“When will he be back?”

“Not until tomorrow.”

“No worries, mate. I’ll wait until we can get this all sorted. I don’t want to disrespect the big man on his home turf.”

The cop no doubt figured that Cobus was fucking with him, but didn’t want to risk the outside chance that this annoying Afrikaner actually knew his boss. Instead, he sent Cobus on his way with a stern warning.

Three hours later, the Triton rolled into a village of ramshackle mud huts assembled with crooked vertical posts. Twenty-five kilometers from the South African border, it looked like a cross between an indigenous village and a modern ghetto. It seemed not so much a casualty of globalization and more as if the developed world had turned its back on these people and defecated its decaying car batteries and rusted soft drink advertisements in their yards. All the old-growth forest in the region had long since been cut down, leaving an apocalyptic landscape of red dirt, devoid of any wildlife bigger than a cane rat or a puff adder. The animals were gone not as a result of poaching, but because of an expanding human population hunting for the pot to feed their families.

The pickup slowed, prowling past boys with water jugs on bikes, who took note of the unfamiliar vehicle and the white face in dark Oakleys behind the wheel.

At the edge of town, Cobus passed a petrol station. He instantly recognized the man working the pump as the father of the boy Basani had killed. Cobus hoped the man wouldn’t recognize him through the tinted windows of his truck. Even if he did, he likely wouldn’t say anything, for fear of exposing the fact that he had ratted out the local kingpin to Cobus and Lawrence when they met with the village elders.

As the Triton moved down the lone strip of pavement in the center of town, the mud huts gave way to large new cinder-block houses with satellite dishes and shiny SUVs. Cobus knew immediately that he had come to the right place, for there was only one way to generate that kind of wealth in a region that was ground zero for rhino poaching. The cinder-block mansions reinforced Cobus’s opinion that for the kingpins, poaching wasn’t about poverty. It was about insatiable greed. And the poor were just another vulnerable species they preyed on.

The Triton pulled up to a large building papered with “Vote Frelimo” posters. The dirt lot out front featured a statue of Jesus, surrounded by high-end superbikes, Range Rover Evoques, and Audi Q7s. Cobus spotted a police car at the end. Maybe he would be seeing the big man Mr. Chongo after all.

Cobus sat in the truck, knocking back a can of Castle Lager. On his head was a garment that looked like a brown ski cap. He tossed the empty can next to several other dead soldiers on the floor. He had bought a twelve-pack of liquid courage when he stopped for petrol in Magude, and had worked halfway through it by the time he reached his destination.