Elements of Risk: A Noah Stark Thriller

by Ridgway, Brady

  He got there before me. He was fully tooled up in combat gear, bulletproof jacket and carrying an AK47. I felt quite naked.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t know. Probably Mayi-Mayi. Had to happen now that we’ve got those okes here.’

  I wondered what ‘those okes’ were thinking, if Doctor Awan was already regretting his penchant for travel.

  ‘Where’s Caprice?’

  ‘Downstairs in the basement. You can go there too if you want to. You look like a moffie in those boots. I wouldn’t go out there dressed like that.’

  I thought of spending a couple of hours in the basement with Caprice and decided that it would be less dangerous outside in my shorts and gay boots.

  ‘Bugger that,’ I said. ‘I’m sticking with you.’

  Piet looked relieved, even thankful. We went to the front door; Piet eased it open and peered outside. Satisfied that there was no immediate threat, he flung it open and ran in a crouch towards the guesthouse. I followed.

  Piet’s reaction plan had already swung into action. Two of his men were there already. They had led the guests down to the basement and secured them. We left them there to defend the house.

  There was a crackle of small arms fire. Piet spoke into a small radio that he was carrying. He was wearing a headset and I couldn’t hear the reply. He updated me once he had got all his situation reports.

  ‘There’s some Mayi-Mayi at the wall to the north. They tried to get through the wire, but were picked up by the motion sensors. They’re taking pot shots at the wall at the moment, but we can’t see them; they’ve pulled back into the bush.’

  ‘Anything to worry about?’

  ‘Not really. They’re not going to do any harm,’ he hesitated, ‘but it’s strange. It looks too organised for those okes. It looks like a diversion.’ The flares spluttered out, leaving us in darkness.

  ‘Diversion? For what?’

  ‘Buggered if I know. There must be someone else out there. The Mayi-Mayi is normally doped out and fearless. This isn’t like them.’

  It had of course occurred to me that this might be the work of my American friends. I couldn’t tell Piet though. ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘I’m going to leave a section at the wall to watch them and pull the rest of the okes back, half to the refinery and the rest to the houses. I can’t secure the whole mine - it’s too big – so we shrink to what we can defend.’

  The moon was up and I could see men moving about at the refinery. There was the roar of a diesel motor. A Land Rover, all its lights off, appeared out of the gloom. The driver handed Piet something and then it drove off to one of the houses. Two more followed. All three parked under the carports of the houses, the men debussed and fanned out to pre-prepared defensive positions.

  Piet handed me a helmet with a monocular night vision scope attached. I put it on, struggled a bit due to my oversize head, looked through the tube at a green landscape. The scope was top quality, probably third generation. I noticed for the first time that there were carefully prepared slit trenches all around the houses. I followed Piet to one of the trenches and we jumped in.

  It was only when we descended the stairs that I realised the trench was more than it seemed. The walls were concrete and at the one end there were more steps leading down to a steel door. We went through the door into Piet’s command centre. The door clanged shut behind us.

  There were no frills. Apart from a line of computer screens on a steel table against one wall, the room was bare. Piet sat at the table in front of a small laptop computer. I pulled up a chair next to him. There was a picture of the refinery on the screen. The other screens showed various views of the berm and surrounding countryside.

  I watched over as Piet toggled through a series of video pictures. Cameras covered the whole area. Nobody could move inside the compound without being picked up.

  Piet turned to me, ‘All the cameras have motion sensors and I get an alarm if someone moves in one of the zones.’ On the right side of his screen was a column of numbers, each one had a clickable box next to it. Two of the numbers were flashing red. ‘These two are the refinery and the houses. They’re picking up the movement of the men getting onto position. As soon as they’ve settled down we’ll be able to see what’s going on.’

  Sure enough the numbers soon stopped flashing. There was still desultory fire coming from the berm where the Mayi-Mayi had first attacked. Piet looked at that camera now and then, but he was more interested at the others, away from the action, where the threat would come from if it really was a diversion.

