“What are we paying you for again?” Demby asked with a smirk as they traipsed through the thicket.
“For what all big game outfitter guides are paid for: entertaining stories,” Jacobs replied.
“I haven’t heard one all day,” Hawk said.
“Well, why don’t you tell us one?” Demby said as he looked at Hawk.
Hawk found a log and sat down, gesturing for his hunting companions to do likewise.
“I was in Namibia hunting leopards once when we came upon one guarding its kill in the brush about eighty meters away,” Hawk began. “The tracker motioned for me to take a shot. But just as I lined everything up, the leopard darted farther into the brush. Apparently something was more interesting to him than his kill. So, I found a tree nearby and climbed up to get a better look. But I couldn’t quite determine what was happening. That’s when I realized one of our trackers, Dikimbe, was missing. Dikimbe had ventured into the brush to try and draw out the leopard—and Dikimbe succeeded, but at his own demise. The leopard charged the tracker and bit him on the neck, leaving Dikimbe for dead. However, in order to get a clearer shot, I needed to climb down from the tree. The second my boots hit the ground, the cat charged me. I dodged behind a tree and just missed his leap toward me. I then emptied several shots into him and dropped him right there.”
Demby chuckled. “You survived a leopard charge?”
Hawk nodded.
“Well, that’s a tall tale. Perhaps you should be a guide, Mr. Martin.”
Hawk held up his hand. “I swear it’s the truth.”
Everyone erupted into laugher, dishing out comments that suggested they didn’t believe him.
“What?” Hawk said. “You think I made that up?”
“I knew Kiwis were good at lying,” Demby said. “I just never knew how good.”
“I swear on my mother’s grave that it’s true.”
Demby studied Hawk. “Maybe so, but I’ve got a few other questions I want to ask you about. Come with me.”
***
FOR THE NEXT FIFTEEN MINUTES, Demby took Hawk away from the rest of the group and grilled him about his work experience.
“I hear you are an exporter,” Demby said.
“Who told you that?” Hawk asked.
“That’s not important. I’m more interested in your ability to export difficult items out of certain countries.”
Hawk smiled. “I haven’t been stumped yet.”
“How good are you?”
“Good enough to have never been caught.”
Demby laughed and slapped Hawk on the back. “You sound like my kind of man. Say, would you be interested in joining us tonight for a game of cards at The Errant Apostrophe’s?”
“I’d be delighted,” Hawk said.
His plan was already starting to take shape.
CHAPTER 23
THE SUN HAD ALMOST DISAPPEARED on the horizon when Demby returned to his office at Sefadu Holdings. He’d endured an unproductive day of hunting, though it wasn’t a complete waste of time. Despite not killing anything, he did manage to establish a rapport with Oliver Martin, the man he believed might be able to help expand his market distribution. But it was too early to tell anything.
His more immediate concern was making sure that he could get all of his illegal diamonds out of the country using SLAM as a cover. If Dr. Ackerman remained uninformed about the true contents of her latest shipment to South Sudan, everything would run smoothly. He could afford nothing less. Al Hasib took its institution of deadlines seriously—or more poignantly, they took deadlines literally.
After sorting through a few email messages from diamond consortiums in Antwerp, Demby decided to lock up for the evening and spend the rest of his night playing cards at The Errant Apostrophe’s. However, his plans were delayed when he turned the key in the deadbolt and skipped down the steps—where he was met by one of his foremen and Dr. Alissa Ackerman.
“I tried to stop her, boss,” the foreman said. “She wouldn’t listen to me.”
A wry smile spread across Demby’s face as he addressed his foreman. “Don’t feel bad. She doesn’t listen to anybody.” Then he looked at Ackerman. “So, what’s this all about?”
“I think I should be the one asking you that question,” she said and proceeded to hold up a small plastic bag that held about a dozen small diamonds. “I found this in the latest shipment I was preparing for South Sudan. Care to explain what’s going on here?”
“It’s not what it seems,” Demby said. “I’m sure someone dropped it in your supplies by accident.”
“People don’t accidentally drop diamonds worth millions of dollars in my outbound medical supply shipment. And your workers especially don’t do it.”
“Believe it or not, accidents do happen here,” he said as he took the bag from her. “I’ll look into it.”
She crossed her arms and glared at him. “Yesterday you were willing to let all those men die because it might affect your deadline. And now today you pull this stunt. This isn’t a couple of anomalies; this is a trend. And it disgusts me.”
Demby shooed the foreman away with the back of his hand. When Demby felt confident the man was out of earshot, he leaned in close to Ackerman.
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll look the other way and go about your business of saving people’s lives.”
“Saving people’s lives? Saving people’s lives? You think that’s enough to make me turn a blind eye to what you’re doing? By smuggling these to God knows who, I doubt you’re helping the situation. In fact, I’d be willing to bet everything that you’re making it worse.”
“Perhaps you’re right, but without them, you couldn’t do the good you do.”
