Endangered Read online

  Endangered

  Linda Chaikin

  © 1997 by Linda Chaikin

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

  www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

  Ebook edition created 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopying, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-6310-0

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  The JESUS Film Project is a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ International. For information on the film, call: 1-800-432-1997. Used by permission.

  Cover illustration by William Graf

  The internet addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers in this book are accurate at the time of publication. They are provided as a resource. Baker Publishing Group does not endorse them or vouch for their content or permanence.

  To The JESUS Film Project, and all those involved in this crucial ministry.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  One

  Mount Kilimanjaro stood alone, endowed by its Creator with a perpetual crown of snowy white, while below stretched the Serengeti Plain, bearded with sun-bleached grasses and dotted with dried thornbush. Flat-topped acacia trees bit their way up through the earth’s brittle crust, giving speckled shade to a small herd of zebra. The animals stood motionless except for the nervous flick of their tails.

  Nearby, at a meager water hole, a pride of lions ambled single file against the horizon of the bright East African sky, the dry wind stirring the amber dust beneath their paws. Two thin cubs, panting from the heat, waited expectantly in the brush. In the distance, lying in the shade of a rock, the male of the pride looked on with golden eyes, his mane ruffling in the wind.

  Sable Dunsmoor walked out of the small mission shamba begun by her mother into the still African morning. She stood musing, not about the lions that eyed the nervous zebra, but about the missing money in her personal account.

  How very odd…. What could have gone wrong?

  After a two-year absence from East Africa, Sable felt the heat demanding its toll, and she stood fanning herself with her wide-brimmed hat, her pale blouse sticking like damp gauze to her skin. Her silky hair, the warm color of honey, was braided, then looped into coils at the back of her neck. Her heavy khaki slacks were bloused into her tall safari boots, designed to protect from a host of crawling critters: large safari ants, biting insects, and even worse—several varieties of snakes.

  Here in Namanga, Kenya, some two hundred miles inland from the coastal city of Mombasa, she stood alone in a Maasai tribal township on the Tanzanian border. Her rented jeep was parked across the narrow dusty track under an acacia. The breeze died. Not a whisper stirred as her gaze absently drifted past open-air stalls where the leather and bead Maasai jewelry was on sale to the wildlife-viewing tourists on safari. She noticed the Maasai women with empty baskets, followed by barefoot children, walking long distances to trade here at the dusty vegetable market. The women and their long walk reminded her of the need for water wells and of the money that should have been in her account to pay for the construction.

  Sable’s thoughts turned to Dr. Vince Adler, a man she highly respected and whom she had thought would be here to meet her. The professor of anthropology was on leave from a private research lab in Toronto and was now working on the wildlife reserve managed by the Dunsmoor family. Dr. Adler was a hero in Sable’s mind, since his research centered on a cause she found dear: what to do about the effects of continued tribal wars, drought, and famine on the game animals of East Africa. He was especially interested, as was she, in working with her father in preserving the last herd of giant-tusked elephants at Marsabit reserve in the NFD region—the Northern Frontier District of Kenya, an area bordering wartorn Somalia.[*]

  She frowned suddenly. She shouldn’t think of Vince as “Doctor” anymore, since an engagement between them was possible in the not-too-distant future, perhaps within a few months after they both arrived to work at her father’s elephant camp near Samburu. Thoughts of an engagement must wait, however, since there was a more urgent problem to deal with: what had happened to the twenty thousand dollars to fund her Christian project here among the Maasai?

  Sable’s throat was dry from more than the heat and dust. She swished her hat, scattering the flies. What would she tell her sister? Kate was working temporarily at a medical camp not far from here and was expecting her to begin the well-drilling project before the two of them left with Dr. Adler for the NFD. Their paternal grandmother, Zenobia Dunsmoor, waited some twenty-five miles away at the family-run game-viewing lodge named Kenyatta.

  For the past year Sable and Kate had planned their well project in memory of their mother, Julia, who had worked with the Maasai as a medical missionary for ten years before her marriage to their father, Skyler Dunsmoor. Having to watch their mother slowly die of cancer in the hospital in Toronto had been a trial of faith for both sisters. As a loving memorial to a cause Julia cared deeply about, they had worked and saved to fund the drilling of two desperately needed wells. And now…the money wasn’t there.

  There must be a simple explanation, Sable told herself, walking toward the tree where the jeep was parked. Before leaving Toronto, she’d been assured the money had already been transferred to the Medical Mission headquarters here in Namanga, and that the funds would be available to pay the Nairobi construction team when she arrived. She slipped her sunglasses on, musing. Could Kate have already taken it and put it to use? If so, why hadn’t she told her?