  A number began to flash. Piet clicked the camera. The image came from the far side of the compound, beyond the pump field.

  ‘Bliksems.’ Piet muttered.

  Three figures moved cautiously from the bushes towards the fence.

  ‘Bogger hulle.’ Piet barked commands over the radio. He was talking to his mortar team, giving them the grid reference for their opening rounds. He turned to me smiling. ‘We’ve got the whole place registered. Those bastards at the fence are going to get a big surprise.’

  ‘What mortars have you got?’ I asked.

  ‘Eighty-twos.’

  ‘Jesus!’

  He laughed.

  We huddled over the screen, waited. A geyser of dirt plumed into the air about fifty metres from the men. We felt the shockwave in our subterranean bunker. The three had been cutting the fence when the mortar round went off. They dropped and lay flat, motionless. They weren’t Mayi-Mayi. Most untrained soldiers would get up and run at the first sign of the heavy guns. Those guys were professionals. They knew that there were more on the way. I wondered who they were: Delta? Seals? CIA?

  They were going to have to move because Piet had their range and Piet knew what he was doing. He rattled the corrections down the mouthpiece. Three mortars left their tubes in quick succession.

  The men heard them, knew what was coming. They had to assume that they’d been rumbled, accept the first was a ranging shot. They got up and ran. Piet saw where they were going, gave adjustments to the mortars; three more flew towards them.

  Our targets had done the right thing. The first three bracketed the position where they had been. They were almost out of camera shot, still running. The next three fell close to them, but the men didn’t falter: disappeared. They didn’t look like they would be coming back any time soon. If the Americans had one big failing it was underestimating their opposition.

  The firing from the wall died down and then stopped. Piet kept his men, and us, in their positions all night. We took turns getting some shut-eye, while the other watched the screen for any sign of movement. No numbers flashed; the attackers had vanished: for now.

  After sunrise we drove to where the men had cut the fence. While a sniper kept watch from the berm, Piet and I went to examine the damage. The wire was cut in a few places, both by the men and by shrapnel from the mortars.

  We followed the tracks for a while and were about to turn back when I saw something black in the grass a little way away. It was a small satchel. I inspected it carefully first to make sure that it wasn’t booby-trapped, then picked it up and examined it. The clip on one side was smashed, the webbing next to it ripped by shrapnel. The other clip was bent; it had failed and the bag had fallen off someone’s webbing. Inside there were three small charges, all primed and ready. The detonators were American.

  That didn’t mean anything of course. Soldiers often used enemy equipment to throw the opposition off their trail, but it was enough to confirm my suspicions. The CIA kidnap attempt had failed. I wondered what happened next.

  ‘What is it?’ Piet took the satchel from me.

  ‘Prepared charges. Looks like they wanted to blow their way in somewhere.’

  ‘These okes were definitely not Mayi-Mayi. I wonder who the bloody hell they are?’

  I shrugged, ‘No idea.’

  ‘Mmm. Let’s get back to the house and pull everybody out of the bunkers.�
� Piet looked at me. I’d known him a long time, but his piercing blue eyes still unsettled me sometimes. ‘This was no Mayi-Mayi attack, although they wanted it to look like it. They must have been after your Iranians. You sure you don’t know anything about this.’

  I squirmed inside, but didn’t show it. ‘No. But the sooner we get them out of here the better.

  ‘Ja. Bloody right. I don’t need this in my life.’

  We drove back to the houses.

  On the way back Piet explained that all the houses had identical basements, which had been converted into bunkers by adding a heavy steel door set in concrete. The door was the only entrance and the bunkers were stocked with water and some basic food such as energy bars. They were very Spartan otherwise; each had four iron beds, a potty and a battery lamp.

  Over the years expatriates in the Congo have been at the mercy of marauding rebels and mutinous government troops. In 1978 Katangese rebels attacked the nearby town of Kolwezi killing eighty Belgian expatriates and more than two hundred Congolese. They rest were only saved by the intervention of the French Foreign Legion, who parachuted in at the request of the Congolese government - who were unable to do anything themselves.