“Without them, I might not have to.” She puffed her chest out and put her hands on her hips, doing her best to look tough. “This ends today.”
Demby chuckled and looked her up and down. “Is that supposed to scare me?” Without waiting for an answer, he pulled out his pistol and pointed it at her head. “This ends when I say it does. Is that clear?”
She nodded and swallowed hard. However, she couldn’t hold her tongue. “But just to be clear, just because you ask me if that’s clear doesn’t mean I’m going to go along with it.”
He cocked the gun and jammed it into her temple. “Don’t get too sassy with me. You aren’t vital to my operation.”
“Apparently I am, because I’m still here.”
“Maybe not for long if you keep up this pace.”
She cut her eyes over at the gun barrel. “I’d remove that if I were you. My lawyer has instructions to release some interesting documents to the world if I should ever die.”
Demby jammed his gun into her head even harder, so much so that her entire head tilted to one side.
“You got guts, woman. I’ll give you that. But it’s the kind of guts that will get you killed.”
He dismissed her. Fifteen minutes ago, he would’ve sworn that no problem he ever had would’ve ever been bigger than failing to deliver for Al Hasib.
He was wrong.
Dr. Ackerman was his biggest problem at the moment. But the situation could change. He’d make sure of it.
CHAPTER 24
ALEX STORMED INTO BLUNT’S OFFICE, pushing her way past his secretary. She flung an envelope at him and slumped into a chair. Propping her feet up on his desk, she nodded toward her special delivery.
“Go on,” she said. “Open it. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”
Blunt stormed around the room and closed the door behind him. “I thought I told you not to come to my office again. This is a practice that needs to end right now.”
“Sorry, Senator, but this is the kind of conversation you can’t have properly on the phone. I need to see your face when you open that envelope and see what’s inside.”
He sat down behind his desk and picked up the envelope. He shook it for a second.
“For all this drama, I would’ve suspected that this rig
ht here would’ve weighed considerably more.”
“I’m not interested in your suppositions right now—only the truth about what’s inside.”
He glowered at her and then cut his eyes toward her feet, which were still perched on the end of his desk. “Do you mind?”
She slid her feet off his desk and let them hit the floor with a loud thud. Sitting upright, she clasped her hands together and rested them in her lap. “There. Happy now?”
Blunt pulled a letter opener out of his top right desk drawer and methodically worked the knife across the the envelope. Once he finished, he blew onto the envelope in order to flare out the sides and make it easier to pluck the contents. He pulled out the picture.
Blunt’s eyes widened slightly.
“Well, this isn’t what I expected?”
“What? Did you figure I unearthed some other secret?”
He forced a smile. “You don’t get into the position I’m in without keeping a few secrets, both others' and your own.”
She leaned forward and pointed at the picture in Blunt’s hands. “So, what kind of secret is this?”
“There are some things it’s just best you don’t know about.”
“Yeah, yeah. Plausible deniability. Please spare me. I want to know what’s going right now.”
He stood up. “Let’s take a walk.”
Blunt led Alex down the hall and outside. After they were a few hundred meters clear of the building, he finally spoke. “I apologize for the security measures, but you must understand that I can’t be too careful.”
She looked straight ahead at a woman pushing her daughter in a stroller. Once upon a time, a normal family was the life she wanted. That was before she found out how the world worked and decided she wanted to be an active participant instead of a passive bystander. She suddenly had a feeling she was about to discover again that it didn’t work the way she thought it did.
“I’d rather you apologize for keeping me in the dark about what I really joined up to.” She continued watching the mother toil as she pushed the carriage along.
“Firestorm still is—and always has been—the special ops program that I told you it was when I recruited you to work for it. Nothing has changed.”
“Then who do you work for? Because not a single person in that photo other than you is in our facial recognition database.”
“That’s because I had them scrubbed.”
“You? You had them scrubbed? Who are they, Senator? Who are you working with?”
Blunt steepled his hands, touching the tips of his forefingers to his lips. He took a deep breath before he spoke. “What I’m about to tell you may get us both killed, but I’d rather me tell you so you’ll drop it instead of ending up dead in a back alley somewhere.”
“I can handle myself.”
He nodded slowly. “I’m aware of that, but if these people wanted you dead, you’d be dead.”
“I get it. They’re powerful. What’s this all about?”
“I’m part of an international alliance of powerful men and women called The Chamber. Firestorm is a legitimate black ops group, but I’m tasked with using my assets in the field to help, among other things, eliminate targets that might be less than desirable if they gain substantial power.”
“So, what? Are we talking about dignitaries, terrorists, business leaders? Who are your main targets?”
He sighed. “Yes.”
“What do you mean, yes?”
“I mean all of them. Anyone who might potentially gain too much power before they ascend to unreachable heights could be eliminated.”
“And The Chamber acts as some type of curator for good?”
“Something like that.”
Alex shook her head. “What gives you the right to determine this? Who do you think you are?”
“Alex, dear, it’s no different than what you do every day. You want to see good triumph over evil. So does The Chamber. They just have the resources to manipulate the ending.”
