Wild Meat Read Online Free PDF Page A

check on her story until the following morning, possibly giving her time to do whatever she had come for. This woman was clever.
    He wondered how the guards would interpret the order to “send a message.” A few months earlier, Wilson had ordered these same two guards to beat up three workers suspected of stealing gasoline, and they had complied with bloody relish.
    He got a little glum at the thought of something bad happening to the woman. Her face wasn’t strikingly pretty, but it was nice. He liked the way her light brown curls brushed her cheeks. And she was tall, the same height as him. He liked that, too. Up close, he’d seen that she was probably in her early thirties, but she moved with the energy of someone much younger.
    While Marcel watched her, the woman reached into a pants pocket, unrolled a floppy white sunhat and put it on, then headed toward the men returning from the forest. One of the men was young and wiry, wearing no shirt and carrying an old shotgun. Over his shoulder were slung the carcasses of two red colobus monkeys and a tiny brown duiker, all tied together at the hind feet.
    The woman caught up with the hunter and started talking, striding along next to him with what Marcel took to be feigned clumsiness. With one hand, she held down the sunhat as though the wind were blowing. Putting on an act every second of the way.
    A minute later she was sitting with the hunter on a log between two lean-tos, and half a dozen children were gathering to stare.
    Marcel stood up and told the guards, “I’m going to tell her she can’t stay, and that you two are going to escort her out in my pickup in case her vehicle gets stuck in the mud. Stay with her for about twenty minutes to make sure she’s definitely leaving, and then turn around.”
    The big round guard protested. “But Mr. Wilson said….”
    “Just follow her out and come back fast. That will be enough of….” He paused, trying to remember the English phrase he’d heard. “Enough of a goddamned message. We have other work to do. It will be dark soon.”
     
     

 
    CHAPTER TWO
     
     
    Five minutes after Amy left the camp, Marcel’s pickup roared past her, kicking up moist red clumps of earth. She glanced at the two guards as they went by, but neither looked her way. The tall man at the wheel seemed more interested in flooring the truck than in following her.
    It was a relief to be out of the camp, moving through the forest. The ribbon of visible sky above the logging road had turned a feathery pink, and the sun sinking behind her turned beads of yesterday’s rain into orange diamonds in the greenery. She wished she could strip down and let the balmy air blow past her whole cramped and sweaty body, but settled for just sliding off her boots and unbuttoning the loose shirt that covered her black tank top.
    It was also a relief to know that the day hadn’t been a complete waste of time. She’d brought along a small camera with great resolution and a sensitive microphone, rather than relying on her cell phone’s recording quality, and it had paid off. The hunter she met had confirmed Robert’s story about someone in the company management buying the meat from the foreman. Her hidden mike had picked it all up, and she’d gotten a few good photos of the hunter lugging his kill. With the crowd of children watching, it had been hard for Amy to be discreet about passing him the two twenty-euro notes, but she’d managed.
    The hunter had also repeated another strange story she’d heard from Robert that afternoon, about armed men coming to look for an American named Tobin some days earlier, all of them dressed in biohazard suits and body armor, sticking guns in everybody’s faces. Apparently the guy had been in the camp a week or so before Robert, driving a big mobile lab with a silly name. Tobin had asked everybody he met whether anyone was vomiting up black slime. People kept on saying no, but Tobin had made sure to ask every last person