He watched himself, the red, hugely swollen head of his cock emerging from his fist, coming in huge spurts against the glass cabin, disappearing instantly in the water streaming down the sides. His lungs ached, his skin felt too tight, his head was a balloon that could burst any moment.
For a moment, the climax wiped out all thoughts from his mind as he was reduced to his animal senses. After coming, he was usually relaxed and refreshed—a little like going for a good, sweaty run. Sex was nice physical exercise with a nice little payoff at the end.
Nothing like this. This felt like dying—as if everything he was came shooting out of his cock, leaving him weak and disoriented.
As strong as the orgasm was, though, it wasn’t quite enough. When Jack’s knees could support him again and he walked out of the shower stall, he was still semierect, still wanting her. Every cell in his body was turned on, damn it, attuned to the woman downstairs. He looked down at himself in disgust, big flag waving at half-mast.
His dick was so sensitized, the cooler air of the bathroom outside the shower stall felt icy cold on his skin. It missed the warmth, the fantasy that his fist was Caroline’s cunt.
At that thought, his dick went straight back up into a full erection.
Fuck.
How could he go down in this condition? Well, only one thing to do—wear a chastity belt. Or his tightest black jeans, which was the same thing. A hard-on would have no place to go in those jeans, he knew from painful experience. If he started swelling, his cock would meet stiff denim, and the pain would make it go down again. That was the plan, anyway. He hoped it would work.
He couldn’t stay in the shower forever, jerking off until there was nothing left in him. It would take all night and probably all day tomorrow.
Jack unlocked the padlock on his bag and dumped all his clothes out. There weren’t many clothes, because he’d had to travel light. The only clean clothes he had left were a pair of sweats, the black jeans and a black turtleneck sweater. He hadn’t even thought to pack an extra pair of shoes, so the boots would have to do. Monday, he’d buy some clothes.
He dumped the last of the items in the bag on the bed. Fifty thousand dollars in ten bricks of $5,000 each. His toolkit. Another Glock with five magazines of ammo, and a cloth bag. Luckily, he still had his security pass, so he’d been able to check his weapons at the airport.
He took a small screwdriver out of the toolkit and checked the baseboard until he found an air vent close to the chest of drawers. Bending, he checked it out. Perfect. Tiny flakes of rust spotted the four screws holding the vent grate to the metal plate in the wall. The grate hadn’t been removed for years to judge from the buildup of soot and rust. Unscrewing the vent took time and some muscle, but eventually he had the screws lined up on the floor and the grate removed.
He checked his watch as he put the items from the bag far enough back in the vent so they wouldn’t show even if you were looking for something. He had no idea who cleaned the rooms, whether it was Caroline or a cleaning lady, but he didn’t want them stumbling onto the Glock, or the ammo, or—Jesus! — the contents of the cloth bag. They should be safe enough in the steel tube. It would only be until Monday.
Monday he was going to open a bank account, deposit the cash and the cashier’s check for eight million dollars and register for a safe-deposit box for the contents of the cloth bag.
He checked his watch—7:25. He’d be on time for dinner.
One last thing. Crouching, he opened the cloth bag and emptied its contents onto the hardwood floor, the dull, irregular rocks rattling as they spilled out in a stream.
Jack studied the jagged mound. Except for the odd glitter as the light caught a natural facet, the rocks could have been pebbles from a riverbed.
Instead, he was looking at at least $20 million in uncut diamonds.
He knew he was looking at rocks that represented human suffering on an unimaginable scale. They’d been mined by slave labor—men and boys who toiled under the tropical sun from first to last light on a cup of rice, immediately shot in the back of the head when they grew too weak to work. An entire country was tearing itself apart because of dull rocks just like these—over eighty thousand people killed over the past year in Sierra Leone. Countless others had had their hands, lips and ears chopped off by the drugged-up baby soldiers fighting in the Revolutionary Army.
Vince Deaver and his men had been willing to massacre an entire village of women and children for them.
No wonder they called them blood diamonds.
