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

He laughed.

‘Would you like to travel with us, Major?’ Gabriel asked. ‘We could use the time to learn more from you about ivory poaching.’

The major smiled.

‘Elegantly put, my friend. Saving my poor rear end from a fifty-mile ride on military suspension, eh? Yes, why not. Thank you.’

The major turned to his men, issued a few orders in Tsetswana and then, as the soldiers climbed into the truck, returned to Gabriel’s side.

‘Follow that truck!’ he said, laughing again.

Gabriel took the wheel and Modimo sat beside him. Eli and Stella climbed into the Land Cruiser’s spacious rear compartment.

‘There,’ Major Modimo said, pointing to a spot about five hundred yards to their left.

Ahead of them, the truck was already turning, leaving the track and bumbling across the rough, rock-strewn ground, avoiding acacias and tall, brick-red termite mounds. Gabriel followed its tyre-tracks, looking past it to the place Modimo had indicated.

At a distance, the object might have been a bonfire waiting to be ignited. A pile of whitish sticks arranged in a rough pyramid. As they neared their destination, the object resolved into the skeleton of an adult elephant. Behind a low-growing thorn bush, Gabriel spotted a second skeleton and then, hidden by that, a third, much smaller than the other two.

He brought the Land Cruiser to a stop behind the truck and climbed out.

Major Modimo issued his orders. Even without Tsetswana, Gabriel could translate it. It’s what he would have said.

Establish a perimeter. Anyone appears, give them a warning. If they don’t stop, shoot. Once in the air. Then to kill.

They walked over to the largest skeleton. Not a scrap of flesh remained, just bleached bones shrouded in a thick, desiccated hide. The front of the skull had been sawn clean off. The spongy interior was revealed across a dead-flat plane of bone, its edges scored by a chainsaw’s teeth.

All around the carcass, the ground had been gouged out in scrapes and scoops. They reminded Gabriel of the gouges in his lawn back in Salisbury when his old greyhound Seamus would dig up the grass for chafer bug larvae.

‘What are they?’ he asked.

‘When the meat is gone, and beetles have consumed every last morsel of edible material that remains, vultures eat the blood-soaked earth. Mother Nature is very efficient out here, Mr Jensen. How does the line go in the film? The circle of life?’

Gabriel nodded, reflecting that, for these poor beasts, the circle had been accelerated unjustly by men’s insatiable greed for money, not a predator’s natural appetite for food.

Behind them, Eli was using the Canon. Photographing the skeletons but also the ground, documenting the entire site in a series of identically framed pictures they could upload to a laptop and study for clues back at the hotel.

‘If you don’t mind, I will wait in the Land Cruiser,’ the major said. ‘I have been here more times than I care to remember. Take your time. We will return to the barracks when you are ready.’

Five minutes later, Stella called over.

‘Alec, Rachel! Over here!’

They hurried over.

Stella was crouching between two widely spaced acacias. She pointed at a series of zig-zag tread marks in a smooth area of dried mud.

‘Must have rained a little before they drove out here. I can take a cast of that.’

She headed over to the Land Cruiser and returned with a black nylon holdall in one hand and a plastic container of water in the other. She set the water down and unzipped the holdall. From its crowded depths she brought out a plastic bag of white powder, a large plastic measuring jug and a block of grey modelling clay, all purchased the day before in Gaborone.

Gabriel watched as she began pulling lumps of modelling clay off the main block and rolling out fat sausages. These she flattened into inch-high strips. She erected low walls around a foot-long section of the tyre-track and squeezed and smoothed the joins with her thumbs. She mixed up the Plaster of Paris in the jug until it reached a gloopy consistency that reminded him of melted ice cream. Pronouncing herself satisfied, she slid a pair of purple nitrile gloves on and poured the thick white liquid into the enclosure and eased it to the edges with her thumb.

She looked up at Gabriel and Eli.

‘In this heat it won’t take more than thirty minutes to dry,’ she said. ‘I’ll photograph it and send the pics back to London. My forensics guy might be able to get us a make and model.’

‘Let’s keep searching while it dries, then,’ Eli said. ‘No offence to Major Modimo or the Botswana Police Force or your former colleagues, Gabe, but they could have missed something. And Stella’s a professional.’

They spread out, each taking a 120-degree slice of a circle. On hands and knees, they began a fingertip search of the ground. They were looking for something, anything, that might provide a lead to the identity of the poachers.

Gabriel could feel the heat burning into him. They’d brought plenty of water, and drunk their fill before starting work, but, even so, he could feel his tongue sticking to the inside of his mouth.

A flicker of scarlet caught his eye: a small bird, identical to the one he’d saved from the spider. He followed its flight as it flitted from bush to acacia and back again. Finding a perch to its liking, it began stroking its beak from side to side on the branch, as if sharpening a knife on a whetstone. Something else caught Gabriel’s eye. A smooth, curved, bone-white surface.

21

He got to his feet and walked over to the thorn bush, causing the bird to depart, peeping with what he imagined was annoyance.

Rolling his shirt sleeve down and donning a leather glove, he snaked his hand into the depths of the thorn bush, wincing at the sharp pain as an inch-long dagger impaled his forearm. He managed to extract the thorn using his other hand and continued pushing his right arm deeper into