SKELETON GOLD: Scorpion (James Pace novels Book 3)

by Andy Lucas

  ‘There has been no progress locating the old scientific base, I’m afraid,’ added Fiona. She knew that was the next question Josephine would ask. ‘Apart from the initial vials of the agent that were discovered with the body, we are no closer to finding it.’

  ‘Do we have any leads? Any idea where to look?’

  ‘The information your uncle passed on to you allowed us to identify a very rough area where it could have been,’ Fiona repeated what they both already knew. ‘It gave us an error margin of a couple of hundred miles though.’

  ‘Which is why we leased this piece of land from Varner in the first place,’ agreed Josephine. ‘We built our first facility here so we could search, while we set our larger plan into motion.’

  ‘The diary was a gift,’ Fiona added. ‘It narrowed the search area down to a parcel of land about ten miles square, and gave us clear information about where to look for the submarine’’

  Josephine knew it all. She had been unhappy when the narrowed coordinates turned out to be nearly eighty miles up the coast, north of the facility, but she had hired a team of people who had been searching hard for weeks.

  ‘I hope they find it soon,’ she warned. ‘We need to obtain more samples of the agent?’

  ‘Scorpion, you mean.’

  Josephine’s stern glare lightened a little. ‘These military types do like to label their pet projects with interesting names. Whatever it’s called, we need more.’

  ‘I am sure we will find the base soon. If we’re lucky, we will find more of the agent.’

  ‘Which we can use to clear any human and animal inhabitants out of vast areas of bush,’ nodded Josephine grimly. ‘A naturally occurring disease, with no risk to ARC. It is ideal.’

  Fiona was the only other person privy to all the secrets of Josephine’s plans. Trusted friend, her loyalty was unquestionable. It didn’t hurt that she was also paid a very large salary.

  ‘It is possible that we won’t find any more vials inside the base, when we do track it down,’ ventured Fiona. ‘The diary clearly speaks of the exchange already taking place before the submarine was lost. We will definitely find a supply inside the submarine, so we must speed up our efforts to locate it too.’

  ‘We have booked the survey vessel that we need. It will be on station next week,’ said Josephine.

  It had cost her a pretty penny to re-task it from its current assignment but the operator has been swayed by the thought of a long-term surveying contract with ARC. With plans for a couple more coastal desalination sites, each one requiring detailed topographical and sonar surveys, dumping their current client made good business sense.

  Josephine dismissed Fiona with a wave of her hand and sat back in her chair to consider everything. Her assistant had been right to say that finding the diary had been a gift, as if fate had suddenly decided to smile on her.

  When the desiccated corpse of a long-lost British submariner had been uncovered in the shifting desert sands by an elderly nomad, he had foolishly decided to take the body back to the nearest town to report it.

  Normally he would have just left it to rest but the body had a number of strange glass vials and an old diary with it. Thinking it might be worth a reward of some kind, as well as keenly aware of the right of a family to know the fate of the deceased, he had managed to wrestle it up onto one of his pack camels. It took the man a week to reach the nearest town, a dustbowl called Aakra.

  The lone police officer who took receipt of the body was always looking for a way to enhance his meagre earnings. After checking the nomad’s story and cross-referencing it against a map, he discovered that the ARC facility was near to where the body had been found, so he gave them a call to see if it was of any interest to them. He couldn’t have been more delighted with their response. They were so grateful that they were going to pay him five thousand US dollars for his trouble.

  Breaking all protocol, which wasn’t anything unusual in far-flung Namibian settlements, a couple of people had flown in from the facility in a helicopter and been allowed to view, search and generally rifle the corpse. The money had been in cash, so the police officer concerned himself little with allowing the visitors to keep two glass vials of clear liquid found with the body.

  He would have let them take the diary too but at some point while manhandling the body, it had fallen and lodged beneath one of the old desks in the small mortuary, located at the rear of the police station. It was only found again much later, after the visitors had left.

