Chapter 5
Steve was in the conference room of SAPS poaching unit and had gone through his photographs of the elephant capture. They grumbled that Steve had only taken still photos, but after he finally got them back on track, they agreed with him that the capture was fairly straight forward until the medicine packets were placed under the elephant's skin.
This was a new wrinkle in the elephant capture and they weren't sure what was in the packets. Everyone speculated that they could be any of the normal South African smuggling items; drugs, gold, ivory or diamonds, but no one knew for sure. They checked their records and there was no capture slated for the date and location of Steve's photos.
To get the most for their money the detectives speculated that the smugglers were trafficking in diamonds. The diamond mines are controller under air tight security, so it would be difficult to remove them from the mines, but not impossible. Bram left the group to go speak to some of the specialists in diamond smuggling.
The fact that there was not an elephant capture scheduled put the poaching unit at heightened alert. They didn't normally have poachers schedule their captures, in fact, they had never had a poacher call attention to themselves. After Steve saw the police relax, he piped up, "You need to stop thinking of these people as poachers and think of them as smugglers that use poaching techniques!"
Several of the men looked at each other and exchanged glances, but none seemed moved by Steve's correction. Steve knew he was fighting a losing battle on this front, so he switched tactics and asked, "Do any of the people in the photos look familiar? Like poachers you have dealt with before?"
All the police looked at the photos and gave sideways glances at each other, but claimed they didn't know who they were. Steve could tell by their surreptitious glances that they had seen these people before and really knew who they were. He didn't know if they were covering for them or just recognized them. Either way he knew that most of the continuing search would be up to him.
The police also refused to give Steve the name of the company and people scheduled to recover the elephant, but they did leave the information on the computer screen long enough for Steve to take a photo with his phone, also committing the names and addresses to memory.
Steve pulled out his phone, wrote the address and corporate name google to search the corporate website. The corporation had locations in Capetown, Johannesberg, Pretoria, Saldanha and Franschhoek. He knew that Saldanha was a shipping port, while Capetown, JoBerg and Petoria were all urban centers, so he assumed that they didn't have anything to do with the capture or smuggling business. Franschhoek was the outlier, because they were in a valley between the mountains in the middle of nowhere, about three hours from Capetown.
He copied the address into Google Maps and saw that their Capetown location was close to SAPS, but the Saldanha location was approximately an hour away from Capetown. He still had to pick up April, so he resolved to investigate the business tomorrow.
The police told him to let them handle it and for him to back off. Steve did not get the impression that it was a high priority, but was content to let them have a go at it. He gathered his information and left their offices with business cards in hand. He was still planning on investigating the corporation and was not going to leave April's or his safety in the hands of keystone cops.
Steve had just left the SAPS poaching office, and was on his way back to see April when he received a frantic call from the hospital that April was missing. He panicked and drove as quickly as he could to the hospital, but he knew he was already too late. They had her and he knew it was up to him to find her and save her.
He immediately found her car and a quick search of the doctor's lounge revealed her phone, so he knew she was gone. She would never leave her phone behind. Steve knew there was nothing he could do her, so he turned around and went back into the poaching police's offices. He needed a lead and he knew they would have one, but he was going to save her even if he had to take Capetown or even South Africa apart.
Chapter 6
As April started to come to, she felt light-headed and woozy. Her whole body was limp and she had this strange pain in her wrists and arms. The pain in her arms and wrists was similar to plan Steve suspended her during their play time, but somehow this seemed different. She opened her eyes and saw blackness and realized the hood was still pulled over her face and the gag was still in place.
She realized her wrists were tied with her arms stretched above her head and she was hanging from something. Her whole body was still recovering from the drugs and she tried to get her still recovering legs to work. She gathered her legs under her, began to stand with the pain in her arms easing a little bit, but that was short lived.