was wide-mouthed for a split second. In the next instant he was thrown backwards into the bowels of the chopper. Jed turned and saw the enemy rifleman not twenty metres away. The man stepped from behind his rock and swung the barrel of the AK towards him.

Even though it was dark and the air was thick with dust, Jed saw the man’s face clearly and was struck by his piercing eyes. Jed was quicker than the gunman. He raised his arm instinctively and fired two shots. A double tap. Both rounds hit the man in the chest and he pitched backwards.

Jed felt hands on his shoulders, dragging him back. He didn’t resist. He landed on his backside on the helicopter’s cargo ramp, feet still dangling in space as the Chinook rose like a big, noisy elevator. It was over. He shook his head. More action in the last ten minutes of his last patrol than in the rest of his six-month tour of duty. In a few days he would be finished with Afghanistan and reunited with his daughter. He closed his eyes and tried to think of Miranda, and not of the wide-eyed look on the face of the man he had just killed.

Zambia

Hassan bin Zayid put down his chilled Mosi Lager and reached for the remote. He turned up the volume on the television set in the lodge’s bar. He was alone in the cool, dark retreat. The staff had returned to their compound for lunch and he had no guests at the moment. It was CNN, something about Afghanistan.

The announcer said: ‘Five known Al Qaeda terrorists were killed yesterday in a raid on their hide-out in eastern Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan. US military sources said the men, all natives of unspecified Arabic countries outside Afghanistan, were in the process of shipping anti-aircraft missiles deeper into the country for use against Coalition aircraft. Two American servicemen were injured in the shoot-out but are said to be recovering. CNN’s Mike Porter has more, from Bagram, Afghanistan …’

The report continued with file vision of the rugged mountains and desolate plains of the war-ravaged country, then the reporter threw back to the studio announcer, who said: ‘Thanks, Mike. We’re going to go now to the Pentagon, where senior US Army officer General Donald Calvert, who until recently commanded the Coalition forces in Afghanistan, is holding a live press conference.’

The vision cut to a shot of a man with a bristly grey crewcut and the lined face of one who had spent years outdoors. Silver parachutist’s wings and myriad colourful medal ribbons stood out in stark contrast to the dull green of his uniform tunic. On his right shoulder was the yellow embroidered shield of the First Cavalry Division with its black bar and horse’s head. On his left, the blue dragon’s head of the 18th Airborne Corps. He stood at a podium, a map of Afghanistan on the plasma-screen television behind and to one side of him.

A reporter off-camera asked: ‘General Calvert, a few months ago you were the commander of Coalition forces in Afghanistan. When you left you were, quote, “confident” we had disrupted Al Qaeda’s ability to mount major offensive operations inside Afghanistan What’s gone wrong since you left and do you stand by your earlier comments?’

The general smiled, leaned a little closer to the microphone in front of him and said: ‘Stu, what we’ve seen in the last few days is proof positive that we are making headway against terrorism. Acting on accurate, timely intelligence, our Special Forces soldiers were able to intercept this band of killers and their deadly hardware and prevent a missile attack from taking place. Call me old fashioned, but I’d rate that a pretty good success.’

Another reporter said: ‘Rachel Wise from the Post, General. On another matter, now that your retirement from the military has been announced there’s been a flurry of speculation about what you will be doing next.’

Again the easy smile. ‘Well, Rachel, right now I’m still an officer in the US Army. My future’s my business, for now, but the first thing I’m going to do when I finish up here is go on a safari holiday.

Now, if there are no more questions about Afghanistan …?’ Hassan hoped Miranda’s father hadn’t been involved in the attack, or been one of those injured. The raid had occurred near Pakistan. Iqbal was in Karachi, studying at an Islamic university. He was nowhere near the border.

Hassan pushed aside his half-drunk beer and strode across the polished stone floor of the bar to his private office. Next to his computer a portable satellite phone sat in its desk charger. He picked it up and started to scroll through the saved names, glancing at the silver-framed photo beside the charger. Taken ten years earlier, on the day of his graduation from Cambridge University, it showed him in academic robes, smiling broadly, his darkly handsome father in a western business suit. Iqbal, his twin brother, stood on the other side of their father, wearing a kansu, the traditional loose-fitting white robe of the Zanzibari-Omani man. A year after the photo was taken, Hassan senior had succumbed to lung cancer.

