Child of Africa Read online

  His dad had got permission from ZimParks to shoot it.

  Joss had thought that perhaps it was just a hungry animal and if they left it alone, it might have walked back into the safari area, then into the national park itself. He didn’t think it was a pest until they frightened it.

  Joss didn’t want his ellie to land up like that – shot and in someone’s cooking pot.

  What his father would say when he got home was going to be interesting, but first, they had to make sure the baby lived. He would worry about his dad’s reaction later.

  Mossman returned with a bottle of warm milk, and Joss watched while his mum teased the baby into taking the teat into her mouth. But Ndhlovy refused to drink from it.

  ‘You try, Joss. She seems to already trust you.’ Leslie gave him the bottle.

  ‘Come on, Ndhlovy, you need the milk, you need to drink it.’ He dribbled a little like his mother had on the elephant’s lips tucked up underneath her trunk, and the little trunk made room for the bottle, arching and resting on Joss’s arm as she attempted to suck on the teat with her lips.

  ‘That’s it,’ Leslie said, ‘come on, baby.’

  Ndhlovy latched on to the teat and began to drink.

  ‘Perfect. Step one accomplished,’ Leslie said. ‘If she takes milk, we can get her stronger.’

  ‘How often do you think she will need a bottle?’ Joss asked.

  ‘Probably every few hours, although she doesn’t seem to be a newborn; she’s already well over a metre tall. Let’s start at two hours, because she’s weak and in need of hydration. Mossman, add extra calf supplement in the next feed, double mix.’

  Mossman nodded.

  ‘Right. Let me get on the phone to Rodger, see what tips he has. Don’t get your hopes up, Joss. She could still die.’

  Joss shook his head. ‘We can’t let that happen, Mum.’

  Leslie put her arms around his shoulders as he fed the baby elephant. ‘We’ll try everything we can. Perhaps if we can just get her well again, you and Bongani can take her back into the reserve, and find her a herd to live with. I don’t know if she will be adopted back smelling of humans, but it’s worth a try. I don’t know how long an elephant baby stays with its mum, but I know it’s a long time. I remember watching a documentary where a herd adopted a calf when its mother died ... we can only try.’

  Joss said, ‘Will you make sure Dad doesn’t shoot it when he gets home from Durban?’

  ‘I’ll talk to him about it, but you know his view on orphaned animals.’

  ‘I don’t understand why he hates animals so much.’

  She let go of Joss and straightened up, arching her back to stretch it. ‘Oh, Joss, he doesn’t hate animals, he just doesn’t see them as pets. Remember, he was a ranger, and he is a hunter. At the end of the day, he worries that he needs to put food on everyone’s plates. Make a decent living. Lots of people rely on him for their wages too. The boys here at the lodge need to be paid so their families can buy food and attend school. The villagers need their cut from the lodge so that they can eat and survive. It’s not just you who needs your dad’s income to be educated and healthy.’

  ‘It’s just one elephant, Mum,’ Joss said. ‘One little elephant.’

  ‘That will grow huge. Now, we don’t need to make any decisions tonight. Let’s just get her better, make sure she survives. Then we’ll deal with the rest. How does that sound?’

  ‘Can I stay here with my ellie tonight?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll bring you some dinner and a sleeping bag, and I’ll leave Ringo behind. He can sleep inside the stable with you. That way if a leopard even puts its nose into the area, he’ll wake you and Bongani up.’

  ‘Thanks, Mum,’ Joss said as Ndhlovy finished the milk in the bottle.

  ‘I’ll see you just now,’ she said as she kissed his forehead. Once outside she said, ‘Ringo, inside, sit. Stay with Joss.’

  The dog leapt to his feet and walked into the stable. Still not sure of the elephant, he approached with caution, but Joss called him to his side.

  ‘Come on, Ringo. Meet Ndhlovy.’

  As the dog sniffed the elephant, his tail began to wag. He settled in next to the pachyderm, licking her every now and again in a reassuring way.

  Ndhlovy didn’t seem to mind the ridgeback next to her, and touched him with her trunk.

