African Ice

by Jeff Buick

  “This is going to make my job a lot easier. I won’t have to print promising-looking areas and overlay them on a precisely scaled map. I don’t know how he did it, but it’s brilliant.”

  She spent the next three hours carefully digesting the aerial video footage and marking possible hot spots on her field map. When she had finished, she reviewed the results and reported them back to Travis. She told him she’d have a more definitive list of possible targets after Hackett’s second pass, scheduled for the next morning.

  She returned to her tent and adjusted the mosquito netting and poison-laden rope. As she lay atop her bedding in the tranquility of the night, she thought about Travis McNeil. She pictured him standing knee-deep in the swamp, breathing heavily and dripping with water after rescuing the porter. She saw his perfectly honed body, his handsome face and sparkling blue eyes. She remembered the relaxed manner in which he held the knife in his right hand and how he’d made the prone body draped across his shoulder seem weightless. She sighed and closed her eyes, shutting out the dim starlight that filtered through the canopy. She saw him smile, and then she watched as their bodies came together and they kissed. It felt good to dream, and the last thought she had before drifting off was that it didn’t have to be just a dream. She slept very well.

  EIGHT

  The limousine pulled up in front of the marble and glass building, and Patrick Kerrigan stepped out into a light afternoon drizzle. His driver sped around the car and held an umbrella above the president of Gem-Star as he walked across the expanse of sidewalk to the lobby doors. Kerrigan nodded to the security officer and proceeded directly to the bank of elevators servicing floors fifty through sixty-five. He punched the button for sixty-three and stood patiently waiting as the high-speed elevator sped up its narrow shaft. Thirty seconds later, he stepped into the reception area of his company, said a perfunctory hello to the receptionist and walked directly to his office. He had his secretary bring in coffee and then secure an overseas line to Belfast. A moment later, a second man entered the room. Kerrigan motioned for the man to take a seat, and sipped on the coffee while waiting for the connection to Ireland. When a voice answered, he put the call on speakerphone.

  “O’Donnell here,” the distant voice said.

  “Hello, Liam,” Kerrigan answered. “How are things in Belfast?”

  “Things are fine, Patrick. What’s up?”

  “I’d like to book your services again. Same deal as last time—you’ll remain on standby until I need you. Same rate of pay we agreed on before. Just be ready to move if and when I deem it necessary.”

  “When?” Liam O’Donnell asked.

  “Starting immediately, and for at least the next three weeks.”

  “I’ll give you a month, but that’s it. I have another job scheduled after that. Do you need the same size team in place?”

  “Yes, if you can arrange it. Six men plus yourself. I’ll wire half the funds to your Swiss account this afternoon, and the other half two weeks from today. Eight hundred thousand English pounds in total.”

  “Sounds good. I’ll get the team together and ready to move inside an hour of hearing from you. What’s our target this time?”

  “Same as before—Africa.” Kerrigan pushed a button and terminated the call. He turned to the man sitting a few feet from him. “They’re the second team, Garret. You’re the third.”

  Garret Shaw nodded. He knew exactly what Patrick Kerrigan meant. Liam O’Donnell and his team of ex-MI5 operatives were a backup in the unlikely event Mugumba was unsuccessful in wiping out the mining expedition once they had located the diamond formation. From Belfast, they could be in the Ruwenzori Mountains within twenty-four hours. Two years ago, Shaw had personally overseen planting a cache of weapons in an underground dugout on the outskirts of Butembo. If O’Donnell and his men were needed, they would be given the location of the stash; if not, the guns and missiles would remain safely tucked away for future use. Shaw knew Kerrigan left nothing to chance.

  “Brandy?” Kerrigan asked, and Shaw nodded. Kerrigan poured liberal servings into the snifters and handed one to him. “How many years is it since you quit working for the government and joined our little organization?”

  “Seven years, Patrick,” he answered. “Seven very good years.” He lifted the brandy glass slightly to toast the longevity of their relationship.

