The Alex King Series, A BATEMAN [good books for high schoolers .TXT] 📗

Minerals and precious metals, oil, fossil fuels and contracts to build roads as well as supplying inexpensive cars to drive on them. China owned Africa now. But unlike the British Empire, China hadn’t needed to fire a single shot, nor wave a flag. They had brought off officials, haemorrhaged money into building roads to connect their investments and bought up the mineral rights in return for providing gainful employment for the locals. Their investment across the continent spanned many countries, but only those with something to exploit.

The two men had driven past the last of the villages. There was now no habitation for the next two-hundred miles. It was here that the company brought people in to hunt the big five. There were many other animals to be hunted, but these were the most prized kills. The five that were worth the effort and the reward.

Romo Badenhorst and his younger brother Vigus ran the company. They employed several white South African rangers, a British chef and up to thirty local blacks who helped keep their business one of the best hunting experiences on the entire continent. From housekeeping and gardening to property maintenance and driving. Even cleaning the swimming pool and patrolling to keep animals out while the wealthy hunters sipped iced beer and told stories and tall-tales around the fire-pit, while Michelin rosette-worthy food was prepared for them inside.

The culling of elephants was a sound business model, and the gifting of the meat to the locals meant that many hundreds of people on the poverty line ate well throughout the year with communal freezers and biltong – the spiced South African dried meat - making the meat available to all. There was much gained from this practice, not least the local’s objection to poachers and the illegal ivory trade. They gained food from the legal hunts, some gained employment, but every one of the locals gained something. Poaching threatened all of this. The Badenhorst brothers sailed close to the wind though, several sets of tusks escaped the dying pits or the fire piles and went missing each year, netting them over three-hundred-thousand US dollars, which they banked off-shore. It was their retirement fund, and although fifteen-years separated the two brothers, they aimed to have just over three-million dollars each when they retired. Their ranch-style house, complete with swimming pool and grounds, and even an air-strip was an easy sell, and they posted company profits of around one and a half million rand a year, or just over one-hundred-thousand US dollars after director’s salaries and dividends. Enough to pay taxes and have a healthy income, but much was put back into weapons and ammunition, vehicles and equipment. These were sold for cash in the next tax year and not put back into the business. The practise had started when finances had been tight after their father’s death, and had now escalated to the point where a thorough tax audit would land them more jail time than Nelson Mandela. Hence the out. The off-shore accounts were steadily building not only with their blood ivory, but from the sales of rifles, ammunition and used vehicles. Some to hunters and other businesses, and some to warlords in provinces and countries further north. Romo Badenhorst always joked that any potential tax inspector might well wander off into the bush and get to meet a lion closer than recommended, if or when the time came for an audit.

When people cross the lines of both legality and morality, the slope is both steep and slippery. It rarely levels out. Hence men like the hunter they were going to find. People who wanted to use a more testing rifle calibre. For years, the .375 magnum cartridge was the legal minimum for African big game. More powerful than rifles used for deer in the rest of the world, and more powerful the most military sniper rifles or squad machineguns, over twice as powerful as the NATO forces personal weapon of 5.56mm. Regulating the killing of game with a minimum cartridge meant a humane and efficient kill. Most hunters, for reasons of ego rather than humanity, chose bigger calibres. The .416 was popular, or even the .500. Manly rifles with a long bolt pull to accommodate the massive cartridge. Rubber buttstocks to cushion the tremendous recoil. But this slippery slope of overkill also encouraged the Badenhorst brothers to cater for bowmen, hunters with spears and occasionally, hunters who liked to wound with a smaller calibre rifle, track the wounded beast and finish it by hand with a knife. The South African brothers had no such desires, but they banked the cash from the people who did. It wasn’t unusual to have hunters shoot a less powerful weapon, but these people tended to be less skilled than the humane hunters. They were not supreme shots. However, the man who had killed a springbok at seven-hundred metres would have to be about the best shot they had heard of. And Romo Badenhorst could see an opportunity to make more money. A marksman this talented had to have a secret. And secrets could cost people money to keep them that way.

The ridge was a few hundred-feet higher than the track. It wasn’t accessible by vehicle because of the number of boulders scattered across the face. The gradient was steep, and neither man relished the climb in the searing African sun. The needle was nudging forty degrees centigrade, although the nights were still seeing a harsh frost.

Both men got out of the truck and adjusted themselves. Romo wore a large revolver in a holster on his belt. It was a .44 magnum, Ruger Blackhawk. A modern recreation of a six-shooter from the wild west. He also carried a bowie knife with a ten-inch blade set into an antelope horn hilt above his left hip. Neither were any use against a charging Rhino, but he liked