  By then, thinking it worthless, he had officially entered it into a paper record and sent it off to the nearest large town for processing and investigation with the body.

  Paperwork filed, the officer promptly forgot all about it and got on with his life, which sadly for him turned out to be very short. Little over a week after the body had been despatched to the main town, his own lifeless corpse was discovered slumped in a chair in the small police station, victim of what appeared to be a premature heart attack.

  There were no injuries on the body and a family history of heart disease ensured that no investigation was bothered with. He was quickly buried in the family plot and mourned. The dirty facts surrounding ARC’s involvement with the submariner’s corpse died with him.

  Suddenly aware of a need to return to civilisation, Josephine made up her mind to take a brief vacation.

  She packed a small case herself and was soon whisked by helicopter to a private airfield she’d had built a few miles inland. The dunes had been levelled and compacted two years earlier, at the start of the construction phase of the plant.

  A concrete runway, over two thousand feet in length, had allowed heavy transport planes to come and go with ease. It now served as her private airfield, boasting a small hanger to house her three Lear jets, its own underground fuel tank and a small brick building, serving as a departure lounge.

  She transferred to one of her jets; a Learjet 45XR, that sped her across the Atlantic Ocean and deposited her in Miami a few hours later. The jet would stay at the airport, on standby, for whenever she felt the whim to return to Africa.

  A limousine then ferried her to the luxurious, gated mansion that she owned, with its own private beach. She had left Fiona in charge at the facility so she knew there would be no problems there. She could take a few days to relax, enjoy her wealth and plan her next move.

  The rear patio was wide and comprised of beautiful herring-bone paving, in a delightful shade of lavender. It overlooked a breathtaking view of an immaculately-kept formal garden, complete with freeform swimming pool and hot tub, all set against a backdrop of an azure ocean and empty, powder-white sand.

  As Josephine settled herself on a sun lounger, sipping at a glass of pineapple juice, she should have been able to start relaxing. Unfortunately, the image of James Pace kept popping into her mind to irritate her.

  She tried, unsuccessfully, to push her concerns aside before giving up on sunbathing for a while, instead heading back inside where she picked up the telephone and dialled a familiar number.

  The female voice on the other end instantly recognised the anxiety in her boss’s voice. She knew enough to say nothing and just allow Josephine to speak, as their previous conversation resumed in earnest.

  ‘James Pace is going to be a problem for us. Any more information on him yet?’

  ‘The McEntire Corporation is heavily involved in the production of some of the technology we use at the facility,’ soothed Fiona. ‘It makes sense that they might want to come and see it in action.’

  ‘No!’ snapped Josephine. ‘The timing was too damned convenient.’ Then, more quietly. ‘I didn’t give it a lot of thought at the time but I wonder if they know something, or think they do.’

  ‘What could they know?’

  ‘That’s just it. There is a lot that they could discover if they dig deeply enough. I can’t allow that. I must know more.’

  ‘There is plenty of information on Google,’ Fiona retorted. When her boss did not repl
y, she continued. ‘As far as I know, it is a hugely successful global company. Doyle McEntire has many friends, in very high places, all over the world. He is a true business icon. His company seems to have avoided some of the financial and political pitfalls that have rocked his rivals over the years but that’s because he is known to be an astute operator. There has never been any suggestion that it is anything other than a strong, legitimate company.’

  ‘Seems too good to be true,’ Josephine countered testily, instantly regretting it. She only had a few trusted lieutenants and she could ill afford to alienate them. Not yet.

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘So you will look into it? Not just Pace and his cronies but the whole damned thing?’

  ‘Of course.’ Josephine heard Fiona catch her breath on the other end of the call. There was an ominous silence.

  ‘What is it? What’s up?’

