The Last Rhino: An African Wildlife Adventure: African Series, #1

THE LAST RHINO

An AFRICAN Wildlife ADVENTURE

David Mark Quigley

Published by Hashbooks Publishing

Copyright © 2021 David Mark Quigley All rights reserved.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-955388-17-7

First Edition Published 2021

The Last Rhino is dedicated to my friend and colleague Hal Tapley. I have always enjoyed the ease with which we communicate, your steadying hand, and the wisdom of your advice. Thank you for being a great friend and all your support over the years.

Innocence, once lost, can never be regained. Darkness, once gazed upon, can never be lost

– John Milton

THE LAST RHINO

Thirsty with greed for the spoils that the illicit rhino-horn trade bled into his pockets, a mysterious African poaching kingpin always managed to evade both detection and capture. Until he decided to turn his devastation on Tony Campbell’s beloved Zimbabwe, and put a ticking target on his back.

Ruthless anti-poaching maverick Tony Campbell is well established and respected in the world of wildlife conservation. He is just about to take on a new anti-poaching role when multiple black rhino carcasses are found, brutally butchered for their valuable horn.

What started out as a routine relocation exercise turns into a frantic military-run mission that will either save the last of the Zambezi rhinos or seal their fate forever.

As the soft underbelly of the nefarious poaching world is stripped away by a series of seemingly unrelated events, Campbell will have to risk it all to lure the kingpin into a trap.

And he’ll have to decide just what price he’s willing to pay to uncover and stop the senseless killings.

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Author Note

The events in this story take place just prior to the start of White Gold, book 2 in my African series, and are loosely based on Tony Campbell’s rhino anti-poaching efforts.

The Last Rhino is a novella, about 40,000 words, and prequel to White Gold in my African series, which can be read and enjoyed in any order. I’ve made sure not to include spoilers for those of you who are new to my works and any existing fans will still find plenty of fresh action and intrigue, as well as a little detail of Tony, his background and some of the players in his world.

I loved revisiting Tony’s life again, and had an absolute blast writing this book. I hope you have as much enjoyment reading it too.

David Mark Quigley

Prologue

Night Feeder: Zambezi Valley, Zimbabwe

It was dark and quiet. So quiet he could hear the tigertail dragonflies thrumming. He stood beside a copse of mopane trees, just off a well-used game trail, listening. In front of him was the mighty Zambezi River, tumbling, like distant rolling thunder, endlessly down towards the Indian Ocean. At this time of the night, he would have silently walked down the game trail to the river’s edge and drank. But not tonight. Instinct warned him trouble was not too far away. It was the lack of noise that had disrupted his nightly routine. He could still easily hear the river, but there was no chorus of crickets, shovel-nosed or sand frogs in song. Something had definitely disturbed these usual nocturnal sounds.

He tentatively stepped out of the trees and turned, his nostrils quivering, sniffing the air, and vanished into a thick maze of scrubland.

He didn’t like it, and although his eyesight was weak, with this impenetrable African darkness it made no difference. Like a blind man, he knew the run of this area of the Zambezi Valley by sense of smell and touch alone. He could easily navigate this rugged bush-strewn valley through the hidden pathways and trails without being seen or heard; only when he wanted to be. At 3,000 pounds, 12-feet long and six-feet tall at the shoulder, this alone was a remarkable feat. But as he was the last of the great horned, hook-lipped black rhinoceroses of this valley, it was what had kept him alive.

Mistakenly perceived as one of the most stupid, cantankerous, nervously inquisitive game in all of Africa, he had drawn from the benefit of millions of years of evolution, passed down through his lineage from his great ancestors the perissodactyls, who were the forefathers of other highly intelligent species, like the zebra and the horse. He had adapted and, using his incredible intellect, developed a uniquely perceptive cunning and survived. Normally seen as an animal that charges anything that provokes its wrath, this particular male was different. He was literally an anomaly. After seeing so many of his family and kind killed and maimed it had triggered something deep within his brain. He had become secretive and stealthy as he moved amongst the jesse bush, a thick scrubland, that now made up his home.

Born as a twin and weighing far less than his male sibling, from the first day of his birth he had to adapt to survive. He became tenacious and resilient, and had to use his intellect to get his fair share of his mother’s milk before he and his sibling were weaned. At times he succeeded, while at others he was bullied and deprived. He quickly learnt what worked and what didn’t. Even before he was weaned he followed his mother’s lead and began to browse, eating those succulent shoots, leaves and fruits that were found deep in the woodlands and jesse bush of the Zambezi Valley.

