Assassin by Ted Bell

finally won its independence from Portugal after a bloody ten-year struggle. But the warring factions had inadvertently conspired to present bin Wazir with two great spoils of war: two revolutionary poaching ideas that, combined, would change his fortunes forever.
    The helicopter. And the land mine.
    Traditionally, African and Asian poachers brought down elephants with high-powered rifles. You’d shoot an animal, walk up to it, and hack its face off with a machete. You’d locate a herd, get within a reasonable range, and open up. You had to kill them all. No animal was allowed to escape. Even though they were useless, calves and pregnant females were slaughtered. Because of their remarkable memories, any elephant that escaped a massacre and joined another herd would infect the new herd with panic.
    The problem with elephant poaching, bin Wazir had soon discovered, was that you had to kill them one at a time.
    “Listen, Tippu Tip, carefully,” he’d said to his chief that night long ago in Maputo. “You’re going to love this idea.”
    The huge African across the table from him had skin so black it was blue, and possessed large ivory-colored teeth, which, when he smiled, looked like a row of piano keys stained red by the juice of betel nuts. The man was a fierce warrior from the village of Lichinga in the northern province of Nyassa. Besides ruling all bin Wazir’s field agents with an iron hand and a steel machete, Tippu had a great head for figures.
    The African chieftain was smiling, but not at bin Wazir. They were at a small table near the stage at the Club Xai-Xai, watching the fat strippers grind and sweat in the dense smoky light. One particularly unlovely dancer had been laboring above them for some time now. The grim town of Maputo, squatting on the bluffs overlooking the Indian Ocean, was awash with such women. Most were former sweatshop girls who’d been sitting at their benches doing piecework when they’d finally come to a great realization.
    They were sitting on gold mines.
    Tippu, staring at the gyrating woman, was gnawing at a hunk of hippo meat he’d purchased earlier in the Zambesi market. Snay tried unsuccessfully to catch his eye.
    “Are you listening or watching, Tippu?”
    “Ar watching, Bwana.”
    “Listen.”
    The great black head swiveled momentarily in Snay’s direction.
    “Ar listen,” he said.
    “Of late, I’ve been thinking about something. An idea which runs through my mind with the noblest perfection. I am not a complicated man, Tippu. I am a hungry man. A thirsty man. I thirst for blood and I hunger for gold. Always. The way a pilgrim long lost in the desert might long for water. As of now, this moment, I feel like a pilgrim who has caught a glimpse of a vast oasis, lying just there, beyond that next dune.”
    Tippu Tip tore himself away from the grunting, gyrating creature above him and turned his blood-red eyes on his employer. Tippu thought the wild-eyed Arab boy was mildly insane, at least deranged, although Tippu had never met a muzungu, a white man, who was more ferocious in getting what he wanted. If you had to work for a white man, Bwana bin Wazir was as good as it got. The Sultan, as he was now sometimes called by Tippu, made all of the African’s former Portuguese masters, many of whom he himself had killed, look like morons.
    “Ar listen, Bwana Sultan,” Tippu said loudly, and many heads swiveled in their direction. Tippu Tip’s voice had the rumble of distant thunder from a borderless land. He took a deep draught of chibuku, the local potion which passed for beer. He said, “What treasure lie in this vast oasis, Sultan?”
    “Blood, Tippu. Blood and gold.”
    “Yes, Bwana. Both good.”
    “I want to buy helicopters. Two, maybe three to start.”
    “Helicopters?”
    “Helicopters,” the Sultan replied, his eyes glittering. “I’m saying to you, Tippu, you are going to be crazy for this idea. Feel free to call me a genius once I have explained