Hassan found the number and pressed the dial button. The feeling of unease, a mixture of guilt and dread, started to spread through him once more. He changed his mind and pushed the cancel button before the phone on the other end started to ring. It was nothing, he told himself again.

He put on Ray-Ban sunglasses and a New York Yankees baseball cap as protection against the glare and heat of the African sun and walked along the riverside track to the enclosures.

‘Hello, Maggie,’ he said fondly.

The cheetah, the eldest of his breeding females, responded to his voice, got up and walked to the gate. Hassan opened it; Maggie made no move to escape. Instead she rubbed her flank against his leg like an overgrown household cat. ‘How are your babies today, beautiful?’

He walked to the shade of the apple-ring acacia inside the enclosure, drawn by a series of high-pitched squeaks.

The cat’s latest litter of five strong, healthy cubs turned their tiny faces to him. The little balls of fluff knew his scent as well as their mother’s. He picked one up and stroked it. Another clawed at the fabric of his tan trousers, while a third tried to trip him up by attacking the laces of his kudu-leather boots.

One day these cheetahs would take their rightful place in the Zambezi Valley, patrolling the riverine forests and floodplains of the great river. He had helped save Maggie, and a few other heirs to the natural paradise that bordered his own private game reserve, from extinction.

Hassan bin Zayid also thought himself an heir to the valley. His family had made their fortune in this part of Africa hundreds of years earlier. His people, on his father’s side, were Omanis. Great traders and seafarers, they had left the Arabian Gulf and followed the east coast of Africa in search of exotic animals, spices and the most valuable cargo of all – slaves.

Hassan certainly did not think of Juma or his other staff as slaves, just as loyal paid servants, but his ancestors had not been as benevolent. They had forged deeper and deeper into the forests and savannas of central and southern Africa, spreading Islam as they went and returning to their bases at Zanzibar and Bagamoyo with dhows crammed with live cargo.

He thought of the news item he had just seen. The war against terror, as the Americans called it, had touched many more countries than Afghanistan and Iraq. His ancestral homeland of Oman had lined up with the Americans, the oil-rich state providing land for US bases. The place of his birth, Zanzibar, had seen a drop in tourist numbers because of world events and his family’s fortunes had suffered as a result.

Hassan found himself missing Zanzibar less and less and spending more time at his game reserve in Zambia with every trip. He loved the island where he had been born, with its azure waters, white sands and heady aroma of cloves and other spices. But the paradise he had known as a child was changing, and not for the better. Each year hotels encroached a little more on the beaches. Even now, with tourist numbers down it seemed to him there were still more white faces than Arabs or Africans on the streets of Stone Town, and that dance music and hip-hop were drowning out the gentle melodies of his own people.

Of course, he didn’t mind the presence of tourists when it came to the monetary aspect – they had made him and his family extremely wealthy over the years. Since the demise of the trade in slaves, ivory and, more recently, rhino horn, the bin Zayid family had made their living from the development and running of hotels on Zanzibar and the Tanzanian mainland. Hassan liked to think of himself as a progressive man. He didn’t hate westerners and, although he had been raised a Muslim, he did not follow all the rules of his father’s religion. Neither had his father, for that matter. Hassan had inherited from him a weakness for malt whisky and a fondness for women with golden hair.

He thought for the hundredth time that day of Miranda, just across the Zambezi from him. He would send the boat for her tonight, to her camp on the Zimbabwean side of the river. They would dine and share a bottle or two of fine wine from his cellar. There were so many things he wanted to discuss with her, but they could wait until after they had made love. He had fallen under her spell so quickly and completely that it still amazed him. He, the millionaire bachelor, with a string of sexual conquests to rival a Hollywood leading man, had found himself ensnared by her beauty, her wit and their shared love of Africa’s precious wildlife. There were still, however, so many things he needed to clear up with her.

