African Ice

by Jeff Buick

  “So you came back—perhaps to finish what you wanted to do?”

  “Perhaps,” she said. “But now that I’m here, I see the same wall I ran into last time. Too many people in dire need and no way to help. I’ve got about four million dollars in mutual funds, real estate and other investments, but throwing money at the problem isn’t the answer. And four million wouldn’t even begin to make a difference. These people need proper housing with clean water and education for their sons and daughters. They need medical facilities and trained doctors and nurses to staff them. They need the basics, and they don’t have them. I feel so . . .”

  “Helpless?” he offered as she let the sentence trail off. She nodded, and he watched a tear slowly roll down her cheek. She didn’t try to wipe it away, just let it trickle down until it reached her jaw and spilled onto her shirt. He reached over and lightly grasped her hand. “If there’s another reason for you being here, you’ll find it.” He saw the corner of her mouth curl up almost imperceptibly before he turned his attention back to driving.

  A few moments later he changed the subject. “I’ve got Billy Hackett watching Mugumba and his men. Promised him an extra ten-thousand-dollar bonus for him to arrange a team of locals to keep an eye on what they’re up to—especially if they leave the city and follow us into the jungle. We also secured the BritPix to Hackett’s helicopter this morning and gave him the first two grids we want him to fly. He’s got a radio tuned to our frequency and will call in once he’s covered the area. He can download the video images to your computer this evening when we stop moving. Kerrigan seemed pleased with our progress when I spoke to him.”

  Samantha glanced over at him, her eyes dry. “You checked in with Kerrigan today?” He nodded. “What else did he have to say?”

  “Not much, just wondered how things were going. When we expected to start looking for the formation.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That we were leaving Butembo and heading into the jungle. That’s all I know, so that’s all I told him.”

  Samantha decided to go out on a limb. “I don’t trust him. I didn’t like the man when I met him, and the more I dealt with him the less I wanted to.”

  Travis kept his eyes on the trail, threading the Land Rover through the overgrown trail. A minute passed before he slowed almost to a stop and turned to her. “I don’t trust him either, Sam. This is the first time I’ve worked for the guy. I was referred to him by a mutual colleague who gave me a glowing review, and Kerrigan offered me a deal I just couldn’t turn down. And the bonus if we make it back is enough to retire on. But I’ve really got some concerns about the way things are going.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Kerrigan arranged for Mugumba to meet and escort us to Butembo. Mugumba has a truck full of very expensive, and very deadly, guns. And he sabotaged some of our gear. Keep in mind that this is the guy Kerrigan hired. What does that tell you?”

  Samantha was silent. He was right. If Kerrigan had hired Mugumba, which he had, then the man most likely knew exactly what his Congolese colonel was up to. The hidden guns, the sabotaged gear and the creepy feeling the diminutive man had given her all added up to bad news. Yet the soldiers had not accompanied them any farther than Butembo. They were alone in the jungle, just the five of them and Hal, and the twelve porters. If Mugumba wanted to keep them close at hand, why wasn’t he with them?

  “At least the soldiers aren’t with us,” he said, reading her mind. “I suppose that’s good and bad.”

  “I can see how that’s a good thing, but bad?”

  “Mugumba is going to stay in touch with what we’re doing. If he’s not physically with us, then he has some other way of tracking our progress. My first guess is the porters. At least one of them is a plant.” He paused for a minute, a troubled look on his face. “But there may be another way.” Another pause, then, “Shit.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Something I just thought of. The GPS systems. I’ll put money on it that he’s tampered with them. We’ll get Alain to run a full series of diagnostics on the instruments when we camp tonight. Let’s just hope we can find whatever he did to them.”

