Zorn and Guerin spent the rest of the morning touring the Cogevex uranium complex with a view toward spotting and correcting any potential gaps in security. They observed open-pit mining; the milling and chemical processing of ore into yellow cake concentrate; the disposal of tailings in watertight impoundments; and various environmental monitoring activities to prevent pollution. They also made the rounds of employee housing and company-owned health facilities. It was all part of the quarterly security evaluation that Zorn Security was paid handsomely to conduct and that Roger Zorn had used to justify his travel to Arlit.
At the company canteen, the French team picked up box lunches so they could set out early for the nearest area where artisanal gold mines might be found. Overnight, Guerin had learned the location of such a mine from one of Zorn Security's native hires. As Guerin's Mercedes left the Cogevex main gate, two other SUVs awaited them outside, one of them driven by the employee who had suggested the mine.
The three-car convoy steered onto the N25 highway and headed south, passing through the northern outskirts of Arlit before turning due east along a subsidiary road and emerging onto the desert. Once they left the city limits, the road was badly degraded. In many places, the three SUVs had to pull off the paved surface to avoid massive potholes. On all sides were barren wastes, with the only signs of life taking the form of spiky shrubs and colorless grass that might have looked more at home on some deep ocean floor.
After leaving the city, they drove for more than an hour without encountering another vehicle. Later, they crossed paths with a convoy of empty fuel tankers headed back to Algeria and a solitary Hino dump truck. The dump truck was so top-heavy that it reeled from side to side like a ship at sea, being laden with scores of African migrants and their untidy bundles that stuck out helter-skelter at every angle.
Zorn’s convoy left the main road north of Gougaram before following a narrow pass that led east into the Aïr Mountains. After nearly four hours of rough driving, Guerin spotted an encampment and pointed it out to Zorn. Moments later, their native driver guided the convoy onto a windswept track toward the unlicensed gold mine.
As they approached the mining site, they sighted a makeshift roadblock ahead, consisting of two men, each armed with a Kalashnikov rifle, seated under a makeshift awning moored to an old Toyota pickup. The native driver spoke with the two armed men and gained their permission to proceed. Several hundred yards further, they came upon a shantytown composed of crude shelters made from corrugated metal, along with some traditional camel's hair tents. Past the encampment lay the mine, a broad quarry-like pit into which an unstable-looking shaft had been dug.
Around the edge of the pit, dozens of laborers scurried about carrying hods filled with unrefined gold ore, which they dumped into the backs of waiting pickups to be milled and the gold content extracted somewhere off site. Large and well-fed foremen, some of them armed with stout cudgels, shouted at the stragglers to keep pace. Meanwhile, the native driver wandered off in search of the mine’s proprietor.
Zorn, Guerin and the three security men exited their vehicles onto the parched landscape, the sun still beating down from the cobalt sky late in the afternoon. The five men, armed only with sidearms tucked into their belts, approached the pit to get a better look at the mineshaft.
What Zorn saw there could not have presented a more stark contrast to the Cogevex mines he had toured that morning. Where the African miners at Suhail and Numinar wore clean uniforms, polished hard-hats and steel-toed boots, the laborers here were dressed in ragged t-shirts, cut-off trousers, and filthy turbans, if they wore any headgear at all. Most of the diggers and hod-carriers were dark-skinned young men, more likely migrants from West Africa than local Tuaregs, and were coated from head to toe in caked dust.
The hods they carried made their sinews strain to the max. It must have been backbreaking work to lift the unwieldy hods out of the mineshaft and up the steep slopes over rickety ladders. As Zorn stepped forward for a better look, the smell of sweat and piss met his nose and nearly made him gag. But none of the workers appeared on closer examination to have arrived by way of deportation from America.
For all the shrill critiques leveled at Cogevex’s uranium mines, what Zorn saw here was infinitely worse than what he’d seen at Arlit. He imagined the detainees from Corvus Base and the horror of being worked to death in this hellish pit. Then he imagined detainees in similar mines all across the Aïr Mountains and wondered if, given a choice, some of these men might not have preferred an injection and a swift plunge into the sea.
