Page 82 of Duty Preserved

“You did good today. You kept moving forward,” he said. “That’s the part that counts.”

The bull got his third leg under him. Then the fourth. He stood, his ears flapping and his trunk sweeping the ground in front of him. He swayed a bit before finding his balance.

Then he turned and moved off. Slow and steady. One big, lumbering step at a time.

Chapter 22

Donovan

We moved out at first light, twelve rangers and two operators strung along the track in a loose patrol column.

A month ago, I’d have had to drag them out of the bunkhouse. A month ago, the column would have been ragged and their weapons carried as little more than inconveniences. Today, Zayn had them formed up before Andrew and I crossed the compound. Two columns of six, weapons slung correctly. They stepped off in silence and moved as a cohesive team.

“Look at them,” Andrew said from beside me, low enough that only I could hear. “Almost makes me feel unnecessary.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

I watched the column move. Baraka was carrying the heavy pack today without having been assigned it. He’d just picked it up. Two of the younger rangers had their heads on a swivel, scanning the tree line to their flanks the way we’d drilled them, and they were doing it without thinking about it. Zayn was at the front, setting the pace.

It had been a week since the mauling. Four days since I’d stood beside Sarah while she put her hands on a sedated bull elephant and pushed through a fear that would have broken most people. The whole camp was learning to adapt to the new circumstances.

Sarah was better. Still hurting, but better. I’d watched her work three cases in the past two days without stalling between them. No second-guessing the dosage, no freezing with the syringe in her hand. She was committing to each task and moving on to the next one, and that kind of forward momentum was representative of her willpower.

Word had come through that Alyson and Cole had both made it stateside. Separate flights, separate roads. Alyson for the long reconstruction ahead of her. Cole to learn how to walk on a leg that was mostly surgical steel. He’d called from a military hospital in Virginia, sounding like himself, which meant he downplayed everything and then asked about the reserve.

“Cole says hi,” Andrew had reported after that call. “And by ‘hi,’ I mean he wants a full status report, a patrol schedule, and an equipment manifest.”

“Did you tell him his job right now is physical therapy?”

“I told him his job right now is watching daytime television and learning to use crutches. He told me to go to hell. It was a productive conversation.”

That was the register we kept it in. Cole was on his back in a hospital with his leg bolted together, and the only way any of us were getting through it was to keep it humorous and keep it moving.

The fellowship program had decided not to send replacements. Ten months left on the rotation, and they weren’t going to onboard anyone new for that. Sarah would finish it alone. The whole reserve’s animals on her.

From what I could see, that didn’t daunt her. Shorthanded or not, she was here because she wanted to be here. She loved it. The animals, the outdoors, and working alongside the rangers who had an equally strong passion for protecting the reserve. She wouldn’t be anywhere else.

Ten more months.

I filed it away for now and kept walking.

The sun climbed, and the patrol pushed deeper into the reserve. This was country we hadn’t covered regularly before, a sector northeast of the main outposts where the terrain opened into broad grassland broken by stands of acacia and the occasional rocky kopje.

“Patrol, halt. Zayn, take ten.” I raised a fist, and the column stopped.

Zayn turned back to me. “There is a waterhole ahead. Maybe four hundred meters. The rhinos come there.”

“Take two men and scout it. Andrew and I will hold here with the rest.”

He tapped Baraka and Otieno, and the three of them moved forward. Spacing themselves in a V formation, they covered the terrain the way we’d taught them. Baraka took the left flank, Otieno drifted right, and Zayn moved center, each one holding his rifle at the ready.

We waited. The rest of the rangers took a knee in the shade of an acacia cluster, using the time to hydrate and get some relief from the weight of the gear they were carrying.

Maybe fifteen minutes had gone by when Zayn called back over the radio.

“Boss. You need to come see this.”

Andrew and I looked at each other. I keyed the radio. “On our way. Hold position.”