The Best American Mystery Stories 2018

David H. Hendrickson DEATH IN THE SERENGETI ^{from Fiction River}

The smell of newly rotting flesh hit Jakaya Makinda. He stopped his Land Rover, grabbed his binoculars off the seat beside him, and trained them in the direction of the odor’s source.

Eighty meters away, mostly hidden by a rocky outcropping of man-sized boulders, lay the carcasses of a dozen or more slaughtered elephants.

Poachers.

Anger coursed through Makinda. He grabbed his Remington pump-action shotgun and, with his broad-brimmed hat shielding his eyes from the early-morning sun, used the binoculars to scan the Serengeti’s tall grass for predators. The poachers were long since gone, but he wasn’t some damn fool white tourist, stepping out of the security of his vehicle, thinking how cute the animals were, all set to launch into “Hakuna Matata.”

Out here, humans were food. Short and wiry, he’d be less of a meal than the overweight Americans whose entry fees paid his salary as senior park ranger, but he had no interest in being any creature’s gristly lunch.

He approached the rocky outcropping cautiously, binoculars dangling from his neck, his shotgun ready and his .38 holstered but loaded.

His stomach gave way when he stepped past the two largest boulders and saw the full extent of the carnage. Beside what had to be close to twenty dead elephants, their missing tusks sawn off at the roots, lay the carcasses of five hyenas, three jackals, and a couple dozen vultures.

The poachers, as they’d come to do, had poisoned the elephants with cyanide, killing them and everything that came to feast on their corpses, most importantly the vultures, who wouldn’t be left circling overhead for rangers such as himself to notice. The poison killed everything in its path but made for an easier getaway.

Makinda gripped his shotgun tightly. He’d get these devils, these parasites who’d invaded even the Serengeti, Tanzania’s greatest treasure. He’d get them if it was the last thing—

Behind him, his Land Rover exploded.

The force of the concussion knocked Makinda face-forward onto the ground. He tasted the tall grass in his mouth. Felt grains of the hard soil between his fingers. His ears rang.

He looked back over his shoulder and saw flames shooting up from the wrecked carcass of his vehicle. Makinda stared in disbelief and horror.

Makinda shot to his feet, grasping the shotgun, and ran toward the flaming wreckage of the Land Rover. He didn’t know why. It was useless to him now. The two-way radio, referred to by safari companies as the “bush telegraph,” would be destroyed, as was its backup.

He hadn’t called in the slaughter because he knew the safari companies listened in on the rangers’ frequency and would flock to this less popular section of the park to gawk at the butchery. Makinda had wanted to report this in person back at HQ and shield tourists from the ugliness. Let them think Tanzania was perfect.

So now he was stranded.

Alone.

And with no cell phone coverage in this sector of the Serengeti, there was now no way to reach the other rangers. No way to alert them that a group of poachers bold enough to blow up his vehicle weren’t settling for elephant tusks. They’d be going for the staggering rewards of rhinoceros horns, which made those from elephant tusks pale by comparison.

Ever since that damned Vietnamese politician claimed rhino-horn powder had cured his cancer, demand had shot through the roof faster than Makinda’s head would have if he’d remained in the Land Rover. The street value now of an average-sized rhino horn was a quarter of a million dollars, and not surprisingly, rhino poaching deaths had skyrocketed every bit as furiously, though mostly outside of the protected national parks. Even so, in this sector of the Serengeti there were only seven rhinos left.

Makinda had always declined the thinly veiled bribe offers, no matter how they escalated. He could be a wealthy man right now, retired in dirty luxury at the age of thirty-nine instead of struggling to care for both his own family of six and that of his late brother, Jephter, whose wife and seven children Makinda had of course taken in.

The only time the temptation had come close to overwhelming him was when Jephter had lain dying of cancer in a Bunda clinic and a poacher, a fat white American with a southern drawl named Luther Ricker, had whispered in his ear, “Save your brother. We’ll give you enough of the rhino powder to make him well. You need not dirty your hands with our money, but save your brother.”

