Operation Pink Elephant Read online

  About the Book

  When their friend Lucky is kidnapped by elephant poachers in Tanzania, the Global Rapid Reaction Responders team are called in to find him. Caesar the super-sniffing war dog is sent with Ben and Charlie on the mission.

  After a death-defying parachute jump into the ocean, they start gathering clues. The poachers were last seen stealing village children to become soldiers for their army – and they have forced Lucky to write a ransom letter. If the team can trace the letter, and work out which way the rebels went, they might be on the right track.

  Saving Lucky from the heavily armed poachers is their top priority, but the GRRR team are prepared to do whatever they can to stop the cruel trade in elephant tusks and to free boy soldiers. Can Caesar’s nose locate the illegal cargo – and trace and rescue a good friend – before it’s too late? A battle on the African plain is about to erupt.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  List of Military Terms

  Fact File

  About the Author

  Also by Stephen Dando-Collins

  Copyright Notice

  Loved the book?

  For Louise, who has trained me well.

  With grateful thanks to Richard and Zoe.

  And for the many fans of Caesar the War Dog who couldn’t wait for the next adventure to begin: Seek on!

  As the Australian Army Bushmaster bumped over the desert terrain, the soldiers in its crowded passenger compartment were smiling. All except for one.

  ‘You guys want me to believe that Australia has more camels than any other country in the world?’ said the odd man out, frowning in disbelief. Wearing camouflage pants and tunic, and a flat, peaked US Marine Corps cap, he was Major General Alan ‘Bud’ Weisner, and he had joined an Australian Special Forces patrol to watch the Aussies at work. He looked around at the seven other men – all of whom wore helmets, sunglasses, leather gloves and desert-patterned combat gear.

  ‘It’s a fact, General,’ said a short, lithe SAS trooper sitting directly opposite, a man known to one and all as Bendigo Baz. ‘Even more wild camels than in an Arab country.’

  ‘Afghans migrating to Australia in the nineteenth century brought them to carry their loads across the desert,’ said Corporal Lucky Mertz, the fair-haired soldier sitting next to Baz. ‘They let them run wild. The boy camels and girl camels just kept having babies, so the population grew and grew.’

  General Weisner shook his head. ‘Next, you’ll have me believe that this here dawg can talk.’ He nodded to the alert brown labrador sitting between the legs of Sergeant Ben Fulton. The dog had been watching each speaker in turn.

  ‘In a way, sir,’ said Ben, the dog’s handler, ‘Caesar can talk.’

  ‘You just have to be tuned into his wavelength,’ said Sergeant Charlie Grover, the troop leader, who sat by the Bushmaster’s rear door. ‘Ben can read Caesar like a book. And I can sometimes get the gist of what he’s trying to tell us, too.’

  ‘Caesar was Sergeant Grover’s care dog for a while, sir,’ Ben explained.

  ‘Until I mastered my Zoomers,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Mastered your what?’ said the general.

  ‘My Zoomers, sir,’ Charlie returned. He bent down and rolled up one trouser leg to reveal a carbon-fibre prosthetic leg.

  General Weisner gaped at the sleek black Zoomer. ‘You’re on active service with a prosthetic leg?’

  ‘No, sir, not a prosthetic leg,’ Charlie replied, before rolling up the other trouser leg to reveal a second Zoomer. ‘Two prosthetic legs.’

  Several of the Australian soldiers in the Bushmaster laughed at the general’s astonishment. They were used to Charlie’s Zoomers and, like Charlie, never gave them a second thought.

  The general shook his head. ‘You Aussies! A Special Forces sergeant on prosthetics, more camels than anywhere else in the world, and a talking dawg!’

  The Bushmaster suddenly slew to a halt.

  ‘Contact!’ yelled the vehicle’s commander. ‘Hostile with RPG at eleven o’clock!’ Swinging the roof-mounted machinegun to the left, he opened fire.

  Charlie’s smile quickly disappeared. ‘Dismount left and engage!’ he called above the machinegun chatter, unbuckling his seat harness. He opened the Bushmaster’s rear door and sprang out into the sunshine, carbine at the ready.

