Danger Woman (2 page)

Chapter Three

Sanderson gathered up Charles Tlalelo and headed to the car park. “We are going to search for bones and I need you to help,” she said, and handed him a GPS device.

One dared not venture alone into the park on foot or with the intention of leaving one's vehicle for more than a few seconds. The park spread out over thousands of acres and the chance a lion or other predator might lurk behind the nearest bush, while remote, was still a possibility. Few, if any humans, would be quick enough to avoid its powerful paws and jaws if encountered. Sanderson wanted Charles to keep watch and, if necessary, fire his rifle in the air to frighten off any predators which might venture too close. Charles jumped at the chance to leave his desk and paperwork behind. Sorting through census figures of the numbers and kinds of species in the park served an important function, but also remained an extremely dull occupation for someone yearning to be a man of importance. He stood, tucked in the tail of his uniform shirt, put on his aviator sunglasses, and headed for the door. Sanderson had him set the coordinates on her GPS device to those she'd recorded the previous night.

It took a little under a half hour to find the spot. She circled the area three times in decreasing concentric circles and, handing the rifle to Charles, got out of the SUV. It would soon be warm and the animals would seek what shade the bush offered. She scanned the surroundings with great care. The area seemed safe enough. The hyenas had returned and reduced the gazelle to unrecognizable bits and pieces. Unlike most of their competitors, the big cats, hyenas use their incredibly powerful jaws to crack and chew through bone. Whereas a cat or vultures would strip off the meat and soft body parts and usually leave a bloody skeleton behind, a hyenas left only pieces that required a trained eye to reassemble into an identifiable kill.

As she expected, she found nothing much that she could identify with any certainty. A medical examiner would have to do that. But there were two distinct areas and the fragments were obviously from separate victims. The size of the bones, one she believed to be the head of a femur, suggested she'd found what little remained of the rest of the body that went with the head. Satisfied she had all that was possible, she bagged what she could, tossed them into the rear of the Land Rover, and climbed into the passenger seat.

“Very well, Charles, let us go on a treasure hunt.”

“Pardon?”

“The park, as you must be aware of by now, has become a dumping ground for the bodies of all sorts of people who must be in this struggle for the late Rra Botlhokwa's business. I want to see if we have all or if we might have missed a body or two.”

“How will we do that, Sanderson? Has the Lord provided you with a map?”

“
Manong
, Charles. We will look for the vultures who will worry a carcass for weeks if they have no new supply of death to feast on. As the priest says to us on Sunday, turn your eyes heavenward and look for a sign. So yes, you could say that
Modimo
has given us a map.
A re tsamaye,
and put on your hat. The sun is very strong here and I do not want to lose you to the heat.
”

Charles did as he was told but realized the aviator glasses did not present so well with his hat in place.
“
Okay, okay, I'm right behind you.”

They spent the rest of the morning contemplating the sky, looking for
manong
and any other sign that something had been killed and still held what Sanderson thought of as forensic interest. They saw only a few vultures while wheeling through wadis and the bush, but they did find, quite by chance—no vultures overhead—another partial skeleton. More importantly, the remains included a wallet which contained an ID and photos. Termites had destroyed the leather that had faced the ground, but had not made it past the first ten pula note in the billfold.

An ID would be important, for sure. They drove back to headquarters. Before she turned the wallet over to Mwambe's people, Sanderson would have Charles photograph it and all of its contents. It wasn't that she didn't trust the fat police superintendent, but in the past she had witnessed him drop his gear box into low when evidence of a crime he did not wish to deal with found its way into his presence. She would have copies just in case. In case of what she couldn't say, but she would have them made anyway.

***

Superintendent Mwambe did not appear pleased at the sight of Sanderson. For him, trouble cropped up every time this woman crossed his path. Today nothing had changed. His forensic people called to say that the woman game ranger had dropped by and they had a badly mauled human skull to deal with. They further informed him that she intended to search the park for the rest of the body and any others that might be lying out in the bush and would bring what she found to them as well.

Mwambe sighed. All this killing would soon bring the authorities up from Gaborone to his post and that meant once again Sanderson would be responsible for drawing unwanted attention to his jurisdiction. Not a good beginning for his day. He sent his nephew Derek out for coffee and a meat pie. He would have a second breakfast.

***

A morose Yuri Greshenko sat at the small table in the casino coffee shop staring at a cold cappuccino. He'd come to Botswana as an assistant to Leo Painter, the rich American who thought he'd need Yuri's special skills as a former Russian gang member to forward his project. Yuri had agreed to accompany the American industrialist for reasons of his own. Painter had called it a win-win. Yuri would find a new life and Leo would have the leverage he'd need against any rivals who might have been lurking in the darker recesses of Botswana's underworld. As it happened there were few and Yuri's special talents had not been required.

