Once Upon the Congo

by Applewhite, Claire; Harper, Chap

  Peter killed the man on the roof with his first shot, then rose up to pick off one of the soldiers running out of the terminal. Osse had the first shot on the sniper on the tower, and the fifty caliber blew him off his perch all the way to the ground. Jean-Jean had taken out one of the men with Barbos, and the other shot had come out of the woods someplace. DRC soldiers poured out of the woods and from behind the hangers and rushed the terminal, killing or wounding the rest of Barbos’s men.

  It was finally over. Lu got up and stood over Barbos Vieux’s body. He had two small round holes right between his eyes. His eyes were open, staring with a strange shocked expression on his face. The women all raced out to see Lu and to make sure she was alright. They hugged her and said she was very brave to stand there and shoot Barbos in front of his soldiers.

  “I’m sick of being kidnapped by those asshole brothers. Are there any more of them?” Lu asked.

  Modesto walked up to Lu and hugged her. “Lu, you didn’t wait for my signal to shoot, but then you didn’t know about the plan. And you know what? Your plan was a whole lot better than mine. You are my hero!” He kissed her lightly on the mouth and turned to look for Gretchen.

  Sony and Carol came over to Chris and Lu. “Can we come with you guys on safari for a few days?” Carol asked. “Because we have earned a vacation.”

  “You can, Carol, but you have to screw on the back of an elephant. Can you and Sony handle that?” Lu said.

  “Elephant-back sex. On our way. Got camera. Got good woman. Point to camp,” Sony said, who may have combined Sony, John Wayne and Tarzan of the apes.

  Carol saw her pistol lying on the tarmac next to Barbos’s body. Chris went over and picked it up. He clicked on the safety and handed the little Beretta to Carol. “I don’t know how you guys were able to sneak that little pistol past the guards, but you saved the day with it.”

  “Chris, why don’t we just say I hid it in a very special place?”

  The End

  Epilogue

  One Week later-Abu Camp-Botswana

  With both jets parked at a nearby airport, the group was packed and ready to end their vacation. The entire group was sitting around a large breakfast table, sipping coffee and Bloody Marys. An eventful week had passed since they left Gbadolite.

  Lu had paid for Charlie, Peter, Carol and Sony to spend a week at the camp with a night elephant ride a requirement. No one complained, which was obvious, since they took those rides almost every night.

  The surviving members of Barbos Vieux’s small troop had been rounded up and eventually sent to a Congolese prison. Modesto thanked his friends from all the intelligence agencies he had tapped for information. The former airport manager had been the key and was compensated most generously by the group. Flights still came into the airport at Gbadolite, but now there was a remodeled reception center and terminal, thanks to the group. The Chinese Palace became a project for Lu, who felt it would make a nice restaurant for tourists and locals. She made part of the Chinese Palace inexpensive for lunches and prepared another section where dinner was a little fancier. The chef who cooked for Mobutu was still in the area and gladly took on the job of supervisor. The city of Gbadolite was slowly coming back, because, as within many parts of the DRC, minerals had been discovered nearby.

  One of the most thrilling events at Abu Camp was Angel and Mit finally announcing their wedding date. The location would be Austria at their mountain retreat in one month. They actually had been secretly planning the wedding for some time to be held at their large cabin, where a new lion skin rug would be a focal point of the spacious den. Angel had been trying the whole time they had been in Africa to get pregnant so she could tell everyone her baby was conceived on the back of an elephant. It may have occurred given the popularity of the resort’s night time “elephant” high club. It would take a while to find out for sure, and she may have not been alone in the effort.

  Chris and Lu had also been discussing having another child. A matching birth date and conception might have been traced back to a nighttime ride as well. Their son Reid had been calling them almost every day. He was, however, having a great time with both sets of grandparents. Trips to the beach, pony rides, fishing and time spent with his Dominican friends playing video games kept Reid quite busy. His parents had installed an arcade room at Grenade Land. They nicknamed the old army base Chris had bought a few years back for the munitions once kept there. At one time the base was a testing site for weapons, but Chris had the compound completely cleaned and fenced in. He built bunk houses for Reid’s little friends and their parents so they could stay at the estate that was several thousand acres in a remote part of the Dominican Republic. Soon they would go to Lake Hamilton in Hot Springs for a couple weeks where they had a house and one set of grandparents and then back to Boston for Reid’s pre-school. The fall and winter would include a trip to Mit and Angel’s wedding, and another wedding soon in Texas.