It was a miracle that no blood oozed from the stones. But no—they were as neutral as they were inert—just rocks, for fuck’s sake. Just rocks.
Jack looked down at the mound people were willing to kill and to die for and made a small noise of disgust before putting them back in the bag. Twenty million dollars of pain and suffering and misery. Murder, rape, dismemberment—that’s what the diamonds represented.
He’d taken them simply because there was no one left in the village alive to give them to, and he’d have died himself rather than let Deaver have them.
Jack put the bag behind the money, the Glock and the ammo, then carefully screwed the grate back onto its plate, thinking how crazy people were to be willing to kill and die for a bag full of rocks.
He rose and made his way swiftly down two flights of stairs toward something warm and living and beautiful. Something definitely worth killing or dying for.
Encampment of the United Nations Observer Mission in Sierra Leone near Obuja, Sierra Leone
Christmas Eve
4:58 P.M.
His name was Axel and he was Vince Deaver’s new best friend.
Axel was Finnish, loved computers, American jazz, missed his fiancée Maja back in Helsinki and hated Africa and everything connected to it. Best of all, he was blond, five-ten, weighed about 170 pounds, just like me, Deaver thought in satisfaction.
Axel always stopped by to see him in the small detention center of the UNOMSIL when he got off guard duty at 1700 hours. At 1703, Deaver could count on good old Axel stopping by, regular as clockwork.
The detention center itself was a joke. Deaver could have escaped at any time over the past three days. His grandmother could have escaped using her dentures and a hairpin. The UN peacekeeping force was not in the prisoner business, and it showed.
Deaver needed more than a way to break out of the detention center—he needed to get out of the encampment and out of Sierra Leone if he wanted his diamonds back. Good old Axel was his ticket out.
It was dark inside the detention center. Electricity was intermittent, the air-conditioning worked sporadically, so the shutters and the door were kept closed against the blistering heat of the tropical sun, intense even in December.
Deaver made sure the lights were turned off during the day, even when the shutters kept the room in semidarkness. Axel had to be used to a darkened room.
Deaver checked his watch. The luminescent dial showed 1700 hours, on the dot.
Axel would be punctual. Deaver had studied him the way an entomologist studied bugs. He knew how Axel reacted to stimuli, and he had his plan worked out down to the finest detail. The Army had trained him well.
17:01.
Deaver jumped up and down to make sure nothing rattled or clinked and patted himself down. There would be a moment when he would have to move fast and silently. More than one soldier had died because a knife clinked against a belt buckle and gave away a position.
He checked his pockets, his boots and flexed his arms. He’d been cooped up for three days now and his muscles were stiff. He was used to hard workouts, and confinement didn’t suit him.
Neither did the thought of being extradited back home for a trial for mass murder.
When Deaver finally caught up with Jack Prescott, he was not only going to get his diamonds back but he’d make the fucker very very sorry he’d interfered, before blasting his fucking head off. Deaver had spent a couple of pleasant hours last night imagining
Jack tied to a chair while he used his knife.
Deaver was very good with his knife.
17:02.
He checked his plan again, ran through it for the thousandth time. About 90 percent of good soldiering was planning and preparation. The plan was good, and he was prepared.
He turned his back to the door.
17:03.
The door opened wide, and Axel walked in, good Finnish soldier from his head to his toes. His fatigues were clean and freshly pressed. The baby blue UN helmet that was such an attraction, practically a beacon, to snipers the world over firmly on his head, boots spit-shined.
“Hello, Mr. Deaver,” Axel said. His English was excellent. “How are you today?”
The light from the open door filled the room. Since his back was to the door, Deaver’s eyes were able to accommodate quickly to the light pouring into the room from behind his back. Going from darkness to tropical light could blind a man for minutes.
“Hi, Axel. Close that door, will you?”
“Certainly.” Deaver heard the snick of the door closing and turned around. By now, Axel had become used to what he considered Deaver’s fetish for darkness.
