Once Upon the Congo

by Applewhite, Claire; Harper, Chap

  “What a beautiful facility you have here. Is all this new?” he asked.

  “Yes sir. It is not yet a year old. What may I help you with?” she asked.

  “I need a massage. How about one o’clock today?” Barbos asked.

  “Sir, we can accommodate you this morning at ten. But, after that, I am booked up for the rest of the day.”

  “What! Is there a convention in town?”

  “No sir. A lot of ladies who have been in the jungle for a few days are coming in to be saved by the spa. They have booked everything: massages, nails, hair, facials and you name it. We had to call in people from other hotels to assist,” she said.

  “That must be my friend, Lu Zacharius?” Barbos said.

  “We don’t normally give out the names of our guests. You must be a friend,” she said without revealing Lu’s name.

  “Oh, that I am, but please do not tell her I asked about her. I wish that to be a surprise,” Barbos said. He didn’t want to divulge his joy at the knowledge that his prey had decided to come to his doorstep.

  He knew he would have to stay hidden while the girls were there. At the front desk, he found they had booked three rooms and would leave the next day after breakfast. He contacted his men and put a plan into action. His friend in Gbadolite would make sure all the requirements were set up there. Everything was falling into place—better than he ever dreamed it would.

  Chapter 33

  Spa Visit

  Two taxis hauled the six expedition girls to the Grand Congo Hotel. When they arrived, Lu booked three suites rather than just any old rooms. Lunch on the terrace by the pool was the first order of business, then from there—girl’s day out. As they were checking in Carol addressed the group.

  “Do you know what Sony said to me when I left?” Carol asked. She didn’t really want a guess since she was going to tell them anyway.

  “Go Kisangani. Get butt rubbed. Do girl shit. Come back. Big sex then—Pilgrim. He’s now trying to be a mixture of old Sony and John Wayne…it’s just irritating,” Carol said with a crooked smile.

  The rest of the girls laughed. They had heard Sony’s short sentence routine many times.

  Lunch was a fancy buffet by the pool under a colorful canvas umbrella.

  “I was hoping for an open fire with a skillet sitting on a rock—but I guess I’m just spoiled,” Angel said.

  “Girls, I know this isn’t a quarry in the jungle. We’ll have to make do,” Lu said.

  Their luggage was sent up. While they finished lunch, they reviewed the time schedule.

  “Charlie,” Lu said. “You will have your facial first, then your massage, your nails, then hair color, make-up and maybe some new clothes if the shop here has your size,” she announced the schedule for everyone.

  They spent the day redesigning themselves. By evening, they were ready for an elegant dinner in new dresses from the hotel shop. Few would’ve believed that only the night before, they were dodging rocket propelled grenades.

  Charlie’s transformation was the most obvious. No longer a mop, her short blonde hair had been feathered around her head. With her face made up, her pretty features were outlined and radically enhanced. The ladies were sure that no one would recognize Charlie. Everyone looked and felt great, but they all knew they would return to the mine after breakfast.

  Throughout the day Barbos had his men report the women’s activities. He had spoiled himself by holing up, letting room service cater to his every need. He even had a hooker drop by so he might celebrate his good fortune. Everything was in place for the next day. A large van would be available to take them all to the airport.

  The mechanics, Patrick and Junior, had the old compressor running like new so now the critical testing could be made. Mit had been a mechanical engineer before he had escaped to the Dominican Republic to establish several dive shops in the Bavaro and Punta Cana areas. He helped Sony calculate the non-decompression diving time for the bottom chamber, using measurements from the previous expedition. Now it was possible to use the pressurized compartments next to the blue hole.

  Sony had become an engineer like his grandfather. He preferred engineering over geology, even though his dad, John Cole, was a geologist. He had taken management courses with his major in anticipation of the day when his dad stepped down, and he assumed the reins of Hanover Oil. None of that mattered to him as much as having a son or daughter. Even though his relationship with Carol was new, she had told him she was ready to start “cranking out kids”—her exact words.