  ‘Well, look at that,’ Leslie said. ‘Anyone would think those two were long-time friends.’

  Joss smiled. ‘You know what, Mum, when I’m old like you, and I’m a Royal British Marine, I can save as many people and animals as I like, and I won’t need anyone to watch over me at night, not Ringo nor Bongani.’

  ‘True, but then you’ll be an adult, and you will be looking after everything you save, down to every last detail, like all the phone calls, getting all the right food, having enough money to enable you to do that saving, and dealing with all the authorities and their different points of view – and don’t forget the local community; they want their say too. It’s never a simple rescue, Joss, there are always more things in the background that need to be sorted out that as a kid you don’t need to worry about. Enjoy your time with Ndhlovy while you have her. Hopefully she’ll be able to go back into the Chizarira soon and live her own life too. Don’t rush this time away, my son, it’s not as great as it looks to be on this side of the fence, being that adult responsible for others.’

  CHAPTER

  1

  Dreamers

  Kajaki Hydroelectric Scheme, Afghanistan, 2008

  The four kilometre-long convoy snaked into the Kajaki Hydroelectric Plant. Joss Brennan watched the turbines arriving at the dam wall through his binoculars and wanted to dance around, even though he was just one of five thousand troops who had played their part in protecting Turbine T2. But celebrations would have to wait.

  Seven sections of turbine, each weighing between twenty and thirty tons, had been transported the final one hundred and eighty kilometres from Kandahar air base, through the Helmand Valley and the desert and finally up to Kajaki Lake. Some optimist had painted holy slogans and an Afghan flag on the containers to try to dig deep into the patriotism the locals had for their country – T2 belonged to the people. It seemed to have worked, because the heavy convoy had arrived at its destination. The people of Afghanistan would soon have two working turbines, creating power and bringing them electricity.

  Chinook helicopters flew overhead, loud as they passed low, sweeping the area.

  Ten days of hell were almost over.

  The eighty-ton crane was the next piece of equipment to come to a halt. As important as the segments themselves, it would help the engineers lift the parts off the trucks. Each minute the sections sat around was a minute longer that the troops had to protect them from the Taliban.

  Joss adjusted his binoculars and looked further up the hill, following the line carefully, looking for anything out of place in the rugged terrain. The word in the barracks was that almost two hundred insurgents had been cleared on the route through and around the dam. He hoped that was true and they were unable to return, but there were always those who, like snakes, slipped through the cracks to come back to bite their butts another day.

  He scanned the compound in a grid pattern, making sure no one would threaten this precious cargo, not after the epic mission they had just accomplished. This was his job, the sniper, the tracker, the spotter in his company. Who knew that watching the animals in Africa all those years ago would be such good practice for hunting the enemy when he became a British Marine Commando? Who would have known that the hours spent with his father and Bongani in the bush, learning the skills of a hunter, would help him be the ultimate marine?

  Joss went over the grid a second time. ‘Check two o’clock on the ridge. Shadow protruding beyond the wall,’ he said into his mic. ‘Definitely something moving in the compound.’ But in the next moment, the shadow had gone, and all that remained was the edge of the wall.

  ‘Affirmative. Suspect unfrie
ndlies,’ Mitch’s Australian twang answered.

  ‘Don’t jump to conclusions, might be the locals. Eleventh troop mobilise. Sweep compound,’ Lieutenant Colonel Johnathan Tait-Markham – Tank to his friends – ordered over the coms.

  After a quick glance at the convoy still rolling in, Joss packed his binoculars. Mitch put his hand out to help him up.

  ‘Crack on, we have a compound to clear,’ came Tank’s voice.

  Joss bent and ran with Mitch just a few steps behind. The stones at their feet slid loosely until their boots gripped the baked surface beneath.

  They reached the compound and were soon hot-footing it along the mud wall. Joss remembered this village well – they had previously cleared an IED from exactly where he walked now. They’d returned a few times since the initial clearing, but that didn’t mean that there were no more IEDs. Insurgents could creep in at any time and rearm a place.

