Tom Cain: Dictator

Andy Stratten kissed his mother’s head as he passed her. ‘We will, Mum, no worries,’ he said, and then, to Moses, ‘Hey, boet, let’s cut!’

The two friends bantered back and forth as they drove out to the site where the shootings had been reported. But the conversation stopped when they came upon the mutilated corpses of the two rhinos.

‘Bastards!’ hissed Andy. He turned to Moses. ‘Welcome back to Africa. Not a lot has changed.’

‘Not yet, no,’ Moses agreed. ‘Come, let us see what happened here, and where the killers went.’

The four men began examining the crime scene, tracking every footprint across the grove, noting the patterns of cartridge shells as carefully as police forensics officers. Tracking spoor was a skill Andy had learned from his first footsteps. To the Ndebele it was a heritage that stretched back through countless generations to the very dawn of humankind.

Moses spoke to the two other black Africans, then addressed Andy. ‘So, we are agreed: eight men, armed with AK-47s, but only seven of them fired. The eighth man stood here, watching the whole scene.’

‘The leader,’ said Andy, ‘giving orders.’

‘I would think so, yes.’

‘OK, so let’s see where they went. I know we promised the old man there’d be no heavy stuff, but if I find the bastard who ordered this, he’s a dead man.’

‘Yes, and then what will happen?’ Moses asked. ‘Nothing good for you, that is for sure. So you must calm that hot Stratten blood. We will follow these men. We will find them, observe them, call in their position and wait for the police. Then, maybe, you can have your revenge. But for now we just follow the spoor.’

The poachers had made an attempt to cover their tracks and set false trails, but the failure of their deceits merely added to the confidence of the men following them. It was not long before they found the spot where the Hilux had been left. The tyre-tracks clearly showed how the poachers had turned off the road and left their vehicle screened by mopane scrub. They had not turned back on to the road, though, when they left the scene. Instead, they’d kept going away from it, deeper into the scrubland.

‘They headed for the river,’ said Andy. ‘They must be nuts.’

‘Perhaps they thought they could cross it,’ Moses suggested.

‘There are fords, but not here. They can’t be that stupid, can they?’

Moses shrugged. ‘Not stupid, perhaps, but desperate. We should be careful. Maybe we should stop here. There are eight of them, remember.’

‘Stop? No way. I will have these fuckers, mark my words.’

Moses said nothing. But his knuckles whitened around his gun and his eyes darted nervously around as they made their way through the mopane bushes that rose as high as ten feet to either side of the path forced through the undergrowth by the heavily laden pick-up.

No one was talking now. The air was still and close, heavy with the resinous, turpentine smell of mopane seeds, and the men’s shirts were gummed to their backs with sweat. The visibility was poor in every direction, every sightline blocked by trunks, branches and foliage. The men bowed their heads low, looking ahead of them at ground level, below the foliage, hoping to catch sight of a poacher’s feet or his shadow.

Even Andy Stratten’s demeanour lost its bullish confidence. His father had fought in the vicious civil war that led to the transformation of the white-ruled former colony of British Mashonaland into an independent Malemba governed by its own people, but his son had been spared that pitiless conflict. For all his talk of revenge he had never gone after human prey, nor been a target himself. Fear was gripping him by the throat and twisting his bowel and guts.

Then, with barely a warning, they were through the scrub and standing by the banks of the river. There, sure enough, was the Hilux, its front wheels and bonnet half underwater, its cab tilting down towards the river, only its rear wheels still finding some purchase on the damp red soil of the bank.

‘Fuck!’ Andy Stratten exclaimed. ‘I hope those dumb munts can swim.’

His relief had made him forget himself: he’d used the white Malemban slang for a black man. No sooner had he said it than he realized his offence.

He was starting to stammer an apology to Moses when the sound of his voice was drowned by two sharp bursts of gunfire. The two estate workers had no time to cry out, still less raise or fire their weapons as the bullets from the AK-47s dropped them where they stood.

The poachers emerged from the mopane scrub, just a few paces away, screaming and gesturing at Andy and Moses to drop their weapons. Then their leader stepped on to the open ground on the riverbank. His eyes hidden behind a pair of fake designer shades, he walked up to Andy Stratten and jabbed a finger hard at his chest.

‘Now who’s the dumb munt?’ he said.

Then he stepped back and got out of the line of fire as the order rang out and the guns started chattering again.

They called themselves war veterans, men who had served in the endless string of conflicts, at home and abroad, that plagued Malemba along with so many other African countries. They were psychologically scarred by their experiences, filled with rage and convinced of their entitlement to land and money in compensation for their services to the state.

When they’d finished their deadly work, they pulled the Hilux back out of the river, restarted the engine and made their way back to the acacia grove. There, the raiding team split in two, four of the men taking the Strattens’ Land Rover as they headed towards the estate house. They paused once along the way to meet another pick-up filled with more armed veterans, then, reinforced, they sped towards their destination.

Zalika Stratten had tried to protest when her father ordered her into the family’s underground shelter, hidden beneath a workshop some distance from the main house. Contact had been lost with Andy and his men. Word had come in from an outlying village of a truck of armed men on the move. In a country inured to armed insurgency, people were used to preparing for the worst. Like many white women in southern Africa, Zalika had taken every self-defence and weapons training course she could get. It was a given among her race and class that they, too, were an endangered species.

‘I know how to handle a gun,’ she insisted, ‘let me fight!’

Her father was having none of it. ‘For once in your life, Zalika, do as you are told!’ he shouted, grabbing her by the arm and half-dragging her towards her only hope of safety.

‘Come on, darling, you know this is for the best,’ said Jacqui. ‘Daddy doesn’t want to have to worry about us.’

The shelter was well supplied with food, water, basic survival gear and even a couple of rifles. The women clambered through a hatch and down a ladder into the underground chamber, then looked up at Stratten, who was on his haunches above them.

‘You know the drill,’ he said. ‘Stay here. Do not make any noise. Do not use any of the torches or lanterns. If all goes well, I will come for you. If it does not, then wait until nightfall, and try to get out under cover of dark.’

‘Oh Dick!’ cried Jacqui, her composure finally starting to crack.

‘It’s all right, my dear,’ said Stratten, trying to keep his own fear from his voice. ‘Don’t you worry now. Everything’s going to be just fine.’ He paused for a second, forcing his emotions back under control, then said, ‘I love you both so very, very much,’ before he closed the hatch.

‘Daddy!’ shouted Zalika in the darkness. But her father was already gone.

Down in the shelter, the women were aware of the trucks’ arrival. They heard the firing of the guns, the screams of the fearful and the wounded, and the frenetic shouts of the fighting men. Then, as swiftly as a passing storm, the gunfire abated and the screaming gave way to a few agonized moans, swiftly silenced by single shots. Finally came a crash as the workshop door was barged open, followed by four quick, confident footsteps heading straight for the hatch.