African Ice

by Jeff Buick

  HIGH PRAISE FOR JEFF BUICK!

  LETHAL DOSE

  “Full of action and danger . . . The author keeps the reader turning the pages long into the night.”

  —Detective Mystery Stories

  “Lethal Dose is a fast-paced, energetic, and relevant read.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “. . . a thought-provoking, suspense-filled novel.”

  —The Midwest Book Review

  BLOODLINE

  “Buick has created an intense, gut-twisting thriller with his brilliant debut. With characters modeled from real-life headlines, he gives the book depth and a life of its own.”

  —The Best Reviews

  A GRUESOME DISCOVERY

  A scream from behind them, deep in the brush, stopped McNeil mid-sentence. With a reflexive motion, a gun appeared in his hand. He held the other up to silence the porters. The scream came again, this time the location more identifiable. McNeil counted the porters and silently indicated to Sam that one was missing. He held up his fist, a sign for them to stay put, and moved stealthily into the underbrush. All was quiet for a minute, then he reappeared with a shaking porter in tow. He motioned for Sam to follow him.

  “I don’t think you’re going to like this,” he said. They broke into a small clearing and Sam gasped, horrified. Before her lay a massacre. Skulls littered the clearing, at least fifteen, perhaps more. Bones, gnawed on by jungle carnivores and partially covered with lichens, interspersed the hollow skulls. McNeil knelt down and picked up a skull, then another, and another. He looked back at Sam and stuck his finger through a round hole in one of the skulls. A bullet hole.

  “They were executed,” he said. “Each one shot in the head once.” He gingerly held up a long bone with a loop of nylon rope hanging off it. “Their hands were tied. They didn’t stand a chance.”

  He kicked at something with the toe of his boot, then bent down and retrieved the object from the moss. He held it out to her. “Do you know what this is?”

  “Yes, of course. It’s a geological hammer. Standard gear for a field geologist. We all carry them.” She stopped and stared at him. “It’s them, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “It’s the expedition that went in a couple of months ago. The bones are reasonably fresh.”

  Other Leisure books by Jeff Buick:

  LETHAL DOSE

  BLOODLINE

  DORCHESTER PUBLISHING

  Published by

  Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  200 Madison Avenue

  New York, NY 10016

  Copyright © 2006 by Jeff Buick

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Trade ISBN: 978-1-4285-1809-4

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-4285-0114-0

  First Dorchester Publishing, Co., Inc. edition: April 2006

  The “DP” logo is the property of Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  Visit us online at www.dorchesterpub.com.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Dianne Young

  A woman of incredible

  courage and strength and moral character.

  Who tracked the silverback gorillas through the

  darkest and most dangerous jungles of the

  Ruwenzori Mountains in Africa.

  ONE

  Springtime in New York City.

  The promise of summer just around the corner. Winter laid to rest for another year. For Samantha Carlson, spring meant New York at its finest. Trees sprouting green, their new leaves softening the harsh lines of the apartment and office buildings that surrounded Central Park. And the early-morning smells. Pretzels, freshly brewed coffee, and dough rising in the bakeries. And with the longer days came mild temperatures. When the mercury rose to a sensible level, Samantha dug her jogging shoes out and brought them back into active duty. Today was day one of the new year.

  She entered Central Park from East Sixtieth Street and began to run—slowly at first, her long blond hair swaying in the breeze—then faster as she settled into a rhythm. She had the park mostly to herself, with only a few other intrepid souls braving the early-morning chill. She checked her watch as she ran—six minutes after five. Her breath misted as she exhaled, then disappeared behind her. She kept an even pace for the better part of twenty minutes.

  She rounded the pond and cut north until she hit the Transverse. Then east toward the park boundary. She picked up the pace as Fifth Avenue came into view, and then slowed to a marginal jog as she hit the sidewalk. By the time Samantha reached her apartment building on East Sixty-third, she was breathing normally. The doorman eased the door open as she approached. She slid effortlessly through, and made for the elevators.

  “Morning, Miss Carlson,” the building employee said as she passed.

  She turned, still moving. “Ernie, I keep telling you, it’s Samantha.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He smiled. They had had this same conversation at least two hundred times. There was no way he would ever call her by her first name. They both knew it. She disappeared into the elevator, and he looked back to the empty street.

  The elevator slid open on the eighteenth floor, and Sam exited into the deserted hallway. Her apartment was the third on the left. She unlocked the door and let herself in. She added a bit more hot water to her shower than usual, to take off the chill from her jog. Twenty minutes later, she emerged from the bathroom, housecoat on, hair wrapped in a white towel. She stared at the telephone for a moment, then checked her watch.