Floor-to-ceiling bars divided the shack in half. Deaver considered his cell a personal affront. The bars were loosely planted in the wooden planks and fixed by screws to the stucco ceiling. The lock was a joke—it would fall apart if you blew on it too hard. How the fuck did they think a cell like that could hold a man like him?
The problem wasn’t getting out, the problem was what to do afterwards. They were about twenty miles from the Sele River. Even if he could make it through the jungle to the river, he’d need to steal a boat and motor his way down to Freetown. It would take three days, at least. Everyone knew there was only one place to escape to, and that was Freetown.
By the time he made it to the capital, Freetown and, worse, Lungi Airport would be crawling with UN troops with his photograph in their hands, itching to capture the American renegade.
So he needed to make sure no one would be looking for him. He needed a body that looked like Vincent Deaver they could bury.
Axel was sympathetic to him, he’d made that clear. Axel loved America and his tidy Finnish soul had been horrified at what he’d seen in his two-year tour of duty in central Africa. “Hell on earth,” he called it.
Axel had made it plain more than once that he thought it a ridiculous waste of time and effort to keep Deaver in detention.
He was right, of course. This part of the world had been on a rampage for fifteen years, tribe against tribe, with brutally ferocious massacres on a daily basis. On the Revolutionary Army scale, what Deaver’d done was the equivalent of a slap in the face.
So Axel was definitely on his side. Deaver had even thought about bribing him for travel documents. Might have worked, but he needed something else from Axel, besides documents.
His body.
Pity, because he liked the guy. But what can you do?
“Merry Christmas, Axel.” Axel’s head swiveled to follow the source of his voice. Deaver sat on his cot, legs spread, forearms on knees, hands clasped. Utterly, totally nonthreatening.
Axel’s eyes would slowly be adjusting to the dark shed after the bright tropical light outside.
Deaver’s body was a still statue slowly taking shape, like a film in the developing pan.
“Merry Christmas, Vince. I came to say good-bye.” Axel walked toward Deaver and wrapped his hands around the bars.
Deaver let his gusty sigh fill the room. He lifted his head. Axel would be able to make out his movements by now. “Man, oh man, I’m going to miss you. Miss our talks. I’m just happy you’ll be out of this shithole and with Maja.”
“Oh, yeah.” Predictably, Axel’s face creased in a smile at the mention of his girlfriend. Axel was slated to leave this afternoon for a two-month rotation back to Finland. He hadn’t even tried to hide how glad he’d be to get out of Africa and back to his computer, snow and Maja, probably in that order.
Axel pulled up a stool and pulled out a little magnetized travel chess set. They had spent the past three days playing through the bars. Deaver had been letting him win two games out of three.
“Hey,” Deaver said, putting on a shy, abashed expression. “You’ve been really good to me, here, you know?” He put a little folksiness into his voice, just two guys chewing the fat on a lazy afternoon. “And I was thinking, what with you going back home for a while and all, that I’d like to give you something. I really owe you, man. I have something for you to give Maja. You know, as a Christmas present. I bet you didn’t get anything for her.”
Bingo. Axel hung his head. There wasn’t much but jungle within a hundred-mile radius. Jungle and soldiers and blood and misery. Nothing a Finnish woman would want.
Deaver stood and walked toward the bars, crooking his finger to bring Axel closer. Curious, Axel stood against the bars. Though they were separated by the bars, they were close enough to feel each other’s breath.
“I’ve got something real special for Maja. Something she’ll like…a lot.” He allowed himself a smile. “Something sparkly. Something all women like.” He shrugged and winked, man to man. “Won’t do me much good in here. You might as well get some use out of it, know what I mean?”
Axel nodded eagerly.
Deaver knew that everyone in the UNOMSIL encampment assumed he had the diamonds. Or rather, since he’d been frisked, knew where the diamonds were.
If only. It was a fucking fortune. Enough money to keep him happy for the rest of his life, wherever he wanted to settle down.