Makinda knew the claims of the rhino powder’s powers were nonsense; all the scientists here said it was so. But he had almost given in that one time.

And perhaps he should have, he sometimes thought. The experts weren’t always right.

Makinda spat, trying to rid the bitter taste of that memory from his mouth. As the smell of burning metal and electronics filled the air, he struggled to gather his thoughts. His vehicle’s explosion had only been the opening gambit. The rhinos would be next, if not his fellow rangers, and he couldn’t just stand by and allow either group to be wiped out.

He had to move. Predators be damned, he had to get to some group that would help him contact his fellow rangers. He’d warn them and get them to the watering holes where the rhinos would be visiting, easy targets for the poachers if not protected.

Makinda had taken no more than five steps up the road when far to the north a soft explosion sounded. Distant and muted, little more than a poof.

But unmistakable.

The hairs on the back of Makinda’s neck stood up.

The north. Rashidi. That was where Makinda’s top assistant was supposed to be this morning. Near the big hippo watering hole.

“No…” Makinda groaned.

But maybe, he thought, it hadn’t really been an explosion. It had just been his overactive imagination, overwrought at barely escaping his own death. It couldn’t—

A second explosion echoed off to the west.

The west. Another soft poof.

That would be Samson.

If Makinda was right, and in his suddenly nauseous gut he knew he was right, that left only Brayson, Salim, and Philipo. Brayson in the northwest, Salim in the east, and Philipo in the south.

In rapid fire, soft explosions echoed off to the east and south.

Poof! Poof!

The taste of bile filled the back of Makinda’s throat. Salim and Philipo. Makinda closed his eyes and waited for the fifth and final explosion.

Brayson’s. The one that would complete the elimination of Makinda’s entire staff. Wipe out their entire sector. Sure, there were many other rangers in the Serengeti, but that covered almost 15,000 square kilometers. Their sector was isolated.

They were on their own. Just him and Brayson.

Makinda waited, but the fifth explosion didn’t sound. Had he missed it? If it had detonated simultaneously with his own, as had perhaps been the plan for them all, he’d never have heard it.

But Makinda’s instincts told him otherwise. When the fifth explosion never sounded, he knew it had not come simultaneously with his own.

Brayson was a traitor.

He had sold them out, the son of a bitch.

Makinda began to run down the road, shotgun slung over his shoulder and binoculars jangling about his neck. His boots clopped noisily, kicking up dirt in his wake. He didn’t care if he had to run a hundred miles. When he got to Brayson, he’d throttle the traitor’s sweaty, grime-covered throat and squeeze until Brayson’s greedy eyes popped out.

If he was guilty.

One look and Makinda would know for sure. But with a sinking, angry heart, he knew already. Brayson liked the night life too much. Handsome. Too handsome for his own good. A ladies’ man. A gambler. A drinker and maybe more. Trekking off to Mwanza whenever he had two straight days off.

The appetites that gave birth to greed. And the murders of Rashidi, Samson, Salim, and Philipo.

And the attempt on Makinda himself, which would have been successful if not for Makinda’s lucky discovery of the butchered elephants, almost totally hidden from the road with the usually telltale circling vultures instead lying dead in the field.

A greed with no conscience.

In retrospect, it was obvious. Brayson had betrayed them all.

He’d betrayed himself.

Makinda picked up the pace, and in no time his effort was rewarded.

A cloud of dust appeared on the horizon. Makinda stopped and broke into a smile. A lucky break! Not a long shot, but still a much quicker arrival of a safari group than he could have expected.

He jumped up and down, ignored the jostling of the shotgun on his shoulder, and began to wave wildly with both hands. It wasn’t exactly dignified behavior befitting a senior park ranger, but he didn’t give a damn. He’d get them to stop even if he had to shoot out the tires, though that shouldn’t be necessary. Any safari company’s driver would know to stop for a clearly identified park ranger.