  ‘Affix bayonets. Two break left, two break right,’ Tank instructed.

  Joss saw Mitch and Tank break left. He rounded the corner of the same hole they had blasted in the mud wall a few weeks back, Cricket, one of his fellow marines, with him. He heard the wasp sounds as bullets flew close to his head. He hit the dirt and rolled for cover.

  ‘Contact. Contact,’ Tank shouted into the mic.

  Crawling after Cricket, Joss slipped into a room. They swept it quickly.

  ‘Clear,’ Cricket said.

  ‘Wait,’ Joss said as he saw a carpet hanging on the wall move. He indicated with his head towards it. Outside he could hear the shallow pop-pop sound of the insurgents’ AKs and the deeper sounds of their own rifles.

  ‘Joss, where are you?’ Tank called. ‘We need a sniper.’

  ‘Clearing this—’

  He got no further as the carpet came to life. Someone was screaming, and the whole thing came down, exposing an insurgent with his gun raised.

  Cricket and Joss shot him down in a hail of bullets.

  Joss approached the body. He kicked the AK-47 away, and looked at the man.

  Correction.

  Boy.

  Joss knelt down and checked for a pulse, but there was none. He was relieved and sad.

  No more than fourteen, the boy had only the wispy beginning of a moustache. His black turban still clung tightly to his head. He looked too young to be carrying a weapon and trying to kill them. He should still be in school.

  This was someone’s son. Someone’s child who might not have wanted to be a soldier.

  Or worse, this could have been a child who chose this path, thinking it was his shortcut to glory in the afterlife.

  Joss swallowed. It was survival – if they hadn’t shot him, they would be the ones lying on the floor. ‘Dead,’ he told Cricket, and together they moved out of the room, to help the rest of the troop.

  * * *

  The stone chips pitted Joss’s face, flicked up by bullets that were unnervingly accurate and close. One whistled past his ear. Joss adjusted his scope. ‘Bogie at three o’clock.’

  He squeezed the trigger.

  The man’s head jerked back. Joss slid the bolt of his rifle, ejecting the shell and loading another.

  ‘Three o’clock,’ he said as he shot the next man who was keeping his troop pinned down.

  Again he reloaded.

  Taking a breath, he looked for the third insurgent he’d seen. He had gone to ground.

  ‘Lost visual,’ he informed Mitch.

  Mitch looked through his binoculars, scanning the small hill on the other side of the village. ‘Four o’clock, blue/black turban. Behind a wall – must be a ledge beneath it that he’s using.’

  Joss adjusted his weapon and took aim at the designated place, even though he could see nothing there. The turban rose as the man wearing it peered over the ledge to check where his enemy had got to. Calmly, Joss fired, and the man dropped out of sight.

  ‘Hit?’ Mitch asked.

  ‘Affirmative,’ Joss said as he reloaded.

  Mitch nodded. ‘Bad angle, I couldn’t be sure from here.’

  The firing had stopped. The silence that followed any fight was always deafening. The wait for the next shot terrifying in case it came right for you.

  ‘Any more?’ Mitch asked.

  Joss took a deep breath and swept his scope over the side of the hill. A single goat nibbled at non-existent grass. ‘Wait ... look left of the goat.’

  Mitch focused on the goat, then left. ‘Bogie,’ he affirmed. ‘He has a rocket launcher.’

  They saw the tip of the man’s head, his arms outstretched to launch the deadly missile at them or at the precious convoy of trucks.

  Joss took him down. The sound of the single shot was loud in the silence that had descended.

  The goat bleated and tried to run away, but it seemed tethered to the insurgent. Panicked, it bleated some more.

  ‘Continue to clear area,’ Tank shouted over the coms and the men came out from where they had taken cover to sweep the village.

  ‘If we let that goat go, it’ll lead us to where they came from,’ Joss said. ‘Find their base.’

  ‘Negative,’ Tank replied. ‘It’s getting late; we pass that on to the American troops to follow up. I’m in contact with HQ, and they have a command passing us in ten minutes. Check fire. Friendlies approaching from behind.’

