African Ice

by Jeff Buick

  “What armaments are you taking into the Congo?”

  “We’ve detailed a list that will give us flexibility under differing conditions. We’ll take in a few Remington 12/26 modified 12 gauges, and some Remington Vent Rib Rangers are good for close-in jungle stuff. I prefer Smith & Wesson handguns. We’ve got a few AirLite Titanium M337s, and a couple of the new model that Smith & Wesson and Walther cooperated on—the SW 99.40. And a Daisy 600.”

  “You’re taking a sniper rifle?” Sam asked. “I can understand the shotguns and the revolvers, but the Daisy 600 is a sniper rifle. What do you need that for?”

  “I used to be a Boy Scout, Ms. Carlson. You know their motto.” He tried not to show it, but he was surprised and impressed by her knowledge of guns.

  Samantha turned to Kerrigan. “Mr. McNeil seems to know what he’s doing. If the rest of his team are equally qualified, they’re quite acceptable.” She paused for a moment, then continued. “I’ll need a spectrometer. The one that can perform laser ablation to determine trace elements. And I’ll need a copy of that report you got from the RCMP.”

  “I’ll have photocopies of the file made up for you.” He paused for a moment. “Are you sure you need a spectrometer? It’ll take some doing to get one away from the Canadian police.”

  “I need that machine to test the trace elements in any diamonds we find near Butembo. If the tests match, we’ll know we’re onto the same vein of the diamonds in your safe. If they don’t, we’ve missed it. And we have to be careful, because there could be alluvial diamonds kicking around. I want to be sure we have it before I send the location back through the GPS systems.”

  Kerrigan nodded in agreement. “Good point. I’ll get on it. Anything else?”

  “What is the possibility of getting a helicopter to recon the mountains east of Butembo?” she asked. “Can we charter one to fly overhead and take a few aerial shots?”

  “I suppose, but it’s dense jungle. You can’t see anything but treetops.”

  “The canopy can tell stories,” she said. “If you can confirm a chopper is available, I’d also like a BritPix. It’s a camera you can attach to an aircraft that gives you 360-degree spherical imaging. If we can arrange for the surface scans to be transmitted to us on the ground, I can use various filters to look for differences in the vegetation. It will be useful in establishing the existence of a pipe.”

  “What’s a pipe?” Travis asked.

  She smiled. The ex-SEAL didn’t know everything. “It’s a geological term for an outcrop of denser rock that hasn’t eroded over the millennia at the same rate at the surrounding rocks. It may not stick up high enough to see above the rainforest canopy, but the vegetation that grows on it may vary enough to see the difference. It’s a long shot, but it’ll give us an area to start in, rather than just combing the area in a grid.”

  “Who’s the manufacturer?” Kerrigan asked.

  “Britannia 2000 Limited. The company’s head office is in Berkshire, U.K. There’s been a lot of talk around the industry about this machine. We think it has incredible potential for exactly this purpose. It’s fairly new; they just began production a couple of years ago.”

  “That could take some time, Sam,” Kerrigan said, writing down the information she gave him.

  “Then I guess how quickly we leave depends on you, Patrick,” she answered.

  “Of course, you’re right. I’ll get on it.”

  “What’s the size of the team?” she asked the team leader.

  “Myself, and three other . . .” He paused for a moment. “. . . mercenaries. Ex-SEALs, all of us. We’ll pick up a dozen or so locals to help pack the equipment east from Butembo. And you, of course.”

  “We can fly directly into Butembo?” she asked hopefully.

  He looked uneasy. “No. Our route in will be complex. The munitions must come in through Kinshasa, the capital of the Congo. There’s no way we could bring that stuff in through Rwanda.”

  “No one mentioned Rwanda. Why are you bringing it up now?” Sam asked.

  “The team is going in through Kigali, the capital of Rwanda.” Travis saw the color draining from Sam’s face, and hurried to explain. “It’s closer. Kigali is only a hundred sixty miles from Butembo. Kinshasa is almost a thousand miles to the southwest of Butembo. The entire trip from Kinshasa is over the Congo River basin. It’s too dangerous.”

  “And you think Kigali is a nice place?” she asked him, memories of time spent there coming back to her.

