Dragon Bones

By Lance Jepson

Blaise Marshall FRCVS is a veterinarian involved in the fight against organized wildlife crime. His ultimate opponent is an enigmatic international crime lord known as Lee Chin. As Marshall, accompanied by freelance reporter Catherine Schaffer, fight in a global conflict against animal cruelty and crime, they are progressively drawn into Chin’s plans to locate, capture and market as medicine, the body parts of true dinosaurs living as a remnant population of in the central African country of Zagunda.
Marshall and Schaffer attempt to foil an illegal importation of coelacanths in Singapore, then Marshall investigates suspicious events at a bull-fighting tournament at the behest of the Spanish government only to be kidnapped and forced to aid his hated enemy. Marshall meets, and falls for, an alluring Spanish bullfighter Silvia Coberó, before they all end up on an ill-fated safari with Chin’s henchman Alex Ivanovs and facilitator Eugene Black, to the dark slopes of Erom-Btaka.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781291794786

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Dragon Bones

Dragon Bones

By

Lance Jepson

Copyright © 2014, Lance Jepson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

PROLOGUE

EROM-BTAKA, ZAGUNDA, CENTRAL AFRICA

To the casual observer the rainforest that swathes the flanks of Erom-Btaka appears to be an ancient fixture. It sweeps up the outer cone of this mountain to merge into the ever-present grey and swirling doughnut-shaped cloud that tops Erom-Btaka, before cascading down the internal bowl to meet the warm, clear waters of the almost geometrically circular lake held within its walls. At its summit, cooler crosswinds meet the warm humid air that rises from the surrounding jungle. Water is precipitated to form an almost permanent cloudbank - a shroud over the true cloud forest that cloaks the pinnacle rim.

On the lower slopes, huge trees raise the canopy of this jungle to hundreds of metres, supporting its monumental green ceiling with pillared trunks of a size testifying to a great age. Almost at the equator, the sun beats mercilessly down on Erom-Btaka, bathing the grateful leaves of these forest giants, but beneath that canopy lies a different world. There it is dark, constantly humid and only slightly cooler than out of the shade. Light is at a premium here and in natural windows of gullies made by streams or trails cleared by forest pachyderms, a myriad of smaller plants explode into the sunshine.  In some places there are oases of light where some jungle leviathan either by death or disease has come crashing down. Here infant and adolescent trees struggle up towards the sky carrying with them a wide spectrum of epiphytes and climbers all with similar aspirations. Even the dark, damp forest floor hosts an enormous variety of shade-adapted plants for the thin soil layer here is rich and warm. Rich because the local soil has its origins in the volcanic heart of the mountain, and warm because Erom-Btaka is not dead, merely dreaming.

Earl Carter stopped and wiped the sweat from his brow before replacing his Stetson. Jesus, it’s hot here, he thought. Too humid and too little air movement for sweat to do its job. All you did was dehydrate, loose salt and you still cooked. A sauna, that’s what it was, yer genuine bona fide sauna.

Ahead of Earl, his guide stopped and patiently waited for the American to catch up. Like many of the unfortunates that crossed Carter’s path, Mbutu regarded Earl as a stereotypic Texan, a true caricature of his upbringing.

Earl Daniel Carter’s family was not just big in oil – they were oil. At the age of sixteen, under the benevolent guidance of his father, Earl had made his first million dollars with an oilrig of a birthday present. After graduating from college (just) he had gone into the family business where his rise in the oil industry had been assured. This rise had been matched by a burgeoning personal fortune which six months ago had been given a serious boost by the untimely death of his father.

Earl was loud, brash and supremely confident with a trademark Stetson complete with a leopard skin band around the crown. His wife claimed that he even wore this hat to bed; a remark that often caused a round of laughter at social occasions. Those that did not laugh were usually Earl’s ex-lovers. These women had, in more ways than one, been frequently overshadowed by that hat.

