Congo Dawn Page 36

  Mulroney’s strong hands clenched and unclenched. Tightening them around someone’s throat right now would be a relief. But the only throat he wanted to crush under these fingers had once again managed to slip right through them. If Mulroney above anyone didn’t know otherwise, he’d start buying his subordinates’ inept excuses that his enemy was a jini, a ghost.

  Down on the tarmac outside the nearest cabin porthole, Trevor Mulroney could see a young Kenyan airport worker manning a hose that was refueling his charter flight. White teeth flashed under security lights as the youth wrestled with the thick hose as though he counted himself privileged to extend a long day’s shift well into the night to service some wealthy foreigner’s private aircraft. Mulroney abruptly yanked down the window shade.

  How well he remembered such an enthusiastic smile on the young man whose stubborn existence his clenched hands itched to choke out. He’d been visiting the London lab that processed samples from Earth Resources exploration projects, searching for that next mineral jackpot. He’d brushed past a station where a Congolese intern on scholarship at the Royal School of Mines was working when his briefcase snagged an electrical cord, spilling molten metal down the intern’s left arm. The Congolese intern had fortunately blamed only himself for his injuries. His groveling apologies, a jumping to servile attention every time Mulroney stepped into the lab, was at first gratifying, then annoying enough to contemplate how one might revoke that scholarship.

  But then the Congolese had come to Mulroney with a garbled story of strange rock outcroppings, a childhood pebble collection, rare metals—a story that had checked Mulroney’s initial impulse to throw the youth out. Was not Africa full of such stories of hidden treasure?

  A discreet independent sample test confirmed Earth Resources had hit the jackpot.

  There’d actually been a moment when Trevor Mulroney had considered the intern’s rambling proposal of joint ventures, new beginnings, a showcase of modern mining in the Ituri Rainforest. After all, Mulroney was not ruled by greed. The planet’s first reliable source of rhenium offered profit enough for any empire, even with such scraps as its discoverer might demand.

  But desperation proved a stronger motivation than avarice. The collapse of his Equatorial Guinea oil deal, the seizing of his coltan concessions in southeastern DRC, the embargo on his Central African Republic diamond fields was no single flood, but an entire tsunami washing at the sand on which Mulroney had so carefully erected his empire. And though Trevor Mulroney had long ago chosen dis­belief in any Supreme Being who might expect some accountability in return, Joseph’s knock at the door still seemed as fortuitous as any fairy godfather or genie of the lamp.

  The United States already consumed nearly half the world’s supply of rhenium, but growing economies like China and India now also had ever-larger appetites for the rare metal. Demand that kept rhenium prices sky-high.

  If authorities in Kinshasa and Bunia found out the true value of the find, by the time they each grabbed their piece of this pie, said pie would be reduced to crumbs. And other bidders for the rare metal would never stand idly by, allowing Earth Resources to develop the Ituri concession in peace. The reason Howard Marshall and his influential allies had jumped at Mulroney’s appeal.

  So much easier to keep the pie intact and to himself. All Trevor Mulroney needed was a year. One year of developing the mine, openly selling off the molybdenum, stockpiling the rhenium and releasing it at discreet intervals into the market. One year would put Earth Resources on such a firm financial foundation it would no longer matter if—as was inevitable with enough time—the truth finally became known.

  It should have been so easy. After all, how much of an obstacle was a single eager, young employee naive and loyal enough to offer Trevor Mulroney the world on a silver platter?

  One might almost think something or someone out there ruling this universe was taking gleeful and malicious pleasure in deliberately setting up, then thwarting his every endeavor.

  Maybe there really was a God.

  The entire long, dark, toe-stubbing, silent trek back to the airstrip, Robin alternatively offered up mental curses to Michael, Joseph, her guide, Trevor Mulroney, the universe in general. Above all the first two since, deliberately or by oversight, neither had thought to remove the vine shackles binding Robin’s wrists. Did they think she’d still make an attempt to run away? Try to follow?

  Well, maybe, Robin could admit.