  “I’ve been to Kigali. It’s a nightmare. But I’d rather take my chances with a day or two in the city than a four-hour plane flight over the Congolese rain forest.”

  Sam looked nervous. “Can we fly into Butembo from Kigali?” she asked. “I’m certain there’s a small airport on the south side of the town.”

  “You might as well advertise in the local newspaper that we’re looking for something new. Flying into Kigali won’t raise any eyebrows, but heading directly into Butembo would raise red flags. You’d have diggers and scavengers all over you within hours. When you land in Kigali, inform the customs officials you’re looking for highland gorillas rather than diamonds. Mentioning diamonds can trigger people to do stupid things, like following you into the jungle and killing you when you find the vein. I may not have led a mining expedition before, but I know these people. I know how desperate they are.” His tone was serious, his message very clear. Sometimes the truth only got you into trouble. “We’ll travel in Land Rovers from Kigali to the Ruwenzori Mountains.”

  She turned to Kerrigan. “What’s our budget? Cash in our jeans?”

  “Two million, five hundred thousand, with a line of credit at the National Congolese Bank for another five hundred.”

  “Signing authority?”

  “You and Travis McNeil, together or separately.”

  “Who will be meeting us in Kigali?” she asked.

  “Our military contact in the Congo has arranged for an escort to get you safely out of Kigali. Four men, all highly trained and loyal to their commanding officer.”

  “And their commanding officer is?”

  “Colonel Nathan Mugumba. He’s reliable—we’ve had dealings with him before. He’s well schooled, spent almost five years in the Boston area in an undergraduate program. He speaks and writes impeccable English, which makes communication a lot easier than dealing with the regional dialects. We’ll leave Rwanda and enter the Congo at the Gisenyi-Goma border crossing. Mugumba himself will provide a small military escort from the border to Butembo.” Sam nodded. The plan was not appealing, but Kerrigan was obviously well organized. “Whom do we report back to?”

  “You’ll relay all information back to me, personally. This entire operation is very tight-lipped, and I’d like to keep it that way. You report only to me.”

  “What is your position with Gem-Star?” she asked, suddenly aware that she had no idea.

  “President,” he said.

  “But not CEO?” she asked.

  He stared at her, his eyes searching, but not finding what they were looking for. “No, Ms. Carlson, I’m not the chief executive officer of the company. That title is held by Davis Perth, grandson of the founder.”

  “Some people are just born into it, aren’t they?”

  Patrick Kerrigan rose from his chair, this time extending his hand to her. “I’ll make sure you have your spectrometer, Ms. Carlson, in addition to any other equipment that would be considered standard. Take care; I’ll be in touch later this week.”

  “Thanks. And please have your accounting department make the initial check out to Samantha, not Sam. The bank still thinks anything made out to Sam is for my father.”

  “As you wish.”

  Sam left the office and the building. She glanced about her as she walked, taking in the cityscape—the concrete jungle. It was widely known to be dangerous and difficult to live in New York. It was a cakewalk compared to what lay ahead—the real jungle. Butembo bordered the equatorial rain forest, and t
o the east it was solid jungle to the base of the Ruwenzori Mountains. On her previous visit she had hiked in a few miles, just to get the feel. It was eerie moving about the ancient forest, surrounded by multitudes of rare and exotic species. And dangerous. The smaller creatures had more enemies, and therefore better defense systems, often poison. The larger animals could simply eat you.

  Her mind drifted back to Travis McNeil. He intrigued her. His demeanor was calculated and wary, but she suspected a very different man would emerge once they were on the go. He had never led a mining expedition before, so the chances were good that this was his first business arrangement with Patrick Kerrigan. She had a sixth sense that Travis didn’t trust Kerrigan. She could understand why, because she didn’t trust him either.

  He troubled her, but she couldn’t put her finger on why. He came across as a consummate businessman, professional and organized. The firm was successful, and he had achieved the leadership of the company without being born into it. Davis Perth, the CEO, had been born with a silver spoon, and that obviously riled Kerrigan. It didn’t take a master’s in psychology to pick up his body language when she had made the comment in his office. Kerrigan didn’t like playing second fiddle. And he had proven his tenacity by bouncing back from a disastrous divorce and rebuilding his financial net worth to sixty million. Quite a feat.

