But he had another weapon.
He pointed toward the female.
“ATTACK.”
Kane moves before the command leaves his partner’s lips. He anticipates the instruction—and charges. Aggression already rages through him, stoked to a fiery blaze by the other. He has smelled her fury, read the territoriality in her posture, heard the threat.
She does not back down, lunging at him at the same time he leaps.
They strike hard, chest to chest, teeth gnashing at each other, catching air and fur. They roll, entangled, first him on top, then her.
She moves, fast, powerful, going for his exposed belly. She bites hard—but finds no flesh, only tough vest. He slides free from under her confusion and dismay. He lunges, snapping, shredding her ear.
She leaps back.
Now wary.
He smells her fear.
He growls deeper, from his bones. His ears lie back, his hackles trembling. He sets his front legs wider, challenging her. Saliva ropes from his curled lips, redolent with her blood.
It is enough.
She backs from his posture, from the toughness of his false hide.
One step, then another.
A new command reaches him, cutting through the crimson of his rage.
COME. FOLLOW.
He obeys, retreating but never backing down, locking eyes, still challenging the other until she falls out of view.
Tucker hurried away from the campsite, putting several hundred yards between them and the pack before slowing. He paused only long enough to run his fingers over Kane. Except for a few missing puffs of hair, he appeared unscathed.
As he’d hoped, Kane’s tactical vest, reinforced with Kevlar, had not only protected the shepherd, but also clearly spooked the female with its strangeness. She was happy to let them retreat.
Backtracking along their old trail, the return journey went much faster. They arrived at the camp shortly before noon and were greeted happily by Christopher and Anya.
Bukolov offered a gruff but surprisingly genuine “Glad you are not dead.”
While Anya and Bukolov prepared a cold lunch, Tucker recounted for Christopher his encounter with the guerrillas and wild dogs.
“You were lucky to survive that hungry pack, Mr. Tucker. And let us hope you are right about the soldiers, that they were simply passing through. Show me how far you mapped and we can plan the best course to avoid trouble.”
Half an hour later, they were all gathered over a set of maps and charts. Christopher and Tucker had settled on the safest route to reach De Klerk’s coordinates. But that was only one problem solved.
“Once there,” Tucker said, “we need to find that landmark De Klerk mentioned, something shaped like a boar’s head near a waterfall.”
He turned to Bukolov and Anya. They knew De Klerk’s history better than anyone. “In his diary of that siege, did De Klerk give any further clues about that waterfall. Like maybe some hint of its height?”
“No,” Bukolov said.
“How about whether it was spring fed or storm runoff?”
Anya shook her head. “De Klerk described the troop’s route into these mountains in only the vaguest terms.”
“Then we’re just going to have to get there and check every creek, stream, and trickle, looking for that waterfall.”
Christopher considered this. “We are at the end of our rainy season. That highland region will likely be flowing with many small creeks and waterfalls. Which is good and bad. Bad because there will be many spots to explore.”
Making for a long search . . .
Tucker pictured Felice closing in on them.
How much time did they have?
“How is it good?” Anya asked.
“The terrain here is hard and unforgiving. As a consequence, the creeks and river basins rarely change course. Year after year, they are the same. If the waterfall was flowing when your man was here, it is probably still flowing now.”
“So we won’t be on a wild-goose chase,” Tucker said. “The waterfall is somewhere up there.”
It was little consolation, but in this desolate environment, that was the best he could hope for.
Tucker rolled up the maps.
“Let’s go.”
35
March 21, 3:30 P.M.
Groot Karas Mountains, Namibia
Following Tucker’s map they made slow and steady progress—the operative word being slow.
Christopher steered the Rover eastward along the dirt road, slipping past the guerrillas’ campsite where Tucker and Kane had encountered the African wild dogs. A couple of miles after that, the trail vanished under them, so gradually that they had traveled several hundred yards before realizing they were simply in the trackless wilderness now.
Their new pattern became one of faltering stops and starts.
Every half mile or so, Tucker and Kane would have to climb out, hike to the highest vantage point, and scout the terrain ahead for signs of hidden bandits or guerrillas. They also charted the best path for the Rover, using both their eyes and the topographical maps.
As Christopher bounced up a rocky ravine, testing the extremes of the Range Rover’s off-road capabilities, Tucker’s GPS unit gave off a chime. He checked the screen.
“Getting close to De Klerk’s coordinates. Another quarter mile or so.” He glanced from the screen to the path of the ravine, calculating in his head. “It should be at the top of this next pass.”
The Rover climbed the last of the approach as the ravine’s walls narrowed to either side. It was a tight squeeze, but they finally reached the top of the pass and rode out onto a flat open plateau.
“Stop here,” Tucker said.
They all clambered from the Rover, exhausted but excited.
“We made it,” Anya said, sounding much too surprised.
Beyond that plateau, the landscape looked like a giant’s shattered staircase. Flat-topped mesas and fractured crooked-top plateaus spread outward, climbing higher and higher. Brighter glints reflected the sunlight, marking countless waterfalls cascading from the heights, draped like so much silver tinsel across the landscape.
Closer at hand, confronting them, rose a thirty-foot cliff. Two wide ravines cut into its face on either side, both large enough to drive the Rover into. Between them, they framed an unusual section of cliff, shaped like a triangular nose with a blunted tip. It stuck out toward them, but its slopes were still too steep to climb.
But it was the ravines that drew Tucker’s attention. The canyons were twins of each other, angling away from each other, like a giant shadowy V, only the legs of the V were slightly curved, like the upraised tusks of a—
“Boar’s head,” Bukolov muttered, sounding disappointed.