Fatal by Arno Joubert

Eagle roar over his head. The plane made a graceful arc, the jet propulsion engines leaving a white contrail in the clear blue sky.  
    Then the fighter jet changed course and headed straight at them. A missile dropped from the side of the aircraft, and orange flames spouted behind the projectile as the turbojet propulsion system kicked in.
    “What the hell?” Roebuck shouted as he jumped up and ran, fumbling for the memory stick in his pocket.
     

Metcalfe’s phone rang and he snapped it open.
    “Yes?”
    “Senator Metcalfe. Captain Babbett here. The mission has been completed.”
    Metcalfe grinned. “Excellent, Captain. I knew that I could rely on you.”
    The man hesitated. “The impact zone was somewhat larger than we anticipated, probably about a mile and a half.”  
    “That’s fine, my boy. I will deal with it. We’ll coordinate some cleanup crews.”
    “Senator, we didn’t see any poachers, only a single soldier. And another guy running for cover,” Babbett said.
    Metcalfe paced around the room. “They were probably in hiding. Did you get both these men that you saw?”
    The captain chuckled. “Without a doubt. Your cleaning crew will be scraping them off the rocks and trees.”
    Metcalfe smiled. “Excellent,” he said and disconnected the phone.
    Now that is how you kill two birds with one stone.

Bruce looked towards the glint on the hillock above him. Last night, the soldier had tried to follow him, but he probably wasn’t used to the terrain. It was easy to lose the man in the dense riverine bush.
    He then waited until 3:00 a.m. and followed the soldier's tracks from the dry riverbed, up the hillock to where the man had set up his own campsite. He had to give it to the man, he travelled light. The soldier had nothing but his weapon, slept out in the open. He had no distinguishing insignia or rank, but he wore a US Marine uniform, the type issued to soldiers in the jungle. The soldier had set a trip wire to alert him of movement close to the camp, but it had been set off, probably by bush rodents, and the soldier hadn’t bothered setting up another.
    An M16 with a mounted Hightech scope had been propped against a sapling. It was an awkward weapon to use in the bush, not accurate beyond a hundred and fifty yards, long and unwieldy. The man came to the bush with what he had in his locker; his prep time was less than satisfactory. Which could be fatal in the bush.
    Bruce had removed the firing pin from the rifle then reassembled it in less than a minute. The man now had a bludgeoning tool, if he didn’t notice that the pin was gone. And you usually didn’t carry a spare.
    The glint from the binoculars beaconed the man’s position once again. Now would be as good a time as any to find out what he wanted. Bruce trudged up the hill towards him.
    He looked up as the F-15 screamed towards them. It looped around and fly back their way. When the aircraft was four hundred yards away, it released a missile, the projectile’s flight path aiming over his head.  
    Bruce made some quick calculations. He had about eight seconds before the missile hit. He bolted away from the impact zone, which he guessed was about two hundred yards south of him.
    Bruce scurried down the hill, slid on a rock and fell, breaking his fall by going into a tumbling roll. He bounced to his feet and stumbled headlong towards the baobab then scrambled into the opening, turning his back to the opening and bracing his head as he lunged inside.  
    The tree shuddered from the initial dull detonation. A moment later an ear-splitting explosion shook the tree violently, breaking and tearing into the branches, as if they were being mowed down by multiple flying circular blades. Tree limbs came crashing down on top of him, and the air was thick with dust and leaves floating to the ground.  
    He waited a couple of seconds then pushed away the broken branches and crawled out of the opening. The entire landscape was a scorched black dustbowl.