Zoo(9)

The man lowered the machete in order to hop out of the car. He held the machete pointed at Abe, but was only half paying attention as he worked with the other hand to liberate the Winchester from the gun rack. Abe reached into the inner lining of his utility jacket and his hand came out holding a nasty little snub-nosed .38 Special. Abe put the pistol barrel between the man's eyes: they crossed just as Curly's do when Moe pokes him in the nose. The man took his hands off the rifle and lowered the machete.

Then the guy behind me removed the machete from my neck. The men and the teenager exchanged glances, shrugged as though they'd just lost a bet fair and square, and hopped out of the truck. Without another word to us, they started walking away, back in the direction we'd come from. The dogs growled and barked after them, but Abe whistled them silent. Abe was red-faced and shaking. At first I thought it was from fear, and then I realized it was mostly anger.

"Cowards!" Abe yelled back at them between his cupped hands. "Boogie shite-asses! Scoundrels!"

He spat brown juice out the window, wiped his face on his sleeve, cursed under his breath, and released the clutch.

"Superstitious traitorous idiot boogie sons of bitches," he muttered, half to me and half to himself, maybe half to the dogs. "It's just us now, gents."

I leaned back in my seat and wiped sweat off my face as I closed my eyes. My pulse was still hammering when I turned and lifted the camera off the seat behind me.

Maybe Natalie had been right about my coming here to Africa, I thought. A cubicle in an air-conditioned office building wasn't looking quite so terrible to me right about now.





Chapter 18



A COUPLE OF miles farther north, we came upon some salt flats forked by a river delta. The scenery beyond them was breathtaking. An endless patchwork of more grassland and salt flats ran as far as the eye could see. I could understand why rich European and American tourists came to the Okavango Delta for safaris. The landscape was spectacular.

The trail we'd been following passed through a ford in one of the river deltas.

"Jesus, are you sure-" was all I could get out before Abe impassively stomped the accelerator and plowed us headlong into swirling water the color of chocolate milk. The water came up to the truck's door handles. I was expecting the motor to quit at any moment. I mentally prepared myself to go swimming. We got wet.

"You New Yorkers," Abe said, pushing us through the flood with his hand on the clutch and his foot on the gas, getting us through it with a mix of horsepower and will. He jerked his hat brim at the snorkel on the side of the truck. "Got it handled, man. Leave it to Beaver."

We slogged through to the other side and up the steep, muddy bank onto a plain of tall, light green grass, maybe about three or four acres wide. A path of tire tracks cut straight across it toward a lagoon that sparkled like silver, where a herd of seventy or so Cape buffalo were shouldering each other in a shallows.

"Look sharp," Abe said, pointing to the herd. "We're getting close now. Those are the buffalo the lions hunt."

I almost dropped the video camera when Abe stomped the brake and brought us to an abrupt stop halfway to the lagoon. At the other end of the tall glade of faded grass, an open Land Rover exactly like ours, with the name of the safari company on the side, was parked by a sausage tree.

Abe took a pair of binoculars from one of his kit bags and stood up on his seat. He slowly swept the glasses over the grassy plain. Then he lowered the binoculars, draped the strap over his neck, sat back down, and drove cautiously across the clearing toward the empty truck.

We stopped beside the vehicle and got out. Something shiny caught Abe's eye. He bent down to the ground and lifted something from the grass. I zoomed in on it with the camera.

It was a woman's gold Cartier tank watch. It looked as out of place here in the African veldt as a shrunken head would have on a plate at the Four Seasons. The alligator strap was encrusted with blood.

We got back in the truck and kept bucking and rocking over the grass. We weren't talking. There were clothes littering the ground around the empty truck and the trunk of the sausage tree, scattered among the grass and dwarf savanna shrubs. Blood-stiffened scraps of shirts, pants, a woman's sneaker, a fanny pack. Bits of fabric blew across the fields. There was a piece of what looked like a Hawaiian shirt stuck in the tree, fluttering on a branch like a flag.

Abe looked up into the canopy of trees and then over at the Land Rover.

"Look, man," he said, pointing. "See the rifle? It's not even out of the rack. The safari guides who go out with the guests, they're no superstitious pussies like our dear kooky friends back there. They're professionals. This all must have happened in seconds. Too fast for them to get their guns."</ol>
 
 

 

"Male lions will protect their pride from humans, but this looks like some sort of ambush," I offered, trying to be helpful.

