In the Company of Killers

Fallen GuardianSamburu County, KenyaCaptain Bernard Lolosoli looked down at the American journalist. “You were right.”Tom Klay, sitting with his back against the tire of a Land Rover, looked up from his notebook. Klay wore a faded safari shirt, brown field pants, and hiking boots. A droplet of sweat rolled off his chin and struck the page at the exact spot where he’d just finished a line, destroying the word and his thought along with it. “It happens,” he replied.“Are you ready?” Bernard asked.Klay closed his notebook and dropped it into his shirt pocket. “All packed.”“Good.” The ranger extended his hand. Klay took it and got to his feet. “Three men entered our east gate two days ago. We located their vehicle this morning. Their plates are stolen, and there is no exit record. Their passports were fakes.”“Passports,” Klay said. “Not locals then.”“Ugandans. On holiday, they said.”Klay caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye. A small male dog emerged from behind the Green Guardians’ field station, carrying a feathered chicken wing in its mouth. The dog was scarred head to tail, with that compact build common to developing-­world canines. “You get many of those?” he asked.Bernard followed Klay’s gaze. “Dogs? Or chickens?”“Ugandans.”“We do. It was rail workers. Now it’s tourists.” Bernard smiled. “Thanks to your article, everyone wants to see our famous elephant.”Klay watched the dog. Every few steps it glanced over its shoulder toward the guardhouse, checking to see if anything was following it. The dog set the chicken wing down in the dirt. It looked back again, expectant. There wasn’t much to see. The concrete field station and next to it the Guardians’ makeshift field armory, a steel shipping container under a thatched roof. Between the two structures, the dirt was stained black with motor oil.The little dog yipped, and Klay heard agitated scrabbling on hard ground as a large dog emerged at speed from behind the building and rocketed toward the mutt. The bigger dog was a Belgian Malinois, a shepherd breed with relentless drive, making it a favorite among law enforcement. As the Malinois bore down, the smaller dog snatched up its chicken wing and sprinted across the clearing. It hopped onto an overturned bucket and into the crotch of a large acacia tree.The Malinois didn’t need the bucket. It leapt straight into the tree and chased the smaller dog up a thick branch into the tree’s umbrella. The little dog barked as it climbed. Suddenly a third dog—­a female as small and scarred as the first, but heavy from nursing—­emerged from behind the field station, carrying a whole chicken, minus a wing. The female crossed the open space, dragging the dead bird between her forelegs, and disappeared into the bush. A moment later her mate leapt from the acacia tree onto the field station roof. The Malinois tried to follow, but it was too heavy and crashed to the ground instead. The big dog was about to climb the tree again when Bernard whistled. The dog froze. “Pfui!” Bernard said, and pointed. “Platz.” The Malinois slunk obediently to the outpost’s front door and lay down.Klay looked up at the dog on the roof. The skinny male lay with its back legs spread on either side of the roof peak, looking down at Klay, chewing its wing.“What do you think?” Klay asked. “You think it’s lost tourists—­or something else?”Bernard sighed. “We paid one hundred thousand dollars for that animal,” he said, looking at the shepherd. “Our donors insisted we have military dogs. I flew to Berlin to buy him. I had to learn German to speak to him. He has a better education than most of my family, and he still falls for that old dog-­and-­chicken routine.” Bernard nodded at two vehicles speeding in their direction. “It doesn’t bloody matter what I think, Tom.”Klay squinted. Two black SUVs were racing toward them from the south, kicking up clouds of dust. “I’m going to say it again. If Botha is running this operation, you do not want a political ride-­along anywhere near it.”“I know it and you know it. He knows to stay in the truck,” Bernard said.“So, why’s he coming?”“Someone might have told him you want his photograph for your famous magazine.”Klay groaned. “I should have brought a camera then.”“That would have been nice.”Two of Bernard’s rangers waited nearby. The Green Guardians were a privately funded counter-­poaching force made up of Samburu warriors. Bernard’s men looked the part. In addition to their desert fatigues and tan boots, they wore their hair in long, ocher-­dyed braids pulled back severely from their scalps, adorned with feathers and narrow, brightly beaded headbands. Beneath their uniforms, the men’s lean ribs were tattooed with chains of coffee-­bean-­sized scars representing bravery. Like their Maasai relatives, the Samburu were nomadic pastoralists. When not on duty, Bernard’s men—­Goodson Ltumbesi and Moses Lelesar— ­tended their animals, lived on milk and blood drained from the necks of their cattle, and warred over livestock with neighboring tribes. With their hair tied back, their dark eyes, and their cheekbones as sharp as cracked shale, they resembled a pair of young eagles swiveling for prey, with well-­oiled and well-­used HK G3 battle rifles for talons.Bernard was a contrast. The Samburu warrior had gone to boarding school in England. He wore his hair short, sported a closely trimmed goatee, and carried a baby’s arm of fat around his middle. When Klay had first met him, years ago, Bernard was working as a fixer, taking journalists to difficult locations throughout East Africa. He emerged shirtless from his hut wearing an orange-­and-­black-­checked shuka over one shoulder, multicolored bead necklaces that wrapped his neck from chin to chest, tire-­rubber sandals, and a gold belt adorned with tiny dime-­shaped metal circles dangling on gold chains. A thin chain stretched from one ear, under his lower lip, and over the other ear. He jingled when he walked, like a child’s toy.“You always dress up like this?” Klay had asked.