  Six twenty-four, and her voice-mail light was flashing. Someone had called while she was in the shower. Early for a call, she thought. She punched in her
code and hit the speakerphone button. A baritone voice enveloped the room.

  “This is Patrick Kerrigan calling for Samantha Carlson. Please call me at my office when you get this message. The number is—”

  She grabbed a notepad from the end table and jotted down the number. It was local, somewhere in Manhattan. She considered calling it immediately, to see if he was actually up and at work yet, then changed her mind. The coffee was brewed, and Samantha settled into her favorite couch with the daily Times. She skimmed the headlines, then flipped to the business section. The Dow-Jones was up, the Nasdaq was up, but the American dollar was down against the euro. She shrugged, and wondered why she bothered; economics baffled her.

  She finished her coffee and stretched. Across the room, a bank of glass overlooked Central Park. She lifted herself off the couch, moved to the windows, slid open the door, and walked out onto the balcony. The view was awesome. She found herself thinking about where she was in her life. For some reason, staring out over the park was a catalyst that triggered memories, and the balcony had become her place for quiet reflection. At thirty-two years old, she held a doctorate in geology—a piece of paper she had used to carve out a remarkable career. Her exploits in some of the most dangerous countries on the planet had earned her the reputation as the female Indiana Jones of the Geological Society. She was no stranger to the ice floes of the Canadian arctic or the steaming rain forests that bordered the Amazon River. Her trips to Africa were too many and too varied to remember. The newspapers and television stations were quick to run a story if it involved Samantha Carlson hunting down a new geological find. She was attractive, athletic, intelligent and accomplished. She was newsworthy.

  Her love-hate relationship with the media had started three years ago, when she had discovered a new anticline loaded with oil in northern Texas. The skeptics insisted that the area had been exploited and a large find was impossible. She had responded by throwing the algorithm for her computer program on the table, and letting it go public. The program, she contended, was the crux of her discovery. It allowed the previously unnoticed bulge to be seen through geophysics. She recommended they punch an eight-thousand-foot hole in the ground, and they did.

  The anomaly gave way to three million barrels of light Texas crude. Two million dollars to drill the well and almost two hundred million in return. The bonus they had lavished on her had paid for half the penthouse in which she now stood. She winced as she thought about where the other half had come from.

  Her parents’ estate. It was almost two years to the day since their plane had crashed into the sea just after liftoff from Casablanca. They had been en route to London, to meet her and spend a week traveling through Europe. The news had devastated her. Her mother and father had been young, in their early fifties, and in excellent health. She had never entertained the thought that they wouldn’t be there, and the void their deaths left was still unfilled. Her mind relived the memorial service, and once the all-too-familiar tape played through, she let it go.

  She’d tried to stop the images for the first year, but her subconscious was too strong. The sight of the two coffins, side by side, being lowered into the ground was indelibly etched into her mind. She watched as the two handfuls of dirt left her hand and splayed across the tops of the coffins as they sat beneath ground level. Empty caskets, lined with a few trinkets and pictures of her with her parents, their bodies never found. She closed her eyes and the picture stopped.

  Samantha opened her eyes, feeling the wet tears, and blinked away the moisture. The park was blurry for a few moments, then it came back into focus. She turned away and reentered the apartment.

  The coffee was still reasonably fresh, and she poured one more cup. She sat on the edge of the couch and looked at the number she had taken from her voice mail. She picked up the phone and dialed.

  “Good morning, Gem-Star,” a pleasant voice answered.

  “Good morning. Could you put me through to Patrick Kerrigan, please?”

  “Certainly. Whom should I say is calling?”

  “Samantha Carlson.”

  The line switched over to Muzak for a few moments, then Kerrigan’s unmistakable baritone voice came on. “Ms. Carlson, thank you for returning my call.”

  “No problem, Mr. Kerrigan. Except that I have no idea who you are, or what you may want with me.”

  “That’s understandable, Ms. Carlson. Have you heard of Gem-Star?”

  “No, can’t say I have.”

  “We’re a mining company, specializing in gemstones. Diamonds, rubies, sapphires, that kind of thing. And we need a geologist. Would you be interested in meeting with us?”

  Sam Carlson took a moment before answering. She was currently without a contract, but financially, she didn’t need to work another day in her life. Then again, not working was boring. “It depends on what you’re offering, Mr. Kerrigan,” she replied.

  “Our offices are in Manhattan. And I’d rather not discuss it over the phone, if you’d like to drop by. Shall we say, one-thirty this afternoon?”

