Jade

“I need you out of the truck,” Matthias ordered, before he clicked on his radio. “Code 99, I repeat, code 99. ADW in progress. Zone 3. All units, code 17. I repeat, all units, code 17. My current position is…” He checked the GPS mounted on the console and rattled off our coordinates. “I’m moving to intercept.”

The radio crackled with activity. Several voices responded, spitting out codes. I assumed the replies came from ranger patrols scattered throughout the reserve. My heart had stopped and my butt was glued to the seat. I’d known that there was a war going on in Africa, a battle between humans and beasts, existence and extinction. But nothing could’ve prepared me for the sheer shock of watching that magnificent giraffe topple like a centenary tree, inexplicably stricken.

“Why are you still in this truck?”

Matthias’s voice startled me out of the shock. I wasn’t the only one. The girls sat frozen in place, eyes wide and mouths gaping. Matthias stuck his arm out the window and motioned for Zeke to drive his truck alongside ours. He then addressed us with the factual, professional coolness of a veteran of many wars.

“Move out,” he ordered, voice tight and controlled. “You will board the other vehicle immediately.”

Something about his tone worked, because the women sprang their doors open and obediently scurried out of the truck.

I swallowed a dry gulp. “Let me come with you.”

“What?” he snapped, then quickly regained his control. “Negative, that’s a no.”

“Look at me.” I met my reflection on his sunglasses. “This is why I came.”

He cursed under his breath. “What part of ‘get out’ don’t you understand?”

“I’m good to go.” My fingers tightened around my camera. “I can do this.”

“You are not getting hurt under my watch,” he spat between clenched teeth. “Every second you delay means another bullet in the air. Is that what you want?”

No, it wasn’t what I wanted at all. Despite my fervent wishes to the contrary, more shots echoed on the plains. I considered another round of discussion, but Matthias’s face settled into a steel mask. He wasn’t budging. There could be more giraffes dying out there. I grabbed my backpack and jumped out of the truck.

“Secure the station,” Matthias said to Zeke through the window. “Get them out of here.”

He slammed on the accelerator and peeled out, cutting across the clearing and barreling into the bush. Sixty seconds later, those brakes screeched again. I was shocked and upset about the giraffe, but I was also reeling from the fact that the game warden had kept me from doing exactly what I’d come to do.

“Jade?” Peter called. “Come on, we need to get out of here.”

Oh, yeah. I needed to get the hell out of here all right.

More shots rang in the bush. They didn’t sound that far away. I slung my pack over my shoulders, checked my bearings, and estimated the distance between me and the nearest brush. What was it? Fifty meters maybe?

I was no Usain Bolt, but I kept form and I could run a pretty decent mile. I looked down at my smart watch, activated my GPS, and marked my location before I gripped the camera hanging from my neck and met Peter’s eyes.

“Oh, no,” he said, reading my mind. “No, Jade. Stay, Jade. Jade!”

My muscles bunched up and a burst of energy exploded into movement. I bolted away from the road, my feet pumping over the uneven terrain, my eyes scanning the way ahead in the dearth of the setting light. I’d never been anyone’s dog and I wasn’t about to start now. I had skills and I’d educated myself on the perils of the African bush.

I leaped across a ditch and swerved around a termite mound, knowing full well that the truck couldn’t follow me on this trajectory. I made it to the bush before Zeke could turn the Land Rover around. Then I lost sight of the truck, as I jogged, roughly, on a northerly heading in an attempt to intercept the route that Matthias had taken.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, I found the truck’s fresh tracks and followed them. My breath came in gasps. My lungs burned. Along the way, I was very quickly reminded of some of the things I’d learned during my research phase. The African bush wasn’t friendly to human skin. The acacia’s thorns tore at me and left a set of impressive scratches on my arm.

Thank God I’d worn long cargo pants and boots. I slowed down and picked my route with more care, trying to avoid further shredding. Ten minutes later, I spotted Matthias’s Land Rover, parked in a clearing. The truck was empty. His Tilley hat lay abandoned on the front seat.

