African Ice

by Jeff Buick

  Central Africa could not provide for its people. And what it did provide often proved deadly. Floods in the rainy season washed away entire villages and poisoned the water supply with human feces. Drought in the dry season killed the cattle and starved the masses that lived hand to mouth. Malaria was rampant in the forested areas, and the temperatures on mountaintops were cold. Even snow was possible. She wondered how anyone could survive here.

  They pulled up in front of the Meridien Kigali Hotel Umubano on the Boulevard de L’Uhunganda. The hotel was a testament to what the local business community could do if given a chance. It wasn’t a new structure, but was well kept and nicely renovated. The facade was white stucco with adobe brick highlights. Generous arches welcomed the traveler into the foyer, where a fountain gurgled softly with crystal-clear water. McNeil headed straight for the concierge desk, and returned a minute later looking pleased.

  “I need a few things, and our concierge tells me there will be no problem getting them. Remind me to tip him well when we leave.”

  Samantha followed him into the lobby and across the tile floor to the registration desk. The clerk was efficient by Rwandan standards, and they had their rooms in under a half hour. McNeil pointed at the restaurant as they made for the stairs.

  “Lunch?” he asked, glancing at his watch. “It’s almost two o’clock.”

  “Sounds great,” Samantha responded. “Okay to eat here?”

  “You’re the one who’s been to Kigali before. Didn’t you stay here?”

  “Briefly. Headed from the airport into the jungle. None of this five-star decadence for me.”

  He grinned as he pulled a chair back for her. The hotel was okay, but certainly not five-star. She sat and a moment later their waiter appeared. They ordered drinks and Samantha said, “I don’t know much about you, except that you were born in San Antonio and spent time with the SEALs when you grew up; being macho and saving the world. Anything else you’d like to add?”

  He grinned again. “If I leave it like that, I’ll come off a lot better than if I start telling stories,” he said. “I’m a bit of a klutz.”

  “Really,” she said, interested. “How so?”

  “Oh, like the time I fell out of an airplane.”

  “Fell or jumped?”

  “Jumped. But my parachute screwed up. It folded in on itself at about a thousand feet, and I hit the ground like a lumpy meteorite.”

  “They usually burn up,” she pointed out.

  “That didn’t happen, but I did break one hundred seventeen bones. And spent the next year in a hospital. I haven’t jumped since.”

  “That’s why you didn’t want to fly into Butembo from Kinshasa. You’re scared of flying.”

  “Flying doesn’t bother me. It’s what can happen if the plane stops flying when it’s supposed to be flying. Parachuting from a crippled plane into the Congo rain forest is dangerous. In fact, it’s probably one of the top ten extreme sports on the planet.”

  She looked thoughtful. “How about something a bit more personal about the kid from San Antonio—what your parents did, that kind of thing.”

  He fumbled in his breast pocket for his cigarettes. He tapped the bottom of the package and one popped up. He slid it out and placed it between his lips, then struck a match and puffed once. As he shook the match to extinguish it, he wondered what to tell her. The truth was abhorrent, out of the question.

  When his mother had met his father, she held a respectable position as a social worker with the city of Houston. She dealt with the downtrodden, the dregs of the oil-rich city. Mary Lambert had a natural intuition that allowed her to separate the grifters from the needy, and she doled out social service justice with a fair hand. She made a difference in people’s lives. Young mothers, their eyes hollow sockets, carried crack-addicted babies into her office every day. She touched the nerve that showed these seemingly hopeless cases there was a light in the darkness. Mary understood the process: clean them up, restore their self-worth and give them dignity in lieu of drugs and disease. She turned people away from life on the streets toward mainstream society by recognizing what natural assets they had, and encouraging them to enroll in courses that made them saleable. She found them employment and stayed in touch, letting her clients know she was there—that she cared. Some failed miserably, but many flourished. Mary Lambert was a jewel in the cracked and broken crown of thorns that was the Houston social service department. Until Joe McNeil walked into her office.