  “It’s been more profitable killing people for me than it was when you were with Delta Force. And not nearly as stressful.”

  “It’s certainly more relaxed,” Garret said, thinking back to the life-or-death missions he had routinely run when he commanded an elite counter-terrorism squad. Life with the army’s most prestigious unit, the Delta Force, was demanding and dangerous, but not well paying. He had defended the United States from terrorist attacks, had often gone on the offensive and taken out perceived threats before they materialized, and had killed countless people in the process. And every two weeks, he had received a major’s pay for his efforts. When Kerrigan had approached him seven years ago, he had jumped at the chance to move from Fort Bragg and ply his considerable skills in the private sector. Kerrigan paid very well, as a healthy overseas account attested to.

  “Why did you pick McNeil to accompany Samantha Carlson?” Kerrigan asked the ex-soldier. The recommendation to hire McNeil had come from one of his SEAL buddies, but Shaw, unknown to McNeil, had planted the seed. He thought his only connection to Kerrigan was his former colleague. And it was best to keep it that way.

  “McNeil is resourceful, enough to keep your geologist alive until she finds the formation. And he’s expendable. He has no real family—they were killed in a murder-suicide when he was about ten years old. An aunt and uncle from San Antonio raised him, which means McNeil can disappear without a lot of rocks being overturned. After he does his job, he’ll just go away quietly.”

  “I hope you’re right, Garret. Perhaps this guy will prove more resourceful than even you think. That could ultimately leave you and him staring at each other down gun barrels.”

  “Impossible. Mugumba has over twenty men, all crack troops armed to the teeth. He has an inside man with the expedition, and a good working knowledge of the terrain. The chances of McNeil surviving Mugumba’s attack are zero. And even if he does, you have Liam O’Donnell and his crew standing by in Belfast. You worry too much, Patrick. And,” he paused for effect, “it’s hardly as if this is the first time we’ve done this.”

  “I hope it’s the last,” Kerrigan said hotly. “I’m getting tired of sending geologists into the jungle and then getting screwed on the location of the diamonds.”

  “The last team was quite slippery,” Shaw acknowledged. “We know they found it, but they never told us where it was. I think we may have taken them out a little prematurely.”

  “We should have had the location from the first team.” Kerrigan literally spat the words. “We’ve wasted four years and millions of dollars since then. God damn him.”

  “You still netted quite the profit from that, Patrick. You should look at the upside of things every now and then.”

  “Quite the upside, Garret. If anyone ever found out what we did, there’d be a public lynching. You’re trained to kill people and you may sleep well, but I still have nights when the memories of what we did keep me awake.”

  “It’s over,” Shaw said, rising from his chair. “Forget about it. Okay?”

  Patrick Kerrigan stared at the man. His hired killer was right; this was no time to suffer an attack of conscience. He had deviated from the straight and narrow path so many years ago that it now seemed forever since he had performed his duties as president of Gem-Star within the law. But it wasn’t always so. The notion of straying into covert acquisition of gemstones under the guise of a legitimate businessman had come upon him innocently enough.

  Eight years ago, he had been appointed to the top position in Gem-Star, reporting to Davis Perth, the grandson of the company’s founder. A half-million-dollar bonus and a y
early salary of eight hundred thousand dollars signaled the end to any mediocrity his life had held and his arrival at the top. The next six months had been glorious. The prestige of position, the wonder of wealth, and the glamour of high-society invitations were his. He reveled in his achievements, playing the power hand he had been dealt to the max. The New York social pages contained the comings and goings of people who mattered, and it was as often as not that Patrick Kerrigan’s picture graced the pages. His life was perfect, his dreams fulfilled. Until the divorce.