A few minutes later, the local driver rejoined the Frenchmen with a light-skinned Arab of about thirty in a flowing white robe and headdress who sported a neatly trimmed Van Dyke beard. He offered his visitors a perfunctory greeting before turning his attention to the driver, who spoke in a language that Zorn recognized as Arabic.
The agreed-upon cover story for visiting the gold mine was that the driver had met some foreign mine engineers interested in purchasing gold nuggets for top prices in Euros. So, after sizing up his visitors, the Arab motioned them to follow him some fifty yards up a gentle rise to an open-sided tent with a good view of the pit. There a boy of nine or ten years brewed tea in a battered copper pot over a camp stove. The driver introduced the group and identified the mine’s proprietor as Abu Ahmad.
Once tea was served, Abu Ahmad dug into a leather pouch strapped around his waist and spread a dozen assorted gold nuggets onto a soiled white rag. He spoke a few sentences to the driver, then turned his eyes to the Frenchmen and waited.
"Abu Ahmad says the larger ones were mined here and are finer than any from Tabelot or the Djado Plateau,” the driver explained.
"Ask him how much he wants per gram," Zorn instructed.
"He asks how much you offer."
Zorn cast a good-natured smile at Guerin before responding. It had never been his intention to haggle the mine owner down to his rock bottom price. Buying the nuggets was merely the cost of learning what kind of life awaited Assodé’s detainees if fate sent them digging for gold.
"I will pay ten percent above today's spot bullion price per gram," Zorn told the driver.
"Thirty percent," came Abu Ahmad's quick response.
"Fifteen percent," Zorn countered.
"Twenty-five."
"Twenty percent. And that's my final word," Zorn said, extending his hand.
The Arab took the hand and bared sparkling white teeth as he held out the largest nugget for Zorn to inspect.
Zorn raised it to his eye and looked for any discoloration or dullness. But the nugget shone brilliantly even in the shade of the tent.
"Weigh it. I'll take it," he told the driver.
"Which others do you want to inspect?" the driver asked.
"I'll take the lot of them."
Abu Ahmad broke out into an open-mouthed grin without waiting for a translation and shouted for the tea boy to bring out a scale and calculator. In less than ten minutes, the nuggets were weighed and packed and their combined value calculated. Zorn handed over a stack of crisp hundred Euro banknotes, rounding up the sum to the nearest hundred.
After that, the visitors stayed on to finish their tea and Zorn plied Abu Ahmad with friendly questions about his mine and the men he employed. When the Arab loosened up sufficiently, Zorn asked through the driver if he had come across any foreign laborers who had recently spent time in the United States.
The proprietor's eyes narrowed.
"I have seen such men, Most are educated city dwellers, unsuited to hard labor. Our methods are primitive. We have no use for them here."
"Where might we find these men?"
"Go to the market square at Timia, a half-day's drive to the south. The labor market opens there twice a week before sunset. You will find them there."
The drive back to Arlit took longer than expected, largely because the final two hours demanded slower speeds, owing to the low angle of the sun. The ceaseless bumps and jolts also made it impos
sible to relax. So when Zorn returned at last to the company compound at Arlit, he was exhausted. Throughout the return journey, all he could think about was American detainees being let go in the Niger desert and slaving away in decrepit mines. And as much as he longed to continue his search, to attempt a second foray out into the desert to Timia’s labor market seemed too much to ask of Guerin and his men. But then another idea came to him.
After showering, feasting on a late snack and following up with a nightcap of XO Cognac, Zorn broached his idea to Guerin.
"I've been thinking again of the base at Assodé and how I might go there. Do you have any contacts among the staff at Arlit who handle the American supply flights?"
Guerin put down his glass of cognac to scratch his bristly chin.
"I might. Who shall I say wants to get in touch?"
