CHAPTER 32

Niassa Game Reserve

Mozambique, Africa

July

RICH TOOK THE NEWS like a man who knew it was coming. Though he obviously wasn’t surprised, he was visibly saddened. Hastings had come to look at Reece less like his nephew’s friend and more like his own blood. With little family left in Africa, it pained him to see Reece leaving. He could see that Reece had found both peace and purpose here in Mozambique, and he was worried that with the appearance of the new American in camp he was now destined for neither.

Though Rich understood Reece’s reasons for leaving, he was inflexible on one point: ever the gracious host, he insisted that Reece and Freddy join the camp in a final farewell dinner. Reece gave his friend a tour of the camp before watching a breathtaking sunset over the river. Beer was flowing by the time Rich Hastings made his appearance at the lodge, leaning his heavy double rifle against a chair and hanging his worn leather ammunition belt next to it.

“Rich, this is my buddy Freddy Strain. We go back a long way. ”

“How’s it, Freddy? ” Reece could sense the reservation in Hastings’s voice.

“Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Hastings. I know your nephew. He’s a good man. ”

“Rich, don’t hold it against Freddy that I have to go. He’s just the messenger. ”

“Mr. Hastings, is that a Westley Richards droplock? ” Freddy motioned toward Rich’s rifle nearby.

Reece grinned.

“You know your guns, Freddy. Please call me Rich. ”

Hastings walked toward the rifle and broke open the action, slipping the panatela-sized cartridges into his hip pocket. He offered the gun to Freddy, who set down his drink and wiped his hands on his pants to ensure that they were dry. He took the rifle as if it were the queen’s scepter, eyes wide.

To the casual observer, the rifle looked a lot like a double-barrel shotgun; it was, in fact, a massive rifle with juxtaposed bores larger than a half inch in diameter. Often referred to as an “elephant gun, ” its 750-grain bullets would stop a charging Tyrannosaurus. This particular model was crafted by one of the gun trade’s most prestigious makers in Birmingham, England, during what is widely regarded as the golden age of gunmaking. A new one would run the buyer about as much as a Range Rover, and even one with this many miles on it would fetch a workingman’s annual salary at auction.

“Five Seventy-Seven, wow. Westley hasn’t made a hundred of these, ” Freddy said as much to himself as those around him.

“That one is number twenty-five, ” Hastings proclaimed with pride.

“That would make it between the wars, would it not? ”

“Indeed it would, lad. This rifle belonged to my father and his father before him. ”

Even Hastings couldn’t help but smile now. He looked on as his new guest slowly turned the gun to admire the exquisite rose and scroll engraving, the swirling grays, blues, and purples of the faded case-colored frame, and the rich marbling of the reddish walnut stock. Though the gun was close to one hundred years old and had been carried for countless miles in the bush, it was in surprisingly good condition. Every ding in the stock, every tiny scratch in the metal told a story. The most prominent sign of wear on the gun came near the twin muzzles of the thick barrels, where the deep blued finish was worn silver like the pale skin under a man’s wristwatch. Rich had carried the rifle over his shoulder with his right hand gripping the barrels in the “African style. ” Over the decades, the sweat and friction from Hastings’s hand had worn completely through the finish.

“Why is it called a ‘droplock’? ” Reece asked, baiting Freddy into showing his encyclopedic knowledge of firearms.

“May I? ” Freddy looked at Hastings with hesitation.

“Please do. ”

Strain snapped the barrels shut, turned over the rifle, and removed the checkered walnut forend. He lifted a hinged plate on the bottom side of the rifle’s action and removed a jeweled metal part.

“This is one of the locks. ” Freddy held the Victorian-looking steel object in his palm. “These guns were designed to be used in places like this where there were no gunsmiths to be found for hundreds of miles and where sending the rifle back to England meant weeks of sea travel. The best of them came with a spare set of locks that the hunter could carry in his gear and replace in the field if something broke. As you can see, these locks drop right out of the bottom of the action, hence ‘the droplock, ’& #8201; ” Freddy concluded, winning Rich over with his knowledge and enthusiasm for the classic rifle.

Throughout dinner, Rich captivated Strain with war stories from the Rhodesia days. Reece couldn’t recall an instance when Freddy had stayed quiet for so long. As they finished the feast of Cape buffalo filet and fresh vegetables, Rich took a more serious tone.