  The new owners of the Shinkolobwe mine were mindful of history and knew that they could not rely on the government or the French Foreign Legion to save them if the shit hit the fan; hence the fortifications and Piet with his little army.

  Chapter 48

  We rescued Caprice first. She didn’t seem phased by her night in the dungeon and immediately went to shower and change. The others hadn’t fared so well.

  When Piet opened the door of the guesthouse bunker, there was a loud bang. The bullet ricocheted off the door with an enormous clang, smashed into the wall behind Piet, missing him by centimetres. Shards of concrete pierced the back of his neck. He slammed the door shut.

  ‘I’m going to kill that cunt.’ he said as if he were stating something everyday and mundane. Only the C-word betrayed his emotion. Piet hardly ever swore.

  I reasoned with him. ‘Piet, they’ve been locked in there all night. They’re probably scared shitless. What would you do if it was you in there and somebody opened the door?’

  He glared at me, ‘So it’s my fault now?’

  I didn’t answer, let him simmer. When he’d calmed down we opened the door again. Of course they still didn’t know it was us and we were likely to get the same reception. The second time we used the door as protection and carefully opened it without exposing ourselves.

  There was no immediate reaction, so I shouted from behind the door, ‘Jahangir, it’s Noah. You can come out. It’s safe.’

  Still no answer. Then I realised that they would all be deaf from the shot going off in that small space. ‘JAHANGIR!’ I shouted, ‘IT’S NOAH. YOU CAN COME OUT.’

  That got through to them. Jahangir came out first. When he saw that it was just us, he called the others. Doctor Awan came out next, waggling a finger in each ear as if he were trying to dig out the ringing. The two VEVAK agents followed, weapons holstered. Piet glared at them but they didn’t back down, glared back defiantly. I knew he’d see reason in the end and put some form of communication into the bunkers.

  We gave them all a chance to freshen up, fed them, took them to see Vladimir. He turned on the Russian charm, explained that it was payday for the army – as if they ever got paid - there had been some over exuberance from the camp nearby, the normal Friday night revelry. But because of the importance of his guests he did not want to take a chance of someone being hit on the head by a spent bullet, so he sent everyone to the bunkers.

  Fortunately the bunkers, being bombproof, were pretty much soundproof too and they might have felt, but had not heard the mortars detonate. They seemed to swallow the story.

  Vladimir then took us all on a tour of the facilities. I had seen it all, but tagged along anyway.

  When we reached the mine, Doctor Awan stood for a moment, hands on hips, surveying the scene, like Mussolini reviewing his troops before battle.

  Then, after a satisfied nod to himself, he explained to us how the mine worked. ‘What you see here is In Situ Leach Mining.’

  Vladimir was taken completely by surprise. He clearly thought that he was going to be the one giving the briefing. He opened his mouth to speak but the doctor cut him short.

  ‘It is most cost effective and also environmentally friendly,’ he said, addressing us all. ‘In order to extract the uranium, a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and sulphuric acid is pumped into the ground by means of injection wells where it permeates the aquifer, leaching the uranium from the ore body.’ He lost me somewhere after ‘sulphuric acid,’ but I couldn’t quite see how pumping sulphuric acid anywhere could be environmentally friendly. The good doctor droned on for another five minutes until even Jahangir was getting fidgety. It wasn’t that the description of uranium mining wasn’t interesting, it was the delivery. The doctor had a singsong voice typical of many from the sub-continent and it had a very strong soporific effect.

  Finally he sensed that everybody wanted to move on and wound up the lecture. He planted himself back in the Land Rover and we drove to the processing plant.

