The Leopard's Prey (24 page)

This is it, girl.
From her elevated position, she watched Kimathi move nearer to the propeller.

As before, Jade retarded the magneto switch and primed the engine. Then she turned on the switch and cracked the throttle. “Contact,” she shouted over the side. Kimathi swung the propeller and moved out of the way. Once again, Jade was caught by the sensation that the plane, like a good horse, had a will to run and only waited for Jade to let her have her head. Jade opened up the throttle, and swept down the field, keeping the plane on the ground until the rpm gauge registered fourteen hundred rpms. She felt the plane jostle over the bumpy terrain as the grasses turned into a blurring rush of olive green. Above, to her right, she spied a black-shouldered kite, his wings outstretched as if in rapturous praise. Then, with a pull on the stick, she experienced the sensation of being suspended as she let the Jenny rise and joined the bird, soaring over the grasslands.

The cool air helped with takeoff, especially as the morning sun did its part in creating breezes. The OX-5 engine sounded soft and sweet to her ears, its low, throaty purr reminiscent of Biscuit’s peaceful rumblings. Beyond that, silence. She increased her speed, climbed gently to one thousand feet, and began her turn. As she circled back over the hangar, she waved to Kimathi. He waved back and started the walk back to the house and his duties in the coffee fields. Jade was left alone, swaddled in fine Irish linen and a sapphire sky.

She peered over the side, feeling the slipstream caress her face. Keeping the sun on her right, she headed north toward Fort Hall, then due west toward the more open land. Bob Perkins had thought Sam might find a young rhino near the Maasai reserves. She’d already decided that the most interesting route would be to head to Naivasha, skirt the lake’s southern side, and slip southwest into the rich plains between the Mau Escarpment and the Ngong Hills.

Maps didn’t always mean much out here. Most of the existing ones were old and didn’t include the newer settlements or show anything beyond the farthest reaches of the Uganda railroad. Rivers were scrawled more or less haphazardly with bends where they didn’t exist.

Sam had taken the best map he could get, made notations, and even drawn in a few of the newer homesteads and dirt tracts. Jade had found it with his logbook in the same tiny compartment where she’d stowed her water. She’d looked over the map that morning, plotted a course, and written down compass bearings. If she spotted a rhino, she needed to be able to get the location back to her employers as accurately as possible. Check that. She needed to get the information to Sam to give to them. This was
his
job.

She planned to fly within sight of recognizable landmarks as much as possible. Below her stood Fort Hall, with its lone trading post and civic station. Just southwest of there they had caught the first leopard. That meant Alwyn Chalmers’ maize farm was close by. She doubted his missing polo pony was still alive, but if it was, she might spot it from the air and help the man out.

Horses were social animals. If it hadn’t come home, then it had probably found company with its closest African relation and was keeping to the edge of a zebra herd. Jade spied what looked like a herd of something a few degrees south of her intended path. She banked, her feet adjusting the rudder bar while her right hand on the stick moved the ailerons to keep a smooth turn. Once again, her thoughts turned to Sam and his description of flying.

Most of it isn’t done with hands or feet,
he’d said.
You fly with your head and by the seat of your pants.
Then he joked that since some pilots he’d known had their heads up their rears, they thought they could fly better than him since the communication from brain to butt was shorter.
It doesn’t work that way,
he’d concluded.

The herd was a mix of zebra and wildebeest. Jade pushed the stick forward and dropped enough to see the animals better. Nothing that looked like a pony stood out.
Too bad.
She climbed back up and headed toward the railroad crossing at Naivasha.

Naivasha, home to cattle auctions and a gorgeous lake, boasted a hotel in addition to the railway station. Recently it had become a popular holiday spot for Nairobiites looking to get away for a day, hoping to see the wildlife they had evicted from their own lands. She turned south just past the railway station and followed the rail line. A black vehicle approached from the west, one of the district farmers perhaps. To her right, Naivasha Lake gleamed, a cobalt gem circled by pink flamingos.

Jade flew toward the lake and dropped to get a better look. Two hippos lounged in the papyrus-fringed shallows, and several pelicans sat on the shore in attendance. An African fish eagle rose beside her, riding a thermal. She took in his white head and back flanked by great black wings. Her heart beat faster as she shared his dominion. Deciding she’d better not share it too closely, she veered toward the land just as the eagle dove for a meal. Jade tore her attention from the freshwater paradise and concentrated on the grasslands. After all, she wouldn’t spot any rhino in the lake.

Mount Longonot rose in a graceful blue haze to the south with more than six miles of scrubby plains between it and the lake. Jade held the stick between her knees and consulted the map. She was in the Great Rift. About twenty miles west of her position rose the Mau Escarpment, but before that, there was a spot identified as Hell’s Gate, where red volcanic rock jutted out in dramatic columnar walls and steam vents exhaled Satan’s breath. Maasai land. Maybe not a good place to fly. She’d stick to these plains.

A quick glance over the side revealed a herd of grazing buffalo, then several giraffe browsing among the acacia trees. Nearby roamed some tiny creatures that might have been dik-diks. No rhino. As she again turned the Jenny’s nose west, she spied a decrepit-looking farmhouse nestled against Longonot’s gentler tip. The dirt tract leading up to it looked fresh enough to still be in use. Jade didn’t see any evidence of cattle or crops and wondered if the place had been recently abandoned. Then she noted the even more dilapidated truck parked under a lone acacia tree.
Perhaps not completely
abandoned.

Jade crisscrossed the plains twice before fortune blessed her just south of the lake’s lowest reach. If her eyes didn’t deceive her, a pair of black rhinos lounged under an acacia just ahead. She passed by, but the tree blocked part of her view. One definitely looked like a calf, but she couldn’t quite make out the mother. She circled and came back around. Sure enough, there was a calf, but now Jade could tell that the mother was not lounging. She was dead, and the baby had no intention of leaving the only protection it had ever known.