  Chris was ready to dive with Mit. After all, they had been diving together since they were in their early twenties. Several years before both had heard about a wreck dive on the Conception several years before off the coast of the Dominican Republic. An aerial photo of the wreck published in a magazine caught Chris’s attention. He and Mit Kruger had just met while salvage diving on a freighter that went down near the Navidad Banks. Over beers one night, Chris showed the photograph to Mit. He pointed out that the bow of the original wreck appeared to be missing.

  On their days off, they began the search. After a month, they found the missing section of the Conception and negotiated for a large share of the treasure. Mit opened dive shops and bought a large boat he later named the Bottom Fantasy. After his first divorce gobbled up the house Chris bought in California, he opened a dive shop in Hot Springs, Arkansas. His second divorce took his home on a lake in Arkansas. Still, he escaped both divorces with money left over, and he enjoyed considerable success on future dives. Lucero Zacharius put the brakes on much of his diving adventures. He didn’t mind, since their son Reid took up a large part of his time. The huge amount of Rafael Trujillo’s gold they had found on an artificial reef in the Dominican Republic had made the three couples wealthy—very wealthy.

  Since it was cool at 135 feet both men donned shorty wet suits. They wanted to retain body heat in case of a decompression situation. Roland and Sony had agreed to help them inside the deep chamber, while Jemi and Peter were in the upper chamber. In the stone cottage above them were the mechanics, Dr. Devine and a couple of soldiers. Once the pressure was equalized in the upper chamber, the round submarine airlock for the lower chamber was opened. They heard a hissing sound and foul air was sucked up into the top chamber. As soon as the men had climbed down the ladder to the lower chamber, the air lock was sealed. Peter and Jemi quickly opened the top seal. Fifty years of foul air blasted through the cottage washing over the men, out the door and into the atmosphere of the Congo.

  In the lower chamber Roland and Sony secured the extra scuba tanks in case they were needed for a decompression situation. Both looked around at the interior of the tunnel. Sony surmised mining had taken place there for many years. Since the mine was a vertical tunnel type, steps had to be carved for the mine to go deeper. A series of cut backs and spiral steps led to a spot where they had hit water and flooding stopped their progress. Pumping in air pushed the water out so they could mine deeper until they reached the water at the bottom level of the blue hole. The expedition did not know how many workers died because they labored in pressurized air. In the early 1800s a small number of bridge engineers knew about caisson illness or decompression sickness and worked to combat it. It could have been some of these very engineers who assisted on this project.

  The four deceased men who John and Vikki Cole found appeared to have died because the air supply above them had been cut off. Possibly, the topside support group had been attacked by natives. Some workers had escaped and returned several days later. With the knowledge that the men in the lower chamber were dead, they may have regarded the room as a tomb and sealed it. Sony and his group would never know exactly what happened. A bigger mystery remained: why hadn’t anyone tried to remove the fortune in diamonds in the lower chamber?

  Undoubtedly, the richest and most productive of all the mining in the past came from diamonds collected from the bottom of the blue hole. Chris and Mit set their bottom timers for ten minutes and wasted n
o time scraping the bottom with trowels to fill fine mesh bags. Chris and Mit surfaced at the bottom of the tunnel, removed their weight belts and started the task of walking up to their support team carrying their gear and the bags of diamond ore. Both briefly examined the old diving suits that held the skeletons of two divers minus their skulls and helmets. By the time they reached Sony and Roland, they were exhausted from the climb. They decided to be safe and stay at that level for thirty minutes, to release as much residual nitrogen as possible. While everyone was waiting for Chris and Mit to outgas, the four began sorting diamonds. Although they lacked class, Ziploc bags were used to store the rough diamonds. With four people picking through the large mesh bags, colorful stones bulged inside the bags. Most were white but there were also light blue, yellow, brown, light green and occasionally even a pink stone. Chris held up a respectfully large sized pink one.

  “Mit, don’t you still have some rose diamonds? I know I do. The prices have gone nuts since we sold ours in Europe.”