  She had instantly recognized him for what he was—a con man looking for an easy ride. A guy who would rather spend an hour lying to Social Services and walking away with some food stamps than get out there and dig around for a real job. But for some reason, she couldn’t say no to him. He was an attractive, mid-twenties man, two years her senior, with an easy one-sided smile. Joe had even white teeth and wavy blond hair that framed his boyish face. She was attracted to him even though she suspected he harbored a dark side. For the first time in her six-year tenure at social services, she cheated the system. Joe was the recipient of undeserved public money—money he spent on drugs and booze. Against every instinct, she began to sleep with him. When sober he was a great lover, often bringing her to climax. When he drank to excess, his performance shriveled. Mary began to drink to wipe out the desires that couldn’t be satisfied by a drunken partner. More often than not, morning would find them passed out on the floor or the couch, the bed unused. And mornings were becoming difficult for Mary.

  In fact, mornings were just the tip of the iceberg. Her entire life began to unravel as she plunged into the same abyss from which she spent her days trying to pull out other addicts. Her work suffered. Travis figured it was about the time he was conceived that she began to use crack cocaine. She started smoking one pipe in the morning to get her going. By the time Travis was born, she was a full-fledged crack addict, living the precarious edge between two worlds. When her baby was eighteen months old, the shadowy world of crack and alcohol finally won the battle. She was fired for embezzling funds and told to go quietly or criminal charges would be filed. She returned home to her alcoholic husband and told him she was unable to support him any longer. He beat her to within an inch of her life. From hospital records Travis dug up later in his life, he knew she had spent thirty-two days recovering from the beating. And it wasn’t the last.

  Young Travis had watched as Joe McNeil’s true colors emerged. He regularly beat Mary, and by the time Travis had reached double digits, his father had turned pimp, selling Mary on the street for pitiful sums of money to buy his booze. They lived in squalor, Travis going to bed hungry so often it became the norm. He would lie awake listening to them fight, praying for a miracle. In a way, he got it. Seven days before his eleventh birthday, his parents began to fight over who should get the last hit off the crack pipe. His father repeatedly hit Mary in her face and stomach as the young boy screamed for him to stop. When he did, Mary was unconscious and bleeding profusely from a gash on her cheek. Travis’s father lit the pipe and sucked in the mind-numbing smoke, then sat back contentedly to watch television. When his mother awoke, she staggered into the bathroom to clean up. From there she walked into the bedroom and returned with the family gun. Travis watched as his father rose from the couch and moved toward her, threatening to kill her if she didn’t give him the gun. She pumped five bullets into his chest, three of them cutting through his heart. She turned the gun to her temple, said good-bye to her son, and pulled the trigger. The sixth and final bullet tore through her brain, spattering blood and gray matter across the room. He was an orphan.

  An aunt in San Antonio, from his mother’s side, offered to take the boy, and Social Services agreed. He packed up his meager possessions and moved from Houston to the much smaller center, and to a loving, caring family. What had happened in the past belonged in the past, Aunt Sarah had told him. He had the rest of his life ahead of him, and nothing could be done to right the wrongs he had been subjected to.

  He had assim
ilated into the new environment well, achieving good grades and making whatever sports teams he tried out for. With the sports letters came the girls, attractive ones with developing bodies and lustful desires. He reciprocated, giving the young women what they wanted. He was the hottest commodity in school his senior year, and he took that with him into college. He made the football team as a wide receiver in his freshman year, racking up seventy-one catches for one thousand two hundred forty-three yards and sixteen touchdowns. The scouts were watching as the whiz kid suited up for his sophomore year. Third game into the season, his chances at the big leagues evaporated when an opponent forced his knee to flex in a manner no knee can withstand. The ligament damage was so great, the team doctors told the boy he’d be lucky to walk without a limp. A professional sports career was out of the question.

  He finished his second year of college with a dismal two-point-six grade point average. He didn’t bother registering for his third year, but enlisted in the Navy instead. His knee had healed, and they saw a healthy body and an alert mind. He was transferred to Little Creek, Virginia, almost immediately. Navy SEALs, Team Six. The rest was history. Except that he took the memories of a horrible youth with him everywhere he went. There was no escaping.

