Burning Bright

Chapter 31

One of the downsides of raising the profile of the tiger sanctuary was the increased number of visitors. Eoin had struggled to get another day’s filming, hopefully his final one, but Banjul had finally managed to arrange it so long as we were there at a time so monstrously early that it had barely been worth going to bed. It was another long drive in the sanctuary to where Eoin had originally been where he’d shot Mr Ahmed and where a mother and cub had been spotted again, so I settled down on the bench seat of the Land Rover with Eoin in the front. He seemed to be able to manage on considerably fewer hours sleep than I could, perky and chatting with Banjul while I tried to stay on the seat and doze. When we came to a halt, I assumed we were at our destination, but Banjul told me to stay in the vehicle.

He got out of the Land Rover and examined some tyre tracks ahead of us.

‘What is it?’ I asked Eoin.

‘Not sure, but he’s not happy about something.’

He walked a little further up the track and then returned to the Land Rover.

‘Is everything OK?’ I asked.

‘No Miss. Those are new tracks and no one should be up here. I drove back late last night and was last back. These have been done since and the cub was very close to here.’

To be honest, they all looked the same to me, but then I wasn’t an expert tracker.

He tried to make contact over the radio, but there was no response. ‘We should go back,’ he said.

‘Banjul, are you saying there are people here that shouldn’t be here?’ Eoin asked.

‘Yes Sir.’

‘So the tigers could be in danger?’

‘Yes Sir.’

‘Shit.’ As Banjul opened his door of the Land Rover and headed to the rear compartment, Eoin jumped out from his side.

‘Eoin? Where are you going?’

‘Wait there.’

‘Yeah right,’ and I opened the door.

‘Kate, this could be dangerous. I don’t want you getting hurt.’

‘I am not stopping here if I can do something to help.’

‘I can’t stop you, can I?’

‘No.’ And the plain truth was that I’d rather be with Eoin if something was going to happen than sat back in the Land Rover doing nothing.

Banjul removed two guns from the back of the Land Rover. Eoin held out his hand for one.

‘You’re not serious?’ I asked. ‘After last time?’

‘I was just going to carry it.’

‘It’s OK, Sir. I can manage.’

Eoin pulled out is camera bag and carefully pushed the car door closed. We followed Banjul along the tracks made by the other car’s tyres and walked for about ten minutes before we saw a glint of silver in the distance. Another vehicle.  It was a Toyota, one of the other sanctuary vehicles, empty as we crept up on it. Banjul crouched down next to the driver’s door and examined the footprints.

‘Fresh,’ he declared. ‘Wait here.’

Of course we didn’t, and followed him along the narrow path, trying to make as little noise as he was, but sounding like elephants crashing through the undergrowth in comparison. He held his hand out to us and we stopped. In the distance were voices, but too far away to hear what they were saying. Banjul crept forward very slowly, indicating that we should follow him. He probably didn’t trust us to do anything else.

We crept along the track until Banjul headed off to one side and we followed him. We were approaching the top of a slope and he indicated us to drop flat onto the ground so that we crawled the last few metres on our bellies, me between the two men. Looking over the edge, I reached out to grab Eoin’s arm. We were at the top of a natural steep-sided hollow, with the only entrance into it through a cleft in the rock which had been sealed off with a wooden barrier. In the centre of the hollow was a tiger cub trapped in a sturdy cage, two large poles above it that had been holding the drop-fronted door open. Its mother was held back by the barrier, although she was clawing at it and howling, desperate to get to her cub.

‘It’s my cub,’ Eoin hissed, and he was right as I caught a glance of the mother’s grizzled and distinctive face.

Banjul indicated that he was going back to the vehicle to try to call for help but we stayed where we were, Eoin drawing his camera out of his bag and beginning to film, focusing first on the mother behind the barricade and then on the cub.

To our right, further round the edge of the hollow, a man appeared dressed in combat gear. He had a tranquiliser gun in his hand and he paused at the top of the slope. Beyond him, a second man in a safari suit stepped up to the rim.

‘Got him,’ safari-suited man said. ‘Well done, Tim. Now we just need to get him out of there.’

‘I’m not sure that barrier’s going to hold. If it doesn’t, we’ll need to get rid of the mother.’

‘Tranquiliser?’

‘If we can. And if we can’t . . .’ and he picked up a rifle.

Safari suit nodded. ‘How do we get down from here?’

Tim produced a rope. ‘Of course, it would be a lot easier if we could go through the gap, but . . .’

‘We could always sort out the mother now.’

‘Probably best to avoid it if we can. Evidence and all that.’

‘True.’

Tim tied the rope around a tree and threw the end down into the hollow, shrugging on a back pack and obviously preparing to climb down to get the cub.

‘What are we going to do?’ I whispered to Eoin.

‘Stop them.’

‘How?’

‘No idea. But I know what Gwaine would do.’