But neither oil nor women were Earl Carter’s passion. Yes, they were essential parts of his life but then so was the air that he breathed and the water he drank. Earl’s real obsession was hunting. The buzz he felt during the long stalk, the chase and the triumphant dispatch of his quarry was what made Earl feel truly alive. In a life full of boardrooms, yes-men, multi-billion dollar deals and where ladies’ underwear snapped at the sound of his bank roll unfolding, the chance to pit his wits against some of the most dangerous and wily creatures on this planet was the only thing that electrified his very being. With them he had no history, no reputation to cow or placate them beforehand - once he had revealed himself he became clear and present danger and his prey would respond as such. Many would try to flee, but not all. On his first African safari some twenty years ago, a leopard had tried the alternative. It would have got him too if Earl had not fired off a lucky second shot. Now a small band of leopard fur adorned Earl’s favourite hat – just another victim of that trademark Stetson. Many, many more trophies had fallen in his sights since that first of the African Big Five.

Earl knew that many fellow hunters also considered him to be something of a stamp collector: it was frequently said of him that he wanted one of everything. Those of a crueller humour sniggered that in some obscure corner of Carter’s trophy collection there hung a small plaque mounted with the head of a hamster. But in reality this strange mixture of philately and thrill seeking was what drove him beyond the normal boundaries of hunting etiquette and into a murky world of illegal hunts and endangered species. Where a hunting permit was not legally available his financial clout would readily trigger one to appear, often with the ink still wet. He knew that his money frequently oiled the machinations of the local black economies in a variety of third world countries and that this allowed him and his ammunition exclusive access to some of nature’s rarest quarries. Carter always worked on the premise that someone somewhere always wanted money – whether it was for their child’s life-saving surgery, their next heroin shot or a small charge of plastic explosive was not his problem.

It was Earl Carter’s interests that had also brought him into Lee Chin’s sphere of activity. Earl had never met Lee Chin. All business was done via intermediaries and the Internet. Chin had even managed to arrange safe passage through this civil war-torn country of Zagunda that was, for the moment at least (and in Carter’s favour), conveniently forgotten by the United Nations. If the UN didn’t acknowledge that a civil war was going on, then there was no need to send in peacekeeping troops. And if hundreds of blacks were dying, so what? The white western world had other things to worry about. Things like oil. Oil was something Earl knew a thing or two about. He knew how it, and other business interests such as diamonds and minerals, could blind both men and nations to distasteful truths like ten-year-old children trained to kill with AK-47’s. After Somalia there was no way that America would step foot on African soil – and if America wouldn’t, no one else would. So Zagunda had been allowed to degenerate into feuding factions headed by warlords that waged a guerrilla war against both their corrupt and weak government and each other. In such a country money spoke loudly and everything was for sale. That was how Carter had ended up here. Last year it had been the bamboo forests of the Szechwan province, adding the giant panda to his collection. This year it was the lush rainforest on the slopes of Erom-Btaka, to bag his first forest elephant and Western Lowland gorilla.

Carter stopped and again wiped the streams of sweat from his face. At least the worst of the ten-kilometre hike from their base camp was over, he consoled himself. Just ahead of him he could see the figure of Mbutu walking in silence along the game trail. On a hunting trip such as this Earl usually made sure that there was only Carter and his guide. The fewer people who knew of these hunting forays the better, mused Carter. It was true that the local guerrilla warlord, the self-styled Colonel Yabina, also knew but money for arms had bought both his permission to hunt and his silence. The US dollar in comparison to the weak local currency was a very effective enabler. Anyway, to Carter’s way of thinking, one guide was easier to silence should it become necessary.

Mbutu belonged to the Asta Pygmies whose traditional hunting grounds extended to the lower slopes of Erom-Btaka. An ageing Pygmy, Mbutu was barely four-foot tall, grey haired and with a face disfigured by an old yaws lesion. As an orphan he had spent several years at a Catholic missionary, giving him a basic command of French and English as well as his native tongue. More importantly, he knew this area like Carter knew his own house and ranch. Streams, trees and elephant trails were as familiar and informative to the Pygmy as any street sign. Every sound, snapped twig or squashed insect told Mbutu something, giving him, in effect, a four dimensional map of the forest. Not only did he unfailingly know where he was in relation to the rest of the forest, these telltale signs also told him what had recently happened here. Mbutu had had to develop these skills, passed on from his tribal elders, when in his youth he had hunted forest elephants for ivory. A job he still occasionally did.