‘Boss, excuse me.’ It was Juma, returned from lunch. He strode down the pathway, carrying the satellite phone. The African was not given to smiling, but his face looked more solemn than ever.

‘There was a telephone call for you. The caller wouldn’t wait, but I have a message.’

‘What is it?’ Hassan asked as he gently laid the cheetah cub back amongst its siblings.

‘I am sorry, boss, with all my heart, but there has been a death.’

South Africa

Panthera Leo.The African lion. This one was a beauty. She guessed his weight at close to a hundred and ninety kilograms – nearly four hundred and twenty pounds where she came from. A big boy.

Professor Christine Wallis flipped open a cheap photo album and leafed through the pages until she found Nelson. To a casual observer the pages and pages of digital photo prints would have all looked the same. All big, tawny lions. Nelson was a little easier to distinguish from the rest because, like his namesake, British admiral Horatio Nelson, he was a one-eyed warrior.

His disability had not affected his ability to fornicate and fight – the king of beast’s two top, and pretty much only, duties in life. Chris put down the album and made some notes in her journal, recording Nelson’s condition – good, and activity - nil.

The lion yawned, baring yellowed fangs the length and girth of a man’s finger. He curled his long pink tongue. It was roughened, like a domestic cat’s, and made for flaying the skin off a dead animal. Chris was three metres away from Nelson, but the predator paid her no mind. The shape of the four-wheel drive she was sitting in was as familiar to him as the striped zebra, or the fearsome bulk of an elephant. Nelson lowered his head, rolled onto his back, wriggled a little to dislodge an annoying tick, then sat up.

Chris took up her camera, focused tight on Nelson’s sleepy face and snapped off three frames in succession, getting a better, closer shot of his scars face. He blinked lazily at the whirr of the camera’s motor wind. He’d heard that sound his whole life. He was all power, Chris thought. The top of the food chain, irresistible to the six females in his pride, respected by his dozen children and feared by his enemies. He was the reason why she was living in South Africa’s Kruger National Park instead of her other home town in Virginia, USA.

Nelson sniffed the air, reassured himself all was well in his kingdom and, content in the knowledge that his wives were either caring for his children or hunting for his supper, laid his big maned head down and fell asleep.

Lions. Chris shook her head. For all their majesty, the big cats were also some of the most boring animals in Africa to watch and study – most of the time. Nelson was doing what every lion did for about eighteen hours a day - nothing. But it was those rarely glimpsed moments of the hunt and the kill where the members of the pride came together instinctively as one to bring down their prey in a tawny blur of dust and blood, that made her rise before dawn six days a week and drive out into the bush. Taking her lead from the lion, Chris laid her head back and closed her eyes.

Her home for the past eighteen months had been a caravan parked under a marula tree in the camping ground of Pretoriuskop rest camp in the south-west of the Kruger National Park. An American university had provided funding for research into the feeding habits of lions and other large predators in the southern part of South Africa’s premier park. A particular focus was the prevalence of humans as prey for large predators. The reserve’s eastern boundary was also the border with Mozambique, and illegal immigrants from that country had for decades been risking the natural hazards of the bush in their quest to find their fortunes in comparatively prosperous South Africa. Even though Mozambique’s prolonged and bloody civil war had long since ended, the flow of illegals had continued unabated. Many of Kruger’s lions, beloved and photographed by tourists from around the world, had feasted on the flesh of luckless refugees. Chris wanted to find out how many lions were man eaters, and whether there were individuals or prides that now specialised in hunting humans. She had interviewed rangers who had come across human remains on the veldt and, with the help of the local police, with whom she maintained an excellent relationship, she had also been able to speak to detained illegal immigrants about their brushes with wildlife. So far she had not actually seen the remains of a human killed by a lion. That was just fine by her.

The noise of a vehicle engine woke her from her doze. A game-viewer – an open-top Land Rover with a canvas awning roof and tiered bench seats crammed with tourists - pulled up in front of her truck. Chris waved when she recognised the driver.

The tourists were open-mouthed with awe at the sight of the lion. However, their silent fascination soon gave way to chattering in at least three languages. Cameras flashed and a child shrieked as Nelson rose on his front legs and yawned. He looked at the game-viewer, considered moving, but couldn’t be bothered. He fell asleep again.