  But Patrick Kerrigan was the least of her worries right now. In the next few weeks her skills as a geologist would be tested under the most rigorous conditions. Her ability to survive the deceit of the diamond traders, the corruptness of the military, the constant threat of disease, and the perils of the jungle were foremost in her mind. She swallowed hard as full reality hit her.

  She was going back to Africa.

  THREE

  Travis McNeil swung his 330xi into a parking stall at the end of the strip mall and locked the car. The trip from Manhattan to Hoboken, via the Holland Tunnel, had been a nightmare. Some idiot had slid the front end of his Porsche under a five-ton delivery truck and the tunnel traffic backed up, causing him to be half an hour late for his meeting. Still, the advantages of having this place in Hoboken, only two blocks from the dock he used to load his gear onto oceangoing ships, far outweighed the occasional problem crossing the Hudson.

  A menswear store took the last two commercial spaces in the complex, and he entered, nodding to the desk clerk. He moved through the retail space into the storage area, around a few racks of hanging suits, to a steel door in the rear. The handle had a box attached with five buttons. He punched in the code and the door opened, exposing stairs leading to the basement. He took the stairs, ignoring the heating and cooling systems to his right, and faced the wall to the left. Just in front of him, a natural gas meter was anchored to the wall. He grasped the glass housing and twisted. Ten feet to his left, a portion of the wall opened, revealing a hidden room. He replaced the housing to its original position, and entered.

  The room was twenty by thirty feet, and well lit. Scores of boxes of differing sizes and shapes lined the walls. The markings indicated they were filled with men’s shirts, socks, underwear, and belts. None of them were. Three men sat at a table in the midst of the boxes, and McNeil greeted them as he sat down.

  “Alain, everything okay with our communications?” he asked the balding, late-thirties man who sat across from him.

  Alain Porter, communications expert with Team Six for his entire eight-year tenure, nodded. He was not a large man, only five-nine in height, and barely more than one seventy pounds, and the best electronics expert the SEALs had ever produced. There wasn’t a system he couldn’t hack into, jam, or recalibrate. More than once, Porter’s knowledge of electronics had saved their skins by reestablishing downed communications with their extraction team.

  “All set.” He smiled, his thin lips pulling back over teeth that were one size too large for his mouth. “The GPS system is packed, ready to go. I’ve tested it extensively—no glitches. Smiths Industries makes a NAVPAC unit that has integrated GPS and inertial systems. Once we’re in the rain forest, we can pinpoint exactly where we are without a break in the canopy. We’re relying strictly on satellite information, not topography.”

  “Samantha Carlson wants to send a chopper up to take video footage of the canopy. Can your gear receive the aerial footage it shoots?”

  “Absolutely,” Alain said. “The NAVPAC has a twelve gigabyte memory. Whoever’s in the chopper can send them to us in a compressed pulse or real-time.”

  “Which is better?” Travis asked.

  “Either way is fine,” Alain responded. “The first few times the chopper goes out, it would be best to let it film the area, return to home base, compress the data, and send it out to us as a pulse. It’s much quicker. But once your geologist thinks we’re closing in on what she’s looking for, it would be better to download the images as they’re filmed. That way, she can direct the helicopter to do exactly what she wants.”

  Travis nodded that he understood. “Did you arrange for portable units?” he asked.

  “I went with Panther 5/20W manpack, and 5W minis for person to person. Damn tough to sweep the frequencies and find us. Electronically, we’ll be invisible once we’re in the bush.”

  McNeil nodded and turned to the man immediately across the table from him, Troy Ramage, weapons expert. Ramage had spent only five years with the SEALs, but his knowledge of munitions and guns was legendary. He was on call twenty-four hours a day, for any member of the SEAL team to call and ask what equipment was best suited for a specific assignment. The best-trained, most active fighting force in the U.S. military called him for advice. It looked good on his resume when he retired.

  “Troy?”

  The arms man stood up and walked to the far wall. His six-foot-five-inch frame looked cramped in the windowless room. His hair was closely cropped, military style, and his face was rugged, with a strong jaw and piercing blue eyes. He opened a box and took out a gun.