  Deep in thought, Sable hadn’t noticed the truck bearing down upon her, driving too fast for the narrow roadway. She heard the engine rev and looked up. Before she could step back, the driver leaned on the horn with a long, ear-splitting blast that pierced the stillness, followed by the ugly sound of heavy tires ripping up the dirt as he stomped on the squeaking brakes. The vehicle bounced and swayed precariously. A brawny truck driver with sun-bleached hair dusting his heavy shoulders under a sweat-stained T-shirt leaned his head out and shouted impatiently as though she were to blame for his reckless driving.

  The truck rumbled past, and Sable, embarrassed at being yelled at, stood with eyes closed while holding her breath, embraced by a cloud of dust.

  That truck again! She had first seen it when driving in from Mombasa. It had hogged the roadway, following closely behind her jeep for several miles before rumbling past, nearly causing her to swerve off to the side. She shaded her eyes and looked after it, recalling the words written on the truck’s side: Smith and Browning Zoo Animals.

  The association, loosely headquartered at the shipping port of Tanga in northern Tanzania, had an odious reputation among game conservationists. Her father had written her in Toronto that it was associated with an international hunte
rs’ group working out of the Far East to supply the lucrative black-market trade in elephant ivory, rhino horns, and leopard skins. Her father seemed to think that few animals were actually captured alive to be sold for zoos or circuses, as their cover suggested.

  Sable wasn’t sure which angered her most—the destruction of wildlife by the poachers, who had no concern for the elimination of unique creations of God, or the unfortunate fate of the animals that were sold to third-rate zoos and circuses.

  That foul crew ought to be arrested, she thought, staring after the big dusty truck as it drove out of town. It was against the law to hunt, kill, or trap in the game reserve without a license from the Kenyan game warden. And animals protected by the endangered species law were not to be hunted at all.

  Sable suspected that the zoo hunters were camped out of sight across the Kenyan border inside northern Tanzania to avoid contact with the game wardens in both countries. The two governments were working with wildlife conservation groups to stop the poaching and safeguard their living treasures from international avarice, since world tourism to view the great animals on the reserves was bringing in millions of dollars annually.

  Yet the poachers abounded, tracking the herds or individual elephants and rhinos with aircraft, Land Rovers, and machine guns. The animals were helpless in the face of such sophisticated hunting techniques, and the poachers were rarely caught. They were like guerrilla fighters who would attack suddenly and melt away before the authorities could arrive. And even more tragic, some wardens and African tribal members cooperated with the international poachers for bribes. White hunters who had retired from legal safari businesses were also sometimes culprits.

  Seated at the wheel of the jeep, Sable started the motor. There was no sense in waiting any longer for Dr. Adler. He must have been detained, and if she were to make it to Kenyatta Lodge by sundown, she needed to leave now. Anxious to see her family again, she pushed aside her concerns for Smith and Browning Zoo Animals and her missing money and drove from the border town of Namanga in the direction of the Dunsmoor game-viewing lodge.

  ****

  As the day wore on, the bright East African sky was adrift with enormous pink and cream-colored clouds passing over the sun. So incandescent were the billows that Sable imagined fire smoldering within, even as memories of Kenya burned in her soul and were warm with longing. Yet such memories were painful, too. She blinked back the unbidden tears and straightened her sunglasses, refusing to allow those memories to rampage through her heart. Returning to Africa must not stir to life again the forbidden embers of her past love for Kash Hallet.

  The jeep bumped along over the ruts below the fast-racing clouds. As midafternoon neared, Sable noticed one of the ancient baobab, the oddly shaped tree that drew so much curiosity from the tourists. The tree appeared to be growing upside down with its tangle of meandering rootlike branches reaching skyward. This particular old baobab stood majestically on the plain with a flock of darkly silhouetted game birds perched on its branches, reminding her of partridges in a pear tree.

  However, it wasn’t the birds or the tree that seized her attention. She slowed the jeep to a crawl, and the dust settled silently. The ominous shadow of a single cloud raced across the suntanned plain, momentarily blotting out the amber grass. A short distance from the baobab tree, some bald-headed vultures were squabbling on the ground, displaying their full wingspan, a sure sign that something was dead or dying.

  A pack of brown hyenas emerged from the prickly brush and sidestepped nervously at the sight of her jeep. They trotted a safe distance away, cackling as Sable drove toward the suspicious gray-colored mound resting on its side in the dried yellow savanna grass.

  No, her heart throbbed, not an elephant. Poachers! How had they separated this one from the rest of the matriarchal herd? Was it a bull? Male elephants were solitary except during times of mating.

  Leaving the engine running in case she needed to escape quickly, she caught up her loaded rifle from the backseat and ventured cautiously from the jeep.

  Slowly she approached the elephant, keeping a safe distance until she could manage a clearer view. She was right—poachers—but her heart was reluctant to admit the next discovery. To come across an elephant like this was traumatic enough, but this particular cow was one she thought she recognized.

  Her fingers tightened on the rifle stock. No, not Moffet! It couldn’t be.