  Even though none of us really wanted to know the details of manufacturing yellowcake from uranium slurry, Doctor Awan made sure that we knew every step of the process. He explained how the recovered liquid was pumped through the extraction and recovery columns, the significance of the added thickeners and the drying and packaging process. But while he was talking, even he was losing interest. He kept looking around as if he was trying to locate a friend in a crowd.

  ‘Is there something else you would like to see Doctor?’ Vladimir asked.

  Doctor Awan wobbled his head in uneasy assent. ‘Oh yes. Well… I wondered if this is where the uranium for the American Bomb was mined?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Vladimir replied.

  ‘But in those days there was no leach mining. I was expecting an open cast mine or shafts, something more conventional.’

  ‘That would be the old Belgian mine. It was closed in 1960 and sealed with concrete.’

  The doctor was crestfallen, his jowls seemed to sag, like a mournful bulldog. ‘That is very unfortunate. I was very much hoping to see the original mine.’

  ‘It’s not far from here, just outside the compound. Mister Hanekom would be happy to take you there later.’

  Piet glared at Vladimir. After the previous night’s drama it would be foolish to leave the compound unless absolutely necessary. ‘I’m not sure that would be a good idea,’ he said. ‘With the security situa…’

  ‘Just drunk soldiers getting carried away. I am sure that it is perfectly safe now.’

  For a moment I thought that Vladimir was in on the whole thing with the CIA. What other reason would he have to send his client outside the compound on a jolly when there clearly was a serious ‘security situation?’ But then I realised that he was just being Vladimir, giving the client what he wanted.

  It certainly made Doctor Awan happy. His jowls tightened and he beamed at Vladimir, ‘That will be excellent. Thank you very much.’ The tour of the compound was over, the doctor wanted to go exploring.

  Chapter 49

  Piet called up the troops. Vladimir decided not to join us: an urgent phone call to his superiors. Yeah right. He knew what was out there; he wasn’t that stupid.

  Jahangir and his two goons came of course. They weren’t going to let their prize nuclear scientist out of their sight. Returning to Iran without him would probably result in the three of them dangling from ropes in some public square. The magnitude of their responsibility was evident on their faces.

  They seemed relieved when they saw Piet’s precautions. A convoy of four Land Rovers pulled up in front of us. Three bristled with machine-guns fore and aft; the fourth sported a long-barrelled recoilless rifle. Unless last night’s intruders had a tank hidden away somewhere it was unlikely that they would bother trying to take us on.
r />   Oblivious to the necessity for such measures, Doctor Awan immediately climbed aboard the nearest Land Rover, folded his arms and waited for the departure. The rest of us found seats and the small convoy growled out of the compound towards the old mine.

  The open cast mine where the artisan miners were scraping for cobalt was less than a kilometre from the main gate. Piet led the vehicles to a small promontory where we had a good view of the whole area.

  Men in ragged clothes swarmed over the stony ground. To one side there was a huge pile of sand about five storeys high. There were no JCBs of any description, just men bent over picks and shovels, scraping at the hard ground, clearing it away centimetre by centimetre. Others filled grey bags with the precious earth and carried it away to where the cobalt was extracted.

  It looked like a giant canyon under construction. But there was no cooperation between different groups of miners. Some worked faster than others and their holes crept under those of their neighbours, undermining the ones above them, threatening collapse. In some places ridges grew between claims, forming the mesas of the canyon.

  In other places the more adventurous had sunk shafts. They didn’t have the equipment to sink them vertically, so they slanted down into the earth, angling towards the abandoned uranium mine.

  Piet pointed to a silent shaft. ‘You see that one over there?’

  We all looked across to where he was pointing.

  ‘There was a big collapse there last year. Eighteen miners died. All the trees around here have been chopped down for timber to shore up the shafts. There’s no timber left; so they put the props further apart, steal them from other shafts, even take them from their own shafts to use further down the tunnel. Every now and then one collapses. They don’t even bother digging the men out; they just start another shaft next to the old one.’

  ‘Is this the site of the original Belgian mine?’ Doctor Awan was not interested in the welfare of the miners.