But when he peered through the binoculars, Makinda’s smile faltered. His hands fell to his sides.

Something was wrong. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly what from this distance, but something about the vehicle looked wrong.

Makinda dropped into a crouch and sprinted for the brush. He spotted a meter-high boulder diagonally ahead to his right. He made a beeline for it, bent over double all the way, then continued away from the oncoming Land Rover and back to where the wreckage of his own vehicle still smoldered.

He dove behind another large boulder, tasted the tall grass once again and a bit of dry soil as well, and scrambled around to face the dirt road. His belly lay flat on the ground, the binoculars uncomfortably pinned against his lower ribcage. He readied the shotgun, touched his finger to the trigger, and tried to calm his hammering heart.

The Land Rover that approached looked different from those of all the safari companies he’d ever seen in the Serengeti. It still had the elevated roof that allowed tourists to stand on their seats, poke their heads out, and shoot photographs. Three African men stared out from just such a perch.

But they didn’t hold cameras or binoculars. They held AK-47s.

The side windows were darkened. Makinda couldn’t see if more compatriots of the men brandishing the AK-47s sat below or if the space was instead filled with cargo. Elephant tusks. Rhino horns.

A bitter taste again filled Makinda’s mouth. He wanted to shoot now and ask questions later, but one pump-action shotgun against at least three AK-47s didn’t sound like good odds to him, even if he got off the first two shots.

Makinda released the pressure of his finger on the trigger. Realized he was holding his breath. Exhaled slowly and as quietly as he could manage.

They stopped twenty meters short of what was left of his ruined vehicle: tortured, blackened steel with wisps of black smoke curling up from it.

Four men climbed out, three slender Africans, though none of them looked Tanzanian, and Luther Ricker, the fat American who’d tried to corrupt Makinda with the words Save your brother. All of them wore nondescript long-sleeved khaki shirts and matching trousers and boots. One of the Africans wore a dark blue baseball cap. They all carried AK-47s as they walked to the wreckage of Makinda’s vehicle.

“Nice work,” Ricker said in his southern drawl, the nice long and drawn out. Niiice. It sent a chill up and down Makinda’s spine. “You blew this one to kingdom come. He’s having a little talk with Jesus right now. With Jesus and his brother.” Ricker laughed, setting off waves of stomach fat rolling.

Makinda’s finger tightened on the trigger.

“I don’t see him,” the African with the baseball cap said in Swahili.

“English!” Ricker yelled.

The man repeated what he’d said, this time in English.

“You vaporized the sucker!” Ricker said. “Blew him into tiiiny bits of dust. That’s all that’s left of him.”

“No blood?” the African said.

“You think he survived this blast?” Ricker said in a tone Makinda associated with talking to children and stupid people. “You want to look for his severed head, be my guest. But get your scrawny ass back here in three minutes. I ain’t got no time for trophy hunting. We got some money to make.”

Ricker lumbered back to their Land Rover and slid in the driver’s seat, on the right, the near side facing Makinda. The three Africans looked at each other, gave slight shrugs, and loaded back into their vehicle.

“That better be all of them,” Makinda whispered to himself long after they were gone. “If there’s a separate group for each ranger they took out…”

He didn’t want to think about that. Four against one was bad enough odds.

Although he knew it was worse than that. Much worse.

Four plus Brayson against him. Four AK-47s plus whatever Brayson was carrying now against one pump-action shotgun and a .38.

A Land Rover, actually two counting Brayson’s, against a man walking on foot.

He didn’t stand a chance.

Makinda started walking. After ten steps, he began to run.

After three kilometers, Makinda finally got lucky. Sweat ran in his eyes. His feet felt like he was walking on eggshells; his boots were not meant for running. His shirt was dripping wet.

But he’d only encountered a half-dozen giraffes, a herd of about twenty elephants, and a hundred or so impalas of one variety or another. None of them had shown him any interest.