The trail was becoming increasingly steeper, causing the Texan to sweat and exert himself even more. To his left there was thick undergrowth, flourishing in the heady mixture of damp and sunlight, whilst to his right there was drop of several metres. This slope was covered in mud and leaf mould and was criss-crossed by rivulets of water that carved their way to the base of Erom-Btaka. In spite of the fact that he was hindered by the combined weight of his western clothes and his beloved .375 Holland and Holland Magnum, Carter doggedly followed his Pygmy guide. Can’t be licked by a friggin’ midgit he told himself.

Off to their left a small finch took flight, a brief flash of dazzling red feathers that caught Carter’s attention. Distracted, he looked up, momentarily shifting his attention from the trail beneath his feet. As Carter swung his weight on to his other foot, it slid in the damp leaf mould, causing him to lose his balance. In a fraction of a second he was sent skidding and grappling down the slope into a small gully, where amid a cracking and snapping of branches and stems he finally came to rest.

Bastard, bastard, friggin’ hell! Carter cursed himself inside his head, yet as an experienced huntsman he kept quiet throughout the fall, knowing fine well that a raised human voice would send all quarry fleeing for kilometres.

For a few minutes he sat in silence, hardly daring to breathe or move a muscle whilst he listened to the forest around him. No alarm calls from parrots or colobus monkeys. Good. He looked back up towards the trail. Mbutu had returned and was scowling down at the American.

Just one friggin’ word, you friggin’ midget and I’ll kill you, Carter virtually mouthed to his guide. Mbutu shrugged and turned away.

Earl relaxed slightly and, cut and bruised though he was, he was more concerned about the Holland and Holland. This firearm was a veteran of several elephant hunts both in Africa and in Asia and without it the whole expedition was a pointless exercise – a waste of time, energy and money. Carter began to attend to his rifle, tenderly checking and cleaning the stainless action and barrel, muzzle brake, bolt stop and Leupold telescopic sight. With great self-restraint Earl blanked out the uneasy tickling sensation of the legion of ticks, picked up on his toboggan ride through the undergrowth, that were now parasitizing his torso.

Mbutu was now becoming impatient. To him the surrounding undergrowth was rustling with a further army of leeches and many-legged ticks homing in on their body heat.

"Monsieur Carter, we must keep going. The bai is not far ahead."

Just hold on, Carter retorted. Remember who’s paying for this. If my H and H Mag is busted, I don’t get no elephant and you don’t get no pay.

Mbutu did not reply, but instead reached for a nearby plant stem, snapped it and began rolling the pungent sap over his wiry frame. If the white man wanted to feed half the forest that was his look out. Mbutu would not give the tiny forest creatures any of his blood.

Finally Carter was satisfied and heaved himself back up to the trail. With a feigned nonchalance he flicked some of the more visible parasites off his arms and legs, and tried not to worry about those he could not see. Normally he would use a lighted cigarette to burn off the more recalcitrant of leeches but out here the faintest whiff of smouldering tobacco would send his prey running in the opposite direction.

Just as they resumed their journey, the two men simultaneously felt rather than heard the dull infrasound vibrations that told them one thing. Elephants were not far away. Carter’s pulse began to quicken.

An hour later Mbutu signalled that they should move more cautiously. Ahead a lime-green glow could be seen where daylight suffused through a wall of leaves that formed a living boundary around the grassy clearing or bai.  Already they could hear the snorting, rumbling and occasional trumpeting of a group of forest elephants. Cautiously, one intentioned step at a time, the two hunters finally reached this screen of vegetation and peered through it. Intense African sunshine beat down upon the dazzling greenery of the bai, so that it contrasted starkly against the dark olives and browns of the surrounding forest.

Carter was exhilarated. In the bai a group of some ten forest elephants stood casually grazing on the verdant grass or digging into the rich soil with their downward pointed tusks, in search of minerals. The largest female, which Carter guessed was probably the matriarch of the group, stood by the forest edge gently fanning herself with her enormous ears. Nearby two youngsters, miniature versions of the adults save the lack of tusks and a downy covering of reddish hair, played. Only a few months old they rolled, squealed and chased each other through the legs of their mothers, aunts and older siblings.