  The Rover hit a particularly large root and the front end dipped violently, smashing the grill into the ground and throwing him and Sam into the windshield. Hal flew over the front seat and hit the dash before sliding onto the floor, unconscious. Travis rubbed his chest for a moment, sore from hitting the steering wheel, and then checked his head. His hand came away with a tinge of blood on it, cut from hitting the edge of the windshield. He grasped Samantha by the arm, and slid her back into the seat. She was only partially conscious, and shaking her head to clear the cobwebs. She nodded that she was okay, and they both grabbed Hal and lifted him off the floor and onto the seat. A four-inch gash across his forehead poured blood onto his face. He groaned as he began to regain consciousness. Sam spilled some of her bottled water onto a cloth and dabbed the wound.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I have no idea what we hit. Are you okay?”

  Samantha nodded. “Hal’s pretty shaken up, though. Let’s get some antiseptic on this.” She rummaged through the medical kit, then unrolled her window as Alain Porter appeared. “We’re okay. Hal’s got a cut, but that’s about it.”

  “Jesus, you should have seen you guys. The truck just nose-dived into that rut and stopped dead. You’re lucky you didn’t go through the windshield.”

  “No shit,” McNeil said sarcastically. He got out of the truck and surveyed the damage as Samantha attended to Hal. He walked ahead with Alain and Troy about a hundred yards and they quickly made a decision. “Unload the Rovers; we’re on foot from here. It’s too swampy in the low-lying areas, and we’d never make it up the other side of this cliff anyway.” He pointed to the wall of jungle that confronted them, a few hundred feet on the other side of the swamp.

  “I’ll get something rigged up to probe the water and see how deep it is,” Ramage said. “The bottom is probably mud, and we don’t need to lose any animals.”

  “Watch out for water moccasins,” Travis warned him. “They’re fast and they’re deadly.”

  “I think I know enough to get out if I see a snake,” Troy shot back, then grinned. “Hey, wasn’t it you who got bit in Angola?”

  “Piss off, Troy.” Travis grinned as he spoke. “Just find a way across the swamp.” He left them at the water’s edge and returned to the Land Rovers. Samantha was halfway through stitching the gash on Hal’s forehead, and he watched her as she finished the final two stitches. She clipped the suture and returned the instruments to the kit.

  “How’s that feel?” she asked Hal.

  “It hurts, Doc, but I’ll be okay. It’s my fault; I should have been holding on.”

  Travis shook his head and lightly grasped Hal by the shoulders. “No, my friend. It’s my fault; I should watch where I’m driving. You okay to walk from here?”

  Hal indicated he was fine and McNeil turned his attention to the porters as they unloaded the trucks. They already had the gear lashed onto the pack animals, the loads evenly distributed. He motioned for Faustin Amba, the lead porter, to join him away from the rest. They walked a hundred feet down the path before he spoke.

  “Faustin, how did Colonel Mugumba hire you?”

  “By reputation, Mr. McNeil,” he answered. “Mugumba asked the village elder for the most experienced guide who also spoke English, and that was me. When I talked with the colonel, he agreed to hire me and asked me to prepare a team of porters for an expedition into the Ruwenzori. I had ten days to prepare. Mugumba paid me half the money up front, and the other half is due when we return.”

  “You hired the entire team?”

  “Except for three, yes. Mugumba had some top Ruwenzori guides come in from another village.”

  Travis turned his head sharply. “Three of the men on your team are unknown to you?” Faustin nodded. “Which ones are they?”

  “Manou, Koko and Beya. Ma
nou wears the red shirt with the white sleeves. Koko has the Miami Dolphins T-shirt, and Beya has a black shirt with light-colored trousers. They have no change of clothes, Mr. McNeil, so you can always recognize them by this.”

  Travis studied the man for a moment, then continued walking. Faustin kept pace. “Do me a favor. Keep a close eye on the three men who are not from your village. I suspect at least one of them is feeding information back to Mugumba. And I don’t exactly trust our military escort.”

  “Yes, sir. I will have all my men watch them closely.”

  “And Faustin,” Travis added, “stop calling me Mr. This and Mr. That. Call me Travis.”