  When she’d held her wrists out to her guide, he’d simply stared at her before setting off at a pace that made keeping up with his bobbing flashlight one continuous tightrope act. After a stumble left her sprawling full-length in the mud, he’d at least fractionally slowed his strides. Once they’d reached the road again, the flashlight’s thin ray permitted Robin to pick her way along the overgrown median between ruts. At some point, a roar of engines passed overhead that had to be the two Mi-17s Robin had spied earlier taking off.

  Robin could have sworn they’d traversed the distance of her outgoing trek several times over when her guide finally led the way off the road up a side trail. Only then did he tug a knife from his tattered shorts. Before Robin could muster apprehension, he’d slit her vine bindings. Handing over her knapsack along with Michael’s borrowed penlight, he broke into a trot back down the trail.

  “Thank you,” Robin called softly after him in Swahili. “I hope your brother Jacob will be okay.”

  But night had already swallowed the youth up. How do they do that without NVGs? They could make a fortune marketing it to special ops!

  Rubbing sore wrists, Robin headed in the opposite direction toward a pale glimmer of light. As she’d anticipated, a few more paces brought her out at the end of the airstrip. Robin didn’t bother turning on a flashlight. Now that she was safely back, she’d no desire to rouse curiosity among Makuga’s guard force or anyone else with eyes on the night.

  Nor did she need such illumination. While she’d been tucked under the rainforest canopy, the moon had risen, its full, silver-yellow orb shedding a luminescence across the airstrip bright enough to read a newspaper headline, if not the finer print. But Robin did not immediately abandon the concealing shadows of the huge hardwood under whose branches she’d emerged. Instead she crouched in dark shadow to grope inside her knapsack. Two unfamiliar shapes were Joseph’s flash drive and cell phone. Robin pulled out her own phone and checked the screen. No new text or voice messages, but—

  Robin blinked. She’d endured a lifetime out there in the rain­forest. Or at least a night. But her phone’s screen read 9:09 p.m. Less than two hours since she’d rushed out of Miriam’s house and down to the airstrip.

  Rising again to her feet, Robin shouldered her knapsack. Michael’s suggestion—make that order—had been for Robin to ferry Joseph’s data up to Taraja, then walk away. Following that option was not even on the table. For two reasons. One, no matter how convincing the rebel leader’s story, Robin had every intention of examining Joseph’s evidence for herself.

  More urgently, if getting this intel to Michael’s BBC friend should involve risk—and Robin wasn’t naive enough to gamble that it wouldn’t—she wanted to keep that risk as far as possible from Miriam, Ephraim, their children, the refugees sheltering at the Taraja compound. Even simply uploading data files to the Internet would leave an electronic trail back to the computer system involved. In this case, Taraja’s solar-powered satellite dish communications setup. As it was, a Skype trail already linked that BBC journalist with Taraja.

  If Joseph’s proof held what he’d vowed, if this story did break wide open, there would be fallout. And while Robin would soon be gone from this country, Miriam and her family had to live here. Live here with a corrupt warlord like Wamba as the hand of law. A warlord whose current position as governor was ample evidence that proving Joseph’s accusations would not necessarily guarantee justice.

  Using the Ares Solutions wireless system was a small enough risk since no one was likely to suspect Robin’s
involvement or search for such a connection. If anyone eventually did, hopefully by that time Robin would be long gone from this place.

  Decision made, Robin headed toward the Ares Solutions camp. Following Michael and Nathaniel’s earlier example, she threaded in and out of shadows edging the airstrip rather than across the bright band of moonlight. A prudent precaution since airstrip and encampment proved to be boiling with activity as Robin slipped closer. Militia uniforms were stringing out into a line along both sides of the airstrip. Closer at hand, the two South African pilots and several other Ares Solutions operatives swarmed over the two Mi-17s, checking missile mountings on one, the underbelly guns on the other, bolting on huge floor guns to angle downward from open side doors.

  It seemed, as Robin had feared, tomorrow’s dawn aerial assault was no idle threat. Had that earlier takeoff she’d witnessed been some sort of trial run?