“Hot biscuits!” Jade exclaimed. Many collectors, she knew, captured calves by shooting the mother, a practice Jade abhored. Since a mother rhino wasn’t easily run off from her young, killing her tended to be the only way to get the calf. Jade wondered how this mother had died. The railroad was only a few miles east of them. Perhaps she’d had a run-in with the locomotive.

Rhinos had been known to charge the puffing engines, usually to the animal’s demise. If this female had survived the immediate confrontation, her injuries might have been severe enough to eventually take their toll. Most animals died on the spot when they’d been dealt a bullet to the heart or brain, but as Jade knew from her experience in Tsavo over a year ago, someone always forgot to tell the rhino. They had a tendency to run on pure momentum and anger.

Another war casualty.
But, like the leopard cubs, this calf had survived its brush with civilization. She’d turn back, pass on the information, and then let her bosses pick up the calf.

Her engine shuddered.
What the hell?
Maybe she’d just hit one of those invisible booby traps where the air changed density. She was close enough to Hell’s Gate that there might be steam pockets where rising gases supplanted the oxygen needed for the engine to operate.

The engine sputtered again, an old man’s cough replacing the throaty purr.

Definitely time to turn back. If she could get as far as Naivasha, she could put down and get tools from someone there.

But then, the engine went dead, and only primeval silence filled the cockpit.

CHAPTER 13

Warriors value the companionship of other warriors and, at some point later
in their career, will live in the manyatta, a warrior village. We might think of it
as an exclusive men’s club.

—The Traveler

SAM WOKE TO the pungent scent of disinfectant and the feeling that someone had replaced his tongue with a cotton wad. He didn’t think he could form enough spit to shine an ant’s shoes. He forced his eyes open and stared at the arrangement of beds, ordered like a barracks. His mind felt as foggy as his mouth, and he couldn’t comprehend the sight. He thrashed and his right arm brushed the top of the chair, knocking Jade’s note to the floor and under the bed.

It must have been those dreams. So real. He could hear the roar of wind race past his ears, feel the plane buck against a strong crosswind, forced into a turn in a dogfight. But the wildest part was that he was flying a Jenny against the Germans.
I flew a Spad.

Sam closed his eyes and tried to gather his wits. There had been other sensations, other illusions or, more accurately, delusions. He’d felt the phantom pains in his missing lower leg and absentmindedly tried to ease it by rubbing the other leg against it. But he couldn’t move. His legs were pinned. He shuddered and once again felt the terror of his capture and imprisonment.
Maybe I wasn’t dreaming. Maybe I’m still in the camp.
He pushed the fear further back in his mind before it could take hold. Instead, he focused on one of the last thoughts he remembered. He could have sworn that he was home in Battle Ground, Indiana. He knew it was impossible, yet the feelings were so genuine, he could smell the fresh-cut hay and feel the sweat on his back. His mother brought him something to drink, lemonade, and he gulped it down before rejoining his brothers in the field.
Gotta make hay while the sun shines.

He thought he remembered hearing Jade’s voice once, but that made no sense.
Jade doesn’t live in Indiana.
He drifted back into oblivion once more.

You can do this,
Jade told herself.
It’s just a landing.
The problem was finding the best spot. With Hell’s Gate in front of her and to the south, and the lake to the north, her options were limited. The beautiful grasslands had too many obstacles in the manner of wildlife.

Even without power, the plane could glide for a while, especially if she could catch an updraft and ride it back up a little, like a vulture. It gave her a bit of time. She glided west, riding into the airstream pulled down from the distant Mau Escarpment, which created a small headwind. Huge cliffs, made from column after column of basalt, acted like a gate, beckoning her to enter the wild lands beyond. A few isolated volcanic towers dotted the landscape to the south. Here all the air became heated by the sun baking the red rocks. Too many rocks. She needed to set down now. She spied a level-looking patch without any wildlife to clutter up a decent runway.

Hard on a plane, colliding with a wildebeest.

Jade was too high to make this field, so she executed a gentle spiral to decrease her altitude. Even then she felt she was coming in too fast, so she used her rudder and turned the plane’s nose a few degrees out of the wind in a sideslip, letting the breeze hit the fuselage to act as a brake.
So far so good.
She was now about six feet above ground and had a decent stretch in front of her. She straightened out and put the nose right into the wind.

Jade felt the wheels make contact and eased back on the stick to bring the tail skid down. Immediately she felt the plane jolt and buck. The grass was deceptive. It hid myriad dirt clods, dried dung chips, and volcanic rocks.

The Jenny skidded to a halt with one final buck. Jade jerked forward. Her head struck the panel and she dropped into black silence.

“SAM, ARE YOU awake? My stars, man, you had us worried.”

The familiar voice completely disoriented Sam. He stared at his visitor, blinking stupidly, his mouth agape. Finally he managed to croak out one word: “Avery?”

“Well, you recognize me at least. That’s something. You look like bloody hell.”

Sam’s mind worked feverishly to reconcile the facts with this visit. Avery was in London. Avery was talking to him.
I’m in London?

“Am I dying?”

Avery laughed. “No, man. Just a nasty run of malaria. You’ll be right as rain in no time.” He patted Sam’s shoulder. “Don’t blow a gasket trying to make sense of it. I didn’t come all the way to Nairobi just to see you. Beverly and I came back because we couldn’t stand London anymore. Arrived yesterday just in time to have Neville drop in trying to find Jade. Told us you had collapsed in a raging fever.”