SKELETON GOLD: Scorpion (James Pace novels Book 3)

by Andy Lucas

  ‘What is he interested in?’ Deborah didn’t know a great deal about Namibia other than it was largely desert and boasted the barren, treacherous stretch of coastline that had been given the title of the name Skeleton Coast at some point in the past.

  ‘That’s for you to find out. It may come to nothing but even a small story linked to McEntire and we have a front page. Listen and understand. Dig up anything you can and do it fast. My source is a good one but by no means exclusive. Other papers will get a sniff soon enough and I want to be ahead of the game.’

  ‘If there is anything, I’ll find out what it is and give you the best damned story you’ve had from me for a long time.’

  There she went again, blowing her own trumpet. He really didn’t like her at all. ‘Just do your job and get me some results.’

  ‘At least this might be something worthy of my talents,’ she goaded gently,’ then hung up before he could reply. Namibia, she mused, as she headed back outside, watching Munambe rise politely from his chair to greet her in a blatantly false show of manners. Deborah knew his only interest lay in what she was hiding beneath her clothes. Still, he was the Namibian delegate, so who better to pump for information? Consequently, the quick questioning approach went out of the window.

  That was how, a little over three hours later, she found herself leaving Munambe’s room, with the sweat barely dried on her skin and the heat still tangible between her legs. The sex had been better than she’d expected, as Munambe was a considerate and sensitive lover who spent a lot of time making sure she was satisfied, but professionally the whole thing was looking like a waste of time.

  Deborah had skilfully questioned him before allowing him to seduce her and then thrown in a couple of extra probes at the end, when his guard was at its lowest. He had spoken with pride of his country’s achievements and in how new investment would lift Namibia’s fortunes still further but he had been vague on the details. He had also seemed genuinely surprised when she mentioned the McEntire Corporation and surprise was a hard thing to feign at the end of a heavy sex session.

  It would have taken a world-class actor to pull it off and she was sure Munambe was not one of them.

  There might still be a story in there somewhere that she could use, she thought, riding the lift down to the lobby and heading back across to the coffee shop. Ordering a cappuccino this time, she decided to drink it in the cool of the air-conditioned interior; the heat of the mid-afternoon was blisteringly fierce by then.

  Although it wasn’t about the McEntire Corporation, Munambe had spoken of another big company, ARC, looking to build a chain of solar energy and desalination plants along the inhospitable Skeleton coast. One was already up and running and the government was now in negotiations regarding the leasing of vast stretches of virgin desert. Unfortunately, despite the high tax revenue the Namibian government would additionally be able to levy against each new power station, they had been unable to yet agree on a reasonable price.

  Namibia increasingly understood the value of its sun-bleached land, he had told her. Oil companies were salivating at the thought of surveying thousands of square miles of land previously kept off-limits by seemingly eternal civil wars, coups and political instability. Mineral rights would soon be going under the hammer too. They would not, he assured her, be allowing anyone to sell them short.

  She sat at a small table, sipping her drink, looking idle on the surface while her sharp brain raced to process the information beneath. It seemed likely that the McEntire connection was a red herring, perhaps even a deliberate one by her boss designed to make her run around foolishly hunting a story that did not exist. It would be just like him, she decided angrily. Then again, the McEntire business umbrella had fingers in endless pies, so perhaps it was somehow involved with ARC?

  In her heart, she understood that her editor’s dislike was further driven purely by professional jealousy. After all, he had taken twenty years to rise to the position of editor while she would do it in five. What would really help her now would be to dig up a good story and return to London with something more substantial than a few dull reports of the conference. That would show him.

  With the green agenda so prevalent, there were bound to be some negative angles she could find. If international companies were looking to exploit Namibia’s largely untapped natural resources, as Munambe had said, she needed to stick closely to him and make sure she beat the competition to whatever stories might be awaiting exposure.

  Deborah Miles had no integrity or moral code when it came to her job. If she could do a hatchet job on a big business name and earn herself a promotion, then so be it. If she could do a deal and agree to take a more positive tack on their involvement, and line her own pockets at the same time, she would happily go along with any amount of subterfuge and deceit. All roads, she knew, led her closer to an editor’s chair.

