CHAPTER 2

Save Valley

Zimbabwe, Africa

August 1998

REECE HAD SHOT A very impressive kudu bull that morning, a spiral-horned antelope known by many as the “gray ghost” due to its elusiveness. He, Raife, and the trackers had pursued the animal since dawn, and the old bull finally made the mistake of stopping to take a peek at whatever was tracking him. Loading the nearly six-hundred-pound animal into the bed of the small pickup had been a challenge, but between the ingenuity of the trackers and the Cruiser’s winch, they had made it happen. They wore the carefree smiles of youth as they approached the ranch house. Raife drove with Gona, the junior tracker, riding shotgun, while Reece and the senior tracker rode in the high seat welded to the bed of the truck, sipping beers and enjoying the beautiful countryside.

As they turned the corner where the house came into view, Raife could tell instantly that something wasn’t right. Three battered pickup trucks were parked haphazardly on the manicured lawn of the main house and a group of about a dozen men were scattered around the yard, most of them visibly armed. Raife drove straight toward the trucks and stopped just short of the crowd.

Feeling very exposed in the back of the truck, Reece eyed the group, whose demeanor was clearly hostile, and wondered what was going on. He counted the men, taking note of how many were displaying weapons, and glanced down at the. 375 H& H rifle sitting horizontally in the rack that ran just in front of his knees. The math wasn’t good.

Raife said something to the intruders in Shona, but they ignored him. The trackers hunched down in their seats like scolded dogs, their eyes fixed on their feet. Reece had learned to trust their judgment over the past month and decided that eye contact with their visitors was not a good idea.

Their dress ranged from soccer jerseys to threadbare dress shirts. Their only uniform seemed to be a lack of uniformity. Most appeared to be in their teens or early twenties, and the weapons they carried were a mix of AKs, shotguns, machete-like pangas, and battered old hunting rifles. Reece had no idea who these guys were, but he could tell that they weren’t happy. After a few moments, Raife’s uncle emerged from the house shadowed by a man roughly the same age. Unlike the others, this man was overweight and well dressed. He wore Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses and a purple silk button-down shirt with short sleeves. A thick gold chain hung at his neck and he sported what looked like crocodile-skin loafers on his feet. His swollen fingers removed a half-smoked cigarette from his mouth, which he flicked aside before strolling slowly across the Hastingses’ veranda as if it were his own. Clearly, this man was the boss.

The younger men perked up when he appeared, their confidence and aggressiveness boosted. He was the alpha and they were the pack. He strode directly toward the white pickup with his gang falling in behind him. He ignored Reece and walked to the driver’s-side window, saying something in Shona that Reece couldn’t understand. At Raife’s deliberate response in his native tongue, the fat man jerked a cocked and locked handgun from the back of his waistband. Reece’s dad had the same one in his collection, a Browning Hi-Power 9mm. He held the muzzle to Raife’s head with his finger resting lazily on the trigger. Reece glanced down at his rifle, knowing that he could never get to it in time. He had seldom felt so helpless in his life and made up his mind that, if Raife were shot, his killer would die soon afterward.

The man held the pistol for what seemed like an eternity, a gold bracelet dangling loosely from his sweaty wrist, the entire episode going into what felt like slow motion in Reece’s mind. The tracker next to him murmured a hushed prayer and Reece found himself wondering what religion he followed. Raife’s uncle stood ten yards away, unable to act against these armed tormenters.

Finally, the man leaned in close to Raife’s face, an evil glimmer in his eye, before whispering “pow” as he raised the muzzle in feigned recoil. He laughed a deep-throated laugh, his belly shaking against his expensive shirt, turning to face his men. They responded with laughs of their own, and those who carried weapons fired shots of intimidation into the clear blue sky. He motioned them toward their vehicles with his handgun and they all crowded quickly aboard, one man holding the passenger door for the boss to drag his considerable bulk into the seat.

The trucks’ wheels spun as they accelerated away, tearing deep red ruts into the lawn. Rich Hastings shook his head as he cursed the armed rabble.

“Bloody bastards! ”

Raife opened the truck door and walked to his uncle’s side, seemingly unfazed by his own brush with death. “Who in the hell were they, Uncle Rich? ”

“War vets. ” He pronounced it as a single word, warvits.

“War vets? Those guys look too young to have even been born when the war ended. ”

“That’s just what they call themselves. They have nothing to do with the war. Mugabe and his people keep up the revolutionary rhetoric, so no one notices they’re stealing the country blind. They’re a gang of thieves, plain and simple. Extortionists. ”

“What did they want? ”

“Money, of course. Eventually they’ll want the whole farm but right now they’ll settle for a payoff. I’d love to shoot the bastards but that’s what the government is hoping for. They send these gangs out to harass the landowners, knowing that if we fight back, they can run to the international media with cries of colonialism. Besides, if I fight back the army would seize this place by nightfall. ”

“What about the police? ” Reece chimed in, his American-born mind shocked at the injustice.

“The police? The police probably told them how to get here. No, boys, there’s not much we can do except pay their tribute and hang on as long as we can. I could move to the U. S. and go work for your father tomorrow, Raife, but what would happen to this place? This farm has been in our family for one hundred and fifty years. I’m not going to abandon it. We employ over a hundred people here. You think those bastards are going to take care of them? We run our own school here, for Christ’s sake. ”

As a twenty-year-old, Reece wasn’t sure what to think, though he did recognize he was from a vastly different culture. On one hand, you had indigenous people who had elected a leader viewed by much of the world as legitimate, though there were already rumblings about the disappearances and murders of those who opposed the now-entrenched dictator. On the other, you had the established property rights of families who had homesteaded their farms with the approval of the British Crown and lived on them legally for more than a century. Both sides believed that they were in the right and neither was willing to budge. To the young American, it looked like conditions were ripe for war.

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