Page 96 of Duty Preserved

Andrew stood near the water tank, one hand scratching his chin. He motioned me over.

I crossed to him and saw it before I got there.

Sprayed in white paint across the curved metal surface of the tank were four words.

BACK OFF OR BURN.

The paint was fresh. Still tacky at the edges of the letters where it had run in thin drips down the tank’s surface.

The rangers found it next. In the darkness and chaos of fighting the fire, they hadn’t noticed it earlier. Zayn came around the side of the tank first, then Baraka behind him. The others filtered in from whatever task they’d been on. They stood in a loose half circle and read the four words, and every man went still.

The silence lasted a long minute before everyone started asking questions at once.

“Who did this?”

“Was it the poachers?”

The last one came from a ranger standing near Zayn’s shoulder. He looked at me and then at the burned-out shell of the vet facility, and the line he drew between the two was written on his face. “We stopped them from killing the rhino. This is what they did about it.”

Not one man argued with him. He was right.

Baraka stood with his fists braced against his hips. “So what are we doing about it?”

Sarah spoke from beside the salvage pile. “The building can be rebuilt. The animals on this reserve can’t.”

I looked at the faces around me. Covered in ash and soot, these exhausted men were unsatisfied with so many unanswered questions. These men had been shot at forty-eight hours ago. They’d spent the last four hours fighting a fire that someone had set in their home. They deserved the full picture.

“Gather up. All of you. Tight.”

They closed the circle. Sarah set down her clipboard on a crate and moved closer. Andrew stayed at my shoulder.

“The man directing this operation is named Willem Nasser. He is a South African national. He’s been running a crew through the Laikipia conservancies for months. Lewa, Borana, Mpala, and now here. They’re killing rhinos for their horns and moving them into the international market through a chain of middlemen. The phone Jomo found at the interdiction site confirmed all of it.”

I kept it short. They didn’t need the detail of every text message and GPS coordinate. They needed to understand that this group of poachers was part of a larger picture.

“This isn’t just some locals with borrowed rifles. This is a funded, organized operation run by men who know what they’re doing. You saw that two nights ago. They had discipline. They withdrew under control instead of scattering. And last night, they drove into this camp while we were asleep, burned the biggest building to the ground, and left us a message.”

I let that settle.

“Faith Njeri has everything we have, and so do KWS and the police. That part is in motion.”

“So what do we do?” one of the younger rangers asked.

“We go after him.” Baraka said it evenly. “This is our reserve. Our camp. He burned our building and put a message on our water tank like we’re supposed to be afraid of him. We find him and we end this.”

Several heads nodded. The ranger who’d connected the interdiction to the fire spoke up again. “Baraka is right. They attacked our home. How about we attack theirs?”

Zayn turned from the tank. He didn’t agree or disagree. He watched me, and in that restraint, I could read his own instincts warring with his judgment.

“I understand what you’re saying, the action you want to take,” I said. “Every part of it. This is your home, and somebody came into it and ransacked it.”

“Yes. We need to show them how it feels to have your home destroyed,” Otieno interjected.

Several heads nodded in response again.

“But here’s the problem. We don’t know where Nasser is. We don’t know where his crew is staging from. Finding and arresting a South African national running an international criminal operation is law enforcement’s job. KWS and the police have everything they need to start. The fire gets added to that report today.”

Baraka’s expression didn’t soften, but his mouth stayed closed.