13
Jed stood on the upstairs verandah of the lodge in Mana Pools National Park watching a herd of buffalo through his binoculars. He was dressed for the bush. He wore a pair of dun-coloured fatigue trousers with baggy side pockets, a brown T-shirt and sandy suede desert boots. All of his gear had been issued to him for service in Afghanistan but it suited the dry African bush just as well.
Jed heard the ratde of a diesel engine as a vehicle pulled up behind the lodge, out of sight. The buffalo, sixteen of them by his count, were meandering slowly along the length of the narrow island in the middle of the river, munching away on the grass like big black cows.
‘They call them black death, you know.’
Jed put the glasses down and saw Moses below him. He waved. Moses had brought Jed’s hired
