Stephen Leather - The Hunting

There were more shots now, to her right, followed by frantic screams. Laura’s heart was beating so fast that she thought it was going to burst. She turned to look back at Lucy but as she did she saw that the two men she had watched ride up onto the beach had slotted magazines into their guns and were aiming them at the Italian teenagers. Laura opened her mouth to scream but before she could utter a sound they pulled their triggers and sprayed bullets at the holidaymakers in the sea. Their tanned bodies were ripped apart and blood splattered over the waves. Lucy screamed and there was another burst of fire. Red blotches appeared on her white bikini and then a bullet hit her in her face and it imploded. Laura screamed in anguish and Sophie and Karl began to cry. Then the two men turned towards them. Their eyes were wide and angry and they began to shout something as they pulled the triggers again. Karl died first, then Sophie, and finally Laura. Her dying thought was that she was supposed to protect her children and that she had failed them.

CHAPTER 4

Falkner was sitting at the lodge’s bar on a zebra-skin stool sipping a St Louis Export beer from the bottle when Van der Sandt walked in. The guide had changed into a blue polo shirt with the lodge’s logo on the breast pocket, and neatly pressed chinos.

Van der Sandt slid onto the stool next to him and ordered a whisky and ice from the barman. ‘Nice work today, Paul,’ he said.

‘I was just along for the ride,’ said Falkner.

‘No, you’re a first-rate tracker and you know exactly what’s needed. I’ve had guides fuck up big time before.’

‘I do my best,’ said Falkner, raising his beer bottle.

‘You did great,’ said Van der Sandt. His whisky and ice arrived and he clinked his glass against Falkner’s bottle. He looked around the bar. A couple of Americans were talking loudly on the terrace and there was a group of middle-aged women sitting at a nearby table. From the photographic gear on the table he assumed they were there for safaris. One of the women looked over at him and he smiled and raised his glass. She threw him an angry look and turned away.

‘We’re going out to shoot giraffe tomorrow morning,’ said Falkner. ‘You’re welcome to come along.’

Van der Sandt shook his head. ‘They’re no challenge.’

‘I hear you,’ said Falkner. ‘But giraffe, zebra, baboon – they’re our bread and butter. Groups of Americans mainly, but the Chinese have discovered hunting and they love it.’

‘Russians, too.’

Falkner laughed. ‘Yeah, the Ruskies are a strange bunch. They’re not really interested in hunting, they just like killing. They say that one of the game farms in the south lets them shoot zebras from a helicopter with a machine gun.’

Van der Sandt shook his head. ‘Unbelievable.’

‘We have to take the business where we can,’ said Falkner. ‘But it’s no fun shepherding amateurs. I had a Chinese guy last week, richer than God, runs factories in Shenzhen and his wife is the sister of one of the guys in the National People’s Congress. He flew in on a chopper with a security team and a girl who I assumed was his daughter but who turned out to be his mistress. He wanted to shoot an elephant and we arranged that but he fucked it up big time and I ended up having to put the animal out of its misery. He also said he wanted to shoot a tiger, but he didn’t seem to grasp the concept that we don’t have tigers in Africa. He kept saying that money was no object. Seriously, I think he wanted me to fly in a tiger so that he could shoot it. Mind you, he left me with a thousand-dollar tip, so I can’t complain too much.’

Van der Sandt chuckled and reached inside his jacket. He took out an envelope and slid it across the bar towards the guide.

Falkner put up his hand. ‘Mr Van der Sandt, I wasn’t dropping a hint.’

‘I know you weren’t,’ he said. ‘That’s just a token of my appreciation for a bloody good hunt. And it’s more than your Chinese client gave you.’

Falkner thanked him and slipped the envelope into the back pocket of his chinos. ‘So what would you say was your hardest kill?’ asked Falkner.

Van der Sandt sipped his whisky as he considered the question. Over the course of his life he had killed thousands of animals and every kill was different. ‘You know, I think I’d have to say it was a saltwater crocodile, in Australia. The Northern Territory. They’ve been protected since 1971 but they issue a limited number of licences each year, mainly to get rid of mankillers. The thing about the croc is that you have to get right up to it. I mean really right up to it, so close that you’re better off using a revolver than a rifle.’ He sipped his drink. ‘This one was a monster, six metres long and weighing close to six hundred kilos. It was about as old as the bull I shot today. It had killed a child and a few months earlier had dragged a guy off his boat and eaten him alive. They issued an emergency licence to kill it and I got it. I’d killed a few crocs before but this was different. This bastard was cunning. He knew we were out to get him. And that made it really hard because like I said you have no choice but to get right up to him. The only place you can put a round is half an inch behind the ear, straight into the brain. And because he was so wary, we had to use harpoons to get him before the kill. We were in a flat-bottomed aluminium boat, about twenty feet long, pretty much the length of the croc. There was me and a guide who knew the river, and a boatman. They were both born and brought up by the river so I was in good hands.’ He sipped his whisky again. ‘We started as the sun went down, using halogen flashlights, and it took us the best part of four hours to find him. I had a harpoon attached to a line, but the bastard kept submerging every time I tried to throw it. Eventually I got him in the neck and that’s when the fun started. I kid you not but he pulled the boat with the three of us in it. There was no way we could pull him in, all we could do was hang on. He pulled us up and down the river for two hours. Strong as an ox. But eventually he started to tire and we could pull him in. When he was close to the boat I ended it with a shot from my Magnum. But he was fighting right up until the end.’ He raised his whisky glass in salute. ‘It was a good death.’ He drained his glass and waved at the barman for a refill. ‘Do you know what the most fierce animal in the world is?’ asked Van der Sandt.

‘The hippo,’ said Falkner. ‘They kill five hundred people a year.’

Van der Sandt laughed. ‘If that’s your criteria, then the mosquito kills millions.’

‘I figured insects didn’t count,’ said Falkner. ‘Okay, crocodile maybe. They’re as dangerous as hell.’

Van der Sandt shook his head. ‘Wrong again,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to be pretty stupid to get attacked by a croc. They keep to themselves.’ He took a long pull on his glass of whisky. ‘It’s the honey badger. Even the Guinness Book of Records has it down as the World’s Most Fearless Creature.’

‘You haven’t hunted them, have you?’

‘They’re tiny fuckers, not worth hunting,’ said Van der Sandt. ‘Just over a foot tall. But they’ll attack anything that moves. You’ve seen them, right?’

‘Sure. But I’m not sure how dangerous they are.’

‘To you and me, probably not. But if a lion cub or a young leopard makes the mistake of trying to catch one, they won’t make that mistake again. They’ve got really loose skin and if they get grabbed they can pretty much twist around inside their skin to fight back. They’ve got killer claws and a vicious bite. And they’ll fight to the death. They’re bred to be tough. The mothers start by feeding them venomous animals when they’re pups. They start them off on scorpions and then feed them venomous snakes all the way up to puff adders and cobras, building up an immunity to snakebites when they’re older. They’re as hard as nails.’