He was out there. Without backup. Crap. I surveyed the area. The light was waning quickly. The shots had stopped. I understood the risks of entering a battlefield. I considered backtracking, but only for a second. If I could catch the poachers in action, I’d have pictures and a hell of a story to tell.

I knelt on the ground, pulled out my gear from the backpack, and forced myself to go through my standard equipment check. The hum of mosquitoes buzzing around me in a dense cloud reminded me to find my repellent and drench myself in it, dispelling the gathering. Back to my gear. I strapped my prized body camera to my shoulder and flipped it on. I checked my Nikon DSLR, inserted a new memory card, and adjusted it to low light setting. With my equipment ready, I secured my pack to my back and advanced cautiously, following the imprint of Matthias’s fresh tracks on the ground.

Once in the bush, it was hard to make out shapes, especially with the light ebbing. I kept at high alert. Twice, I startled some kind of fowl from its cover among the undergrowth and once I almost stepped on a warthog. It huffed at me before it took off, tail in the air. What else was crammed in the woods along with me?

I stopped and listened. It took a little while, but I caught a break. Voices. Somewhere to my right. Sound carried far on the Serengeti, so I stole silently toward the noise. As the sun sank beyond the fiery horizon, I caught a glimpse of a clearing in the distance. There was a bulge on the ground. I zoomed my lens and looked through my viewfinder, taking advantage of the last vestiges of light. I clamped down on my lip. The giraffe.

Flashlights came on. I counted eight men huddled around the dead animal. The giraffe had already been gutted and the poachers were hard at work skinning the animal with expediency that suggested a professional poaching crew.

I gulped around the lump in my throat. Tempering my adrenaline, I crept along a dry creek that sheltered me from view. It led me to a small gap in the bush overlooking the larger clearing. Poachers had a reputation for being a nasty bunch and what I’d learned so far indicated that these merited some extra care. I crawled up the dusty bank, took off my backpack to ensure a low profile, and concealed myself in the grass. Night had fallen and a full moon was quickly rising, showering the bush with a silvery sparkle that accentuated the shadows around me.

I adjusted the body cam on my shoulder. Flash was out of the question. Under the moonlight, I’d need a longer exposure to capture any images. I braced my left arm on the ground, steadied my DSLR against my forearm, and began to shoot a combination of pictures and footage, hoping to capture at least a few clear images.

The moonlight and the zoom lens allowed me to see the men working on the giraffe. They wielded power tools, wore military fatigues, and were well armed. Some of the men were covered in blood as they worked to skin the animal. A grunt startled me. The rustle of several large bodies passing nearby had me on the alert for an unfriendly animal encounter. I tried not to think about Africa’s great predators. You wanted to come to Africa, Jade? Well, there you have it, girl. Enjoy your visit.

I took in a deep breath. My lungs filled with the scent of ash-covered loam and grass, dung, urine and blood. The mosquitoes buzzed by, but they weren’t biting. I was stretched out on my belly, propped on my elbows, clicking away, minding my own business, when the elephant stepped on me. At least, that’s what I thought happened for a whole ten seconds, when I couldn’t breathe under the crushing weight that squashed me to the ground like a turd smashed under a giant foot. Of course, the fact that elephants have no hands should have been a dead giveaway, since a massive hand clamped down over my mouth.

“Quiet.” A voice rasped in my ear. “Not a word. Understand?”

I froze and nodded. The pressure over my mouth eased. When I didn’t scream, or move, the hand retreated and the crushing weight lifted.

The murmur came again. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

Funny how I’d only heard that pebbly voice today for the first time and yet I knew exactly who it belonged to.

“I’m doing my job, kind of like you,” I whispered, glancing at Matthias, who now sprawled on his belly next to me, eyeing the poachers. He’d ditched his sunglasses and had his carbine with him as well as a sidearm I hadn’t seen before. I caught a sparkle of fire in his eyes before repositioning my camera over my arm and jockeying for my next picture. “How did you find me?”

“You sounded like a rhino coming through the bush.”

“Did not.”

