The Elephant Slayer — James Kelly

There is only one man who works for the secret arm of the CIA known as TUSC. He is tracking a known terrorist organization through the illegal slaughter and poaching of Elephants and their ivory, sold on the black market to raise the funds needed to carry out their jihadist agenda.Matthew Buxton is a one man army bent on tracking down and eliminating the terrorist organization and all those helping it to exist.The Elephant SlayerA giant orange sun had lit up the sky like a star gone nova as the rotation of the earth slowly pushed the darkness onto the savanna. The day had been long and the heat extreme as the herd had ambled its way across the plain to the watering hole where they would spend the night. They had drank and bathed in the cooling water of the ponds, covering themselves with mud to keep the flies and gnats at bay and ate their fill of the lusher reeds and trees that surrounded the oasis. Now the elephants huddled just inside the tree line not ten yards from the ponds. Led there by the matriarch, some dozed in the still heated air of the African evening, others grazed before sleep trying to ingest the last of the four hundred pounds of vegetation they would need to sustain themselves on the next day's trek. As they slowly began to go off to sleep some kept a trunk or an ear over a loved one while the smaller newborns instinctively lent against their mothers while they dreamt of green pastures and succulent bamboo. The men had lain downwind of the ponds since the early morning. Even though they had tracked this herd for a couple of months they weren't exactly sure of when the elephants would arrive. This was the perfect spot. Miles from the nearest village, so far gone in fact that no would hear the rifle reports.