  Sony and Carol were not waiting any longer. They wanted children and yesterday wasn’t soon enough. They had only known each other for a couple of weeks but couldn’t have been any more suited for each other. Modesto and Gretchen understood only too well since they had a similar experience a few years back. Carol’s parents and friends were coming from Nice, France to Austin, Texas, where Sony lived. He could afford to foot the bill with the new share of diamonds alone. The entire twenty five percent would be credited to the Cole Family Trust each month and divided among his parents, sisters and himself. The quarry was slowly being converted into an actual mining operation under the guidance of Jemi and his crew. They had found an underwater submersible robotic system, plus he had contracted with professional hard hat divers. Jemi had shipped uranium in nuclear waste containers, and he was investigating other methods. Joint efforts were underway with other uranium mines in the DRC. Sony was not needed at the mine but promised to come back and visit often.

  Carol would not be needed at the quarry since Charlie would be the acting anthropologist. Charlie and Peter planned to spend a great deal of time there and were going back to the quarry from Abu camp. Charlie would act as liaison for the Efe and Lese tribes and make sure they were taken care of properly. One anthropologist was enough for now, but the expedition had sparked interest in visits from all over the world. Charlie would sort through and mete out the groups that were allowed to visit the natives. She felt it would be impossible not to have some change in the natural lifestyles of the pygmies, but she wanted to protect their wild and primitive way of life as best as she could.

  Peter was a part of the African geological team, along with Rick Lasiter and the Haitian geologist, Darley Konte. All were to stay on at the quarry for a while to monitor and do testing for the Haitian government. A wooden building had been constructed for Peter and Carol in their absence. Not everyone understood what a beautiful woman like Charlie could see in Peter, but never was there a happier lady than when she was with him. Although he was not particularly handsome, he was brave and had proven so at the airstrip in Gbadolite. He was highly intelligent and had a boyish charm—an innocence that made Charlie feel totally comfortable. Their lovemaking was passionate, and she wasn’t shy about telling the other girls how size really did matter. They talked about marriage with a causal assurance, as they were young and fresh out of college and, therefore in no hurry. Both were doing what they loved to do with the person they loved right beside them.

  Zoe and Lu would become best friends. Lu had forgiven Zoe for being a spy and welcomed a new running buddy close by in Haiti. They had already planned to get together on Lu’s next trip to the Dominican Republic. Lu’s father, T.J. Earnhart, was getting on in age, and Lu wanted to come often to check on him and let Reid visit him and his grandmother Allie.

  Roland and Modesto had hit it off, as they held similar positions in their respective side-by-side countries. Both traveled to each other’s country several times a year, which made a great excuse for a party. Gretchen and Zoe would complement each other. Z
oe would take on the role of shopping for clothes for Gretchen, who was always too busy in her medical practice. Zoe and Roland had held off having children since they were busy with the hotel but now that financing was strongly in place, they didn’t have an excuse. Both were, of course, invited to Sony’s and Mit’s wedding, with all expenses paid.

  For the country of Haiti, the gold stored in the Ivory Coast bank was being sold off as needed for reconstruction. With the estimated value in the billions of dollars, the treasure would go a long way to fund public projects. That is, if the government would keep their hands off the revenues for their own perverse uses. A gold “czar” was put in charge to sell gold as needed and keep much in reserve, as the price was still trending upward. Now that Roland knew about the treasure, he would keep an eye on those who wanted to fund political campaigns, build cities in the jungle and charter jets to takes politicians’ wives and girlfriends on shopping sprees.