Elephants were not the only visitors to this clearing. To Carter’s right a large family of gorillas had also stopped off to eat the lush grass and herbs. The air was filled with the chomping, grunting and snapping of vegetation that always accompanied a gorilla family feeding session. They viewed the elephants with some circumspection but were sufficiently familiar with these forest giants to feel safe in their presence. A huge silverback gorilla stretched and yawned, casually displaying his yellowing canines to some younger blackback males, tacitly reminding them of his status. On either side of this simian king his many wives alternately groomed each other or ate, or attended to their young. Occasionally the silverback would solicit a female to groom his fur, luxuriating in the tactile pleasure of contact with the opposite sex as she removed the assorted parasites that threatened to infest his fur.

None of these animals so much as glanced as a flock of African grey parrots descended in a fluttering, squabbling, shrieking cloud of silver and red. They flocked and wheeled briefly before landing and mobbing around some elephant manufactured holes. They too were in search of minerals.

Carter could not believe his luck. So many potential trophies were laid out before him that he briefly could not decide which to go for. Today, having come in search of forest elephants (and the old matriarch would be a fine bag) he was now sorely tempted to try for the silverback. The .375 Holland and Holland Magnum was not what he would have chosen for this massive primate but one did not get many opportunities like this in one lifetime.

The forest made his mind up for him. Mbutu sniffed the air, and directed Carter’s gaze towards a particular area of jungle margin. They had both noticed that the female elephants, in particular the old female, had started to become agitated. Confident that their position had not been given away Carter had wondered whether some jungle predator, possibly a leopard, was close by. But he was not prepared for the huge bull elephant that strode into view.

Still smaller than its savannah cousin, this forest elephant was massive for its species. The right tusk was snapped some two-thirds of the way down the shaft, whilst the other was of such a length that he had to raise his head in order to clear the tusk of the ground. On either side of his great head a cascade of dark, viscous secretions streamed from his temporal glands, creating a blackened staining down across his cheeks and on to the lower jaw. The bull’s penis was partially extended and he was constantly dribbling urine. Even Carter could smell him now. This was a bull elephant in musth – the testosterone-boosted state of sexual hyperactivity that occurs once a year in bull elephants. In this state they wander the forests of their ranges, looking for females in season and violently contesting with other males for their right to mate. For the three months that a bull is in musth it is aggressive and unpredictable – a mountain of muscle and pointed ivory on a very short fuse. Carter could not resist the challenge.

Steadily, with great control, Carter raised himself erect and sighted the bull. Downwind of the bai as he was, he was nevertheless now in full view of the herd. Only their preoccupation with the newcomer prevented their spotting the human. Adrenaline made his heart thump so loud he wondered that the animals in the clearing did not hear it. At that very moment the bull turned its direction of movement, heading towards one of the smaller cows in the herd, trunk outstretched to detect any hint of oestrus. The bull’s position was now such that Carter could no longer get a good head shot, but instead had to content himself with aiming behind the left shoulder in an effort to hit the heart. The sweat of intense concentration rolled down Earl’s forehead.

Away to his right there was a sudden howling and shrieking of a gorilla in extreme distress, accompanied by a violent disturbance of undergrowth. The male silverback gorilla was instantly transformed from supine leisure to an image of rage and fear. His fur bristled, doubling his apparent size as he repeatedly barked a warning, launching the rest of the group up into the safety of the surrounding trees. The African greys, forest sentinels, took to the air as one, screeching alarm calls that briefly drowned out the distressed cries of the gorilla they could not see. Meanwhile the silverback repeatedly charged the place of the commotion, but always stopped short of the undergrowth from which now only occasional muffled sounds could be heard. He thumped and tore at the ground yet even reinforcements in the shape of three blackbacks failed to give him the courage to attempt a rescue.

Carter and Mbutu stood transfixed as they watched the scene unfold. Carter’s mind raced. A leopard? But surely four adult gorillas could scare off one of these big cats. Poachers? They would have used firearms. If not these, then what?

The musth bull, bellowing and rumbling and with his ears flapping out either side of his head, charged. The male gorillas scattered in its wake, finally abandoning any thoughts of a rescue attempt, whilst the bull elephant plunged into the forest like some avenging force for good. As it disappeared from view its trumpeting calls were joined by bird-like shrieks from behind the green screen of foliage. The Texan turned to his guide – and blanched. Mbutu looked visibly smaller and greyer. His eyes were wide and panic-stricken; he was trembling. The Pygmy clasped a small fetish to his chest.