So, the American had been right after all—win-win. Almost. He'd believed he had a chance at a new start. Now, Yuri wasn't so sure. His past had caught up with him. The police had found him out and deemed him an undesirable. He would have to leave or else. The
or else
involved working for them to sniff out a new threat from abroad, a Russian group of gangsters, more accurately, Bratva
,
seemed bent on taking control of the Chobe. Yuri now found himself, like Odysseus, poised between his own Scylla and Charybdis: Serve as a double agent for Botswana's security force, the DIS, or refuse and be shipped back to Mother Russia and inevitably sucked back into the life of a Bratva operative or arrested and jailed on an old warrant. He had believed his clever connection and passage to South-central Africa, a place no one seemed to have heard of, had given him an opportunity to leave that life behind. But it had found him out anyway.

Working for the Bratva had been a life he neither sought nor enjoyed, but as a cast-off army officer in Russia in an economy in transition, he had drifted into it. Once in, he found leaving it alive impossible. Most people did not know that the Bratva
,
in one form or another, had existed from the time of the Tsars, had endured and even flourished under Communism, then really blossomed to new heights with the unplanned and hasty introduction of capitalism to the old SSRs.

Now, however, and despite his careful maneuvering, it had found him out and he had to choose. The government of Botswana knew about his past and the old but still outstanding warrants for his arrest and did not want him in the country. That is, they did not unless he paid for future hospitality with a favor. Work for them or leave. Either way, his chances of surviving the next step in this journey were slim at best. He'd been outed and consequently, any chance he might have had to return to the U.S. or anywhere outside Russia had evaporated. Fleeing would be futile. One or another of the many agencies on either side of the law would eventually find him. Accepting the offer to spy on his former colleagues created its own probable dead end—operative word, dead.

Leo, his patron and now his friend and supporter, sat down opposite him.

“I called everyone I know in Washington,” he said and snapped his fingers to draw a waiter's attention. “No dice. They can't help. Can't, won't, damn it. When I ran Earth Global, half of those pussies were on my contribution list, or their boss was. I'm talking millions here, Yuri. You'd think they'd remember and pull a few strings for me.”

Before turning the world's second-largest energy and mining company over to new management and retiring, Leo had had his hooks in, and the ear of, most of the movers and shakers in the nation's capital. But in a culture that seemed ruled by
Yes, but what have you done for me lately?,
his stock had plummeted and favors now came few and far between.

“So what do we do now?” he added.

“Do? I have little choices, Leo. Whether I, as you say, fish or cut the bait, I am overboard.”

“Lovely mismanaged metaphor, Yuri. You are saying you're screwed.”

“Yes, and if screw is the correct, what you say…metaphor, then it is one of those screws that only go one way, that cannot be removed, you know?”

“I don't think hardware is the origin of the expression, but I take your point. So, I ask again, what do you do now?”

“I die quickly or slowly. That is my choice.”

“You're being too harsh. Look, the best course for you now is to play along with the local police. Modise is a guy you can trust, I think. Besides, if you do, I have a plan.”

“A plan. What plan, Leo? A plan to free me from the Bratva, the police, and who knows what or how many Russian agencies that have me on its list of undesirables?”

“I may have lost my edge with the politicos, but I still have a few cards I can pull out of my sleeve, Yuri. Now drink up. The foreman on this construction job—that's using the term loosely—says he's ready on the west end. We have the new wing to check out. Do you have the punch list or do I?”

Chapter Four

The hyena with the sobriquet
Kotsi Mosadi
would have rejected the name and the reputation it implied were she capable of conceptual thought which, of course, she was not. She was no more dangerous than any other of her species. Hyenas, male and female, compete with every carnivore in the park, large and small cats, dogs, raptor birds, and even an occasional large insect. Not to do so, and aggressively, would end with either her replacement as the pack leader, the demise of the pack itself, or quite possibly both. The bush is not a place for sentimentality or a Disney personification of wildlife. You may do that in animated movies with casts of cuddly cubs and wise old baboons, but in the park, it was eat or be eaten, be the hunter or be the prey, nothing more, nothing less.

Realistically, hyenas have only two enemies, humans and lions. Either would kill them on sight and both would do so simply out of traditional enmity. That which existed between hyenas and lions was historical and innate, a rivalry that stretched back into the mists of time. But with humans the hatred had been learned, was of more recent origin, and seemed to have more to do with aesthetics than rivalry—they are such unattractive animals. Ancient Egyptians, on the other hand, were said to domesticate hyenas and, like pig farmers of a later era, fatten them and bring to them to market to be eaten, presumably, as a delicacy.