He’d pushed to get to a particular intersection of the dirt roads, knowing it was likely some safari group would pass it soon.

And he was right.

He was there at the crossing for less than two minutes when he spotted clouds of dust in the east billowing up from the road. Ma­kinda considered wading into the tall grass far enough to hide himself until he was sure it was Nikons and Canons that were pointing out of the tops of the vehicles and not AK-47s, but he figured he’d take his chances with the Land Rover over whatever hidden surprise waited for him in the tall grass.

As it turned out, it was an Ace African Safaris Land Rover, driven by Chibuzo Akunyili, a man Makinda had dealt with for years and called Chi. Makinda waved him down.

“What’s up, chief?” Chi said. “What are you doing out here all alone?”

“Hello, Chi. May I step inside? I’ve got a private message I need to give you.”

Makinda liked Chi and thought he could trust him, but knew that what he was about to say would not be popular. He couldn’t imagine any driver taking off and leaving him standing there—there’d be hell to pay if anyone did—but the morning’s events had shaken him. Makinda was taking no chances.

“Sure, hop in.”

Makinda stepped aboard and quickly introduced himself to the five tourists arrayed on three rows of blue seats, the first two rows consisting only of a single seat on each side, the last row the only one that stretched from side to side.

Sweat dripping off his face, he ducked down to speak to Chi, seated on the right side, the driver’s side, of course. On the left was a large flyswatter to nail the occasional tsetse fly and a brown cardboard box filled with a dozen or so white boxed lunches.

“I’ve got a very dangerous situation here,” Makinda whispered to Chi. “I need your complete discretion.”

Chi’s brow furrowed. “Of course.” He was a broad-shouldered man of about fifty-five with short gray hair. A white nameplate with black printing identified him at the front of the vehicle; a smaller one hung above the left pocket of his dark green shirt.

“You can’t tell anyone about this,” Makinda said. “My life depends on it. Possibly others.” He pointed to the two-way radio and the square black microphone that hung from a chrome metal clip. “Nothing on the bush telegraph. It’s going to be difficult, but I’m counting on you.”

Chi nodded vigorously. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ve got to commandeer this vehicle.”

“Jakaya, these tourists paid top dollar! I can’t—”

“Mine got blown up by poachers. I was supposed to be in it.”

Chi fell silent.

“How many vehicles in this group you’re hosting?” Makinda asked.

“Three. Four including this one.”

“I need you to find them right away. We need to offload these people into those other three vehicles. Do you know where they are?”

“Sure. The other three are less than a kilometer away from here. They’re viewing a pride of lions another group found. All of us heard on the bush telegraph and went rushing to join them. We were the farthest away. We’re the last group getting there.”

Makinda swore. He closed his eyes tightly. “Get going while I think.”

The Land Rover lurched forward along the uneven dirt road.

“I can’t have this going out over bush telegraph,” Makinda said. “Not from you or any of the other drivers in your group. Or for that matter any of the drivers in the other groups with other safari companies that will wonder why we’re offloading people from this vehicle to the other three. Nothing can look unusual. Nothing can look suspicious.”

“We can’t offload people with lions out there,” Chi said.

“I know. I know. How many other safari companies are already at the site?”

Chi got back on the two-way radio and asked.

“Close to a dozen,” came the static-filled answer in Swahili.

Makinda shook his head. “We can’t make the offload there. It’s too dangerous. Besides, we can’t let that many other drivers see us. The bush telegraph will talk about nothing else. The wrong ears will hear it.” He squeezed Chi’s shoulder tight. “Surprise is the only thing I have on my side.”

Chi got Ace African Safari’s other three drivers on the radio. “Problems with my vehicle. Bad differential. Rendezvous with me a half kilometer down the road, due east.”

He hung up. “They’re not happy. Two were in prime viewing position. They’re going to get an earful over this for days. But they’re coming. And they’ll be quiet. I said the magic words.”

“Bad differential?”

Chi nodded. “Bad differential is our code for silence.”