"T’Ele-Mdanga," the Pygmy whispered, barely articulating the words with his bone-dry mouth.

What?

"T’Ele-Mdanga – the Spirit Hunter of Erom-Btaka –is here. We must go –NOW!"

Now just you hold on. No-one’s going any...

Follow me now – or die! And with that Mbutu turned and ran, nimbly leaping the fallen branches and clumps of ferns that littered the trail they had followed. Simultaneously the bull elephant broke cover on the other side of the bai, blood streaming from a torn left ear and multiple cuts and slashes around its head and shoulders. It was heading straight for them.

Carter’s .375 Holland and Holland Magnum sprung to his shoulder as the hunter sighted his target. The telescopic sight gave him a front-row view of the bull’s eyes. The thought occurred to him that this elephant had the same look in its eyes as Mbutu. The rifle crackled and the bullet glanced off the left side of the elephant’s skull, the animal saved by a random head turn to the right. Onward it came.

Shit! cried Carter as he turned and hurriedly followed his guide. Whereas Mbutu’s small frame was adapted to rush and dodge between the natural obstacles of the jungle floor, the Texan’s six-foot-six frame crashed through any bushes that barred his way, which in turn violently whipped at his face and legs in retaliation as he tried to keep up with his erstwhile guide. Mbutu was drawing ahead. And the noises behind were getting closer. A quick glance behind confirmed that the bull was still bearing down on him; the violent snapping of vegetation of its progression seemed to be all around him. Earl Carter was a fit man, but no athlete and he was quickly tiring in the heat and humidity. In desperation and exhaustion he flung his Holland and Holland to the ground to free every last ounce of energy for flight.

The trumpeting of the elephant now seemed distant, yet the undergrowth continued to crash and snap and shake on either side of him. Summoning up reserves from deep inside Carter yelled, Mbutu – wait for me!

His call for help was immediately answered by a series of the bird-like calls from the surrounding forest. Similar to the calls they had heard earlier, this time the sound was so intensely loud it hurt the Texan’s ears.

Carter burst into a small clearing. Mbutu was waiting, shaking. He was holding his fetish out before him.

Thank God gasped Carter at the sight of his companion.

Mbutu’s eyes suddenly widened and focused behind the Texan.

Monsieur Carter – use your gun –now.

It was almost a inaudible. Carter, bent with exhaustion, looked down at his empty hands.

Oh shit, he all but whispered.

An irresistible force hit in the middle of his back, slamming him face down into the leaf litter. As he fell he caught a brief glimpse of green as a large striped form entered the clearing to his right. Then soil was ground into his eyes, his mouth and nostrils. The weight on his back was such that he could not breathe. Carter became aware that a dark shadow had fallen about him, and that his nostrils were filled with an overwhelming stench of rotting flesh. In the periphery of his fading vision rows of long, sharp teeth were silhouetted. Something warm, wet and fetid drooled across the back of head. Then the pressure started.

Even though Mbutu was running at full pelt he still heard the sharp crack of a skull imploding. Grasping his fetish tightly and mumbling pleadings to T’Ele-Mdanga, the Pygmy accelerated and desperately hoped that the Spirit Hunter would not require a second soul today.

CHAPTER ONE

RUSSIA’S FAR EAST, 306 MILES NORTH EAST OF VLADIVOSTOK

With an explosion of burnished orange and black, the tiger burst out of the densely packed pines and on to the bright snow, sending a cloudburst of snow and ice before her. She landed in an unexpectedly deep drift, stumbling and collapsing awkwardly on to her injured right shoulder. With a low moan she hauled herself to her feet, blood from the open wound staining where she had lain, violently tarnishing the innocence of the virgin snow. Briefly she hesitated and listened. Even in her exhausted and terrified state, she could still judge that the dogs were gaining.

The tiger leapt forward again, trying to cover as much ground as she could with each bound before sinking deep into the newly fallen snow. Normally her toes would spread out to form natural snowshoes, distributing her weight evenly over her huge paws so as to support her on such a fragile surface, but now a combination of advanced pregnancy and exhaustion were taking their toll. Every time she landed, the snow came mid-way up her