Ivory Nation

plaintive cries and tottered over to the dead paratrooper.
Stevo watched as the little creature bent its head and stroked the dead man’s cheek with the tip of its trunk. Mewling, it snuffed out a breath that flipped Rob’s hair up. It walked a complete circuit of the body, trailing its trunk over an outstretched hand, the boots and finally the face again, then retreated to the shade of its mother’s belly.
Hardly daring to breathe, Stevo watched as the mother bent her head and reached between her fore legs with her trunk to caress the baby’s head. Then she lifted her head, glared at him, and turned away.
Releasing a pent-up breath, Stevo watched as mother and baby walked away from them, pushing out of the clearing through grass seven feet tall.
‘That was close!’ Stewie whispered in his strong northeast accent. ‘Look at poor Rob, man. You need to call it in.’
While Stewie, Moses and Eustace covered the body and began assembling a rudimentary travois out of branches to drag it back to their Land Rover, Stevo ran a few quick calculations.
They’d covered about three miles on foot, mostly through forest. It had taken about an hour. That was when all were alive and only carrying daysacks and rifles. Now, with a thirteen-stone corpse to drag, they’d be looking at double that, at least.
Once back at their FOB, they could radio ahead to let the Anti-Poaching Unit HQ know they were down a man and would need him flying back to the UK. Then it would be the sad, silent, four-hour drive back to Gaborone.
He sighed. Poor Rob. Killed by the mother of the baby elephant he was feeding. She wasn’t to know he was only trying to keep the poor little thing alive. He’d survived Afghanistan, counter-terror missions across half the world, even the regimental Christmas talent show, when he’d done a passable imitation of Elvis Presley singing ‘Love Me Tender’. You loved to sing, Rob mate. But at least he’d met his end doing good. Not blown to shit by some medieval madman with an IED and a bloodstained copy of the Koran.
Stevie looked up.
They’d lashed two long poles together with lianas into a long, narrow V and tied shorter sticks on top of them, crosswise. Together, Eustace, Moses and Virtue lifted their fallen comrade’s broken body and gently lowered it onto the travois.
Stewie looked over at him. The gaze spoke of shared missions, other bodies waiting to be CASEVACed from the battlefield, a depthless camaraderie among fighting men that would endure long after Rob’s flesh had melted from his bones.
Stevie nodded back.
‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘Stewie, you and Moses take the first half-mile, then me and Virtue’ll take over.’
‘What about me?’ Eustace asked, pushing his camouflage cap back on his head.
‘I want you to scout ahead. I don’t want to meet any more elephants.’
Eustace nodded, his normally smiling mouth now set in a grim line. Holding his AK across his body, he jogged ahead and disappeared from the clearing.
Stevo turned to the others.
‘Let’s get him home, boys,’ he said.
Machetes slashing at thick foliage, they made slow progress. Stevo checked his watch: 1415 hours and they’d barely covered the first mile.
Of Eustace, there was no sight. But he was the most experienced tracker of the three Botswanans. He’d be doing his job; reconnoitring the ground ahead and warning of potential threats.
Stevo had just lifted his side of the travois, swatting away the flies that had formed a dark, buzzing column above Rob’s body, when a rifle shot rang out.
He and Virtue dropped to their knees, laying the travois flat and readying their rifles. Stewie and Moses were also crouching, rifles aimed into the enclosing brush.
‘That did not sound like an AK,’ Virtue said.
He was right. The report had a higher-pitched sound to it, the crack tighter somehow. They’d all heard enough gunfire, in combat or APU-versus-poacher encounters, to know the sound of one long gun from another.
Stevo ran a lightning-fast combat appreciation.
One man unaccounted for. Probably dead.
Enemy numbers unknown.
Terrain inhospitable. Visibility twenty yards max.
Our forces, four.
Split up into pairs and maintain a line.
Leave Rob. Sorry, mate.
He clicked his fingers to get the others’ attention.
An index finger pointed at Stewie and Moses, then left. They nodded and crouch-walked away from him. A second signal, to his own chest then Virtue’s, then right. Virtue nodded. Together they headed for a path leading away from the travois and directly opposite the route Stewie and Moses had taken.
He heard voices. They were speaking English, but in a variety of accents ranging from French-inflected East African to the unmistakable guttural sound of an Afrikaaner.
‘Do we go in, boss?’ one asked.
‘Nah, man. Too slow. Clear them out.’
The first speaker laughed.
‘Sure thing, boss. I flush them right out.’
Stevo heard a loud metallic scrape. Recognised it. A charging lever. On something big. Something heavy. Something—
The machine gunner opened fire. Stewie’s head burst open like a ripe melon falling from a tree. Virtue’s scream was cut off mid-stream as he was cut in half, spraying blood and tissue all over Stevo’s left side.
The roar of the shooting obliterated all other sound. Stevo started firing instinctively, emptying his magazine as he swept the SA-80’s barrel right to left into the brush.
Moses was firing into the trees, their broad-leaved foliage now shredded by the incoming fire to reveal a dark-skinned man standing in the back of a pickup operating a belt-fed machine gun. Moses’ face exploded outwards as a burst caught him, and his lifeless body toppled backwards, still firing the AK.
Scrabbling for a spare magazine, Stevo heard crashing. He looked up. Striding towards him was a white man in khaki shorts and a belted jacket, his eyes shadowed under a wide-brimmed hat. He held a sand-coloured assault rifle at his hip, the muzzle pointed at Stevo’s chest.
‘Drop it!’ he shouted.
Stevo might have gone for a shot if the SA-80 was loaded, but without a mag, it was useless. He dropped it. Raised his hands in surrender.
‘I’m a British paratrooper, mate,’