Makinda nodded. “Thank you.”

“After we ditch the cargo”—Chi nodded toward the back—“do you need a driver?”

“I couldn’t ask. This is too dangerous.”

“Do you need a driver?”

“I believe these poachers killed four other rangers and would have killed me if I wasn’t lucky. I probably won’t get out of this alive. If you join me, you’ll be every bit as much at risk.”

“These poachers. They’re going after the black rhinos?”

Makinda hated the name “black rhino.” There was almost no color difference between the “white” and “black” variants, but the names had been given to the two species by the colonialists—based on the white version being more docile and the black more savage—and the racist titles had stuck. But now wasn’t the time to quibble.

“I’d bet my life on it,” Makinda said.

“Double that wager. Count me in.”

They headed northwest, toward the last noted location of the nearest rhino. Makinda filled him in on all the details. If the man was going to die, he had a right to know. Chi drove with a sense of unspeakable fury over the pitted dirt roads, bouncing the two of them wildly in the air, straining at their seat belts every time he hit a pothole or partially submerged rock at top speed.

But they arrived too late for the first rhino.

Vultures circled overhead. Others filled a nearby tree. Flies swarmed through the air. The smell of blood and death was palpable.

The fallen rhino lay on its side, the armor of its lower torso blown apart by what must have been a shotgun blast at point-blank range, its horns hacked from its mighty head. Makinda stared at the magnificent creature. Almost four meters long and well over a thousand kilos.

Its only natural enemy: humans.

Humans and their greed and stupidity.

Makinda thought that if the Vietnamese politician were here right now—the one responsible for stoking the fires of this poaching greed—Makinda would shoot the man with no remorse at all.

They came upon a second felled rhino, its midsection blown apart and its horns hacked off just like its brother’s.

And then a third.

Each time Makinda and Chi found the carcass further northwest than the one before. The guiding hand, of course, was Brayson’s. No one else, not even the best of the safari tour guides, could have told the poachers where to find the rhinos so quickly.

Makinda spat on the ground, then they headed further northwest.

Soon they saw vultures flying overhead and followed them to where fifteen more slaughtered elephants lay, huge holes ripped in their heads by shotgun blasts. Their tusks had, of course, been sawn off.

“I thought you said they used cyanide on the other elephants,” Chi said. “Why shotguns now?”

“It’s faster,” Makinda said. “They think I’m dead along with all the other rangers, other than their buddy Brayson, of course. There’s no need to cover your tracks if there’s no one left to catch you.”

As if to underscore his point, a chorus of gunshots boomed in the distance. Makinda stared in that direction, then connected the dots of each slaughter in the map inside his mind.

Suddenly Makinda knew the poachers’ destination.

The tiny airstrip.

He hadn’t expected that. He’d assumed that the poachers would exit the country using the same vehicle, taking no chances, sticking to back roads, staying as invisible as possible, and finding some unguarded path out of the country. Or use a standard exit point where there was a corrupt guard.

But via the airstrip? To get out of the country? The more he thought about it, the more sense it made, flying low beneath radar detection, especially if their destination was somewhere beyond one of the neighboring countries.

It was a tiny airstrip with a short dirt runway suitable only for prop planes, so remote that it had once had a plane crash because a hippo had wandered onto the strip. It serviced only a handful of planes each day, if that.

“While they harvest those tusks,” Makinda said, “we’ll race to the airstrip. That’s where they’re going. I’m sure of it. If we’re lucky, we’ll get there first.”

“Chief,” Chi said hesitantly. “They’ve still got all the AK-47s. We’ve got one shotgun and a revolver.”

Makinda explained his plan.

Chi stared at him. “Really?”

Makinda and Chi waited, hiding in the thick trees that lined the short, six-hundred-meter dirt runway and its grass curtain. They crouched on one knee at the opposite end from where a small, nondescript white bush plane rested beside the tiny white wooden shack that serviced the airstrip. Other than the buzzing of insects and the chirping of birds in the trees around them, the place appeared lifeless. Not a soul was visible, although presumably someone was working in the shack, the same person whose battered old jeep was parked outside, the lone vehicle visible in the open grassy area that passed for a parking lot.