  At precisely one-twenty, Samantha Carlson stepped off the elevator onto the sixty-third floor of Gem-Star’s building, and into a world of opulence. Cultured Italian marble tiles graced the floors, and original oils hung throughout the foyer of the multinational company. Comfortable leather chairs and couches paired with teak tables furnished the room. The tones were muted teal, and a small waterfall tucked into a feature wall gurgled as the water softly fell onto the rocks.

  Sam Carlson took it all in, and stopped at the rocks in the waterfall. She moved closer and almost gasped. Embedded in the stone were small greenish rocks—uncut diamonds. She bent over, admiring the naturalness of the display. A voice drifted over to her from behind, and she turned to face the speaker.

  It was a man in his early fifties, and of obvious wealth. His hair was well groomed and dark, with a slight graying about the temples. She wondered if the gray was natural or dyed for the effect. His suit was Armani, his tie silk. But it was the charismatic air about the man that told the uneducated of his position in society.

  “You must be Samantha Carlson,” he was saying. “Only a geologist would see more than some drab rocks and a waterfall.”

  “You mean the diamonds?” she asked, and he nodded. She extended her hand and he shook it. His grip was firm, but she caught the slight twitch in his eye as he felt the strength in her grip. That happened a lot. Between the gym and working in the field, she had extreme upper-body strength for her size and gender.

  “I’m Patrick Kerrigan.” He smiled and motioned past the reception desk toward the hallway. She followed him as he started into the labyrinth of offices.

  “Do you always meet your appointments in the lobby?” she asked, curious.

  “Almost never,” he responded, and waved her into a corner office, shutting the door behind them. “But your reputation precedes you. Plus”—he smiled—“I just happened to be walking by the reception area when you arrived. Please, sit down.” He pointed to a cluster of wing-back chairs by the windows. As she moved toward them, she noticed the top of a head barely protruding above the back of the nearest chair. She came alongside the chair, and a man rose to greet her.

  “Samantha Carlson, this is Travis McNeil. Travis, Samantha.” Carlson made the introductions, and the two strangers shook hands. “He’s involved in our latest venture—the one for which we’d like to have you as geologist. I’m getting ahead of myself, Ms. Carlson. Please make yourself comfortable, and I’ll start from the beginning.”

  An employee carrying a tray with light snacks and drinks entered from another door. Samantha took the opportunity to study Kerrigan’s office, as he looked over the tray. It was a man’s office—heavy in texture and style. The floors were hardwood, with Persian rugs thrown about almost randomly. Numerous statues and large carvings dominated the furnishings. It was an eclectic mixture, and very worldly. She was impressed.

  “You like my collection?” Kerrigan caught her surveyin
g the room. She nodded. “I brought back one souvenir from each country I traveled to. Currently, there are one hundred thirty-three different figures in this room, some of them priceless, some of them quite worthless.”

  “It’s quite the collection, Mr. Kerrigan. I especially like the trinket you retrieved from Kenya.” She stole a quick glance at the ivory statue tucked back in a far corner. “I’m sure that came out before the ban went on.”

  Patrick Kerrigan pursed his lips and eyed his visitor as if seeing her for the first time. She interested him.

  He knew her background from the file his company had compiled. Born thirty-two years ago in Boston, she had followed her father’s footsteps into geology. She had completed her undergraduate degree in Boston, but shifted to New York to attend Columbia University for her master’s and Ph.D. Samantha Carlson had excelled in a field dominated by men. Times had changed over the past twenty years, and her gender had made great strides into the field, but the top geologists worldwide were all men, with one exception: her.

  She showed no fear, and took on the toughest assignments under the most dangerous conditions. And she consistently came out on top. She successfully negotiated a multimillion-dollar drilling contract with the Russian government after she discovered huge oil reserves in the desolation of Siberia. The Amazon basin had yielded a substantial find of tourmaline, and she had hammered out a working arrangement between her employer and the Brazilian government. Her latest venture was in the Canadian arctic, where she was unable to save the drilling rig, but kept seventy-eight men from certain death by ordering their evacuation.

  She was attractive, Kerrigan decided, but not from a strictly feminine view. Her features were more chiseled than soft, her body tensile and wiry, not spongy. He was surprised she wore her hair so long, but it suited her. But of all her features, it was her eyes that awed him. It wasn’t just their color, a shade of teal that danced between green and blue. They had an intensity that told of a quick and alert mind behind them, a mind with a thirst for knowledge. Her eyes probed the person she looked at, gnawing into his soul and taking more from him than the words he spoke. To call Samantha Carlson interesting was an understatement.