  Faustin grinned and headed back to the trucks. Travis walked ahead a few hundred feet and met up with Troy and Alain. They had marked a passage through the swamp with broken branches stuck into the muddy bottom, which now protruded above the slime covering the stagnant water. They were just burning off the leeches when he arrived. “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah, it’s passable. Deepest part is about six feet and the bottom isn’t too soft. The horses should make it all right. Full of fucking leeches, though.”

  He watched as Alain seared the last one from Troy’s back. They were a nuisance more than anything else. Painful if they got a good grip, and very painful if one didn’t wear underwear. Burning a leech off one’s groin area was not a lot of fun. He turned and motioned to the approaching line of porters to keep coming. Samantha walked a few feet ahead of the lead horse and she arrived first.

  “Can we make it across?”

  “Easy. It’s going to get a lot tougher than this,” Travis said. They both looked ahead to the obstacle. The bottom of the ravine was approximately two hundred feet across and was mostly stagnant water. An occasional mangrove poked above the water line, and lilies and floating grasses covered much of the surface. To the left was a bend in the valley, obscuring the source of the water. To the right, the direction the water slowly drained, was a long area of open water truncated by a pile of uprooted trees some hundred yards downstream. He pointed to the lead porter to continue once he hit the water’s edge, and the man led his horse into the slough, following the branches Troy and Alain had used to mark the safest route. One after another the team forded the swamp. McNeil and Samantha crossed with the seventh man, about halfway through the caravan. They waited on the far side. Trouble hit when the final porter was only thirty feet from safety.

  A ripple creased the still water moments before the man screamed and disappeared beneath the surface. A stream of bubbles marked the direction the man was moving underwater. It led downstream toward the logjam. His horse bolted and surged ahead to the shore, knocking down two men in its panic. Numerous shouts and panicked screams rose from the porters grouped along the shore. Samantha turned to Travis, who was ripping off his shirt.

  “What’s happening?” she screamed above the din.

  “Crocodile,” he yelled back, slipping a hunting knife with a ten-inch blade from its sheath and breaking into a run through the loose undergrowth near the water’s edge. He was almost at the far end of the slough when he veered sharply right and dove into the water. A few ripples extended from where he entered, then the water went calm again. There was no indication of two men and a crocodile somewhere under the surface.

  “What the hell is going on?” Samantha screamed in disbelief.

  Troy grabbed her arm. “With a croc, you’ve only got one chance, Sam,” he said. “Get in quick and kill it while it’s busy with its catch. Crocs are predictable. It’s going to try to stuff its dinner under a log somewhere down at that end of the swamp. Travis knows what he’s doing.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding! Two guys and a crocodile underwater and I’m supposed to be calm. To hell with that.” She pulled away from Troy’s grip and grabbed his gun from its holster. She snapped off the safety as she ran toward the far end of the water. She stumbled as she ran, almost falling, but managing to remain on her feet. As she got closer she could see the water was stained red. She reached the area where Travis had gone into the water just as a figure burst from beneath the surface. She stopped and leveled the revolver. Then lowered the gun. Travis, holding the porter across his shoulder, stared back at her.

  “Unless there’s another croc in here, I don’t think you need the gun,” he said. “That one’s dead. Here, give me a hand.” He shrugged hard and the man fell forward. Sam had only a second to react, but dropped the gun and caught the unconscious figure before he hit the ground. She immediately checked to see if he was breathing. He wasn’t. She tilted his head back and began applying CPR. Travis worked the man’s chest, pushing gently. A few breaths into the prone figure and he gagged, spitting out a mouthful of water. She tipped him sideways and patted him on the back. He started breathing normally. Travis was already stripping away the man’s pants and checking the bite wounds.

  “How is he?” Samantha asked.

  “Not bad. The croc never let go of its initial grasp. There are only a handful of puncture wounds and no tears. He’s going to be okay, won’t even lose his leg.”

