But the dog lowered his head suddenly as he neared, its tail tucking in as it edged toward him sideways, wiggling, whining. That’s when Brandt saw Amal’s body behind the rock—throat ripped out. Arm mauled. Dead. This dog had killed the one-armed bandit? Another body lay in the sand a few metres away from Amal.
They were all dead, every single one of the men who had entered the ambush.
Confusion raced through Brandt’s mind as he crouched down and took hold of the animal’s collar. He reached for his flashlight, shone it on the tag.
Jock.
His heart began to hammer overtime, his life flashing before his eyes—images of Stefaan, mauled. His own dog, blood on its mouth. Yolanda. His brother. He was beyond exhausted—he hadn’t slept for days, he told himself. He was hallucinating, here in the Valley of Ghosts—seeing a dog from his past.
Fatigue was catching up with him, that’s all this was. Brandt tried to shake the ghostly sensation as he whistled for Dalilah.
While he waited for her to come down, he read the name on the dog’s tag again, just to be certain he’d seen it right the first time. “Hey, buddy,” Brandt said, crouching. “What happened here? Where are you from?”
The dog whimpered then slithered off to a body lying not far from Amal. He licked the man’s face, then lay down beside him with another whimper.
Frowning, Brandt went over to the body.
Dalilah came scrambling down the rocks behind him.
She froze.
“That’s Jock!” she whispered.
“I know,” he said, crouching beside the dog. Just like the animal he’d rescued from the wilds in Caprivi, the one his brother shot. It looked exactly the same—a russet Staffordshire cross, stocky and strong.
“Jock from the safari lodge,” she said, still trying to wrap her own head around the animal’s appearance in the Valley of Ghosts. “The lodge owner told us he was using him to track... Oh, my God.” She dropped to her haunches beside Brandt. “This is Jacob. He’s the lodge tracker—Amal must have forced them to trail us, Brandt.”
An AK-47 lay in the sand next to him.
“It must have been Jacob,” he said, looking at the gun, “who turned on them all. He killed Amal’s men, and Amal must have attacked him—Jock tried to protect him.”
Dalilah reached to feel for a pulse at the old man’s neck.
“He’s alive, Brandt! He’s got a pulse!”
Quickly they rolled him over. There was blood across his abdomen, and more blood pooled dark in the sand under him. Yanking up the old man’s shirt, Brandt shone his flashlight over him. “He’s been stabbed.”
Brandt ripped off his own shirt. Balling it up, he pressed it to the old man’s wound. “Hold this! I’m going to see if I can bring our jeep round.”
Dalilah pressed the balled-up shirt into Jacob’s side as Brandt ran off to find the jeep. Smoke burned her throat and eyes, a fire still crackling in one of the engines.
The dog whimpered beside her, wriggling closer to Jacob. Emotion squeezed through Dalilah’s chest, and her attention went to the mauled body lying a few feet from her.
Amal Ghaffar. The one-armed enemy of the Al Arif clan, dead in the moonlight, a hooked and bejewelled dagger covered with blood at his side. Killed by a dog. It seemed fitting somehow, she wasn’t sure why. But however this bastard had died, a battle of decades was finally over. An era of true peace was finally possible for the Al Arif family. And it had ended in the Valley of Ghosts.
Bile rose in her throat, and she looked away.
The dog stayed with her, whimpering softly. Tears pooled and ran down her cheeks.
Two days later
Brandt and Dalilah had been in Gaborone, the Botswana capital, for over forty-eight hours now. They’d driven Jacob in Skorokoro to the nearest town, where Brandt had accessed a phone and secured a chopper. Jacob had been airlifted with them and Jock to the Princess Marina Hospital, where he’d gone straight into surgery. Luckily, he was going to survive.
When Jacob had been able to speak after the operation, he’d told Brandt he’d seen signs of the ambush as they entered the gorge, and he’d said nothing—he’d wanted Amal to die, and he’d figured Amal was going to kill him and the dog anyway. Jacob preferred going by ambush, he’d told Brandt.
They’d also learned from him that all the staff back at the Zimbabwe lodge had been systematically slaughtered, including Jacob’s wife. He had no remaining family.
Brandt invited the old tracker to come stay on his farm, where the old man could heal and be with Jock for as long as he wanted. Brandt was indebted to Jacob—he’d kept the blood off both his and Dalilah’s hands. He couldn’t begin to say what this meant to him.