Page 80 of Duty Preserved

He stood alone in the open grass, separated from the bachelor group by several hundred meters. His posture told me everything before I raised the binoculars. Weight shifted off his left side. He was showing clear signs of agitation, most likely from whatever pain he was dealing with.

Through the binoculars, the wound was worse. A ragged tusk furrow along his left shoulder, the edges swollen and dark with infection. Fluid wept from the lower margin.

“He has to be all the way under before anyone can touch that,” I said.

Every person in both vehicles knew what this was. The same sequence—dart, wait, approach, hands on—that had put Alyson in a Nairobi hospital.

I opened the drug kit and loaded the dart. Calculated the dose against the bull’s estimated weight. Checked it. Checked it again.

“Zayn, place your people. Baraka and one other with loaded backups, positioned to cover. One set of eyes on him at all times. If he moves, I need to know.”

Zayn gave the orders. The rangers moved into a loose arc around the wounded animal. Baraka loaded a backup dart and braced the rifle against the vehicle door. A second ranger took position to his left.

Everything by the book. The same steps that had been followed the day Alyson had gone in on the lion. The dart had been placed correctly. The backup had been loaded and ready. The approach had followed every protocol. And it had happened anyway.

Nobody joked. Everything got checked twice.

Donovan stayed on me. He was the one going in at my side, and his position beside the vehicle said so.

I fired.

The dart hit the bull’s right hindquarter. He flinched. His head swung, trunk curling, and he took two staggering steps forward before the drug caught him. His legs locked. His head dropped. His body began its slow negotiation with the ground.

We waited.

I counted the minutes against my watch. His ears went still. His trunk settled into the dirt. The rise and fall of his rib cage slowed to a deep rhythm visible from where we stood.

“Test him,” I said.

Zayn moved in from behind. Tapped the bull’s hind foot with a stick. No response. Touched the tip of the ear. Nothing. He looked back and raised a hand.

I picked up my surgical kit and stepped out of the vehicle.

The distance was maybe forty meters.

For the first half of it, my legs worked. I was walking toward a sedated animal with my kit in my hand and the procedure mapped in my head. And for that first half, it was just a normal approach on just another normal day.

Then I got close enough to feel the scale of him. Thousands of kilograms of muscle and bone on the ground ahead of me, and all of it had to stay down.

My legs stopped.

Did I use the right amount of sedative?

I stood in open grass with the kit gripped in both hands and looked down at my fingers. The fingers I’d trusted for ten years. The ones the camp now relied on. The ones that had never once in my life refused a task I’d set them to.

They were shaking.

Not a fine tremor I could work through. A shake that ran from my wrists to my fingertips and turned the surgical kit into something I couldn’t hold steady. I tightened my grip, and the shaking got worse.

This wasn’t Gregory’s voice. Gregory had never touched this part of me. This was new, and it was worse for being new. I had always had control of my hands. Whatever else I doubted about myself, I had never doubted these.

My body had decided the animal ahead of me was already moving. Already surging up, and every step closer was a step closer to danger. My legs locked against the certainty of it.

I stood there.

The sun was on my back. The rangers were in position. Every indicator said the drug was holding. My body didn’t believe any of it.

I looked at the bull’s rib cage. The slow rise. The slow fall. The same rhythm it had held for twelve minutes. Behind me, Baraka had the backup braced and ready. Zayn was in position. Donovan was right here. Everything that could be done to make this safe had been done, and my legs would not move.