Away from Africa, away from Afghanistan and Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and all the fucking ’Stans. Away from Iraq, away from all the shithole places with kids blowing themselves up just for the pleasure of gutting you while they did it and women who hid grenades under their burqas and men willing to shoot you for your fillings.
No more.
No more twelve-year-olds high on ganja or palm wine carting around AK-47s they could barely lift, with access to unlimited ammo and just itching to bag a white man. No more roadside IEDs, no more leeches or scorpions or lice, no more MREs, no more rough sleeping.
He’d earned that money. It was fucking his. He’d been dreaming of a big hit for years, and when he’d heard the rumors of a village whose men had all gone off to war and with millions of dollars in conflict diamonds hidden in the ground, he’d instantly known that this was It. His big chance.
He’d never have to soldier again, or ever have to work at anything, ever again. Never take orders again, never do anything but what he damned well pleased.
No more jungles, no more deserts. No more bivouacking in primitive encampments on stony ground.
Deaver planned on living in luxury for the rest of his natural life. Buy a mansion somewhere nice, somewhere sunny, somewhere OUTCONUS. In the Bahamas maybe. Or maybe Monte Carlo.
Why not? Buy a big house with a pool and servants and lots and lots of women. Not that many beautiful women wanted to fuck a soldier, but they sure as hell lined up ten deep to fuck rich men.
He could taste it, smell it, feel it, this new life.
And it was all gone. All his dreams for his future, a future he’d sweated and taken bullets for, wiped out in a second by Jack Prescott.
Deaver’s fists clenched as he remembered in a white-hot rage that moment when his future was snatched away from him. He and his men had opened fire on the village, softening it up. A knife against the throat of the daughter of one of the women, and he had the location of the diamonds. He’d run into the hut, found the bag and was running toward his men, who were eliminating the villagers—no sense in leaving witnesses behind—when all of a sudden, four spaced shots rang out, followed by sudden silence.
A sniper, picking off his men, one by one.
In his scramble to get to safety, the bag slipped from Deaver’s fingers as he ran to the nearest hut, leaping over the dead bodies in the central clearing. He slid into the openi
ng and turned around, rifle to shoulder, and saw a big man disappear into the jungle with his diamonds.
He knew it was useless trying to follow. If Jack Prescott didn’t want to be found, he could disappear like smoke.
Deaver had spent the next few hours ransacking the village, turning over bodies, in the hope that there was another stash of diamonds, but by the time he’d come to the conclusion that there was nothing left, UN soldiers had surrounded the village and taken him into custody.
For a moment the heat of rage swept through him, wiping out every other thought except that of hunting down that fucker Jack Prescott, getting his diamonds back and killing Prescott with a knife, taking a couple of days to do it.
None of this showed on his face. He bent his head forward and dropped his voice to a murmur. “Come in here, Axel. And I’ll give you something that will make Maja drop to her knees in gratitude.”
“Okay, Vince.” Though there was no one else in the hut, Axel dropped his voice, too. As if they were about to exchange confidences.
Deacon stood up and backed away slowly. “Come inside.” His voice was still low. “I’ll show you what I’ve got for you. For her.”
Axel didn’t even hesitate. Deacon knew Axel thought of him as someone much like himself. Nice white boy caught up in the craziness that was West Africa.
Axel unlocked the cell door and walked inside, following Deacon, who’d reached his cot and pulled something out from under the hard mattress. A cloth bag with smooth round objects that rattled.
Axel’s excited breathing was loud in the darkened room.
Deacon smiled. “Maja’s going to love these. Come over and look.” Deacon reached over the cot to suddenly open the shutters, flooding the room with harsh light. Axel was temporarily blinded and would remain blind for about a minute and a half. More than enough time.
Deacon had closed his eyes and turned his back to the window, and he could see just fine.
His hand dropped to his boot, where he quickly and quietly pulled out a long thin dagger with a folding handle the UN troops hadn’t even noticed. He’d been briskly frisked for arms before being shut up in the detention center, but no one had thought to check his boots. Or his belt buckle with the minirevolver or the garotte wire along the inside of his belt.
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