Before he had reached 18 months old, he was already getting the bulk of his food from the plants of his valley. Luckily for him he had developed this early independent spirit and adaptability. One day, at the start of his second rainy season, he learnt the harsh reality that faced his kind. He had wandered off on his own, a little further from his mother and twin, as he had now grown accustomed to doing, browsing, taking advantage of the new growth that followed the rain. He already weighed close to 600 pounds, and was steadily growing in size each day. As he was stripping the succulent green foliage from bushes and snapping off low acacia branches, he was jolted out of his feasting reverie. A harsh noise of crashing barks, like thunder, spooked him and sent him tearing away in fear through the bush.

After many hours, crying out for his family with high-pitched screams, he made his way back to where he had last seen them. Only to find blood-soaked carcasses beneath a buzzing halo of flies and vultures. Sending the vultures scattering, he stood beside the dismembered bodies of his mother and brother, smelling them, and wailing and mewling like an oversized kitten. They had been cut down, murdered with deep gashes on their heads, their faces hacked off and their horns gone. All around them was trampled grass and bush, reeking of an acrid scent that he soon learnt was man, a scent that he grew to fear and hate.

Left all alone to fend for himself, he gazed mournfully through his long eyelashes at the plains and woodlands, which suddenly looked vast and terrifying. His survival instincts kicked in, telling him to flee. He turned and left, never to return to this spot again.

Five years on, he adapted without his family. He had at first learnt to avoid that acrid stench, for during those years he had come upon similar scenes and instinctively knew only stealth and cunning would allow him to survive.

The first three times he had close calls with man, his only predator, had been pivotal in his understanding and now continued interaction with these hated marauders. The first, in fear, he had merged into the bush and run away, hurried on by those thunderous barking shouts that seemed to accompany these loud and obnoxious creatures. The fright and his harried flight never sat well with him, eating at his reasoning, it vexed and worried him.

But then he’d gotten wise and found another way of dealing with these hated invaders. So the next two times he was pursued, he slunk into the undergrowth, hid and silently waited.

The second time, firstly in fear, then in outrage, like an avalanche, he had attacked, exploding his bulk through the wall of bush he had hidden behind, and was surprised at how incredibly frail and easy to kill these attackers turned out to be. He impaled one, flicked him off his horn and drove a second one up and crushed him against the trunk of a jackalberry tree. He left them there and chose to avoid that spot in future.

On the third occasion, he realized with stealth, slyness and vigilance he had an edge over these adversaries. Even with his limited eyesight he intimately knew the lay of the land. This time he listened and waited, and even though he didn’t recognize it as such, began to hunt them. There were three of them. One died with a horn through his kidneys when he impaled him from behind after he had walked past his place of concealment. The man had been scouting ahead on his own and had stopped to relieve himself against the base of a blackwood tree. He had emerged from his screen of bush and soundlessly walked up behind the man and dispatched him with his horn.

The second had rounded a corner on the trail the group was using and was confronted by the beast. He died a lingering death with a crushed pelvis, courtesy of a front hoof stomped onto the small of his back. The third, who threw up some sort of stick that barked flames and shouted violently in his face, died as the contents of his torso were ripped from his body by the flick and toss of his sharpened horn. He left these three invaders where they lay, but returned a day later to find their remains had been devoured by hyenas.

He had also seen others like himself snatched off the savanna and abducted by these alien invaders and locked away inside the belly of monsters with many big round, rolling black feet.

Being the dominant bull in his territory, he endlessly patrolled and had now begun to defend his domain. His fierce cunning had planted unsettling fears in the nearby villagers. For the years that followed these encounters, there was talk of witchcraft and ethereal sentinels who patrolled the valley. There were swirling stories of men seen entering this part of the Zambezi Valley, yet never to be seen again.

He sensed rather than saw the dawn’s strengthening light. It was as if the river began to awaken, its eddies and splashing undulations seemed to be getting louder. Then he heard the haunting, sing-song cry of a hunting fish eagle ringing through the valley, and a lone red-crested cuckoo echo its monotonous longing call, way off in the distance. There