  Next step, Namibia. Draining her coffee, she headed back across to the hotel, a plan forming in her devious mind.

  11

  Pace couldn’t sleep and it had nothing to do with the heat. He had mulled over the diary entries for a long time, leaving Sarah to soak up the sun without him. There was nothing that jumped out at him; they were the final scribbles of a dying man, yet the dead words served to unsettle him for no good reason that he could fathom.

  It was a little after two in the morning when he slipped out of the huge, silk-sheeted bed and quietly dressed in a white cotton tee shirt and shorts before padding softly across the stateroom carpet, opening and closing the door with exaggerated care. He didn’t want to wake her for two reasons. She needed to sleep off a large dinner and several bottles of wine, and he needed more time to think. As beautiful and amazing as she was, he did not want to be distracted until he could figure out what was agitating him.

  The crew were all asleep, with the exception of a single man on watch, up on the bridge. The cruiser was loaded with the most modern electronic threat detection equipment; radar and sonar eyes that scoured the surroundings for miles. Linked to a sophisticated bank of computers, they would sound the alarm and were able to move the vessel out of harm’s way in the event that a human hand was unavailable to do the job.

  Being a McEntire covert vessel too, she was crammed with multi-modal signal jamming equipment, secure satellite communications and she packed two underwater torpedo tubes, one on either side of her submerged bow in a similar fashion to a naval submarine. Deep below decks, concealed behind false storage racks, a fully automated torpedo room housed twenty Mark 46 torpedoes.

  On her sleek superstructure, situated at the bow and stern, faint circular grooves in the teak decking marked the spot where Goalkeeper anti-aircraft weapon systems could be raised from their hidden housings and employed at a moment’s notice.

  With fire control being automatic, their twin radar systems could identify and prioritise up to eighteen different threats at a time, and deploy the inbuilt Avenger 30mm Gatling gun to eliminate them, one after another. Packing an almighty punch with its seven barrels, a fire rate of 4200 rounds per minute and a muzzle velocity of over a kilometre per second, the Gatling gun was more commonly recognisable as the main weapon of the A10 Thunderbolt fighter bomber. With an effective range of over two kilometres, the Goalkeeper system offered 360˚ protection for the vessel, from either surface or air attack.

  Pace had been fully briefed on these special additions to the vessel and his incredulity at the lengths the McEntire Corporation went to conceal its more sinister operations was rapidly fading. Since barely surviving his recent exploits in the Amazon, he had been allowed into the inner circle and was now well aware that the McEntire Corporation played its national-interest fuelled espionage role with lethal effectiveness. The fact that they were aboard a luxurious warship, in effect, now ceased to enthral him.

  Settling himself into a deckchair at the stern, being careful not to position himself anywhere near to the circular groove, he stared out across the dark water and forced himself to think.
Something was wrong, he knew that, but he couldn’t identify what it was. Closing his eyes, and allowing a warm breeze to waft around him, he focused on the facts that he knew, yet again, wracking his brain to pinpoint the problem.

  The diary entry told him that the sailor’s valiant efforts to survive had been in vain and that he had succumbed to his wounds out in the desert, desperately trying to flee for help. The submarine had been lost, delivering gold bullion to a point thousands of miles away from the homeland. The exchange must have been worthwhile or the Admiralty wouldn’t have sanctioned so many trips, and gold was a very rare commodity for a warring nation that had to be used wisely.

  Whatever they were collecting had to have been vital for the war effort, but what was it? Scorpion was the codename but that was all he had gleaned from the pages.

  A sixth sense sharpened by years in the military, and by more recent life and death struggles in the jungle, suddenly stirred. They were well out from the coast and the ship’s automated defences lay quiet and concealed, so Pace knew that nothing sinister was approaching, nothing detectable anyway. In the past he would have shrugged off the feeling but he was wise enough now to never ignore his own alarm system.