“Like what?” Bernard had replied.Bernard took Klay up in a rented Cessna 172 to look for elephants. It was the first time Klay saw Kenya’s largest living elephant, a local tourist attraction named Voi. The super-­tusker was standing among a group of five males on the west side of a low hill. All six were big elephants, but Voi was mammoth, with tusks so long they rubbed the ground. Bernard pointed him out, then banked the plane to take a second look. “Watch!” As the plane came around, the five male elephants looked up, then quickly encircled Voi. Brandishing their tusks, they shook their heads violently, while Voi turned his back to the plane and lowered his head.Klay was astonished. “Like they know,” he said. Bernard tapped the earcup of his headset to indicate he couldn’t hear. Klay bent the mic closer to his lips and shouted again. “Like they know,” he repeated, “it’s because of his tusks . . .”“Of course they know!” Bernard had replied. “We say, ‘An elephant is born carrying two gravestones: One for himself. One for his species.’ ” Klay had included the line in his article. “The Last Great Tusker,” he’d called it.Klay’s cover story had come at a cost. The big elephant was now world famous. Voi’s enormous tusks, revered by Ken­yans, were now priceless to Asian ivory collectors. To protect him from poachers, Kenya’s president had declared the animal a national treasure, and had deputized the Green Guardians to protect him.Only a few criminals had the connections and the wherewithal to kill the well-­protected Voi and smuggle his tusks to China whole. Klay’s information was that Ras Botha, a man known all too well to Klay, was about to try.Klay watched the politician’s vehicles approach. “Long haul from Nairobi.”“We flew him in,” Bernard said. “Same as you. He’s trouble for us, Tom. Ras Botha may be our immediate threat, but if we’re not careful, Simon Lekorere will become our long-­term problem. The Chinese completed the Uganda rail line since you were last here. They have built another line from Addis to their military base in Djibouti.”“The Ultimate Silk Road Project,” Klay said. “I know.”“Do you know they want to connect them?”Klay whistled. He imagined a gigantic Roman numeral I burned into the side of East Africa. The Kenya-­to-­Uganda rail line would be the numeral’s base; Addis, Ethiopia, to the port of Djibouti would be its cap. China had built the southern line for economic reasons. The northern line was strategic: Djibouti was a gatekeeper to the Suez Canal.Klay looked up at the small dog still crunching its chicken wing. “Oil,” he said.Bernard nodded in the direction of the politician’s incoming vehicle. “He extorts payment from us to keep his voters from poaching our elephants. That’s nothing new. Our donors pay him off. But he will get more money than we can afford by selling our land to the Chinese. Connect those two rail lines and everything we have here will vanish.”Klay looked out over Kenya’s idyllic landscape. Bernard was right. Whatever China’s ultimate plan, if a third rail line was built through here, everything he was seeing would be lost. “No protests?”Bernard laughed. “The Chinese hired Perseus Group.”Klay cocked his head toward the other American in their group, a lanky blond software engineer wearing a pale blue Perseus Group polo shirt. The engineer leaned against the Guardians’ outpost, rapidly typing something into his iPhone. “I thought you hired Perseus Group?”Before Bernard could respond, the two SUVs braked to a hard stop, covering Klay and Bernard in their dust. Klay ran his tongue over his teeth and spat. Two bulky Kenyans wearing sunglasses and business suits emerged from the lead vehicle. They hurried across the clearing, inspected the Guardians’ Land Rover, gave a nod, and a third bodyguard opened the main car’s back door. Inside sat Simon Lekorere talking on a mobile phone. The heavyset politician wore a dark brown cowboy hat, gold-­framed Gucci sunglasses, and an orange kitenge shirt.“Jesus,” Klay muttered.“He’s Samburu,” Bernard said.The politician sipped a bottle of beer.“Deep down,” Bernard added.Bernard whistled, and his rangers swung themselves into the open Land Rover. The Perseus Group engineer did not move.“Let’s go,” Klay yelled to him.The engineer glanced momentarily in Klay’s direction, then returned to his phone. He spent a few more moments typing before finally crossing the clearing to join them.“I sent my report to Tysons Corner,” he said to Bernard.“That’s your prerogative, Greg,” Bernard replied.“Our contract is very clear with respect to all anti-­poaching operations.”“So you said. We’ll be leaving in a moment. You’ll have the second row to yourself.”The engineer climbed into the truck.“Welcome to Kenya, Mr. Sovereign,” Simon Lekorere boomed, extending his hand. The politician’s hand was small in Klay’s, but surprisingly calloused. The portly man laughed, as if he knew what Klay was thinking.“Come,” he said, climbing into the Rover’s passenger seat. “Let us see if we can save some of our elephants today.”A bodyguard placed a small cooler between Lekorere’s feet. Bernard walked Klay to the back of the vehicle.“What’s your play to hold him?” Klay asked quietly.“Pride,” Bernard said.“Pride?”“Samburu understand the importance of land. We have to remind him that he is Samburu first and a greedy politician second. He’s wily. He’s been playing the Chinese for us, getting us a new school and a clinic.” Bernard reached into the back of the vehicle and withdrew a rifle. “Take this.”“No, thanks,” Klay said.“You said it yourself,” Bernard said. “If this is a Botha operation, we should be ready.” He nodded toward the politician. “Let’s give him the idea we’ve got something worth protecting, shall we?”Klay accepted the rifle, a battle-­scarred, bolt-­action Mauser, no doubt confiscated from a poacher. He sighted it. Checked the action. “Make a better club,” he said, working the ragged bolt.“Good.” Bernard smiled. “We are out of those.” He handed Klay a five-­round stripper clip. Klay pressed the cartridges into the magazine, pushed the bolt forward, and let the clip fall to the ground.Bernard bent down and picked it up. “We recycle these.”“Sorry,” Klay said.Bernard tapped him on the shoulder with the piece of metal and nodded toward the politician. “We need him. So try not to shoot him.”“That only happened once,” Klay said. “And it was an accident.”Bernard was still chuckling as he started the vehicle.