  The bitch he had dragged up the social ladder with him suddenly decided her life would be better with his money, but without him. She hired a top-notch matrimonial lawyer and proceeded to rip his financial life apart. She went for the jugular, and got it. The bonus was gone, as was half his yearly income. Along with the financial ruin came a pariah effect. The beautiful people didn’t wish to be seen with a loser. They knew, they always knew somehow, who the winner was when a couple split up. They sided with his ex and expelled him from the group. He was relegated to watching the goings-on of the select few, including his ex-wife, from the sidelines with the masses. He was close to a breakdown when Davis Perth stuck his head in one day. He threw a file on Kerrigan’s desk and told him to wrap up the exploration; they had hit nothing but dirt on this one.

  He had opened the file and lightly perused its contents. The more he read about the Brazilian property, the more he believed Davis Perth was wrong. There were gemstones to be had in the formations, and the geologist had made mistakes. But instead of having Gem-Star reopen the dig, he took some time off and visited the site personally. After three days of concentrated digging in the area, he knew he had uncovered stones of great value. Sapphires by the dozens, perfect in color and clarity, were his for the taking. And take he did. The vein provided him with an additional three million dollars in untraceable income. He opened a numbered Swiss account and applied for Caymanian citizenship. He funneled the ill-gotten wealth into the Caymans and Switzerland, protected by the secrecy of the banking institutions. He paid no taxes and was asked no questions. It worked well, and he looked for other plays to pilfer. He did not have to look long to find more.

  Gem-Star was a large corporation, looking for large deposits to exploit. They deemed numerous smaller plays to be unprofitable and abandoned them. Kerrigan went in later and cleaned out whatever wealth was trapped in the rocks. As time progressed, he got bolder. He began to change the essayer’s reports on the new properties, masking potentially prosperous veins. When Gem-Star decided the play was not worthy, he took over and plundered it. His personal wealth grew at an astronomical rate. But the path was dangerous. The mines often fell inside political boundaries that were hazardous to his health. Central and South America were dangerous if you strayed off the beaten path, and that was exactly where the mines were. So he hired Garret Shaw to do his dirty work—a move that had paid enormous dividends for seven years now.

  He continued to stare at Shaw as his mind regressed. It was sheer coincidence that they had met. Shaw had been in New York for a two-day layover before departing for North Africa with the Delta Force, and he had stopped at a small bar for a couple of scotches. The driver’s side front tire on Kerrigan’s Audi had suddenly gone flat, and he had entered the bar looking for a telephone. Shaw overheard Kerrigan asking for a phone to call AAA, and had offered to change the tire just to keep from getting bored. As Shaw worked, they had talked. And the conversation finally drifted around to what he did for a living. With three malt scotches down the hatch and another one waiting on the counter, he had divulged more information to Kerrigan than he should have.

  As they parted, Kerrigan gave him his business card and told him to phone if he wanted to become very rich. Shaw had called and set up an appointment. The rest was history. Shaw had resigned from the army to take care of the shadowy details of Kerrigan’s profitable mining adventures. The allegiance between the two men was solid, with each knowing enough to send the other to prison for two or three lifetimes. Shaw joined Kerrigan in the small percentage of Americans who are independently wealthy, and gave his boss complete loyalty in return. There was only one act the two had perpetrated that Kerrigan wished they had handled differently. But, as Shaw had said, that was in the past and now was not the time to develop a conscience.

  He continued to stare at the ex-soldier, this time seeing the man and taking in the image. Garret Shaw was six-foot-four-inches, two hundred fifty-five pounds, without an ounce of fat. He wore faded jeans and a loose plaid shirt, but Kerrigan knew that under the clothes was a finely tuned body, trained to kill. Shaw worked out two hours a day, every day. He bench-pressed over three hundred pounds and ran the fifty in under six seconds. His face was tight skin over chiseled steel and his eyes burned a bright blue. He still wore his hair in a military crew cut, and he often reminded Kerrigan of a huge GI Joe doll.

  “Tell me, Garret,” Patrick said. “What’s going to happen if McNeil manages to survive Mugumba and O’Donnell? You and him, face to face. Who would win?”