  “In addition to the Remingtons and the Daisy, I’ve added a few more toys.” He held the gun out in front of him. “The Vektor MINI SS 5.56mm machine gun. Much lighter than its 7.62 big brother, and more accurate at close range. Excellent for jungle warfare.” He replaced the machine gun and pulled a shorter, more compact weapon from an adjacent box. “Vektor CR21 Assault rifle. Also 5.56mm ammunition. The advantage for keeping to the same ammo is obvious. This little pup is totally nasty at almost any range. Largest caliber slug of any compact assault rifle on the market.”

  Ramage was enjoying himself. He slid the gun back into its case, and gingerly opened a wood crate tucked in the corner. He held up a device with a long tube, mounted on a tripod, and a small missile-shaped shell. “M8 81mm mortar, by Vektor, of course.”

  “Was Vektor having a clearance sale?” Alain asked, laughing.

  “Hardly. I spent a shitload of money on these things.” He grinned as he spoke. “You get what you pay for. This mortar is extremely light, the tube short for the accuracy you get, and the shells are all frags. For those special moments.” He carefully replaced the mortar and its ammo, then continued.

  “The Daisy 600 is a nice rifle, but I prefer this.” He took a briefcase-shaped object from another box. He opened it and began taking parts out, snapping them together. The final result was a long, high-caliber rifle. “The Sako TRG 21/41 sniper,” he informed them. “Accurate to within four inches over a half mile. Outstanding.” He disassembled the rifle and replaced it, then sat down.

  “Impressive, Troy. As usual,” McNeil said. He turned to the final man present at the table: Dan Nelson, explosives guru with Team Six for seven years. “Dan, how did you spend your money?”

  “Very carefully.” Nelson smiled and stood up. Six feet tall, with a linebacker’s build, Dan Nelson was a handsome African-American with the most astute mind the SEAL team had ever had on staff. He was notorious for acing the bomb-defusing drills, knocking so many seconds off the previous record that no one could ever hope to better it. It made him a legend
in the tight-knit SEAL community, and pissed off a few of the brass when McNeil had talked him into leaving the SEALs and working in the private sector.

  Nelson hoisted a wooden crate from the floor and placed it on the table. The top opened easily, and he retrieved a metal object from amidst the packing chips. “Fragmentation grenade, gentlemen. Manufactured by SM Swiss, this baby weighs one pound and has over two thousand fragments. Absolutely deadly inside a fifty-foot radius. Great for the jungle. The shrapnel cuts through the underbrush like it isn’t even there. Just remember to duck.”

  He replaced the hand grenade and pulled out what appeared to be a large-caliber bullet. “Believe it or not, a 7.5mm anti-tank round.” He had everyone’s attention as he continued. “Up to two hundred and fifty yards, this thing will penetrate almost any armor, including tanks.”

  “Impressive,” Travis said, “if we’re up against tanks.”

  “You never know,” his explosives expert shot back. He replaced the shell and pulled out a mortar. “SM 120mm Mortar Cargo Bomb. It’s effective up to seven thousand yards, and delivers thirty-two anti-personnel grenades. Much better than the conventional HE Bombs.”

  “Now that we can use,” Troy said approvingly.

  “And a handful of explosives for our geologist,” Dan said, closing up the boxes. “Surface charges, and some down-hole stuff as well. If she finds the vein, we can uncover it.”

  “Did you get the missiles?” Travis asked. “In case they have helicopters?”

  “Certainly,” Dan said, prying open the lid on the last case. Inside were three Saab-Bofors surface-to-air missiles. “Laser guided, based on the Linear Quadratic Method, with night devices. Range of just over four miles.”

  Travis rose and addressed the three ex-SEALs. “Well done, gentlemen. We’ve been in some pretty hairy places before, but from what I understand, we’re heading for hell. I’ve been to Kigali, but never across the border into the Congo. Kerrigan has, and he says that the Congo is the vilest country on the planet. The government is totally corrupt, the military more dangerous than the criminals, and the climate makes a steam bath feel like a blast of arctic air. Just our kind of place.”