Free White Bone by Ridley Pearson Page B

police? Here?”
    “They will be soon enough. We must go, now! There is going to be bloodshed.”
    Vladistok headed off in the opposite direction, deep into the squalor.

14

    L oose tarps serving as stop-gap roofs snapped in the breeze like flags. They rattled Koigi. A bushman through and through, he had an aversion to all things urban. He viewed Nairobi as a blight, the slums of Kibera as an infestation.
    As a matter of pride, he refused to shed his ranger uniform in favor of civilian clothing when he was in the city. Given that he was wanted for questioning by police and the KGA, it was a bold and premeditated statement. Today, the KGA could shoot poachers and ask questions later. But Koigi had started out in another era, another epoch. Back then, he’d been tagged for murder for his slaughter of five poachers caught in the act of attempting to hack an elephant’s tusks from its head with machetes as it lay—alive—paralyzed by a poacher’s dart. Six months later: two more poachers. A year after that, a band of eight in a pickup truck with automatic weapons.
    Today, a tip had overcome his reservations and brought him to Kibera. He led three of his best men. Like him, they wore protectivevests. This was what the city did to you: You left your tribe and your village for the promise of money and material goods, only to find it an empty promise. The work was infrequent, the housing absent. You joined a million souls squatting in the dirt only kilometers from Range Rovers, exotic fountains and excess.
    Koigi knew this all too well; knew Kibera as a place of boredom, disease, childhood and work. God, how he resented its existence. He had been raised here, by an aunt who sewed scraps of tarps into grain bags and an uncle who’d had a corner on the recycling market. He knew the lanes, could navigate their wandering inconsistencies blindfolded. Knew the place he would find Guuleed if the tip was accurate.
    He and his men moved quickly, assuming the police would soon arrive. Those in the lanes moved aside. Uniforms of any kind meant trouble, even the wrinkled and soiled khaki ones worn by this quartet of determined fighters. To them, the leader, the one with his arm in a sling, looked as mean as a water buffalo. He could see the fear in their eyes. Reveled in it. The weapons slung across their necks but held in hand were well used. Children dodged out of the way, then turned and followed at a distance. Women pulled their handiwork back into their stalls. Grown men scattered.
    Koigi hand-signaled one of his men down a lane to the right. Moments later, another to his left. Behind him, another spun fully around every ten paces and walked briefly backward, taking responsibility for defending their backs. The same man tried to discourage the children from following, but failed. In Kibera, a raid was considered entertainment.
    A moment earlier, Koigi had spotted a familiar face through a parted plastic sheet. Maya Vladistok was important to the cause. An ally. Her presence confused matters. He wondered if she’d beenbehind the tip. Perhaps that explained the white man he’d seen her speaking with.
    The string of shanties stretched in every direction. Masses of people. Koigi identified the dwelling in question not by the flaking marine-blue corrugated tin that formed its outside wall, but by the bootprints in the mud heading inside. It was sandals, bare feet and trainers in Kibera, not bush boots.
    He allowed time for his two unseen men to gain position. Held his finger to his lips and motioned civilians away. He tightened the vest, more a nervous tick than a necessity. Then he eased forward, and gently tried the door. Blocked from the inside. Motioning his man behind him down to his knees to reduce his profile, Koigi kneeled as well. He hoped they would shoot high.
    He had nothing to live for but the elephants. No family. His childhood sweetheart long dead.
Take the fear of dying out of a soldier,
he thought,
and you have a