  “I have a few left. Someone told me the pink ones like you’re holding will go for a million dollars a karat in the next year or so. They are rare, and every new bride wants one. Most people still haven’t even heard of rose diamonds.” Mit said.

  “I want to give our group some diamonds before you guys leave. I need to have Jemi deduct them from my share. I may stay a couple more weeks, but I guess you guys will be going home pretty soon,” Sony said.

  “Not home, but back to our vacation, I hope. Roland, you and Zoe are going with us back to Abu Camp. I made the call to Abu and the bank yesterday. They are working to get started on the rebuilding, but you need to be in charge of the contractors and the details,” Chris said.

  “Thanks. If you are ever hanging around Port au Prince just drop by. I’ll give you a good rate on a room,” Roland said.

  “Our time looks good, Chris, if we want to unscrew the hatch. Oh, by the way, we’re okay to fly in twelve hours,” Mit said.

  “I won’t be going anywhere till the ladies get back. We’ll most likely leave tomorrow sometime—if Sony can handle things now?”

  “I’ll be fine from here. I appreciate your help. When I get topside, I’ll tell Modesto as well. He and Isaac are up there plotting to take over the world with their small army. You know men like that need a few wars to keep them happy,” Sony said.

  The airtight lock was released. Jemi and Peter helped Chris and Mit into the upper chamber. Jemi inspected the diamonds in the clear plastic bag with the eye of a mining engineer. “Well, yes, this will cover some of our labor costs.”

  “It won’t take much to cover costs for Mit and me,” Chris said.

  “I’ll bring in professional divers to work the bottom. Eventually, I’ll have to figure on a washing plant. I need to get the concentrates to a level where I can either fly them to be processed or build a facility here. The question is how much we can dig here? It’s so rich in diamonds, I don’t have to be in a hurry,” Jemi said. “I think we have gotten several pounds of them so far.”

  “When are the girls coming back?” Sony asked.

  “Probably in a couple hours or so. I had a call from Lu before the dive. They were having breakfast, then going to the airport. I see the supply helicopter has already returned,” Chris said. He watched men unloading plywood and new tents from the chopper. A giant Russian transport helicopter was also parked in the quarry. It had just unloaded a yellow front-end loader. The quarry was beginning to look like a real mining site.

  Lu was thrilled to get a van that held her entire entourage along with shopping bags from the hotel shops. Even though they were dressed in jungle garb, their clothes looked more like designer jungle garb. African clothing designers had caught the eyes of all the ladies, and certainly gorillas and chimps would be impressed with their new duds. When they got the bills, their husbands and boyfriends would also be impressed.

  The driver of the van had a co-pilot, but no one noticed until they spoke to each other in Haitian Creole. Zoe noticed first.

  “Lu, those guys are Haitian,” Zoe whispered in her ear.

  Gretchen overheard the whisper and started to dig for her 9mm. Then, she remembered everyone had to leave their guns on the helicopter. Observing the mumbling in the back, the Haitian man riding shotgun turned and faced the ladies who were dressed as though they were going to the premier of a Tarzan movie. Carol was sitting at the extreme rear of the van almost out of the view of the man with the gun. She ducked down and went out of view of everyone for a few seconds, then sat up with a strange look on her face.

  “We are pleased to have you using our van today,” he said. Calmly, he pulled out a 45 automatic and pointed it at the girls. “You are taking a small side trip. No harm will come to you if your boyfriends do as we say. I am now going to ask Lucero to call her pilot and have him meet us at the airport immediately. Here is a satellite phone,” he said. He tried to hand it to Lu. She refused and produced her own phone and began to dial a stored number.

  “Bill! You need to get to the airport and have my jet ready. We will be there in a few minutes,” Lu said, without explanation.

  “What’s up?”

  “Can’t say.”

  “I have to file a flight plan. Where are we going?”

  “Just a minute.”

  “Where are we going? He has to file a flight plan.”

  “Tell him—Gbadolite.”