  But Robin didn’t approach to ask because the glare of security spotlights now revealed as well the extent of mud, twigs, and sticky sap staining her own clothing, limbs, and face. A situation to be remedied before she drew that unwanted attention she’d been trying to avoid. The Serbian whose sprained ankle had relegated him to permanent sentry duty appeared to find nothing unusual in her belated arrival or filthy appearance. But Robin felt a need to offer explanation. “Things got pretty muddy setting up tents at the refugee camp.”

  The Serbian pulled back the mesh perimeter gate to let her through. “Yes, I saw the helicopters bring the new refugees.”

  A comment that made no sense, but Robin didn’t linger for a clarification because Ernie Miller was heading their direction from the helicopters, and dodging his sharp eyes was easier than inventing a more plausible explanation. Ducking into her tent, Robin let her knapsack slide from her shoulder. She shook its contents onto her army cot, then removed her iPad from its protective sleeve and powered it up. In the dim glow of the iPad screen, Robin stripped off muddy clothing, sponged down quickly with hand wipes, and pulled on clean khakis.

  Activating her Skype function next, Robin spread out Michael’s scribbled note and typed in the username he’d written out. Contact information for an Alan Birenge popped up immediately. The profile photo showed a male with the café au lait complexion and narrow features of mixed African-European heritage, an intelligent gaze peering through wire-rimmed glasses. Bio info listed Kenya as birthplace, British citizenship, journalist as occupation. With Birenge’s Skype username was also listed a phone number, by its calling code an inter­national cell phone service like Robin’s.

  Robin jotted down the number, then reached for Joseph’s flash drive and cell phone. But here she ran into a snag. To fulfill Michael’s request and Joseph’s, Robin had to load the material onto her iPad’s hard drive before she could e-mail photos or files. But Robin’s iPad did not include a USB port, and while she always packed a cable for her own digital camera, it didn’t match Joseph’s devices.

  Robin’s hesitation was brief. She might not possess equipment to coax the flash drive’s contents or the cell phone’s photo album onto her iPad, but she knew someone who undoubtedly had every cord and adapter in existence. Grabbing iPad, flash drive, and cell phone, Robin headed over to the communications trailer. Out on the airstrip, both helicopters were lifting into the air again. But this time they settled almost instantly back down onto a patch of grass and weeds at the edge of the airstrip. Robin had just reached the trailer steps when she saw the sputtering neon green of a flare being lit. Then another farther up the airstrip. They winked out as immediately as they’d been lit.

  The helicopter rotors cut off again just as Robin stepped through the trailer door. As she’d expected, Carl Jensen was inside, huddled over his precious computer screens. Even better, she’d found him alone. “Hey, I saw them moving the helicopters out there. And setting up flares down the runway. What’s going on?”

  Carl didn’t even raise his eyes from the screens, but he removed a set of MP3 earbuds to respond. “Prep for Mulroney’s arrival. Flight should be here in a couple hours.”

  Robin set her iPad down abruptly on the nearest workstation. “But—I thought Mulroney was flying in from London tomorrow. And it’s already after dark. Surely there’s no commercial flights in or out of Bunia at this hour!”

  “That’s what the GPS and flares are for. Guess Mulroney decided he wanted in on tomorrow’s kill. He’s chartered a private jet.” Carl tapped the screen in front of him. Against a high aerial shot of ghostly green rainforest canopy, Robin could make out a ragged circumference of the orange-yellow blotches she knew to be human heat signatures.

  “You see this? Our bush hunt perimeter has now contracted to an eight-kilometer radius around the mine. Troops rounded up a few dozen more refugees, none of them our fugitive yet. Choppers dumped the strays at Taraja with the others. But we’ve still got ­scattered signals beyond our own guys. Dawn tomorrow we’ll finish tightening our noose, then go after every remaining intruder individually. Worst-case scenario, if they don’t surrender, Miller’s team out there’s getting ready to bomb the dickens out of them.”