  ‘I sent a request to security to run a trace on the McEntire team’s whereabouts. The report has just popped up on my email.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘We know they were aboard one of the McEntire Corporation’s ocean fleet, a luxury cruiser called the Sea Otter. I just wanted to check where they came from, before they got into our neck of the woods,’ she explained, her voice steady.

  ‘I’m not going to like this, am I?’ predicted Josephine.

  ‘Afraid not, no.’ Fiona knew they were in trouble now, as she scanned further down the detail of the email. ‘They sailed to us from a position seventy miles up the coast from our facility, which would put them right in the search area for the K-45, and the scientific base. They sailed directly there from Gibraltar, where the ship is based.’

  ‘They know about the base, perhaps even about the gold,’ spat Josephine angrily. ‘Why else would they have been nosing around in that exact area? That is more than just a coincidence.’

  ‘I agree with you. They must have had a reason to sail directly there.’

  They discussed the issue for a few minutes more. Had the McEntire Corporation obtained a copy of the diary somehow, or discovered other information that had led them to that spot? Did they suspect what ARC was planning?

  ‘Listen carefully,’ Josephine made a decision. ‘I cannot risk our plans. I want James Pace, and his friends, out of the picture, quickly.’

  ‘How far out of the picture?’

  Josephine Roche’s tone was dripping with venom. ‘Permanently. Just like Varner and Lefevre.’ She added, ‘I am getting straight back on the plane. Relaxation will have to wait.’

  16

  The desert sands looked the same as they had done nearly a century before. The ocean sat a few hundred metres away from them, dazzling and alive; sparkling and dancing confidently beneath the merciless glare of a ferocious sun. A cloudless sky was as lifeless as the parched land, not a bird or insect in sight. Truly this was a desolate spot, thought Smith glumly. He had been on this job for over two months already, searching for some old military base that was likely to have been buried beneath ten feet of shifting sand years ago and was now lost forever. Although he hated wasting his time, the pay was very good and he was running his own show this time. Normally just a hired gun, his current employer had given him an important brief, assigned him a dozen mercenaries, and let him loose on the Skeleton Coast.

  There was nobody around for miles. The nearest village was at least a four hour drive away by truck, or Land Rover, if you managed to traverse the treacherous terrain carefully, avoiding deep sand, hidden gulleys and unstable dunes.

  Smith and his team had combed this area for days, using a mixture of satellite imagery, portable ground penetrating radar units, metal detectors and good, old-fashioned footwork but to no avail. They had hit a couple of promising signals, only to find the remains of a downed aircraft and a small fishing boat, both completely buried to a depth of five feet. How could they find what they sought? Smith only knew to carry on doing his job until the boss told him to stop.

  But today would prove to be far from another waste of time. They were moving to an area slightly further inland than they had covered so far, where the satellite pictures showed a suggestion of straight lines beneath the surface sand. Nature rarely made anything in straight lines but he was fully prepared for it to be another red herring. So he was genuinely surprised when the initial metal detector surveys came back with very strong results, far more powerful than anything they had hit for days. Probably just another buried metal shipwreck, he thought.

  With shovels, three of his men started to attack an area that had registered a particularly powerful metal signature, easily shifting the sand until their tools struck the target with a familiar clang of metal on metal. At first glance it appeared to be just a length of iron girder and Smith felt his initial optimism fade but as the men cleared away more of the sand, parallel girders and iron crossbeams saw their first rays of sunlight for a century. Smith’s heart leaped and he hurriedly pulled out his paper checklist related to the old base. Yep, there it was. A railway track, running from the base to an ocean jetty, used for launching a small boat!

  He gathered his men together, unable to stop smiling. Not only did this mean that the days of failure were behind him but that his boss would be pleased. In his line of work, a happy boss usually equated to a fat bonus.

  The job was now a simple one. All they had to do was dig out the railway track, heading inland. According to his information, it should lead them to a boathouse. From there, they could easily identify the other buried buildings using the ground-penetrating radar, sweeping out in increasing circles until they had the entire base mapped. Then it was just as case of digging, sweeping and seeing what secrets came to light.