  Revenues from the Aruwimi mine would slowly build and be a long-term solution to the funding of many public projects. Haiti had so much need, many people thought the country was too broken too ever be fixed. Roland and Zoe didn’t see things that way. They had seen the people survive on almost nothing and given the right help with the right leaders, they were confident progress could be made using micro-loans from the government and banks that were protected by real assets.

  Roland, Zoe and the others who went on the expedition to the Congo were heroes to the Haitian people. News had trickled in that Haiti had discovered hidden gold and also owned a diamond and uranium mine in the Congo. Chris Zacharius found his way into the headlines as the person who never gave up the search for Papa Doc’s gold. Plato received praise for finally turning over the journal that exposed the hidden gold and the quarry.

  Everyone had a fabulous time at Abu Camp, and the ladies may even have forgiven the men for sneaking over to dive at the quarry. Chris, Mit and Modesto were sitting at the table while the rest had gone to finish checking out. Chris had something on his mind.

  “Did you know that Mobutu was worth between over five and fifteen billion dollars in the 1990s. He robbed the Congo blind and much of the money came from the U.S. The CIA paid him to supposedly stop the spread of communism. What I find interesting is no one knows where the billions of dollars went. We know there were Swiss accounts where some of it was hidden. He had jillions of kids from marriages and mistresses, and they didn’t get the loot. He first flew to Togo and then to Morocco, where he died of prostate cancer. I guess he wore the damn thing out. Anyway, I wonder where he hid the billions of dollars that didn’t go into Swiss banks?”

  “Don’t know, and I don’t care,” Mit said.

  “No interest,” Modesto said.

  “No interest in what?” Lu asked as she rolled her small suitcase up to the table.

  “Lu, would you like to go on vacation with me to Morocco,” Chris said.

  “Oh no! Not if you’re going on some fucking treasure hunt?”

  “Five—maybe fifteen billion. A couple of camel rides away. Nice meals in a sultan’s palace. Maybe a side trip to the pyramids and Petra. Any bucket list items there, dear?” he said with a devious smile.

  “Chris, there may be a bucket alright—full of shit dumped on your head. You want me to crank out another kid while you ride a damn camel through the Sahara desert waving one of those curvy knife thingies. Forget it, asshole!”

  “Is that a maybe?” Chris said.

  Lu stomped off to join the other girls to tell them another treasure hunt was being planned and to keep their eyes peeled for indications of a real plan taking shape.

  Mit and Modesto sipped on their Bloody Marys without looking up. When they looked at Chris, they saw a familiar far off distant stare. They had seen if before and knew there was no cure for it. It was a sickness and there was no medicine to treat it. They knew in the next year or two a plan would be laid out in front of them. It would be an exciting adventure with unbelievable rewards and dangers that no sane person would tackle. He would make it inviting. They would say no, and the women would revolt. But, in a way, they all wanted to see what he would come up with next. Not that they had any interest in it, of course.

  Charles L. (Chap) Harper

  Chap is a native Arkansan and attended the University of Arkansas and Little Rock University. After working for a large Insurance Company for twenty-one years, he retired as a Vice President. Chap moved from California to a house on Lake Hamilton in Hot Springs, Arkansas and began to write. His first novel was Once Upon a Reef published in 2012. It was inspired from his visits to the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean Islands. The story idea concerned billions of dollars of gold stolen by the now assassinated dictator Rafael Trujillo and a group of scuba divers looking for the treasure. Chap’s love of scuba diving was evident in this novel and the one to follow.

  Later in 2014 he wrote Once Upon the Congo which was a follow up to the first novel but certainly stands on its own since several new characters joined the ones in the first book. This book has been published by Smoking Gun Publishing Company and will be available in May of 2015. The story will remind the reader of great stories like King Solomon’s Mine and those stores about great white hunters in Africa. Chap inserts humor, romance, danger and adventure and creates a story that blends history with dynamite fiction.

  Currently he has just finished Beer, Bait, and Ammo and hopes to have it published in 2016.

  Other Books by This Author

  Once Upon a Reef - 2012

  Beer, Bait, and Ammo - 2016