Makinda and Chi had hidden their Land Rover a short distance past the airstrip, then raced back, crouching low and working around to their current position, not quite at the end of the strip on the opposite side from the jeep and the shack, always staying under the cover of the trees.

In an ideal world, Makinda thought, he would arrest these men and bring them to justice along with Brayson. He would look directly into the eyes of Ricker, whose sadistic words, Save your brother, haunted him still.

But a host of AK-47s against a single shotgun and a .38 didn’t amount to an ideal world. He’d be lucky if he got any kind of justice at all.

Makinda was starting to wonder if he’d been wrong and the airstrip wasn’t the poachers’ destination after all when they drove up in their Land Rover and parked haphazardly next to the jeep. The four men emerged, Ricker and the three Africans, AK-47s at their sides, shielded from view of the shack.

Makinda trained his binoculars on them as they walked single file into the shack. A solitary cry of outrage rang out briefly, then was silenced a split second later as the AK-47s roared to life.

Moments later, while Ricker strolled casually to the plane, unlocked it, and pulled down the stairs, the three Africans returned to the Land Rover. They unloaded stacks of curved white elephant tusks, then carried them to the plane and stuffed them inside, angling the longer ones around the corner of the door. It took several trips for the three men until finally the one in the blue baseball cap carried a green, blood-stained duffel into the plane and, with the four poachers all aboard, closed the door.

“The duffel has the rhino horns,” Makinda said. “I’m sure of it.”

As the propeller blades whirled, he peered into the binoculars, needing to see inside the cabin, and muttered, “Good!” when he saw Ricker in the pilot’s seat.

His assumption had been correct. There were no innocents aboard. Only the four poachers. It was time to make them pay for the deaths of the four rangers and whomever they’d just shot in the shack. For the butchered rhinos and the elephants. It was time to make sure they never returned to kill again.

“This revolver isn’t going to do squat,” Chi said.

“Aim for the propeller blades. Give it a chance.”

The plane accelerated down the runway, at first moving at barely more than a standstill, then faster, speeding closer and closer to the two men waiting in ambush.

The plane roared, drowning out all sound, its propellers a blur.

Makinda tasted bile at the back of his throat. His heart hammered, but he felt strangely at peace.

“Come get it,” he said, his voice steady.

The plane drew closer. Almost on top of them.

It began to take off, angling upward.

“Three… two… one,” he said.

It lifted off the ground.

“Now!” Makinda yelled.

They burst out of their cover, firing. Makinda’s shotgun boomed its deafening blast and the pilot-side window blew out. He pumped in another round, thinking he heard the ping of Chi’s shot hitting the thin metal of a propeller, then Makinda fired again, this time ripping a hole in the bush plane’s white underbelly as it drew beside them.

Makinda pumped and fired, pumped and fired, aiming at the fuel tank as the plane shot past.

It wobbled at eye level, wings dipping wildly, groaned, then righted itself, inching higher off the ground.

He pumped and fired. Pumped and fired.

But the plane continued to climb.

Fifteen feet off the ground.

Twenty, then thirty.

And just when it appeared that they had failed, the plane fell silent. At first Makinda, his ears ringing from the shotgun blasts, didn’t realize it except on some subconscious level.

He pumped and fired, having long since lost count of the shots but sure the Remington’s external magazine was almost spent. He pumped and fired even as the plane stalled and then plummeted, nose down.

It crashed, and just as Makinda and Chi both fired one last shot, the plane exploded violently, the concussion knocking the two men backward through the air.

A fiery ball shot high into the sky from the mangled wreckage of the plane. The smell of burning fuel and human flesh filled the air.

After a time, Makinda turned to Chi and hollered, “You up for a visit to Brayson’s house?”

Chi nodded. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”