"Tell them the CEO of Zorn Security seeks a courtesy visit to Assodé. The Tetra people will know who I am."
Chapter Twenty: Assodé
"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be guarded by a bodyguard of lies.”
–Winston Churchill
EARLY AUGUST, ASSODE, NIGER
Amjad Ibrahim awoke before dawn on his third day at the desert detention camp. He knew little of what lay ahead, other than what he had heard from an overhead loudspeaker hours after his arrival.
"Welcome to the Islamist Republic of Niger," the announcement had begun in a gruff military voice. "Rest from your travels. Eat and drink your fill. In a few days, once you have adjusted to conditions here, you will be released as free men into your new homeland. Your Nigerien brothers and sisters are good people and will receive you with open arms. But once you leave this place, you will be expected to work, and work hard, to make your contribution to society. And if any of you might think of rejoining the jihad, think again. Because if the jihadis don't get you killed, our drones will. They own the skies. And they see everything."
As if to accentuate the warning, the prisoner standing beside Amjad, a rail-thin Pakistani in his early twenties with throat whiskers and dark suicidal eyes, tapped him on the shoulder and pointed upward, saying only, "Listen."
Suddenly, Amjad noticed a high-pitched buzz overhead that sounded like a distant swarm of mosquitoes. The Pakistani gazed intently at the sky for a few moments before he tapped him again, aiming his finger toward a spot almost directly overhead. Then Amjad saw it, a tiny gray fleck against the deep blue sky.
"I'll bet they're watching us right now, hoping one of us tries to escape," the youth said. “Then 'Bam!' A Hellfire missile will nail him. I've seen it happen."
"Then how do you protect yourself?" Amjad asked.
"There's no protection. The drones see everything. Whatever happens, happens. It's Allah's will."
Amjad turned away and followed the queue of detainees to the mess tables, where correctional-facility MRE1 rations were doled out three times a day and where twenty-gallon water dispensers stood on metal stands so the men could refill their Tetra-issued belt canteens at will.
Amjad picked up his midday ration, topped up his two belt canteens, and found a vacant spot on the ground to sit while he ate lunch. He opened the pouch of buffalo-style chicken first and ate it cold because the flameless ration heater that accompanied military-spec MREs had been removed, as had the water-resistant matchbook. Amjad ate slowly and chewed thoroughly to extract maximum nourishment from the chicken. Then he moved on to the crackers and peanut butter and last to the granola bar, not wasting a single morsel of the twelve-hundred-calorie meal.
From habit, Amjad cast a sidelong glance at the ration table in hope that his captors had made a mistake and included jerk pork or barbeque pork entrees among the rations. On his first day at camp, this had occurred at dinner. Detainees like him who were not strictly observant Muslims picked up several extra entrees from those who refused to eat pork. Amjad scored three of them and ate one with each of his next three meals so as not to let the food go to waste.
After lunch he made his way to the edge of the camp, where open latrines of the straddle-trench design had been dug. Even in the dry desert air, the stench was overpowering. Amjad hurried to finish his business and get away. As there were no washbasins or showers, he wiped his hands with sand, Arab-style. And it was good that he finished when he did, because scarcely two minutes later, the loudspeaker ordered the men to queue up for buses that would take them out into the desert to begin their new lives. But where would he be taken? And what kind of life would he find there? All at once Amjad had a queasy feeling in his stomach that had nothing at all to do with the greasy MREs.
The buses set off at mid-afternoon, heading south on a narrow track across the rocky terrain. The men were bound at the wrists to a steel cable that ran the length of the bus, but this time they were not hooded. Though the bus windows were coated on the outside with translucent film, in places the film had torn or peeled away, allowing prisoners to peek out. From time to time low hills of dark gray stone rose up on either side, but most of the way all Amjad could see was vast trackless desert.