“I won’t pretend that I don’t know who you two blokes will be working for, but let me explain my reservations. When our prime minister agreed to end the Bush War and turn the country over to majority rule, a man named Abel Muzorewa was elected prime minister and led the interim government. He was a good man, a bishop of all things. The war didn’t stop, though, because the bloody communists didn’t control Parliament. Those pulling the strings in Washington and London felt that the new government was too cozy with the European settlers, so they sent in the CIA to disrupt things. We caught them red-handed, meddling in our constitutional process, and we rounded up the entire ring. In exchange for their agents’ return, the U. S. government agreed to drop their sanctions and recognize the interim government. Like fools, we took the deal and Carter and his people stabbed us in the back, pretending it never happened. Now, I don’t blame the CIA men. They were following orders. They were tools, though, pawns of a government that would break any agreement to get what they wanted. The CIA actually had the gall to try to recruit me to bury weapons caches and mark coordinates for possible runways, DZs and LZs, ah, but that’s a story for another day. Don’t forget what I told you, boys. You are good blokes. Be wary of politicians meddling in the affairs of other nations, ordering young men like you to their deaths in exchange for reelection. ”

After an uncomfortable pause, Louie made a toast to Reece, which broke the tension and effectively ended the dinner. It was time to say good-bye to the camp staff—the trackers, the cooks, the skinners, the maids—the people whom Reece had grown to know like family over the past four months. They stood single file in the main lodge, with hats in hand as a sign of respect. One by one, they approached Reece and either hugged him or shook his hand. Reece had a gift for each of them: a headlamp, a knife, a pair of boots that looked as though they might fit. He gave away virtually all his possessions. These seemingly ordinary items were treated as treasures by the staff. Finally, the procession thinned out, leaving only Gona and Solomon. Gona, a man of few words, said nothing lest the tears that filled his eyes spill down his cheeks.

“Sara mushe, Gona, ” said Reece.

Gona merely nodded in response, gripping Reece’s hand tightly before half-hugging him and turning quickly away.

Solomon stood alone in his olive coveralls, looking none the worse for wear despite having been recently on the brink of death.

“You saved my life, Mr. James. I cannot thank you. . . ”

“You’ve been a great friend, Solomon. That’s thanks enough. Take care of yourself, and take care of Gona, too. I’ll come back one day. ”

That brought a wide smile to Solomon’s face. He pulled an object from his pocket that looked like black wire wrapped in a small circle and handed it to Reece, who recognized it as a traditional elephant-hair bracelet, woven from the thick hair of the tail with four rectangular knots spaced equally around the circumference.

“This is from the cow, Mr. James, where I was shot. I hope that she brings you luck. ”

Now it was Reece’s turn to choke up, knowing that Solomon had walked miles to the site of his own near-death shooting to recover the slain animal’s tail and weave it into a bracelet for the man who saved his life.

Reece spent one final night in his open hooch, listening to the sounds of the hippos and elephants in the river below, a lion roaring somewhere to the west. He slept little, his thoughts racing to process the news that he wasn’t dying after all. Are they really going to pardon me? Pardon my friends? Is this a trap? How could Mo be working for ISIS?

His last thought as he finally drifted off to sleep was of an explosives-laden drone settling onto the roof of an SUV in Baghdad.

• • •

At dawn, a Pilatus landed on the strip where Reece had first arrived many weeks ago. Reece caught a look at the pilot through the Plexiglas window, secretly hoping to see his friend Liz Riley. Unless she’d grown a beard, it wasn’t her. The two passengers disembarked: a junior case officer from the Tanzanian embassy and an interpreter to drive Strain’s Defender 110 back to Dar es Salaam. Strain shook Rich Hastings’s hand and climbed aboard the idling aircraft, leaving Reece and Hastings to say their good-byes.

“I can’t thank you enough for all that you’ve done for me, Rich. ”

“You would have done the same for me, James. Family looks after one another. ”

“Here, take this, you never know when you may need it. ” Hastings handed Reece a small sheath knife, its handle made from smooth ebony.

Reece pulled the blade from the leather scabbard and saw a stylized osprey engraved on the side, perched on a rocker that read Pamwe Chete, the motto of the famed Selous Scouts, meaning all together.

“I can’t accept this, Rich. ”

“My fight is over, James. Yours has just begun. Take it and be well. ”

Reece reached into his bag and brought out his Winkler-Sayoc tomahawk, handing it to the man he now saw as family.

“Thank you. Thank you for showing me how to live again. ”

Before the older man could protest, Reece turned and boarded the plane.

As they lifted off, he saw Hastings standing beside his white Land Cruiser, watching yet another son depart Old Africa.

PART TWO

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