“Quiet.” He lifted a pair of state of the art thermal binoculars that I’d love to own. “My men will be here soon.”

“I thought the poachers were after elephant and rhino,” I whispered. “Why are they poaching a giraffe?”

“That’s a magnificent specimen for any collector,” Matthias said in hushed tones. “And giraffe meat is an expensive, exotic treat in China. They’ll make a good chunk of change on that kill. Now, you’re gonna backtrack to the truck and wait for me there.”

“I will do no such thing.”

“You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?” He cursed under his breath. “You’re out of here the minute we get out of the bush…”

I don’t think he was done by any means, and I sure had some things I wanted to say, but the click of a weapon cocking behind us silenced us both. We exchanged wary looks. This is all your fault, his eyes said. Worst part? He could be right.

“Follow my lead.” He placed his weapon on the ground and rose with his hands in the air.

I set my camera on the dirt and rose to my feet, hands up. Two men dressed in green camouflage faced us. One was taller than the other by a good foot, but both men were armed with AK-47s and both weapons were centered on us.

My stomach plummeted to my feet. Had I really gotten us caught? No way. I had skills. I was good. It hit me like a Mack truck. These poachers had set up a trap. They’d actually lured us in with their kill. These two must have been holding back to ambush first responders. Were they out to kill the reserve’s rangers?

My knees buckled a little. I forced myself to breathe and focused on the two men. Think, Jade. I hadn’t seen this kind of action in a while. Assess, adapt, overcome.

Eyes wide, the shorter man of the two pointed a fat finger at Matthias. “Kifaru?” he said, in Swahili.

“Ndiyo.” The taller man’s smile widened and he motioned for the other man to approach us from the right before he shifted into perfect, British-accented English. “I think we just got ourselves the prize.”

Since the taller man seemed to be calling the shots, I labeled him as T-man in my mind. Short man became Pot Belly, for obvious reasons. T-man and Pot Belly approached us with their weapons pointed straight at our chests. At this range, a single bullet could do the trick.

T-man eyed Matthias and spoke in a deep baritone as he continued his approach. I didn’t understand a word he said, but I’d witnessed enough conflicts in my life to recognize the tension in the air, the winner giving orders to the loser, saying things, probably nasty things, judging by the way in which T-man’s eyes kept deviating in my direction.

If I had gotten us into this mess, I had to get us out of it, and fast.

Matthias could’ve been a block of granite next to me, a sculpted rock sticking out from the earth with zero expression on his blank face.

“What’s he saying?” I muttered between stiff lips.

“You don’t wanna know,” he muttered back.

“You got a plan?” I kept my stare on the two approaching thugs.

His voice was barely audible. “It doesn’t include you.”

Great. Peachy. Fantastic. He wasn’t a team player. I swallowed a dry gulp.

T-man came to stand next to me. His breath blustered over my cheeks as his black eyes inspected my face. Sweat glimmered on his narrow forehead, pooled above his lips and shone over his razored skull. My heart, which was already beating hard, revved up. I pressed my lips together and forced myself into assess mode.

With a swipe of his hand, T-man ripped the body cam from my shoulder. The straps of my harness broke, but the yank left me smarting all the same. Next to me, Matthias flinched, but he held still when Pot Belly came around and pressed his gun to the back of his skull.

T-man extracted the memory card and dropped it in his pocket before he slammed my body cam on the ground and stomped on it several times. The little camera crumbled beneath his boot with sickening cracks. I cringed. Great. There went another cutting edge, pricy toy. If I survived today, Hannah was going to kill me.

T-man hung his weapons from his shoulder, seized my arm above the elbow and dug his fingers into my flesh.

“Kneel,” he said to Matthias. When Matthias didn’t follow his order, T-man pulled out a nine millimeter from his holster and pressed the muzzle against my temple. “Kneel and clasp your hands behind your back or she dies.”

Reluctantly, slowly, Matthias bent his knees and knelt on the ground. His eyes never left T-man’s face. Pot Belly grabbed Matthias’s hand gun from its holster and stuck it in his belt. Matthias’s glare could’ve incinerated everyone in the clearing.