After two or three hours of driving, and as the buses’ shadows grew long, they reached the outskirts of a town where, to Amjad's surprise, he looked out his peephole and saw what appeared to be fruit trees planted in neat rows in a lush green oasis. Further on, the bus passed through narrow streets lined with low mud-brick houses. From what he could make out as he rode through town, Amjad estimated its population at five to ten thousand. At last the buses pulled into a large open area that he thought must be the town's market square.
On the far left side of the square, crowds were forming around three low stone platforms. Straight ahead and to the right, assorted trucks, SUVs, donkey carts and camels were parked haphazardly around the square’s perimeter. Amjad focused his gaze on the platforms and, for a panicked moment, wondered whether they might be intended for an Islamic-style beheading, as he had seen in photographs of Saudi Arabia. Then he noticed a thin line of ragged Africans, hands tied behind their backs and ankles hobbled with rope, being led onto the center platform. The crowds shifted toward that platform while the escorts poked and prodded one dark-skinned prisoner after another with long sticks and made them spin around so that the onlookers could inspect them from all sides.
It reminded Amjad of old engravings he had seen of slave markets in West Africa and the American South. And then the thought hit him with full force: why had the detainees been brought to this, of all places, to be released? Were they to be auctioned off as slaves?
Before he could dwell much longer on that horrific thought, the bus turned left toward a series of makeshift pens and chutes like those found at stockyards and slaughterhouses. The bus stopped, its door opened, and the men stepped out, still bound to the steel cable that ran the length of the bus. Their American guards, armed with truncheons, pepper spray, and stun guns, led the men into one of the chutes, attended on both sides by stout natives wielding stout wooden batons the length of axe handles. There the cable was retracted and the men, though still bound at the wrists, were freed to move about. Within moments, two detainees who disembarked ahead of Amjad attempted to climb the chute's sides and were beaten back.
Next the detainees passed one by one through the chutes and out into a sort of corral or pen already packed with men who had arrived on preceding buses. Amjad pushed forward to the nearest wall of the pen, at the risk of being crushed, to gain a better view of the square. The crowd was a wild assortment of humanity, from robed and turbaned Tuaregs to semi-Westernized youths in jeans and polo shirts, to light-skinned and affluent-looking Arab men in neatly creased dress slacks and spotless white shirts, as if they had left their suit jackets and ties behind in the car.
But there were also men in khaki who did not appear to be detainees. So perhaps, if he could escape somehow and wade into the crowd, he in his khaki work clothes would not be picked out as easily as if he’d worn an orange jumpsuit.
As more onlookers flooded into the square, t
he scene became more chaotic. Yes, perhaps he might have a chance of blending into this crowd. But how to reach it? And what if he did and managed to make it into the narrow streets beyond? What then?
At that moment, through the slats of the pen, something caught Amjad’s eye. Off to the far right, at the edge of the square, he noticed three late-model SUVs, flanked by a half-dozen men in dark trousers and polo shirts who seemed to be observing the platforms from afar, like curious tourists. The men were light-skinned, closely shaven, and apparently European. What if they were not here to deal in slaves? What if they found the scene as shocking as he did and might be willing to help him? But again, more importantly, how was he to reach them?
Before Amjad could develop the thought further, he heard a commotion behind him and saw a dozen or more detainees attempting to scale the pen's walls. Guards left their positions around the pen to beat them back. And in that moment Amjad felt a mighty surge of adrenalin. Now was his chance. He would probably be caught, and perhaps beaten or killed. But what was that compared to the wretched fate of a slave? Without even looking to see if guards awaited him on the other side, he climbed up and over the barrier.
By nine A.M., Zorn’s three-car convoy was on the road, following the same route east from Arlit that they took the day before. But instead of turning northeast as they had to visit the gold mine, they headed southeast, past Gougaram, to enter a pass through the low hills of the Aïr Mountains. They were on the road for nearly four hours before they spotted the American camp on a distant rise. The convoy stopped and the men dismounted to observe the place through binoculars. Now that the vehicles' engines fell silent, Zorn noticed an odd hum in the air. Then, listening harder, he identified it as the whine of a distant propeller.
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