Chris knew most of the safari guides and rangers in her part of the park, including the ‘jeep jockey’ driving this vehicle, a South African guy named Jan. He was young, blond and attractive. Not her type, but he looked good in his short khaki shorts. Jan was sitting up on the backrest of his seat, facing his passengers and explaining some facts about lion behaviour to them.

‘We’re safe as long as we stay in the vehicle, but if you got out and tried to pat the big kitty it would be the last decision you ever made in your life,’ Jan said. There were a few nervous laughs from the crowd.

Jan started his vehicle and edged it around Chris’s until he was parked beside her window. ‘Morning, Professor,’ he said, smiling.

‘Had much luck, Jan?’ Sometimes the jeep jockeys were a pain in the ass, getting too close to animals in order to present a better photo opportunity for the tourists, and scaring off the game in the process. Jan, she recalled, was studying zoology and seemed to have a genuine respect for wildlife.

‘Only need a leopard and we’ll have nailed the big five this morning.’

‘Head via the Klipspringer kopjes on your way back to camp. That big male was out on a rock sunning himself this morning.’

‘Thanks, Professor. I’ll buy you a beer with my tips if we catch up with him. Hey, how’s Miranda doing up in Zim? You heard from her lately?’

‘She’s fine. Working hard and much better able to concentrate on her studies now that she’s away from you guys.’ Chris attracted her fair share of attention from the men in the national park, but Miranda, blonde, blue-eyed, gorgeous and thirteen years her junior, sent the South African young bloods into a frenzy of competition for her affections whenever she passed through Kruger.

Jan laughed. ‘She wasn’t interested in any of us last time she was here. Oh, by the way, I nearly forgot. The gate guard said there’s a message for you at reception.’

Chris checked her mobile phone. She was out of range, even though much of the park was now covered by the cellular phone network. ‘Thanks, Jan, I’d better be getting back, then. Good luck with your spotting.’

She followed the game-viewer back onto the main tarred road running through the park, then overtook Jan and drove as fast as she dared back towards Pretoriuskop camp. When she was close to the camp and its tower, her mobile phone beeped. Chris pulled over, ignoring the bull elephant snapping branches from a tree a scant fifty metres from her. She dialled the number to retrieve her message.

It was the embassy. A female secretary started to dictate the number for her to call, but she cut the woman off, ended the call and started to dial again. She knew the number by heart. Bad news, Chris thought. The embassy only ever called when something terrible had happened.

Afghanistan

Jed’s spirits were high as he walked down Disney Parade, the main thoroughfare through Bagram Air Base. The road was named not after the cartoon creator, but a US Army soldier who had been killed in a welding accident in the early days of the American occupation of the old Russian base.

The jet engines of a C-17 transport aircraft screamed at full pitch and the fat-bellied bird roared down the runway. Jed smiled. He had just visited the APOD, the aerial point of debarkation, and confirmed his seat on a flight out of Afghanistan that night.

The dust by the side of the road was ankle-deep and as fine as talcum powder. It broke over his boots like the foamy edge of an ocean tide. The wind picked up and he shielded his eyes from the flying grit. He could no longer see the foothills of the Hindu Kush mountains, couldn’t even see two-hundred-metres down Disney. A convoy of Hummers rumbled down the road, stirring up even more dust. The paratroopers manning the 50-calibre machine-guns and Mark 19 automatic grenade-launchers mounted in the turrets of each vehicle had their faces wrapped in Arab shamags, their eyes protected by goggles. He would not miss Afghanistan.

From the runway to his left, on the other side of the old Russian aircraft hangars, he heard the whine of helicopter turbine engines winding up to full power. Another patrol, another search for an enemy who was both hard to find and hard to identify. He thought of the men he had killed on his last mission, a few days earlier. He pressed his fingers to his eyes to wipe out some particles of dirt, and to squeeze out the image of the face of the man he had shot at close range.