  Chapter 34

  Gbadolite

  Barbos Marcel Vieux met the eclectically dressed ladies at the boarding ladder next to Lu’s plane. The Haitian van drivers already emptied the ladies’ purses and removed cell and satellite phones. No guns were found on the females. The women entered the plane and allowed the men to stow their luggage. Carol had some trouble walking and a stricken look appeared on her face. The other ladies attended to her and brought her a bottle of water. Lu asked what was wrong but got no answer. Soon the plane was in the air. Barbos called Chris on Lu’s sat phone.

  “Chris, this is Barbos Vieux. How are you today? Listen, I have six very beautiful ladies with me. We are going on a little side trip together. Wondered if you would like to join us? We are going to a very unique place that most tourists miss when they tour Africa. It’s called Gbadolite. A heavenly place, carved right out of the jungle, with a long airstrip for your little Lear jet. Be here by five o’clock this evening, or I will start killing them—one each hour. Oh, bring some diamonds and no one else except your pilot. About eight ounces for each girl—a total of three pounds. I certainly don’t want to appear greedy. Got that? Good.” Barbos clicked off the power in the middle of screaming and cursing from the other end of the connection.

  Chris had an ashen color to his face. He told Mit, who was standing next to him, what just happened.

  “What the fuck! How many times does a goddamn Vieux kidnap our women?” Mit said.

  They informed Peter and Sony. All four ran to the big wooden building to find Modesto. He was furious when he heard the news but shifted gears to being a cunning military genius with global contacts. His job was to take out Barbos and his men—kill them without harming a hair on any of the ladies’ heads. All the available maps of Africa were laid out in front of him and Isaac. They made phone calls to the DRC headquarters, Kisangani Airport, the CIA, back to the DRC Army and calls to numbers given to Modesto by the sources.

  “Modesto, Mit and I have a problem. We can’t fly until eleven hours from now because of the deep dive,” Chris said.

  “Can’t you fly at low altitudes?” asked Modesto.

  “Yes, under 1000 feet—at the most, 1500 feet. The jet can do the job, but we’ll have to be damn careful and map out a non-mountainous route—fly in the valleys—up river beds,” Chris said.

  “Call your pilot and have him map the route as best he can. We will delay your flight so your arrival will be as close to five o’clock as possible without going over. You can outgas as much as possible, but first we have to get you to Kisangani along with the
troops we are taking—like, right now.”

  Isaac rounded up the troops he wanted and left the majority to guard the mine. The supply helicopter and the Russian transport were loaded for the two hour flight to Kisangani. Mit and Chris rode in the smaller supply aircraft because it was easier for the pilot to maintain a low altitude. If a five hundred foot hill was in front, then the pilot would have to drop to five hundred feet to maintain the 1000 foot altitude. By five o’clock, both Mit and Chris would only have about five hours left on their no fly status. The risk would be less, but not erased. The Gbadolite airport was at 1500 feet. Neither of them would be any good to their mates if they were paralyzed or dead.

  Before they took off, Modesto learned the area around Gbadolite was controlled by forces still sympathetic to Mobutu even after he left in 1997. The leader was a warlord who was seldom seen who most rebel soldiers had never met. He was another colorful character in a long line of goofball African despots. The DRC, CIA, and Rwanda had assets in the area. The swords from hell were prodding these assets from all sides. Nobody in authority in that part of Africa wanted dead American and European female millionaires. Gbadolite was a city that was already an embarrassment for the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

  When someone would ask about Gbadolite, the answer was usually, “Oh yeah. That’s the city that crazy-ass Mobutu built in the jungle. It’s the city with palaces and an airstrip that would allow a chartered Concorde jet to land so Mobutu’s wife could fly to Paris to go shopping. Yeah. That place.” At the Kisangani airport, Isaac put on a pilot’s uniform and sat next to Chris’s pilot Bonte. Barbos said ‘just a pilot’ but never mentioned a co-pilot, so they were taking a calculated risk. There was a good chance Barbos and their men would kill them all anyway after they got the diamonds. Although Chris and Isaac would bring diamonds, they hoped Barbos wouldn’t be able to keep them.