  Getting up slowly from his deckchair, uncoiling silently like a cat, he strained his ears. He heard nothing above the gentle lap of a calm sea against the ship’s hull. Stepping over to the stern rail, he scanned the moonlit ocean for any sign of menace. Again, nothing.

  Puzzled, he was just about to give up and return to his chair when something made him look up. He had no reason to, as the radar systems would alert the crew to any aerial threat. Still, he did, and he was just in time to see the dark figure of a parachutist drop softly the last thirty feet before pulling hard on the brake toggles and settling silently somewhere up on the bow.

  Pace was up and moving, fast but not running. The last thing he wanted to do was to run headlong into a situation. He thought about heading back down to the stateroom to retrieve his Sten gun, now beautifully restored and adapted by one of London’s finest gunsmiths so that it took modern 9mm ammunition in its clips and would fire reliably without being prone to the jams that gave the weapon such a bad reputation in the Second World War. It had been specially boarded away from prying eyes of customs officials, and now languished in a drawer under the bed, ready to use if needed.

  He didn’t have the time to get the gun, nor to alert anyone, and instead decided that he needed to get up to the bow as quickly and quietly as he could, then deal with the intruder himself.

  The clear, starry sky and bright moonlight offered him little by way of concealment either. Moving as quickly as he dared along the companionway, pressing his back hard against the cool metal walls of the ship as he did so, Pace reached the bow in less than a minute. To his complete surprise, the intruder stood out on the bow deck, in complete view, calmly stripping off the parachute harness, which dropped suddenly to the wooden deck, leaving the figure dressed only in a simple, dark material flight suit.

  Luck was smiling on Pace. The intruder had his back to him and he could not see any sign of a gun belt, or a knife. Just in case a weapon was due to make an imminent appearance, Pace took the instinctive decision to act and was running out across the deck, accelerating wildly, before his rational mind had time to reconsider the rashness of the move.

  He almost made it.

  Barely two feet separated them before the intruder sensed his approach and whirled on the spot to meet the attack. Finesse went out of the window as Pace hurled himself bodily forwards, crashing into the figure and sending them both sprawling backwards. Winded, Pace was up on his feet in a flash and drawing back his fist, ready to hammer it home into the rising face of his opponent when a shout sounded from behind him, accompanied by the heavy footfalls of several pairs of feet.

  ‘James! Stop! Stop!’

  Still intent on flattening the intruder, Pace paused long enough for the figure to stand up on groggy legs and suck in a deep lungful of warm sea air.

  ‘Yeah, James,’ wheezed a shockingly familiar voice. ‘How will I be able to enjoy the sunshine and a few cool beers if I’m covered in bruises?’

  ‘Max?’ Recognition immediately drained Pace of violent intentions and his balled fists dropped limply to his sides. ‘Max! What the hell are you doing here? And why the clandestine night drop? Wouldn’t it have been easier just to fly in tomorrow morning?’ He found himself laughing, as did Hammond, and the two men clasped hands, grinning broadly.

  ‘Since when have I ever done anything the boring way?’ Hammond asked.

  It was true. Max Hammond was a qualified accountant, who organised all the finances for the huge global concern that was the McEntire Corporation. He was also an experienced adventurer and headed up a great deal of the Corporation’s covert missions; at least until now. Completely devoid of body hair through acute alopecia, he was shorter than Pace but lithe and muscular, possessing strength and agility that he had developed over three decades of martial arts training and teaching. A genuine enigma, Pace had come to respect him and knew he was someone useful to have around in a tight spot. They had already become firm friends.

  ‘Thought I’d drop in and surprise you,’ Hammond chuckled softly, scooping up the parachute rig with expert hands and packing it back in its casing without sparing his fingers a second glance. He’d had to repack a chute, in enemy territory, in pitch darkness, on several occasions before. With the stars and moon bathing the bow deck in a silver glow, it would almost have seemed like cheating if he’d used his eyes. ‘McEntire wanted me to test out a new GPS guidance system for use with a HALO suit, so I decided a field test, somewhere warm, was called for.’ This time he laughed loudly.