  Garret stared back at Kerrigan. “Why, I would, of course.” He turned abruptly and left, leaving Kerrigan with the feeling that no man could face off with him and live. It was a good feeling, very reassuring. What was even more reassuring was that the chance of McNeil ever going toe-to-toe with Shaw was nil. McNeil would die in the jungle, along with that uppity bitch, Samantha Carlson.

  NINE

  Samantha rubbed her eyes and splashed cold water over the nape of her neck. She stood up and walked around for a minute, then returned to the computer monitor and stared at the images of the rain-forest canopy. She scrolled the video feed ahead a few frames, then paused it again. She was right; there was another possible spot for the kimberlite outcrop. She noted the exact coordinates of her find in her field notebook and shut off the computer. Her latest find brought to seventeen in total the number of possible locations for the pipe. She called it in to Hackett, and then headed off to find Travis.

  “I’ve finished the second video feed from the helicopter,” she told him when she located him having a beer on the far side of their base camp. “It’s down to seventeen possible locations.”

  “And one of those is our target?” he asked, sitting up in the hammock and finishing his beer.

  “Not necessarily. I used the video footage from the two perpendicular grids that Billy ran in his chopper. Most of the distinct color changes in the canopy were caused by shadows. What appeared to be a darker section of forest from one view was often eliminated when I looked at it from a ninety-degree angle. The seventeen areas I’ve got locations for are ones that appear darker on both passes. The reason they’re darker is unknown. The vegetation could be spring fed, which would cause different coloration than the surrounding trees that rely solely on rain for water. Or they could be fertilized by something that brings out a deeper green shade. Or,” she smiled, “they could be sitting on a kimberlite pipe.”

  “Ahh, the kimberlite pipe you talked about in Kerrigan’s office,” Travis said, toasting her as he opened another beer. Then he looked puzzled. “That’s where the diamonds are, right?”

  She motioned for him to follow her back to the equipment, and they talked as they walked. “Right. The pipe is a rock formation that brings the diamonds up from deep inside ancient geological formations to the tertiary, or current, rocks. Without kimberlite pipes, the diamonds would remain trapped far too deep to ever find or mine.”

  “But you talked a lot about alluvial diamonds in Sierra Leone and the Congo. They’re not the same, are they?”

  “No,” she said. “Alluvial diamonds are found on the surface. Somehow, usually through erosion, they’ve made their way to ground level. It’s common for them to get caught in the flow of a river or a stream and end up hundreds of miles from where they initially surfaced. What the old prospectors would do is follow the rivers to the source and look for the pipe. If they found it, they’d stake it out, then try to mine it or sell it to De Beers.” />
  “Makes sense. De Beers is the big boy on the block.”

  “Huge. They control the market. They have since 1888, when Cecil Rhodes consolidated a bunch of smaller companies to form De Beers Consolidated Mines.”

  “Who’s Cecil Rhodes? I thought it was the Oppenheimer clan that controlled De Beers.”

  “Ahh, very good, Mr. McNeil,” Samantha said, raising an eyebrow. “He kills crocodiles and understands the intricacies of the diamond cartels as well. Impressive. The Oppen-heimers have headed De Beers since 1929, when Ernest Oppenheimer was appointed chairman. He lasted until 1957, and then his son Harry took over. They were the brains behind controlling production and keeping global sales channeled through the Diamond Producers’ Association. It was brilliant marketing. Hell, it still is.”

  “Okay, Doc, enough history. We’re not following any rivers back to their sources, are we?”

  “We don’t have to. According to Kerrigan, the last expedition narrowed the area where the pipe is located to the seventy square miles we’re having Billy Hackett recon. And look at this,” she said, unrolling one of the numerous topographical maps that seemed to accompany her everywhere. She stabbed the atlas with her finger. “This region to the northeast is the most promising, with nine of the seventeen targets in this four-square-mile block. And you’ll notice that there is no river originating farther up the mountains and flowing down through this area. So that would explain why no alluvial diamonds have been found below the pipe. There’s no water to wash them out of their formation and push them down onto the flats.”