The Lioness(25)

He’d heard the pop of the guns and one of the Land Rovers taking off—and then screeching to a stop. He’d seen the rest of the safari guests herded into another vehicle at gunpoint and considered emerging from behind the tree with his hands up. Surrendering to these…kidnappers. That’s what he supposed this was. A kidnapping. But he didn’t believe he was hiding here out of cowardice. He thought, for better or worse, that he was being brave. His plan, as much as he had one, was that once the porters, working at gunpoint, had finished loading the truck and everyone had left, he would track down some Maasai villagers and then together they would find more rangers and figure out how to rescue Katie Barstow and her entourage. They’d passed a Maasai boma yesterday when they had been skirting the edge of the reserve, and it had been well into the afternoon. That meant it might be walkable. It was to the southwest. He would try to get there.

This all assumed, of course, that he didn’t get himself eaten. Or that they didn’t spot him behind this tree and shoot him for trying to evade capture.

He guessed Patton’s tent was about forty yards away. They hadn’t searched it for provisions or torn it down yet.

And so he made a decision: he would sneak to that tent first and see if any of Patton’s guns were there. Most were in one of the lorries, but not all. Maybe the rifle that fired the .375 H&H Magnum would be in the tent. Or, if not that one, he presumed the .38 Smith & Wesson might. A single weapon wouldn’t help much with the men back here at the camp: there were at least three of them still here and probably a few more he hadn’t spotted. But it might give him a fighting chance against any one of the creatures out here in the savanna that would eat him as happily as it would a solitary klipspringer or oribi it found alone in this endless ocean of grass.



* * *



    .?.?.

Just yesterday, he had been in the third of the four rows of seats in the Land Rover, Terrance Dutton right beside him and Reggie Stout in the back. Katie Barstow and her husband were in the second row. They were traveling along the Mara River because Juma had heard that wildebeest were massing on the northern bank and there might be a crossing. But now Katie was pointing at the roll of toilet paper that the guide kept, among other critical provisions, in the front passenger seat to his left. For a movie star—for a woman who’d grown up in Manhattan—her utter lack of squeamishness impressed the hell out of him. But, of course, this whole safari was her idea, and he’d known her long enough to see that she was, as the movie mags liked to say, “as down to earth as your kids’ favorite babysitter.” Reggie knew as well as he did how toxic Katie’s childhood had in fact been, though she always insisted that her older brother had borne the brunt of it. Still, Reggie was the one who had masterminded the public persona of Katie Barstow. Sure, people in the know realized that she was Roman and Glenda Stepanov’s kid: a Broadway pedigree and serious Upper West Side scratch. But in Seattle or Tallahassee or Indianapolis, she was just that sweet, innocent, good-natured girl you hoped your son would date.

They stopped and Juma climbed out of the vehicle and looked around for animals. When it seemed safe, he nodded, and Katie grabbed the roll of TP and disappeared behind some thorn brush.

Peter knew that his first wife would never have put up with this nonsense. Neither would his second.

He stared at the ceaseless blue sky and squinted, enfeebled and enervated by the sun. The air was thick and heavy, and in the distance he saw a copse of trees, serried like soldiers. He couldn’t believe that he’d forgotten his hat once more at the camp. His forehead had been red yesterday afternoon. If he weren’t careful, it would hurt like hell by this evening. On the bright side? All this sun made his client even prettier. Yes, Katie had been an ingenue and always been seen as girl-next-door wholesome, but she still had just enough Stepanov inside her to add a pinch of exoticism to the look. It was, Peter realized, an unspoken part of her appeal.

When both Juma and Katie were back in the jeep, David asked her if she felt better.

She kissed him on his cheek. “I never felt bad,” she told her husband. “I had to go to the bathroom. Big difference. Also?”

Everyone waited.

“On the other side of that brush? Two of the cutest little dik-dik antelopes appeared out of nowhere on the rocks. They couldn’t have been more than a foot and a half tall. I may have a flush toilet in California, but I see nothing like that from the bathroom window.”

“Maybe you will when we’re settled in at the ranch,” David said.

She arched a single eyebrow. “Unlikely.”

They continued in silence for the next ten minutes, except for when Juma would point out animals to them: buffaloes or baboons, a crocodile in the shallow waters of the river near dozens of dozing hippopotamuses (some with birds picking the bugs off their backs), warthogs with their babies, and all kinds of vultures. A lappet-faced vulture in one tree, an Egyptian in another, and a pair of Ruppell’s in a third. His eyesight astonished Peter. His own vision was a disaster without his eyeglasses, but this old guide saw things like a solitary cheetah or a lone rhinoceros at incredible distances.

Suddenly Juma started to accelerate, racing across the track in the savanna cut by countless other Land Rovers and jeeps, and Peter and Reggie exchanged glances. Their guide, with that remarkable sixth sense of his, knew something was about to happen. There was something they had to see, and so it didn’t matter how badly he bounced them around in the back of the vehicle. In the distance, Peter noted the other Rover was paralleling them, plunging ahead with the same ferocity. And then, a moment later, there it was. Juma screeched to a stop on the southern side of the Mara River, kicking up dust, and Muema, who was driving the other vehicle—the one with Felix and Carmen and Billy and Margie—halted right beside them. Across the river, perhaps a hundred yards distant, were thousands of wildebeest pacing back and forth along the northern bank and many hundreds of zebras. A few at the front were staring into the water, some pawing at the dirt where the bank started a twenty-foot slope into the river.