  Travis McNeil took another drag on his cigarette and slowly blew the smoke into the humid air. “Not much to tell, really,” he said. “Normal family, cute house with a white picket fence on a quiet street. Mom and Dad went off to work each day, provided for us. I made a few sports teams, but never got invited to any training camps. Started smoking early, drank underage, that kind of stuff. Pretty boring, actually.”

  Samantha nodded and opened a small pouch attached to her belt. She extracted a large pill and looked at it with great distaste. “Three weeks of these things has been hell,” she said, swallowing the last of her malarial pills. “Have you ever had malaria?”

  “Once. It’s not pleasant. How about you?”

  “Lucky so far,” she answered.

  Their drinks arrived and he crushed out his cigarette after ordering lunch. “I’ll miss these when they’re gone.”

  “American cigarettes?”

  He nodded. “They’ve got those awful French cigarettes. Gitanes, I think they’re called. Quite vile,” he said, then turned as three men entered the restaurant. He motioned for his team to join them.

  “Careful you don’t get your shirt dirty, Troy,” Travis goaded his arms expert as he sat down. “You’ve only got two left.”

  Troy just laughed and turned to Samantha. “Thanks,” he said. “Extra shirts or prison. It’s an easy choice.”

  Sam just smiled. Travis got down to business. “I was talking to Philip Acundo on the trip from the airport. He says the munitions arrived in Kinshasa two days ago. Colonel Mugumba took a personal interest in the shipment. He met with Ng at the docks and offloaded the cargo into a few Land Rovers. Acundo told me the equipment should be en route to Goma sometime tomorrow. If all goes well, we should be armed and dangerous in two days.”

  “Thank God.” Alain Porter breathed a sigh of relief. “I feel naked. All four guys who picked us up at the airport this morning were packing.”

  Dan Nelson agreed. “We’re sitting ducks. It would be nice to pick up a few handguns. Just in case.”

  “No. I’m sure Mugumba made it pretty clear to these four guys to get us out of Rwanda and into the Congo. If we don’t arrive, they might as well not come back. If we get caught with weapons in Rwanda, they could shoot us on the spot. Zero tolerance toward foreigners.”

  “Nice fucking place,” Ramage said.

  “That’s why you’re getting the big bucks for this one, Troy. Let’s just stay out of trouble until we get to the border and get our hands on our gear. Then we can kick some serious ass if we have to.”

  The other three men nodded. Samantha watched them as they interacted. A bunch of overgrown macho men, she thought. And then she reconsidered. What kept these men alive was their ability to kill the other guy before he got them. And without guns, Dan Nelson was right. They were sitting ducks. If anyone wanted this entourage to disappear, what better time than before they picked up their guns? She realized the gravity of the situation. And in that, she found a new respect for these men.

  They were here to protect her, to ensure she found the elusive diamond formation in the Ruwenzori Mountains. They were ready to lay their lives on the line. That they were being paid for it suddenly became insignificant. These four men brought a commitment to their jobs that few others did. If they had a bad day at the office, they died. She glanced around the table as they continued talking about the upcoming mission. She liked what she saw. And for a fleeting moment, she felt safe.

  Then the doubt returned. Could she find the formation? The longer it took her to locate the diamonds, the greater the chance they’d all be killed. Ultimately, the success of the mission rested on her shoulders—her ability as a geologist. She felt a slight curl at the edge of her lips as this thought hit her. Kerrigan was right about two things. She had a knack for staying alive, and she was one damn good geologist.

  Things would be okay. Keep her alive long enough and she’d find the diamonds.

  FIVE

  Samantha was up before the sun. She wriggled out of her clothes and started the shower. A trickle of dusty water spilled from the showerhead into the claw-foot tub. She stepped in and shivered in the early morning heat. The water was freezing. She wondered how in such a sweltering climate, the water could be so cold. Other than the planned stop in Butembo, she knew this would be the last decent shower for some time, and she tried to enjoy it. It didn’t work, but she emerged clean and refreshed after ten minutes. She dressed and took the stairs to the main floor.

