'Word of honor.'

Craig fidgeted.

'That look on your face. You're doing it again,' Tess said. 'Holding back.'

The thing is…'

'What?'

'Are you ready for another shock?'

'You mean, there is more?'

'In the closet.' Craig opened it. 'Notice he had few clothes. A pair of clean jeans. An extra shirt. A spare – only one – cotton pullover. A few pairs of socks and underwear on the shelf. And this.' Craig reached to the right, toward the inside wall of the closet.

'Whatever it is, I don't want to see it.'

'I'm sorry, Tess. But it's important. I have to show you.'

The lieutenant pulled an object from the closet. The object was a foot-long section of wood that seemed to have been cut from a broomstick handle. A half-dozen three-foot-long pieces of rope were attached to one end.

Tess shuddered. 'A whip?'

'With dried blood on the ropes. He… I believe the term is… flagellated himself.'

TWENTY-THREE

The Tsavo National Park. Kenya. Africa.

The hunter waited patiently, clutching his long-distance, high-powered rifle, hunkering with practised discipline in a shelter of scrub thorn next to a cluster of baobob trees. His view of the water hole was unobstructed. At mid-day near the equator, the heat was so severe that the targets would soon lumber into view, forced to seek water. Although his wide-brimmed hat and the bushes around him provided some shelter from the glaring sun, the hunter sweated profusely, his khaki hunting shirt dark with moisture. But he didn't dare raise his canteen and drink, lest his motions reveal his position. After all, his quarry was extremely cautious, vigilant against intruders.

Still, the hunter's patience and determination had been rewarded many times before. He simply had to maintain professional conduct. Later, when his hunt was successful, he could afford the luxury of drinking.

His nerves tingled. There! To his left! He sensed more than heard the approaching rumble of huge plodding feet. Then he saw the dustcloud they raised, and finally the massive animals emerged from a stand of flowering acacia trees, warily assessing the open grassland, nervously judging the water hole.

Elephants. The hunter counted ten. Their wide ears were flared, straining to detect unfamiliar threatening sounds. With disappointment, the hunter noted that four were tuskless children and that the adults had tusks that were barely – hard to tell from this distance – four feet long. With greater disappointment, he remembered a time, twenty years ago, when the curved tusks had been six, eight, and sometimes ten-feet long. On average, the weight of each tusk had dropped from eighteen pounds to nine. As a consequence, it required much more killing to achieve the quota demanded by ivory merchants. Twenty years ago – the hunter mentally shook his head – forty thousand elephants had roamed this plain, but last year, he'd estimated that only five thousand remained, and that figure didn't include the two thousand carcasses he'd come upon during his increasingly determined expeditions. Soon the ivory trade wouldn't exist. Because the elephants themselves would no longer exist. Twelve tons of tusks, the harvest from thirteen hundred elephants, were worth three million dollars. But smaller tusks meant less weight and more killing in order to achieve the quota.

His fingers rigid on his rifle, the hunter watched the reluctant elephants finally overcome their nervousness and approach the water hole. They were so magnificent. He focused his intensity, clasped his rifle's trigger, and slowly, angrily, swiveled his vision, scanning the grassland around the water hole.

Again the hunter's nerves tingled, instincts quickening.

To his right, he saw motion. Figures rose from the shelter of waist-high grass. These figures, too, held rifles.

Men! Dressed in camouflage khaki, the same as himself!

Other hunters!

But he and they weren't competitors. Not at all. Quite the contrary. They existed in a complex deadly condition of symbiosis. Their purpose demanded his purpose, and with angry resolve, the executioner swung his rifle toward those predators.

Even from a distance, he could tell that they weren't using hunting rifles but automatic weapons – M-16s and AK-47s. He'd stumbled upon the evidence of their slaughter too many times before. Entire herds destroyed, riddled with bullets, their carcasses rotting in the sun, their tusks grotesquely hacked from their faces, their meat – which could have been used by starving natives – left for ravaging jackels and swarming maggots.

God damn those other hunters.

To hell!

Which was exactly where this hunter intended to send them.

Careful not to reveal himself, he slowly stood, raised his rifle, braced it against his shoulder, intensified his vision through the rifle's high-enlargement sights, steadied his finger on the trigger, and with enormous satisfaction, squeezed.

Without removing his gaze from the rifle's sights, he saw – in closeup – the predator's skull blow apart.

Nothing like explosive bullets.

At once, the hunter saw another predator surge upward from the grass, recoil in horror, raise his hand to his mouth, and stumble back, fleeing.

No problem.

With a slight shift of angle and focus, the hunter shot yet again.

And blew the second predator's chest apart.

So how does it feel? the hunter thought. When you died, did you feel like… did you identify with… did you imagine… and regret… and feel sorry for… the agony you caused so many of God's magnificent irreplaceable creatures? The elephants?

Shit, no. You're incapable of emotion, except for greed.

But you're not feeling that now, are you?

You're not feeling anything.

Because, you bastards, you're one less curse on the planet.

Native bearers scrambled from the waist-high grass and fled toward a distant ridge. Their panicked outlines were tempting, but the hunter restrained his trigger finger and lowered his rifle. His message had been delivered. He understood – although disapproved of – their motives.

The native bearers needed employment. Yes.

They needed money. They needed food.

But no matter their desperation, they shouldn't help to destroy their heritage! The elephants were Africa! The elephants were…!

The hunter's anger diminished. His churning stomach made him want to vomit. As the native bearers scrambled below the curve of the distant ridge, he stood with professional caution, assessed the grassland around him, regretted that the elephants had been spooked by his gunshots and had retreated from their desperate need to drink from the shallow, muddy, water hole, but he felt tremendous pride that he'd done his duty.

It took him five minutes to reach the first of his executed predators. His dead antagonist looked pathetic, the robust man's skull blasted open, his blood soaking into the dirt. But then -

– the hunter reminded himself -

–  the dead elephants looked even more pathetic. Because when alive, so magnificent, the elephants had been a triumph of creation.

An example had to be made.

The hunter removed a pair of pliers, knelt, propped open the corpse's mouth, and began the necessary but repulsive work of reinforcing the example.

'Ivory,' he muttered, his voice choked. 'Is that what you want? Ivory? Well, here, damn it, let me help you out. I mean, unlike the elephants, you've got all the ivories anybody needs.'

With torturous effort, the hunter began to yank out each and every one of the corpse's teeth.

He set them neatly in a pile beside the sunken-mouthed corpse.

He then proceeded toward his other victim.