Blue Warrior

“The video image.” Sandra pulled the Fat Shark goggles off. “It just went blank.”

Shit. There goes the picnic, Johnny thought. “Let’s check the control station.” Johnny and Sandra climbed into the back of the Rover. She was right. The video image was gone.

“We lost the video signal.” Johnny realized how stupidly obvious he sounded.

“Now what?”

Good question. The Solar Falcon was preprogrammed to automatically return to base when it sensed either low battery or signal disruption of any sort. Johnny checked the monitors. At least the Solar Falcon was still broadcasting a GPS signal. The drone was turning a lazy figure eight, but not returning to station.

“That’s weird,” Sandra said. “Why is it doing that?”

Johnny shrugged. “Something wrong with the motherboard, I guess.”

“I thought you said these things are reliable. We paid a lot of money for it.”

“The Solar Falcon is as reliable as they get. But it’s still just a machine. Things happen.”

Something caught Sandra’s eye. She leaned over. Glasses tinked. “What’s this?”

“Nothing.”

“There’s a picnic basket back here. Looks like some good stuff.”

“The hotel concierge pulled it together for me,” Johnny confessed. “The basket, too.”

She smiled mischievously. “So that’s why Pearce isn’t here today.”

Johnny frowned, worried about his friend. “Not exactly.”

Sandra pointed at the GPS monitor again. “So what should we do?”

“We jump in the Rover and go find us a Falcon.”

* * *

The small herd of white rhinos chuffed and snorted contentedly as they fed on the grass beneath their heavy feet. Two calves brayed as they chased each other in circles around a big female, her ear tagged with a great yellow tab marked “WWA.” A nearby bull swung his heavy head with its menacing long horn in their direction, just checking to make sure no threats had startled the bellowing calves.

A thousand feet above the herd, Sandra’s Silent Falcon drone was still making a lazy figure eight, its camera still pointing at the big female. Had the rhinos any inclination to gaze skyward, their famously poor eyesight wouldn’t have allowed them to notice the aircraft at its current height, but even their excellent hearing couldn’t have picked up its whisper-quiet motors, not even at two hundred feet.

But a four-wheel-drive ground vehicle? That caught the herd’s attention, though nobody stopped feeding. Heavy, tube-shaped ears perked up and rotated in unison in the direction of the engine rumbling toward them from a distance. As the sound edged nearer, heads lifted warily. The big bull grunted, then turned and trotted heavily for a nearby stand of acacia trees for shelter. The others followed swiftly behind him, the trumpeting calves falling in line behind their mothers. The female with the yellow tag took the rear and felt the bee as it zipped past.

Only, it wasn’t a bee.

It was a bullet. Then a hundred.

The air roared with gunfire.

Men shouted.

The bull had led them all into a trap.

The tagged female ran. Her flanks suddenly stung with heat. Her sides ached as if tree branches were thrust into her ribs. She bellowed in pain.

They were all bellowing.

Except the babies. They cawed like birds, high-pitched and keening.

The tagged female dropped to her knees. Saw the flash of metal in her dim eye. Searing pain exploded in her snout as the machete blade thwocked into the bone just above the horn.

Two dozen men. Black, like shadows, swarmed the herd. Rhinos down. The men circled them. Arms swinging, blades chopping. Blood and skin and bone flecked into the air with each strike. Men pulling hard on the horns while others chopped at the roots. Panicked eyes rolled white in shock as blood seeped into the grass.

And then the big bull roared.

He was on his knees but still swinging that giant horn and roaring, knocking a shadow man to the ground.

More gunfire. The bull’s guts spilled into the grass.

And the last baby screamed.

* * *

The Land Rover bounced over the uneven terrain, but Johnny kept the pedal floored. He kept one eye on the GPS locator on the dashboard and one on the windshield.

Sandra pointed at a thick stand of acacia trees looming in the distance. Bright red burning bush creepers flowered brightly in the tree branches. “They must be in there.” Sandra had lost visual contact with the herd when the video feed was cut but the falcon was still tracking them, apparently. A handheld tablet monitor was in her lap now.

Johnny yanked the wheel hard to avoid a fallen log, then pointed the Land Rover toward the acacia stand. A path of beaten-down grass wound around toward the back. “Looks like our rhinos were here after all,” Sandra said, nodding at the grass track.

The Rover sped around the bend and past the first tree. Johnny slammed the brakes.