Klay backhanded the engineer with a withering look. He had seen Bernard glance—glance—at a clean stretch of granite and then describe in detail the poacher who had crossed the rock hours earlier, including his age, weight, how fast he was moving, and what he was carrying. Then, calculating how much of the poacher’s load was likely water, and where the area’s water sources lay, Bernard had driven ahead of his quarry, set up camp, and was having tea when the poacher arrived. “I’ll be having those,” Bernard had said, taking a sack of bloody tusks from the surprised man. “Good tracking follows a trail,” Klay wrote of the incident. “Great tracking leads it.”

“Voi’s not here, Greg,” Klay repeated.

Looking at Bernard, the software engineer scoffed, “I’m not talking dowsing sticks.”

The blinking-green elephant on the engineer’s phone suddenly jumped. Klay pushed the phone hard into the engineer’s chest. “What’s that?”

The engineer looked down. “Oh,” he said.

“Oh, what?”

“Must be the satellite.” Greg tapped at his phone. “There may be a lag. It happens sometimes.” He turned and pointed west to a single mountain that rose above the plain. “It says he’s up there.”

The KWS ranger shook his head and dropped his cigarette.

•   •   •

I don’t like it,” Bernard said after they had parked and surveyed a portion of the mountain’s base. “No spoor.”

Klay, too, had seen no tracks—neither human nor elephant—and it was getting late. “Okay,” he said. “But if my intel’s right, and Greg is right, and we don’t follow?”

“Then we’ve said goodbye to a national treasure.”

Bernard spoke to the KWS ranger and returned to Klay. “There’s a plateau just before the top. Our cattle end up there sometimes. That’s where he’ll be. Follow the trail. We’ll clear the area and meet you at the plateau.”

“What about those two?” Klay asked.

“The MP stays in the car.”

When Bernard didn’t continue, Klay shook his head. “No.”

“Babysit him, would you?”

Klay looked at Greg again and sighed. “Beer’s on you.”

“Fair enough.”

Bernard gave a few hand signals, and then he and his rangers vanished up the steep slope, dancing over rocks and among trees, like ghosts.

The climb was steeper than Klay had expected. After an hour he was using vines and roots to pull himself upwards. After two hours, he was struggling to silence his breathing. It came out of him in deep, cave-emptying gasps. His thighs burned. At each step he ordered his foot to clear the next rock, then watched as his boot kicked the rock loose and sent it tumbling down the mountain. Behind him, Greg climbed easily.