“So you are the great Matthias Hawking?” T-man studied Matthias. “You don’t look so great to me right now, kneeling on the ground. I had my hopes, but I didn’t think you’d venture out here on your own, when most of your men are chasing ghosts on the other side of the reserve.”

The calvary might be coming, but apparently, not soon enough.

T-man barked something at Pot Belly, who snapped into action. He pulled out a tattered map from his front pocket, unfolded it, and laid it on the ground before Matthias.

“Where’s the ivory?” T-man said. “Where are the elephants?”

My belly went cold. The thug was looking for the reserve’s elephant herds. I’d learned about the herds before I came. They represented millions of dollars on the ivory black market. At a time when some of the greatest herds of Africa had been decimated, Pacha Ziwa’s elephants not only survived, they thrived. They had developed a survival strategy against poachers that included an uncanny ability to seemingly dissapear from the landscape. Where they went was a mystery. For the safety of the elephants, the scientists who tracked them kept the secret. But now the poachers were closing in and the herds were in extreme danger.

Matthias stared at T-man. His gaze never once wavered. Not a single word made it through his tightly pressed lips. I let out a slow breath. If anybody knew where the herds were, it would be the reserve’s game warden. The poacher’s plan began to make sense to me. Bait and trap the rangers to find the elephants. But Matthias made no move to help these thugs. I liked that about him. Now I just needed to come up with a plan to get us out of here. Nothing like a gun to the head to stimulate the brain.

T-man squeezed my arm and confronted Matthias. “This here your girlfriend?”

“I’m most certainly not his girlfriend,” I said, feigning indignation. I didn’t think it would help if T-man thought we were an item and frivolous conversation seemed like the best start to my plan, which so far, mostly consisted of smoke and mirrors, delay and distract. If I could keep us alive until the rangers got here, we had a fighting chance.

“I don’t believe you, girl.” T-man’s gaze shifted between Matthias and I. “I know he likes you. Watch this.” In a sudden move, he put me into a chokehold. “Yeah, he likes you. See? His whiteass face is getting all red.” He let out a mocking cackle as Matthias’s face flushed even redder, along with his ears. My heart was going a million miles an hour, but so was my mind.

“And why wouldn’t he like you?” T-man scoffed against my ear. “You are all woman. You’d make an excellent lay. Sweet ass.” He squeezed my butt, dipped his nose in my hair and inhaled. “You smell good, like a mare in heat, like you need to be fucked really hard.”

I held my breath against the spicy tinge of his sweat and the smell of pot that scented his breath. His nearness made me sick to my stomach. But I wasn’t going to panic. Instead, I stomped on his foot, hard, and tried to twist out of his clutch in a bid to test his strentgh. My findings weren’t encouraging. He had a good hold of me and his body was built of marble-like muscle. He pressed his forearm around my neck and cut off my breath until polka dots began to dance before my eyes.

“Feisty zebra you got here.” He laughed his unpleasant cackle. “I’m going to enjoy breaking her in.”

“Leave her alone, Kumbuyo.” Matthias finally spoke. “Your problem is with me.”

“You know my name?” The man eased his chokehold and I could breathe again. “How?”

“Kobe Kumbuyo.” Matthias flashed a ferocious smirk. “I know who you are and where you come from. I know you work for Lamba, although I can’t figure out why you’d work for a son of a bitch like him. My advice? Get the fuck away while you can, take your goddamn poachers with you, and don’t come back.”

It was a bold warning for a man who was currently unarmed and kneeling on the ground with the muzzle of an AK-47 hovering in the vicinity of his head. Not only was I shocked, I was impressed, because the man that Matthias had just defied was no small time poacher.

The name Kobe Kumbuyo threatened to turn my leg bones into mashed potatoes. I locked my knees and tried to reason through the fear. I’d come across Kumbuyo’s foul credentials during my research. He was part of an infamous rebel group that border-hopped throughout Central Africa, trading tusks and prized animal parts to buy weapons. He worked for Francoise Lamba, the bloody leader of the Lord’s Liberation Army.