  “Quick thinking,” she said. “I’m impressed.” They both stood as the group of porters and McNeil’s team arrived. They stared at each other. Samantha let her eyes drop from McNeil’s face to his broad shoulders, then down his v-shaped torso. His chest was well-defined and his stomach rippled. His musculature was pumped and his biceps swollen from the physical exertion. Not the body of an average thirty-something male. She looked back into his eyes. “Travis McNeil, croc killer,” she said. The sexuality in her tone surprised even her.

  He just smiled and dried off with a ragged towel one of the porters offered. Alain and Dan sterilized and bandaged the stricken man’s leg, and other than the bite wounds, his condition had stabilized. Travis waved to Faustin and the lead porter came over.

  “He has to be taken back to Butembo,” he said. “Get one of the three men that Mugumba assigned to your team to take him in the Land Rover. The vehicle is useless to us anyway. And that takes one of Mugumba’s men out of the equation.”

  “Consider it done,” Faustin said. He spoke to the group of porters surrounding the wounded man, and they split up, some of them fashioning a stretcher by thatching palm fronds and attaching them to lengths of wood they found nearby. Some of the others moved back to the crossing area and settled the animals. Three men waded into the water and pulled the now-visible croc carcass onto land. They set about skinning it.

  One hour later the injured man was loaded into the rear of the Land Rover and the chosen porter backed the four-wheel-drive up the jungle path and out of sight. Everyone met on the far side of the swamp, and they resumed their trek into the foothills of the Ruwenzori. Travis showed Faustin where he wished to go, then let Faustin pick the guides to lead the group into the jungle. The going was slow. There was no path, and the lead men hacked at the ferns and thorny lianas that covered the dank dirt of the forest floor. The lead porter changed every half hour to avoid overexertion and McNeil kept close track of his compass as they progressed. At six o’clock he called Faustin over and told him to find a suitable spot to camp for the night. Twenty minutes later they were setting up their tents.

  Travis was kneeling with Alain when Samantha showed up at his tent. The GPS system was sitting on the ground in front of them, and the unit for receiving data from the helicopter was only a few feet away, attached to a quietly purring generator. Travis waved her over. Alain was pointing to something in the guts of the GPS unit and explaining what he had found.

  “They tampered with the GPS.” Porter filled her in quickly as she settled in beside them. “See this board tucked in under the main memory cache?” She nodded and he continued, “It’s a second transmitter, set to a different frequency. It’s feeding someone, we can’t be sure whom, our exact position.”

  “Oh, I think we have a pretty good idea,” Samantha said. “What can we do about it?”

  “Well, we can make a small adjustment to it when
the time is right.” Samantha looked puzzled and he explained. “Once you think we’re close to the vein, we’ll switch the polarity on their transmitter. That way, when we move the last mile or so, their positioning will show us moving one hundred eighty degrees from the direction we’re actually moving. If we move one mile due east after we change it, they’ll end up two miles west of the actual location. And two miles in this mess,” he looked about the dense foliage, “is forever.”

  Okay,” she said. “When I think we’re getting close, we’ll leave the GPS at the base camp. When we’re sure we’ve located our diamonds, you can make the adjustments and then we’ll take it with us.”

  “Excellent,” McNeil said. “Give us at least a half mile.” She nodded. A small red light suddenly glowed on the unit set up to receive the signal from Billy Hackett’s helicopter. “We’ve got information incoming.” They collectively moved to the machine. The light shone for four to five seconds, then flickered and went out. “Billy must have compressed the data and sent it as a pulse.”

  Alain checked the unit and nodded. “We’ve got almost three gigabytes of data stored on the hard drive. At normal transmission speed that would take more than an hour to download. He compressed it, all right.”

  Samantha watched as Alain hooked the field computer up to the liquid crystal screen and clicked on the play button. The monitor showed a picture-in-picture display, the main screen showing a sea of green as the helicopter flew over the forest, while the smaller image relayed the position of the chopper against an underlying land-based grid. The latter was a feature Hackett had included without being asked and it looked to be an excellent idea.