  Sable glanced about the dried brush but saw nothing—no calf. Then it couldn’t be Moffet, she reasoned. If it were, her baby would be here, too. And, anyway, what would Moffet be doing here so far from her own family unit? She would not have left their protection unless something was wrong—very wrong.

  Sable drew near, then stopped; a cry of dismay escaped her lips. She’d recognize that elephant anywhere by its left ear. Five years ago she had helped treat the damaged ear that Kash said had been gored by a rhino in a squabble at a water hole.

  She and Kash had first brought the young elephant to the Nairobi orphan zoo years ago after Sable had found the mother dead, another victim of poachers. But before the young elephant became too tame to survive again in the wild, Sable and Kash had released her in the Amboseli Game Reserve, hoping that a herd in this protected area would still accept her.

  She swallowed as she stared at Moffet, recognizing the red tag Kash had marked the elephant with before setting her free. She remembered the relief she’d felt when she learned that Moffet had indeed been accepted by an old matriarch into a small herd. Later, Moffet had given birth to a calf that Sable had named Patches.

  Sable approached silently. The sight was far worse than expected because the elephant with its pitiful half-ear also brought back memories of her love relationship with Kash, which had ended as painfully as Moffet’s life had.

  “Oh, Moffet….” Her throat ached; the words choked off. The poachers had brutally killed her for her two medium-sized tusks. Ivory! Something man didn’t need for his own survival, but only to feed his greed.

  Her hand clenched when she saw that Moffet was not yet dead, although there was nothing she could do to save her. She could only put her out of her misery.

  “Moffet,” she whispered.

  It was uncertain whether or not the elephant understood her name or recognized the voice that spoke it. The only sounds that filled Sable’s ears were the quarreling snarls of the vultures and the high-pitched laugh of the hyenas.

  Sable wept, unashamed, hoping the animal could somehow sense her sorrow, could sense that some humans were her friends. There was a bond between the redeemed children of God and His creatures. She cared because Jesus was the Designer. He had produced that which was “good” until sin had come to ravage and destroy! She knew she cried for more than this elephant alone. To Sable, Moffet represented all the elephants of Africa. They were unappreciated for their majestic beauty and seen only as something to slaughter for a simple ivory tusk that would be carved into a needless decoration to adorn some wealthy home.

  More than Moffet was dying. For Sable, Kash, too, had died—his honor, character, and a love that was once as strong and tender with passion as a warm African night were also gone. The young man whom she had loved had compromised his character and his love of Africa—for money. The young man who had worked with her father to protect and nourish the game animals had turned into a ruthless poacher himself. He had prostituted his knowledge of the land to exploit what he had once protected.

  Insects droned noisily, carelessly, unmoved by the death scene as they landed on Sable’s sweating throat. She was too emotionally spent to even brush them away. Is this what I’ve returned to Africa for? Savagery? Misery? Death?

  The answer came to her heart with a drumlike cadence of the certainty of the calling of God upon her life. Yes, she had returned in His name to walk amid death and offer the message of Life, to hold forth the true Light where Satan’s thick darkness still reigned. She had returned to speak of hope where there was despair, to offer Christ’s eternal g
ift of reconciliation to all who would hear. She had come to show the JESUS film to the Maasai and the nomadic tribes in the NFD, to bring Scripture portions in their own languages and medicine for Kate to use in her work as a nurse. Yes…she had come home to stay. No amount of suffering would turn her back.

  Moffet made a noisy breathing sound, and Sable stirred from her thoughts. She gripped the rifle and approached the suffering animal. She remembered suddenly—the calf…where was Patches?

  Sable looked about again, her gaze pausing on the ground a short distance away where the soil was marked up with tire tracks, boot prints, and the ugly telltale sign of a scuffle. The poachers had worked to trap an animal and load it onto the trailer truck. Patches. And the poachers?

  Smith and Browning! She thought of the truck that had nearly run her down at Namanga and the rawboned driver who yelled at her. He and his hunters were the ones who destroyed Moffet for her tusks, leaving the elephant to die a painful death, and took Patches to sell to a zoo. Sable was certain of it.

  She neared the truck and trailer tracks, aware that the herd might be in the area. The marks were clear—and so was the direction the hunters had gone with their stolen treasure. As she had first suspected, the hunters had escaped across the plain for the Tanzanian border, not too many miles away. They would be camped near the Usa River for the night and eventually head for the port of Tanga to load their animals aboard ship.

  Sable shuddered at the death rattle coming from Moffet and turned sadly to look upon the elephant. She started toward her when a far different sound came from the boulders, bringing a leap of fear to her throat—the low snorting of a lioness who must have smelled the blood as she was on the prowl for food for her cubs. Sable knew that there were “rebels” in this area—loners among the lions, both males and females, that had been rejected by the pride and were forced to hunt and survive on their own until they matched up with another lone lion to start a pride of their own.

  There would be trouble, for the pride that already ruled this territory would fight to protect its food supply from invaders.