Steeling himself, Cobus pulled down his cap, a ranger-issue woodland camo balaclava that concealed his entire face. He then pulled out the shotgun he had concealed under a blanket on the floor behind him.

Cobus tugged open the metal door and entered the building, which looked like a cross between a mansion and a clubhouse. Men in flashy clothes were day drinking after a hard morning hunting endangered animals. A Mozambican police officer was shooting pool with his shirt unbuttoned and hanging open.

The room fell silent, all eyes on the masked intruder with a shotgun leveled at them.

“Nimpini,” Cobus demanded.

The men traded nervous glances. Cobus spotted the police officer sliding his hand toward his holstered pistol. He whipped the shotgun muzzle toward the officer’s face. Stepping forward, he took the officer’s pistol, then ejected the magazine and put the empty weapon in a duffel bag slung over his shoulder. “I’m only here for Nimpini,” he assured his wide-eyed hostage.

The officer’s self-preservation instinct won out, and he surreptitiously nodded in the direction of the bar. No honor among thieves, Cobus mused.

Holding the shotgun with one hand, he withdrew a folded piece of paper from his pocket. He flapped it open, revealing a printout of a wanted poster for Nimpini. Cobus compared the man behind the bar to the man on the paper. Same scar bisecting his chin and lower lip. Same motherfucker.

Cobus turned back to the police officer and instructed him to lie facedown on the floor, arms and legs spread. He then had all the other men starfish on top of him. This way, only the top man had the option of daring to make a run for it—a decision that would inevitably prove fatal.

Cobus shrugged the empty duffel bag from his shoulder and dropped it on the bar. “Where are your guns?”

Cobus followed Nimpini into a back room, posting up at the doorway so he could keep eyes on both Nimpini and his pile of henchmen. Inside the room, Cobus saw a rack filled with high-powered hunting rifles and Kalashnikov variants. These were the guns that had killed both the humans and the rhinos Cobus had held so dear. “All of them in the bag. Now.”

As he headed for the door, Cobus warned Nimpini’s men that if anyone followed, the first bullet Cobus fired would be into their leader’s head. He then bound his prisoner’s wrists and shoved him into the back seat of the Triton.

Several kilometers outside town, Cobus pulled off on a dirt road leading into the dusty woodlands of Mozambique. He dragged Nimpini out of the pickup and tossed him in the dirt. Nimpini landed face-first, the sharp stones on the ground lacerating his chin. He looked back to see Cobus approaching, clutching his shotgun. Before he could question what was about to happen, Cobus lifted Nimpini’s hips off the ground so he was on his knees and shoulders, face planted in the dust. Then Cobus reached under him and unbuckled his pants, tugging them down around his ankles. Nimpini was familiar with the use of rape as a weapon, but he had never been on this end of it. “No, please,” he whimpered.