  Two days later, the once top secret facility had been located and teams of men worked around the clock to remove the tons of sand that had accumulated over the past century.

  Progress was slower than Smith had hoped because his boss had refused his request to fly in some heavy equipment to speed up the dig. His orders were specific. Clear it all by hand, carefully. All the sand had to be sifted to ensure that nothing was missed and be was NOT allowed to enter any of the buildings after they had been dug free from the sand. When it was time to enter, he would be given new instructions.

  On the plus side, his team had swollen to forty men who made short work of the task. Smith was amazed at how much sand could be dug out, sifted and then carted off-site without the help of machinery. The buildings, made from prefabricated concrete blocks, were perfectly preserved, with their glass windows still all intact. The final shovel-load was sifted just before midnight on the third day after they discovered the railway track and Smith turned in for the night with a glass of Bushmills whiskey to celebrate.

  His employer was flying in personally the next morning to take charge of the site so he would be finally free of the desert. A luxurious hotel suite was now so close he could almost taste it.

  Dawn broke with a haunting orange tinge that added a sense of peaceful surrealism to the empty landscape. The base sat in stark contrast to the bleakness that surrounded it, appearing as if it could still be operating, with all the sand cleared away, even its once well-trodden courtyard lay exposed to the rising heat once more. Nothing moved except a couple of yawning, weary guards who patrolled the perimeter with the lacklustre attitude of men who felt they were wasting their time. Automatic weapons hung loosely at their sides, dangling disdainfully on their shoulder straps.

  Inside large tents, the rest of the men slept soundly, exhausted by their recent labours. They were soon roused from their dreams by the thumping of distant rotor blades, growing louder until a large Chinook hove into view above the far dunes and swept overhead, its powerful downwash buffeting the canvas walls and threatening to blow the tents away. Men were suddenly up and alert, gathering their few belongings as they prepared themselves to leave for civilisation.

  Smith watched the squat helicopter complete another full circle of the base, and camp, before it began to slowl
y descend. The Chinook was an easy helicopter to recognise even though this one was far removed from a military workhorse. Converted as an executive helicopter, it gleamed with red and white bodywork. The few windows were tinted and offered privacy to the occupants.

  Touching down in the base courtyard amidst a self-generated sandstorm, the eighteen metre twin blades began to slow as the pilot eased off the power from its twin 3750 horsepower Honeywell engines. As the maelstrom finally subsided, Smith stepped forward, ready to greet his paymaster.

  For her part, Josephine Roche was excited to see the old base flash below her as she ordered the pilot to make a couple of low passes. She wanted to see everything and was surprised to note the old prefab buildings in such good condition, which boded well for what she hoped to find inside. She had only flown back in two nights before, having been told of the discovery as she was mid-flight across the Atlantic.

  Next to her, as always, sat the reassuringly muscular bulk of her personal assistant. Nash and Garner were two tough, flinty-eyed mercenaries who were also aboard, acting as her bodyguards. The camp was already well supplied with mercenaries and weaponry but Josephine liked to have some extra insurance whenever she went into the field, which wasn’t often. The pilot and co-pilot completed the crew.

  The ramp exit at the rear hummed open, dropping at a sedate pace until it crunched with finality against the sand. Smith stepped around to the rear and allowed himself a moment to marvel at the luxurious fittings now visible. Fitted out like a luxurious lounge, the grey leather sofas, deep charcoal carpet and wall-to-wall teak furnishings screamed wealth.

  Wafting down the carpeted ramp, Josephine was flanked by her bodyguards. They reached the foot of the ramp in a single fluid movement, at which point Smith extended a sweating palm.

  ‘Miss Roche, it is very good to finally meet you. Can I offer you a cool drink or would you like to move straight over to inspect the buildings? Nothing has been touched inside. The doors remain sealed, as per your instructions.’