Kotsi Mosadi held the key position in the pack and, to the extent such concepts were to be understood, had responsibilities. The welfare of her pack, male and female alike, rested on her hunched shoulders. In addition, once a year, she and the other females bore litters ranging from one to four—the young necessary to the pack's survival. If hunting with great success and being a fierce protector of her pack made her dangerous, then so be it, but her behavior differed little from every other leader of spotted hyenas or their smaller, shyer, brown relatives that shared the park. She just happened to be more successful and therefore more obvious to the game rangers charged with monitoring her behavior. In truth,
Kotsi Mosadi, was spoken of by them more in admiration than contempt.

Game rangers are charged with the management of the park and its denizens. Poachers, intruders of all sorts whose intentions are less than beneficial to the animals, are pursued aggressively and punished severely when caught. That would include any attempt to hurt Danger Woman. Lions, however, were given a pass should they manage to hunt her down and dispatch her. And given half a chance, they would do that. For her part, a sick or weakened lion would be fair game. The difference between them: the lion would never deign to eat a hyena, while a hyena will eat anything, including an unlucky lion.

From the relative shade of the bush she stirred from her midday doze. With those of her pack who were also awake, she watched Sanderson's Land Rover bounce by and pause while its occupants inspected a pile of bones. The hyena's interest would not be piqued as long as nothing emerged from the vehicle. To Danger Woman and her pack, the larger thing represented an entity too big to attack, something akin to a noisy and smelly elephant. However, in her experience, occasionally smaller, and more easily attacked things sometimes emerged from within and could be targeted if they strayed too far from the big one. That would be at night. Daylight was not the hunting time for hyenas. She blinked as the small thing emerged, gathered bones, and then disappeared back into the big creature again.
Kotsi Mosadi
had no interest in those bones. She knew they were dried out and contained few nutrients.

It would be dark soon enough and then she would lead the pack in hunting. Even though she'd fed the night before on the lioness' gazelle, she would need to eat again and soon. The pups in her womb were growing and their demands on her body for sustenance grew with them. She longed for a dead elephant to scavenge. The pack could eat for weeks on a moderately large elephant.

***

“Be careful, Sanderson,” Charles Tlalelo said and glanced toward the bush. “
Dipheri
are lurking over there. I think it must be Kotsi Mosadi
and her pack
.
She would quickly separate you from your life if you give her the chance.”

“Charles, that hyena is not interested in this middle-aged woman, for sure. I am too tough even for her terrible jaws.”

“You are tough, I know, but I am thinking she is tougher and you are not middle aged. My mother is middle aged. She looks it. You are seeming to be much younger.”

“Are you flattering me, Charles?”

“No, I am…never mind. Just be careful.”

Sanderson grinned. The bones had been picked clean and sometime in the past, which explained why the hyenas dozed a few meters away instead of protecting a possible meal. She brushed aside the twigs and bits of grit and placed them into a plastic bag which she then tossed into the back of the Land Rover.

“Next stop, the office and lunch, Charles. We have made progress. I wonder who this poor soul was before he or she became someone's dinner.”

Charles put the SUV into gear and they headed for the main gate to the park. Two safari trucks with rows of tourists perched in tiers, cameras at the ready, waited while their driver/guides cleared the vehicles with the attendant.

“Let us hope none of these eager people decides to hop out of the truck to retrieve a hat or camera and become a lion's midday meal.”

Charles looked worried. “Has that ever happened, Sanderson?”

“Almost. People see the lions lolling in the grass like big pussies and they forget that they can weigh hundreds of kilos and are always hungry. They would probably love a belly rub from some plump tourist, but I am sure they would prefer fresh meat more. Elephants, too. These visitors think they are visiting Babar and then some great bull in musk, or for no reason at all, decides their truck is too close, the horn beeping too loud, it is a threat to the calves, or who knows why, and topples their car and possibly crushes them. Over in the Okavango Delta they have bigger problems because the people camp in the park and will sometimes think they want an evening stroll out into the wild for a closer look at nature. We will lose a visitor over there now and again.”

“That woman in South Africa who wanted to get a close-up of the lioness and left her window down—”

“That was a rarity, Charles, a once in a million, but yes, if the sign says, ‘Keep your windows closed,' it is best to do so.”

“The park is not a petting zoo.”

“Or a playground. Except for the animals, of course.”