He had killed before. He had called in airstrikes on Iraqi Republican Guard positions and armoured columns during the first Gulf War. He had seen the burned and shattered bodies of some of his victims, become hardened to the grotesque face of death, but he had never been close enough to one of his victims to look into his eyes. He had no doubt about himself as a soldier, the righteousness of his cause, or the fact that the man would have shot him without blinking if he had been quicker on the draw.

The rangers who had swept the compound the day after the mission had found two Hongying 5 surface to-air missiles, Chinese knock-offs of the portable shoulder-launched Soviet SAM 7, or Strela. Although based on nineteen sixties technology, the light-weight missiles were still a serious threat to modern aircraft. There was no doubt the team had hit the right target at the right time and probably saved Coalition lives. But still the face of the man haunted him. He supposed it was only normal.

Two Black Hawks and an Apache rose above the dust stirred up by their rotor wash and headed south. Khost, he guessed. Afghanistan might have dropped off the front pages of the world’s newspapers, but Americans were still fighting and dying there. He wondered how long the war would go on. He believed the operations in this blighted country had made a real dent in Al Qaeda’s ability to conduct terrorist operations around the world, but their enemy was like the mythical Hydra, growing a new head as soon as one was lopped off. The war, such as it was, had spread to Asia and Africa, where terrorists had tried to down an Israeli airliner in Kenya with weapons identical to the ones discovered after his last mission.

He thought about Africa. It was ironic that at a time when much of the rest of the world was preparing itself for possible terrorist attacks, Miranda was probably safer in strife-torn Zimbabwe than anywhere else.

‘Jed!’ a man’s voice called from behind him.

Jed turned. ‘Morning, sir. Hell of a day for a walk,’ he said to his commanding officer, a full colonel who had served in the Army since Vietnam. Jed had enormous respect for the old man. A veteran of too many firefights to count, with more combat experience than any of them, he was also a devoted family man who cared for his soldiers like they were his sons. He almost always had the makings of a smile on his face, no matter how bad the situation.

‘Just got a signal from the States, Jed,’ the colonel said. ‘Thought I’d better come find you in person.’

Jed looked into the other man’s eyes. There was no smile. ‘It’s not good, Jed. There’s been an accident…’

2

Jed drained the last of the Scotch from the plastic tumbler and let the single ice cube slide into his mouth as the fasten-seatbelt sign chimed and lit up. He turned and stared out of the window of the United Airlines 737-300 and chomped on the ice as the plane descended through the clouds.

He needed a clear head for his meeting with Patti – she had sounded incoherent on the phone – but at the same time he had needed a couple of Scotches to calm his own nerves for the flight. A combat veteran and paratrooper with more than two hundred jumps on his log card he might have been, but he was still scared of flying. Also, there was the constant pain, a feeling deep in his core, every time he thought of Miranda.

She couldn’t be dead, he told himself over and over again. There was no body, according to Patti, who desperately wanted to believe Miranda was hiding, or maybe alive but lost in the African bush.

‘I don’t know how to tell you this,’ the CO had said to him on the dusty roadside at Bagram, ‘but it seems Miranda has been killed by a lion in Africa.’

For a moment he had thought the colonel was joking. Everyone in the unit knew his daughter was researching carnivores in Africa. The guys in Special Forces were hard men and, Lord knew, some of them had twisted senses of humour, but one thing a guy would never do was joke about another man’s kids.

It was no joke, but it was absurd. Miranda had lived in the African bush for six months and she had repeatedly told Jed in her emails that she knew how to take care of herself. Also, he remembered her reassuring him in one message that when she camped out in the field there was always an armed ranger or safari guide in the party. What had happened to the guard? For the man’s own sake, Jed hoped he was dead. If not, he would be by the time Jed finished with him.

Boston looked cold and bleak through the gaps in the cloud cover. He had never liked coming here, although the thought of meeting Miranda had always made the trip worth it. Nightmarish scenes played over and over in his head as he prepared to face Patti. The thought of his baby being torn apart by a wild beast was too much to bear. He screwed his eyes tight for a couple of seconds to rid himself of the recurring image. He was tired, fall-down tired, but there would be time to sleep on the next flight, later that evening.

