Burning Angels

Taking a massive gulp of air, he dived through the smoke towards the heart of the flames. Incredibly, he felt no sensation of burning; no heat at all. He lifted the can and let rip, the foam cutting through the toxic vapours and dousing the flames within seconds.

Fighting his way forward into the cockpit, he unbuckled the unconscious form of Konig and hauled him from the HIP. Konig looked as if he’d taken a blow to the head, but otherwise he seemed relatively unharmed. Jaeger was soaked with sweat by now, and choking from the smoke, yet he turned a further time and ripped open the other door to the HIP’s cockpit.

With a final burst of energy, he grabbed the co-pilot and began to drag him towards safety.

50

Jaeger and Narov had been moving at speed for a good three hours now. Sticking to the cover of a wadi — a dry watercourse — they’d managed to overtake the poaching gang, and without any sign that they had been spotted.

They pressed ahead to a thick grove of acacia trees, from which they could get eyes on the poachers as they passed. They needed to assess numbers, weaponry, strengths and weaknesses, in order to determine the best way to hit them.

Back at the helicopter, the poachers had been driven off by the weight of defensive fire, and the injured had been stabilised. They’d called for a medevac chopper, which Katavi Lodge was getting sorted. They planned to lift the baby elephant out at the same time as picking up the wounded.

But Jaeger and Narov had left long before any of that could happen, hard on the trail of the poachers.

From the cover of the acacia grove they watched the gang approach. There were ten gunmen. The RPG operator who’d hit the HIP, plus his loader, would be bringing up the rear, making twelve in all. To Jaeger’s practised eye, they looked tooled up to the nines. Long bandoliers of ammo were hanging off their torsos, and magazines were stuffed into bulging pockets, plus rakes of grenades for the launchers.

Twelve poachers, with a veritable war in a box. It wasn’t the sort of odds he relished.

As they watched the gang pass, they saw the ivory — four massive bloodied tusks — being passed between them. Each man took his turn, staggering along with a tusk slung over his shoulder, before passing it on to another.

Jaeger didn’t doubt the energy expended in doing so. He and Narov had moved light, but still they were drenched in sweat. His thin cotton shirt was glued to his back. They had grabbed some bottled water out of the HIP, but even so they were already running short. And these guys — the poachers — were carrying many times more weight.

Jaeger guessed that each tusk was a good forty kilos, so as heavy as a small adult. He figured they’d be breaking march and setting camp any time soon. They’d have to. Dusk was only a short time away, and they would need to drink, eat and rest.

And that meant the plan forming in his mind might just be doable.

He settled back into the cover of the wadi, signalling Narov to do likewise. ‘Seen enough?’ he whispered.

‘Enough to want to kill them all,’ she hissed.

‘My sentiments exactly. Trouble is, if we take them on in open battle, it’ll be suicide.’

‘Got a better idea?’ she rasped.

‘Maybe.’ Jaeger delved into his backpack and pulled out his compact Thuraya satphone. ‘From what Konig told us, elephant ivory is solid, like a massive tooth. But like all teeth, at the root end there’s a hollow cone: the pulp cavity. And that’s filled with soft tissue, cells and veins.’

‘I’m listening,’ Narov growled. Jaeger could tell she still wanted to go in and hit them right here and now.

‘Sooner or later the gang will have to call a halt. They camp up for the night, and we go in. But we don’t hit them. Not yet.’ He held up the Thuraya. ‘We stuff this deep into the pulp cavity. We get Falkenhagen to track the signal. That leads us to their base. In the meantime, we order up some proper hardware. Then we go in and hit them at a time and place of our choosing.’

‘How do we get close enough?’ Narov demanded. ‘To plant the satphone?’

‘I don’t know. But we do what we do best. We observe; we study. We find a way.’

Narov’s eyes glinted. ‘And what if someone calls the phone?’

‘We set it to vibrate mode. Silent.’

‘And if it vibrates its way loose and falls out?’

Jaeger sighed. ‘Now you’re just being difficult.’

‘Being difficult keeps me alive.’ Narov rummaged in her pack and pulled out a tiny device no bigger than a pound coin. ‘How about this? GPS tracker device. Solar-powered Retrievor. Accurate up to one and a half metres. I figured we might need one to keep tabs on Kammler’s people.’

Jaeger held out a hand for it. Stuffing this deep into the tusk’s pulp cavity was certainly feasible, if only they could get close enough.

Narov held off from passing it over. ‘One condition: I get to place it.’

Jaeger eyed her for a second. She was slight, nimble and smart, that much he knew, and he didn’t doubt that she might move more quietly than he could.

He smiled. ‘Let’s do this.’