"And what did they do with the bodies?" Abe said. "Lions usually feed where they kill. I've never seen anything like this."





Chapter 19



STRETCHED FLAT IN the tall grass, the dominant one-eyed male lion crouches, waiting. Since hearing the distant grumble of the engine, he has been lying on the edge of the clearing about eighty feet to the east, just within charging range.

His powerful chest rises and falls under his almost strawberry blond mane. His dusky amber eyes narrow, focused on the distance. He opens his mouth slightly, whiskers tingling as he scents the dry wind.

Having hunted this pride area almost from birth, the ten-year-old male knows every inch of the terrain. At first, he'd lain in wait to the west, but moved when the wind shifted. A keen predator, he takes up a position downwind, so his scent won't be detected by his prey.

He is waiting patiently for his prey to put its head down or face the other way, the optimum position for attack. Just a moment or two of distraction will give him enough time to charge. He will finish the stalk as he always does, by quickly knocking his prey off its feet and clamping his jaws on its throat.

He would have already attacked, except he is wary of people, unused to hunting them. He has been shot at several times before by hunters and game preserve rangers during his days of wandering, before he had joined his pride.

Without taking his eyes off the prey, the lion makes a low vocalization. It is answered by a soft growl, almost a purr, in the grass to his right, and then by another string of moans in the grass to his left.

In response to his call for a stalking attack, the two dozen lions at his back split into two groups, one to flank and herd, the other to wait in ambush.

The flanking lions begin skulking quickly, silently through the grass, using every scrap of cover. Their yellow and brown fur makes them all but invisible, tawny masses of grass-colored animals in the vegetation. They string themselves into a loose net around both the sausage tree and the prey, cutting off any chance of escape.





Chapter 20



ABE COCKED HIS head and whistled, and the dogs leaped from the truck and into the tall grass.

"Listen, man," Abe said as he sighted through his rifle's telescope. "If it comes up, the best way to kill a lion is a head shot, right between the eyes."

"Thanks for the tip," I said, continuing to film.

I lowered the camera a moment later when two sharp, loud dog whines rose in the air at the clearing's edge. One right after the other.

Abe whistled for the dogs. Nothing happened.

He put his fingers to his lips, whistled louder. Silence.

"That's not good," he said.

Abe raised the Remington to his shoulder and pressed an eye to its sight. I swung my camera in the same direction and held my breath.

A lion appeared in the grass twenty yards to our east.

I had never seen a lion in the wild before. It is a beautiful and terrifying sight. The sheer bigness of the animal. It truly makes something spin in your soul, deep below the ribs.

I was still in a state of unprofessional awe when Abe pulled the trigger. The blast of the rifle so close to me was like a kick in the head. It left a mosquito whine in my left ear. In the place where the lion had been standing a moment before, there was nothing. It was as if he had disappeared.

Abe climbed back up into the Land Rover.

"Get your ass up here if you feel like staying alive, man."

That sounded like a good idea to me. I slammed the door, and then there was motion from the other end of the clearing. A second male lion broke cover and stood up in the tall grass, stock-still, tail swishing. Watching us. There was something otherworldly and bleak about his implacable, amber-eyed gaze.

The lion roared and began moving toward us. Slowly at first. Then something triggered in him, and he tumbled into a charge, coming at us at breakneck speed. Abe pulled the trigger just as he began his leap. Another jolting crack of firepower in the air. I saw a fistful of brain fly out of the back of his head. He died in the air and slammed onto the ground in a tumble, rolling into the driver's side of the truck, rocking it as though it were a cradle in the grass.

I kept filming as Abe kicked out the bullet casing. It pinged off the edge of the windshield with a sound like a wind chime. On the ground below, I noticed that the lion was still breathing.

Not for long. There was another whamming thud as Abe shot it right above the buttocks through the spine.

Abe replaced the three spent cartridges in the rifle's magazine. When he was done, he lifted off his hat and swiped his brow as he looked around the clearing. Silence. No insects, no birds. The shadow of a high white cloud raced over us. I took my eye from the viewfinder for a moment and glanced at Abe beside me. He looked sick.</ol>