“What happened here?” Davis managed to force out through a wave of nausea.

Becker walked him through the attack, explaining that over a dozen Boko Haram militia members had come for the herd. When they arrived, the oblivious elephants stood only yards from their position, feeling unthreatened by the humans. The animals didn’t recognize the AK-47s and belt-fed .50-caliber machine guns the men were carrying.

Davis approached the body of a baby elephant whose tusks hadn’t yet come in. Unlike the other animals, its body was completely intact, save for the bullet wound torn in its side. Davis knelt, touching its body.

“They hit the baby first,” Becker informed him.

“Why?” Davis groaned. “It didn’t even have any ivory?”

“Elephants have a strong social structure—stronger than humans. The poachers know that if you shoot the baby first, the herd will never abandon it.” Becker went on to explain that they had intentionally shot the baby in the abdomen to wound it, to make the agony of its wailing so unbearable that the entire herd would gather around.

“I’m not a racist,” Becker said in his thick Rhodesian accent. “But these people are fucking animals.”

Davis turned to Becker, a renewed purpose in his eyes. He had wanted to make a difference since he joined the agency, and now he would finally have his chance.

“Do you know which way they went?”

“Their spoor headed north into the forest, but we didn’t follow.”

“Why not?” Davis asked with a tinge of indignation in his voice.

“These guys who did this aren’t poachers—they are professional killers trained in bush warfare. We’re not an army, bru. We’re not equipped for that.”

Davis considered the issue as an idea took shape. “I’ll need to use your Wi-Fi back at the lodge.”

They returned to the empty hunting lodge, where Becker made coffee as Davis got to work on his computer. The agency had resources no other country had access to, and Davis would use them for good.

Becker set a cup of coffee in front of him. “You said they were killed five days ago?” Davis pointed to satellite images of the forest he had pulled up on-screen. “These satellite images are from that day.”

Becker could see a cluster of large dark spots in a clearing. “There’s the herd.”

Davis toggled the display to thermal imagery, noting a constellation of white dots in the forest. “Looks like fourteen heat signatures coming from the northwest.” He tapped a key, and the image jumped forward in time. With each additional tap, the human heat signatures jumped closer to the herd in a stop-motion video.

As the staccato imagery flickered past, Davis went speechless at the sight of white-hot lines—streams of lead from the .50-caliber machine guns—connecting the poachers and the elephants.