He pulled his green suit bag from the overhead locker. He had about an hour with Patti. He doubted he could take more than that. She was waiting for him when he emerged from the airbridge.

They stared at each other for a few seconds.

She was wearing jeans and high-heeled boots, a white T-shirt and a cropped black leather jacket. Her golden hair was piled carelessly high, stray wisps framing her face. She was a little fuller in the face, but still as beautiful as the day they had met. He saw Miranda in her eyes and mouth. It was all he could do to fight back the tears.

Patti Vernon had transferred to his school in his senior year. They had started dating a week after she arrived. She lost her virginity to him on prom night. It seemed as though they would live happily ever after, until he made a spur of the moment decision to join the Army instead of going to college. They had planned to marry as soon as possible, and he wanted to start earning money. She had reluctantly become a soldier’s bride, on the promise that he would eventually go to college with the money he made from his first enlistment.

Their teenage passion lasted for the first year of marriage. Patti was on the pill and took it religiously, except for the weekend between Jed’s basic training and advanced infantry training. They went away to a country hotel and she forgot her oral contraceptive packet. They risked it. Patti fell pregnant.

Jed loved his baby girl, but he was being seduced away from his overtired wife, who seemed to blame him for the fact that she had to drop out of college and could barely afford to make ends meet. Domestic duties left Jed cold, particularly when compared with the excitement of airborne school at Fort Benning, Georgia, and ranger training in the Florida swamps.

Grenada, in 1983, was the first time America had seriously flexed its military muscles since Vietnam. The brief conflict also marked the beginning of the end of Jed and Patti’s marriage. The Army had shaken off the shame of defeat in south-east Asia and Jed Banks had discovered that he was born to be a warrior.

Patti’s lower lip started to tremble and Jed walked to her. He folded her in his arms as she started to cry.

‘Oh, Patti,’ was all he could say.

‘Jed, it can’t be true.’ She leaned back and wiped her face with the back of her hand.

‘I know, Patti. I can’t believe it myself.’

‘She’s all right, Jed, I know it. She might be hurt, but she’s not dead.’

Jed wanted so much to believe Patti was right. ‘Let’s find somewhere to sit down. Are you alone?’

‘Rob’s outside. It’ll take an age for him to park the car. How long have you got?’

‘Less than an hour, and I’ve got to check in for my connection to Johannesburg. Let’s get a coffee.’

He ushered her across to a cafe, his hand on her elbow. He sat her at a table and she blew her nose on a tissue while he went to order.

Jed returned from the counter with two black coffees. ‘OK, tell me about this email you got.’

She sniffed again, then rummaged in her big leather handbag. ‘It’s from a professor. Wallis is her name, Christine.’ Patti pulled a crumpled print-out from the bag and smoothed it out on the laminated tabletop. ‘Miranda met her during her final year at college – said the professor ran a postgraduate program for zoology majors in the Kruger National Park in South Africa. Professor Wallis was the one who put Miranda onto this research project in Zimbabwe.’

Jed nodded. He remembered Miranda’s description of the program, if not the names of the people involved. Zimbabwe had been short of foreign aid for years, because of its political and security situation, and it seemed the few foreign wildlife researchers left in the troubled nation were welcoming with open arms any contributions or volunteers. Miranda had mentioned that she was being funded by a US-based wildlife conservation group, as an offshoot of the program being run by Christine Wallis in South Africa. He couldn’t remember the name of the organisation. ‘So what did the professor have to say?’

‘Well, the media were reporting Miranda’s …’ Patti’s lip began to tremble again.

‘It’s OK, Sugar,’ he said, a little surprised at how easily the old nickname came back.’ I saw the reports.’ He had printed them off at Bagram. ‘They said it appeared she had been sleeping with her tent flap open and that a lion had entered.’

Patti nodded, took a deep breath and held up the paper. ‘Professor Wallis says, “These reports surprised me greatly as Miranda is always so sensible when she spends time in the field. She always made a point of making sure her tent was completely secure, and was well aware of a recent case in which a young man was taken by a lion because he slept with his tent open on a particularly hot evening”.’