  The six other Australian soldiers were close on his heels. Caesar came bounding out with Ben, who kept him close on a short leash. General Weisner was second-last out the door, with Baz last of all, pushing the general in the back with one hand, to hurry him up, and lugging his favoured Minimi machinegun with the other.

  Outside, the men quickly fanned out to the left of the stationary Bushmaster, whose gun had fallen silent. They threw themselves flat against the side of a dune three metres high, flopping onto red-tinged sand that was baking-hot. Caesar dropped down beside Ben, tongue hanging out in the searing heat, and tail wagging – this, to him, was fun. A second Bushmaster that had been following forty metres behind them also came to a halt, and another eight Special Forces troops spilled out the rear and took up positions against the dune.

  ‘The Bushmaster’s .50 cal has dealt with the RPG,’ announced Charlie. ‘Ben and Caesar, scout ahead for IEDs. We’ll cover you.’

  ‘Roger,’ Ben returned. He lowered his head to his labrador companion. ‘Ready to go to work, mate?’ he asked Caesar.

  In response, Caesar licked Ben on the cheek and gave him a look that seemed to say, Ready when you are, boss.

  Ben smiled and gave his canine mate a solid pat. ‘Okay, Caesar. Seek on!’ Up he rose, and Caesar did the same.

  With Caesar on the leash, padding over the sand just ahead of Ben, the pair moved past the first Bushmaster as it sat immobile, engine ticking over. Behind handler and dog, Charlie and the others were slowly sweeping the landscape with their weapons, ready to open fire to protect Ben and Caesar from attack. Heat shimmered off the sand. Keeping the dune on their left, dog and handler cautiously moved forward. Ben held the end of Caesar’s leash in his right hand, and cradled a Steyr automatic rifle with the other.

  General Weisner lay unarmed in the middle of the group of Australians, watching dog and handler with interest. Only now did the general notice that Caesar had leather booties tied to each of his paws. ‘You gotta be kidding me!’ he exclaimed. ‘That dawg is wearing booties!’

  ‘Special footwear for explosive detection dogs, General,’ explained Charlie. ‘A place as hot as this, with baking sand underfoot – that’s not a dog’s natural terrain. It’s not ours, either, but at least we’ve got thick boots to protect our feet. So, the Special Operations Engineer Regiment came up with something to protect the EDDs’ feet in places like this.’

  ‘Now I’ve seen everything. Dawg booties!’ said Weisner, with a laugh in his voice. He watched Ben and Caesar working their way forward. ‘They been together long, that dawg and his handler?’

  Without taking his eyes off the landscape, Charlie nodded. ‘Ben picked him out at the kennels when Caesar was about eighteen month
s old. They’ve become like father and son.’

  ‘Personally,’ said General Weisner, ‘I don’t think a combat unit is any place for a dawg.’

  ‘That dog has saved our lives more than once, General,’ said Baz, sighting down his Minimi.

  ‘Yeah, but just the same –’ Weisner responded.

  ‘Caesar’s onto something!’ called Lucky. He had been watching Caesar and Ben’s progress through the telescopic sight atop his Blaser sniper rifle.

  Sure enough, a hundred metres ahead of the first Bushmaster, Caesar had come to a halt. With his head low, he gazed at the side of a tall ridge of sand. All of a sudden he dived forward and began to dig furiously with his front paws, sending sand spewing out behind him. His tail was wagging furiously.

  ‘No, Caesar!’ Ben growled, hauling back on the leash.

  Caesar stopped digging and turned his head to Ben. The puzzled look on his face seeming to say, But I found something!

  ‘You know what to do, Caesar,’ scolded Ben.

  Caesar ducked his head and let out a little whimper, as if to say, Oops! Sorry, boss. Then he promptly sat and gazed intently at the spot where he’d begun to dig. Sand rolled down from above to partially fill the hole he’d created. This stare was Caesar’s ‘signature’, the way he signalled the location of hidden explosives to Ben.