  Joss watched as the American marines chatted to Tank on their way through. He pointed to the goat, and their leader nodded. Then they were off, along with the goat, over the small hill and out for their night patrol.

  Joss’s company gathered and headed towards their temporary barracks, spirits high, adrenaline levels beginning to lower. Joss grinned. This was what he had been born to do – to wear his green beret and serve the greater good, just like his grandfather. To help people who were unable to stand up to tyranny. Fight for freedom and justice when those around couldn’t.

  Tonight he would pen another letter to Courtney, like he always did when something significant took place, then he would watch it burn, as was regulation. He would rewrite it when he got back to England, after he was out of the desert, a more sanitised version. An emotionless version that would never depict the true horrors they experienced out here, or the simple joys of just waking up, knowing that you had achieved something amazing.

  It didn’t matter that Courtney didn’t write back often; he just wanted her to know he was okay out here in the world beyond Africa. He kept the letters he’d received from her in England, and any that he received while on the front line he would read, commit to memory, then burn so that the enemy would not get their hands on them.

  Letters to his best friend, and phone calls to Bongani, his lodge manager, were his only connection to his home in Zimbabwe now that his parents were gone.

  CHAPTER

  2

  Whispers on the Wind

  Binga Area, Zimbabwe, 2010

  Bongani sat on a stool, wiping his father’s brow with a cool cloth. Once the chief’s skin had barely shown a wrinkle, but now when Bongani looked at him, he saw a man weathered with age and worry. A face of one who knew his time was close, but still insisted on holding on to life, on to the hope that life was eternal and one could cheat death.

  The chief lifted his gnarled hand, the skin whisper-thin, and started to push Bongani’s hand away, but then clutched it instead. ‘This is not your job to attend to an old man. Since your sisters cannot come to my bedside, you should get the nurse,’ he said.

  Bongani put his other hand over his father’s. ‘They have lives of their own. Looking after their own families. I live here. This is my place. It is where I want to be. With you, making sure you are comfortable.’

  ‘That was Sibusisiwe’s job,’ Chief Tigere said. ‘Your mother was supposed to live alongside me, so that when it was this time, she could look after me, and not some strange nurse you pay to do the work.’

  ‘It is sad that Mother left this world before you, but if she were here, she would be the one telling you that alth
ough I am a grown man, I should still spend time with my father, and ensure that he is looked after. Talk to him about times gone by and times yet to come.’

  ‘Times to come ... I will not see those with you, they are your dreams, but I am honoured that you have shared them with me. To know a man’s dreams is to have power over his future, and that is a valuable gift.’

  ‘I know,’ Bongani said. ‘How will I manage once you are no longer here to guide me?’

  ‘You will be fine. I taught you well.’

  Bongani nodded. ‘That you did, Ndende.’

  ‘You are the son who will become chief; you have never been like your half-brother.’ The old man coughed, and the fluid in his chest gurgled, the sound painful to Bongani, who was counting the weeks till sickness took his father from him.

  ‘When I die, he will come for you. He will come to take your land, your title.’

  ‘No, he is too busy with his criminal activities now to worry about a small bit of land in the bush.’ Bongani knew that his forehead creased with his lie. The only reason he had been safe all these years was that Tichawana was more afraid of his father than he was of any other person in the world.

  ‘Do not underestimate him,’ Chief Tigere said.

  ‘I will try not to, because I also remember well,’ Bongani said, patting his father’s hand and watching as the medicine he had taken with his thin soup at last made him sleepy.

  ‘So you should. Never forget, or that mangy dog will come here and steal everything you have worked so hard to build. Your lodge, your life. Be careful, my son, be careful ...’ He drifted into sleep.

  Bongani let out a sigh, and put the cloth into the basin of water. He placed the basin on the stainless-steel nightstand. The stand was so foreign in the traditional mud hut his father insisted on still living in, as was the putt-putt sound of the generator outside, providing electricity.