Ivory Nation by Andy Maslen (free children's ebooks online txt) 📕

steel counterweight, swinging the red-and-white striped pole up to admit them.

‘Thanks,’ Stella said through the open window as she inched the Land Cruiser over the threshold. She followed a track edged with white-painted rocks to the rudimentary carpark.

She parked, and all three clambered out of the Land Cruiser’s air conditioned interior into the already searing heat of a Gaborone morning. A stork strutting across the compound, its rosy beak as long as a combat knife, eyed them warily before taking wing and flapping noisily up to perch on a rooftop.

They entered the whitewashed office block. A young female soldier in beige dress uniform, her braided hair tied in tight at the nape of her neck, looked up from a folder and smiled.

‘You are here to see Major Modimo?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ Gabriel said. ‘I’m Alec Jensen.’

‘And I’m Rachel Camaro,’ Eli said.

They both held their press passes out for inspection, but the young woman waved them away with another smile. She ignored Stella. The gate guard must have filled her in on ‘the security’.

‘Wait here, please,’ the soldier said, before picking up her desk phone, a heavy-looking unit in a shade of institutional green Stella remembered from her parents’ first house.

‘Major Modimo. Your guests are here. Yes, Sir.’

She replaced the handset in the cradle and smiled up at them.

‘Major Modimo is coming to collect you personally,’ she said, in a tone of voice that suggested this was very far from an everyday occurrence.

The tread of boots on polished tiles sounded loudly from a corridor behind the reception area. Gabriel straightened. Beside him Eli did the same, and he noticed approvingly the way Stella took a couple of steps back to stand behind and to his left.

The man who rounded the corner and approached the small group forced Gabriel to hurriedly reset his expectations. He realised he’d been expecting a carbon-copy of another African officer who’d extracted him and Britta from a firefight in north-western Mozambique a few years earlier. Major Anthony Chilundika had been tall, solidly built, heavily moustachioed and possessed of a jovial booming voice: a Sandhurst-trained combat commander with the manners and appearance to match.

Major Modimo presented an altogether different model of army officer. No more than five feet seven and ten stone, he nevertheless looked good in his immaculately tailored camouflage fatigues. His steel-rimmed glasses and neatly trimmed goatee gave him the cerebral look Gabriel associated with intelligence and strategy types.

They shook hands and, after the introductions were out of the way, the major ushered them along a narrow corridor to his office.

Sparsely furnished, with a desk and three mismatched chairs, the room was clearly a purely practical space. Gabriel saw none of the trappings of success so many people at the top of hierarchies – military or civilian – collected. No gold pen and pencil sets. No extravagant artworks or ceramics. No expensive leather-upholstered sofas or glass-topped coffee tables.

He did, however, register a framed photograph of the major smiling and shaking hands with a man Gabriel recognised from the briefing notes Don had supplied: Jerome Tsebogo, Botswana’s current president. Beside it, another photo of the major, an AK-47 on his hip, standing with three soldiers behind the corpse of a black man, sprawled on the ground beside a tusk as long as he was.

The major spoke, jerking Gabriel’s attention back to the present.

‘You are in Botswana writing an article for the Times of London about the illicit trade in ivory, yes?’

‘That’s right, Major,’ Gabriel said. ‘As you know, the people of Britain are very concerned that these magnificent animals should be protected. It’s a very topical story.’

‘It is also a very complicated story, did you know that?’

‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’

‘The farmers up north are not so happy about Botswana’s healthy elephant population. A single bull can destroy an entire year’s crop in one night. They come into villages and smash the place up. They kill people, too.’

‘We’d want to present all sides of the story, obviously.’

‘Yes, and I’m sure your readers will love to hear that,’ Modimo said with unmistakable sarcasm. ‘Poor blacks killing beautiful elephants just,’ he made air quotes, ‘to protect their livelihoods.’

This conversation wasn’t going at all the way Gabriel had envisioned.

‘We heard about the murders of your men by poachers. And the three British paratroopers. We thought we could start there. If you could arrange for us to visit the site of the killings.’

‘I have already detailed a squad of my best men for protection. I will accompany you,’ Modimo said.

He turned to Stella.

‘You are security?’

‘Yes, Major.’

‘You have a weapon?’

She smiled.

‘Civilians are prohibited from owning handguns in Botswana, Major. As you know.’

Gabriel could see the major trying, and failing, to suppress a smile.

‘Of course, my dear lady. And your employers, which one, I wonder? Techpoint? Logistics International? Kagiso Group? They will not, how shall I put this delicately, have reached an accommodation with my colleagues at police headquarters?’

Stella lowered her eyes and returned his smile. Said nothing.

Modimo laughed.

‘Well, no matter. For the purposes of this little,’ he paused, ‘adventure, I will furnish you with a firearm. I assume, even though you aren’t carrying, you know how to shoot?’

‘I do.’

‘Excellent. Let us proceed, then. My men are on standby and eager to get into the field.’

Outside, seven soldiers were standing in the shade of a tree. A couple were smoking. They were laughing and bantering. As soon as the major arrived, the cigarettes were hastily stamped out, the laughter ceased, and all seven snapped to attention.

‘At ease, men,’ the major said. ‘These are our visitors from England. Mr Jensen, Miss Camaro and,’ he turned to Stella, ‘my apologies. I didn’t ask your name.’

‘O’Meara.’

He turned to face his squad again.

‘And Miss O’Meara. Corporal Kobisa, find Miss O’Meara a rifle.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

The man sprinted off and returned shortly afterwards bearing a wooden-stocked AK-47. He skidded to a halt in front of Stella, who thanked him and shouldered the rifle.

Modimo pointed to the Land Cruiser.

‘I should take your car if I were you. More comfortable