Lamba was wanted for crimes against humanity. His army raided villages, killed the men and elders, and abducted the women and children. He raped the women and turned them into slaves, which he trafficked for money. He forced boys into his so-called-army and drove them to kill their own people.

But Lamba’s reign of terror had been concentrated in Central Africa, Uganda, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Until now. The fact that Kobe Kumbuyo was here, at the very edge of the Serengeti, was very bad news for Tanzania. Wherever Kumbuyo went, Lamba followed and massacre occurred, for wildlife, sure, but also for people.

“I’m warning you,” Matthias muttered, from his place kneeling on the ground. “Get the fuck out of Pacha Ziwa.”

“Shoot him,” Kumbuyo said to Pot Belly with the casual ease of someone who’d given that exact same order a thousand times.

Matthias’s eyes turned to his would be killer. There wasn’t a trace of fear in his stare, only fierce, pure defiance and rage that tensed his coiled body. Pot Belly pressed the muzzle of his AK-47 against the base of Matthias’s skull and put his finger to the trigger. A warning screamed in my mind. Adapt, adapt, adapt!

“Don’t shoot him.” My voice startled everybody. “Those elephant herds? He’s the only one who knows where they are. Who’s going to tell you where to find the ivory if you shoot him?”

Matthias’s head snapped up. His eyes focused on me. It was as if he was seeing me for the first time. Pot Belly looked to Kumbuyo in confusion. Kumbuyo’s narrow forehead crumpled and his lips puckered in an angry pout. I don’t know what made him madder, Matthias’s defiant glare or his own lapse in logic.

Kumbuyo hesitated for a moment, then grabbed a fistful of my hair and hurled me across the small clearing, pitching me against the trunk of a nearby tree. I whirled around. When possible, I preferred to face my opponent. I found Kumbuyo’s eyes fast on me and his handgun aimed straight at my chest.

“Don’t do this, Kumbuyo,” Matthias rumbled. “If you hurt the woman you’ll have the Americans trailing your ass in no time. Lamba won’t like that much. Let’s make a deal. You let her go and I’ll take you to the herds.”

“No way,” I said. “The herds have to be protected.”

Matthias’s stare clobbered me. “How about you keep quiet for a change?”

“You’re going to tell me where the herds are,” Kumbuyo said, towering over Matthias. “You’re going to tell me right now or you’re going to hear her scream.”

Matthias started. “If you hurt her—”

Kumbuyo struck Matthias’s face with the back of his hand, a hard blow that twisted Matthias’s head on his neck and sent him teetering to the ground. I gasped and started to go to him, but Kumbuyo’s gun cased me again, persuading me that moving would be a really bad idea.

Matthias caught himself with one arm, straightened on his knees, and wiped the blood trickling from his nose. He stared at the crimson blotch on his hand and smiled, a flash of fangs. Slowly, deliberately, he lifted his head and fixed his glare back on Kumbuyo.

“The elephant herds?” Kumbuyo said.

Matthias gave him nothing. I had to give the guy credit. He had the balls of a bull.

And then Kumbuyo cocked his gun and aimed it at Matthias’s head.

Keep adapting. I had to do something.

“Excuse me?” I curled my index at Kumbuyo. “May I have a word with you, in private, please?”

Kumbuyo’s stare shifted to me. “Now what?”

“I might know a few things that may interest you.”

Kumbuyo’s eyebrows raised on his forehead. “And what would that be?”

“About the elephants?”

Matthias’s voice came in a low growl. “She doesn’t know shit.”

“I do too.” I tried to sound convincing.

“She just got here,” Matthias said. “Fresh off the plane.”

“I know some things,” I said defensively. “And I’ll share, If you give me what I want.”

Kumbuyo chuckled. “Do you think you’re in position to negotiate with me?”

