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of organisms, both harmless and pathogenic.
    “How much farther?” Jack asked.
    “About twenty minutes,” Kamau said, a few seconds before taking another sharp turn that had Jack grabbing for anything to keep from taking flight. Then they skidded to a stop. “Forget the twenty.”
    Jack didn’t have to ask why. The stench of rotting flesh assaulted him seconds before flies, which had undoubtedly landed and sucked on things he didn’t want to think about, started pelting his arms and face. He swatted them away and pushed the sunglasses Kamau had loaned him higher up his nose to protect his eyes. Ignorance was bliss. Unfortunately, anyone who’d studied pathogenic bacteriology and virology knew flies were a vector for river blindness, among other things. He brought the crook of his elbow up to shield his nose from the putrid smell, and jumped down.
    Kamau had gone with his men, rifles loaded, past a clump of dry brush into a small clearing. Jack followed, catching up just as all but one of them put their firearms down. It was important for someone to stand guard at all times. Jack had questioned the need for all the guns when they’d left camp, but they’d explained the necessary precaution. If not for human danger, then for a wild animal interaction gone bad. Several of the guns were loaded only with tranquilizers, he was told. He wished he knew which ones.
    A weak squeal full of angst and pain came from one of the two forms that lay on the ground. The larger elephant, though it still looked relatively small, lay motionless and bloody, its body a deflated mass of wrinkled skin. Kamau and his men had gone to work on the second elephant. It didn’t look any older than the one he’d seen Anna cry over, but this one had two arrows jutting from its body, one piercing its trunk and the other its hind leg
    Jack cursed, and on instinct, ran to help hold down the struggling infant as Kamau worked to stabilize him. Jack wrapped his arm around the leg, freeing the team to work on the wounds and secure the heavy calf for transport. Kamau had radioed in for help as soon as they arrived on-scene, but said they couldn’t wait. The calf had already lost a lot of blood and they had to do whatever was possible in the field.
    “Will he make it?” Jack asked.
    “Hard to say. We can only try.” The vet jerked his head toward the other victim. “No kill is worth the ivory, but that one was barely old enough to have tusks. All this for the slightest piece of ivory. This baby just got in the way. These two must have strayed, or were somehow lured from the herd on its way toward water.”
    “Poachers?” Jack asked, adjusting his hold on the rough skin, gritty with dry dirt, at Kamau’s direction.
    The vet shook his head. “No. Poachers these days are too high-tech. They wouldn’t have bothered with arrows. We have a rogue local on our hands. This is a farming region. The proximity to Mount Kilimanjaro has enriched the soil from past volcanic eruptions, and the ice melt usually ensures a good water supply, at least underground and along most riverbeds. But when we get a drought this bad, crops suffer. That means some farmers get desperate enough that they’ll deal with poachers. Ivory for money. Money to feed their families and keep their farm running. And so long as need shows its face, greed finds a place.”
    Jack shook his head, carefully setting down the elephant’s limb. The calf had calmed considerably under the drugs Kamau had injected, and the help they’d called on, a large truck, arrived from camp. Jack stepped back to let the team strap the baby for lifting, and moved back in when it came time to shift him. Only when the calf was secured to the truck did Jack notice he was covered in blood.
    Someone else took the Jeep’s wheel on the way back. Jack sat there in the passenger seat, the calf’s cry for help still sounding in his mind. The atrocity he’d witnessed... How could anyone cause suffering or turn their