  ‘That’s better, mate,’ said Ben, ruffling the labrador’s neck. He then dropped to his knees and, shouldering his rifle, slid a gloved hand into the sand where Caesar had been digging, then rummaged about until he felt an object about ten centimetres in. Pushing the sand aside with both hands, he revealed a package the size and shape of a shoebox. In fact, it was a shoebox, painted a sandy colour to blend with its surroundings. Carefully, he removed it from its hiding place and sat it on the sand. Giving Caesar a pat, he said, ‘Good job, mate. You found it.’

  Caesar, happy that he was back in Ben’s good books, began to wag his tail anew.

  Coming to his feet, Ben looked back to his waiting comrades and signalled for them to approach. Three of the SAS men came at the trot, before Charlie, Lucky, Baz and the general followed. Meanwhile, the men at the second Bushmaster remained in covering positions.

  ‘What’s your dawg found there, Sergeant?’ the general asked as he joined the group standing around the EDD and his handler.

  By way of explanation, Ben dropped to one knee and took the lid off the box.

  Major General Weisner peered into it and scowled. ‘What’s that in there?’ he asked. ‘Looks like a sugar sachet to me.’

  The box was empty but for a white square sachet.

  ‘It is a sachet, sir,’ said Ben. He held it up to show the general. ‘An EDD training sachet. It contains chemicals typically used in explosives.’

  ‘And that’s what your dawg sniffed out, through the sand?’ Major General Weisner reached for the sachet.

  ‘I wouldn’t touch it with your bare hands, if I were you, sir,’ said Ben, holding onto the sachet.

  ‘Why’s that, Sergeant?’ the general demanded.

  ‘You might set off an explosives detector when you go through airport security on your way back to base tomorrow,’ said Ben, half jokingly.

  ‘Or Caesar might track you down as an insurgent,’ Baz suggested with a smirk.

  Weisner looked around at Baz. ‘I touch that, and the dawg could track me down?’

  ‘Yep,’ Baz said with supreme confidence.

  ‘As much as twenty-four hours later,’ added Ben.

  Weisner turned back to him. ‘That, I would like to see, Sergeant. And your dawg was able to detect this, through the sand! Outstanding, soldier. Outstanding!’ He glanced at Caesar, who was staring intently at the sachet. ‘He’s trained to dig up his finds as well, huh?’

  ‘Er …’ Ben looked embarrassed. ‘Actually, General, that’s a bad habit of Caesar’s. He’s not supposed to dig, though he loves nothing better than to dig up my mother’s rosebushes. He’s trained to indicate the location of explosives, but once in a while his enthusiasm gets the better of him and he will dig for them. This is our first op since we got back from overseas, so he’s keen to please.’

  ‘Yeah, Caesar’s only human,’ said Baz, getting a laugh from the others.

  ‘Caesar’s digging habit was what attracted you to him, wasn’t it, Ben?’ said Charlie.

  ‘That’s right.’ Ben dropped the sachet back into the shoebox and closed the lid. ‘The digging habit showed he had an intense curiosity, and that’s what we need in a good EDD.’ He gave Caesar a pat and stood up.

  Charlie, meanwhile, checked his watch. ‘Okay, let’s call it a day. Back to the LZ.’ Turning to the two Bushmasters and the men with them, Charlie twirled a finger in the air, then pointed back the way they had come. ‘Exercise terminated.’

  This had been a training exercise, part of the induction of several new men into the SAS Regiment. The sighting of an RPG by the Bushmaster’s commander had been fictitious, but apart from that, Charlie had striven to keep things as real as possible every step of the way. The day before, an army helicopter had landed here, and one of the crew members had buried the shoebox containing the explosives sachet. The helicopter pilot had noted the location via GPS, and the commander of the leading Bushmaster had been given the coordinates to follow.

  Caesar and the sixteen Special Forces men piled back into the Bushmasters. They were soon headed south toward an area on the flat twenty kilometres away, which was being used as a helicopter landing zone.