“Allow me to explain,” I said, thinking on my feet, grappling to come up with something that might sound plausible without giving up my true identity, because that would only complicate a bad scenario and make it worse. “I’m here on assignment. I’m a photojournalist. In the States. I came here to get the story behind the story. I’m interested in talking to people like you, people who are in the forefront of Africa’s civil wars, freedom fighters like you.”

“Is that so?” The man flashed a contemptous grin that confirmed my ruse wasn’t working. “You must think I’m an idiot if you think I’d fall for that one.” Kumbuyo eyed Matthias. “You were about to talk elephants?”

“No, I wasn’t.” Matthias flashed his insolent smirk.

He was trying to mess with Kumbuyo’s mind. Anger often led to mistakes and mistakes offered opportunities. But Kumbuyo was a seasoned fighter, and he had his own mind games to play. He sneered at Matthias and kept his gun on me.

“I suppose you need to be persuaded.” Kumbuyo turned to me. “Take off your shirt.”

My stomach hit the ground. “Excuse me?”

Kumbuyo barked. “Do what I say.”

“Um…” I hesitated. “I’m not very good at that.”

Kumbuyo pulled the trigger.

The shot rang loud in my ears. The impact rattled my knees. Was I hit? I glanced down at myself, heart hammering in my throat. No blood. No pain. I looked to one side, where the moonlight illuminated the tree bark, chipped by a bullet, not three inches from my head. I took a breath and then another. I was alive and so was Matthias, whose face echoed the moon’s pale light. Kumbuyo had proven he was beyond dangerous. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill us.

“Next time I’ll punch a hole in the middle of your pretty forehead,” he said. “I won’t ask again: Take. Off. Your. Shirt.”

My brain was in full gear. I was dealing for our lives. Matthias’s jaw clenched so tight that a muscle twitched on his face. One of the poachers who was working on the giraffe came to investigate when he heard the shot and lingered at the clearing. Now there was another armed thug flanking Matthias. Crap. It was time to adapt some more, to the extreme if necessary.

“All righty.” I swallowed a huge gulp of fear and tinkered with my buttons. If my delay and distract tactics were going to work, I needed to convert my weaknesses into strengths and play up whatever assets I had available, which were not many at the moment.

I steadied my voice and let out a little huff. “How about a new trade? You don’t have to be such as asshole, you know.”

Kumbuyo’s eyes narrowed. “What did you call me?”

“An asshole,” I said, matter of factly. “The asshole is that part of your anatomy from where you—”

“I know what it is!” He snapped. “You don’t call me names, woman!”

“Oh, come on.” I batted my eyelashes like a shameless flirt, my fingers progressing slowly down my buttons. “You don’t have to be all mean and grumpy all the time.”

He snarled, a soul-freezing sound. “What?”

“You.” I said a little prayer in my head and stuck to my plan. “You’re not a bad looking guy. In fact, you’re kind of attractive when you smile, which by the way, is not nearly often enough. If I’d met you at a bar in, say, Arusha, and you would’ve bought me a drink or something, I may have let you take me upstairs, if you get my meaning.”

Kumbuyo’s eyes widened.

Matthias rumbled. “Jade…”

“I’m not ashamed to admit it,” I said over Matthias’s voice. “You’re an attractive fellow. You’re big and strong and brawny. I’m a sucker for brawny. And I do love big.” I let out a flirty chuckle. “You give me an interview? I’ll make you a very happy guy.”

I let my gaze roam over his body, lingering over the bulge rising between his legs. I batted my eyelashes some more, pouted a bit and, having captured Kumbuyo’s complete attention, chose that moment to part my shirt. His knuckles tightened around his gun but his arm fell to his side, along with his gun. He stared at me, lips slacked, eyes centered on my body.

I was a shock-and-awe kind of girl and a true believer in the tactical element of surprise. So I slid my arms out of my sleeves, dropped my shirt on the ground, and reached behind my back. Following one crazy feat with another, I unhooked my bra and tossed it aside, as casually as if I were taking off my sunglasses.

And then I was naked from the waist up, bared to the elements and exposed to the feral stares aiming at me, proving that I could shock the shit out of anyone, including my wildest self.