  A reminder of the urgency of Robin’s mission. Michael, Joseph, and the boy Jacob would be among those heat signatures still out there when dawn came. And if Trevor Mulroney was on his way here tonight, Robin had further motivation to get this behind her before considering how to face the Earth Resources CEO. Carl Jensen glanced up as Robin pulled out Joseph’s cell phone to lay it beside the iPad. “Tech problem, eh? Network or hardware?”

  His tone evinced neither interest nor annoyance. Mercenaries were not a particularly techno-savvy bunch, and bailing them out of their frequent electronics troubles was among Carl’s many duties. Robin handed him the cell phone and flash drive. “Not a tech problem, just need a cord or something to download this phone’s camera memory and any files on this drive to my iPad.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem.” After rummaging through a box, Carl unearthed a selection of cords. He plugged a cable into Joseph’s phone and connected to his own computer setup. The flash drive he inserted into a USB port. The device’s memory folder showed up immediately on the monitor. Carl dragged its single document onto his own screen. “Let’s take a look at what you’ve got here.”

  The pink-faced, stoop-shouldered Shaggy clone looked so eager, so benign, so nice that Robin was tempted to spill her entire errand to him and elicit his help. Except this wasn’t Robin’s secret to share. She put out a hand as Carl reached to joggle the mouse. “No, I don’t want anything opened, just shifted straight to my iPad.”

  Carl asked no questions, simply choosing a separate cord to connect computer and iPad. A few clicks of the mouse dragged the first folder into the iPad’s memory. His fingers flew next over the cell phone keypad. Within moments a moving image filled the screen.

  Carl’s disinterest abruptly vanished. “Hey, that one of our ops? Wow! That’s some action! Mind if I get a copy for the mission reports? That’s not a shot I have from any of our cameras.”

  “Just some footage someone took. But I’d have to get their permission before passing it along.”

  Robin tamped down her impatience as Carl shifted video and photo albums from the cell phone to her iPad. The instant he’d finished, she snatched up the cell phone, unplugging both cords. As the file folders vanished obediently from the computer screen, she tugged the flash drive from the USB port. The single file Carl had dragged over onto the computer screen remained behind. Reaching for the mouse, Robin clicked to delete it. But something in her fumbling opened it instead, filling the screen with a meaningless jumble of letters, numbers, and graphs that included the terms molybdenum, ore yields, rhenium trace. Carl had leaned in for a closer view by the time Robin managed to close and delete the file, berating herself for her carelessness. With any luck, the contents of Joseph’s flash drive would be as incomprehensible to him as to Robin.

  As she’d hoped, Carl straightened up almost immediately with a slight grimace. “Molybdenum
yields, eh? Not my cup of tea. Though I wouldn’t have put you as the geology type either. Or are you one of those mercenaries who’ve caught the African treasure bug?”

  “Neither,” Robin answered with a calm she wasn’t feeling. “But I like to know the basics on any new assignment. And this one includes a molybdenite mine, so I’ve been doing a little research.”

  “Yeah, well, wherever you got that particular research, it’s clearly an error. Or at least a misplaced decimal. Rhenium trace levels at 3 percent? Point 3, maybe.” Carl clearly misunderstood Robin’s startled jerk. “Yeah, boring, I know. Just as well you haven’t caught the bug. Odds of finding Africa’s next big bonanza are somewhat less than winning the lottery. At least without a few million to invest in mineral exploration.”

  Robin had taken advantage of his digression to scoop up both flash drive and iPad. “Really? I’ve got to say my research for this ­mission is pretty well all I know on the subject. How do you know so much? I thought you said geology wasn’t your cup of tea.”

  To Robin’s relief, Carl had turned his interest back to his computer screens. “It isn’t. But I come from a long family line of mining interests. Studied it in college until I figured out IT research was more my gig. You need anything else? ’Cause I’ve still got to get GPS coordinates for these heat signatures out to the ground units before I can turn in.”

  “No, that’s it. Thanks!” Robin did not completely release her breath until she was back inside her tent. At least it had been Carl Jensen and not Pieter Krueger or even Trevor Mulroney who’d been witness to that little fiasco. As single-minded as the tech guru had shown himself to be, he’d likely forgotten Robin and her errand already. And at least she had the pictures.