  The front-desk clerk was the only sign of human life. She said good morning and walked into the street. She glanced both ways, then turned right and began to jog. The cobblestone road was rough and slippery under her feet, and she relaxed a bit when she turned off the main road and the stones turned to dirt. She picked up her pace, pressing her cardiovascular system to work harder. She was breathing heavily as she turned right into a narrow street a few blocks from the hotel. This was the Rwanda she remembered.

  Shanty housing lined both sides of the lane, many shacks with broken windows, and few in good repair. Mottled doors infested with termites stood as testaments to the resident’s position in Rwandan society. Most in this area were in poor condition, with peeling paint and rusted hardware. An occasional one boasted a new coat of paint, a sign that the owner was doing just fine. She continued along the road for half a mile, then cut left into a darkened alley. She slowed her progress as she approached the end of the street.

  Twenty feet from the dead end was a door, similar to almost every other door she had run past in the last ten minutes. She stopped and knocked. Inside, there were scuffling noises as the residents roused themselves. A moment later, the door opened. A short man, just over five feet, with a pug nose and a puzzled expression, looked out. Suddenly he brightened.

  “Doctor Sam,” he said, grinning widely, his white teeth shining in the low light of dawn. “Doctor Sam, you’ve come back.” He waved his arm for her to enter his house.

  “Hello, Hal,” she said, grasping the man’s hand and holding it affectionately. “You look great.” She glanced about the room, where five other people now stood looking at her. “Mauri.” She dropped Hal’s hand and gave his wife a hug. The woman smiled and nodded. English was not her native tongue, nor had she ever learned it.

  “Doctor Sam, what brings you to Kigali?” Hal asked, motioning for her to sit at the lone piece of furniture in the tiny house. She sat at the table and watched as Mauri prepared the morning tea.

  “I may need your services, Hal,” she said. “You know the Virunga Mountains, near Gisenyi.”

  “I have led many expeditions into the wilds in search of the mountain gorillas. I know the area very well.”

  “I need you to know the Ruwenzori Mountains as w
ell. Please tell me you’ve been there.”

  “I’ve been there, Doctor Sam, but not for a long time. The Democratic Republic of Congo does not appreciate Rwandans since our government sided with the rebel forces that are trying to overthrow the Congolese government. The border is shut down. We can’t get across anymore.”

  “Leave that to me,” she said. “The important thing is that you know the area around Butembo.”

  “Oh yes. That’s where the upland gorillas live. I’ve been there many times. I know the area very well.” He looked at her suspiciously. “You’re not an anthropologist. You’re a geologist. Why are you interested in gorillas?”

  “I have no interest in the gorillas unless some government type asks. I’m looking for a rock formation.”

  Hal winked at her. “I understand.”

  “Then I’d like to hire you, Hal. I’ll pay very well, but it will be dangerous. You may not make it back alive.”

  “Living in Rwanda is dangerous. Some people don’t come home from a trip to the corner store. Perhaps, since it is so dangerous, we could arrange for payment in advance. For my widow.”

  Samantha laughed. The little man was exactly the same as she remembered from four years ago. She dug into her pockets and pulled out five hundred American dollars. She handed it to Hal. “Another one thousand if you make it back. Deal?”

  “Deal, Doc,” he said. This time his smile lit up the entire room. The sum represented almost four year’s wages for an average Rwandan.

  Sam spent the next half hour sipping tea with Hal, his wife, and their four children. After arranging for Hal to meet her at the hotel bar within the hour, she excused herself and headed back to the hotel. The sun was up and the streets had changed. Gone were the closed doors and empty laneways. Instead, windows and doors were open, and children hung from them, watching her as she moved through the teeming slums. Street vendors hawked their goods from small carts or off the dirt that served as the sidewalk. She attracted a great deal of attention as she walked, her white skin and blond hair visible from a distance. At times, conversations stopped as she passed, the natives intent on watching her as long as possible. None of it made her feel uncomfortable. Rather, it made her feel special.