  ‘So, this is Australia’s Simpson Desert,’ said Major General Weisner. ‘I’ve never seen so much sand in all my days.’

  ‘Largest sand dune desert in the world, sir,’ Baz volunteered.

  ‘176,500 square kilometres, to be precise,’ added Lucky. ‘It straddles the corners of South Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory.’

  ‘You guys are full of facts,’ said Weisner, a hint of derision in his voice.

  ‘We study hard before every mission, General,’ Lucky said seriously. ‘We have a cardinal rule in the SAS – learn as much as you can about the place your unit is tasked to operate in, before you set foot there. That information might just save your life one day, or the life of someone you’ve been sent to rescue.’

  The major general nodded. ‘I know the value of good intel, Corporal,’ he said to Lucky. ‘But where do you draw the line? When do you say “Enough, too much information”?’

  ‘You can never have too much information, sir,’ said Charlie.

  ‘For instance,’ said Baz, ‘did you know that the Simpson Desert is named after a fridge?’

  For a moment there was a stunned silence in the back of the bucking Bushmaster.

  ‘What he means, sir,’ said Lucky, ‘is that this desert is named after Alfred Simpson, who founded a washing machine company that became the largest whitegoods company in Australia.’

  ‘Simpson!’ said an SAS man, his face lighting up. ‘My mum and dad have got a Simpson fridge at home.’

  ‘Same bloke, same company,’ said Lucky.

  ‘The ironic thing is,’ said Charlie, ‘Lucky’s expert knowledge is not going to benefit the SAS much longer. His enlistment is up in a week, and he’s leaving the army.’

  ‘Is that right?’ the major general said with surprise. ‘That’s a shame. Got another job to go to, Corporal?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Lucky replied. ‘I’m joining the Tanzanian Wildlife Service, in Africa.’

  ‘Hell’s bells!’ Weisner exclaimed. ‘That’ll make for a heck of a big change. From Special Forces to playing nursemaid to wild animals.’

  ‘Not really, sir,’ said Lucky. ‘I grew up among animals. My father is a zoologist in New Zealand. But it’s my military skills the park rangers want. There’s a war going on over there, between ivory poachers and the rangers – and the poachers are winning. They’re better armed and better led than the rangers. My job is to turn that situation around.’

  ‘Well, good luck, Corporal,’ said Weisn
er sincerely. ‘What about you other guys – you’re going to miss the corporal, right?’

  ‘Nah!’ said Baz, with a wink Charlie’s way. ‘Lucky’s the last bloke you want to go on ops with – he farts in his sleep.’

  This brought a roar of laughter from the others.

  ‘We will miss Lucky,’ said Charlie. ‘He’s been my right-hand man for quite a few years now. But I know he’s passionate about animal conservation. I think he’ll do a great job in Africa.’

  ‘I’m passionate about chocolate,’ said Baz, grinning broadly, ‘but I wouldn’t want to work in a chocolate factory.’

  This brought more laughter from the men. As the banter continued, Ben leaned down to Caesar and spoke quietly in his ear. ‘You did good today, mate. But we have to get you out of the digging habit. If that had been a real IED there in the sand, you might have set it off.’

  Caesar, looking around at him, let out a whine as if to say, Sorry, Ben, then licked his master on the end of his nose.

  Laughing, Ben pulled Caesar’s head in close for a cuddle. ‘I can never be mad at you for long, mate.’

  Lucky reached over and patted Caesar. ‘In my book, this four-legged bloke can do no wrong. He’s the best!’

  ‘Where’s Caesar?’ Ben asked, taking a bottle of water from the fridge.

  ‘Out in the backyard, playing with Maddie,’ said Nan Fulton, while peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink.

  ‘Just keep an eye on him,’ said Ben. ‘He’s started digging again. He did it on an exercise in the Simpson Desert last month, and he did it yesterday while we were training new EDDs at Holsworthy.’

  ‘He’d better not start digging up my rosebushes again!’ Nan peered out the kitchen window, then began to laugh. ‘Ben, come and look at this!’