“How old is this organization?”
“They’ve been around for a long time.”
“And yet the world has still seen evil the likes of say, Adolf Hitler, rise to power under their watch?”
“The Chamber tried to assassinate him on more than one occasion. Unfortunately, one of its operatives didn’t succeed until there had been far too much innocent blood shed.”
Alex eyed him closely. “Hitler committed suicide.”
“Were you there?” He chuckled. “The Chamber likes to remain invisible, which is why you’ve never heard of it until just now. But you’ll never hear about them. When you work well in the shadows, you stay there. You understand this, don’t you?”
She ignored his question. “And what happens if The Chamber gains too much power? Who’s going to stop them?”
“The Chamber’s mission isn’t to gain power but to assure that it rests in the hands of well-meaning men and women.”
“So, the prime minister of Denmark, Liam Jepsen, isn’t a well-intentioned leader?”
Blunt stared at her, mouth agape. “How do you know about that?”
Alex winked at him. “I’m deeply familiar with the art of espionage, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“Not all of our missions are affiliated with The Chamber,” Blunt said, sidestepping her question. “In fact, most of them aren’t. Most of what we do is about keeping this country safe and looking out for the best interests of our allies.”
“So, who are all those people in that photo with you?”
“It’s best that you don’t know. But you’re going to have to trust me on this.”
Alex said nothing as she tried to grapple with what she’d just learned.
Blunt pointed at the woman who’d been pushing a stroller. She was now seated on a bench and nursing her baby. “That right there is why we do this. There are innocent people in this world who need to be protected. Without people like you and me, the world would be a far more dangerous place.”
Studying the woman for a moment, Alex wondered if maybe that was the life for her and she’d been pursuing the wrong thing all this time.
He put his hands on Alex’s shoulders and turned her directly in front of him. They locked eyes.
“Alex, you’re damn good at what you do—and what you do matters to millions of people. They may not see it, but I promise you that you’re on the right side in this war we fight in the shadows. You keep doing what you can to keep Hawk informed and safe out there, and I’ll make sure that none of it is ever in vain. Deal?”
She nodded and started to turn away before he spoke again. “One more thing.”
She turned toward him. “What is it, sir?”
“What did you find out about the feeds?”
“They were hacked. I had a friend look into them. Said a hacker named Bare Bones was responsible.”
“And do you know where to find this Bare Bones character?”
“No, but I’ll do some digging. Just know that it might be a few weeks. Hackers are only as good as their ability to remain anonymous.”
“And this one must be pretty good, I imagine.”
She nodded. “One of the best.”
“Thanks, Alex.”
They parted ways, leaving in opposite directions.
Alex glanced back at the woman who was now making funny faces at her daughter and bouncing her up and down.
She wanted to believe Blunt for both her sake and all of those nameless and faceless people that he'd mentioned. She stopped trusting people a long time ago, and she still wasn’t sure what she thought about Blunt’s passionate speech.
She determined right there that she was going to find out who those people were and what their true agenda was—even if it killed her.
CHAPTER 25
HAWK FINISHED HIS BEER and closely watched Visser for his poker “tell." With an average hand, Hawk would have no better than a fifty-fifty chance of winning. Almost everyone at the table would make riverboat gambler
s question their own bravado in less than two hands into a game. For that reason, Hawk struggled to determine who the bluffers were and who weren’t. He needed more time to decide, time which he didn’t have.
“Fold,” Hawk said as he pushed away from the table.
“What? You fold?” Visser said, mocking Hawk. “The man who could shoot a fly off a moving elephant’s tail from eight hundred meters is going to bail?”
“Knowing when to fold is how you stay alive,” Hawk said with a wink.
Visser looked down at his hand and then back up at Hawk. “In poker? Or life?”
“My advice is universal.”
Hawk’s exit from the table left only Visser and Soto to battle it out. Hawk wandered toward the bar where Demby was nursing a bottle of Star, Sierra Leone’s most popular beer.
“Is that any good?” Hawk asked.
Demby smiled. “Better than drinking the water if you’re a foreigner.”
“I thought beer was always better than water, no matter what country.”
“Now that is a fact, my friend.”
Hawk motioned for the bartender and ordered a Star.
“Did your mine survive without you today?” Hawk asked.
“Probably did better without me.”
“Yesterday was quite a challenge. I’m glad everyone survived.”
“Thanks to you and Dr. Ackerman.”
The bartender popped the top off a bottle of Star and then slid it to Hawk.
“She’s quite stroppy.”
Demby furrowed his brow. “Stroppy?”
“It’s a Kiwi word. But you know—feisty, tough.”
“Ah,” Demby said while he nodded. “That I know. She is indeed.”
Demby held up his bottle and clinked it with Hawk’s. “Cheers, mate.”
Hawk smiled. “Cheers.”
“So, Mr. Martin, I have a problem and was wondering if you could help me solve it.”
“How can I be of assistance?”
“I understand that you are in the export business.”
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