  ‘That wasn’t a HALO jump,’ smiled Pace suspiciously, noting the absence of a protective, high-altitude pressure suit, or oxygen tank. ‘You must have tipped out below ten thousand feet to drop wearing a normal flight suit?’

  ‘True,’ Hammond conceded. ‘I only managed to test the accuracy from a standard jump height. Worked a treat, though. Led me down perfectly. The computer factored in changes in wind speed and direction of drift at the various altitudes brilliantly. And the new chute design gives an extra twenty percent distance on the normal wing. It was an amazing ride.’

  ‘Won’t the boss be a little miffed when he realises that you commandeered one of his aircraft as an excuse to gate crash my romantic cruise with his daughter?’

  ‘No,’ he threw open his hands innocently. ‘I know him well enough to push to the line, but not over it.’ Hammond was still smiling infectiously. ‘The plane was on a legitimate supply run down to Cape Town. The pilot only had to deviate a couple of hundred miles from his planned course to accommodate me, and it was a test that needed to be run. McEntire will understand.’

  ‘You hope.’

  ‘Yes, Max,’ came a soft, grumbling tone padding up from behind the assembled group. ‘You’d better hope that my father doesn’t think you’re just sneaking yourself in an extra holiday, paid for by him!’

  Sarah managed that rarest of feats of being able to rise from bed, in the early hours, throw on a pair of shorts and a crop top, smooth down her hair with her hands and still end up looking gorgeous, without the hint of make-up coming anywhere near her skin.

  ‘Ah, there’s a sight for sore eyes,’ Hammond said, hugging her so hard that she squealed for breath. ‘Makes throwing myself out of an aeroplane in the middle of the night suddenly all seem worthwhile.’

  ‘Flatterer,’ she chided. ‘It’s great to see you. Seriously though, does my father know you were coming down here?’

  ‘Of course not. Though it was actually his suggestion that I test out the equipment on a night jump, aiming for a moving target like a boat, or train. I agreed and he said he’d leave the details up to me. So, here I am. Surprise!’

  ‘Next time, tell me,’ complained Pace good-naturedly. ‘I might have killed you.’

  ‘I was more concerned that the coded messa
ge I sent through to the captain might not have reached him in time and that the ship’s Gatlin guns might have shredded me in mid-air. Luckily for me he seemed to have got the message and kept my secret. Would have hated to spoil the surprise.’

  Pace frowned. ‘For a moment, I thought you were a sinister figure somehow linked with that body we found.’

  ‘Body?’ Hammond’s ears pricked up and the atmosphere of relieved joviality was abruptly punctured.

  ‘Yep. Fished a corpse out of the water a few hours ago. Got him on ice down below,’ Pace explained. ‘Not nice.’

  ‘Dead bodies in the ocean are not uncommon,’ ventured Hammond seriously. ‘But you obviously suspect foul play, James. Why?’

  So Pace told him what had happened, starting with the background he’d learned from McEntire. Hammond let out an impressed whistle at the amount of gold involved. Slowly they all walked back to the lounge, where they fixed themselves some hot coffee.

  As Sarah, Pace and Hammond sipped at the hot liquid, the time was a little after two-thirty. The darkness pressing in on the wide expanse of glass around them lent the warm lamp light a soothing sense of security.

  ‘The body was too far out, and too fresh, to have been washed out this distance by a current, no matter how strong,’ Pace finished. ‘That body did not come from the shore. It probably came off a boat, and we’re way off the beaten track here.’

  ‘Any identification? Anything we can use to trace him? Come on, James. For all we know he’s some poor sap who had a few drinks too many and ended up falling off the back of his cruise ship.’

  ‘Possibly,’ conceded Pace, ‘but the body had multiple broken bones. Not what you’d expect from a simple fall overboard unless it was from a huge ship. And,’ he added drily, ‘this is the McEntire Corporation we’re talking about, come on. We’re down here sniffing around after tons of missing gold bullion and already someone is dead.’